The MonkMartyr Agapit of Makrushevsk

Commemorated on May 21

      The MonkMartyr Agapit of Makrushevsk, the founder of the Makrushevsk Nikolaev monastery, was a companion of the Monk Longin of Koryazhemsk. At one point at the Sol'vychegodsk Borisoglebsk monastery, during a time of illness he was granted a vision from an icon of Saint Nicholas, through whom he was healed. Setting out to the place indicated in the vision, he at first built there a chapel, and when a monastery formed, in 1578 he erected two churches – the one in name of Saint Nicholas and the other in honour of the Annunciation of the MostHoly Mother of God. The local inhabitants wanted to eradicate the monastery. They murdered the Monk Agapit on 21 May 1584 and threw his body in a river. But the monks found the body and gave it burial betwixt the temples, building at the place of burial a chapel, and at the crypt they put the chains of the saint. Afterwards the relics were transferred and placed beneathe a crypt in the monastery church. In the year 1712 the Kholmogorsk bishop Varnav (Barnabas) gave blessing to the brethren to gather together an account about the life of the Monk Agapit and about the miracles from the Velikoretsk Icon. And with his blessing, in 1715 was written the Vita-Life of the MonkMartyr Agapit.

© 1996-2001 by translator Fr. S. Janos.