Saint Palladios of Antioch
Having treated the episcopal Saint Palladius, Apostle of the Scots, in my British saints series, it seems that Saint Palladios of the Syrian Desert may not be a bad place to continue. This holy Syrian hermit’s life is treated in the Religious History of the Syriac theologian Blessed Theodoret of Kyrrhos, the which text as Russian religious historian Gyorgi Fedotov relates was translated into Slavonic for use in the Prolog, and formed one of the primary sources of early East Slavic monastic spirituality.
Saint Palladios the Hermit [Gk. Παλλάδιος, Ar. Bâlâdiyyûs بالاديوس] lived at the same time as (the elder) Saint Simeon ‘the Stylite’. Blessed Theodoret says that Palladios’s ‘endurance, fasting, vigils and perpetual prayer I think superfluous to narrate, since in them he bore the same yoke as the godly Simeon.’
However, there is one miracle that Theodoret finds it worthwhile to dwell on. Palladios lived in a village called Imma (modern Yenişehir right on the border between Turkey and Syria). One year while Palladios lived there, there was a fair at which traders from Antioch and far beyond came to the town, producing a huge throng of men. One chapman’s wares were particularly popular, and he sold out before the fair ended, closed up shop and went home. This chapman’s success had been seen and marked by a wicked man, as had the gold he had collected. This man kept wakeful during the night, noted the road the chapman would take, and set up an ambush on the road. The chapman, setting off with a light heart and a heavy scrip, went on his road and encountered the brigand who lay in wait for him. They came to blows and the chapman was bloodily slain with a knife. The killer took his coin, and then dumped the body of the chapman near the door of the cell where Palladios lived.
It was not long before the word spread of the murder, and the excitable townsfolk and fairgoers of Imma came to Palladios’s cell and battered his door down. The howling mob descended upon the holy man and cried out for him to be taken and judged for the murder. One of the mob was, in fact, the murderer himself. Palladios was brought to where the slain man was, and lifted his hands and his eyes to heaven. He prayed aloud to God that the slanders against him would be disproven and that the truth be brought to light. He then knelt at the side of the murdered chapman and clasped his right hand. ‘Tell us, young man,’ spoke the saint, ‘who struck you this blow? Point out the perpetrator of the crime and free the innocent from this wicked calumny.’
No sooner was this spoken than the murdered man opened his eyes, sat up, spoke softly to Palladios, looked around the crowd gathered there and levelled a finger straight at the man who had waylaid him on the road. The crowd lay hand on the killer, found on him the very knife that he had used to stab the chapman, and also the coin that he had grasped out for in greed. Palladios was cleared of all wrongdoing, and the apologetic people of Imma drew off from him. By this wonder of raising the dead to life the holiness of Palladios was made manifest to many.
Blessed Theodoret mentions Palladios as being ‘in the same company’ as Saint ’Ibrâhîm of Harrân, but by this he seems to have meant only that the two of them were hermits of the same general age (the reign of Emperor Valens) and region. And he ends his hagiography of Saint Palladios by saying: ‘To the splendour of his life bear witness the miracles performed after his death: even today his tomb pours forth cures of every kind – the witnesses are those who through faith draw them forth in abundance there.’ Palladios assuredly works these wonders not only for the sick and the suffering in body, but also for the tormented in spirit, and also those framed and falsely accused at law. Venerable Palladios, desert hermit to whom are revealed hidden things, pray unto Christ our God who knows and is all Truth, on behalf of us sinners!
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