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Laurence of Turov

Our Venerable Father Laurence the Recluse of the Kiev Caves, Bishop of Turov

Venerable · Bishop · Wonderworker · d. 1194

Commemorated 29 January — Repose of the recluse of the Kiev Caves and bishop of Turov

Laurence (†1194) was a monk of the Kiev Caves monastery who lived as a recluse in strict enclosure, was granted the gift of healing — especially of casting out unclean spirits — and was afterwards consecrated Bishop of Turov, a see of the Turov-Pinsk land in the west of the Kievan realm. He shepherded his diocese in the last years before the fragmentation of the Rus' and reposed in 1194; his incorrupt relics rest in the Near (Anthony's) Caves of the Kiev-Caves Lavra, where he is numbered among the venerable fathers who lie there. He is commemorated on January 29, and among the Fathers of the Near Caves. He is not to be confused with the later Laurence the Recluse of the Far Caves, a distinct Kiev-Caves saint.

Laurence belongs to the company of the ascetics of the Kiev-Caves monastery, the mother-house of Russian monasticism, in the twelfth century — the age in which the Caves had already given the Church a long succession of recluses, healers, and hierarchs, and in which many of its monks were called out to be bishops of the young dioceses of the Rus'. Of his origins the record says little; he entered the Caves and there took up the life of a recluse (zatvornik), shutting himself into a cell for unbroken prayer, in the severe form of the solitary life for which the Caves were renowned.

The tradition remembers him as a healer, and above all as one given power over the demons: those tormented by unclean spirits were brought to him, and by his prayer were set free — a gift the Kiev-Caves Paterikon and the Russian menologia associate with the great recluses of the monastery. From this reputation for holiness he was raised, like others of the Caves before him, to the episcopate: he was made Bishop of Turov, the see on the Pripyat in the Turov-Pinsk country (in what is now Belarus), a diocese that had earlier been held by the great preacher Cyril of Turov (April 28). As bishop Laurence governed his church in the troubled decades of the later twelfth century, and reposed in the year 1194.

His body was returned to, or remained the treasure of, the Kiev-Caves Lavra, where his incorrupt relics are venerated in the Near Caves (the caves of Saint Anthony); he is commemorated with the other fathers who lie there. The record of his life is that of a synaxarion and a monastic paterikon — the enclosure, the gift of healing, the episcopate, the repose — and is given here at the length the surviving sources allow, without embellishment.

Feast and commemoration

January 29 (church date; New Calendar civil January 29; Old Calendar civil February 11), a Russian (Moscow Patriarchate / OCA) commemoration, kept on the day led by the translation of the relics of Ignatius the God-bearer. Laurence is commemorated also in the Synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of the Near Caves (September 28) and in the Synaxis of All the Venerable Fathers of the Kiev Caves, kept on the second Sunday of Great Lent (a movable commemoration; the Kiev-Caves Lenten synaxes are owed as a movable rule and index per the project's record of open questions, and are noted here in prose rather than asserted in the frontmatter). No proper service is appointed; the common of a venerable father is used.

Hymns

Troparion — Tone 8 (from the common of a venerable father)

In thee, O Father, was preserved unfailingly that which is according to the image; for taking up the Cross, thou didst follow after Christ, and by thy deeds thou didst teach us to despise the flesh, for it passeth away, but to care for the soul, a thing immortal. Wherefore, O venerable Laurence, thy spirit rejoiceth with the Angels.

Original translation from the Slavonic

Iconography

No verified pre-modern image of Laurence of Turov identified apart from the collective icons of the Fathers of the Kiev Caves has been secured on Wikimedia Commons under an unambiguous attribution; the entry therefore stores no image and the saint is noted as wanting an icon. He is depicted, in the manner of the Kiev Caves fathers, as a monk in the schema and — where his episcopate is marked — in the omophorion, an aged bearded figure holding a scroll or blessing, and appears among the ranks of saints in the composite icons of the Near Caves.

Disputed questions

  • Two Laurences of the Kiev Caves. The Jan 29 saint is Laurence the Recluse and Bishop of Turov, whose relics lie in the Near Caves and who reposed in 1194. He is distinct from Laurence the Recluse of the Far Caves (13th–14th century), a separate Kiev-Caves ascetic whose incorrupt relics lie in the Far Caves and who is commemorated on January 20 (and in the Synaxis of the Far Caves Fathers). Some notices — including the OCA's heading for January 29 — conflate the two, styling the bishop of Turov a father "of the Far Caves"; the resting-place (Near Caves) and the episcopate of Turov mark out the saint of this day. (The Far Caves recluse is tracked as a Pending entry at January 20.)

Sources

  1. Kiev-Caves Paterikon and Russian menologia — the recluse of the Caves, the gift of healing and of casting out demons, the consecration as Bishop of Turov, and the repose in 1194; the veneration of the relics in the Near Caves.
  2. Orthodox Church in America, Lives of the Saints, January 29 (consulted live) — Saint Laurence, recluse of the Kiev Caves and bishop of Turov (with the Far/Near Caves discrepancy noted under Disputed questions).
  3. Russian calendar for civil February 11 (consulted live at azbyka.ru) — the recluse of the Near Caves, bishop of Turov, reposed 1194, and his place among the Synaxis of the Near Caves Fathers.