Nicander of Gorodnoezersk

Venerable Nicander of Gorodnoezersk (Nicander of Lake Gorodno) was a monk of the Russian Church, the founder of the Nikandrov hermitage at Gorodnoe Ozero, who died on 15 March 1603. His veneration is local; the Russian source says that he is commemorated locally on 15 March and 4 November, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Novgorod. The sources do not give the date of canonization.

Almost nothing has been preserved about his worldly life, it is known only that he was born in the sixteenth century. He founded the men's Nikandrov hermitage (later the Nikandrovsky pogost, then the village of Nikandrovo of the Lyubytino district, Novgorod region), in the Borovichi district, Novgorod governorate, 47 versts northwest of Borovichi and four versts from the pogost of Sherokhovichi, on the shore of Lake Gorodno, from whose name he received the surname Gorodnoezersky. When Nicander founded the hermitage is not known exactly. The inventory of 1581 says: in the Nikolsky pogost at Sherokhovichi, the monastery of the tsar and grand prince, stood on black forest, Nicander's hermitage, and in it the church of the Resurrection of Christ and the heated church of Demetrius of Vologda the wonderworker, the abbot's cell and 10 cells, in them 3 elders, and 7 cells empty. Together with his few companions Nicander lived in the monastery he had founded until his death; he died on 15 March 1603. His relics were laid under a slab in the monastery he founded, in the grove behind the pogost.

After the venerable one's death the hermitage began to decline and the number of monks to fall sharply. To support it, the hermitage was attached to the Krutets monastery, and in 1764 it was abolished and renamed the Nikandrovo pogost, with a church of the Resurrection of Christ and a side chapel in honour of Venerable Nicander. After the October coup the monastery was plundered and closed by the Bolsheviks and only after the collapse of the USSR did its restoration begin; today there is a convent there.