Sebastian of Poshekhonye
Our Venerable Father Sebastian of Poshekhonye, Wonderworker of Sokhota
Venerable · d. c. 1500
Commemorated 26 February — Principal commemoration, 18 December
Sebastian of Poshekhonye (†c. 1500) was a Russian monastic saint, the founder and first abbot of a hermitage in the forested Poshekhonye country of the upper Volga. On the River Sokhota, some ninety versts from the town of Romanov (now Tutaev) in the region of Yaroslavl, he raised a monastery in honour of the Transfiguration of the Lord, and gathered a brotherhood whom he taught to live by the labour of their own hands, tilling the soil for their bread. He reposed about the year 1500 and was buried at his monastery; his relics rested there, and in later centuries a stone church was built above them. He is commemorated on February 26.
Little is recorded of the life of Saint Sebastian beyond the foundation that keeps his memory. He was a monk of the Poshekhonye — the wooded, lake-scattered country north-east of Yaroslavl, between the Volga and the Sheksna, a region that in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries drew many hermits into its forests and became studded with their small monasteries. There, on the banks of the River Sokhota, about ninety versts from the town of Romanov (united in later times with Borisoglebsk as Tutaev), Sebastian settled in the wilderness and founded a monastery in honour of the Transfiguration of the Lord.
Around him gathered a brotherhood, and Sebastian governed it as a true father of monks. The tradition remembers above all his teaching that the monks should support themselves by their own labour: the community cultivated the land and ate the bread of their toil, in the manner of the desert fathers and of the great Russian cœnobites of the age. He led, the account says, by his own example of ascetic work and prayer. He reposed in old age about the year 1500, and was buried in the monastery he had raised.
Relics and later history
Sebastian's monastery, like many of the small Poshekhonye foundations, did not long remain independent: in the course of time it was joined to the Ascension monastery of Cherepovets, and it was among the houses closed in the monastic reforms of 1764 under Catherine II, its church becoming a parish church. His relics remained at the site, and in the nineteenth century a stone church was built over the place of his burial, where his memory continued to be honoured by the faithful of the region. He is reckoned among the wonderworkers of the Poshekhonye and the Yaroslavl land.
Feast and commemoration
Sebastian is commemorated on February 26 (church date; Old Calendar civil March 11), his principal day, in the Russian calendar and the OCA; a second commemoration is kept on December 18. He shares February 26 with Porphyrius of Gaza, Photini the Samaritan Woman, and the new-martyr John Kalfa; in the Russian calendar he is also numbered among the Synaxis of the Saints of Rostov and Yaroslavl. His repose is dated "about 1500," on the border of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the sources place him in the early sixteenth century.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 8
In thee, O Father, was preserved unimpaired that which is according to the image; for taking up thy cross thou didst follow Christ, and by thy deeds thou didst teach us to despise the flesh, for it passes away, but to care for the soul, a thing immortal. Therefore, O venerable Sebastian, thy spirit rejoices together with the Angels.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Sebastian is depicted in the manner of the Russian venerable monastics: an elder in the monastic schema and mantle, with a long beard, holding a scroll or with his hand raised in blessing or prayer, and sometimes shown against his Transfiguration monastery on the Sokhota. No identity-verified pre-1900 image has been located for storage; the entry is listed as wanting an icon.