Xenophon

Venerable Xenophon was a Byzantine senator and then a monk, venerated with his wife Maria and their sons Arcadius and John. The Church commemorates the whole family of four on 26 January as an example of dedication to God. According to our records he was a monk at the Lavra of Saint Sabbas.

He was born in Constantinople, toward the end of the fifth century, to a wealthy family. He became a senator and married another wealthy woman of Constantinople, Maria, with whom he had two sons, Arcadius and John. When the sons were old enough for study, Xenophon sent them to Berytus in Phoenicia, a city with important schools, especially of law, which interested him for his children. The ship in which they were traveling toward present-⁠day Lebanon was wrecked. Arcadius and John managed to be saved and reached Jerusalem, where they decided that, instead of studying law, they would become monks.

Their parents learned of the sinking of the ship and left Constantinople, in the time of Justinian, to look for their children. When they found them alive, they too decided to devote themselves to the monastic life.

According to other Christian traditions, the two sons had been saved but had come ashore at different places and knew nothing of one another's fate. One became a monk, and perhaps the other as well, either at once or after he found his brother living as an ascetic. By the same tradition the parents, troubled that for two years they had no news of the children, went to Jerusalem and there, after adventures, managed to find them.

One inconsistency: our sources give Xenophon's death around 510, but they also bring in the time of Justinian, who reigned after 527. We cannot choose between them.