Melkhisedek Dmitrienko

Melkhisedek Dmitrienko was a hieroschemamonk of the Russian kellia on Mount Athos, venerated by the faithful without synodal canonization. He was born in 1862 in a village of the Graivoron district, Kursk province, into a peasant family. In 1884 he came to Athos, to the Monastery of St Panteleimon, where on 17 March 1887 he was tonsured a rasophore with the name Meletios and worked in the monastery vineyards at Krumitsa.

In 1888, with the blessing of his confessor, the hieromonk Andrew (Verevkin), later hegumen, he took up the labour of silence and settled with the monk Anthony (Pshenichny) at the kellion of the Holy Archangels in the hills of Kapsala. He stayed there for almost half a century without leaving, and there he received the schema and priestly ordination, with the name Melkhisedek.

Many Athonite monks testified to his gifts: spiritual discernment, foresight and wonderworking. Father Vladimir (Kolesnikov) recorded in his diary that he visited him in 1906 and spent four hours in conversation. Saint Kuksha of Odessa, then called Xenophon, had been his disciple before leaving Athos, and the elder comforted him at his departure with a revelation. Father Andrew remained Melkhisedek's confessor until his death and supported him spiritually and materially.

The date of his death is not established; he seems to have reposed in the hospital of the Russian monastery toward the end of the 1930s.