Mark the Silent

The Venerable Mark the Silent of Sarov is one of the best-⁠known ascetics of the Sarov Hermitage, sometimes called the spiritual forerunner of the Venerable Seraphim of Sarov. The schemamonk Mark was much honoured among pilgrims. He was born in 1737 in the merchant family Aksenov of Kursk and received the name Michael. The boy grew up withdrawn and silent, unfit for worldly life, and at twenty he went to the Sarov Hermitage. There traits of foolishness for Christ came to light. At times the strangeness of his words disturbed the brethren of the monastery and seemed improper and unseemly for a monk. Besides, he could not stay in one place: he lived sometimes in the monastery, sometimes left it and settled in the forest. But in his words foresight was noticed, and so the abbot of Sarov assigned him a separate cell in the monastery.

In 1784 Michael was tonsured a monk with the name Methodius. Almost at once he went to live as a hermit in the forest, where, on the bank of the river Sarovka, by a stream, a cell was set up for him. Beside the cell he made a garden and gave the vegetables to those who came to him. To them he also gave matches that he made with his own hands. For himself he took nothing except candles. "What is superfluous is never useful," the elder used to say. Receiving the schema, he got a new name, Mark. The schemamonk spoke very rarely, more often answered questions by writing with charcoal on the wall or with a stick on the sand, and so he was called Mark the Silent. Only a few brethren were regularly granted his speech, among them the Venerable Seraphim of Sarov. It is told that when Seraphim lived at the far hermitage, Mark sometimes visited him. Seraphim honoured the schemamonk Mark so much that he asked to be buried beside him.

Mark the Silent died in 1817 and was buried by the altar of the Dormition cathedral.

He is commemorated on 10 August, in the new style, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tambov.