Polycarp of the Kiev Caves

Venerable Polycarp of the Caves was archimandrite of the Kiev Caves Monastery, who died on 24 July 1182 (the birth year 1200 on the record does not fit). He is commemorated on 24 July, in the Synaxes of the venerable fathers of the Near Caves and of all the fathers of the Caves, and among the saints of Kiev; the Ukrainian source also gives 28 September.

Almost nothing has been preserved about his childhood and worldly life. He lived all the time in the Caves Monastery, but it is not known when he was tonsured. It is known only that his exemplary and strict life and his spiritual discernment made him beloved of the brethren, who elected him archimandrite in 1164, and won him the friendship of the grand prince of Kiev, Rostislav Mstislavich. In Great Lent, on Saturdays and Sundays, Prince Rostislav Mstislavich would, as far as possible, dine with Father Polycarp and the brethren of Theodosius' monastery. Once he told him that he wished to withdraw from the vain life of the world and to live in the quiet of the monastery, but Polycarp answered that heaven required other labours of him: to do justice and to guard the Russian land. The Ukrainian source adds that the prince even wished, in old age, to take the monastic habit in his monastery, but the saint held him back.

For having relaxed the fast of Wednesday and Friday on feasts of the Lord, Metropolitan Constantine condemned Archimandrite Polycarp to imprisonment, but soon he was freed and, returning from confinement, governed the monastery until the end of his life. According to the Serbian source, he was a disciple of Saint Simon, bishop of Vladimir and Suzdal, and composed many lives of saints and epistles to the blessed Akindin, archimandrite of the Caves; after Akindin's death he was elected abbot of the Lavra, which does not agree with the date 1164 in the Russian source. The Ukrainian source says that the Kiev Caves Paterikon took shape from his correspondence with Bishop Simon of Vladimir.

Polycarp died on 24 July 1182, and his relics rest in the Near Caves (of Saint Anthony) of the Lavra, not far from the relics of Venerable Damian the Healer. The shrine is first marked on a map of 1703, with the inscription Polycarp the abbot.