Joachim of Siya

Holy Venerable Joachim of Siya, of the sixteenth century, was a disciple of Venerable Anthony of Siya. His commemoration is kept on the third Sunday after Pentecost, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Novgorod and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Siya, and the page gives 11 July as the fixed day, in the new style. He is mentioned in all the lives of Venerable Anthony.

Joachim struggled with Anthony at the Transfiguration monastery of Kena, in the Kargopol land, founded by Pachomius of Kena, "a virtuous and very pious monk". With the blessing of Pachomius, Anthony left the monastery together with the venerable Alexander of Siya and Joachim. The monks set out to look for a deserted place, wishing to be alone with God alone. By the rivers Onega and Shelexa they reached the river Emtsa, the left tributary of the Northern Dvina, and stopped at the Dark Rapids, where they raised a hut and a chapel. They stayed there seven years, and in time Isaiah, Elisha, Alexander the second and Jonah joined them. In the wilderness they built a church dedicated to Saint Nicholas and cells. The monastery lasted until 1580.

The hermits were driven out by the inhabitants of the nearby village of Skrobotovo, who suspected that the monks wanted to take their lands. At the beginning of the twentieth century there was a tradition explaining the poverty of the people of Shelexa by the injustice their ancestors had done to Anthony: as soon as the peasants began to honour his memory, their affairs went better. On the site of the Saint Nicholas Shelexa monastery, at the mouth of the Shelexa where it flows into the Emtsa, there then stood a chapel dedicated to Venerable Anthony. Scholars have said that Anthony and the brethren may have struggled in the Holy Trinity hermitage of Shelexa.

The expelled monks wandered long through the forest and met a hunter, Samuel, from the village of Brosachevo in the Emetsk district, who told them of a place on a peninsula of Lake Mikhailovskoye, near the river Siya, marked by many wonderful signs: the old residents of the place had heard bells several times and monastic chanting, and had seen monks cutting down the thicket of the forest.