The life of St Meletios the Younger
Roughly a decade later, near thirty, he set out on an extended series of pilgrimages, spending three years moving through the Holy Land, visiting Jerusalem, Galilee, and both banks of the Jordan, before continuing on to Rome and, by some accounts, as far as Compostela in distant Spain.
He returned to settle at a small oratory dedicated to Saint George near Thebes, hoping for a quiet, solitary life on its bare mountainside, but his reputation grew faster than he could escape it, and after twenty-eight years there the crowds drawn to him forced him to move on once more. He resettled at Mount Kithairon, near the village of Myoupolis, and there, rather than finding the solitude he had sought, he instead founded a major monastic community that grew, under his direction, to include more than twenty dependent houses. He wore a single garment of horsehair, ate only enough to keep working alongside his monks, and spent much of each night in tearful prayer after only brief rest. He died on Mount Kithairon in 1105, at the age of seventy, having spent a lifetime being drawn, again and again, out of the solitude he had originally sought.
