Q4307617

Moses the Hungarian, known in Slavonic sources as Moisei Ugrin, was an eleventh-century monk of Hungarian origin who became one of the early fathers of the Kiev Caves Monastery. Virtually all that is recorded of him comes from the Kiev Caves Patericon, a thirteenth-century collection of monastic lives rather than from contemporary chronicles, so the narrative must be treated as hagiographical tradition with a possible historical core. According to that tradition he was living in Kievan Rus' when King Bolesław I of Poland occupied Kiev in 1018 and carried off numerous captives. Moses was among them and was taken to Poland, where a wealthy widow purchased him as a slave.

The widow, struck by his appearance, tried by gifts, threats and violence to force him into marriage. Moses refused, declaring that he wished to remain chaste and to become a monk. After prolonged ill-treatment she had him castrated. Following Bolesław’s death in 1025 a revolt broke out in Poland; the widow was killed and Moses regained his freedom. He made his way back to Kiev and received the monastic tonsure from Saint Anthony, founder of the Caves Lavra.

He spent about ten years in the monastery, living in strict asceticism. The Patericon presents him as a wonder-worker and as a model of victory over sexual temptation. He died in the Lavra in 1043 and was buried in the Near Caves, where his relics were later venerated together with those of the other Caves fathers. His principal feast is 26 July; he is also remembered on 28 September at the synaxis of the saints of the Near Caves.

No birth year or birthplace more precise than Hungary is preserved. Because the only substantial source is a later pateric text, modern historians regard the story of his captivity, mutilation and monastic vocation as a mixture of possible fact and edifying legend typical of early Rus' monastic literature. He was never the subject of a formal papal or patriarchal canonization of the later Western type; his cult grew by local monastic veneration within the Kiev Caves community and was subsequently received throughout the Russian Orthodox Church.