St. Anthony of the Kiev Caves

A man of Liubech who went to the Holy Mountain as a young man, was tonsured there, and was sent back to Rus by his abbot to plant monasticism in it. He dug himself a cave in the bluffs above the Dnieper at Kiev around 1051 and lived there in silence; disciples came and dug their own, and from those caves grew the Lavra of the Caves. He left the building of the community to St Theodosius, who gave it the rule of the Stoudios monastery, and went on living underground. The two of them are the fathers of Russian monasticism, and the saints of the Caves lie in the tunnels they dug. He died in 1073. Feast: July 10.