Venerable Isaac the Wonderworker, Abbot of Spoleto

Chieza di Sant’Ansano, Spoleto, Italy

The twelfth of April, which also happens to be Palm Sunday in the Orthodox Church, is also the feast-day of the sixth-century monastic Isaac of Spoleto, a Syrian-born abbot in Italy whose life and deeds were recounted in the famous Dialogues of Pope Saint Gregory. This Syrian Saint Isaac, emphatically not to be confused with the seventh-century Holy Father Mâr ’Ishâq an-Naynuwî, was apparently involved in the Christological disputes of his day, which is why he fled from Syria to Ostrogothic-ruled Italy. Saint Gregory heard about him from an Italian nun, Gregoria, who knew him personally: in fact, he had aided and defended her when she had sought to become a nun over the objections of her parents, who had arranged an unwanted marriage for her. He had also as a source Eleutherius, a ‘reverent man’ who was acquainted with the saint.

Nothing is known of Isaac’s life before he came out of Syria. When he first came to the church in Spoleto, he asked the wardens leave to go into the church for prayer and to stay there overnight. The wardens granted him leave, and he stayed there and prayed the whole day. He kept a vigil that night, and prayed for another day. And another after that. On the third day, one of the wardens – a proud and stubborn man – went into the church and accused Saint Isaac of hypocrisy and self-display. The warden struck Saint Isaac full in the face. But no sooner had he done so but an unclean spirit possessed him and he began to suffer terribly. The warden fell onto the ground in convulsions, and when Saint Isaac approached him his contorted mouth began to exclaim, ‘Isaac doth cast me forth.’ The Syrian pilgrim had made known his name to no one at that time. Isaac began to wrestle with the man on the floor and, pinning him under him, drove the evil spirit out in the name of Christ.

The thankful and chastened warden went and spread the news of this all over Spoleto, and soon the men and women of the city, both rich and poor, began to seek him out. They invited him into their homes, sought his blessings, and sought to offer him whatever they had to hand. The wealthier Spoletans offered rich gifts of land and money for an abbey; the poorer ones offered him their labour in building it. But Saint Isaac accepted none of their gifts, for he was a humble man. He left the city and settled in a wild and secluded place, building a rough cottage.

Even here he was sought out. Young men came to him, desirous upon embarking upon his holy way of life, and he accepted them as disciples. However, some among his disciples would slyly point out that it would be good for the abbey to take such gifts as were offered to it. Zealous to keep his own poverty ‘as covetous rich men are to preserve their corruptible wealth’, Saint Isaac told them instead: ‘A monk that seeks a living upon earth is no monk.’ Here Saint Isaac of Spoleto seems to have foreshadowed the mediæval zavolzh’e, or ‘non-possessors’ of Russia, led in spirit by Saint Nil of Sora.

Saint Isaac gained a reputation for divine foresight and for working wonders. There was one evening when he told his disciples to lay out a certain number of trowels in the garden. The next night he told them to go and make stew for the workmen so that it would be ready for them in the morning. His disciples were confused, for they had no knowledge of any workmen – but they did as he bade them. The next morning, the disciples were astounded to find a large band of rough, unruly men delving and turning in the garden – indeed, exactly as many men as there had been spades lain out there. It turned out that Saint Isaac had discerned that the little cell would be attacked by a band of masterless men who had come to plunder and rob and kill. But as soon as they entered upon Saint Isaac’s vigil, God gave unto them a spirit of repentance, and they went silently out into the garden, took the spades there, and began to work. When Saint Isaac saw them the next morning, and when his disciples had come with the stew, he greeted them with genuine good cheer, saying: ‘God save you, brothers! You have worked long and hard; rest now and eat.’

Saint Isaac told his disciples to serve them the stew, and the rough men took gratefully and relaxed themselves. Then Saint Isaac told them: ‘When you want anything from our gardens, just come to the gate and ask, and take it as God’s blessing. But steal no more, nor seek to do any man harm.’ He then gave them the monastery’s store of vegetables and herbs, and sent them on their way.

On another occasion, several beggars clad in rags came to the monastery, asking Saint Isaac to, of his charity, give them some clothes. Saint Isaac gave them no immediate reply. Instead, he turned to one of his disciples and with detailed directions told him to go into the forest, and find a certain hollow bole of a tree, and take the clothes that were hidden inside, and bring them to him. The disciple, wondering, did as his master told him, and found the clothes just as he had foreseen. Then Saint Isaac took the clothes and gave them to the beggars, saying, ‘Put on these clothes.’ For these beggars were in fact cheats: they had done off their clothes and hidden them away, thinking to con the saint out of clothes which they might sell for money, but instead Saint Isaac had given them back their own clothes. In shame they hurried back from where they’d come.

There was another man in Spoleto who desired Saint Isaac’s prayers, and sent his manservant with two baskets full of meat. The servant, thinking to profit himself by his master’s generosity, took one of the baskets and hid it in a bush till he could return home again. The other basket he took and presented to the saint, who received it with gratitude. Then, with a tender hand upon the servant’s shoulder, he spoke with concern:

‘Give my thanks to your master. Also, do take care how you lay hand upon the other basket which you hid away. An asp has crept inside. If you disturb it, it may bite you.’

The manservant was glad to have escaped death by the asp’s poison, but he went from there in deep remorse for having tried to beguile the man of God and his master both. Saint Isaac had no wish for the death of any man, not even a bandit or a swindler, and instead his clairvoyance allowed him to save them from the snares of the Devil. Saint Isaac was indeed a gentle and mild soul, though Pope Gregory notes with a slight tone of parody that he was given to ‘excessive laughter’ and joking. Here, in dialogue with his textual interlocutor and disciple Peter, he states that this saint who had been given so much by God, was also visited by a ‘small fault’ to fight against and overcome such that he would not fall into the greater sins of vainglory and delusion. Better a laugher than a LARPer, it seems.

Saint Isaac reposed in the Lord around the year 550, three years before the baneful Battle of Monti Lattari when the last king Teia of the Eastern Goths fell to Justinian’s general Narses, and his people forced back into Germania – as Pope Gregory says, he ‘lived almost to the last days of the Goths’. The relics of the Syrian saint were originally interred at San Giuliano in Milan, Italy, but they were translated to the Church of Saint Ansanus in his adoptive hometown Spoleto in 1502, where they are kept in a crypt beneath the church. Venerable Isaac, humble worker among the voluntary poor, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Troparion for Palm Sunday, Tone 1:

By raising Lazarus from the dead before Your passion,
You did confirm the universal Resurrection, O Christ God!
Like the children with the palms of victory,
We cry out to You, O Vanquisher of death;
Hosanna in the Highest!
Blessed is He that comes in the Name of the Lord!

Icon of the Entry of Our Lord into Jerusalem