Barlaam of the Kyiv Caves

Venerable Barlaam of the Kyiv Caves was the first abbot of the Kyiv Caves Lavra, together with Saint Anthony, and fell asleep in the year 1065. The Russian Church remembers him on 19 November (2 December on the new calendar) and on 28 September, in the Synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of the Near Caves.

He was born between the end of the tenth century and the beginning of the eleventh, into a boyar family. According to the Caves Paterikon, he was the son of Yan Vyshatich, the military commander of Kyiv, and of his wife Maria. He received a good Christian upbringing in his parents' house and from youth was marked by purity of soul. Visiting Venerable Anthony, he fell so deeply in love with the quiet and pious life of the ascetics of the Caves that he resolved to leave the world with all its allurements and live in a cave. He opened his secret thought to Anthony, who praised his desire but warned him lest the glory of the world turn him back from the cave. The day after the conversation Barlaam left his parents' house and even his betrothed and, dressed in rich robes, with a fine retinue, on a richly adorned horse, rode to Anthony's cave. The humble monks came out to meet the nobleman and received him with bows. Barlaam dismounted, bowed to the ground, took off his boyar garments and laid them at the venerable one's feet, along with his horse and retinue, saying: “Here are the allurements of worldly life; do with them as you will, for I count them as nothing and wish to live with you in the cave, to gain Christ and never return to my house.” Anthony answered that he should remember to whom he was making the promise and in whose army he wished to serve, and then, by his order, the blessed Nikon tonsured him a monk, against his father's will.

As the community grew, Anthony made him abbot of the monastery. When the number of brothers reached twenty, Barlaam saw that the cave church was too small and in 1058, with Anthony's blessing, built a wooden church dedicated to the Dormition of the Mother of God, the first above-⁠ground church of the monastery, shown in a miniature of the Radziwill Chronicle. Later Prince Izyaslav (in baptism Demetrius) made him abbot of the monastery dedicated to his patron, Saint Demetrius. In 1064 he founded on the northern peninsula of the Koretz hills a convent, the Koretz Annunciation convent, probably the first convent for women in Kyivan Rus'.

He made several pilgrimages to the holy places: in 1062 to Jerusalem, bringing back many church vessels and what was needed for monastic life, and then to Constantinople. On the way back, in 1065, he fell asleep in the city of Volodymyr in Volhynia, at the Zymne monastery, a land that the Paterikon calls “his own country,” where estates at Budiatychi, Niskynychi and Kalusov are linked to Barlaam. Before his death he asked his companions to carry his body to the Caves monastery and to give the icons and all he had bought to Venerable Theodosius, which was done. He was buried in the Caves of Anthony, where his relics lie today, in the underground church dedicated to him.