Luke the Stylite

Venerable Luke the Stylite lived at Constantinople and Chalcedon in the tenth century. He is commemorated on 11 December in the Orthodox Church and in the Greek Catholic Churches. The sources do not agree on the dates: according to one source he was born around 879 (perhaps around 900) and died around 970, and according to the Serbian source he died on 11 December 979. His life is preserved in only one manuscript, of the eleventh century.

He was born in the village of Atikon, in the Anatolic district, in Asia Minor, into a well-⁠off family of soldiers. At eighteen he took part in a war against the Bulgarians, in the time of the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, in which many thousands of men perished. Luke saw the death of many thousands, but remained alive and believed that God had preserved his life. At twenty-⁠four he became a priest, but for a few more years he remained in the army. Then he left family and friends and gave himself to asceticism; he ate only wild herbs, slept on the floor and wore chains. He withdrew to the monastery of Saint Zacharias in Bithynia, in Asia Minor, then, after three years standing on a pillar, went to Mount Olympos, then to Constantinople and finally to Chalcedon.

He lived forty-⁠five years (according to the Serbian source, over forty) on the pillar of Eutropius, near Chalcedon, seeking holiness in Christ.