Paisius of Uglich

Venerable Paisius of Uglich (in the world Pavel Ivanovich Gavrenev) was a Russian monk of Uglich, the founder of the Protection of the Mother of God Monastery in that city. He was born after the year 1398 and died on 6 June 1504, at more than a hundred years of age. He is commemorated on 6 June and on 23 May, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Rostov and Yaroslavl.

He was born in the village of Bogorodskoye, near the town of Kashin. The exact date of his birth is not known: after 1398, or in the first years of the fifteenth century. His father, Ivan Ivanovich Gavrenev, was a boyar of the prince of Uglich. His mother, Xenia Vasilyevna, was the sister of Venerable Macarius of Kalyazin, of the Kozhin family. After the death of his parents, Pavel entered, at about ten or eleven years of age, the monastery of his uncle, where he received monastic tonsure and occupied himself with copying books, some of which have survived to this day.

He was then sent by Venerable Macarius to Uglich, where in 1476, at the wish of Prince Andrei Vasilyevich of Uglich, he founded the Protection of the Mother of God Monastery and became its hegumen. His relics were laid beneath the floor of the monastery. His Life was composed at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Among his disciples are Vassian and Adrian of Uglich.