John the Faster was a monk of the Kiev Caves Lavra, one of the many ascetics whose relics rest in the Near Caves of Saint Anthony. He is commemorated on December 7. Almost nothing of his biography survives; he is remembered chiefly by the epithet "the Faster," which marks the discipline by which he was distinguished, and is grouped among the venerable fathers of the Near Caves.
The few accounts that mention him differ on his period: he is variously placed in the twelfth or thirteenth century, and the sources hedge rather than fix a date. As with many of the caves ascetics whose names are preserved without a written life, his memory is carried by the liturgical commemoration of the Lavra and by the veneration of his incorrupt relics, which remain in the Near Caves; fragments are also held at the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Washington, D.C.
He belongs to the wider community of Kiev Caves monastics who are commemorated individually on their own days and remembered together in the Synaxis of the venerable fathers of the Near Caves. Because the surviving record is so spare, the database treats his entry as an honest stub: his title, his discipline of fasting, his burial in the Near Caves, and his feast are reported, while no further biographical detail is asserted.
