Saint James the Wonderworker was Bishop of Rostov in the late fourteenth century and the founder of the monastery on Lake Nero that came to bear his name. By tradition he received monastic tonsure at the Kopyrsk monastery on the River Ukhtoma, some eighty kilometers from Rostov, where he later served as igumen. In 1385 he was raised to the see of Rostov, at a time when Pimen was Metropolitan and Demetrius of the Don was Great Prince.
His episcopate is chiefly remembered for an act of mercy that cost him his throne. When a woman had been condemned to death, the bishop intervened on her behalf, following the example of Christ by inviting whoever considered himself without sin to be the first to cast a stone at her, and he sent her away to repentance instead of to execution. The prince and the nobles of Rostov, displeased at his judgment, drove him out of the city.
According to the tradition preserved in the synaxarion, the expelled bishop spread his episcopal mantiya upon the waters of Lake Nero, signed himself with the Cross, and was carried across the lake upon it as though upon a boat. He came ashore about a verst and a half from the city, where he built himself a cell and a small church in honor of the Conception of the Most Holy Theotokos by Righteous Anna. This became the beginning of the Conception–Saint James monastery. Saint James died there on November 27, 1392, the day on which he is principally commemorated; he is also numbered among the Synaxis of the Saints of Rostov, kept on May 23.
