Jacob of Omuch

Venerable Jacob of Omuch was a monk, companion and disciple of Venerable Theophilus of Omuch and the organizer of the Omuch Hermitage in the Luga district, near Saint Petersburg. He died in 1412, almost at the same time as Theophilus. He is commemorated on 21 October and, on the third Sunday after Pentecost, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Saint Petersburg and the Synaxis of the Saints of Novgorod.

Almost nothing has been preserved about his childhood and worldly life, and later data are very few and fragmentary. It is known that he was a monk of the Nativity of the Mother of God Monastery at Konevets, where he met Theophilus, soon elected abbot. Weary of the noise of life at Konevets, Theophilus and Jacob sought quiet and solitude among moss, hills and swamps, on the banks of the river Omucha. From 1396 they spent their life there in strict fasting, unceasing prayer and struggle with thoughts and the attacks of evil spirits.

The labours of the two hermits, however, soon became widely known and drew zealots of piety, who founded together with the venerable ones, in the wild country on the river Omucha (some 60 to 70 kilometres from Porkhov), the hermitage of the Dormition of the Mother of God, afterward named for Theophilus. Hieromonk Nikodim (Kononov), in his 1901 work on the Russian saints venerated in the Saint Petersburg diocese, quotes Archbishop Filaret: Theophilus and Jacob founded in 1396 the hermitage in honour of the Dormition of the Mother of God on the river Omuga, near the village of Demyanovsky, 65 versts from Porkhov; Theophilus was the founder of the hermitage, and Jacob the organizer of the monastery.

Jacob died almost together with Theophilus, around 1412. His relics were buried under a slab in the wooden church of the Dormition.