Stephen of Komel

Venerable Stephen of Komel, also called Stephen of Ozersk, was a Russian monk, the founder and first abbot of the Saint Nicholas monastery at Komel, near Vologda, who died in 1542. He is remembered on 12 June (25 June on the new calendar). His life was written by an unknown author, probably towards the end of the sixteenth century, and survives very rarely in copies of the seventeenth century.

Youth and the search for quiet

He was born in the Vologda region, in the second half of the fifteenth century, to the family of a servant at the court of the Borodaty princes. From childhood he had heard of the struggles of Saint Dionysius of Glushitsa and of the strict cenobitic rule of the monastery there. He left home in secret for Glushitsa and in a short time was tonsured a monk. After some years, with the abbot's blessing, he set out to wander through monasteries to perfect himself in the spiritual life, and then settled at the Tikhvin monastery. The crowds of pilgrims who came to venerate the icon there did not please Stephen, a lover of solitude from childhood, and he went further north in search of peace and quiet.

The hermit of Lake Komel

On the shore of Lake Komel, at the source of the river Komel, some thirty-⁠five kilometres south of Vologda, he built himself a small chapel in the dense forest and settled in complete solitude. More than once in winter he was threatened with death by hunger, for he had no supplies and did not even know the way to the nearby villages. Only hunters who happened by supported him with meagre gifts. After three years the brethren began to gather to him. When about ten had assembled, they wished to have a church and chose Stephen as their head.

At their request he went to Moscow, to Metropolitan Daniel, who ordained him priest, raised him to hegumen, gave him a letter of blessing and what was needed for the service, and Grand Prince Vasily III gave him a charter for lands and revenues to support the monastery. In 1534 he built the monastery, with a church in the name of Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker.

His repose and veneration

He fell asleep in the Lord in deep old age, on 12 June 1542. In the same year, after the monastery had been ravaged by the Tatars, a new church was built over his grave. A year later the monk Gury, called in the source a pupil of the icon painter Andrei Rublev, which fits the dates poorly, painted two icons of the saint from memory. Soon his service was composed and a local commemoration was established in his memory on 12 June (25 June).