Saint Sarah of the Desert | |
|---|---|
| Nun, Desert Mother [1] | |
| Died | 5th century Egypt |
| Venerated in | Oriental Orthodox Churches Eastern Orthodox Church Catholic Church Episcopal Church |
| Feast | 15 Paremhat (Coptic Christianity) 13 July (Chalcedonian) 5 January (Episcopal Church) |
| Patronage | Nun |
Amma (Mother) Sarah of the Desert (5th century) was one of the early Desert Mothers who is known to us today through the collected Sayings of the Desert Fathers and of the Holy Women Ascetics (the Matericon). [2] She was a hermit and followed a life dedicated to strict asceticism for some sixty years.
Sarah is said to have dwelt in a monastic cell near a large river, likely the Nile, at which she would never look. Her sayings attest that this saint spent her life battling a demon that tempted her to fornication. Records indicate that Sarah lived near Skete in the early to mid-5th century. [3] She lived a life of severe asceticism, refusing wine, laughter, or to leave her cell except to attend church. [2]
She was not completely isolated and received visitors during her time as a hermit. On one occasion, monks of Scetis came to visit her. She gave them a fruit basket and they honored her by eating the bad fruit and leaving her the good fruit to eat. [4]
Among her sayings recorded in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers are: [4]
Among her saying recorded in the Mataericon are: [2]
Sarah is commemorated on 13 July in the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches.
Sarah is honored (with Theodora and Syncletica) on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America [5] on January 5. [6]
A hermit, also known as an eremite or solitary, is a person who lives in seclusion. Eremitism plays a role in a variety of religions.
Onuphrius lived as a hermit in the desert of Upper Egypt in the 4th or 5th centuries. He is venerated as Saint Onuphrius in both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Catholic churches, as Venerable Onuphrius in Eastern Orthodoxy, and as Saint Nofer the Anchorite in Oriental Orthodoxy.
Mary of Egypt was an Egyptian grazer saint dwelling in Palestine during Late antiquity or the Early Middle Ages. She is highly venerated as a Desert Mother in the Eastern Orthodox and Coptic Churches. The Catholic Church commemorates her as a patron saint of penitents.
The Desert Fathers were early Christian hermits and ascetics, who lived primarily in the Scetes desert of the Roman province of Egypt, beginning around the third century AD. The Apophthegmata Patrum is a collection of the wisdom of some of the early desert monks and nuns, in print as Sayings of the Desert Fathers. The first Desert Father was Paul of Thebes, and the most well known was Anthony the Great, who moved to the desert in AD 270–271 and became known as both the father and founder of desert monasticism. By the time Anthony had died in AD 356, thousands of monks and nuns had been drawn to living in the desert following Anthony's example, leading his biographer, Athanasius of Alexandria, to write that "the desert had become a city." The Desert Fathers had a major influence on the development of Christianity.
Melania the Elder, Latin Melania Maior was a Desert Mother who was an influential figure in the Christian ascetic movement that sprang up in the generation after the Emperor Constantine made Christianity a legal religion of the Roman Empire. She was a contemporary of, and well known to, Abba Macarius and other Desert Fathers in Egypt, Jerome, Augustine of Hippo, Paulinus of Nola, and Evagrius of Pontus, and she founded two religious communities on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. She stands out for the convent she founded for herself and the monastery she established in honour of Rufinus of Aquileia, which belongs to the earliest Christian communities, and because she promoted the asceticism which she, as a follower of Origen, considered indispensable for salvation.
July 18 - Eastern Orthodox Church calendar - July 20
August 2 - Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar - August 4
January 7 - Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar - January 9
January 11 - Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar - January 13
Saint Anastasia the Patrician was a Byzantine courtier and later saint. She was a lady-in-waiting to the Byzantine empress Theodora. Justinian I, Theodora's husband, may have pursued her, as Theodora grew jealous of her. Anastasia, to avoid any trouble, left for Alexandria in Egypt. She arrived at a place called Pempton, near Alexandria, where she founded a monastery which would later be named after her. She lived with monastic discipline and wove cloth to support herself.
