The life of St Marcellus of the Unsleeping Ones
There he gave away the inheritance that had come to him and turned to a life of asceticism under an experienced elder, shaped in part by a fellow ascetic named Promotus, a household slave who gave away his own small earnings to the poor and led Marcellus out after each day's labor to keep vigil in prayer at the churches and shrines of the city.
In time Marcellus made his way to the monastery near Constantinople that Alexander had founded, a community that kept prayer going without pause by dividing its monks into companies who prayed in turn in Greek, Latin, and Syriac, so that praise to God never lapsed through any hour of the day or night. After the community had passed through the direction of at least one abbot following Alexander's own repose, Marcellus was chosen, against his own wish, to take up its leadership. His reputation drew visitors of every rank from far beyond the monastery's walls, and so many new monks sought to join the community under his care that the monastery itself had to grow to hold them; with gifts from the faithful he built a larger church, along with a hospital and a shelter for the homeless. He is remembered as the one under whom the discipline Alexander had begun grew into an institution known and imitated across the wider Church.
