Fantinus the Younger

Venerable Fantinus the Younger (Fantinus of Calabria, Fantino il Giovane) was a monk and hermit, born in Calabria about 927 and died in Greece in the year 1000. He is called the Younger to distinguish him from Fantinus the Wonderworker (the Elder), an earlier Calabrian saint. Our sources give no date for his commemoration.

He was born in Calabria, in a place described as the closest to Sicily, of parents named George and Vriena. While still a child he was brought to Saint Elias the Cave-⁠Dweller, to whom the spiritual education of the boy was entrusted. At thirteen he became a monk and worked as a cook, then as a porter. At thirty-⁠three he became a hermit in the region of Mount Mercurion in northern Calabria, where many monasteries and hermitages had been founded under the Basilian rule. He led a life of severe asceticism, eating only raw vegetables and passing his time copying manuscripts. He also had a vision of heaven and hell.

He lived both as a hermit and as a monk and abbot. He persuaded his aged parents, his two brothers, Luke and Cosmas, and his sister Caterina to enter the monastic life. When he became a hermit, he left his brother Luke in charge of the monastery of monks that he had founded. Though a hermit, he often returned from the wilderness to serve as guide and spiritual teacher to his disciples, among them Nilus the Younger and Nicodemus of Mammola.

The monastery he founded was destroyed by Muslim raiders during his lifetime. An angel told him to preach in Greece. He left Calabria with two disciples, Vitalis and Nicephorus. During the voyage the ship ran out of drinking water. Fantinus is said to have made the sign of the cross over a container filled with seawater and to have wonderfully changed it into drinkable water. He visited Corinth, Athens and Larissa, where he lived near the tomb of Saint Achillius of Larissa. He lived four months in a monastery dedicated to Saint Menas near Thessalonica, and then outside the city walls. In Thessalonica he cured the sick and caused a corrupt judge to repent. He is also credited with preventing a Bulgarian capture of the city. He died in Greece. The eleventh-⁠century Greek Life of Fantinus has been edited and translated into Italian by Enrica Follieri.