Meletii Kotelnitskii

Meletii Kotelnitskii was a Russian schemamonk of New Thebaid, born in 1826 in the Vyazma district, Smolensk province, in a noble family, a former officer. He reposed on 26 September 1905. He is venerated by the faithful, without a synodal canonization.

Named Vasily Nikolaevich in the world, he was taught at home by tutors and from fourteen at a military school; his mother raised him in the spirit of Scripture. He served in the army and in the war of 1877-1878, at Plevna, where typhus spread among the troops; his wife Nadezhda, a nurse and his helper, fell ill and died. Left free, he drew ever closer to the wish to become a monk. On the advice of an elder at the Yuriev monastery he went to Athos with the Kazan icon of the Mother of God, kept in his family. He lived a few years in the skete of St Andrew, then fell ill with typhus, was taken to the Russian hospital at Constantinople and was healed in a wonderful way, to the astonishment of the doctors. At the request of ambassador Nelidov he received the blessing of the abbot Andrew to settle in New Thebaid, where he gave the icon to the church of the Athonite venerable fathers. He reposed on 26 September 1905, after a week's illness, and was buried by the whole brotherhood of the Thebaid.