Isaiah of Siya

Venerable Isaiah of Siya (sixteenth century) was a disciple of Venerable Anthony of Siya and one of the founders of the Antoniev Siya Monastery, in the Arkhangelsk region. He is venerated as a saint in the Synaxis of All Saints Who Shone Forth in the Russian Land (second Sunday after Pentecost), in the Synaxis of the Saints of Novgorod and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Siya (third Sunday after Pentecost); in the Menaion and the Patriarchate Calendar he appears under the name Elijah.

He is remembered in almost all redactions of the Life of Venerable Anthony of Siya: in the first, written in 1578 by Jonah, a monk of the monastery, in that of 1579 by Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich, in the short redaction, in the prologue type, in that of the 1660s by Abbot Theodosius and in the historical redaction of the first third of the eighteenth century, in which Archimandrite Nikodim took part. Isaiah was one of the four monks who joined Venerable Anthony of Siya and his disciples Alexander Berdov (from 1576 archbishop of Novgorod, from 1589 metropolitan) and Joachim, in the monastery of Saint Nicholas on the river Yemtsa, near the Dark Rapids. The Life says that "they built there a church in the name of our holy father Nicholas the Wonderworker, made cells and founded the monastery," and with the four brothers added to the first two, the venerable one himself was the seventh in the brotherhood. After seven years they had to leave the monastery, because of the discontent of the inhabitants of the village of Skrobotovo. Through the prayers of Venerable Anthony, the Lord showed them a new, solitary place, on a peninsula of Lake Mikhailovskoye in the Dvina land, where in 1520 the Siya Monastery was founded. At Anthony's order Alexander and Isaiah went to Moscow to the grand prince Vasily III Ivanovich, to obtain the charter of foundation and land grants. The petition of the elders was granted in 1525.

In the memorial book of the Siya monastery his commemoration is set down on the fourth Saturday of Great Lent and on 30 October, among the six "beginning" elders, together with that of Venerable Pachomius of Kena and of Anthony's parents. He was canonized in the Synaxis of the Saints of Novgorod when the feast was resumed in 1981; the canonization was confirmed by his entry in the Synaxis of the Saints of Siya, set on 15 July 2008 with the blessing of Bishop Tikhon of Arkhangelsk and Kholmogory.