Venerable Daniel Abbot of Shuzhgorsk

Daniel of Shuzhgorsk was a Russian monastic of the sixteenth century, numbered among the ascetics who carried the cenobitic tradition of central Muscovy into the forested hinterland of the Russian north. According to the synaxarion he was born within the Moscow dominion and entered monastic life at the Komel monastery, the community founded by Saint Cornelius of Komel. He is commemorated on September 21.

After a period of formation at Komel, Daniel withdrew to seek a more solitary life in the sparsely settled country around White Lake (Beloozero). He settled on a hill known as Shugh Hill, or Shuzhgora, from which his epithet derives, and there gathered a community and founded a monastery dedicated to the Transfiguration of the Lord. He served as its abbot and was buried at the Transfiguration church of the house he had established.

Daniel's foundation shared the fate of many small northern monasteries: in 1764, in the course of the imperial reduction of monastic establishments, it was converted into a parish church. By later accounts the Transfiguration temple fell into ruin and the saint's grave was no longer preserved. His memory is maintained chiefly through the synaxarion notice rather than an extended life, and the surviving record of him is brief.