Venerable Markianos, Hermit of Kyrrhos

Qinnasrîn, Aleppo Governorate, Syria

The fifteenth of January in the Orthodox Church is the feast day of Saint Markianos, a fourth-century hermit who lived in the desert outside the settlement of Kyrrhos in Northern Syria. He was a contemporary of Emperors Constantius II and Valens, and was known to Saint Flavian, the thirty-third Patriarch of Antioch.

Saint Markianos was a native of Kyrrhos, a Seleucid city which is now the treasured archæological site of Nabî Hûrî نبي حوري on the Turkish-Syrian border, seventy miles northwest of Aleppo. The Prologue of Ohrid states that Saint Markianos was of noble ancestry and possessed notable physical beauty. However, he left everything aside for the sake of Christ, and pursued the life of a desert anchorite outside Khalkis – modern-day Qinnasrîn قنسرين about twenty-five kilometres southwest of Aleppo in Syria.

There, Markianos built for himself a small cell and lived there for many years in strict fasting and constant prayer. He had no need to light candles for his reading and prayer rule at night, because a sweet divine light suffused the room and was sufficient for his eyes. During his time he was a great wonderworker and performed many prodigies in Christ’s name for the sick and the suffering. He also attracted to him two devoted disciples, whom he housed in cells separate from his own, though he taught them happily what he knew.

As his fame grew, Saint Flavian called upon the hermit to end his strict self-imposed solitude and be a light and example to Christians in the city. Saint Markianos declined decisively. However, he was happy to receive guests in his cell, and with gentle words and insight he was able to direct many Syrians to the Orthodox faith and save them from various hæresies. Before his blessed repose in the Lord in 387, he directed one of his two disciples, Eusebius, to take his body and bury it unmarked in the desert, far away from his cell, to avoid the contention that would arise over his relics between the various churches. Holy hermit Markianos, bearer of the light of Christ in the Syrian desert, pray unto God for us!

Apolytikion to Saint Markianos, Tone 8:

By a flood of tears you made the desert fertile,
And your longing for God brought forth fruits in abundance.
By the radiance of miracles you illumined the whole universe!
O our holy father Markianos, pray to Christ our God to save our souls!