Our Venerable Father Anatolius of the Near Caves of Kiev
Life
Anatolius of the Near Caves is one of the monastic ascetics of the Kiev Caves Monastery whose relics rest in the Near Caves of Saint Anthony. Almost nothing of his individual biography survives: the synaxarion preserves his name, his standing as a venerable monk, and his commemoration on July 3, but records no account of his life. He is distinguished in the calendar from Anatolius the Recluse of the Far Caves, who is venerated on the same day.
He is numbered among the wider company of Near Caves fathers honored together at the Synaxis of the Monastic Fathers of the Near Caves, kept on September 28.
Contributions & Legacy
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Historical Context
The Near Caves to which Anatolius belongs were established by Saint Anthony of the Kiev Caves, who had trained on Mount Athos before settling at Kiev around the middle of the eleventh century and withdrawing to a cave near the upper monastery in 1057. From this beginning grew one of the principal centers of monastic life in Rus'.
The Near Caves hold the relics of many monastics of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, among them figures such as Nestor the Chronicler. Anatolius belongs to this body of Kiev Caves ascetics, though the specific period and circumstances of his life are not recorded in the surviving sources.
Relics & Shrines
His relics rest in the Near Caves of the Kiev Caves Monastery, where the bodies of the monastic saints have long been venerated. Left uncovered during the Soviet period, they were after the fall of the Soviet Union covered with a cloth and remain so, the caves continuing as a place of pilgrimage.
