Saint Amphilochius Bishop of Vladimir in Volhynia

The See of Vladimir-Volhynia

Vladimir-Volhynia (Volodymyr-Volynskyi) is among the oldest towns of Rus'. It first appears in the Primary Chronicle under the year 988, when Vladimir the Great appointed his son to rule there, and from 1146 it served as the capital of the Principality of Volhynia; its Dormition Cathedral was completed in 1160. The diocese was thus founded in the earliest period of the Christianization of Kievan Rus', only a couple of generations before Amphilochius became its third bishop, which places him among the first shepherds of one of the most ancient Christian centers of the Rus' lands.

Episcopal Labors

The sources remember Amphilochius above all as a missionary bishop. His seventeen-year tenure fell in a period when Christianity was still consolidating in the region: he labored intensely for the conversion of pagans and to eradicate the pagan superstitions that survived among those recently baptized. Beyond his pastoral work he acted as a peacemaker, striving to quell the quarrels among the princes of Volhynia.

On laying down his office he did not retire into idleness but entered the Kiev Caves monastery — the great monastic center of Rus' and the cradle of much of its early sanctity — where he lived out his final years until his death in 1122.

Commemoration and the Volhynian Hierarchs

The October 10 feast of Saint Amphilochius honors him alongside the other holy hierarchs of the Volhynian region. This collective commemoration was instituted in 1831, when the Pochaiv Lavra — the foremost monastery of Volhynia — was returned to Orthodoxy after 111 years of Greek-Catholic Basilian control. The Lavra was reconsecrated as Orthodox on October 10, 1831, and the same date was chosen for the memory of the Volhynian saints, binding Amphilochius's commemoration to the restoration of Orthodox monastic life in the region he had once shepherded.