Saint Herman of Solovetsky was born in the city of Totma in the Perm diocese. He first visited the Solovetsky Islands in 1428 but did not stay there. He returned to the Pomor coast and remained at the chapel in the village of Soroka on the Vyga River, where he met Saint Savvatiy.
In 1429, the ascetics moved to the deserted Solovetsky Island and spent about six years in labor, fasting, and prayer. The main feat of Saint Herman was his daily work. In 1435, after the death of Saint Savvatiy, he briefly returned to the mainland and met the hermit Zosima. In 1436, they reached the Big Solovetsky Island and soon founded a communal monastery.
Herman labored for more than 40 years in the monastery under the igumen Zosima, making sea crossings and building churches. The oral narratives of Elder Herman about the Solovetsky ascetics Savvatiy and Zosima were recorded at his request and later used in the compilation of their lives.
In 1479, fulfilling the commission of Igumen Arseni, Herman went to Novgorod, but illness prevented him from returning to the islands. In the monastery of Saint Anthony the Roman, he received the Holy Mysteries of Christ and peacefully surrendered his soul to God. The Solovetsky monks could not transport his body to the monastery due to the muddy roads and buried him in the village of Khovronina on the banks of the Svir River.
Five years later, under Igumen Isaiia, the brothers transferred the holy relics of Saint Herman to the Solovetsky monastery and laid them next to the relics of Saint Savvatiy. Later, a chapel was erected over the burial site, and in 1860, a stone church was built and consecrated in his honor.
Since 1692, by the blessing of Patriarch Joakim, the church has established the veneration of Saint Herman. Now the holy relics of the founders of the monastery, Saints Zosima, Savvatiy, and Herman, rest in the Church of the Annunciation of the Most Holy Theotokos.
