John the Clairvoyant

John was born about 305 and worked in his youth as a carpenter (or, some say, a builder). At about the age of twenty-five he withdrew to the desert and placed himself under an old ascetic, whom he served with perfect obedience for many years — the Lausiac History and the History of the Monks in Egypt tell how the elder, to prove him, bade him water a dry stick daily for a year, and how John did so without questioning. After his elder's death John lived in various solitudes, and at last, about the age of forty, enclosed himself for good in a cell hewn in the rock of a mountain above Lycopolis in the Thebaid, with only a small window through which he spoke with those who came and received their offerings. For some forty-eight years, it is said, he did not leave his enclosure, nor see the face of a woman, nor eat food that had been cooked.

God granted him an extraordinary gift of foresight and discernment of hearts. He told visitors of things done far off and things to come; he warned of the rising and falling of the Nile and of the harvests; he read the secret thoughts of those who came to test him. His fame spread through the whole empire. The emperor Theodosius sent to him before his wars against the usurpers Maximus and Eugenius, and John foretold to him victory in both — prophecies that were fulfilled — so that the emperor honoured him as a prophet. Palladius, the author of the Lausiac History, and the monks who compiled the History of the Monks in Egypt visited or reported of him, and their accounts are among our surest windows onto the desert of that age.

John foretold his own death and reposed in peace about 394, at nearly ninety years, found kneeling in prayer three days after he had taken leave of the brethren.