The life of St Euthymius the New of Thessalonica
He spent fifteen years in ascetic training on Mount Olympus in Bithynia before returning, at what he understood as a divine prompting, to found two monasteries on Mount Peristeras near Thessalonica in 863, which he governed for the next fourteen years while serving as deacon. In a resolution the Church remembers as a kind of restoration, both the wife and the mother he had left were themselves received into monastic life at one of these same communities. In his final years Euthymius withdrew further, to the island of Hiera off Mount Athos, where he reposed in 898; his relics were afterward carried back to Thessalonica, the city his monasteries had served.
