Jacob of Borovichi

Saint Jacob of Borovichi died about the year 1540 and is a saint of the Russian Church, a wonderworker of Borovichi and of Novgorod. His commemoration is on 23 October, and on the Tuesday of Bright Week (22 May, according to other sources), with a service of six stichera. No information about his life has been preserved. Tradition calls him a pious boatman and a fool for Christ, killed by thunder about 1540. The Serbian source calls him a venerable martyr.

His Life says that in that year, on the third day of Pascha, an ice floe with an oak log (a coffin) came floating down the river Msta to the Novgorod settlement of Borovichi, and in it lay the body of a youth. The inhabitants, not wishing to be involved in inquiries about an unknown dead man, pushed the floe into the middle of the river, but it returned to the bank. In the night the elders of the village saw this youth in a dream, who said that he was a Christian like them, that they should not drive him away, that his name was Jacob and that he had received it in honour of Saint James, the brother of the Lord. After this the relics were placed in a chapel, and in 1544 they were moved to the Holy Spirit Monastery. In the same year the celebration of Saint Jacob of Borovichi was established (from 1572 a celebration with the polyeleos was established). According to the Serbian source, the body was buried by the locals and taken to their church dedicated to the Descent of the Holy Spirit, and many miracles appeared from his relics.

In 1657 Patriarch Nikon moved the relics of Saint Jacob to Lake Valdai, to the Iversky Monastery at Valdai. A part of the relics remained at the monastery at Borovichi. In 1858 Feodor Verkhovtsev made a new shrine for the relics, which stood in the Dormition cathedral of the Iversky Monastery. A particle of the relics of the blessed and righteous Jacob is enclosed in the Kiy Cross. At Valdai, in 1826, the chapel of Saint Jacob of Borovichi was built, which has survived to this day.