Demetrius of Tsilibino

Venerable Demetrius of Tsilibino was the founder of the Archangel hermitage at Tsilibino, on the river Vychegda, twenty-⁠eight versts from Yarensk, in the Vologda governorate, at the end of the fourteenth century, in the time of Saint Stephen, bishop of Perm (1383 to 1396). He is commemorated on 24 January, on 26 October and in the third week after Pentecost, in the Synaxis of the saints of Vologda.

Almost nothing has survived of his childhood and life in the world, and the other reports about him are few and fragmentary. The hermitage he founded served at first as a shelter for preachers of Christianity among the Zyrians, and later, on the site of the hermitage there stood a parish church.

Venerable Demetrius was one of the closest disciples and zealous helpers of Saint Stephen in spreading the Orthodox faith among idolaters, and probably came from the Zyrians enlightened by Saint Stephen. The venerable hieromonk Demetrius lived in a cave that he had dug under the church and came out of it only for the service and to preach the word of God in the surrounding villages.

The year of his death is not known. The saint's body rests near the church he built.