The study examines the popular veneration of Saint Macarius of Zheltovodsk and Unzhensk in the Nizhny Novgorod Region. The research draws on data from folklore expeditions conducted by N.I. Lobachevsky Nizhny Novgorod State University in the 20th and 21st centuries, Volga River travel guides, publications by local historians, and fiction. It has been revealed that, unlike the era of the 16th-19th centuries, when St. Macarius was venerated as a defender of the Nizhny Novgorod lands, an enlightener of the peoples of the Volga Region, a patron of warriors and prisoners, and a patron of trade, the modern folk cult of the saint in the region has been preserved discretely, manifesting itself in a small number of narrative legends, toponyms, and the veneration of holy springs. However, the figure of the saint has lost its historical functional content. It has been established that the area of existence of the legends about Makarius Zheltovodsky is limited to the Trans-Volga and Vetluga parts of the Nizhny Novgorod region, including those bordering the Kostroma and Ivanovo regions – i.e. Lyskovsky, Voskresensky, Semenovsky, Gorodetsky, Sokolsky, Chkalovsky, Varnavinsky, Vetluzhsky districts. The range of folklore stories on the Macarius theme has been determined, and the leading motif of narratives about him has been identified – the motif of the saint’s journey to Unzha, which in local Trans-Volga traditions led to the emergence of legends about Macarius’s stops in various settlements of the Trans-Volga and Vetluga regions. Rare hagiographic legends about the saint, legends about his founding of the Makaryev Zheltovodsky Monastery, legends about Macarius and the elk/deer that have become ingrained in the Nizhny Novgorod Old Believer community, and legends about his floating on a rock, including one with Barnabas of Vetluga, are analyzed. It is established that legends about Macarius Zheltovodsky are currently considered a vanishing layer of Nizhny Novgorod folklore.
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