Venerable Alypius the Stylite (+640)

The Venerable Alypius the Stylite was born in the Paphlagonian city of Hadrianopolis. The saint’s father died early. His widowed mother distributed all her property to the poor, gave her son to Bishop Theodore to be brought up, and herself began to serve in the church and was counted worthy to be ordained deaconess.

From his youth Saint Alypius wished to dedicate himself to the Lord and longed for a solitary life, but Bishop Theodore would not let him go from his side. Once, when the saint was accompanying his bishop to Constantinople, the holy Martyr Euphemia appeared to him in a divine vision and commanded him to return to Hadrianopolis and build a church dedicated to her. The blessed one obeyed the heavenly blessing and, with the offerings of the Christians of Hadrianopolis, built a church of Saint Euphemia on the site of an abandoned pagan cemetery. Opposite the church, under the open sky, the Lord’s chosen one set up a pillar on a pagan gravestone. The Venerable Alypius laboured on the pillar for fifty-three years.

Fourteen years before his death Saint Alypius’s legs became so diseased that he could no longer stand. The Lord’s chosen one bore these most grievous sufferings with patience and thanksgiving. Near the venerable father’s pillar two monasteries, one for men and one for women, gradually came into being.

The blessed Alypius died in 640, at the age of a hundred and eighteen. The saint’s body was buried in the church of the holy Martyr Euphemia which he himself had founded. At the venerable father’s incorrupt relics many miraculous healings took place.