Hieronymus Ekziemplarski

Hieronymus, secular name Ilya Tikhonovich Ekziemplarski, (born 20 July 1836 in Dmitriyevy Gory, died 2 November 1905 in Warsaw) was an archbishop of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Hieronymus came from a family of Orthodox priests. He graduated from the theological seminary in Vladimir and then from the Kyiv Theological Academy. After obtaining his degree in theological sciences in 1861, he was employed as a lecturer at the theological seminary in Kyiv, specializing in pedagogy and homiletics. He was ordained a priest in 1871 as a married man. He served in Kyiv and was also a catechist in various schools in the city. In 1885, nine years after his wife's death, he took permanent monastic vows, adopting the monastic name Hieronymus. Later that year, he was consecrated as the bishop of Chehrin, a vicar of the Kyiv eparchy. From 1890 to 1894, he was the ordinary of the Russian Orthodox Diocese of Lithuania, from 1894 to 1898 of the Eparchy of Warsaw, and then for seven years he headed the Eparchy of Chełm and Warsaw, and in the last months of his life, the Eparchy of Warsaw and the Vistula.

In all the eparchies he managed, he conducted extensive charitable activities, supporting orphanages, charitable societies, and schools. He was also interested in the functioning of monasteries and Orthodox press, the education of church singers, and he consecrated new sacred objects. As the archbishop of Chełm and Warsaw, he promoted Orthodoxy among resistant Uniate communities and their Russification. He unsuccessfully sought the abolition of the Archdiocese of Lublin, whose clergy, in his opinion, spread anti-Orthodox views among former Uniates and strengthened their resistance against the actions of the Tsarist authorities. He also called on the Orthodox clergy to be more active in working with resistant Uniates, and from 1902 he sought the establishment of the Eparchy of Chełm.

He died in 1905, and was buried in St. John Climacus's Orthodox Church in Warsaw, which he constructed at his own expense, planning to make it a family tomb. He was the only Orthodox bishop of Warsaw in the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church who died while in office and was buried in Warsaw.