Saint Theodosius the Cenobiarch

When Theodosius was young, in the mid-5th century, he visited Saint Symeon, where he was greeted, miraculously, by name and invited to commune with the great Stylite atop his fabled pillar.

Like Symeon, and just about every monk of that time, Theodosius went on to become a hermit — in his case, with profound asceticism, for 30 years in a cave outside Bethlehem where the three Magi once stayed.

But solitary life wasn't entirely for him. Theodosius is called the Cenobiarch because he began the cenobitic way of Christian monasticism, inviting other monks to live with him in a commune. Their group began, fittingly, in that same, age-old cave.