Abraham of Rostov

Saint Abraham of Rostov, archimandrite at Rostov, in the world Abercius, born at Chukhloma in the Kostroma region, is venerated because, according to his Life, he destroyed the idol of the god Veles and built on that place the monastery of the Theophany. He fell asleep in old age, by tradition in 1077. He is commemorated on 29 October, the day of the finding of his relics, on 23 May in the Synaxis of the Saints of Rostov and Yaroslavl, and on 21 May in the Synaxis of the Saints of Karelia (by the old calendar).

Life

From childhood he was very ill. In youth he became a Christian, according to tradition cured of illness through prayer. He resolved to become a monk at Valaam, received the name Abramius and settled at Rostov on the shore of Lake Nero, where he made himself a hut. Nearby was a place where the local tribes, probably the Ves and Merya, worshipped a stone idol of Veles, which inspired superstitious fright in the whole neighbourhood. His Life tells of a vision in which the Apostle John the Evangelist gave him a staff crowned with a cross to destroy the idol. In memory of the vision he built on the site of the temple a monastery of the Theophany and a church of Saint John the Theologian and preached the Gospel. Convinced by his preaching, many pagans were baptized. At the petition of the Rostov princes he was ordained archimandrite of the monastery of the Theophany.

Death and veneration

He fell asleep in old age and was buried by his disciples in the church of the Theophany. His relics were found on 29 October 1210, in the time of Grand Prince Vsevolod the Big Nest. His canonization for the whole Church took place, in Golubinsky's view, by the time of the Makarian councils of 1547 to 1549. A service made on the model of that of Saint Sergius of Radonezh is mentioned in a fifteenth-⁠century manuscript. In 1551 Tsar Ivan the Terrible, before the campaign against Kazan, visited the monastery; the staff with which the saint had destroyed the idol was shown to him, and he took it on campaign and left the cross at its end in the monastery. After the conquest of Kazan he ordered the stone Cathedral of the Theophany built, with four side chapels, in 1553 to 1555, and sent books and icons. In 1860 Fyodor Verkhovtsev made a new shrine for his relics.

The time of his life

The Life gives 1010 as the date of death, but most historians regard the date as wrong. Karamzin said Abraham worked at Rostov in the time of Andrei Bogolyubsky or after. Klyuchevsky places his work between 1073 and 1077, Macarius Bulgakov up to 1045, Andrei Titov at the end of the eleventh or start of the twelfth century, and Filaret Gumilevsky at the start of the twelfth century. Golubinsky doubted his very existence, regarding him as one with Abraham of Galich, and placed his work in the last quarter of the fourteenth century. Arseny Kadlubovsky does not regard him as founder of the monastery of the Theophany and places his life in the fourteenth century.