Agapetus of the Kyiv Caves

Saint Agapetus of the Caves was a monk and physician of the Kyiv Caves Lavra, born in Kyiv, tonsured by Saint Anthony of the Caves, and fell asleep on 1 June 1095. He is regarded as the first physician of Kyivan Rus. He is renowned for the free help he gave to the sick, which is why he is called "unmercenary". The Church remembers him on 1 June (14 June by the civil calendar) and on 28 September, in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Near Caves.

According to the Kyiv Caves Paterikon, he was tonsured at the Lavra while Anthony was still alive. Following his teacher's example he tended the sick with herbs and prayer and gained great fame by curing grave illnesses with prayer and a boiled herb. According to his Life he healed Prince Vladimir Monomakh. An Armenian doctor with a large practice, who opposed him, seeing the healings wrought by prayer, went over to Orthodoxy and became a monk. The Paterikon also says that Agapetus fell ill and the Armenian doctor told him he would die in three days, or else he himself would become a monk. Agapetus answered that the Lord had told him he would not die in three days but in three months, and so it was. After his death the Armenian went to the abbot and asked to be tonsured, saying that Agapetus had appeared to him and reminded him of the promise. It is also said that, with Theodosius of the Caves, he founded the first hospital, on whose site the church of Saint Nicholas was later built, and a shelter. His relics rest in the Near Caves of the Lavra. Local veneration began with the compilation of the Paterikon, in the first third of the thirteenth century, and that of the whole Church after the decision of the Synod in the second half of the eighteenth century. Churches bear his name at Donetsk, at Kyiv on Shuliavka, and in the Lavra. In 1993 a stamp of Ukraine was issued with him, and the Ukrainian Association of Infectious Disease Specialists gives an Agapetus of Pechersk medal.