Theodore Ostrozhsky

Holy Venerable Theodore Ostrozhsky of Pechersk, prince and monk, descended from the line of Saint Vladimir, equal to the apostles, through his great-⁠grandson Svyatopolk-⁠Michael, prince of Turov (1080 to 1093) and Grand Prince of Kyiv (died 1113). He became known for building churches and for defending Orthodoxy in Volhynia against the violence of the papists.

His name first appears in 1386, when the Polish king Jagiello and the Lithuanian prince Vytautas confirmed his hereditary possession, the Ostrog district, and added the Zaslav and Korets districts. In 1410 he took part in the defeat of the knights of the Catholic order at Grunwald. In 1422, out of sympathy for the Orthodox in Bohemia, he supported the Hussites in their fight against the German emperor Sigismund. Into Russian military art he brought a special method, the Hussite formation, the so-⁠called camps, taken up by the Ukrainian Cossacks. In 1432, by a series of victories over Polish forces, he forced Prince Jagiello to protect by law the freedom of Orthodoxy in Volhynia. Prince Svidrigailo, fearing the strengthening of his ally, imprisoned him in 1435, but the people, who loved him, rose in revolt and freed him. In 1438 he took part in the battle with the Tatars.

After 1441, leaving vast estates in the best regions of Podolia and Volhynia, military fame and the principality, he received monastic tonsure with the name Theodosius in the Kyiv Caves Lavra and struggled there for the salvation of his soul until his death, in the second half of the fifteenth century (the year is not known with certainty). He was buried in the Far Caves (of Theodosius). In 1638 the hieromonk Athanasius Kalnofoisky testified that the Venerable Theodore "rests openly in the Cave of Theodosius, in his whole body."

He is commemorated on 24 August (new style), in the Synaxis of all the Venerable Fathers of the Kyiv Caves on a movable day (in the calendar on 28 March), in the Synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of the Far Caves on 10 September, and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Volhynia on 23 October.