Ηegumen / Abbot
Saint Macarius was born in 1605 in the city of Ovruch, in Volhynia, into the noble family of Tokarevsky. From 1614 to 1620, he studied at the Assumption Ovruch Monastery and became a monk of this monastery. In 1625, with the blessing of the archimandrite, he moved to the Kupyatich Pinsk Monastery. In 1630, he was ordained as a hierodeacon, and in 1632 – as a hieromonk. In 1638, he was appointed the abbot of the Kamyanets Resurrection Monastery. From 1642, he led the brotherhood of the Kupyatich Monastery, and from 1660 – the Assumption Ovruch Monastery.
For more than ten years, he fought against the Latin-Poles in Ovruch. In 1671, after Ovruch was devastated by the Tatars, Archimandrite Macarius left the monastery and went to the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. Later, he was appointed the abbot of the Kaniv Monastery, where he continued to defend Orthodoxy.
He suffered a martyr's death on September 4, 1678, at the hands of the Turks who attacked the monastery. Saint Macarius met the enemies with a cross in his hands. The Turks hanged him by his hands and feet between two pillars. After two days, they beheaded him. Witnesses of his martyrdom brought his body into the monastery church, where they hid from the enemies. The Turks burned the church with those who had taken refuge inside. When the inhabitants of Kaniv were sorting through the bodies of the dead, only the body of Saint Macarius was found intact, as if alive, and was buried on September 8, 1678, under the altar in the same church.
