Barsonofia of Moscow

Holy Venerable Barsonofia of Moscow, whose name in the world was Varvara, lived in the first half of the sixteenth century and was the mother of the Holy Hieromartyr Philip (in the world Theodore Kolychev), metropolitan of Moscow and all Rus (1507-1569). She was the wife of the boyar Stepan Ivanovich Kolychev, called Stenstur, who held estates in the Novgorod land. The Kolychevs were one of the most noble families of the Muscovite state, descended from Andrei Kobyla, a descendant of an ancient dynasty of princes of Prussia. It may be that Varvara too belonged to the Moscow aristocracy, but her family is not known for certain.

Varvara-⁠Varsonofia was full of piety and cared for the poor. It may be said that the character of the future hierarch Philip was shaped by his virtuous mother, for, according to the author of his life, Theodore from childhood preferred reading books of the lives of saints to riding and avoided the dissipated life of those his age. In the years of her marriage Varvara bore Stepan Ivanovich four sons, Theodore, Prokofy, Jacob and Boris, and several daughters.

Later she took the tonsure with the name Varsonofia (most probably after her husband's death, about 1547) and founded in Moscow a convent of the Ascension of the Lord (Voznesensky on the Moat), better known as the Varsonofievsky. It stood between the streets Lubyanka and Rozhdestvenka, in a lane that took the monastery's name. Near it once stood a poor-⁠house, that is, a cemetery for strangers, the destitute and those who died a violent death. Here, by order of False Dmitry I, the tsar Boris Godunov, his wife and his son Feodor Borisovich, killed by the usurper's men, were buried (under Vasily Shuisky the Godunovs were moved to the Trinity-⁠Sergius Lavra). The convent was abolished in 1764, under Catherine II. The cathedral became a parish church, and the buildings and monuments, including the church of the Ascension, were demolished by the Bolsheviks.

Her memory is kept on the first Sunday before 8 September, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow (5 September, a movable date), and on the second Sunday after Pentecost, in the Synaxis of All Saints Who Shone Forth in the Russian Land, in the new style.