Abraham of Galich

Venerable Abraham of Galich, also called Chukhlomsky or Gorodetsky, was an abbot and founder, a disciple of Saint Sergius of Radonezh, who founded four monasteries on Lake Chukhloma, in the region of Galich in today's Kostroma Oblast. He died around the year 1375 and is remembered on 20 July and on 23 January.

His birthplace and secular name are not known. According to a short account of his life, he lived first at the Pechersky Ascension monastery in Nizhny Novgorod, from where he moved to the Trinity Lavra of Saint Sergius. After some time, with the blessing of Sergius of Radonezh, he went to the principality of Galich and founded there the first monastery in the Galich region, the Avraamiev Novozaozersky monastery, dedicated to the Dormition of the Mother of God, on the northeast shore of Lake Galich. His legend says that he settled in the domain of Prince Dimitry of Galich, who held Galich in the years 1360-1363. Later he founded three more monasteries, among them the Gorodets monastery, dedicated to the Protection of the Mother of God, on the northern shore of Lake Chukhloma. In the eighteenth century all these monasteries, except Gorodets, were closed and became parish churches.

He died in the chapel near the monastery, where he had retired shortly before, about 1375. According to the legend it was on 20 July 1375, but the historians D. F. Prilutsky and E. Golubinsky, noting that his life names as his contemporary Prince Yuri Dmitrievich, who received Galich only in 1389, think that his death was later. Over his relics a stone cathedral of the Protection of the Mother of God was built in 1608-1631. After the monastery fell into ruin, in 1857-1867 a cathedral in honour of the icon of the Mother of God of Tenderness was built over the relics. In 1896 a silver shrine was placed above them, taken away in 1922, but the relics themselves were not opened.

His life was compiled in 1548-1553 by the abbot of the Gorodets monastery, Protasy, on the basis of old monastery records. He was twice numbered among the saints with local veneration, in 1553 and in 1621. Church-⁠wide veneration began in 1981, with the establishment of the Synaxis of the Kostroma saints, in which his name was also entered.