Sisoes of the Far Caves
Our Venerable Father Sisoes the Schemamonk, of the Far Caves of Kiev
Venerable · d. 13th century
Commemorated 6 July — Kept on the day of his heavenly patron, Sisoes the Great, 28 August — Synaxis of the venerable fathers of the Kiev Caves whose relics repose in the Far Caves
Sisoes, called the Schemamonk, was a monk of the Kiev Caves Lavra of the thirteenth century whose incorrupt relics rest in the Far (Theodosian) Caves. Of his life nothing is transmitted beyond what his name and his rank imply: that he bore the great schema, the highest degree of the monastic profession, and that he was remembered among the brethren for fasting — the service of the Caves fathers names him with St Gregory the Faster as one who subdued the passions of the flesh by abstinence. He is commemorated on July 6, the day of his heavenly patron Sisoes the Great, and with the fathers of the Far Caves on August 28.
The Far Caves and the silence of the record
The Kiev Caves Lavra, founded in the eleventh century by Anthony and Theodosius, preserved in its two cave systems — the Near (Antonian) and the Far (Theodosian) — the bodies of several hundred monks, of whom the Kiev Caves Paterikon tells the stories of perhaps forty. The rest are known only by the inscriptions over their coffins and by the collective services composed for them. Sisoes the Schemamonk belongs to this second, larger company: his name and his monastic rank are recorded, his relics are venerated, and no vita was ever written.
What can honestly be said of him is therefore this. He lived in the thirteenth century — the century of the Mongol sack of Kiev in 1240, which broke the Lavra as an institution for generations and drove much of its life underground in the literal sense, monks living and dying in the cave corridors. He received the great schema (skhima), the highest monastic profession in the Byzantine and Rus' tradition, which binds its bearer to a life of near-total withdrawal, unceasing prayer and severe abstinence; the epithet is used of him as a title because it was the salient fact about him.
The witness of the service
The one substantive tradition about his manner of life comes from the liturgical texts appointed for the fathers of the Caves, where Sisoes is joined with St Gregory the Faster as an example of those who conquered the flesh through fasting. This is the sort of detail that liturgical poetry preserves when narrative does not: the brethren who composed the service knew what Sisoes had been known for. He is therefore honoured specifically as a faster, in the line of the Egyptian ascetics whose name he bore.
Feast and commemoration
July 6 (church date; Old Calendar civil July 19), in the Russian, Ukrainian and OCA calendars only — his veneration is local to the Kiev Caves and does not appear in the Greek or Antiochian books. He is commemorated again on August 28 with the venerable fathers whose relics lie in the Far Caves, and on the second Sunday of Great Lent with the whole assembly of the saints of the Kiev Caves, a movable commemoration recorded under that rule. No proper office is appointed for him alone; he is served with the common of the Caves fathers.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 8 (common of an ascetic father)
In thee, O father, was the divine image preserved unimpaired; for taking up the cross thou didst follow after Christ, and by thy deeds thou didst teach us to despise the flesh, which passes away, and to care for the soul, which is a thing immortal. Wherefore, O venerable Sisoes, thy spirit rejoiceth with the angels.
Iconography
Sisoes of the Caves is shown in the great schema: the dark analavos embroidered with the cross, the lance and the sponge and the letters of the Adam's-head device, worn over the mandyas, with the pointed koukoulion drawn up over the head — the habit that distinguishes the schemamonk from the ordinary monk in Rus' iconography — and a scroll or a prayer-rope in the hand. His face is that of an elder, thin from fasting, with a full grey beard. He does not appear alone in surviving pre-modern icons but is included, with his name written beside him, in the crowded compositions of the Synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of the Far Caves, engraved and painted at the Lavra from the seventeenth century onward, where the fathers are ranged in tiers about the Dormition church. No pre-1900 image of him singly has been identified for this repository.
Disputed questions
- Nothing is known of his origins, his tonsure or his repose. The thirteenth-century dating rests on the tradition of the Lavra and on the position of his relics in the Far Caves, not on any document. Some listings give simply "13th–14th century".
- Not to be confused with Sisoes the Recluse of the Kiev Near Caves, likewise a thirteenth-century monk of the same Lavra, commemorated on October 24 with the recluses Arethas and Theophilus and with the fathers of the Near Caves on September 28. The two are distinct saints of the same house, the same name and the same century, distinguished only by cave system and feast day, and they are constantly confounded. This entry is the schemamonk of the Far Caves, kept on July 6 and August 28; the slug of the Near Caves recluse is reserved for his own day.
- Not to be confused with Sisoes the Great (†429), the Egyptian desert father commemorated on the very same day. The Kievan monk was named for him at his tonsure, and is commemorated on July 6 for that reason — the ordinary Rus' practice of keeping a saint without a proper day on the feast of his patron. The confusion is easy and common in English calendars, where both appear on July 6 as "Venerable Sisoes."
- The great schema does not make him a distinct order of saint; he is classified simply as venerable, the type proper to all monastic saints.