Venerable Leukius of Volokolamsk

Venerable Leukius was a disciple of Venerable Paphnutius of Borovsk at the Paphnutiev-Borovsk Monastery — a community that raised a whole generation of notable ascetics of the era, including Venerable Joseph of Volotsk. For about ten years he spiritually guided the young monk Daniel (later Venerable Daniel of Pereyaslavl, †1540), who had entered the Borovsk monastery in 1466.

In 1476, Elder Leukius, together with his disciple Daniel, withdrew to the Volokolamsk lands and founded a hermitage there; they lived together for about two more years before Daniel departed for Pereyaslavl in 1478. The community he founded became known as the Dormition Hermitage on the Ruza River, about 32-35 versts from Volokolamsk, near the village of Sereda-Stratilatskoye (now the Shakhovskoy district of Moscow region). At the time of the hermitage's founding, Venerable Leukius is calculated to have been about 62 years old.

He died in deep old age, presumably around 1492 (documentary charters to the monastery indicate he was already deceased by 1503); he is buried in the community he founded.

His feast is kept on July 17/30.

NOTE ON THE FEAST DATE: some sources also give the date August 17/30, but this date risks confusion with a different, separate saint — the 3rd-century Martyr Leukius of Alexandria (Brindisi), whose feast falls on that very August date; preference has been given to the July date as more consistently attested for this specific Volokolamsk ascetic. Venerable Leukius is also commemorated in the Synaxis of Moscow Saints (a movable Sunday before August 26).