Luke of Taormina
Our Venerable Father Luke of Taormina
Venerable · d. c. 820
Commemorated 6 November — Repose at Corinth
Luke of Taormina (died c. 820) was a Sicilian ascetic of the age when the island was still Byzantine and its monasticism flourishing. A native of Tauromenium (modern Taormina), he forsook his parents and betrothed in his youth for the wilderness, spent long years in fasting and prayer on the slopes of Mount Etna, and in his old age, prompted by a revelation, founded a monastery, travelling to learn the usages of other houses. He fell asleep at Corinth. He is commemorated on November 6 among the venerable fathers, a minor but universal synaxarion memory.
Luke was born at Tauromenium on the eastern coast of Sicily, in the period when the island belonged to the Byzantine world and was thick with Greek monasteries and hermitages. While still a young man he left behind his parents and the bride to whom he had been betrothed and withdrew into the wilderness, giving himself to the ascetic life of fasting and unceasing prayer. He struggled for many years on Mount Etna, whose lava heights and solitudes drew the hermits of Sicily as the deserts of Egypt had drawn theirs.
Toward the end of his life, moved by a divine revelation, Luke gathered his own disciples and founded a monastery; and that he might order its common life aright, he visited many other monasteries in various cities to acquaint himself with their rule and observance. He died, according to the received notice, at Corinth, about the year 820 — his passing on the Greek mainland fitting the wider dispersal of Sicilian and southern-Italian monks who, in the century of the Arab conquest of Sicily and of the iconoclast troubles, carried their monasticism into Calabria, the Peloponnese, and the capital.
Feast and commemoration
November 6 (church date; Old Calendar civil November 19). He is commemorated among the venerable fathers of the day, on which the principal feast is that of Paul the Confessor; the received Greek and Slavonic books furnish him no proper office, and he is sung under the common of a venerable-ascetic.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 8
In thee, O father, was preserved unimpaired that which is according to the image; for taking up thy cross, thou didst follow Christ, and by thy deeds thou didst teach us to despise the flesh, for it passes away, but to care for the soul, a thing immortal. Therefore doth thy spirit rejoice with the angels, O venerable Luke.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Luke would be shown, in the manner of the venerable fathers, as an ascetic monk with a long beard, in mantle and often the schema, holding a scroll or blessing. No securely identified image of this Luke — as distinct from his better-known namesakes Luke the Younger and Luke of Demenna — has been found for storage, and he is listed among the wanted icons.
Disputed questions
- Not to be confused with other saints of the name: Luke the Younger of Steiris in Hellas (the "New Wonderworker," died c. 953, commemorated February 7) and Luke of Demenna, abbot in Calabria (died c. 993, commemorated October 13) are distinct later Italo-Greek ascetics.
- The record is slight. Luke is a synaxarion saint; the surviving notice is brief, and his dates (a repose about 800–820) are approximate.