Venerable Alexis the Man of God

According to his Life, Alexis was the only son of Euphemian, a rich and charitable Roman noble, in the time of the emperors Arcadius and Honorius. On his wedding night he gave his bride his ring and belt wrapped in purple cloth, left home secretly and sailed east. For seventeen years he lived as a beggar in the porch of the church of the Mother of God in Edessa.

When people there began to honour him, he left and, the Life says, came back to Rome, where he lived another seventeen years unrecognized as a beggar in his father's house, mocked by the servants. Before he died in 411 he wrote down his story, and the letter found in his hand told his parents and his bride who he was.