Acacius of Tver

Saint Acacius was bishop of Tver and Kashin, born on 14 March 1482 and reposed on 14 January 1567 at the Zheltikov Monastery. The Russian Church honours him as a saint among the hierarchs. His commemoration is on 14 January and on 29 June, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver (old calendar).

No data have been preserved about his early years. The synodikon of the Volokolamsk Monastery says that his father was the priest Basil, and his mother took the monastic habit with the name Julia. He himself received monastic tonsure at Volokolamsk from the founder of the monastery, Joseph of Volokolamsk. In 1517 he became archimandrite of the Vozmishchensky monastery of Volokolamsk. On 30 March 1522 Metropolitan Daniel of Moscow appointed him to the see of Tver, widowed after the death of Nil the Greek. Immediately after his consecration, Acacius, with other hierarchs, interceded with Vasily III for the prince in disgrace, Vasily Shuisky. In 1531 Maximus the Greek was exiled to the Otroch monastery in Tver, under Acacius's supervision, and lived there twenty years, enjoying Acacius's attention and respect, so far that he sat with the bishop at table and ate from the same dish.

As bishop Acacius took part in important church events of the middle of the sixteenth century: in the enthronement of Metropolitans Joasaph (1539) and Macarius (1542), in the work of both Macarian councils for the canonization of saints (1547 and 1549), in the Stoglav Council of 1551, in the council of 1553 to 1554, which condemned the heresy of Matthew Bashkin and examined the writings of the secretary Viskovaty on icon painting, and in the consecration of the first archbishop of Kazan, Gurias (3 February 1555). In 1550, when Metropolitan Macarius went from Moscow to Ivan the Terrible, who was on the Kazan campaign, the government of the Russian Church was left to Archbishop Nikander of Rostov and Bishop Acacius. In 1564 Acacius consecrated at Tver the Trinity church, called the "White Trinity", today the oldest of the surviving stone buildings of the city and one of the cathedrals of the Tver diocese.

From 1564 he was gravely ill and was absent from the council which decided about the wearing of the white cowl by the primate of the Russian Church and from that of 1566 which elected Philip as metropolitan. He reposed on 14 January 1567 and left the instruction to be buried in the Dormition Zheltikov Monastery beside Arsenius of Tver, which was done on 26 January by Bishop Philotheus of Ryazan. Soon after Acacius's death (not later than 1568), his confessor Archimandrite Vassian Koshka wrote the Word "On the Repose of the Holy Bishop of Tver Acacius and on His Life in Brief", which is the main source of biographical information about the saint.