Benjamin of the Kiev Caves

Venerable Benjamin of the Caves was a monk of the Kiev Caves Monastery, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (our record gives 1400 as the year of death). The Orthodox Church honours him among the venerable fathers. His commemoration is on 10 September and on 26 October (13 October by the old calendar).

His life is known from the epitaph on an arcosolium icon. The epitaph says that before his tonsure he was a rich merchant. During the service he heard the words of the Gospel that it is hard for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of heaven (Matthew 19:23), after which he distributed all his property to the poor and received tonsure in the Monastery of the Caves. Until death he pleased the Lord God by fasting, prayer, poverty and obedience.

A Ukrainian source notes that in a late Ukrainian chronograph of the second half of the 1620s there is an interesting remark: that the description of the capture of the Lavra by Batu in 1240 was written by a certain Benjamin the "chronicler". This person is linked with Venerable Benjamin of the Caves, but the matter is disputed.

His relics rest in the Far Caves, beside the relics of Venerable Euthymius of the Caves. Anthropological studies show that he died as an adult and that he stood about 166 centimetres tall. On icons of the Synaxis of the Saints of the Caves he is usually shown in the right group, in the seventh row, second from the left, in monastic dress with a cowl on his head, to the right of Rufus the Recluse, in the row of monks who rest in the Far Caves.