Dionysius of Suzdal

Saint Dionysius of Suzdal, Hierarch, in the world David, was bishop of Suzdal and Nizhny Novgorod from 1374 and metropolitan of Russia in 1384-1385, who died at Kyiv in 1385, never having been able to take possession of the metropolitan see. The Russian Church remembers him on 15 October (the day of his repose), on 26 June (9 July) and on other days.

The hermit of the Volga

He was born about 1300 in the lands of Kyiv; his parents are not known. He was tonsured a monk and ordained hieromonk at the Caves monastery in Kyiv. Then he left the monastery and went to the Volga, where he settled alone in a cave he dug himself, on the bank of the river, near Nizhny Novgorod. Brothers gathered around him, and on that spot he founded, in some sources in 1330 or 1335, a Pechersky monastery, with a church of the Ascension of the Lord, in which he was abbot, then archimandrite. The monastery became a “school of the Christian faith and piety,” with up to nine hundred monks, and had a good influence on the inhabitants of Nizhny Novgorod. In 1352 he sent twelve brothers of his community to teach the people and found new monasteries. In 1371 he tonsured the forty-⁠year-⁠old widow of Prince Andrei Konstantinovich, whose example was later followed by many.

Bishop at Suzdal

In 1374 Saint Alexis, metropolitan of Moscow, ordained him bishop of Suzdal and Nizhny Novgorod, for his virtuous life and learning. The years of his episcopate coincided with the time when Russia was rising to shake off the Tatar yoke. On 31 March 1375 a Tatar commander captured by the people of Nizhny Novgorod shot an arrow at the bishop, but it pierced only his mantle. In 1377, with his blessing, perhaps even under his editing, the monk Lavrenty compiled the famous Laurentian Chronicle.

The struggle for the metropolia

After the death of Saint Alexis, in 1378, Venerable Sergius of Radonezh proposed to Grand Prince Dmitry Donskoy to elect Bishop Dionysius as metropolitan. The grand prince, however, wished to have as metropolitan his confessor, the priest Mityai, hastily tonsured with the name Michael and raised archimandrite of Novospassky; the council of bishops at Moscow elected him metropolitan at the prince's command. Dionysius boldly opposed the grand prince, pointing out that setting a primate without the will of the ecumenical patriarch is contrary to the canons; Michael, angered, threatened that on his return from Byzantium he would not leave Dionysius even a priest. Dionysius wanted to get ahead of Mityai and go himself to Constantinople, but was stopped and put under guard by the grand prince. To gain release, he promised not to go to Constantinople and gave Sergius as his guarantor; but as soon as he was free, summoned by the patriarch, he hurried to Byzantium, in 1379, which brought Sergius many troubles. Michael died on the way, and one of his companions, Archimandrite Pimen, reached Constantinople before Dionysius and was named metropolitan in Michael's place.

At Constantinople Dionysius stayed more than a year. In that time he sent from there two copies of the icon of the Mother of God Hodegetria, a part of the Life-⁠giving Wood and particles of the instruments of the Saviour's Passion. The patriarch highly valued his qualities, raised him to archbishop (in 1382) and gave him a phelonion with many crosses. At the end of 1381 he returned from Greece with the patriarchal charge of taking care to combat the heresy of the Strigolniki in Novgorod and Pskov. Convinced of his worth, after the change of two metropolitans, the grand prince wished to see him on the metropolitan throne. In 1383-1384 Dionysius went a second time to Constantinople, together with Theodore of Simonov, Sergius' nephew, and was, according to the Russian sources, raised to metropolitan. Patriarch Neilus Kerameus was not sure that he could trust him and sent two metropolitans to Moscow, to depose Pimen and install the archbishop of Suzdal. On his way back, passing through Kyiv, Dionysius was detained by the Lithuanian prince Vladimir Olgerdovich, at the insistence of Cyprian, archbishop of Kyiv, who should have succeeded at Moscow in 1378 but was not received there until 1390.

Repose and veneration

Dionysius died in detention on 15 October 1385 and was buried in the Caves of Anthony at Kyiv, in the monastery where he had begun his spiritual life. From his second journey to Constantinople he had brought relics of the Passion of Christ, placed in a reliquary which became one of the important relics of the grand princes of Moscow. In the Russian Church his memory is kept, according to the old calendar, on 15 October (28 October on the new calendar), as “Metropolitan of Suzdal,” since he could not take possession of the metropolitan see; he is also remembered on 26 June, on 23 June in the Synaxis of the saints of Vladimir, on 28 September in the Synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of the Near Caves and on the second Sunday of Great Lent, in the Synaxis of all the Venerable Fathers of the Kyiv Caves.