Anatolius the Recluse

Venerable Anatolius the Recluse was a monk and recluse of the Kiev Caves Lavra in the twelfth century. He is honoured by the Russian Church among the venerable fathers. His commemoration is on 3 July and on 28 September (old calendar), in the Synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of the Near Caves.

No reports of his life have been preserved. The Teratourgima of the cathedral monk Athanasius Kalnofoysky (1638) calls him an elder and wonderworker. His local veneration began at the end of the seventeenth century, when Archimandrite Barlaam Yasinsky of the Lavra, later metropolitan of Kiev, established the commemoration of the Synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of the Far Caves. In the service of the Synaxis of Saints composed then, Anatolius the Recluse is mentioned in the second troparion of the ninth ode, together with Venerable Spyridon and Nicodemus. In the view of Filaret (Gumilevsky), he struggled with these saints in the twelfth century. The "Description of Russian Saints", known from copies of the end of the seventeenth century, counts him among the saints of "the city of Kiev". It is said that he was marked on the map of the Near Caves of 1638 as "holy elder Anatolius the wonderworker" and on later maps as "Anatolius". The sources do not agree on whether he belonged to the Near or to the Far Caves.

Veneration in the whole Church began after the Holy Synod allowed, in the second half of the eighteenth century, the names of a number of saints of Kiev to be entered in the calendars of the Church. The commemoration of Venerable Anatolius on 3 July was established in honour of his namesake, Saint Anatolius, Patriarch of Constantinople. Metropolitan Eugene (Bolkhovitinov) and Archbishop Filaret (Gumilevsky) give his commemoration separately on 31 October, the day of the venerable Spyridon and Nicodemus, prosphora bakers, who rest in the Near Caves. Archbishop Sergius (Spassky) and the Menaion of 1978 to 1989 give another day, 3 July by the old calendar. His relics are kept in the Near Caves (of Saint Anthony).