Early Life and Captivity
Theoktiste was born around 820 in Methymna, also called Mithimna, on the island of Lesbos. Orphaned as a child, she was placed by her relatives in a monastery, where she was brought up by the nuns, learned the chanting and prayers of the community, and gave herself to the monastic life from an early age.
According to the tradition preserved by the OCA, at about the age of eighteen she obtained her abbess's permission to visit her sister in a nearby village at Easter (dated to 846). During the visit Arab raiders invaded, capturing her along with her sister and other inhabitants and transporting the captives by ship. When the vessel put in at Paros, she managed to escape from her guards and, in the OrthodoxWiki account, became lost in the woods before finding shelter in the island's church.
Solitary Life on Paros
On Paros, Theoktiste lived as a hermit for some thirty-five years, dwelling in an old church dedicated to the Most Holy Theotokos. Local tradition identifies this with the Church of Panagia Ekatontapyliani. She lived in constant prayer, subsisting on wild plants and seeds and drinking water from a source in the church precinct that is said still to exist.
Through all these years she had never received Holy Communion. When a hunter pursuing game discovered her in the church, she asked him to bring her the reserved Eucharistic Gifts on his next visit. In 881 he returned with the Holy Mysteries; after receiving Communion she reposed that same night.
Relics & Shrines
After her death the hunter removed one of her hands to keep as a relic, but his ship was tossed by fierce winds and could not sail until he returned the hand to her body. When companions came later to venerate her remains, they did not find her body in the grave.
Local tradition on Paros connects her memory with the Church of Panagia Ekatontapyliani. According to OrthodoxWiki, a footprint is preserved in the marble floor of the church and one of her bones is kept in a chest near her chapel, which stands at the site where she was buried.
Hagiography and Veneration
The Life of Theoktiste was composed around 920 by Niketas Magistros, a Byzantine official and man of letters. Niketas deliberately modelled the work on the Life of Mary of Egypt, adapting it to the events and setting of ninth-century Byzantium, and especially to the ever-present Saracen pirate menace of the age. According to the narrative, the hunter recounted her story to a hermit named Symeon some thirty years after her death, and Symeon in turn relayed it to Niketas.
Symeon Metaphrastes later revised the Life, moving her feast to November 10, though Eastern Orthodox tradition continues to observe it on November 9 (OrthodoxWiki also records a commemoration on November 22). In Byzantine iconography she is depicted as a thin, white-haired woman, barefoot and clad in a ragged cloak that covers barely half her body, mirroring the traditional depiction of Mary of Egypt. She is venerated as a saint in both the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church.
