Venerable
Venerable Nicodemus of the Kiev Caves
XII в.
Also known as: Никодим Печерский, просфорник, Никодим Проскурник, Никодим Киево-Печерский, Никодим просфорник
A 12th-century monk of the Kiev Caves who with St Spyridon baked the altar bread for the monastery for many years; his relics rest in the Near Caves.
Venerable Nicodemus was a 12th-century monk of the Kiev Caves Monastery who, together with Venerable Spyridon, baked the prosphora (altar bread) for the brotherhood. Their story is told in the oldest part of the Kiev Caves Patericon, in the account "Of Spyridon the Prosphora-Baker" written by the monk Polycarp in the late 1220s or early 1230s.
Both were men of simple origin. By order of Abbot Pimen they worked in the monastery kitchen, preparing the bread for the Divine Liturgy for many years — according to tradition, thirty — with unceasing prayer and fasting, and both died in peace. Abbot Pimen probably governed the monastery in the 1130s–1140s.
Their relics rest in the Near (Anthony's) Caves of the Kiev Caves Lavra; an anthropological study of 1988–1990 found that Nicodemus died aged 35–45. The saints are commemorated on 31 October (13 November), on 28 September (11 October) with the fathers of the Near Caves, and on the Second Sunday of Great Lent with all the saints of the Kiev Caves.
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