Tikhon of Karachev

Saint Tikhon of Karachev the venerable was abbot and founder of the Resurrection monastery near the town of Karachev, who died in August 1609. He is venerated in the Russian Church as a local saint, among the venerable fathers. He is commemorated on 16 June (29 June in the new style), together with Saint Tikhon of Amathus, and in the synaxis of the saints of Bryansk.

His life

He lived the ascetic life near the town of Karachev in the second half of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century. He founded beyond the river Snezhet the Resurrection monastery, called Tikhon's Hermitage. The year of its founding is not known, but it is known that in 1585 it was already governed by the abbot Zacharias. The venerable one lived on a pillar, in a small round cell raised above the second storey of the monastery's wooden church. From the pillar he saw the surroundings well and, striking the alarm bell, warned the townspeople of the raids of the Crimean Tatars.

Saint Tikhon is counted among the saints of the town of Karachev and honoured as a new wonderworker. In the synodikon of the Resurrection monastery of 1700, after the names of the tsars, "the kin of the builder, the monk Tikhon, the founder of this monastery" was also written. A note in cinnabar to the inscription in the synodikon says: "in the year 1609, in the month of August, on the day ..., the monk Tikhon, the founder and builder of this monastery, reposed." Preparation for canonization began while there were still living those who remembered Tikhon's asceticism and his lineage, that is, in the middle of the seventeenth century, in the period of greatest revival of the region: the final departure of the Poles, the passing of some lands into the palace administration, large gifts from the tsar's treasury for the restoration of the region, the compiling of synodikons with commemoration of the royal family, the building of churches and monasteries. On the reverse of the first leaf of the synodikon is pasted a picture showing the monastery church, with full-⁠length figures of the venerable Arsenius and Tikhon of Karachev at the sides and, above, the face of the Lord Jesus Christ stretching His divine hands toward them. The miniature was probably made before the saint's glorification, at the end of the seventeenth century, before 1700.

The venerable Tikhon was buried in the monastery he founded, in a crypt under the floor. On the day of his commemoration, a procession went from the city cathedral and other churches to the Resurrection monastery, to honour the memory of the founder; pilgrims came from distant places, and after the procession a nine-⁠day fair was held in the town.

The monastery after his death

In 1614-1615 Tikhon's Hermitage was burned to the ground and devastated by Polish-⁠Lithuanian bands. In 1625 the monastery was reborn. Archdeacon Paul of Aleppo, who visited it in 1654, wrote that the church of the Resurrection was then of cedar wood, with a high bell tower and gallery. In 1697, with the money of Tsarevna Tatiana Mikhailovna, a two-⁠storey stone church was built in place of the decayed wooden one: the upper tier in honour of the Resurrection of Christ, the lower in honour of the Smolensk icon of the Mother of God, with a side chapel of Saint Tikhon of Amathus. In this chapel was the crypt with the tomb over the burial place of the venerable Tikhon. In the 1760s a stone porch was built in place of the lower chapel. In the crypt a full-⁠length icon of the saint was kept. The monastery was ruined several times and was abolished in 1764. In the years of the occupation in the war, services were held in the church of the Resurrection; after the liberation of Karachev, the church was closed, and in the 1970s it was half ruined, used as a saltpetre store. At the beginning of the 1990s it was restored, parish services resumed from 1998, and in 2004 Tikhon's Hermitage was restored as the Resurrection men's monastery of Karachev. The relics of the venerable Tikhon are in the right side chapel of the Resurrection church, in one of the three burials. Four images of him are known: the one in the synodikon, the one on the lid of the wooden tomb cover (a full-⁠length figure on wood), a photograph of 1906 by K. K. Babyanskaya of the tomb slab, made during a "major repair", and a small enamel icon, 3.2 by 4.0 cm, showing the saint standing, beside a tree trunk with two icons in its branches, with the inscription "St Tikhon Kar.".