Monasterio de las Cuevas de Kiev
Epifany was born in Moscow. In the 1620s, he attended the Kiev Brotherhood School and furthered his education abroad. He was one of the most educated people of his period in Central and Eastern Europe. He came to master Latin, Polish, Ancient Greek and Hebrew. On his return to Kiev, he took monastic vows in the Kiev Pechersk Lavra. In the late 1630s, he compiled the first Latin-Church Slavonic lexicon, which he would revise on several occasions.