Venerable Barnabas the Abbot of Vetluga

Barnabas was a priest from Veliky Ustyug. In 1417 he settled as a hermit on the river Vetluga, by a high bank called the Red Hill, in a forest country then lived in by the Mari. Tradition holds he spent some twenty-eight years there alone, in peace with the wild animals, and foretold that monks and many people would one day live in that place.

He died in 1445. His hermitage grew into a monastery, a trading village formed around it, and in 1778 this became the town of Varnavin, named after him.