Venerable Mary of Radonezh

Mary was the mother of St Sergius of Radonezh and the wife of St Cyril. According to the Life of St Sergius by Epiphanius the Wise, the couple came from boyar families of the Rostov principality; Cyril served the princes of Rostov. Their children were Anna, Stephen, Bartholomew (the future St Sergius) and Peter. The Life relates that before Bartholomew's birth his cry was heard three times from the womb during the Liturgy, and that Mary, like Hannah the mother of Samuel, vowed with her husband to dedicate the child to God.

Impoverished by journeys to the Horde, Tatar raids and famine, the family moved from Rostov to Radonezh. In old age Cyril and Mary took monastic vows and died soon afterwards; Bartholomew buried them at the Protection Monastery in Khotkovo, where their relics rest. Long venerated there, they were included in the Synaxes of the Saints of Rostov and Yaroslavl and of Radonezh and glorified for the whole Russian Church by the Council of Bishops on 3 April 1992.