By Fr. George Dorbarakis
This Venerable one was from Caesarea of Palestine. He began his ascetic life at the age of eighteen, living in deserts and mountains. After he had spent twenty-five years in withdrawal together with many others, he received the following temptation from the evil one.
A certain harlot, appearing as a poor woman, arrived at the mountain where the Saint lived. When night fell, she wept with sobs, claiming that she had supposedly lost her way and would become food for wild beasts. Therefore she begged the Venerable one to receive her into his cell so that she might not be devoured by their teeth.
Since it was impossible to leave her outside, he told her to enter, while he himself withdrew into the inner part of the cell. In the morning, seeing the change in her appearance (for she had dressed herself during the night in garments with which she adorned herself), the Venerable one asked who she was and why she had come there.
She answered him shamelessly, “Because of you.” And after maliciously criticizing his ascetic conduct and adding that all the Righteous of the Old Testament had been with women, she invited him to lie with her.
He, slightly disturbed but already having himself under control and obedience, and considering how, if he committed this sin, he could possibly hide from divine grace, rose up before falling into sin.
What then did he do?
He set fire to a large quantity of dry branches and entered into the midst of the flames, admonishing himself and saying: “If you can endure the fire of Gehenna, since you long for shameful pleasure, obey the woman and go with her.”
Thus he burned himself and humbled the uprising of his flesh. The woman, chastened by what she had seen, he sent to a monastery. And he himself, healed by the grace of God from the wounds of the fire, went with the guidance of a ship captain to a small barren island one day’s journey from the mainland. There he remained for ten years, receiving food from the captain.
But again he arose and departed from there, when a young girl who had survived a shipwreck upon a plank arrived near him. The Venerable one pulled the girl ashore, but he himself left from there also, saying that grass and fire cannot exist in harmony.
He was even brought to land upon dolphins.
Afterward he passed through countries and cities, having as his watchword: “Flee, Martinian, lest temptation overtake you” — for thus he resolved to spend the remainder of his life — and he arrived in Athens. As soon as he reached there, he departed to the Lord and was deemed worthy of a glorious burial by the bishop and all the people.
It is also said of the women that the first, who went from the mountain to a monastery and lived there, was deemed worthy to work miracles; while the other remained patiently on the barren island until the end of her life, clothed in men’s garments brought to her by the ship captain.