Jacob of Galich

Venerable Jacob of Galich was a Russian monk and reposed in the second half of the fifteenth century at Galich (according to one source in 1442). The Russian Church honours him among the venerable fathers. His commemoration is on 4 April, on 7 April and on 30 May (12 June by the new calendar). The sources do not agree on his connections: one says that he was a disciple of Saint Sergius of Radonezh and of noble birth, another makes him a disciple and relative of Paisius of Galich, which does not fit the year 1442.

Little is preserved about his life, and the main source is the Life of Venerable Paisius of Galich, composed between 1642 and 1681 or 1682. Jacob was tonsured a monk by Paisius in the Dormition monastery of Paisius of Galich, who according to the service was his relative. A few years after the tonsure he was ordained priest. The Life of Paisius tells how Jacob saved the greatest treasure of the monastery, the Ovinovo icon of the Mother of God, in a great fire of the Dormition cathedral. The cathedral was locked, so when the fire began, the priest Jacob broke the church doors with a beam, entered the church through the flames, took the icon and came out. The setting of the icon, of silver and gold, melted completely from the fire, but not even Jacob's hair was singed.

After living some time more in the monastery, Jacob went to look for a place for a new monastery. According to tradition, in the part of the city of Galich near Staryi Torzhok (the site of the old market), near the ancient place called Stolbishche, or the Old Fortress, he founded the Staro-⁠Torzhok Monastery. He reposed in the schema and was buried there, in the cemetery for strangers beside the monastery. Later at his grave the sick were healed of "cruel fevers", and over the grave a wooden church was built in the name of the holy princes Boris and Gleb. One source also says that he had the gift of foresight.

It is believed that Jacob was glorified for local veneration after the canonization for the whole Church of Venerable Paisius of Galich, around 1682. In the eighteenth century a service was composed for him, kept in the monastery until the 1920s. His image was painted like that of Zosimas of Solovki. In 1925 the Staro-⁠Torzhok monastery was closed, and in the early 1930s the relics were removed and lost. At the beginning of the twenty-⁠first century the surviving monastery buildings house the Galich pedagogical school. Jacob's canonization was confirmed by the entry of his name in the Synaxis of the Saints of Kostroma, whose feast was established in 1981.