Barnabas of Vetluga

Holy Venerable Barnabas of Vetluga was born in Veliky Ustyug and, until he went into the wilderness, was a priest at one of the city's churches. In 1417 he settled on the bank of the river Vetluga, on the Red Mountain, where he struggled in solitude for twenty-⁠eight years, "serving God in psalmody and prayers, eating herbs and oak shoots". As the author of his life says, wild beasts also came to him, many bears that lived near his cell; the saint walked among them as among cattle and rejoiced to see them, thanking God, and the beasts were gentle with him.

In the surroundings of the mountain, for fifty versts, there was no human dwelling. Rarely did people visit the hermit for his blessing, and to them he foretold that after his departure God would increase human life on the bank of the Vetluga, and monks would live in the place where he had dwelt. According to tradition, in 1439, before settling on the river Unzha, Venerable Macarius (commemorated 25 July / 7 August) came to him for guidance. Venerable Barnabas reposed in deep old age, reckoned to be on 24 June 1445.

After the death of the holy ascetic, many monks came "from various lands" to live at the place of his labours, and farmers with them, and people multiplied along the whole river as far as the Volga. On the Red Mountain the monks built two churches, one of the Holy Trinity and another, over the saint's grave, of Saint Nicholas, and founded a communal monastery called the Varnavin Hermitage. The life of the saint was written in 1639 by a monk of the hermitage, the hieromonk Joseph (Dyadkin), who later became at Moscow chief director of the church printing house.

The rumour of the saint's miracles reached in 1639 the Patriarch of Moscow, Joasaph, who questioned before the synod two priests of Vetluga, John and Onesiphorus, who had come to Moscow to testify to the miracles and to the mercy they had received. Onesiphorus had suffered from blindness for a long time and in his grave illness had lost hope. The monks urged him to pray at the saint's grave, and there he received his sight. The other priest confirmed his words and told how he himself had been healed of an illness at the grave. The Patriarch then sent Abbot Pafnutius of Zheltovodsk to the monastery to verify, and he, gathering many other accounts of miracles flowing from the saint's shrine, reported to the Patriarch, who glorified the memory of the newly revealed wonderworker. In 1639 the saint was canonized.

In time, on the site of the monastery the town of Varnavin arose, and the main church of the monastery became the town cathedral, dedicated to the holy Apostle Barnabas.

He is commemorated on 24 June, on 5 February in the Synaxis of the Saints of Kostroma, and on 12 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Nizhny Novgorod Metropolia, all in the new style.