Life and Asceticism
According to his hagiography, Bessarion was baptized in his teenage years, after which he set out on a pilgrimage to visit various holy sites. He traveled to Jerusalem and to the wilderness of the Jordan, where he visited Saint Gerasimus and learned about monastic life at several desert monasteries. Upon returning home, he received monastic tonsure and became a disciple of Saint Isidore of Pelusium.
Bessarion's discipline was severe and austere. He chose to despise the comforts of the body, sleeping always in the open air without shelter, dressed only in a few rags, and enduring both heat and cold. He took a vow of silence and ate only once a week. The sources relate that he never lay down to sleep, choosing always to remain standing or sitting, and that he spent much of his life wandering the desert in prayerful solitude.
His endurance in prayer was famous: by tradition he once remained for forty days and forty nights without food or sleep, standing motionless and immersed in prayer. He died at a great age, departing peacefully to the Lord.