Isaac of Sinai

Holy Venerable Martyr Isaac of Sinai is one of the fathers of Sinai and Raithu, slain in the monasteries and caves of Mount Sinai and of the desert of Raithu. They are commemorated on 27 January and on 5 May (a movable day), in the Synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of Sinai, in new style.

Those fathers struggled on the mountain where God gave Moses the ten commandments and in the desert of Raithu, on the shore of the Red Sea, and were killed by the Saracens and the Blemmyes, nomadic Arab tribes. The first slaughter was around the year 312, as the Egyptian monk Ammonius wrote, who witnessed the death of forty fathers of Sinai; at that time the Arabs also killed thirty-⁠nine fathers at Raithu. The second occurred more than a hundred years later and was described by a witness who escaped by a miracle, Venerable Nilus the Faster.

The ascetics led a strict life: all week they stayed in their cells in silence, on Saturday they gathered for the vigil, and on Sunday they received Communion. They ate only dates and drank water. Some of them were known for working miracles, like the elders Moses and Joseph. In the service of the venerable fathers the following are named: Isaiah, Sabbas, Moses, the disciple of Moses, Jeremiah, Paul, Adam, Sergius, Domnus, Proclus, Hypatius, Isaac, Macarius, Mark, Benjamin, Eusebius and Elias.