Origins and Early Monastic Life
Savva was born in Kashin, a city in the Tver region, into a noble family of Tver boyars. The OCA synaxarion identifies his father as Ivan Borozda of Kashin. The historian V. O. Klyuchevsky proposed that Savva was identical to the Tver boyar Savva Ivanovich Borozdin, though modern research does not support this identification.
After receiving monastic tonsure, Savva practiced asceticism in the monasteries of Tver before establishing an earlier community, the Savin Monastery, on the Tma River in the Tver region. He subsequently moved to the area of the Vishera River near Novgorod in search of greater solitude.
Foundation of the Savvo-Vishersky Monastery
Seeking seclusion, Savva first settled by the Sosnitsa River, where Archbishop John of Novgorod visited him and supplied what was needed to build a hermitage. A land dispute with the Lisitsky Monastery forced his return to the Vishera River, where the Slavensky quarter of Novgorod granted him land.
In 1418, with the blessing of Archbishop Simeon of Novgorod, Savva built a wooden church dedicated to the Ascension of the Lord and constructed cells for monks, founding the monastery that came to bear his name, on the left bank of the Vishera in what is today the village of Savino in the Novgorod district.
The monastery endured for centuries after his death, receiving significant donations from Novgorod's Slavensky quarter in the late fifteenth century. Under Abbot Dorofei, Tsar Ivan the Terrible ordered the construction of a shrine for Savva's relics in 1574, and major stone churches, including the Ascension Church and a church dedicated to Saint Savva, were raised in 1662. The monastery was closed under Catherine the Great's reforms of 1764 but reopened after seven years; it was permanently closed in the 1930s, and today only a small chapel (built in 1992) and two stone fragments remain at the site.
Pillar Asceticism
After completing the church, Savva erected a pillar (Russian: stolp) upon which he spent the entire week in ascetic labor, descending only on Saturdays to join the monks for the Sunday liturgy and to receive communion. This stylite discipline links him to an ascetic tradition that continued in the Russian Church until roughly 1461; since Savva died in 1460, he is regarded as effectively one of the last documented Russian stylites.
Death, Veneration, and Canonization
Before his death, Savva designated a monk named Andrew as the next abbot of the community. He died on October 1, 1460, according to Klyuchevsky's traditional dating, though some modern research proposes a date in the 1420s, giving his age as seventy-nine. He was buried between the church he had built and his pillar, and a chapel was later erected over his grave.
Popular veneration is said to have begun after a fire that destroyed nearby structures but reportedly left his coffin untouched. Abbot Gelasius compiled brief notes on Savva's life, and in 1464, at the direction of Archbishop Iona of Novgorod, Pachomius the Logothete composed a Life and a liturgical service for him. In 1549 Savva was canonized for universal Church veneration at the Second Makariev Council. He is venerated among the Assembly of Novgorod Saints and bears the epithet 'the Wonderworker.'
