Theodore of Rostov

Venerable Theodore of Rostov was the founder and first abbot of the Boris and Gleb monastery at Rostov, who died on 22 October 1409. He is commemorated on 22 October, together with Paul, and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Radonezh; in the painters' manual he appears at 8 November. Almost nothing has been preserved about his worldly life.

In the second half of the fourteenth century Theodore came from the Novgorod land and settled in the forest, near a great road that led from Kargopol and Beloozero to Moscow and Rostov. For three years he fed on voluntary alms, for which he hung a basket on a tree beside the travellers' road; what he found in the basket he shared with the poor who visited him. When the monk Paul, later numbered among the venerable ones, came to him, they decided to build a monastery together. Venerable Sergius of Radonezh, who had come to Rostov at that time, at their request showed them the place for the monastery, on the bank of the river Ustye. Encouraged by Father Sergius' blessing and by the appearance to them of the great passion-⁠bearers Boris and Gleb, Theodore and Paul built a church and cells for the monks, gathered brethren, and received in possession various lands and fishing grounds on Lake Beloe.

The news of the monastery spread through the surroundings and soon quite a crowd came there, and Theodore, who longed for solitude, soon handed the abbacy to Paul and left the monastery seeking quiet; he founded in the wilderness the Kovzha Saint Nicholas monastery, and only when he felt that his death was near did he return to the Boris and Gleb monastery, where he reposed on 22 October 1409. Soon after him Paul also died. The commemoration is made of both at once, on 22 October, and in the painters' manual they are noted at 8 November; the lack of a life of the venerable ones is abundantly made up by the tale of the Boris and Gleb monastery itself, written on the spot at the beginning of the second half of the sixteenth century and preserved in a collection of the Trinity Lavra of Sergius.