The life of St Cassian the Greek of Uglich
Ivan offered him cities and lands to live on, but the honors of court life sat heavy on a heart drawn instead toward solitude and the plain service of God, and Constantine turned the offer aside. With the Grand Prince's blessing he went to Rostov, staying first with Archbishop Joasaph, and later followed the bishop further still, to the Ferapontov Monastery, when Joasaph withdrew there seeking a stricter quiet than Rostov could offer.
At Ferapontov, after a night vision that directed him toward the monastic life, Constantine was tonsured and took the name Cassian. Some time later he left the monastery with a few of the brethren and sailed down the Volga toward Uglich; short of the city, a striking stretch of riverbank near where the Uchma River meets the Volga caught his eye, and there he raised a cross and built a simple cell. The hermitage he began there, dedicated to the Dormition of the Mother of God, grew in time into a monastery of its own.
He reposed at a great age on October 2, 1504, remembered as a prince who had traded a court's honors for the discipline of an ordinary monk's cell.
