Dorothea of Kashin

Venerable Dorothea of Kashin (Lodygina or Ladygina, in the world) was a schemanun of the Presentation convent in Kashin. She was born in 1549 and reposed in 1629 at Kashin. She is a locally venerated saint. Her commemoration is kept on the day of her repose and on her name day, and our calendar gives 24 September and 6 February. The record does not say by what act she was numbered among the saints.

According to some data, she came from the family of the Smolensk princes Korkodinov, but the name she bore before monastic life is not known. She was married to Fyodor Lodygin and had a son, Michael. Her husband fell in the Time of Troubles, probably in the defence of Kashin against the Poles in 1609. After his death she withdrew to the Presentation convent, just laid waste by the enemy, and settled among the ruins, in a cramped cell. All the means she had she devoted to the restoration of the convent and to helping the needy people of Kashin. Twenty years she struggled in the convent, receiving the schema in 1615, with the name Dorothea. She reposed in 1629 and was buried on the convent grounds.

The grave of Venerable Dorothea, near the Presentation cathedral, was adorned with a monument of white stone, hewn in the form of a column, with a gravestone inscription containing the date of death. In the manuscript chronicle of the convent a number of miraculous healings were recorded of pilgrims after their prayers at the grave of the venerable one. The icon of Venerable Dorothea was painted by the abbess of the convent, Antonia (Mezentsova), after a vision she had in 1848 of the schemanun to whom she often prayed. In 1857 Abbess Antonia, on the advice of the elder Peter Tomanitsky of Uglich, raised over the grave a chapel of iron, which stood until 1870, when a new, stone one was built in its place. Every year, on the day of Dorothea's repose and on her name day, common memorial services were held there. In the chapel were buried the remains of Abbess Antonia, who died in 1875, and of the benefactors of the convent, the spouses John and Anna Vanchakov.

In the Soviet period the convent was closed, and the chapel was destroyed in 1931 and 1932. In 1999 a stone cross was set on the presumed place of the grave. The ascetic is venerated in the Orthodox Church in America and in the Russian Church Outside of Russia. The name of Venerable Dorothea, together with those of other locally venerated saints, entered the Holy Trinity Orthodox Russian Calendar published by the Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville. In 2002 a small wooden chapel of the venerable one was built at Asten in the Netherlands by Dutch Orthodox, in memory of their pilgrimage to the grave of Dorothea.