16th century
An elder of the Philotheou monastery on Mount Athos who lived in silence and asceticism.
Our Venerable Father Dometius of Philotheou
Saint Dometius of Philotheou was an Athonite elder of the sixteenth century who lived a life of silence and asceticism at the Philotheou Monastery on Mount Athos. The surviving record of him is slight: the synaxarion remembers him chiefly as a monk devoted to hesychia, the contemplative stillness long cultivated in the monasteries of the Holy Mountain.
He is most often named in connection with the Hieromartyr Damian of Philotheou, who pursued the monastic life of silence alongside him and withdrew to a hermitage under his guidance as elder. Damian was later seized by the Turkish authorities and martyred in the year 1568, a date that fixes Dometius within the sixteenth-century life of the monastery.
Saint Dometius is commemorated on August 7. He is distinct from the fourth-century Martyr Dometius of Persia, who is also commemorated on that day.
By a flood of tears you made the desert fertile,
and your longing for God brought forth fruits in abundance.
By the radiance of miracles you illumined the whole universe!
O our holy father Dometius, pray to Christ our God to save our souls!
Text used with permission of the Orthodox Church in America (oca.org).
Dometius belonged to the Philotheou Monastery, founded at the end of the tenth century and dedicated to the Annunciation of the Theotokos. It ranks twelfth among the twenty ruling monasteries of Mount Athos and stands on the northeastern part of the peninsula in Greece.
Within this community Dometius is remembered for pursuing silence and ascetic discipline, and for serving as the elder under whose guidance the future hieromartyr Damian withdrew to a hermitage.
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