Makary of Kalyazin

Venerable Makary of Kalyazin (in the world Matvei Vasilievich Kozhin) was the founder of the Holy Trinity Monastery at Kalyazin, in the Tver region. He was born in 1402 (by the sources, with a question mark) and died on 17 March 1483. He is commemorated on 17 March, on 26 May (the finding of his relics) and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver, on the first Sunday after the day of Saints Peter and Paul.

He was the elder brother of Bishop Gennady of Tver and the uncle of Venerable Paisius of Uglich. He was born in the village of Kozhino (today in the Kashin district, Tver region), to the boyar family of Kozhin, Vasily and Irina. At 18 he married Elena Yakhontova. After his wife's death (one source says that she died after only three years of marriage) he went to the Klobukov monastery at Kashin, where he was tonsured with the name Makary. After a few years he left the monastery and settled in a desert place, 18 versts from Kashin, where he made himself a cell in the midst of a dense forest. Soon seven elders from the Klobukov monastery joined him, and on the site of their common life the Holy Trinity monastery took shape, famous already in the venerable one's lifetime.

He passed to the Lord on 17 March 1483 and was buried in the wooden church he had built. On 26 May 1521, during repair works in the church, the coffin with Makary's body was found, in which, according to tradition, there were incorrupt relics. In 1547 a church council glorified him among the saints. In 1700 a silver shrine was made for the relics. In the 1930s, after the closure of the monastery, Makary's relics were taken to Tver and then given to the Trinity cathedral. Metropolitan Victor solemnly moved the relics of Venerable Makary from Tver to Kalyazin, where they were placed in the church of the Ascension (according to the Serbian source, in its crypt). In 2008 a bronze monument to the saint was erected and consecrated at Kalyazin, which has become a landmark of the town, the work of the People's Artist of Russia Evgeny Andreevich Antonov.