Macarius of Optina

Macarius of Optina was one of the great elders of the Optina Hermitage in nineteenth-century Russia and is counted among the Synaxis of the Optina Elders. He is best remembered for his work of spiritual direction and for organizing the publication of patristic and ascetical writings at Optina, an enterprise that made a substantial body of monastic literature available to a wide Russian readership. He reposed in 1860 and is commemorated on September 7.

He was born in 1788 into the noble Ivanov family and baptized Michael; his secular name is given as Mikhail Nikolayevich Ivanov. His parents, Nicholas and Elizabeth, are described in the tradition as pious, and the family was connected with an estate in the Orel province. His mother died in 1797 and his father in 1806. In his youth he received a parish-school education and worked in financial administration, serving as an assistant bookkeeper and later heading a treasury board in Kursk.

In October 1810 he visited the Ploschansk Hermitage and remained there to take up the monastic life. He was tonsured a rassophore in December 1810 with the name Melchizedek, and tonsured a monk with the name Macarius in March 1815, being ordained hierodeacon shortly after and to the priesthood in 1817. At Ploschansk he was formed under Elder Athanasius (Zakharov), a disciple of Saint Paisius Velichkovsky, and later came under the guidance of Father Leonid (Nagolkin). He transferred to Optina, arriving in February 1834, and placed himself under Father Leonid; he became confessor of the monastery in 1836 and superior of the skete in 1839.