The life of St Avram of Smolensk
After thirty years Bishop Ignatius persuaded him to be ordained, and from then he served the Liturgy daily and spoke with rich and poor alike who came to his cell. He painted two icons himself, one of the Dread Judgement and one of the trials of this life. Lean and pale from his labour, he was said to resemble Basil the Great.
The notables of the city and some of the clergy came to hate him. They brought him before the prince and the bishop, charging him with corrupting the women who came to him, with heresy, and with reading forbidden books, and some wanted him drowned or burned. He answered every charge and was forbidden to serve regardless, and sent back to his old monastery. Then the rain stopped. The city asked for him again, the bishop examined the matter a second time and cleared him, and only when he was allowed to serve did the rain return. Ignatius gave him a new monastery to guide and retired into it himself. He kept seventeen brethren there, and he died after fifty years in the monastic life.