Euphrosyne of Alexandria, also called Euphrosynē, was a saint who disguised herself as a male to enter a monastery and live, for 38 years, as an ascetic. Her feast day is celebrated on September 25 by the Greek Orthodox Church and Byzantine Rite Catholics, on September 27 by the Episcopal Church, and on January 16 by the Roman Catholic Church.
The Sayings of the Desert Fathers is the name given to various textual collections consisting of stories and sayings attributed to the Desert Fathers from approximately the 5th century AD.
Syncletica of Alexandria was a Christian saint, ascetic, anchorite, and Desert Mother from Roman Egypt in the 4th century AD. She is the subject of The Life of Syncletica, a Greek hagiography purportedly by Athanasius of Alexandria but not published until 450; and the Alphabetical and Systematic Apophthegmata, which included 28 of her sayings and teachings. She died at the age of 80, after a three-year-long illness from mouth cancer.
Joannicius the Great was a Byzantine Christian saint, sage, theologian and prophet. Well known for his devoted asceticism and defense of icon veneration, Joannicius spent the majority of his life as a hermit on Mysian Olympus, near what is today Bursa, Turkey. Joannicius lived during the reign of Emperor Theophilos, a noted iconoclast, which contrasted with Joannicius's embrace of icon veneration. Icon veneration was later restored to the Byzantine Empire under the reign of Empress Theodora, a move that some devotees ascribe to Joannicius's influence and prophecies. Joannicius served in the Byzantine army in his early years before devoting his life to ascetic study and monastic contemplation. He is venerated with a feast day on November 4 in the Eastern Orthodox Church and Roman Catholic Church.
Theodora of Alexandria was a saint and martyr who lived during the 5th century in Alexandria, during the reign of Emperor Zeno. Hagiographer Sabine Baring-Gould states that Theodora's story might have been embellished and that her biography was probably pieced together from the lives of other saints, such as Marina the Monk, another 5th century Byzantine saint who also lived as a male among monks, was accused of the same things as Theodora, and was vindicated after her death.
Desert Mothers is a neologism, coined in feminist theology as an analogy to Desert Fathers, for the ammas or female Christian ascetics living in the desert of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria in the 4th and 5th centuries AD. They typically lived in the monastic communities that began forming during that time, though sometimes they lived as hermits. Monastic communities acted collectively with limited outside relations with lay people. Some ascetics chose to venture into isolated locations to restrict relations with others, deepen spiritual connection, and other ascetic purposes. Other women from that era who influenced the early ascetic or monastic tradition while living outside the desert are also described as Desert Mothers.
Bishoy of Scetis, known in the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria as the Star of the Desert and the Beloved of our Good Savior, was a Coptic Desert Father. He is said to have seen Jesus, and been bodily preserved to the present day via incorruptibility at the Monastery of Saint Bishoy in the Nitrian Desert, Egypt. He is venerated by the Oriental Orthodox Churches and the Eastern Orthodox Church, and is known in the latter under the Greek version of his name, Paisios.
The Saint Herman of Alaska Monastery is an Eastern Orthodox monastery located in Platina, California. It is part of the Serbian Orthodox Eparchy of Western America. The monastery was founded by Seraphim Rose and Herman Podmoshensky back in 1968 with the blessing of Bishop John Maximovitch of the Diocese of San Francisco and Western America of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR). The monastery was founded in 1970 and only since 2000, the monastics serve under the omophor of Bishop Maksim Vasiljević of the Serbian Orthodox Eparchy of Western America. The monks there lead ascetic lives.
Apollinaris Syncletica was a saint and hermit of the 5th century, venerated in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. Her story is most likely apocryphal and "turns on the familiar theme of a girl putting on male attire and living for many years undiscovered".
