Tarasius of Solovki

Holy Venerable Tarasius of Solovki is remembered together with Auxentius and Axius, two ascetics who struggled in the same place. All three are presumed to have been monks of the Transfiguration Monastery on Solovki, who lived and died in the seventeenth century within the Kashkaran parish of the Arkhangelsk diocese.

No written account of their lives has survived. Their memory remained in the parish only through oral tradition until the early twentieth century, which suggests that a local feast was once kept for them at the parish church and then forgotten. Nothing in writing confirms this.

The local veneration of Tarasius, Auxentius and Axius was confirmed when their names were included in the Synaxis of the Saints of Solovki, established in 1993 with the blessing of Patriarch Alexy II. They are commemorated in that synaxis on 22 August (9 August, old style), in the Synaxis of the Saints of Novgorod on 11 July (a movable date) and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Kola on 28 December, all in the new style.