Iliya Aminskii

Iliya Aminskii was a schemamonk of the Russian kellia on Mount Athos, venerated by the faithful without any synodal canonization. A native of the Kamenets-⁠Podolsk province, he was an educated and capable man, manager of the wheat and sugar-⁠beet estates and works of Tereshchenko, with great wealth and standing in society. One day he left it all and chose the monastic life.

He reached Athos in 1904. At the Russian Monastery of St Panteleimon he confessed to Father Agathodor (Budanov) and asked leave to live not in the monastery but in the forest belonging to it. The elder gave his blessing, and Iliya lived in the forest for almost thirty years, under a rock, eating herbs and fruit, without changing his rags, without tending his body even after he was past eighty, and without ever speaking. When he met people he fell to his knees and stayed with his forehead to the ground until they had gone.

The only photograph that survives was taken in 1919 at the demand of the Greek authorities. At that time Father Agathodor tonsured him into the schema with the name Iliya. His life belongs to the struggle of the Russian forest hermits of Athos, called siromakhi.