Venerable Agapetus (Agapit) the Unmercenary Physician of the Kiev Caves

Venerable Agapetus (Agapit) of the Kiev Caves, the Unmercenary Physician, was a monk of the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery and a younger contemporary of St. Anthony of the Caves, laboring in the second half of the 11th century. Though he had no formal medical training, he tirelessly nursed sick brethren, preparing herbal remedies for them, yet it was above all through prayer that the sick were healed — earning him the title "unmercenary physician," after the holy unmercenaries Cosmas and Damian. According to tradition, he remotely healed Prince Vladimir Monomakh of Chernigov by sending him herbs, refusing any reward. An Armenian physician in Kiev, who had failed to cure Agapetus and predicted his death within three days, was astonished when the saint lived three more months; the physician subsequently converted to Orthodoxy and was tonsured a monk at the monastery. St. Agapetus reposed in the late 11th century and was buried in the Near (Anthony's) Caves, where his relics rest.