Euthymius of the Kiev Caves

Venerable Euthymius of the Kiev Caves is a schemamonk of the Caves Lavra whose relics lie in the Far Caves. Neither the time nor the circumstances of his life are known. He is commemorated on 20 January, in the synaxis of the venerable fathers of the Far Caves, on 28 August, and on the second Sunday of Great Lent, in the synaxis of all the venerable fathers of the Caves, by the old calendar.

What is known of him

Nineteenth-⁠century literature places him, without basis, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but the sources say nothing about his life. The relics in the Far Caves of the Lavra are mentioned for the first time, in 1638, by the monk Athanasius Kalnofoisky in the book Teraturgima. He writes that on the relics of the venerable one there was a cross by which those who came were blessed, and some were healed. From the second half of the nineteenth century it is no longer mentioned. On the maps of the Caves of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in the inscriptions on the location of the relics, he is called hieroschemamonk or schemamonk. Biochemical examination of the relics shows that he died at the age of thirty to forty and was about 166 cm tall. His relics are in the Far Caves, beside those of Benjamin, near the underground church of the Annunciation.

According to later tradition, on receiving the schema he became silent and spoke to no one except in prayer in church and in his cell. He ate nothing cooked by fire, only raw greens. The kontakion composed in the nineteenth century says that after receiving the schema he was always quiet and silent, spoke to no one but prayers to the Lord and ate only raw herbs, and therefore now finds imperishable food in heaven.

Veneration

Local veneration began at the end of the seventeenth century, when the archimandrite of the Lavra, Varlaam Yasinsky, the future Metropolitan of Kiev, established the feast of the synaxis of the venerable fathers of the Far Caves. His name is mentioned in the canon of the saints of the Far Caves, from the same time. Veneration throughout the Church began after the Holy Synod allowed, in the second half of the eighteenth century, the names of some Kievan saints to be included in the calendars. The day of 20 January was set in the second half of the nineteenth century, in connection with the commemoration of Saint Euthymius the Great on the same day.