Paphnutius the Recluse of the Kiev Caves
Our Venerable Father Paphnutius the Recluse of the Kiev Caves
Venerable · d. 13th century
Commemorated 15 February — The recluse of the Far Caves, 28 August — Synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of the Far (Theodosius) Caves
Paphnutius was a monk of the Kiev Caves who lived as a recluse in the caverns of the great monastery and is remembered above all for the gift of tears: by the unbroken remembrance of death he wept continually for his sins, and when the hour of his own death came he departed in peace, the tradition says, in the sight of angels who came to receive his soul. Nothing of his origin or of the year of his repose is securely transmitted; he is counted among the venerable fathers who rest in the Far (Theodosius) Caves, where his relics lie, and is generally placed in the thirteenth century. He is commemorated on February 15 and with the whole company of the Far Caves on August 28.
The record of Paphnutius is that of many of the saints of the Kiev Caves: a brief notice in the Patericon and the calendars, preserving not a biography but the single virtue for which the brotherhood remembered him. He is called the Recluse (zatvornik) — one of those monks of the Caves who, after the common life, withdrew into a sealed cell or cavern to give themselves wholly to prayer, seen by no one, receiving food through a small opening, and dead to the world before their death.
The grace proper to Paphnutius was the remembrance of death and the gift of tears that flowed from it. Holding always before his mind the hour of his own departure and the judgment to come, he wept without ceasing for his sins, and made of his weeping a continual prayer — the penthos, the "blessed mourning," that the ascetic tradition reckons among the highest of gifts, for the Lord's own word is that "blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted." When at last he lay dying, the tradition relates, he met death not with the fear of the sinner but with the joy of one long prepared, and angels appeared to bear away the soul that had so long wept in expectation of that meeting.
Beyond this the sources are silent, and this entry invents nothing to fill the silence. His relics rest incorrupt in the Far Caves of the Kiev-Caves Lavra, among the fathers of that place; his era is not fixed by any dated notice, and the Russian calendars place him, with the other later saints of the Far Caves, in the thirteenth century.
Feast and commemoration
February 15 (church date; Old Calendar civil February 28), his own day, kept in the Russian tradition and the OCA. He is commemorated again with the whole brotherhood who rest in the Far Caves at the Synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of the Far (Theodosius) Caves on August 28, and, in the Russian usage, among all the Kiev-Caves saints on the second Sunday of Great Lent. The commemoration is proper to the Russian and Ukrainian Churches and does not appear in the Greek Menaion of the day.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 8 (general of a venerable)
In thee, O Father, was the image of God preserved with exactness; 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 thy spirit, O venerable Paphnutius, rejoiceth with the angels.
Original translation from the Slavonic
Iconography
No pre-modern image identifiable as this recluse alone has been found, and none is stored here; he appears within the great composite icons of the Synaxis of the Fathers of the Kiev Caves, ranged among the venerable of the Far Caves. Singly he would be shown as a Caves monk in the schema — an aged, bearded ascetic in the dark monastic habit, a scroll in his hand — and, proper to his own memory, weeping, the gift of tears marked upon his face.
Disputed questions
- Which Paphnutius? The name is borne by several saints of the calendar, and they are easily confused. This recluse of the Kiev Caves is to be distinguished from Paphnutius the martyr of Egypt and his companions (September 25); from Paphnutius the Confessor, the one-eyed bishop of the Thebaid at the Council of Nicaea; from the venerable Paphnutius, father of Euphrosyne of Alexandria (commemorated with his daughter, and — like this recluse — kept also on February 15); and from the later Russian Paphnutius of Borovsk (May 1). Only this Paphnutius is styled "the Recluse of the Caves."