Nil of Stolobny

Venerable Nilus of Stolobny (end of the fifteenth century - 7 December 1555) was a Russian hermit who spent twenty-⁠seven years in solitude on Stolobny Island in Lake Seliger, founder of the Nilo-⁠Stolobensky Hermitage. He is venerated in the synaxes of the saints of Tver and Novgorod. He is commemorated on 7 December, on 27 May, the day of the finding of his relics, and on 26 June.

Life

His life, written at the end of the sixteenth century by the monk Philotheus Pirogov of Vologda, from the notes on his life and miracles composed by Herman, the first abbot of the hermitage, has preserved some news. He was born at the end of the fifteenth century in the Zhabensky churchyard of the Derevskaya district of Novgorod. The names of his parents and his name in the world are not known. He was orphaned young and came to the Krypetsky Monastery, where he was tonsured with the name Nilus, in honour of Venerable Nilus the Faster. After a time he left it and in 1515 went into a forest near the river Cheremkha (Seremkha), where he made himself a cell and lived thirteen years as a hermit. News of the hermit in the forest spread, and people began to come to him for advice and prayers. Burdened, in 1528 he left his hermitage and moved to Stolobny Island in Lake Seliger.

On the island he dug himself a dugout, in which he spent the first winter, and in summer he built a wooden cell and a chapel. He lived alone on the island twenty-⁠seven years, earned his food by working the land and accepted fish given by fishermen who passed there at times. He was marked by strict asceticism: unwilling to sleep lying down, he drove hooks into the wall of his cell and rested leaning on them. He dug his grave beforehand in the chapel and placed in it a hewn coffin, to which he came to mourn his sins. He fell asleep on 7 December 1555 (a Serbian source gives 1554). Before his death his confessor visited him, Abbot Sergius of the Saint Nicholas Monastery at Rozhkovo, who heard his confession and gave him communion. Coming the next day, Sergius and other monks found him dead and buried him.

Veneration

Five years after his death a stone tomb covered with a pall was made over his grave. In 1595 the first icon was painted, and in the opinion of Golubinsky local veneration began then; the beginning of veneration throughout the Church is not known. In 1594 the men's monastery of the Nilova Hermitage was built where he was buried. In the museum Heritage of Venerable Nilus is kept a painted wooden sculpture, regarded as wonderworking, probably of the 1770s-1780s, depicting him seated, head bowed and leaning on crutches, as he died in prayer. His image is on the coat of arms of the Firovo district of the Tver region.