Stephen of Perm

Stephen of Perm (; ; – 26 April 1396) was a Russian Orthodox bishop, painter and missionary. Stephen is credited with the conversion of the Komi peoples to Christianity. He settled in Ust-Vym and became the first bishop of Perm in 1383.

Stephen also created the Old Permic script, Epiphanius the Wise wrote about his life in The Life of Stephen of Perm.

Life

Stephen was born around 1340 in the town of Ustyug in northern Russia. The region was populated by the native Komi, also known as Zyrians or western Permians, with a minority of Russians. He befriended Epihanius, who became the biographer of Sergius of Radonezh and later Stephen as well.

The effect of the new bishopric and the conversion of the Vychegda Perm threatened the control that Novgorod had been enjoying over the region's tribute.

Legacy The historian Serge Aleksandrovich Zenkovsky wrote that Stephen of Perm, along with Epiphanius the Wise, Sergius of Radonezh, and the great painter Andrei Rublev, signified "the Russian spiritual and cultural revival of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century". Indeed, Stephen's life encapsulates both the political and religious expansion of "Muscovite" Russia.