Dositheus of Pskov

Venerable Dositheus of Verkhny Ostrov (Dositheus of Pskov) was a disciple of Venerable Euphrosynus of Pskov, founder and first abbot of the Monastery of Saints Peter and Paul on Verkhny Island, on Lake Pskov. He reposed in 1481 or 1482. He is commemorated on 8 October and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Pskov, on the third Sunday after Pentecost. Since 1987 his name has been entered in the Synaxis of the Saints of Pskov.

Almost nothing has been preserved of his childhood and life in the world, and other information about him is very scarce and fragmentary. The monastery was founded, according to the chronicles, around 1470. The Talab islands were then an impassable forest, a refuge for robbers. In his monastery Dositheus established the common life in the wilderness.

His relics rest beneath a slab in the Verkhny Ostrov monastery, which was abolished in 1764 and turned into a parish church of Saints Peter and Paul. After the October revolution the church was closed by the Bolsheviks; many clergy were arrested and exiled without the right of return after release, and some were shot. Today the monastery is slowly being revived.