The life of St Gregory of Pelsheme
Uneasy with the notice his own family's standing brought him, he traveled to Rostov to venerate the relics of Leontius, the city's own martyred first bishop, and settled for a time at the monastery of Abraham there. The monks of the Savior monastery in that same region later asked their archbishop to place Gregory over their own community, and he accepted out of obedience rather than ambition, governing it for two years before leaving in secret to seek a more hidden life in the forests near Vologda. There he became close with Dionysius, the ascetic of Glushitsa, who encouraged him when Gregory came to believe he was being called to found a monastery of his own; carrying a cross on his shoulder, Gregory crossed the river Pelshma and planted it in a thicket on the far bank, marking the site of the monastery that grew up around it. He reposed there in 1442, remembered afterward as a wonderworker and as the founder of one more of the small forest communities that carried monastic life deeper into Russia's north.
