Sergius of Radonezh
Sergius of Radonezh refounded Russian monasticism, blessed the campaign that led to Kulikovo, and refused every office he was offered. He was born to a family of Rostov boyars ruined by Moscow's expansion and by a Mongol punitive raid, went into the forest north-east of Moscow with his brother in his early twenties, and built a wooden cell and chapel in country that had no settlement at all. Disciples came anyway. The community that formed became the Trinity Lavra, and Sergius imposed on it the communal rule - shared property, manual labour, no personal possessions - which had lapsed almost everywhere in Russia after the conquest. What followed was a movement rather than a house: his disciples and their disciples founded something in the order of four hundred monasteries, most of them pushed further north and east into the forest, and they took Russian settlement, agriculture and administration with them. It is the single largest expansion of the Russian world before Siberia, and it was carried out by monks looking for solitude. He mediated between quarrelling princes on Moscow's behalf and reconciled several to its authority, and in 1380 he blessed Dmitry before the Don campaign and sent two monks with the army, which turned a tribute dispute into a war of faith. He declined the metropolitanate when it was offered. He is the most venerated of Russian saints, and the Lavra he founded at Sergiyev Posad has been the centre of the Russian church, with one interruption, ever since. He is said to have refused the metropolitanate twice and to have worn the same patched habit as the youngest novice. The Trinity Lavra became the wealthiest monastery in Russia within a century of his death, which is the usual fate of houses founded on renunciation. Andrei Rublev painted the Old Testament Trinity for its church in his memory. His relics were opened and put on public display by the Soviet government in 1919 as an anti-religious demonstration, and returned to the church in 1946.
- Lived: 1314 CE – 1392 CE
- Nationality: Russian
- Roles: religious
