Spiridon di Pečerska

Spiridon of Pechersk, known in Slavic sources as Spyridon the Prosphora-baker (Spiridon Prosfornik Pechersky), was a monk of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra in the twelfth century. The monastery, established in the mid-eleventh century in the hills above the Dnieper at Kiev, was the foremost monastic house of Kievan Rus'. According to the Kiev Caves Paterikon, the principal hagiographical collection for the community, Spiridon came from a peasant family and remained illiterate all his life. He nevertheless learned the Psalter by heart and recited it continually.

He received the obedience of baking the prosphora, the bread offered in the Eastern Christian Eucharist. The Paterikon relates that he and another monk, Nicodemus, fulfilled this task for thirty years. While he worked at the kneading trough and the oven he chanted the Psalms without ceasing, uniting humble labour with unceasing prayer. This portrait of an unlettered monk whose entire theology consisted in memorized psalmody and faithful service is characteristic of the early Caves tradition associated with Saints Anthony and Theodosius.

The Paterikon records a miracle that occurred when fire broke out in the monastery bakery. Spiridon removed his monastic mantle, spread it over the flames, and then went to fetch water. He carried the water in the same mantle; the cloth did not burn and the water did not leak through it. Returning, he extinguished the fire. The episode is presented as a divine confirmation of his holiness and of the sacred character of the work of preparing the eucharistic bread.

Spiridon died at the Lavra and was buried in the Near Caves (the Caves of Saint Anthony). His relics are still venerated there among those of the other Caves fathers. In the Orthodox liturgical calendar he is commemorated on 31 October together with Nicodemus the Prosphora-baker, on 28 September in the Synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of the Near Caves, and on the Second Sunday of Great Lent in the general Synaxis of the Kiev Caves saints. No chronicle supplies a precise year of birth or death; the twelfth-century date is inferred from the Paterikon’s internal chronology and from later liturgical books. Apart from the Paterikon notices, no other contemporary evidence for his life has survived.