The life of St Aphrahat the Persian
Later in life he moved to a hermitage near Antioch in Syria, where, though he spoke only broken Greek, people of every rank came to seek his counsel and his prayers for healing. He arrived there during a period when the Arian emperor Valens was persecuting the Orthodox and had exiled the city's bishop, and Aphrahat lent his support to those, including the priests Flavian and Diodorus, who were holding the faithful together in the bishop's absence.
Confronted once by Valens himself, who asked why a monk had left his cell to walk the public roads, Aphrahat answered that he was defending a household on fire, likening the true faith under attack to a burning home that could not simply be abandoned to the flames; the emperor let the matter drop. Aphrahat was remembered for many such healings and for his steadfastness, and reposed in old age in Antioch. He is sometimes conflated in later tradition with an earlier Persian namesake, the theologian who wrote the Demonstrations, though the two lived in different lands and are properly distinguished.
