Alexis of Solovki

Venerable Alexis of Solovki, a hermit, a native of Kaluga, laboured in the first half of the seventeenth century on the Solovki islands. He is mentioned in the life of Venerable Diodorus of Yuryeva Gora. When Venerable Diodorus went through the Solovki and Anzer islands helping the hermits, he met many ascetics hidden in the thickets of the forest, among them Alexis of Kaluga. The abbot of Solovki Monastery was then Venerable Irinarch (1613 to 1628).

It is not known whether a local canonization of Venerable Alexis took place in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as for the other hermits of Solovki. His name was entered in the early nineteenth century in the "True and Brief Enumeration of the Venerable Fathers of Solovki", and in the early twentieth century in the Arkhangelsk Paterikon. Local glorification took place with the establishment, in 1993, with the blessing of Patriarch Alexy II, of the Synaxis of the Saints of Solovki. He is commemorated on 22 August, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Solovki, and on 11 July, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Novgorod.