Helladius of Kiev

Venerable Helladius the Recluse was a monk and recluse of the Kyiv Caves monastery, in the twelfth or thirteenth century. He is venerated by the Russian Church among the venerable and remembered on 4 October and on 28 September on the old calendar (17 October and 11 October on the new), in the Synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of the Near Caves. An English source says his commemoration at the Caves is the Saturday after 14 September. His relics are kept unopened in the Near Caves of the Caves Lavra.

What is known

News of the life of Venerable Helladius has not been preserved. The first to mention him is the "Teraturgima" of the cathedral monk Athanasius Kalnofoisky (1638), who calls him a faster and wonderworker. Veneration throughout the Church began after the Holy Synod permitted, in the second half of the eighteenth century, the names of a number of Kyivan saints to be entered in the common menologia. In the canon of the venerable fathers of the Near Caves (the feast of the Synaxis of all the Venerable Fathers of the Caves and of all the saints who shone forth in Little Russia was established in 1843) Helladius is mentioned as a wonderworker in the sixth troparion of the seventh ode. The Ukrainian source also calls him a venerable martyr, which the others do not say.

His likeness

An iconographic manual of the end of the eighteenth century gives these notes on Helladius's appearance: Russian in look, like Florus, with a black cowl on his shoulders, both hands crossed at his heart, in monastic robe. On the icon near his relics he is shown in a dark mantle and cowl, with a straight grey beard, and with a book in his right hand.