St. Moses the Hungarian

St. Moses the Hungarian was, as his name records, of Hungarian origin, and lived in the early eleventh century in the service of the princely house of Kievan Rus'. According to his life, he was a companion of St. Boris and, after that prince's murder, fell captive in the wars that followed and was carried off to Poland as a prisoner.

There, the account relates, a wealthy Polish noblewoman was so taken with the handsome young captive that she sought to make him her husband and lover, offering him freedom and riches; but Moses, having vowed his chastity to God, steadfastly refused her, enduring for his refusal imprisonment, torments, and, by tradition, mutilation, rather than break his vow. Freed at last, he came to the Kiev Caves Monastery and lived out his days as a monk in prayer and penance, dying about 1043. Venerated for his heroic purity, he is invoked as a helper against temptations of the flesh, and his memory is kept on 26 July.