Venerable Arsenius of Konevets

Venerable Arsenius of Konevets was born in Novgorod in the late fourteenth century and worked as a coppersmith. He took monastic vows at the Lisitsky monastery near Novgorod under Abbot Euthymius, later Archbishop of Novgorod, and after eleven years went to Mount Athos, where for three years he made vessels for the monasteries free of charge. On leaving he received the Athonite rule and an icon of the Mother of God, later known as the Konevets icon.

Returning to Novgorod in 1393, with the blessing of Archbishop John II he sailed to Lake Ladoga and settled on Konevets Island, where a monastery arose around 1393–94 and a church of the Nativity of the Theotokos was built in 1398. He drove the demons from the pagan Horse Stone, visited Athos a second time and, after a flood, moved the monastery to a new site on the island. He introduced a common refectory and died on 12 June 1447. His veneration is attested from the sixteenth century and was made general in 1819. His relics, long hidden during the wars with Sweden, were uncovered in 1991 after the monastery was returned to the Church.