Philaret Gumilevsky

The son of a priest from the village of Lesnoye Konobeyevo [ru], Shatsky District, Tambov Governorate, Filaret is best known as a theologian and church historian.

[1] At the precocious age of 30 he was appointed Dean of the Moscow Theological Academy based in the Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra.

During his tenure in Riga (1841-1848) the Governorate of Livonia saw a religious conversion movement, as a result of which more than one hundred thousand Estonian and Latvian peasants converted to Orthodoxy.

He also established a school in Riga in February 1846, which grew four years later into a seminary (Latvian: Rīgas Garīgais seminārs).

In 2009, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) recognized him as a saint for local veneration.