Cyril of Novoezersk

Venerable Cyril of Novoezersk (of the Belyi family, 4 February 1481 to 4 February 1532) was a hieromonk and the founder of the Kirillo-⁠Novoezersky monastery on the White Lake, a wonderworker. He is commemorated (Old Style) on 4 February and on 7 November, the day of the finding of his relics. His canonization followed soon after the finding of the relics in 1649; his commemoration day first appears in the second complete edition of the Prologue (1659).

Life

He was born at Galich, of a noble family, the Belyi. At fifteen he left home for the monastery, to Venerable Cornelius of Komel, who tonsured him a monk. After a time he was found by his parents, who thought him dead; they followed their son's example and also entered monasticism, giving a part of their fortune to Cornelius's monastery. With the abbot's blessing, Cyril left the monastery and began to go about other monasteries, to venerate the holy places; these wanderings lasted some twenty years. According to the Life, at the Dormition monastery at Tikhvin he was granted the appearance of the Mother of God, who directed him to the shore of the White Lake. There, on the Red Island, he built two cells (for himself and for later brothers) and two churches, of the Resurrection of Christ and of the Mother of God Hodegetria. The founding of the monastery is placed in 1517. Soon other hermits joined Cyril and the Kirillo-⁠Novoezersky monastery was formed, which had the attention of grand princes and tsars, who endowed it with gifts and estates. Cyril was abbot of the monastery he founded and died on 4 February 1532.

The relics

On 7 November 1649, in digging the trench for the foundation of a church being built, the relics of Venerable Cyril were found. In 1652, after the completion of the building, they were placed in a shrine in the arch between the cathedral church and the one dedicated to Saint Cyril. In 1658 the boyar Ilya Miloslavsky covered the shrine with a precious covering "in memory of his parents and for his soul". Soon after the finding of the relics, Cyril's canonization took place. In 1795 a gilded silver shrine was made for his relics. At the opening of the relics, in February 1919, the report of the 8th section of the People's Commissariat of Justice to the Congress of Soviets described them as "a doll representing a man, with the shape of a human face and all its parts, such as nose, chin, etc.; under the covering a heap of bones, some of which, such as the thigh bone and the back part of the skull, keep their shape, all the others have turned to dust; in the skull two copper coins of 1740 and 1747". On 11 June the executive committee at Belozersk decided that the bones of the opened relics be given to a doctor to be "made harmless", put in a wooden coffin and set in the former place. In 1928 the monastery was closed and desecrated, some valuables were given to a museum, and the place of the relics remains unknown. The monastery was heavily destroyed, a camp was opened in it, and since 1994 the colony IK-5 ("the Vologda Pyatak") is there, one of the five colonies for life prisoners in Russia.