Venerable Syncleticea of Alexandria

Synclecticea was born in Alexandria in the 4th century to a wealthy family from Macedonia. She refused all suitors, and after her parents died she gave away her inheritance and went with her blind sister to live in the tomb of a relative outside the city. She ate bread made of bran. For a long time she answered women who came to her with silence, but in the end she taught them, and a community of nuns grew up around her.

Her sayings are among the few from a woman in the collections of the Desert Fathers. In old age she suffered for three and a half years from a disease that ate away her body, refusing doctors. According to her Life, she foretold her death three days ahead and died at about eighty, c. 350.