Dionysius of Pereyaslavl

Holy Venerable Dionysius of Pereyaslavl was a recluse and the builder of the Monastery of Saint Nicholas on the Marsh at Pereyaslavl-⁠Zalessky. He departed to the Lord on 15 April 1645, after receiving the great schema. The information about him is preserved by local tradition, recorded at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Dionysius was an Armenian and, before becoming a monk, was engaged in trade. Once, after earnest prayer, he saw in a dream Saint Nicholas, who commanded him to renew the monastery of Saint Nicholas, founded not later than 1377 by Venerable Demetrius of Prilutsky and abandoned after its plundering by a Polish-⁠Lithuanian detachment in 1609. It seems that he soon received tonsure and settled in the monastery. On 5 July 1613 Tsar Michael Fyodorovich appointed him builder of the Nikolsky monastery. At his expense a wooden church and a fence were raised in the monastery, the venerable one helped introduce the rule of common life, and in his time the monastery acquired lands and charters with privileges. Before his death, receiving the great schema, he laboured in seclusion; the place of his burial is not known.

Already in the Menologion of Simon Azaryin, from the middle of the seventeenth century, Dionysius is mentioned among the ascetics who are venerated by people and have received grace from God for their righteous life, but whose days are not recorded in the months, as the recluse at Pereyaslavl-⁠Zalessky of the Nikolsky monastery on the marsh. In the Nikolsky monastery there was a depiction of Dionysius as an elder praying in heavy chains before the wonderworking icon of Saint Nicholas; the picture was lost, probably before the monastery's conversion into a convent, around 1898. He was canonised by the entry of his name in the Synaxis of the Saints of Rostov and Yaroslavl, celebrated since 1964, and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Vladimir, celebrated since 1982. After the renewal of the Nikolsky monastery in December 1993, veneration of Dionysius was restored in the monastery.