Ignatius Ostrovsky

Holy Venerable Ignatius Ostrovsky (of Novgorod, of the Oyat), of the sixteenth century, was a disciple of Venerable Alexander of Svir. The Description of Russian Saints (known from copies of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) says that the relics of the disciples of Venerable Alexander of Svir rested in the Entry into the Temple monastery at Ostrov, on the Oyat: the venerable fathers Ignatius, Leonid, Dionysius, Theodore, Ferapont, Cornelius and Athanasius, disciples of Saint Alexander of Svir, in the Rear Hermitage on the river Oyat, in the monastery of the Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple, five stages from the river Svir, up the Oyat, from the village of Arkhangelsk Sermaks, where Alexander's parents are buried.

Biographical data on the venerable ones of Ostrov are not preserved, nor is there information about their veneration in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. The saints are not mentioned in the Life of Venerable Alexander of Svir (about 1545) or in the manuscript synodikons of the Alexander of Svir monastery of the seventeenth century (in some copies of the synodikons Dionysius Alexandrovsky is named, hegumen of the Alexander of Svir monastery until 1608). The Life of Venerable Alexander of Svir says that in the Entry monastery at Ostrov the venerable one's father received monastic tonsure. So the monastery would have been founded in the second half of the fifteenth century. Yet in the description of the Obonezh district of 1582, the Entry monastery at Ostrov is mentioned as newly arisen (or restored?) on the site of a churchyard of the Entry. In the literature it is claimed that Venerable Alexander's disciples lived first at the Vazheozero hermitage, then moved to the Entry hermitage, where they died and were buried. It seems that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a local veneration of the saints existed, for descriptions of their appearance occur in icon painters' manuals of the eighteenth century.

In the nineteenth century the place of burial of the venerable ones of Ostrov was unknown. According to Archimandrite Leonid (Kavelin), Dionysius was the founder of the Entry monastery in the village of Arkhangelskoe (Sermaks) and was buried there in the church; the other disciples of Venerable Alexander listed in the Description, as well as Venerable Nikephoros of Vazheozero, were buried in a cave by the Transfiguration church of the Rear Hermitage of Nikephoros. In the opinion of Archbishop Sergius (Spassky), these reports are the result of a confusion between the Rear Hermitage of Nikephoros on Lake Vazhe and the Rear Hermitage on the river Oyat. By the same supposition, the founder of the Entry monastery on the Oyat could have been Ignatius, mentioned first in the list of the venerable ones of Ostrov in the Description.

It seems that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the venerable ones continued to be venerated locally. In the Old Believer menologia of the nineteenth century they are mentioned (except Dionysius) with separate days of commemoration (coinciding with the feasts of saints of the same name): on 3 October the commemoration of Dionysius (Dionysius of Ostrov and Dionysius of Novgorod are mentioned here as different saints), on 20 December of our venerable father Ignatius of the Oyat, disciple of Saint Alexander of Svir, on 10 April of Theodore, on 16 April of Leonid, on 16 May of Theodore (a second time), on 19 May of Cornelius and on 27 May of Ferapont.

The canonisation of the venerable ones of Ostrov was accomplished by the entering of their names in the Synaxis of the Saints of Karelia, established in 1974, and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Novgorod, whose celebration was revived in 1981. Ignatius is commemorated on 3 June, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Karelia, and on 11 July (new style, a movable day), in the synaxes of the saints of Novgorod and of Saint Petersburg.