Macarius of Pisma

Venerable Macarius of Pisma was a Russian monk of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, founder of the hermitage that bears his name. The sources do not say when or by what act he was numbered among the saints. He is commemorated on 23 January and on 22 June (old calendar). A detailed life of him and of his labours has not been preserved.

According to tradition, he was born around the middle of the fourteenth century in the village of Danilovo in the principality of Galich, twelve kilometres from the place where the monastery was to be founded. Today this is Kostroma region, the village of Makariy-⁠na-⁠Pisme. According to a tradition not supported by documents, he came from the boyar family of the Pisemskys of Kostroma, who owned the village of Pokrovskoe on the river Pisma, a tributary of the Kostroma.

In his youth he went to Saint Sergius of Radonezh, at the Holy Trinity Monastery. There he was tonsured a monk by his teacher, with the name Macarius, in honour of Saint Macarius the Great of the fourth century, who struggled in the desert of Nitria in Lower Egypt. Having gained spiritual experience, he left with Sergius's blessing, like many other disciples of his, for deserted places in order to deepen his ascetic labour. He returned to the north, to his native land, the principality of Galich. On the bank of the river Pisma, in the forest, he built himself a cell and a chapel. The place was about a kilometre from the present monastery, near the village of Semyonovskoe, and was anciently called "the old hermitage of Venerable Macarius of Pisma".

After a time another disciple of Sergius, Paul of Obnora, came to him and became his new teacher. Paul had struggled for fifty years in various monasteries, among them the Abraham-⁠Gorodets hermitage, from which he came to the Pisma, where the two ascetics met. They struggled, prayed and laboured together for twenty years. In time people learned of the life of the saints and disciples began to come to them, seeking good guides on the path of salvation.

Around 1389 the ascetics parted. Paul went north-⁠west to the river Obnora, a right tributary of the Kostroma, where he founded the Holy Trinity Pavlo-⁠Obnorsk Monastery, in which he struggled until his death in 1429, and where he was buried.

On the advice of his friend and teacher Paul, Macarius founded a monastery and became its first abbot. The community needed a church of its own, so Macarius and his disciples moved upstream on the river Pisma, to a high bank above a bend of the river, and built a small church in honour of the Transfiguration of the Lord. Beside it they built cells and farm buildings. So the monastery on the Pisma came to be. The year of foundation is reckoned as 1400.

The day of Macarius's repose is not known; it was somewhere toward the end of the first quarter of the fifteenth century. His disciples buried him in the church of the monastery he had founded.