Stephen of Rostov

Blessed Stephen of Rostov, fool for Christ, lived in the eighteenth century as a monk of the Holy Trinity Monastery at Varnitsa, foretold the fate of Bishop Dositheus of Rostov, and was buried at the church of the Ascension in Rostov.

Blessed Stephen, in the world Abram, had been a serf of the boyar Lucian Lopukhin and a relative of Demid (Diomid) Glebov. Abram and Demid often went on pilgrimage to monasteries and to the relics of the holy wonderworkers. Once Abram foretold to Diomid that he would become a bishop but would be put to death, and advised him not to leave his master. Soon Abram was tonsured with the name Stephen and entered the Holy Trinity Monastery at Varnitsa, where he became renowned for his ascetic life and great holiness, and the people called him "the pious". Demid too received the monastic habit, with the name Dositheus, and after a few years became hegumen of the Annunciation Monastery at Snovitsa near Vladimir; soon he was archimandrite of the Suzdal Spaso-⁠Evfimiev Monastery, the largest, and then of the Novospassky Monastery in Moscow, and in 1711 he was raised to bishop of Rostov. At Rostov he began a great building activity, raised new churches, restored old ones and made costly gifts to the cathedrals and monasteries of the diocese.

On 20 October 1715, during the service on the day of Saint Abraham, at the Epiphany Monastery, Bishop Dositheus caught sight in the crowd of his old friend, the monk Stephen; the latter recognized in the bishop in rich vestments the friend of his youth, Demid, and urged him to lay aside his rank and retire as a simple monk to Solovki. The bishop did not heed him, and in 1718 the monk's prophecy came true: Dositheus was stripped of his episcopal rank and executed on Red Square in Moscow, accused of treason against the tsar. Blessed Stephen was buried beside the church of the Ascension in Rostov, the oldest parish church of the town (built in 1565).

He is commemorated on 5 June, in the new style, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Rostov and Yaroslavl.