St. Theodore Trichinas

Theodore was born in fifth-century Constantinople of pious Christian parents and entered an early marriage with the consent of his family. When his wife died young, he left the city to enter monastic life — first at a monastery in Bithynia, then at a cave he found in the wilderness behind the city of Asomatos on the Asian shore.

There he lived for many decades in extreme asceticism. His clothing was a single rough hair-shirt — the trichinion from which he takes his name, "Theodore the Hair-shirted" — and he wore it through the changes of the seasons and the wearing-out of his own skin, never replacing or supplementing it. He fasted strictly, kept vigils, and would not receive visitors except for matters of great urgency.

He died in peace around 460 at his cave above Constantinople. The synaxarion records that many miracles of healing took place at his tomb, and a small monastery rose around it in the years following. His feast falls on April 20.