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Venerable (Monastic)5th century

Venerable Cherimon of Egypt

4th–5th century

Also known as Chaeremon

An Egyptian desert ascetic of Sketis remembered in the Lausiac History and the sayings of the desert fathers.

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Commemorated as

Our Venerable Father Cherimon of Egypt

Life

Cherimon (also rendered Chaeremon or Cheremon) was an Egyptian desert ascetic numbered among the Desert Fathers of the late fourth and early fifth centuries. He lived as a hermit in the monastic settlements of the Egyptian desert, and his name is preserved in two of the foundational records of early monasticism: the Lausiac History of Palladius and the alphabetical collection of the sayings of the desert fathers.

Little biographical detail survives beyond these notices. The tradition remembers him as a long-lived solitary who pursued an austere life of manual labor and prayer at a considerable remove from the communal church and water sources of his settlement. He is commemorated in the Orthodox Church on August 16.

Troparion1 hymnReadHide
TroparionTone 8

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 Cherimon, pray to Christ our God to save our souls!

Text used with permission of the Orthodox Church in America (oca.org).

Contributions & Legacy

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Life in the Desert

According to the synaxarion, Cherimon lived as an ascetic in the desert monastic settlement of Egypt either at the very end of the fourth century or in the opening years of the fifth. His cave is recorded as standing some forty stadia from the church and twelve stadia from a spring of water, a distance that marks the severity of his withdrawal from the conveniences of communal life.

The tradition relates that he continued at his handicraft into extreme old age and died at more than a hundred years. The Wikipedia notice associates him with the Nitrian Desert of Lower Egypt, while the Orthodox synaxarion places him in the Skete (Scetis) desert; both belong to the same cluster of Lower Egyptian monastic centers that produced the early eremitic tradition.

Sources and Commemoration

Cherimon's memory rests chiefly on his appearance in the Lausiac History, the account of the Egyptian monks composed by Palladius of Galatia around 419–420, and in the alphabetical Paterikon, the collection of the sayings of the desert fathers (Apophthegmata Patrum), where his name falls near the end of the Greek-alphabetical sequence of abbas.

The Orthodox synaxarion further notes that he is named by Saint Theodore the Studite in the Lenten Triodion, in the service for Cheesefare Saturday, in the sixth ode of the Matins canon — a commemoration that gathers the great ascetics of the desert as exemplars for the faithful at the threshold of Great Lent.

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Sources: OCA Synaxarion (oca.org), Lives of the Saints