Venerable
Venerable Tikhon of Lukh (Kostroma)
XV в. — 1503
Also known as: Тихон Луховский, Тихон, Луховской чудотворец, Тихон Лухский, Тимофей (мирское имя)
A soldier from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania who left for Muscovy rather than abandon Orthodoxy, became a monk and founded a hermitage on the river Lukh; he died in 1503, and the St Nicholas–Tikhon Monastery grew up on the site.
Venerable Tikhon of Lukh (secular name Timothy) was born in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and served there as a soldier. Unwilling to accept union with Rome, in the early 1480s he left for Moscow together with Prince Fyodor Belsky. There he gave away his property, became a monk with the name Tikhon and withdrew to the Lukh lands in the Kostroma region.
He settled at Kopytovo on the river Lukh; when the monks Photius and Gerasimus joined him, he moved to a better site three versts away. The brethren lived by their own labour: Tikhon copied books and worked as a wood-turner. Out of humility he never accepted ordination. He died in poverty on 16 June 1503, and a monastery of St Nicholas soon arose on the site.
In 1569 (or about 1566) healings began at his tomb and his relics were found incorrupt under Hegumen Constantine. His Life, with seventy posthumous miracles, was written in 1649. He is commemorated on 16/29 June and on 26 June / 9 July (finding of the relics).