died 1654
Abbot of the Alexandrov community in Russia (1654)
Our Venerable Father Lucian, Abbot of Alexandrov
Lucian of Alexandrov was a seventeenth-century Russian monastic and abbot, founder of the monastic community near the settlement of Alexandrov (Alexandrovsky Village) in central Russia. He is commemorated in the Russian Orthodox calendar on September 8, the feast of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos, to which the principal church of his foundation was dedicated.
According to his life, Lucian was born in Galich, in the Kostroma region, and accepted monastic tonsure at the monastery of the Nativity of the Theotokos near Pereyaslavl-Zalessky. He later came to the area of Alexandrov, where he found in the nearby forest an abandoned and decrepit church containing a wonderworking icon of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos. He chose to settle beside it, and as word of his solitary ascetic life spread, devout men came to him and received the monastic tonsure at his hands. As the brotherhood grew, the church was restored and a monastery arose around it.
Lucian is also credited with establishing a women's monastery dedicated to the Dormition of the Theotokos, founded with the approval of Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich by 1650. His life records that he met opposition from adversaries but was reinstated through the intervention of a benefactor, Alexander Barkov, who served as a stoker at the Tsar's court. The monastic foundations associated with him have continued to exist in later centuries.
His life attributes to Lucian a gift of speech and a gift of spiritual insight. He is said to have foreseen an outbreak of plague two years before it came, calling those around him to repentance. Before his death, according to the tradition, he prayed at length before the wonderworking icon of the Mother of God, entrusting his monastery to her protection. He reposed in 1654 (some accounts give 1655) and is venerated as a venerable monastic of the Russian Church.