Venerable James of Zheleznoborov

James of Zheleznoborov was a Russian monastic founder of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, remembered as a disciple of Saint Sergius of Radonezh and as the founder of a monastery on the Tebza River in the Galich district of the Kostroma region. He is commemorated on April 11, the day of his repose.

According to the synaxarion, he was born in the second half of the fourteenth century into the noble Anosov (also rendered Amosov) family, whose lands lay near Galich in Kostroma Province. As a young man he came to Saint Sergius of Radonezh, who tonsured him into monasticism, and he spent several years at the Holy Trinity Monastery before seeking a more solitary life.

In 1392, with the blessing of his elder, James withdrew into the forest to the banks of the Tebza River, at a place called Iron Pines (Zhelezny Borok) on account of the iron-ore deposits in the area, which gave both the locality and the saint their name. There he gathered a community and, with the patronage of the princes of Moscow, built a monastery dedicated to the Entry of the Theotokos into the Temple, together with a church in honor of the Holy Prophet and Forerunner John, into which he introduced a strict cenobitic rule modeled on that of the Trinity-Saint Sergius Monastery.