Akindin of the Caves

Venerable Akindin of the Caves was archimandrite of the Kyiv Caves monastery in the 1220s and 1230s and died, after being mentioned in 1231, about 1232. The Russian Church venerates him among the venerable. He is remembered on 28 August on the old calendar, in the Synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of the Far Caves, and on the second Sunday of Great Lent, in the Synaxis of all the Venerable Fathers of the Caves.

Service

It is said that nothing is known of his family. Our sources do not agree on the beginning of his service: the Russian biography puts him as archimandrite in the 1220s and 1230s, while the Ukrainian one says he was chosen abbot of the Caves monastery about the year 1203, after the death of Archimandrite Theodosius III, and that he did much for the renewal of the monastery, plundered by the Cumans and the Olgovichi. In 1230 an earthquake badly damaged the monastery and the Dormition cathedral, and the archimandrite laboured greatly to restore them. His last written mention is from 1231, when he took part in the consecration of Cyril II, bishop of Rostov. He is thought to have died about 1232. The new archimandrite was Polycarp II.

In the Paterikon of the Caves

Akindin is mentioned twice in the Kyiv Caves Paterikon. In the epistle of Simon, bishop of Vladimir and Suzdal, to the monk Polycarp of the Caves, Akindin is called archimandrite and brother. To him is addressed the epistle of the monk Polycarp "On the Holy and Blessed Monks of the Caves", in which Akindin is called "most honourable archimandrite of all Rus". This epistle was the basis for the compilation of the Kyiv Caves Paterikon. The epistle to him is dated 1233 or 1234, which does not agree with his death in 1232, so the year of his death is not certain.

Veneration

The beginning of the local veneration of Venerable Akindin is not known, and his name is absent from the service of the venerable fathers of the Caves. Among the Kyivan saints he is mentioned by the "Description of Russian Saints", known from lists of the end of the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. In the 1650s the commemoration of "the venerable father Akindin, archimandrite of the Caves monastery" was entered in the menaion of the Trinity-⁠Saint Sergius Lavra by its cellarer, Simon (Azaryin).