The life of St Ignaty of Rostov
Cyril did not live much longer, and once he had passed, the Kievan metropolitan Cyril III chose Ignatius as the man to take his place, formally installing him in September of 1262.
More than a quarter century followed under his care, twenty-six years in all, years his people remembered chiefly for how much patience and warmth he brought to the office rather than for any single dramatic act. He reposed at last in the late spring of 1288.
An unusual story survives from the day his body was laid out for burial: witnesses in the church that day claimed to have watched him lift from his own open coffin and hang suspended over the gathered crowd, extending a blessing down over both the people and the city before settling back into rest. However that account is weighed, his relics have stayed on open display ever since inside Rostov's Dormition Cathedral, resting since the end of the eighteenth century in a coffin cast of silver, and his name is kept too within the broader Synaxis honoring the saints of Rostov and Yaroslavl together, a joint commemoration only established in the twentieth century.
