CAVES MONASTERY

One of the oldest and most important East Slavic monasteries, the Kievan Caves Monastery is located in the southern part of Kiev along the Dnieper River. Its name derives from the tunnels and caves that served first as cells for monks and later as burial crypts. According to the Primary Chronicle, the monastery was founded by Saint Anthony of the Caves (died c. 1073) in 1051 after his return from Mount Athos in Greece, where he was tonsured. Anthony's pious life attracted a number of followers, and soon he appointed Varlaam, the son of an influential boyar, as abbot and secluded himself in a nearby cave. In 1062 Varlaam left to lead the St. Demetrius monastery, and the brethren chose Theodosius to replace him. The monastery grew steadily under Theodosius's guidance, and in an attempt to provide an orderly life for the monks, he introduced the Byzantine rule of Theodore of Studion (759–826). Despite the strong coenobitic nature of this rule, which required a common life under the strict guidance of the abbot, the way of life described in the Primary Chronicle at the time of Theodosius's death in 1074 is more idiorrythmic, in that each monk was left to develop his own method of monastic practice. A hallmark of caves monasticism in the Kievan period was the claim, often repeated in the sources, that the Caves was a monastery founded not by princes or rulers, but through tears, fasting, prayer, and vigils. As a spiritual center, the monastery was a major source of bishops and missionaries in pre-Mongol Rus.

The Caves Monastery was also the center of cultural life in Kievan Rus. The Primary Chronicle has been traditionally ascribed to Nestor, a monk of the Caves Monastery writing at the end of the eleventh century, who also wrote the Life of Theodosius and the life of the slain princes Boris and Gleb. In addition, the monastery is the setting of the Kievan Caves Patericon, a thirteenth-century compilation of stories about caves monks, which was reworked and later reprinted until the nineteenth century.

Theodosius's successors undertook a major building campaign that continued with some minor setbacks until the invasion of the Mongols, who sacked Kiev and destroyed the monastery under Batu Khan in 1240. The monastery began to flourish once again in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries under Lithuanian rule. By the sixteenth century the Caves had become quite wealthy, although as a citadel of Orthodoxy it still faced some major challenges. After the Treaty of Lublin, which combined Poland and Lithuania, and the Treaty of Brest, which created the Eastern Rite Catholic Uniate Church (1596), there was pressure to subject the monastery to the Uniate metropolitan of Kiev. Only strong resistance by the Caves monks reversed this process. With the acquisition of Kiev by Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, the monastery and the see of Kiev were placed under the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Moscow. The Caves was the first (1598), and one of only four monasteries in Russia to be given the special designation lavra, which signified a particularly large and influential monastery. The monastery was an important center of Orthodox spirituality until 1926, when it was made a museum by the Soviet government. It was restored to the Orthodox Church in 1988.

See also: kieven caves patericon; kieven rus

bibliography

Fedotov, George P. (1965). The Russian Religious Mind. New York: Harper Torchbooks.

The Paterik of the Kievan Caves Monastery. (1989). Translated and with an introduction by Muriel Heppell. Cambridge, MA: Ukrainian Research Institute of Harvard University.

The Russian Primary Chronicle: Laurentian Text. (1953). Ed. and tr. Samuel Hazzard Cross and Olgerd. P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor. Cambridge, MA: The Mediaeval Academy of America.

David K. Prestel