Serapion of Vladimir

Holy Hierarch Serapion of Vladimir, also called Serapion of the Caves, was an archimandrite of the Kiev Caves Monastery, a preacher and writer of medieval Rus, and in the last year of his life bishop of Vladimir.

Little is known of his life. The Resurrection Chronicle reports that in 1274 Metropolitan Cyril appointed Serapion, archimandrite (in other lists, hegumen) of the Kiev Caves Monastery, bishop of Vladimir, Suzdal and Nizhny Novgorod, and that he died the following year. The chronicle calls him very learned and well read. The headings of his sermons name him holy, venerable and blessed, and manuscript calendars count him among the saints.

Though he governed the see of Vladimir for only one year, he was a good shepherd, attentive to the needs of his flock and concerned to heal its wounds. A contemporary says that he was very learned and strong in the Holy Scriptures, and he had the gift of preaching. Five sermons are certainly his. The first three describe the Tatar invasion, most fully the third; they agree with the chronicle, so their factual accuracy cannot be doubted. Grieved by the misfortunes of his land, the preacher sees in them a punishment sent by God for human sins and a means of correction, and so he reproaches his hearers with great energy for a variety of vices.

The fourth and fifth sermons deal with two customs born of superstition: testing witches by water, and digging up buried suicides, whom the people believed spoiled the weather and so harmed the harvest. The saint allows that sorcerers may affect people through demons only so far as people believe in them, and he rebukes his hearers for still believing in sorcery and for wanting to make lifeless water a witness in questions of life and death. In the fifth sermon he ties the troubles of the people to the sins for which God punishes. His sermons are simple, more accessible than those of Hilarion and Cyril of Turov, yet vivid, poetic and full of force. Among them are the Word on Little Faith, the Word on the End of the World and the Word on the Turmoil of This Life.