Theodore of Edessa

Saint Theodore of Edessa was a monk of the Lavra of Saint Sabbas the Sanctified, then bishop of Edessa in Syria, a spiritual writer and theologian, who died in 848. The Church remembers him on 9 July by the old calendar and on 19 July, the day on which, according to the Greek tradition, he fell asleep.

Youth and monastic life

He was born at Edessa into a wealthy family; his father was named Simeon and his mother Maria. He had an elder sister. The sources say that he went to school from the age of five and became skilled in rhetoric and philosophy. While still young he was left an orphan (the sources give different ages, ten or eighteen). He gave to the poor the share of the inheritance that fell to him, the other half having been taken by his sister, and set out for Jerusalem to venerate the Holy Places. He was tonsured in the Lavra of Saint Sabbas, where he spent many years in prayer.

Bishop of Edessa

At the age of sixty, at the suggestion of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, he was chosen bishop of Edessa in Syria and was consecrated by the Patriarch of Antioch. The Greek and Serbian sources place him in the eighth and ninth century respectively; they agree that he died in 848. As a hierarch he fought against heresies: Manichaeism, Nestorianism and Monophysitism. Tradition adds that followers of these heresies made an attempt on his life, but he escaped.

His life tells of a journey to Baghdad, to the caliph Mavia, with a complaint against the injustices suffered by the Orthodox. There Theodore healed the caliph of a grave illness. The caliph then received Baptism and took the name John, and three of his courtiers followed his example.

Writings

Theodore wrote works of spiritual guidance. There survive "A Hundred Chapters Most Profitable for the Soul" and "A Contemplative Discourse," both included in the Philokalia, as well as a short ascetic teaching on monastic life and a discourse of instruction on the Councils. His chapters guide the reader in the ascetic life and rest on the teaching of Evagrius of Pontus and other fathers of the desert.

His repose

Sensing that his death was near, he returned to the Lavra of Saint Sabbas, where he fell asleep on 19 July. His life was written at length by Basil of Emesa, his nephew, the son of his sister. It includes a long discourse of instruction to the heretics of Edessa and a conversation with Theodosius, the stylite of Edessa. It was translated very early into Church Slavonic and survives in many Russian manuscripts of the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries. A life of him in Greek is also kept at the Athonite monastery of Iviron.