Gurias of Shaloch

Holy Venerable Gurias of Shalocha is little known. He is known to have been a fellow-⁠worshipper and friend of Venerable Martyr Euphrosinus of Sinozero. While still a monk, in 1598, he settled with him and Venerable Philaret near the Chagodoshcha river and the Gvozdensk stream; the place was later called the Old Hermitage.

Wishing a still more solitary life, after a time Venerable Gurias went to struggle in other places. Around the year 1603 he founded, at the confluence of the little river Shalocha with the Mologa, the Dormition Hermitage of Shalocha and became its hegumen. As hegumen, with the blessing of Patriarch Job of Moscow, he consecrated the wooden church of the Annunciation, which Venerable Martyr Euphrosinus of Sinozero had built. He reposed in the Lord in 1603. Now, at the place of his rest, stands a wayside cross.

He is commemorated on 11 July (new style, a movable day), in the synaxes of the saints of Vologda and Novgorod.