The life of St Patapius of Thebes
Returning to Thebes after his studies to find his father already dead, he withdrew instead into the Egyptian desert, and his reputation as a hermit spread quickly enough that a steady stream of visitors sought him out for counsel and hospitality, more company than the solitude he had gone there to find. Unable to keep the peace he wanted in Egypt, he set out around 428 for Constantinople, a journey that, tradition says, was interrupted for some seven years at Corinth, where he and an Egyptian disciple named Sechnuti lived together in a cave before finally completing the voyage. In Constantinople he settled in a small cell by the city wall near the Blachernae church, and there, still seeking obscurity, found himself known instead for the gift of healing that drew the sick and needy to him for the rest of his life. He reposed in peace and was buried in a nearby monastery; centuries later, in 1904, his relics were found incorrupt during building work near Corinth, at the very place he had once stopped on his own unfinished journey.
