Dorotheus the Egyptian

Venerable Dorotheus the Egyptian was a hermit of the Thebaid, who died at the end of the fourth century. He is commemorated on 16 September (by the old calendar; 29 September by the new) and on 19 January, on the day of the Synaxis of all the saints who shone forth in the land of Egypt.

Dorotheus was from the Thebaid and around 328 became one of the Theban hermits, living in the so-⁠called Cells of the hermits, in the desert west of the Nile, near Alexandria. The blessed Palladius, bishop of Helenopolis, was for a time a disciple of the venerable father Dorotheus and a witness of his ascetic labours, and writes of him in the Lausiac History. According to Palladius, the old man Dorotheus spent sixty years in a cave, leading a very strict life. Very hardworking, he spent the whole day, even in the heat of noon, gathering stones in the desert by the sea and building cells from them, which he then gave to those who could not build for themselves. When Palladius once asked him why, at such an age, he tormented his body in that heat, he answered that the body tormented him, and he would torment it.

He ate each day a little dry bread and a handful of greens and drank a little water. Palladius testifies that he never saw him stretch out his legs or lie down to sleep on a mat or a bed, but he spent the whole night sitting and plaiting baskets of palm fronds, by which he earned his bread. Thinking that he had begun such a strict life on his account, Palladius carefully inquired of many of his disciples whether he had laboured so all his life, and they told him that from his youth he lived thus, that he never lay down on purpose to sleep, except that during work or at meals he would close his eyes for a moment, so that often the morsel fell from his mouth from drowsiness. When Palladius once tried to compel the holy man to rest a little on a mat, Dorotheus told him, moved, that if he could persuade the angel to sleep sometime, he would persuade the zealous ascetic too.

Palladius reports that Dorotheus lived in the desert about sixty years. Palladius' mentor, the priest Isidore, advised him to stay with him three years to tame his passions, but Palladius could not endure this period. Many scholars give 395 as the year of Dorotheus' death. Palladius' account entered the works of historians such as Sozomen, Cassiodorus and Nikephoros Kallistos. In the second half of the twelfth century the story of Dorotheus appears in the Russian Prologue.