Pelagia of Rzhev

Venerable Pelagia of Rzhev (sixteenth century?) is numbered among the saints in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver and the Synaxis of All Saints Who Shone Forth in the Russian Land. She is commemorated on the first Sunday after 29 June.

The sources about her are almost nonexistent. She is identified with the mother of Venerable Arsenius of Novgorod († 12 July 1572?), mentioned in his Life, but the identification is doubtful, since Pelagia is her name in the world, while Arsenius's mother bore in monasticism the name Apollinaria. She does not appear in the old calendars and no old icons of her are known. Her canonization is held to be the entry of her name in the Synaxis of All Saints Who Shone Forth in the Russian Land, established in the 1970s in preparing the Menaia, and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver, whose celebration was set in 1979. On the west facade of the Rzhev cathedral of the Okovets Icon of the Mother of God a modern icon-⁠painting of the saints of Rzhev was made in 2005, among them Pelagia, in the niche on the right, beside Prince Vladimir.