Artemyev, Pyotr

ARTÉMIEV, PIOTR. - Russian deacon, b. about 1665 at Surdal, d. a martyr for the Catholic faith in the prison of the monastery of Solovetz, near Archangel, on 30 March (old style) 1700. He pursued his studies at the Academy of Moscow. During a journey to Venice, the young A. secretly converted to Catholicism through the agency of P. Tikhovskij, a Jesuit. This did not prevent him, upon his return to Moscow, from receiving the diaconate from the hands of Patriarch Adriano. Attached to the service of a church at Petropavlovsk, he soon publicly manifested his belief in Catholic doctrines. Denounced and condemned to degradation, he was first imprisoned in the monastery of Viageskij, at Klolmogor (1698), then in that of Solovetz (1699). He did not long withstand the severity of prison and the cold. Feeling death near, he availed himself of the right he had to request absolution from a heterodox priest, but it is not known whether he obtained II. He expired after having foretold the conversion of his homeland to Catholicism and having composed an apology for the Catholic truths commonly rejected in the dissident Russian Church.