Konstantin of Tver

Venerable Martyr Constantine († 1609), archimandrite of the Boris and Gleb Monastery in Torzhok, in the Tver region, was burned alive with the monks and the townspeople in June 1609, during the Polish siege. He is numbered in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver and in the Synaxis of All Saints Who Shone Forth in the Russian Land, with commemoration on the first Sunday after 29 June.

He was abbot of the Boris and Gleb Monastery at Torzhok in 1600-1609. He is mentioned in a charter of Tsar Vasily Shuisky, of 1610, to Archimandrite Jonah, confirming the privileges of the monastery given by Tsar Feodor Ioannovich and False Dmitry I. In June 1609, in the battle for Torzhok with the troops of the voivode K. N. Choglokov, the Poles set fire to the town's quarters, and Constantine burned with the monks and townspeople in the wooden church of the Presentation of the Mother of God (according to the local historian D. I. Karmanov, the monastery was burned in 1606). The fire of 1609 is confirmed by a charter of the tsars Ivan V, Peter I and the Tsarevna Sophia, of 1689, which speaks of the ruin of a metochion monastery, whose community was killed and some taken prisoner. In the monastery's synodikon, in the list of the archimandrites, first is named "Constantine burned, with the brothers." In his memory, each year on 25 January memorial services were served in the monastery. In the Tver edition of the "Book of the Russian Saints," in the list of the saints of "the town of Torzhok," "Saint Constantine, builder of the monastery, who fell asleep in the year 6603, on 29 July" is mentioned (that is, 1095, an erroneous date or perhaps another saint).

Archbishop Demetrius Sambikin entered the name of the murdered archimandrite in the "Tver Paterikon" (1907). General veneration is established by the entry of his name in the Synaxis of All Saints Who Shone Forth in the Russian Land, defined in the 1970s in preparing the Menaia. His name belongs to the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver, liturgically celebrated since 1979. He is painted on the modern icon of the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver, in the cowl, with a round white beard, blessing with his right hand and holding a scroll in his left.