The life of St Nicholas Sviatosha of Chernigov
In February of 1106 he walked away from all of it, title, wife, family, to receive the tonsure at the Kiev Caves monastery under the name Nicholas, the first ruling Russian prince known to have made such a choice, enduring without bitterness the ridicule his own brothers heaped on him for it.
His first assignment in the community was kitchen work, three years of hauling water and splitting firewood, followed by three more years guarding the monastery gate, a slow progression through humbling tasks before he finally embraced a discipline of silence. What money still came to him from his old life he poured into the monastery instead, raising a church to the Holy Trinity there along with a second, an infirmary chapel bearing his own new name, and spending further gifts on manuscripts, on adorning the churches, or simply handing them to the poor. He also stepped in more than once to calm the rivalries among his own extended family of princes, brokering peace in 1142 between the ruler of Chernigov and the Grand Prince Vsevolod. He reposed on October 14, 1143, remembered as the first of Russia's princes to give up a throne for a monk's obedience.
