The life of St Kirill of Belozersk
According to the account kept of his life, one night while reading before an icon of the Mother of God in that cell, he heard a voice instructing him to go to White Lake, in the far north, where a place had been prepared for him. He set out with a companion named Ferapont in 1397 and, arriving at Lake Siverskoye, dug himself a cave dwelling and raised a wooden cross to mark the spot. Others gathered around him there in time, and the community grew into the monastery that came to bear his name, Kirillo-Belozersky, eventually the largest in northern Russia. Cyril, remembered as a disciple of Sergius of Radonezh, carried the same discipline that marked Sergius's own foundations into this remote northern setting. He reposed in 1427, in the ninetieth year of his life, having spent three decades governing the community he had founded almost by accident, in flight from the very kind of leadership he ended up giving for the rest of his days.
