Christopher of Koryazhma

Venerable Christopher of Koryazhma (also called of Solvychegodsk) was the founder of the Hermitage of the Mother of God that bears his name, in the Vologda region of northern Russia, and lived in the sixteenth century. He died after 1572, in a place that is not known. The Russian Church commemorates him on 25 July, by the old calendar.

He began his ascetic labour in the skete of Venerable Longinus of Koryazhma (died 1540), later the Koryazhma Monastery of Saint Nicholas, and was one of Longinus's first disciples. Ten years after his teacher's repose, Christopher settled on the small river Malaya Koryazhemka, where he built himself a cell and a chapel.

News of the hermit soon spread, and pilgrims and disciples began to gather around him. About the year 1555 he built a church in honour of the icon of the Mother of God Hodegetria and took charge of the community that had formed.

Near the hermitage there was a spring whose water was held to be healing. Word of it reached Moscow, and Tsaritsa Anastasia, the wife of Ivan the Terrible, wished to use it for her illness. Christopher was summoned to Moscow and brought help to the tsaritsa. He returned to his monastery with a gift from the court and with these funds began the building of a new church.

The work was finished in 1572. Christopher then left the hermitage and departed in an unknown direction. The place of his death and burial remains unknown.