Bartholomew Troitsky

Holy Venerable Bartholomew Troitsky was one of the first disciples of Venerable Sergius of Radonezh. The life of the Abbot of the Trinity says nothing about him. Of Bartholomew speaks the life of Venerable Sergius composed by Simon Azaryin, and his name also appears in the Tale of the cellarer Abraham Palitsyn on the siege of the Trinity-⁠Sergius Lavra by Polish-⁠Lithuanian invaders in 1608-1610.

According to this tale, on one of the hardest days of the defence of the monastery Saint Sergius appeared to the sacristan Irinarkh and told him that he had sent to Moscow, to the house of the Most Pure Mother of God and to the wonderworkers of Moscow, to offer prayers, his disciples Micah, Bartholomew and Naum, at the third hour of the night, and that their enemies had seen them too. Irinarkh told at once what he had heard. The voivodes questioned their own men and the prisoners, and scouts seized a Pole who confirmed that the besiegers had seen three monks ride out of the monastery and had sent pursuit after them, which had not caught up. The defenders gave thanks to God and to the great wonderworker Sergius.

A monk who was being treated in the monastery hospital doubted the report that Sergius had sent his disciples to Moscow, wondering on what horses the saint could have sent monks. As he thought this, he turned his face to the wall and suddenly heard the door of the cell open and the steps of someone entering. It was Saint Sergius himself. He asked why the monk doubted and said that the disciples had indeed been sent, on three blind horses that the groom Athanasius Oshcherin had driven out of the monastery into a fenced place, and told him to tell all this. Then the saint became invisible. The monk felt well, wept until matins for his doubt, came to church on his own feet and told everyone. When they looked for the blind horses, they found them nowhere, and all were convinced of the truth of the words of Saint Sergius.

The wonderful journey of Venerable Micah, Bartholomew and Naum is depicted, among other works, on a lithograph about the defence of the Lavra and on Mikhail Nesterov's painting "The Horsemen", in the collection of the Church Archaeological Cabinet of the Moscow Theological Academy. Some scholars suppose that Bartholomew may have been a disciple of Venerable Micah.

He is commemorated on 19 July in the Synaxis of the Saints of Radonezh and on 5 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, in the new style.