Luke of Rostov

Saint Luke was bishop of Rostov, who died on 10 November 1189. He was canonized by the Russian Church as a hierarch. He is commemorated on 8 October (21 October by the new calendar) and on 23 May (5 June), in the Synaxis of the Saints of Rostov and Yaroslavl.

He was probably a native of southern Russia. He received monastic tonsure in one of the monasteries of Kiev, from which, it is not known when, he was elected abbot of the Saviour monastery at Berestovo. On 11 March 1185 he was ordained bishop of Rostov. In his time the wall paintings began in the stone Dormition cathedral of Rostov. Probably in 1188 he was moved to Vladimir on the Klyazma, remaining bishop of Rostov. In 1187 he persuaded Grand Prince Vsevolod Yuryevich to make peace with the prince of Ryazan. In the same year he painted the Dormition cathedral of Vladimir, which he consecrated in 1189; this cathedral had burned in 1185 and had been renewed by Grand Prince Vsevolod.

On 10 November 1189 Bishop Luke passed to the Lord, and Grand Prince Vsevolod Yuryevich, according to the chronicle, prepared his body with the abbots, the monks, the choir clergy and the priests and laid it at the Holy Mother of God in the city of Vladimir on 11 November, on the day of commemoration of Saints Lita, Victor and Vincent. At the restoration of the cathedral (1888 to 1889) the tomb of Bishop Luke was discovered, walled up very long ago with large old bricks; the slab that covered it, a gabled slab of a single piece of white stone, proved quite solid.

The chronicler says of Saint Luke: he was holy, merciful to the poor and widows, kind to every person, rich or poor, humble and gentle in word and deed, consoling the sad, truly a good shepherd. By a decree of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, in 1552, it was ordered that in the Dormition cathedral of Vladimir, after the five bishops of Vladimir, a memorial service be held every year for Bishop Luke on 8 October.