His parents were pagans, but he turned to Christ in childhood. Having compassion on a child dying of cold, he gave him his clothes and said that he had clothed Christ with them. Having left his parents, he was taken by an angel to Mount Diavis, where he lived with a hermit who taught him the monastic life. After the elder's death, he spent fifty-eight years in a cave, being nourished by an angel. Receiving a command from the angel, he went out and preached the Christian faith, enduring many sufferings from the kings Car, Carinus, and Numerian. After receiving a hundred blows to the neck and other torments, seeing miracles, the tormentors released him. Returning to the cave, he lived there for another seventeen years in strict fasting and departed to the Lord around the year 300.
