Alexis the Recluse

Venerable Alexis the Recluse was a monk and recluse of the Kiev Caves Lavra, in the thirteenth century. He is honoured by the Russian Church among the venerable fathers. His commemoration is on 24 April by the old calendar (7 May by the new), on the second Sunday of Great Lent, in the Synaxis of All the Venerable Fathers of the Kiev Caves, and on 28 September (11 October by the new), in the Synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of the Near Caves.

The day 24 April is given in a complete Christian calendar, the Kiev edition of 1875. Archbishop Dimitry (Sambikin) explained this by the fact that Alexis's relics lay, as they do now, close to those of Venerable Sava, whose commemoration falls on that day. His troparion and kontakion are shared with those of Venerable Sava of the Caves.

He struggled in the Near Caves (of Saint Anthony) of the Caves Lavra in the second half of the thirteenth century. The time of his life, like that of all the saints of the Caves who lived during the Mongol-⁠Tatar invasion, can be dated only approximately. Little is preserved about his life. In manuscript saints' books, in the Book of Saints and in the canon of the service of the venerable fathers of the Caves, he is called a wonderworker, as also in the service of the Fathers of the Caves. He is mentioned as "our venerable father Alexis the recluse" among the saints of "the city of Kiev" in the "Description of Russian Saints", known in copies from the end of the seventeenth to the eighteenth century.

Seeking to reach spiritual heights, the righteous man withdrew into a small cave and spent many years in strict fasting. The details of the lives of recluses are generally unknown, but the tradition of the Church considers them zealous intercessors for people before the Lord. The life of Venerable Alexis is not described in the Kiev Caves Paterikon of 1661.

The local canonization of Alexis dates from 1675, when the saint was added to the common commemoration established in 1643 by Saint Peter Mohyla, metropolitan of Kiev. Veneration in the whole Church was established by decrees of the Holy Synod of 1762, 1775 and 1785, according to which a number of saints of Kiev, among them Alexis, could be entered in the Moscow calendars for the whole Church.

His incorrupt relics were found after 1675 and lie openly in the Near Caves (of Saint Anthony) of the Lavra, near the relics of Venerable Sava. He is first mentioned on the map of the Near Caves of 1703. In 1795, on the place where he rests, the relics of "venerable Alexis, resting in seclusion" are marked (in 1744 "venerable Maximus the recluse" was entered here by mistake, and between 1769 and 1789 "saint Maximus"). It may be that this ascetic was the one the German envoy Erich Lassota had in mind when he wrote, in 1594, about the caves of the Lavra, that among those he saw there lie Saint Dionysius, Saint Alexis and Saint Mark.