Dating and Sources
The chronology of Abramius is uncertain, a difficulty common to the early monastics of the Caves owing to the scarcity of written records. He is most often associated with the period of the Mongol-Tatar invasions in the thirteenth century, though this is not certain. Archbishop Sergius (Spassky) placed him in the twelfth to thirteenth centuries, while the Orthodox Encyclopedia situates his life between the second half of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth.
The earliest surviving notice of him is in the Teraturgim of Hieromonk Athanasius (Kalophoisky), a seventeenth-century work, in which he is named the Venerable Elder Abraham, the Lover of Labor. Later writers, including Archbishop Philaret (Gumilevsky), drew on this tradition in describing his life.