Sergius of Shukhtovo

Venerable Sergius of Shukhtovo (Shukhtoma), in the world Stephen, was a schemamonk of the Russian Orthodox Church, who lived at the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth. He departed to the Lord in 1609. The Church commemorates him on 19 May by the old calendar (1 June on the new).

Almost nothing has been preserved about his childhood. It is known only that Stephen was born and raised in the city of Kazan, at the beginning of the second half of the sixteenth century, and that from his youth he led a strict and abstemious life. For some years he travelled to the holy places: he went to Palestine, to Constantinople, to Novgorod, to the land of the Lapp Samoyeds by the Ocean sea, to Solovki and to other places.

In 1603 he was tonsured with the name Sergius at the Resurrection monastery of Cherepovets. Then he came to the Shukhtovo district, fifty versts from Cherepovets, where he carried out the monastic labours of prayer on his knees and fasting. He died on 19 May 1609, in his sixth decade. His relics were laid under the ground in the church of the Protection of the Mother of God in the village of Shukhtovo, at first a monastery church and later a parish church.