Caves in the Syrian desert
This Soul Saturday, the twenty-second of February, in the Orthodox Church is also the feast-day of three Syrian ascetics, Saints Thalassios, Limnaios and Baradatos. All three men were known personally to Blessed Theodoret of Kyrrhos, who wrote about them in his Religious History. Full disclosure: a lot of my post here will be borrowing from my friend, comrade and fellow-metalhead Fr Deacon Aaron’s blog. He writes at length about Thalassios and Limnaios, and a third hermit John, with particular reliance on Theodoret’s History.
Saint Thalassios [Gk. Θαλάσσιος, ‘of the sea’] was the eldest of these three, and probably a good generation older than Theodoret. Theodoret describes Saint Thalassios as ‘a man adorned with many good qualities, but surpassing the men of his time in simplicity of character, gentleness and modesty of spirit’. Saint Thalassios made his hermit’s cell in a cave in the side of a hill south of the as-yet-unidentified village of Tillima near Kyrrhos in Syria, where Blessed Theodoret visited him. Tillima had once unfortunately been a centre of the hæretical teachings of Marcion, but the presence of holy men such as Thalassios in its midst seems to have had a salutary effect on its spiritual health and cultivation.
He was joined in this cell by a disciple, Saint Limnaios [Gk. Λιμναῖος, ‘of the lake’]. Saint Limnaios was many years younger than his spiritual father Thalassios. ‘At a very young age he entered this wrestling-school and received a fine education in this consummate philosophy,’ writes Blessed Theodoret, where Limnaios ‘received sufficiently the teaching of the godly old man and made himself an impress of his virtue.’ Theodoret describes Limnaios as having imposed upon himself a discipline of total silence, and supposes this was a penance for his having been somewhat overly free with his tongue in his earlier life. Saint Limnaios spent some years with Saint Thalassios but then went off on his own to learn from Saint Marûn.
Similarly to Saint Makedonios Krithophagos and Saint Eusebios of Asikhan, Saint Limnaios when he went out by himself took up residence in a rough stone enclosure with no roof, as Theodoret says he lived in ‘neither house, nor tent, nor cabin’, and had lived this way constantly for thirty-eight years by the time Theodoret wrote his History. He bore illness and infirmity gladly and eased his pains through prayer. He gained a significant reputation as a healer, and was able to heal by faith through the sign of the Cross and through the invocation of the divine Name.
As such, he gained a significant following, and crowds would come to discourse with him and to be healed by him, gathering at the one crack in his stone wall through which he could bless them. Saint Limnaios had a special love for the blind, and he built two huts near his own enclosure for a group of blind beggars who came to him, and he instructed them in singing from the Psalter. Saint Limnaios took care of the blind beggars himself by dividing with them what he had from the generosity of his worldly visitors.
The third Syrian ascetic we commemorate today is much younger than the other two, and apparently has little connexion with them other than his places of origin and struggle. Saint Baradatos [Gk. Βαραδάτος, apparently a Semitic name deriving from the toponym Nahr Baradâ نهر بردى, the main river running through Damascus] was a native of Antioch, who as a young man struggled terribly with ‘strong passions’ and ‘fiery, indomitable lusts’. Upon undertaking the life of a hermit, he had to tame these lusts with some ascetical disciplines that might strike us moderns as extreme. He confined himself within a wooden cell that was deliberately constructed to be too small for his tall frame, such that when he stood he had to stoop down and such that he could not lie down straight but had to curl up his legs and back when he rested. His cell had no windows, instead being put together so loosely that the wind and sun could flood through the cracks between the timbers. It also had only one door which at all times Saint Baradatos kept obstructed.
Baradatos spent many years within this flimsy box, until Bishop Theodoret himself managed to convince him to emerge from it, for the health of his frail body. After this, Saint Baradatos began to undertake his ascetic disciplines standing up. He covered himself in a garment cobbled together from animal skins, which covered his entire body except two small slits for his nose and mouth to allow breathing. He could not see through this leather garment and could not walk on his own, having to be led by the hand. Instead he stood stationary at the gate to the town, and kept his hands raised to heaven, praising God always. He reposed around the year 460, his body having been exhausted from his ascetic exertions.
Saint Baradatos’s ascetic extremes can and should demand some scepticism – particularly since the bishop who recorded his life in the History personally found some of them to be unhealthily strict. However, these ascetic feats were far from crazed; they had a true and proper purpose. And Saint Baradatos himself, under the influence of his discipline, had attained an excellent scholarly mind as well as a calm, reasonable and dispassionate personality. He gave clear and thoughtful answers to the theological questions which were put to him, and his advice both spiritual and practical, given even to non-monastics and non-ascetics, was temperate, reasonable and salutary. Saint Baradatos was one of three men – the other two being Saint Simeon Stylites and Saint James the Solitary – that Emperor Theodosios II trusted, to help effect a reconciliation between the Patriarchs John I of Antioch and Cyril of Alexandria. Holy hermits Thalassios, Limnaios and Baradatos, sea and lake and river of spiritual wisdom inexhaustible, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!
Apolytikion for Soul Saturday, Tone 8:
Only Creator, with wisdom profound, You mercifully order all things,
And give that which is needed to all men:
Give rest, O Lord, to the souls of Your servants who have fallen asleep,
For they have placed their trust in You, our Maker and Fashioner, and our God.
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