Venerable Tikhon of Medin and Kaluga

Tikhon was born in Kiev c. 1400. As a young man he walked to Moscow and became a monk at the Chudov monastery in the Kremlin, taking the name of Tikhon of Amathus. Seeking solitude, he went into the forests between Kaluga and Medyn and settled on the little river Vepreyka, living, as tradition tells, in the hollow of a huge oak and digging a well for water.

Disciples gathered around him, and the hermitage became the Dormition monastery known as Tikhonova Pustyn. According to tradition, the local prince, finding him there while hunting, raised his whip to drive him away, and his arm went stiff until he asked forgiveness. Tikhon died there on 16 June 1492.