Gennady of Vazheozero

Venerable Gennady was a hermit at Lake Vazhe (Vazheozero), in northern Russia, and reposed on 8 January 1516. He was born in the second half of the fifteenth century. The Russian Church honours him among the venerable fathers.

According to tradition, he was a disciple of Saint Alexander of Svir and, with his blessing, withdrew to Lake Vazhe, where he lived as a hermit until his death. He foretold to his disciples that a monastery would rise on the place of his hermitage. The prophecy was fulfilled: Saint Nikephoros of Vazheozero founded the Vazheozero Hermitage there.

His detailed life was lost when the hermitage was ravaged by the Lithuanians at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The most important source about him is the service composed long ago, which gives mostly general features: that Gennady was sanctified from his mother's womb, that from infancy he loved God, that he gave his possessions to the poor and left his homeland and kin. With the blessing of Alexander of Svir he lived for a long time entirely alone in a dugout on the shore of the lake. Only toward the end of his life did he receive two or three disciples for silent prayer, whom he taught the singing of divine praises, diligence, fasting and prayer.

His food was herbs, and his bed was the ground. He also wore chains, which were kept in the hermitage until the end of the seventeenth century.

According to his printed Life, the relics of the venerable one were laid to rest and kept incorrupt, together with the relics of Saint Nikephoros, in the church of All Saints, built between 1854 and 1858 on the site of an earlier tomb chapel.