Mardarius the Recluse

Venerable Mardarius the Recluse lived in the thirteenth century in the Far Caves of Saint Theodosius, in the Kiev Caves Lavra. He enclosed himself in his cell and strove there with prayer, fasting and obedience.

His troparion and kontakion call him unacquisitive, and the inscription over his relics says of him that he was "without a cell": he had nothing in his cell except the clothes on his back. In an ode of the service for the Synaxis of the Fathers of the Far Caves he is called a zealot of poverty, together with Saint Ammon.

He was buried in the Far Caves. He is commemorated on 13 December, on 28 August in the Synaxis of the Fathers of the Far Caves, and on the second Sunday of Great Lent, in the Synaxis of All the Venerable Fathers of the Kiev Caves.