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Name & Status

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Dates

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Biography

Short Description

Moses the Hungarian (also known as Moses Ugrin) was a monk of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra and is venerated as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church. He was born in the Kingdom of Hungary in the late tenth century and belonged to a family that later produced two other saints. Together with his brothers George and Ephraim he entered the retinue of Prince Boris, one of the sons of Vladimir the Great of Kiev. In 1015 Boris was assassinated on the orders of his brother Sviatopolk; George died defending the prince, while Moses escaped the massacre. Ephraim subsequently settled at Torzhok, where he established a monastery and is commemorated as Saint Ephraim of New Torzhok.

During Bolesław I of Poland’s campaign against Kiev in 1018, Moses was among the captives taken westward. A Polish widow of high standing bought him from his captors and sought to make him her husband. According to the Kievan Caves Paterikon, the principal medieval source for his life, she offered him freedom, riches and social rank if he would consent. Moses refused, stating that he had resolved to become a monk and to keep his body chaste for God. The woman then resorted to force: he was flogged, starved and finally castrated on her orders. After the death of Bolesław in 1025 and the ensuing disorders in Poland, Moses regained his liberty and made his way back to Rus’.

He received the monastic tonsure at the Kiev Caves Monastery from its founder, Saint Anthony. The Paterikon relates that he lived there for about ten years, distinguished by strict asceticism and by the counsel he gave to brethren who were tempted by carnal thoughts. He died in the monastery in the mid-eleventh century and was interred in the Near Caves, where his relics are still shown. Because the Paterikon was compiled more than a century after the events it describes, precise dates for his birth and death cannot be established with certainty; later liturgical calendars conventionally place his death in 1043.

Saint Moses is commemorated on 26 July (Julian calendar) and together with the other venerable fathers of the Near Caves on 28 September. He has been invoked especially by those who struggle to preserve chastity. His cult remained local to the Caves Lavra for a long period and was gradually received throughout the Orthodox Slavic churches; no single act of papal or patriarchal canonization is recorded, as his veneration belongs to the earlier, more organic stratum of Orthodox sanctity.

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