Jacob of Solovki

Venerable Jacob of Solovki, also called Jacob of Kostroma, was abbot of the Solovki monastery from 1581 to 1597 and died in 1614. Almost nothing has survived of his childhood and life in the world, and the other reports about him are few and fragmentary.

It is known that he was a monk tonsured at Solovki and a disciple of Saint Philip. In his time, between 1584 and 1594, a strong stone wall was built around the monastery, which stands to this day, to the plan of the Solovki monk Tryphon, under the supervision of the voivode Ivan Yakhontov, sent from Moscow, but at the monastery's own cost. Tsar Feodor Ivanovich granted the monastery great tracts of land in the time of Abbot Jacob. At the same time the monastery raised the fortress of Suma.

In 1591 the relics of Saint Philip were brought from the Dormition monastery at Otroch, near Tver, to the monastery on Solovki. Throughout Jacob's abbacy the holdings of the monastery and the houses founded from it were repeatedly attacked by the Swedes.

In the spring of 1597, with the blessing of Patriarch Job, Father Jacob became the first superior, with the rank of archimandrite, of the Holy Trinity Ipatiev monastery. After Vasily IV Shuisky came to the throne, he fell into disfavor because of his closeness to the Godunovs and was forced, in 1607, to return to Solovki.

The venerable one is commemorated in the Synaxis of the saints of Solovki and, on the third Sunday after Pentecost, in the Synaxis of the saints of Novgorod. The calendars also place him on 9 August.