Paul of Latros

Venerable Paul of Latros (Paul of Mount Latros) was a Byzantine monk, born around 880 at Elaia, the port of Pergamon in Mysia in western Asia Minor, and died on 15 December 955 or 956 at Latros. He was numbered among the venerable saints. He is commemorated on 15 December, in both the Catholic and the Orthodox Church (according to the Serbian source, on 15 (28) December).

After his father's death, who perished in a naval battle with the Arabs, he was raised together with his brother Basil in the monastery of Saint Stephen in Phrygia, and after his mother's death he was first a shepherd, then gave himself to the strictest asceticism in the Karia monastery in the surroundings of Mount Latros (today the Besparmak range in Turkey), near Miletus. Later he shut himself in a cave on the top of a rock and became a stylite. The fame of his labours and holy life drew to him many ascetics, who built at the foot of the rock the monastery of Stylos (at the pillar). The emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (913 to 959) often wrote to the venerable one. Peter I, tsar of Bulgaria, and Pope Agapetus II honoured him for his life pleasing to God. Later Venerable Paul withdrew to the island of Samos, where he founded a lavra and restored three monasteries ravaged by the Hagarenes (Arabs). At the end of his life he returned to the monastery on Mount Latros, where he died in 955.

The venerable one's brother Basil became abbot of the monastery of Saint Elijah on Mount Olympus the Lesser in Bithynia. Saints Callistus and Ignatius Xanthopoulos report that, in answer to the question of one of his disciples, the venerable one wrote a treatise on the distinction of true and false light, manifested in prayer. The life of the venerable one is told by the anonymous Byzantine Life of Paul of Latros.