Simon of Vladimir

Saint Simon, hierarch (died 22 May 1226), was first a monk at the Kyiv Caves Monastery, then abbot of the Nativity of the Mother of God monastery at Vladimir and, from 1215, bishop of Vladimir. He is commemorated (Old Style) on 10 May and on 28 September, in the Synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of the Near Caves. Our sources do not give the date of canonization and show a confusion between two saints of the same name.

Life

Of his childhood and worldly life almost no news survives, and the rest is scanty and broken. Simon is known as the author of eight tales about eight monks of the Caves, written for his friend, the Caves monk Polycarp. They are included in large extracts in various archaeological editions, and in their entirety in the Kyiv Paterikon, without the "epistle" to Polycarp which preceded them. The "epistle" and the "tales" are notable for their historical details about the life of the venerable ones he depicts. He wrote the "Tale of the Founding of the Caves Monastery", in which there is the story of a Shimon Africanovich, benefactor of the monastery's church, who had first been a Latin (Catholic) and, from Saint Theodosius of the Caves, learned to believe rightly in Jesus Christ, bringing after him to Orthodoxy some three hundred souls, because of Theodosius's miracles. In the "Tale" the Greek painters who worked in the church are mentioned, and "Greek books kept in memory". V. N. Tatishchev saw a copy of a chronicle in which Simon, using the library of Prince Constantine Vsevolodovich, recorded certain events of the years 1200 to 1225, praising the prince for his love of enlightenment; this chronicle has not been found since Tatishchev.

This Simon, who composed part of the Caves Paterikon, is confused by most writers with Saint Simon, bishop of Suzdal and Rostov, who lived at the beginning of the twelfth century and was the third or, according to other chroniclers, the fifth bishop of the Rostov region. The body of Simon I rests incorrupt in the caves of Kyiv, while Simon II is buried in the Dormition cathedral at Vladimir. Archbishop Sergius (Spassky), in the booklet "Saint Simon, Bishop of Vladimir and Suzdal" (Vladimir, 1899), shows that there were two saints, Simon I and Simon II, and supposes that the commemoration of 10 May was ordained at Kyiv first in honour of the first Simon (of Suzdal), who rests at the Caves Lavra; later, at the latest in the seventeenth century, on the basis of the Paterikon or of Simon II's epistle to Polycarp, the opinion arose that the one resting at the Lavra is Simon of Vladimir, who wrote that epistle.

Repose

Bishop Simon reposed in peace on 22 May 1226; on the eve he received the schema. He was buried in the Dormition cathedral at Vladimir, in a stone coffin with the saint's relics.