Titus the Soldier of the Kiev Caves
Our Venerable Father Titus the Former Soldier, of the Far Caves of Kiev
Venerable · d. 14th century
Commemorated 27 February — The wounded warrior who became a monk of the Far Caves, 28 August — Synaxis of the Fathers of the Kiev Far Caves
Titus the Soldier (14th century) was a warrior who, grievously wounded in battle, turned from the world to the monastic life and became a monk of the Far (Feodosiev) Caves of the Kiev Caves Lavra, where he gave the remainder of his days to prayer and repentance and was healed of the passions as of his wounds. Little is recorded of him beyond this pattern — the brave soldier who exchanged the warfare of the world for the unseen warfare of the ascetic — and his relics rest among the wonderworking fathers of the Far Caves. He is commemorated on February 27, the same day as his namesake, Titus the priest of the Near Caves.
Of Titus the Soldier the record is brief, in the honest way of the Caves synaxaria, which preserve for many of the Lavra's later fathers only the essential shape of a life given to God. He had been a soldier — a man, the tradition says, of courage, who had distinguished himself in arms — and in the course of his service he was severely wounded in battle. The nearness of death and the long suffering of his wounds worked in him the conversion that ease had not: he renounced the world, came to the Kiev Caves monastery, and received the monastic tonsure, resolving to spend what strength remained to him in penance for his sins and in the service of God.
In the monastery he lived out the second and greater warfare — the ascetic struggle against the passions — with the same bravery he had shown in the first, and the tradition holds that he was granted healing, both of soul and (the accounts imply) of the body broken in battle, in reward for his humility and his tears. He reposed a monk in the fourteenth century, and his relics were laid in the Far Caves of the Lavra, where they are venerated incorrupt among the fathers of that place. His memory is kept on February 27.
Feast and commemoration
Titus the Soldier is kept on February 27 (church date; Old Calendar civil March 12), a commemoration of the Russian calendar and its descendants (the Moscow Patriarchate, the Orthodox Church in America). As a father of the Far Caves he is also commemorated in the Synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of the Far Caves (August 28) and in the general Synaxis of all the Fathers of the Kiev Caves (the Second Sunday of Great Lent).
Iconography
He is depicted as a monk of the Caves, aged and bearded in the monastic schema; where his former calling is marked, he may bear a subtle allusion to it — but the settled type is simply that of the venerable father. No public-domain image of Titus the Soldier has been identified for storage; the entry notes the icon as wanting.
Disputed questions
- Not to be confused with Titus the Presbyter of the Kiev Caves, the priest-monk of the Near Caves (†1190), famous for the deathbed reconciliation with the deacon Evagrius, who is commemorated on the same day, February 27. This Titus is the former soldier whose relics rest in the Far Caves, of the fourteenth century; the other is the priest of the Near Caves, of the twelfth. The shared name, day, and monastery make the two easy to confuse — the distinguishing marks are soldier / Far Caves / 14th c. against priest / Near Caves / 1190.