Clergy
Metropolitan Ilarion
XI ст.
- Metropolitan and writer
The first native of Rus’ to become Metropolitan of Kyiv (1051) and author of the “Sermon on Law and Grace”. As a priest at Berestove he dug the cave where the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra began.
…for they ruled not over a poor and unknown land, but over the land of Rus’, which is known and heard of in all four corners of the earth.
Biography
Nothing is known of Ilarion’s origins; the years of his birth and death are lost. The Primary Chronicle calls him “a good man, learned and given to fasting”, a priest at the princely Church of the Holy Apostles at Berestove. From there he would go down to the Dnipro slope, where he dug “a small cave, two fathoms deep” for solitary prayer. Later the monk Antoniy settled in that cave — and so the Kyiv Caves Monastery began.
In 1051 Yaroslav the Wise gathered the bishops, who installed Ilarion as metropolitan in St Sophia’s Cathedral — the first time the head of the Church of Rus’ was not a Greek but a native. After 1054 his name no longer appears in the sources.
Ilarion is remembered as the author of the Sermon on Law and Grace (written between 1037 and 1050), a masterpiece of early East Slavic rhetoric. It praises Prince Volodymyr, who baptized Rus’, and his son Yaroslav, who built St Sophia’s and “crowned the glorious city of Kyiv with greatness as with a crown”. It is one of the first works to present Rus’ as an equal member of the Christian world.
Life timeline
- 1037–1050 The Sermon The Sermon on Law and Grace is composed.
- 1051 Metropolitan Installed as metropolitan in St Sophia’s.
- 1051 Caves Monastery Antoniy settles in his cave.
Kyiv in their life
- St Sophia’s Cathedral — where Ilarion was installed as metropolitan in 1051.
- Berestove (Church of the Saviour at Berestove, Lavrska St) — the princely village where Ilarion served as a priest.
- Kyiv Pechersk Lavra — grew out of his cave. A walk around the Lavra
