Venerable Poemen of Palestine (+c. 602)

The Venerable Poemen of Palestine lived in the sixth century in the desert of Rouba. The blessed fathers Sophronius and John tell of him in the hundred and sixty-seventh chapter of the Spiritual Meadow. Once, in winter, the monk Agathonicus came to the Venerable Poemen for spiritual instruction and spent the night in a neighbouring cave. In the morning he told the saint that he had suffered terribly from the cold of the night, to which Poemen replied that he had not felt the cold at all, for a lion had come, lain down beside him and warmed him. “But,” the ascetic added, “know that I shall be torn apart by beasts, because when I lived in the world and kept sheep, my sheepdogs tore apart a man passing nearby. I could have saved him, but did not do it. It was then revealed to me that I would die the same kind of death.” And so it happened: three years later Poemen of Palestine was torn apart by beasts. This took place at the end of the sixth century.