Venerable Thalelæus the Hermit of Syria

Thalelaeus came from Cilicia and was a monk and priest before settling near Gabala in Syria, by a ruined pagan shrine among old tombs that people feared as haunted. There, his Life says, he withstood the attacks of evil spirits by prayer. He then built himself a cell two cubits high and one wide, in which, being tall, he had to sit with his head bent to his knees, and lived so for about ten years. Bishop Theodoret visited him and asked why; he answered that he hoped by small hardships now to escape great torments later. Many pagans nearby became Christians, and with them he replaced the shrine with a church of All Holy Martyrs. He died c. 460, after sixty years as a monk.