Gerasim of Boldino

Venerable Gerasim of Boldino (born Gregory, 1489 to 1 May 1554) was a Russian monk, founder of the Boldino monastery near Dorogobuzh and of the Holy Trinity monastery on the Zhizdra. He was canonized for veneration in the whole Church on 3 February 2016 by the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church, together with other ascetics who had been venerated but not glorified in the whole Church. He is commemorated (Old Style) on 1 May, on 23 May (Synaxis of the Saints of Rostov and Yaroslavl), on 7 July (the finding of his relics) and on the Sunday before 28 July, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Smolensk.

Youth and apprenticeship

He was born in 1489 at Pereslavl-⁠Zalessky, of devout parents, and received at baptism the name Gregory. In 1502 he begged the well-⁠known ascetic Daniel to receive him as a novice and lived in the same cell with him in the Goritsky monastery at Pereslavl. After 1508 he received tonsure at the monastery of the Holy Trinity of Daniel and was named the monk Gerasim. The monastery was being built on the site of a house for the poor, which received the lame, blind and crippled, and his chief obedience was to make footwear for them, for which the brothers called him "the shoemaker". "While Gerasim lived in his cell, he added labours to labours and struggles to struggles, in fasting and unceasing prayer, day and night, without sleep."

The Boldino monastery

On 25 March 1528 he came, the Life tells in his own words, as one of the poor, to the forest near Dorogobuzh, a desert place where robbers lived, called Boldino, guided by God. Once some cruel men who did not fear God, passing by, reviled him, beat him and dragged him. In 1530, two years after his settling by the Moscow road, he had a vision by night: near his hut he heard a ringing as of many bells well matched. And on the second and third night he heard the same ringing for a long time. In the morning he went to the place from which he had heard it and found a spring called Boldin, a very beautiful and dry place, and in the middle a great oak, with three mighty branches, under which the rain did not come. He raised his hands to heaven and prayed long, saying: "This is my resting place, here I will dwell for ever". With a staff in his hand and a bag on his back he went on foot to Moscow to ask Grand Prince Basil III for permission to build a monastery.

On 9 May 1530 the church of the Holy Trinity was consecrated, with a side chapel of Saint Sergius. After a time the heated church of the Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple was built. In 1535, with his disciple Simeon, he came to Vyazma, where he later founded the monastery of Saint John the Forerunner. In 1542 to 1543 he ordered that one of his disciples, Simeon, be made abbot for them, built a monastery in the Bryansk district, in the Bryn forest, on the river Zhizdra, in the name of the Holy Trinity, where he appointed Peter Korastelev as builder, and another in the Dorogobuzh district, on the river Nepra, at Vyrkovy Luki.

Repose and relics

Gerasim passed to the Lord on 1 May 1554, in the monastery he founded, in the twelfth indiction, at the seventh hour of the night, giving his labouring and long-⁠suffering soul into the hands of God. The finding of his relics is commemorated on 7 July, and on 3 February 2016 the Council of Bishops canonized him for veneration in the whole Church.