Our Venerable Father Sisoes the Schemamonk of the Far Caves of Kiev
Life
Sisoes the Schemamonk was a thirteenth-century monastic of the Kiev Caves monastery whose relics rest in the Far Caves. He had received the Great Schema, the highest degree of the monastic life, and is remembered among the holy fathers of the Far Caves rather than through a separate detailed biography. He is commemorated on July 6 and is distinct from the earlier Egyptian desert father Sisoes the Great, who shares that date.
Like many of the monastics of the Caves, little of his individual history survives. He is named within the general service for the Monastic Fathers of the Kiev Caves whose relics are preserved in the Far Caves, where the canon recalls his asceticism alongside that of Saint Gregory the Faster.
Contributions & Legacy
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Monastic Life and Commemoration
Sisoes belonged to the monastic community of the Kiev Caves and is associated specifically with the Far Caves, the section of the underground complex also known as the Caves of Theodosius. As a schemamonk he had taken on the Great Schema, the most demanding form of the monastic vocation.
His memory is preserved chiefly through the collective commemoration of the Far Caves fathers. The fifth ode of the canon for that service joins his name with that of Gregory the Faster, recalling that both restrained their passions through fasting.
Relics and Shrines
His relics rest in the Far Caves of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra. The monastery, traced to the eleventh-century settlement of the Venerable Anthony and the abbacy of the Venerable Theodosius, became renowned for the incorrupt relics of its many monastic saints, who were glorified in 1643 under Metropolitan Peter Mogila. The fathers of the Far Caves are venerated together in a general synaxis, within which Sisoes is numbered.
