High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Venerable Ambrose of Optina (Russian: преподобный Амвросий Оптинский; name at birth: Aleksandr Mikhaylovich Grenkov - Александр Михайлович Гренков, December 5, 1812, Bolshaya Lipovitsa settlement, Tambov guberniya—October 23, 1891) was a starets and a hieroschemamonk in Optina Monastery, canonized in 1988 by the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church.