Ignatius of Simonov

Holy Venerable Ignatius of Simonov, an icon painter of Moscow (at the end of the fourteenth and in the first half of the fifteenth century), was a monk of the Dormition New Simonov monastery in Moscow. He is first mentioned by Venerable Joseph of Volokolamsk in the Spiritual Charter (the long redaction of the monastery's rule, beginning of the sixteenth century; Word 10, an answer to the curious and a brief account of the holy fathers who were in the monasteries in the Russian land), in connection with the disorders in the monastery that arose after Hegumen Saint Theodore was raised to the see of Rostov (1388/89) and after the departure from the monastery of Venerable Cyril of Belozersk (before 1397). The disturbances were opposed by the monks Bartholomew, John the Golden and Ignatius, called elders, as well as the future metropolitan of Kiev and all Russia, Saint Jonah.

In the second redaction of the Life of Saint Jonah, included in the fourteenth step of the Book of Degrees of the Royal Genealogy (1560-1563), in connection with the coming of the future Metropolitan Jonah to monasticism in the Simonov monastery the names of the ascetics there are also given: and there he struggled with the blessed Bartholomew, John the Golden and Ignatius the icon painter. The Description of Russian Saints (known from copies of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) says that the venerable fathers Bartholomew the blessed, the cellarer John the Golden and Ignatius the icon painter departed in the year 6950 (1442) and were buried in Moscow, in the Simonov monastery.

He is commemorated on 5 September (new style, a movable day), in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow.