Venerable Sophia Of Suzdal

Venerable Sophia of Suzdal, born Solomonia Yuryevna Saburova (c. 1490 – December 18, 1542), came from an old but modest boyar family. In 1505 she was chosen from some 1,500 candidates to marry the heir to the throne, Vasily III. After twenty childless years of marriage, the Grand Prince insisted on divorce; on November 25, 1525, Solomonia was forcibly tonsured at the Nativity Convent in Moscow, taking the name Sophia — contemporaries record that she resisted the tonsure. She was soon transferred to the Intercession Convent in Suzdal, which she herself had richly endowed while still grand princess, and there she lived in ascetic labor for roughly seventeen years, including a period of exile to Kargopol during the regency of Elena Glinskaya. She died on December 18, 1542, and was buried in the crypt of the Intercession Cathedral. Healings were reported at her grave after her death; tradition holds that in 1609 her apparition frightened the Polish commander Lisovsky into sparing Suzdal from destruction. Local veneration was authorized by Patriarch Joseph in 1650, her feast was formally fixed in 1916, and in 1984 she was included in the Synaxis of Vladimir-Suzdal Saints. Church-wide glorification followed in 2007.