Venerable Theodore of Sanaxar

Theodore of Sanaxar was an eighteenth-century Russian monastic, born in 1719 near the town of Romanov in Yaroslavl province and baptized John. His parents were Prince Ignatius Ushakov and Paraskeva, also called Irene. As a young man he enlisted in the Preobrazhensky Guard Regiment in Saint Petersburg, where he attained the rank of sergeant, before abandoning a promising military career for the monastic life.

By tradition, his turn from worldly life came at about the age of twenty, when the sudden death of a friend at a drinking party moved him to leave the capital. After a period of solitude in the forest, he entered the Ploschansk Monastery south of Kiev. Arrested for lacking proper documents, he was brought before Empress Elizabeth, who forgave his desertion and ordered him tonsured. He was tonsured in August 1748, at the age of twenty-nine, and given the monastic name Theodore.

Theodore later settled at the Sarov hermitage and, in 1759, moved with his disciples to the Sanaxar Hermitage, where he became the restorer of the monastery. He was ordained to the priesthood, appointed superior, and raised to the rank of igumen in October 1764; Sanaxar was officially recognized as a monastery on March 7, 1765. He died on February 19, 1791, the day on which he is commemorated. He is the uncle of the Righteous Admiral Theodore Ushakov of the Russian Fleet, with whom he is sometimes confused.