Proclus of Sinai

Holy Venerable Martyr Proclus of Sinai is one of the Venerable Fathers slain at Sinai and Raithu, who struggled in the monasteries and caves of Mount Sinai, where God gave the ten commandments through Moses, and in the nearby desert of Raithu on the shore of the Red Sea. They suffered at the hands of Saracens and Blemmyes, nomadic Arab tribes.

The first slaughter took place around the year 312 and was described by Ammonius, an Egyptian monk, witness to the death of forty Fathers of Sinai. At that time the Arabs also killed thirty-⁠nine Fathers at Raithu. The second slaughter took place more than a hundred years later and was described, again by a witness who escaped by a miracle, Venerable Nilus the Faster (commemorated 12 November). The ascetics of Sinai and Raithu led a particularly strict life: all week they stayed in their cells in silence, on Saturday they gathered for the vigil, on Sunday they received the Holy Mysteries, and their food was only dates and water. Many of them, among them the elders Moses and Joseph, became known for the gift of working wonders.

The service of the venerable ones names them: Isaiah, Sabbas, Moses, his disciple Moses, Jeremiah, Paul, Adam, Sergius, Domnus, Proclus, Hypatius, Isaac, Macarius, Mark, Benjamin, Eusebius and Elias.

Venerable Proclus is commemorated on 27 January (14 January in the old style) and on 5 May (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Sinai, in the new style.