Venerable Theodosius the Abbot of the Kiev Far Caves

Theodosius was born in Vasilev near Kiev and grew up in Kursk. As a youth, to his mother's anger, he wore poor clothes and himself ground the wheat and baked the bread for the liturgy. He finally left home in secret and became a monk with St Antony in the caves outside Kiev; his mother later followed him and took the veil in a Kiev convent.

As abbot of the Kiev Caves monastery he built the church of the Dormition and introduced the Studite rule from Constantinople, which other Russian monasteries then took up. When Prince Sviatoslav drove his brother Iziaslav from Kiev, Theodosius rebuked him openly in a letter. He died on 3 May 1074; his Life was written by Nestor, a monk of the monastery.