CHAPTER XXXIX

PIOR

[1] PIOR, a young Egyptian, having renounced the world, left his father’s house and in an excess of zeal gave his word to God that he would never see any of his relations again. Fifty years after his sister, now an old woman, having heard that he was alive seemed likely to go out of her mind if she could not see him. But being unable to go to the great desert she besought the bishop of the district to write to the fathers in the desert that they should send him and she might see him. So, considerable pressure having been brought to bear on him, he decided to take one other with him and go. [2] And he announced at his sister’s house: “Your brother Pior has come.” So standing outside and perceiving from the creaking of the door that the old woman came out to meet him, he closed his eyes and called to her: “Ho! What’s-your-name, I am Pior your brother, I am he. Look at me as much as you want.” So she was convinced and glorified God, and having failed to persuade him to enter her house she returned to her dwelling. But he having offered a prayer on the doorstep exiled himself again in the desert.

[3] Now this miracle is told of him, that he dug in the place where he lived and found some very bitter water. And until he died he remained there, accepting the bitterness of the water in order to show his endurance. Many of the monks therefore after his death tried to rival him by dwelling in his cell, but they could not complete a year; for the place is terrible and inconsolably dreary.

[4] Moses the Libyan, a man of exceedingly gentle disposition and very affectionate, was counted worthy of the gift of healings. He told me this: “When I was a young man in the monastery we dug a very big pit, twenty feet broad. In this eighty of us excavated for three days and we got a cubit further than the vein where we generally found water and expected it (in this case), but found none. So very much disheartened we were contemplating the abandonment of the work. Then Pior appeared from the great desert at the sixth hour, (the time) of burning heat, an old man clad in a sheep-skin coat, and greeted us and said after the greeting: “Why have you lost heart, men of little faith? For I have seen you since yesterday losing heart.” [5] And having descended by a ladder to the cavity of the well he said a prayer with them, and having taken the pick he said after striking the third blow: “O God of the holy patriarchs, make not the toil of thy servants useless, but send them the water they need.” And immediately water sprang out so that they were wetted all over. So he prayed once more and went off. They tried to make him eat, but he would not suffer them, saying: “That for which I was sent is accomplished; for this I was not sent.”