Saint Ambrose, Elder of Optina, the Wonderworker

Ambrose (Alexander Grenkov) was born in 1812 in Tambov province, the son of a sexton, and taught at the church school in Lipetsk. In 1839 he entered Optina Pustyn near Kozelsk, where he became a disciple of the elders Leonid (Lev) and Macarius. Often ill and confined to his cell, from the 1860s he received crowds of visitors every day, peasants and nobles alike.

Among those who came to him were Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Vladimir Solovyov and Konstantin Leontiev; the elder Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov owes features to him. In 1884 he founded the convent of Shamordino, and he died there on 10 October 1891. He was the first of the Optina elders to be canonized, in 1988.