Jonah of Pskov

Venerable Jonah of Pskov (Jonah of the Pskov Caves) was a hieromonk from the Moscow land, regarded as the first builder of the Pskov Caves Monastery, who died around 1480. His name in the world was John. He is commemorated on 29 March (11 April). By a decision of the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church of 3 February 2016 he was canonized for veneration in the whole Church.

At the end of the 1460s he was sent to the city of Yuryev (Dorpat), where for two and a half years he served at the church of Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker, built by the people of Pskov. Around 1470 he was forced to leave Yuryev for Pskov because of oppression by the Catholic Germans. Grieved at the separation from his fellow priest Isidore, who had received the crown of martyrdom, he left Pskov and devoted himself to ascetic labour in a cave where the ascetic Mark had formerly lived. Together with his wife Maria he began to dig a small church into the mountain. After the death of his wife, which came from illness and excessive labour, he received the monastic habit with the name Jonah.

He completed the cave church and two cells and so laid the beginning of the Pskov Caves Monastery, on the river Kamenka, 56 versts from Pskov. The church could not be consecrated at once: the clergy of the Holy Trinity cathedral in Pskov did not dare to do it, thinking the matter unusual. After asking the blessing of Archbishop Theophilus of Novgorod, Jonah consecrated on 15 March 1473 the church dedicated to the Dormition of the Mother of God. He asked for the land for the monastery from its owner, Ivan Dementiev.

Venerable Jonah laboured in the cave monastery until 1480 and passed peacefully to the Lord. He was buried in the cave, but already in 1642 a new tomb was prepared for him by order of Bishop Gennady of Pskov. His relics are kept in the Caves Monastery, of which he is regarded as one of the founders.