Ignatius (Brianchaninov)

Ignatius (Dmitry Aleksandrovich Brianchaninov) Bishop of the Caucasus and Black Sea, b. February 6, 1807 in the village. Pokrovsky, Gryazovets district, Vologda province, from the nobility, died on April 30, 1867. Having received a good education at home, in 1822 he entered the St. Petersburg Main Engineering School and attracted the attention of the inspector general of engineers, Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich, was enrolled as a pensioner of his wife and throughout his life enjoyed the attention of his high patrons. In 1824 he was transferred to the lower officer class (which is now the Nikolaev Engineering Academy) and on December 13 he was promoted to ensign engineer. At the end of the course, despite all the convictions of his parents and family, he decided to enter a monastery, something he had been thinking about since childhood, and only the intervention of the Emperor himself kept him from this step. In January 1827 he was appointed to the Dinaburg engineering team; but on November 6 of the same year, after a serious illness, he was dismissed from service with the rank of lieutenant and immediately went to the Alexander-Svirsky Monastery. For about four years he underwent various obediences in the Ploshchanskaya hermitage of the Oryol province, in the Optina Vvedenskaya hermitage in the Kaluga province, in the Kirillo-Novoezersky monastery in the Novgorod province, in the Semigorodnaya hermitage in the Vologda province. and in the Glushitsky Dionysian Monastery. On June 28, 1831, in the Vologda Resurrection Cathedral, he took monastic vows with the name Ignatius and on July 25, he was ordained as a hieromonk, and on January 6, 1832, he was appointed to the Pelshemsky Lopotov Monastery of the Kadnikovsky district as a builder; for the renewal and improvement of the Lopotova monastery (by the way, he started a good choir) on May 28, 1833 he was elevated to the rank of abbot. At the end of December 1833, the Emperor ordered him to be moved as rector to Sergius Hermitage with the promotion (January 1, 1834) to archimandrite. For about 24 years he ruled this desert, worked hard to establish the monastery: he erected three churches and several cell buildings, acquired lands, forests and fields, started vegetable gardening, horticulture, cattle breeding and arable farming, increased the staff of monastics; under him the monastery was elevated to first-class status. From June 22, 1838, he was dean of all monasteries of the St. Petersburg diocese; On October 27, 1857, he was dedicated as a bishop in the city of Stavropol, Caucasian. On August 5, 1861, due to poor health, after smallpox and fever, he was retired to the Nikolo-Babaevsky Monastery with a pension of 1,500 rubles; there he died. By way of life, the Right Reverend Ignatius was an ascetic in the full sense of the word. His works in 6 volumes: “Ascetic Experiences”; "Ascetic Sermon"; “Offering to modern monasticism - rules of outward behavior for new monks and advice regarding spiritual monastic activity,” etc. have gone through several editions.