CHAPTER XLV

PHILOROMUS

[[1] WE met in Galatia the priest Philoromus, a most ascetic and enduring man, and stayed with him a long time. His mother was a maidservant, his father a free man. But he showed such nobility in the Christlike mode of life that even those whose family record was unsurpassable revered his life and virtue. He renounced the world in the days of Julian the infamous Emperor, and spoke to him with boldness. Julian ordered him to be shaved and buffeted by boys. He endured the ordeal patiently and expressed his thanks to Julian, as he told us himself. [2] In his early days war against fornication and gluttony was his lot. He drove out these passions by shutting himself up and wearing irons, and by abstinence from corn-bread and all things cooked by fire. After persevering in this course for eighteen years he sang the hymn of triumph to Christ. Attacked in divers ways by the spirits of wickedness, he abode in one monastery for forty years. He told us this: “For thirty-two years I touched no fruit.” Once when timidity attacked him, in order to get rid of it, he shut himself up in a tomb for six years. [3] The blessed Basil, the bishop, took great care of him, rejoicing in his austerity and firmness. Even now he has not renounced the pen and the writing sheet, though perhaps in his eightieth year. He said: “From the time that I was initiated and born again until to-day, I have never eaten another’s bread for nothing, but always as the result of my own labours.” (Speaking) as in the presence of God, he convinced us that he had given to the cripples 250 pieces of money earned by the work of his hands, and had never wronged anyone. [4] He went on foot even as far as Rome itself to pray at the martyr-chapel of the blessed Peter. He went also as far as Alexandria, to pray at the martyr-chapel of Mark. Then he came also a second time to Jerusalem, having gone on his own feet and defrayed his own expenses. And he said this: “I do not remember that I was ever absent in mind from my God.”]