Venerable Erasmus of Kyiv Caves

Venerable Erasmus of the Kyiv Caves was an Eastern Orthodox monk of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra (the Monastery of the Caves) in Kyiv who lived in the twelfth century. Virtually everything that can be said about him with any confidence comes from the Kievan Caves Paterikon, a collection of monastic narratives compiled in the thirteenth century from earlier traditions of the community founded by Saints Anthony and Theodosius of the Caves. No reliable source records his place of origin, family, or year of birth, and later synaxaria that assign an approximate death date do so without a contemporary documentary basis.

According to the Paterikon, Erasmus inherited substantial wealth and spent it entirely on the adornment of the monastery’s principal church, the Church of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos (the Great Lavra Church). He furnished the church with many icons until his resources were exhausted. Reduced to poverty, he was mocked by some who regarded the expenditure as wasted. He himself fell into spiritual despondency, fearing that he had squandered his goods without heavenly reward and that he had neglected the poor.

He then became gravely ill. In that illness he received a vision in which the Most Holy Theotokos appeared together with Saints Anthony and Theodosius of the Caves. She assured him that his offering of icons had been accepted, that she would adorn him in the Kingdom of her Son, and that the poor would be his intercessors. He was told to rise, to be clothed in the great schema (the highest rank of Orthodox monastic profession), and that he would depart this life after three days.

Erasmus recovered enough to receive the great schema and died three days later, as the vision had indicated. His relics were laid in the Near Caves (the Caves of Saint Anthony) of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra and have been venerated there as incorrupt. The Eastern Orthodox Church commemorates him on 24 February and also in the Synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of the Near Caves on 28 September. No further contemporary evidence of his life survives.