Spyridon the Prosphora-⁠baker

Venerable Spyridon the Prosphora-⁠baker (Spyridon of the Caves) was a monk of the Kyiv Caves Lavra in the twelfth century, prosphora-⁠baker of the monastery, that is, the one who made the loaves for the Holy Liturgy. He died around the middle of the twelfth century, by one source in 1148, while our calendar gives 1200. He is remembered on 31 October. His relics rest in the cave of Anthony, in the Near Caves.

Life

Of his childhood and his life in the world almost nothing survives, and the other reports of him are scanty and fragmentary. It is known only that he was a peasant by birth and came to the Caves monastery in the time of Abbot Pimen (1132 to 1141), who appointed him to bake prosphora with the monk Nicodemus. He came to the monastery entirely illiterate, but soon, though he was no longer young, he learned to read the divine books and, according to the Brockhaus and Efron encyclopaedic dictionary, he knew the whole Psalter by heart. A Ukrainian source says he read it day and night, while he worked.

According to the legend, one day the roof of Spyridon's cell caught fire from a spark of the oven. Then he covered the oven with his mantle and, tying the sleeves of his hair shirt, ran for water and called the brethren of the monastery to help him put out the fire. When they gathered, the monks saw a miracle: the mantle with which Spyridon had covered the oven had not been touched by the fire, and the water did not run out of the hair shirt, through which the fire was quickly put out. A Ukrainian source says the fire was in the bakery.

Remembrance

Spyridon the Prosphora-⁠baker died toward the middle of the twelfth century. The tale of the venerable Spyridon and Nicodemus of the Caves was placed in the second letter of the monk Polycarp to the archimandrite Akindin of the Caves. A Ukrainian source adds that Spyridon died at the age of fifty to sixty, that one of the first iconographic portraits of him was printed in the Caves Paterikon of 1661, made by the engraver of the Lavra, Ilya, and that his image is preserved in the paintings of the churches of the Lavra. His relics rest in the Near Caves, beside those of Nicodemus the Prosphora-⁠baker, of Athanasius of the Caves and of Isaac the Recluse.