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Biography

Short Description

Saint Macarius of Unzha, known in Russian as Makarii Unzhenskii and also as Macarius of Yellow Waters (Zheltovodskii), was a monk and saint of the Russian Orthodox Church who lived in the late fourteenth and first half of the fifteenth century. Traditional hagiographical sources state that he was born in 1349 in Nizhny Novgorod to a family of devout Christians. From childhood he was drawn to prayer and asceticism. He entered the Caves Monastery (Pecherskii monastyr) of Nizhny Novgorod and received the monastic tonsure from its abbot, Dionysius, a spiritually renowned figure who subsequently became Archbishop of Suzdal. Under Dionysius’s guidance Macarius was formed in the monastic life that had been renewed in northern Rus’ in the tradition associated with St. Sergius of Radonezh.

After a period in community, Macarius withdrew to live as a hermit. In the early fifteenth century he settled near Yellow Lake (Zheltoe ozero) on the Volga, where disciples gathered around him. The resulting coenobium became known as the Zheltovodsky Makariev Monastery. The house grew in numbers and reputation. In 1439 the monastery was attacked and destroyed during a campaign by the Khan of Kazan, Ulu-Muhammad. Many of the brethren were slain; Macarius himself was taken prisoner. The vita relates that he was eventually freed and that the khan forbade him to restore the community on the same site.

Accompanied by surviving monks, Macarius traveled into the forested region of the Unzha River, then a remote frontier. There, about 1440, he established a new monastery that came to be called the Unzhensky Makariev Monastery. He spent his last years in this northern skete, practicing strict fasting, unceasing prayer, and the direction of souls. According to the same traditional chronology he died on 25 July 1444, at the age of ninety-five, and was buried in the monastery church.

Veneration of Macarius began locally soon after his death. His relics were uncovered in 1671 and reported to be incorrupt, after which his cult spread more widely in the Russian Church. He is commemorated on 25 July (Julian calendar), the day of his repose, and also on 12 October, the anniversary of the uncovering of the relics. The two monasteries linked with his name—the Zheltovodsky house, later refounded, and the Unzha monastery around which the town of Makaryev developed—remained centers of pilgrimage. Macarius is remembered as a wonder-worker and as one of the monastic colonizers who carried Orthodox ascetic life into the Trans-Volga forests during an era of political fragmentation and Tatar incursions.

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