Vassian of Yastreb

Holy Venerable Vassian of Yastreb was abbot of the monastery of the Transfiguration on the river Yastreb (Prokhor's Hermitage), near the village of Zayastrebye and the churchyard of Sarniki, in the Vladimir region, close to Sudogda. He lived at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century.

The source that mentions him is the "Description of the Russian Saints" (late seventeenth to eighteenth century): it names the venerable fathers Prokhor the hermit and Vassian, hieromonk and head of the monastery on the river Yastreb, wonderworkers of Vladimir, who lived in the year 7100 (1592). He was probably a disciple and successor of Venerable Prokhor of Yastreb, whom the Kaidalov calendars of saints (late seventeenth century) call the "head" of the monastery. Before his death Vassian received the schema with the name Basil.

The monastery at Yastreb had been founded on the family estate of the Vorotynsky princes by Prince Ivan Mikhailovich (died 1627, in the schema Jonah), in memory of his father, the commander M. I. Vorotynsky, tortured in 1573 by order of Tsar Ivan IV. At the end of the seventeenth century, soon after the extinction of the Vorotynsky line which maintained it, the monastery fell into decline: it was turned into a churchyard, Spas-⁠Sarniki, and the monks were moved to the monastery of the Transfiguration at Murom. In the middle of the eighteenth century the old church, near which the founders were said to be buried, burned down; in its place a wooden church of the Transfiguration was built in 1775-1779, which burned in 1859 and was soon restored. Today the church stands in ruins, and every year on 8 July the priests of the Sudogda parishes serve a moleben there for Venerable Prokhor and Vassian of Yastreb.

The time of the saint's local canonization is unknown. It is confirmed by the inclusion of his name in the Synaxis of the Saints of Vladimir, whose feast was established in 1982 with the blessing of Archbishop Serapion (Fadeev) of Vladimir and Suzdal. The saint is commemorated on 6 July, new style, in this Synaxis.