Thalassius, Limnaeus and Baradates

The three are commemorated as a group because they belong to one world — the ascetic country of Syria in the fifth century, the hills between Antioch and Cyrrhus where a great generation of solitaries lived in the open air — and because one witness records all three: Theodoret of Cyrrhus (c. 393–c. 460), the learned bishop and historian, who knew many of these ascetics personally and wrote their lives in his Φιλόθεος Ἱστορία, the Religious History or History of the Monks of Syria. His book is the source of nearly everything transmitted of them, and its first-hand quality — Theodoret had visited their enclosures and spoken with them — gives these three otherwise obscure hermits an unusually vivid record.

Thalassius

Thalassius (Θαλάσσιος) withdrew to a hill near the village of Targala, in the territory of Cyrrhus, and there passed thirty-eight years in the ascetic life with neither a roof over his head nor any cell or shelter — exposed, year after year, to the weather of the Syrian uplands. Theodoret praises above all his character: a simplicity of manner, a gentleness and a humility so complete that they became the marks by which his disciples were known. For this holiness the Lord granted him the gift of wonderworking and of healing the sick, so that his bare hilltop became a place of resort. He is the elder of the three and the teacher of the second.

Limnaeus

Limnaeus (Λιμναῖος) began under Thalassius, from whom, Theodoret says, he "acquired the virtues of his teacher — simplicity of manner, gentleness and humility." He then attached himself to the renowned Maron, the father of a whole family of Syrian solitaries and the patron whose name the Maronite tradition carries. Afterward Limnaeus made his own dwelling: on a hillside he built a small enclosure of unmortared stones, open to the sky — without a roof — and shut himself within it, receiving visitors only through a small opening. But his solitude was not a flight from the wretched. Learning that the blind, the poor and the crippled of the region had nowhere to go, he had huts built for them along the hillside about his enclosure, gathered them there, and — with the help of those who brought alms to him — saw to their bodily needs; and, not content with feeding their bodies, he took charge of their souls as well, teaching them to pray and to glorify God. For his holiness he too received the gift of wonderworking; the tradition remembers that when a serpent bit him he healed himself by prayer. In him the Syrian ascetic ideal shows its other face: the solitary who is also the refuge of the helpless.

Baradates

Baradates (Βαραδάτης; Slavonic Varadat), the third, carried the ascetic severity of this country to its furthest reach. He began as a desert-dweller in a hut near Antioch, then built himself a stone cell upon a hill so cramped and low that he could only stand within it stooped, and so ill-made — with neither proper window nor door — that wind, rain and cold came through the gaps of the stones upon him. Later he left even this for a harder practice: he stood in the open, his whole body covered in leather from head to foot, with only a small opening left for his nose and mouth, and so prayed, standing with his hands raised to heaven, under the sun and the weather. It was this last austerity that brought him into the record of Theodoret of Cyrrhus: the bishop, judging the leather covering excessive and dangerous, personally urged him to give it up, and Baradates, in his deep humility, obeyed his bishop. He had acquired many spiritual gifts, and people came to him for counsel; he reposed in peace about the year 460. (Some calendars give his repose as 469.) The tradition remembers that his counsel was sought even at the imperial court — the emperor Leo I is said to have consulted the Syrian ascetics, Baradates among them, on a question of the Church.