Savva of Tver

Venerable Savva of Tver was abbot of the Presentation (Savvin) monastery in the Tver governorate, who died in 1467. He is commemorated on 2 March and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver. Almost nothing has been preserved about his childhood and worldly life, and the other data are few and fragmentary.

The beginning of Savva's monastic life is reckoned as 1397, when the Presentation (Savvin) monastery was founded in the village of Savvino, to which Savva came with his brother Varsonophius and in which he lived until his death in 1467. For about twenty years Savva passed through various obediences and did not even hold holy orders. Only in 1417 Abbot Varsonophius, who had been set to lead the monastery by Savva of Vishera, withdrawing into the wilderness, handed the abbacy to his brother Savva, with the obligation to receive holy orders.

Savva was abbot of the monastery about 50 years; he was very strict and demanding of the brethren for lapses in the church service, and he often beat the guilty with his staff. This is shown by the words of Joseph of Volokolamsk, preserved to this day: we saw the blessed Savva, who was abbot of the Savvin monastery, in the Tver region, for more than 50 years; he cared for his flock so much that he always stood at the church door with a staff in hand; if any of the brethren did not come at the beginning of the service in church, or left before the dismissal, or talked during the singing, or moved from his place to another, Venerable Savva was never silent about it, but forbade it, so that he did not leave even small faults without notice; when it was needed he was strict, and when there was need he was merciful. Savva composed a special rule for his monastery, which is kept today in the Dormition cathedral in Moscow; at the end of the rule is set an Easter table carried to the eighth thousand years.