The life of St Michael of Klops
Tradition holds that he was first found already inside the locked cell of the hieromonk Makary, seated and quietly copying out the Acts of the Apostles, and that when the abbot and brothers questioned the stranger he answered only by repeating their own words back to them, giving no account of his name or origin. He remained at Klops for forty-four years under this same self-imposed obscurity, wearing his body down with labor, vigil, and deliberate deprivation, and in time was recognized, by a visiting prince who had known him before, simply as their own Michael. He served the community as reader and singer, read the lives of the saints to the brothers at their meals, and spoke plainly against wrongdoing wherever he saw it, unafraid of rebuking even those in power, including Prince Demetrius Shemyaka, whom he denounced for blinding his own cousin, Grand Prince Basil the Dark. He was remembered too for a gift of foresight, said to have predicted the birth and the reign of the future Grand Prince Ivan III years in advance. Michael reposed on January 11, 1453, and the Russian Church numbered him among its saints just under a century later, in 1547.
