Dionysius of Glushitsa

Venerable Dionysius of Glushitsa was an icon painter and the founder and abbot of several monasteries on the river Glushitsa in the Vologda region, born in 1363 and died on 1 June 1437. He was canonized by the Council of Makariev in 1547 and is commemorated on 1 June and on 12 October, with a solemn six-⁠fold service.

He was born in the environs of Vologda and at baptism received the name Demetrius. He entered the Spaso-⁠Kamenny monastery and in 1382 was tonsured a monk. After nine years he went to a deserted monastery, Saint Luke, which he restored and in which he stayed for a time. In 1400 he left the monastery of Saint Luke and founded, 15 versts from it, the Protection of the Mother of God monastery on the river Glushitsa. In 1420, 4 versts from the Protection monastery, he founded the Sosnovets hermitage. He died at the age of 74 and a half. The service for Venerable Dionysius was composed in 1548, and from the middle of the sixteenth century iconographic images of him appear.

His life is known from the Tale of the Spaso-⁠Kamenny Monastery, composed by Paisius Yaroslavov around 1481, and from the life written by the monk Irinarkh around 1495. According to the lives, Dionysius occupied himself with copying books, sewing clothes, carpentry and blacksmith work, and painting icons. Today he is best known as an icon painter. In the nineteenth century many icons were attributed to him; the local tradition of Romanov-⁠Borisoglebsk attributed to him the icon Saviour of Borisoglebsk, venerated in the town. Some of the surviving icons are attributed by scholars to another Dionysius, the famous Moscow icon painter (for example the life icon of Demetrius of Priluki); some are later and cannot be by Dionysius of Glushitsa; the attribution of some is disputed. The best known is the lifetime portrait icon of Cyril of Beloozero from the Kirillo-⁠Belozersky monastery, now in the Tretyakov Gallery. An inscription on the case in which the icon stood says that the image of the wonderworker Cyril was painted by Venerable Dionysius of Glushitsa while the wonderworker Cyril was still alive, in the year 6932 (1424), and the case was made in the house of the Most Pure One and of the wonderworker Cyril in the year 7122 (1614), with the blessing of Abbot Matthew.