Our righteous Father Alypius the Iconographer of the Kiev Caves
In the reign of Vsevolod Yaroslavich, Prince of Kiev from 1078 to 1093, some Greek iconographers were brought from Constantinople to adorn the Kiev Caves Lavra. Alypius’s parents had entrusted him to the monastery to learn how to paint icons, and he worked with the iconographers and learned from them. They were working on a mosaic icon of the Most Holy Mother of God, when suddenly as they looked upon it, it began to shine brighter than the sun. Having received miraculous assurance that the grace of God dwelt in the Kiev Caves, Alypius was tonsured by Saint Nicon and became an accomplished iconographer, working diligently to glorify God through the painting of icons, and dividing whatever he earned from it into three parts: one to buy the materials to paint his icons with, another for the poor, and another for the monastery’s needs. Because of his piety and virtue, he was ordained to the priesthood.
On one occasion, when other monks in the monastery had thrice taken money from a rich man for icons to be painted by Alypius without telling him anything about it, and on another when the Saint himself was about to paint an icon for a layman but was hindered by the sickness from which he soon died, the icons were painted for him miraculously: on the latter occasion, by an Angel who appeared visibly to him and painted the icon in his sight, then asked him if he had left anything out or done anything wrong. Receiving the Saint’s assurance that he had painted it very well, the Angel disappeared with the icon. When, beyond all hope, the icon appeared in church in time for the feast that the man had commissioned it for, he understood the magnitude of the miracle and came to the Kiev Caves and told the superior. They went to Alypius, now on his deathbed, and asked him who had painted the icon. The Saint said it was an Angel, who now stood before him, about to take his soul. He then fell asleep in peace, in the year 1114.
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