Georgy Ivanovich Maximov was born in 1861 in
stanitsa Nagavskaya in the
Don Host Oblast of the
Russian Empire to a
Cossack family. His father was a church reader (Russian: псаломщик). He finished elementary and parochial school in Nogavskaya and high school in
Ust-Medvedicka. He studied from 1879 to 1882, in the Don Theological Seminary in Novocherkassk, and then attended the Spiritual Academy in
Kiev. After graduating from the
Kiev Theological Academy in 1886, he served as a priest in Novocherkassk, where he remained for years. "He was an extremist in his religious beliefs. Before being tonsured as a monk in December 1890, he castrated himself with his own hands in an attempt to achieve moral perfection through mortification of the flesh." Soon he became principal of the church gymnasium in Ust-Medvedicka in 1894. He left Don Episcopacy in 1902 for
Vladikavkaz, where he became
rector of the cathedral in Vladikavkaz. After his wife's death, he was left with six children, the youngest was one year old and the eldest sixteen. By decision of the Holy Synod he was appointed Rector of the seminary in
Saratov in 1906. He became
monk in August 1909, adopting the name ″Germogen″, and was elevated to the rank of
archimandrite. In May 1910, he was consecrated as Bishop of
Aksay in
Saint Petersburg, Vicar of the
Don Diocese, and on 18 May, he arrived at the Don Diocese in Novocherkassk for his duties. In 1919, he became the 23rd Bishop of the
Yekaterinoslav and Novomoskovsk (1919 – November 1920) After the
October Revolution in 1917, Germogen condemned
Bolsheviks′ campaign against Cossacks in the course of the
Russian Civil War. He was a participant of the Southern Church Council of the Russian Church that took place in
Stavropol from 18 May to 24 May 1919, at which the
Church Administration was formed in Southern Russia that adopted ecclesiastical authority in the territory held by the troops of
Anton Denikin's
White Army. In the spring of 1920, he went from Novorossiysk to
Yalta by boat (from whence the final evacuation of the White Guard troops took place in November 1920), then on to
Constantinople and later to the city of
Thessaloniki, Greece. ==Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia==