Sylvester of Obnora

Venerable Sylvester of Obnora was a disciple of Saint Sergius of Radonezh, a hermit on the banks of the river Obnora, in the lands of Vologda and Yaroslavl, and founder of the monastery of the Resurrection there. He is venerated in the Russian Church as a venerable saint. The sources do not agree on the year of his death or on the day of commemoration: the English source gives his death on 25 April 1479, our record in 1379, and the Russian source the commemoration on 8 May (Old Style). The sources do not give the date of canonization.

The sources

His old Life has not survived, for the manuscript burned in a fire at the end of the eighteenth century. The manuscripts of the seventeenth century keep only the date of death, news of the founding of the monastery, miracles after death and liturgical texts, which show his veneration as a saint. In the mid-⁠nineteenth century Professor Sergei Smirnov of the Moscow Theological Academy composed a short Life of him from these sources and from oral tradition.

Life

Nothing is known about his origin. He received tonsure in the monastery of Saint Sergius of Radonezh and, like many of his disciples, left in search of solitude. The place of his struggles was the banks of the Obnora, a small river, today in the Vologda and Yaroslavl regions, a tributary of the Kostroma. According to the English source he lived on herbs or tree bark and roots, nearly died, but an angel fed him and saved him. Later many hermit monks began to settle on the Obnora and around it, among whom Saints Paul of Obnora, Sergius of Nurma, Cornelius of Komel and Gennadius of Lyubimograd are known. After many years of solitude, disciples who wanted monastic life began to come to Sylvester, and he, receiving a charter of blessing from Metropolitan Alexis of Moscow, built the church of the Resurrection, the beginning of the future monastery (today the village of Voskresenskoye, in the Lyubim district, Yaroslavl region).

The relics

The Resurrection monastery on the Obnora was abolished in 1764 and made a parish. In 1825 all the wooden buildings were demolished and a large stone church was built. In 1860, according to the testimony of the sacristan and some parishioners, a miracle took place in the church: the lid of the shrine of Saint Sylvester opened by itself and the incorrupt body of the saint was seen. After that many pilgrims began to come to his relics, and reports survive of many miracles at his tomb. In 1876 a new shrine was ordered. The relics were lost in the 1920s, in the campaign to open relics, and the church was closed. Today it has been returned to the Church, services are held in it and restoration work is under way.