Venerable Apollo (IV)

The Venerable Apollo (IV) withdrew into the desert of the Thebaid at the age of fifteen and spent forty years there. Afterwards, at God’s prompting, he founded a monastery near Hermopolis, where up to five hundred monks gradually gathered. Saint Apollo was a strict faster. He took food cooked on a fire only on Sundays; at other times he ate herbs.

Other monks too followed the example of the Venerable Apollo. The holy ascetic reposed in the fourth century.