The Tradition of Their Coming
According to the account preserved at the Kiev Caves, the Mother of God appeared to the Byzantine architects at Blachernae in Constantinople, summoning them and declaring that she wished to build herself a church in Rus, at Kiev. She directed them to Saints Anthony and Theodosius of the Caves and provided gold sufficient for three years. The architects are said to have received from the Theotokos an icon, described in the tradition as one of the most ancient icons of the Russian Orthodox Church, and to have been instructed to place within the foundation the relics of seven holy martyrs: Menignus, Polyeuctus, Leontius, Acacius, Arethas, James, and Theodore.
The tradition relates that the site of the church was confirmed by a series of signs in answer to three days of prayer by Saint Anthony: dew appearing on the chosen spot alone on alternating nights, the measuring of the dimensions with a golden sash, and a bolt of lightning falling from heaven. A parallel account connects the measuring of the foundation to a golden belt brought by Saint Shimon, a Varangian prince, by which the ground was measured at thirty belts in length and twenty in width. The church was dedicated to the Dormition of the Mother of God.
The Building of the Dormition Cathedral
The stone Dormition Cathedral was begun in the mid-1070s and stood at the spiritual center of the monastery, drawing the community toward the area of the present Upper Lavra. Sources differ on the year of completion, variously reported as around 1075, 1077, or 1089. Saint Anthony reposed in 1073 and Saint Theodosius in 1074, so that both founders died before the stone church was finished. After the masons had raised the structure, Greek masters are recorded as arriving to adorn it with frescoes and mosaics, working alongside the Kievan iconographer Alypius (Alipy).
A further account, preserved in the monastery's tradition, tells that the Greek iconographers returned some ten years after the saints' deaths to demand additional payment, since the finished church exceeded what they had agreed to build. Recognizing, in icons of Anthony and Theodosius, the very men who had commissioned them, the Greeks were astonished, acknowledged that they had been called by a power beyond themselves, did not press their claim, and instead became monks, ending their days in the Caves Monastery.
Relics & Shrines
By tradition the Greek master-builders remained at the Kiev Caves Monastery and were buried there. The monastery's caves grew into extensive underground labyrinths of tunnels, cells, and catacombs that served as both dwellings and burial places for the monks; the relics of the Caves fathers were solemnly glorified in 1643 under Metropolitan Peter Mogila.
