Venerable Euthymios the New, of Thessalonica and Monk of Mt Athos

Euthymius, born Nicetas in 823 or 824 at Opso near Ancyra in Galatia, married young and had a daughter, but at eighteen left home to become a monk on Mount Olympus in Bithynia. Around 859 he went to Mount Athos, where he lived for years as a strict hermit, at times in a cave and in the open.

Disciples gathered round him, and he restored the monastery of Peristerai near Thessalonica. Shortly before his death he withdrew with one monk to the small island of Hiera, where he died on 15 October; his disciple and biographer Basil gives the year 898, the Rostov Lives 889. He is one of the founders of monastic life on Athos.