Venerable Paul of Xeropotamou

Life

The son of Emperor Michael Kuropalates. With a brilliant education, with rare wisdom and at the same time meekness, Procopius (as he was first called) was in his youthful years an object of admiration for all of Constantinople. In one charter, Emperor Romanus the Elder called him "the greatest of all philosophers." But fearing that his soul might become proud and perish from human glory, this brilliant young man one day dressed himself in a beggar's rags and came to the Holy Mountain, where he received the monastic tonsure from the renowned saint Cosmas. After long labors of solitary asceticism, he restored the Monastery of Xeropotamou, and shortly thereafter built the new Monastery of St. Paul, where he ended his days in old age. When that monastery was consecrated, Emperor Romanus sent as a gift a large portion of the Precious Cross, which is preserved there to this day. It is said of this saint that he preached the Gospel in Macedonia and Serbia. He endured many torments from the wicked Emperor Leo the Armenian, the iconoclast, and reposed in the year 820. Before his death St. Paul said to the brethren: "Behold, the hour approaches which my soul has always desired and from which my body has always trembled."