Michael Kozlov

Michael Kozlov was a Russian schemaarchimandrite, a former Old Believer, a monk of St Panteleimon Monastery on Athos under the name Meletius, then a missionary and archimandrite in Siberia, at Selenga Monastery. He reposed on 31 January 1884, shortly before midnight of 1 February, aged 58. He is venerated by the faithful, without a synodal canonization.

Named Macarius Kuzmich Kozlov in the world, he was born in 1826 at Sychevka, Smolensk province, to Old Believer parents. As a boy he learned to read the Psalter, but his parents took him out of school and put him to trade. After his father's death, Old Believer relatives took him out of the town school. He taught himself Christian doctrine, grammar and rhetoric. He came to Orthodoxy through the repentance received by the archpriest of Rzhev and sought chrismation. In 1854 he entered a monastery of the united-⁠faith rite and on 15 April 1857 reached Athos, where he was tonsured Meletius. He wrote Letters to Friends from Athos, about his error in the schism and his return, and a diary, a precious source for the history of the monastery. In 1860 he went to Russia to gather alms and returned after four years. In 1872, with the blessing of Patriarch Anthimus, he was sent to the Nekrasov Old Believers in Asia Minor and on the Danube for religious discussions. Later he was a missionary at Sviyazhsk, and in 1879 he was named archimandrite and head of the anti-⁠schism mission in Transbaikalia, at the Holy Trinity Monastery of Selenga. In almost five years he built many buildings and ordered the life by the Athonite typikon. He wrote The Seeker of Unceasing Prayer. On his deathbed he knew his days, for fifteen years earlier, on Athos, in illness, he had heard that he would still live in Siberia. He was buried behind the altar of the monastery's Holy Trinity church, on the south side.