Biography
Benjamin of the Kiev Caves
About Benjamin of the Kiev Caves
Benjamin is remembered in the Orthodox Church in America's received account as a fourteenth-century merchant who became a monk. During worship, the story says, he was deeply affected by the Gospel warning about wealth and entry into God's kingdom. He then distributed his property to people in need and entered the monastic life. The account remembers his later years through fasting and prayer and associates his burial with the Caves of Theodosius. These are the principal personal details preserved in the short notice. It supplies no exact birth or death year, names of relatives, or separate chronology of his commercial work. His remembered change of vocation is retained without an invented account of his motives beyond the received narrative.
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