Dionysius, Archbishop of Suzdal, in the world David, was
tonsured at the Kiev Caves monastery. He arrived at the Volga with an
icon of the Mother of God that he had received as a blessing from Sts
Anthony and Theodosius. St Dionysius dug out a cave not far from
Nizhni-Novgorod and struggled in total solitude. Brethren constantly
thronged to the holy ascetic and in the year 1335 he founded a monastery
in honor of the Ascension of the Lord. Among his students of St
Dionysius were Sts Euthymius of Suzdal (April 1) and Macarius of
Zheltovod and Unzha (July 25). In the year 1352 the holy Elder sent
twelve of his brethren to “the upper cities and countryside, whom God
would bless” for the spiritual enlightenment of the people and the
organizing of new monasteries. The monastery of St Dionysius exerted a
deep charitable influence on the inhabitants of Nizhni-Novgorod. In the
year 1371 the saint tonsured into monasticism the forty-year-old widow
of Prince Andrew Constantinovich, an example of how he accepted into
monasticism “various dignitaries: women, widowers, and virgins.”
In
the year 1374 St Dionysius was deemed worthy of the office of bishop.
His years of service as bishop occurred during a remarkable period, for
Russia was rising to cast off the Mongol-Tatar Yoke. On March 31, 1375
the Tatar military-chief, having been shown to the bishop’s court by the
enslaved inhabitants of Nizhni-Novgorod, shot an arrow at St Dionysius,
but the Lord preserved his chosen one, and the arrow struck only the
bishop’s mantle. In 1377, through the blessing of St Dionysius (who may
have edited the document), the Lavrentian Chronicle was compiled by St
Laurence, inspiring Russia in its struggle for freedom.
In 1379,
preserving the integrity of the first hierarch’s cathedra, St Dionysius
was one of the bishops gathered in Moscow by order of the prince, and he
came out against the election of the prince’s protegee, the ill-reputed
archimandrite Mityaya as Metropolitan.
In the same year of 1379
St Dionysius journeyed to Constantinople with a protest against the
choice of Mityaya on grounds of his complicity with the heretical
Strigolniki. The saint made a strong impression upon the Greeks by his
sublime spiritual frame of mind and his profound knowledge of Holy
Scripture. Patriarch Nilus, having termed the saint “a warrior of God
and a spiritual man,” wrote that he himself saw him “at fasting and
charity, and vigil, and prayers, and tears, and every other virtue.”
From Constantinople St Dionysius sent two copies of the Hodigitria Icon
of the Mother of God to a Council at Suzdal. In 1382 the bishop received
the title of archbishop from the patriarch. Returning to Russia, the
saint travelled to Pskov and Novgorod to struggle against the heresy of
the Strigolniki.
He visited Constantinople a second time in 1383
for discussion with the patriarch on questions about the governance of
the Russian metropolitanate. In the year 1384 St Dionysius was made
“metropolitan for Russia” by Patriarch Nilus. But upon his return to
Kiev the saint was arrested on orders of the Kiev prince Vladimir
Olgerdovich and subjected to imprisonment, where he died on October 15,
1385. The burial of the saint was in “the Kiev Cave of the Great
Anthony.” St Dionysius is commemorated on June 26 because it is the
Feast of his patron saint, St David of Thessalonica, whose name he was
given in Baptism. In the Synodikon of the 1552 Nizhni-Novgorod Caves
monastery, St Dionysius is called a “wonderworking monk”.
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