Jacob Yakut

Holy Venerable Jacob Yakut, the envoy of the Trinity Lavra, was the second disciple of Venerable Sergius to come to him on Mount Makovets, a man of peasant stock. The brethren called him briefly Yakut (the nickname comes, it seems, from the name Jacob).

For long years he bore in the monastery, without murmuring, the heavy obedience, full of cares, of envoy. It is thought that he was mainly occupied in obtaining bread for the monastery. This obedience shows that he had special permission to go outside the monastery and to touch the world around. It may be supposed that Jacob the Envoy, in his duties, reached not only nearby Radonezh but also Moscow, where he perhaps had contact, at the Theophany monastery, with Venerable Stephen of Radonezh, the elder brother of Sergius. According to Venerable Epiphanius the Wise, Jacob the Envoy was sent outside the monastery only in case of utmost necessity, and therefore not often. He probably came to the Trinity monastery in the middle or the second half of the 1340s. He reposed, it seems, before the beginning of the 1380s.

He is commemorated on 19 July, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Radonezh, and on 5 September, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow (new style, the second being a movable day).