Venerable Gregory the Recluse of the Kiev Caves

Gregory the Recluse was a monk of the Kiev Caves Lavra who lived in the fourteenth century. The synaxarion remembers him as a strict ascetic who passed his life in seclusion within the monastery's cave complex, and his relics are numbered among the saints whose remains repose in the Far Caves, those associated with the founder Saint Theodosius.

His defining ascetic practice, as recorded in the tradition, was an extreme regimen of fasting: uncooked grass and wild vegetation are said to have served as his only food throughout his life. He distributed this same vegetation to those who came to him, and the tradition relates that the sick who received it were healed, on account of which he is also remembered as a wonderworker.

Gregory is commemorated on January 8. He is to be distinguished from an earlier Gregory the Wonderworker of the Kiev Near Caves, an eleventh-century monk of the time of Saint Theodosius who is commemorated on the same date.