Leontius of the Kiev Caves
Our Venerable Father Leontius, Canonarch of the Kiev Caves
Venerable · d. 14th century, at the Kiev Caves Lavra, while still young
Commemorated 18 June — Repose; kept on the day of his patron, the martyr Leontius of Tripoli, 28 August — Synaxis of the venerable fathers of the Kiev Caves whose relics repose in the Far Caves
Leontius, called the Canonarch, was a boy or very young monk of the Kiev Caves Lavra in the fourteenth century who was given the office of canonarch — the singer who intones the verses and gives out the tone for the choirs — because of the unusual beauty of his voice. He was taught the Scriptures, kept the office faithfully, and died young. His relics rest in the Far (Theodosian) Caves, and he is commemorated on June 18, the day of his heavenly patron Leontius of Tripoli, and with the fathers of the Far Caves on August 28.
The office of canonarch
Almost the whole of what is transmitted about Leontius is contained in his title. The canonarch (Greek κανονάρχης, Slavonic канонархъ) is not a soloist but a servant of the choir: he stands in the middle of the church and reads out, line by line and phrase by phrase, the text of the canon, the stichera and the prokeimena, announcing the tone in which each is to be sung, so that the two choirs may take it up. It is the office by which a monastery's liturgical order is actually kept in motion, and in a great house it was normally entrusted to a young monk with a clear, carrying, accurate voice and a memory trained on the books.
The Caves tradition says that Leontius came to the Lavra as a boy and was received; that he had a fine voice, which is why the office fell to him; and that he was instructed in Holy Scripture as part of that training. This is the Caves' familiar pattern: a child brought into the monastery, formed inside it, and given work suited to what he had. He does not appear as a hermit, an elder, a wonderworker or a builder, and the Paterikon attaches no miracle to him.
An early death
He died while still young, in the fourteenth century, and was buried in the Far Caves, the older of the two labyrinths, where the relics of Theodosius' first companions lie. The Caves reckoning has thus preserved not an ascetic career but a promise cut short — a boy who sang the services and did not live to grow old in them. That is precisely what the monastery chose to honour: faithfulness in a small office, exercised for as long as it was given.
Veneration
His name stands among the venerable fathers of the Far Caves in the Caves lists and on the plans of the caves themselves, where each burial is marked and named. He was included, with the whole company of the Far Caves, in the general veneration of the Kiev Caves saints confirmed in the seventeenth century, and his memory has been carried ever since in three places in the calendar: on his own day, June 18; in the Synaxis of the venerable fathers whose relics repose in the Far Caves, on August 28; and in the movable Synaxis of all the venerable fathers of the Kiev Caves, kept on the second Sunday of Great Lent (this last is a movable commemoration and is recorded here in prose, pending the movable sweep). The Greek synaxaristic collections have taken him over from the Slavonic books and list him on June 18 as Ὅσιος Λεόντιος ὁ Κανονάρχης.
Feast and commemoration
June 18 (church date; Old Calendar civil July 1), Russian, Ukrainian and OCA usage, and carried also by the Greek synaxaristic lists. He is the second commemoration of the day in the Slavonic and OCA order, after the martyrs of Tripoli. August 28 (Old Calendar civil September 10) is the Synaxis of the fathers of the Far Caves, at which he is named with the rest; the movable synaxis of all the Caves fathers falls on the second Sunday of Great Lent. No proper service is appointed for him alone; he is sung from the common of a venerable father and, on August 28, from the office of the Caves fathers.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 8
In thee, O Father, was preserved unimpaired 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 overlook the flesh, which passes away, and to attend to the soul, which is a thing immortal. Wherefore, O venerable Leontius, thy spirit rejoices with the angels.
Iconography
Leontius is painted as a young monk, beardless or with the first down of a beard — the Caves iconography is careful to mark his youth, which is the one biographical fact it has — in the rason and koukoulion or with the head bare, holding a scroll, and often a book of chant or an open service-book, the attribute of his office. He appears chiefly in the great composite icons of the Synaxis of the venerable fathers of the Far Caves, where the fathers are ranged in tiers above the caves with the Dormition church of the Lavra between them and each figure is named in the halo; and in the printed and engraved Caves plans and Paterikon illustrations of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, where his name is set against his burial place. No individual pre-1900 image of him has been located, and none has been stored.
Disputed questions
- Dating and identity. The fourteenth-century date is what the Caves lists give; no year is transmitted, and no incident of his life is dated. Nothing in the notice permits a tighter fix.
- Not to be confused with the martyr Leontius of Tripoli, on whose day he is kept and whose name he bore; with Leontius, first bishop of Rostov (May 23), the enlightener of the Rostov land, who was himself tonsured at the Kiev Caves and is by far the better known Russian saint of the name; with Leontius of Jerusalem (May 14); or with the two other Leontii of this same day, Leontius the Athonite and Leontius the Shepherd.