The life of St Timothy of Symbola
Sources give his teacher there under two different names, Theoctistus in one account and Theosteriktos in another; both describe the same formation at Symbola and agree that Timothy also came, at another point, under the guidance of Plato, later abbot of the nearby monastery of Sakkoudion and, in his final years, associated with the Studion community in Constantinople through his nephew Theodore, one of that era's most respected monastic teachers. Through years of ascetic discipline he reached, tradition holds, an unusual degree of spiritual maturity, receiving what his contemporaries took to be gifts of healing the sick and casting out troubling spirits. Rather than settle permanently in one place, he spent much of his later life as a wandering hermit, moving through wilderness, mountains, and forest, keeping to a rhythm of prayer that continued through both day and night. He lived to a great age and reposed in the year 795, remembered less for any single dramatic episode than for the sheer duration and consistency of a life given over entirely to that wandering discipline of prayer.
