Julian Boyko

Schemamonk Julian (born Oleksii Ivanovich Boyko, 4 April 1940 to 10 July 2005) was a Ukrainian Orthodox ascetic, schemamonk and fool for Christ, who died at Kyiv. Our sources show no canonization of him: he is venerated by the faithful as an elder but is not numbered among the saints. What follows is his life as the Ukrainian source tells it.

Childhood

He was born in the village of Novostarodub in the Petrovo district of the Kirovohrad region, to Matrona Mitrofanovna Yastrub, a milkmaid. In the birth record the father was not listed, but a villager, Ivan Boyko, acknowledged paternity and allowed the child to take his name. He was born with grave physical handicaps, and was disabled from childhood. His first years were very hard: after the birth his mother, in despair, left the baby in a snowdrift, from which a neighbour saved him and forced the mother to take him back. Later the mother tried to get rid of him by leaving him in the forest, but a dog brought him home, pulling him by the sleeve. In the family he was treated harshly, went hungry and was beaten by the older children, so that he found consolation in prayer. As a teenager he walked twenty-⁠five kilometres to the nearest open church, at Petrovo.

Wandering and folly for Christ

At about fourteen he left home and began the life of a wandering pilgrim. According to contemporaries, in the mid-1950s he was seen at the Kyiv Caves Lavra, dressed in a woman's smock, hiding his spiritual state under the guise of madness (folly for Christ). In the 1960s he lived for a time in Oleksandriya, where he was known as "Lyonya", and at the end of the decade he moved to Kirovohrad (today Kropyvnytskyi), where he lived with other wanderers, Nicholas Trubin (a future priest) and Maria Savytska, in communal houses of prayer, devoting himself to prayer and folly. His spiritual teacher was the Athonite elder Hieroschemamonk Euthymius (Yevtushenko), who served at the Nativity of the Mother of God cathedral in Kirovohrad and who blessed him on the way of complete folly. He went with Nicholas Trubin to the Pskov Caves Monastery, where he spoke with Schema-⁠archimandrite Michael.

At Kyiv and the tonsure

In the mid-1980s he moved to Kyiv, going first to the cathedral of Saint Volodymyr. With the blessing of the well-⁠known ascetic, the nun Alipia (Avdeeva), and of Archimandrite Ambrose (Yurasov), he was received and cared for by the believer Nina Alexandrovna Yavorska, in whose apartment at Vyshneve, near Kyiv, he lived sixteen years. Toward the end of Mother Alipia's life he received from her, symbolically, the blessing to continue her labour in the capital. After receiving monastic tonsure with the name Julian and the great schema, he became known among the faithful of Kyiv by his unusual appearance: he wore a schemamonk's cap, walked with a crutch and with his right hand always bandaged, spoke in allegories and hid under oddities the gift of foresight.

From 1997 he visited the Kytayiv Hermitage regularly. A part of the brotherhood gathered around him and chose him as spiritual guide; because of misunderstandings with the leadership of the time, some monks followed him to Knyazhychi and then to Borodianka. He travelled much to the holy places of Ukraine and made a large contribution to the revival of the Motronin monastery in the diocese of Cherkasy, where he supported Abbess Matrona and the sisters. With his blessing and prayer three new monasteries were founded in Transcarpathia: the Dormition (Kychirne), the Protection (Kostryno) and Saint Volodymyr (Sukhyi). Though he suffered from diseases of the legs and grave hernias, he received many who asked his counsel. In his last years he lived in Kyiv, at Berezniaky and then in the Kharkiv district.

Repose

At the beginning of July 2005 his condition suddenly worsened: he went through clinical death and coma. After recovery he made, a week before his death, a last farewell journey to Motronin and Kirovohrad. He reposed on 10 July 2005 at Kyiv. The coffin was taken to the Motronin monastery, and on the evening of 11 July to the Nativity of the Mother of God cathedral in Kirovohrad, where the doors remained open all night. On 12 July 2005, the day of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, after the Liturgy for the departed and the funeral led by Archimandrite Parthenius, he was buried in the Lelekivka cemetery of Kropyvnytskyi, at the place he himself had indicated. The grave is a place of pilgrimage.