Athanasius Iron Staff

Venerable Athanasius Iron Staff was a disciple of Venerable Sergius of Radonezh and struggled in the Novgorod land with Venerable Theodosius. They settled at the place called Cherepovets, at the mouth of the river Yagorba into the Sheksna, amid dense forests, where they raised a church in the name of the Holy Trinity and founded the Resurrection monastery of Cherepovets. Nothing certain is known of Theodosius. Little is recorded of Athanasius; an annal calls him "the hermit called Iron Staff, a disciple of Saint Sergius the wonderworker" and says that he reposed in the year 6900 (1392). Other sources give about the year 1388.

The monastery was razed in the Lithuanian invasion, so no records of its founders survived, except an entry in a donation book of 1568 that calls Theodosius and Athanasius "the founders of this holy monastery". Their relics lie in Cherepovets, under the Resurrection cathedral. They are commemorated on 18 July (5 July old style), on 8 October (25 September old style) and on 9 December (26 November old style).