Arcadius of Vyazniki

Holy Venerable Arcadius of Vyazniki, more exactly Arcadius of Vyazma, was a recluse and hermit at Vyazma, a disciple of Venerable Gerasim of Boldino, and departed to the Lord in 1592. The name Vyazniki in some lists is a mistake for Vyazma.

On the place where he lived and struggled at Vyazma a church was later founded, and from 1832 a convent named after him. His relics, found in the seventeenth century under Patriarch Joachim, on 11 July, rest under the ground at the Gerasim Monastery in Boldino near Dorogobuzh. In the Great Menaion Reader of Metropolitan Macarius, under 31 July, is placed a polemical treatise by the venerable one, written in 1538 and aimed mostly against the Council of Florence of 1438 and against Metropolitan Isidore, who had signed at that council the act of union of the two Churches.

At the end of the seventeenth century the veneration of Venerable Arcadius of Novy Torg merged with that of Venerable Arcadius of Vyazma, and icons appeared with the inscription: Venerable Arcadius, wonderworker of Vyazma and Novotorzhsk. This union of names is also seen in the inclusion of Arcadius of Novotorzhsk and Vyazma in the Synaxis of the Saints of Smolensk, established in 1984.