Venerable Vendemianus the Hermit of Bithynia

Life and Ascetic Struggle

By tradition Vendemianus was born in Myzia and, while still young, became a devoted disciple of Saint Auxentius, one of the Fathers associated with the Fourth Ecumenical Council (Chalcedon, 451). He relocated to the monastery that Auxentius had founded on Mount Oxia, not far from Chalcedon, and settled there in the spiritual life.

He took up his abode in a cell within the crevice of a cliff near his teacher's hermitage. According to the synaxarion he spent forty-two years there, devoting his life to fasting and prayer and being tempted by demons. Because of this holy life and these struggles he was held to have been granted the gift of healing. He inhabited the mountain cliff for more than four decades and died around the year 512.

Veneration

Vendemianus is commemorated on February 1 by the Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic Churches. He is depicted in the Menologion of Basil II, a significant Byzantine liturgical manuscript, and is counted among the sixth-century Byzantine hermits of Anatolia.

Saint Auxentius, His Teacher

Vendemianus's spiritual father, Saint Auxentius, was born around AD 400 in Syria of Persian ancestry and served in the imperial Equestrian Guard under the Emperor Theodosius II before abandoning secular life for monasticism. He established a hermitage on Mount Oxia and attended the Council of Chalcedon in 451, later relocating to Mount Scopas in Bithynia, where he gathered many disciples and served as a spiritual guide.

Among Auxentius's notable students, Vendemianus is remembered as the one who lived for forty-two years on a mountain cliff near his teacher's hermitage. Auxentius died on February 14, 473, on Mount Scopas, and is commemorated on that day.