Venerable Hypatius the Healer of the Kiev Caves

Venerable Hypatius practiced asceticism at the Kiev Caves Lavra in the 14th century. He led an extremely strict ascetic life: he ate only bread and water, allowed himself almost no sleep, and spent his nights in prayerful vigil. For such abstinence and humility he was granted by God the gift of healing the sick, and he tended to ailing brothers with motherly care. The venerable one's relics rest incorrupt in the Far (Theodosian) Caves of the Kiev Caves Lavra.

IMPORTANT IDENTITY CORRECTION: the original stub contained the biography of an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT saint — Hieromartyr Hypatius, Bishop of Gangra (Cappadocia, 4th century), a participant in the First Ecumenical Council of 325, stoned to death by Novatianist followers on his way home from the Council. This confusion arose from a calendar coincidence: Hieromartyr Hypatius of Gangra is commemorated on the very same date — March 31/April 13 — as Venerable Hypatius of the Kiev Caves; whoever compiled the stub apparently pulled the life of the namesake instead. Bishop Hypatius of Gangra has no connection to Kiev.

Both original images also proved CRITICALLY WRONG: one was labeled "St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov)" — a 19th-century hierarch unrelated to either Hypatius (likely cause: the phonetic similarity of the Russian names "Ипатий"/"Игнатий"); the other was labeled "Hieromartyr Vladimir, Metropolitan of Kiev and Galicia" — the famous 1918 New Martyr, whose relics indeed rest in the same Far Caves of the Kiev Caves Lavra as those of Venerable Hypatius — the likely cause of the mixup being that both saints appear adjacent to each other in listings of relics of the Far Caves, from which the wrong image was apparently pulled.