The life of St Nilus of Sora
Back in Russia he founded such a skete of his own beyond the Volga, near the river Sora, and the pattern spread quickly enough that those who took it up came to be called, together, the Trans-Volga Elders.
Nilus held that land, wealth, and the peasants bound to serve a monastery's estates had no rightful place in a life meant for poverty and contemplation, a conviction that set him and his fellow Elders directly against Joseph, abbot of Volokolamsk, who argued just as firmly for the Church's right to hold such property. Their dispute came to a head at the Council of 1503, where Joseph's side prevailed and the monasteries kept their land; Nilus did not see his own conviction win out in his own lifetime.
Both men are honored today as saints of the Russian Church, a reminder that sanctity did not require either of them to have been right about everything.
