Salaman the Silent

Salaman is described by Theodoret of Cyrrhus in the History of the Monks of Syria as a monk who pursued stillness (hēsychia) more radically than almost any of his fellows. He came from the village of Capersana (Kapersana), on the western bank of the Euphrates. Seeking a life wholly hidden from men, he found a small hut in a village on the far, eastern bank, and there walled himself in — leaving neither door nor window — so that he might neither go out nor be visited nor speak. Once each year he would open a way through the wall, bring in the food he needed for the coming year, and close it up again; and thus he lived, in unbroken silence and prayer, seeing and speaking to no one.

Theodoret preserves two episodes that fix his character in the memory of the Church, both turning on the completeness of his silence. In the first, the bishop of the district, hearing of the hidden ascetic and wishing to honour him, came by night, broke through the wall, and ordained him — presbyter, the account says — with prayers and the laying on of hands; Salaman said not a word, neither refusing the grace nor answering the honour, and when it was done the bishop walled him up again and departed, and the hermit resumed his silence as before. In the second, the people of his native village on the western bank, coveting the blessing of so holy a man, came by night, carried off the whole hut with the saint inside it, and set it up on their own side of the river; and Salaman, again, neither protested nor helped, but let himself be moved without a word — until, some while later, the villagers of the eastern bank came in their turn and carried him back. Through it all he kept his stillness untouched, a living witness that the hesychast's peace is not in his place but in his heart. He reposed about the year 400, and Theodoret's book carried his memory into the calendars of the Church.