THOMAS OF MOUNT MALEOS

In the image of Saint Thomas, one is struck by the complete discrepancy between the incredible gifts from above and the absolute unknown of when and where he lived. Knowledge of the historical circumstances of the supposed era of his earthly path helps to explain a lot. Asceticism was a way of self-preservation for him, and withdrawal from the world was a way to keep the Orthodox faith.

1 The name of Saint Thomas of Mount Maleos appears to be Slavic. But it is neither Bulgarian, Serbian, nor Russian. Thomas was a former Byzantine military commander who became a monk, acquired a special grace for teaching and performing miracles, and was later glorified by the Church as a saint.

2 The ascetic followed for a long time the most experienced fathers, but he himself lived alone. Once he got lost in the desert, but the Prophet Elijah himself revealed him a pillar of fire to show him the way. The saint overcame the most severe attacks of demons, who sought to instill fear in him or distract him with lusts. At the end of his life, he could heal the sick and correct congenital ailments with the power of grace. Once, in a waterless place, he brought forth a spring of water through prayer. The saint’s signs were truly of biblical prophetic proportions. After his death, they continued from the place of his burial.

3 The word “Malea” refers to a place, although historians have not yet been able to determine it. It could be a mountain or an isolated river in Asia Minor, or even a part of Mount Athos. Neither the dates of the saint’s life nor the precise circumstances of his biography have been preserved.

4 The saint’s life describes the sequence of great miracles he performed and the extreme asceticism that preceded them.

5 Saint Thomas could have lived in the 8th, 9th, or even 10th centuries. But if we assume that his life took place during the era of iconoclasm, then much becomes clearer. Thomas may have been one of those great Byzantine commanders who saved Constantinople from the Arab-Muslim armies besieging the city.

6 When, shortly after their victory, the Byzantine emperors launched an iconoclastic policy, Thomas renounced earthly glory and fled. He could only retreat to where the monastic defenders of icons were hiding at the time: to one of the holy monastic mountains of Asia Minor.

7 There were four such Holy Mountains. Three of them were in Asia, in the historical region of Bithynia, but only the fourth, the youngest of them, Athos, was in Europe and has survived to this day.

8 Those mountains that were on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus served as a special refuge for icon defenders. After all, the Byzantine army and police rarely appeared there. However, when the army did come there to fight nomads or pirates, monks and entire monasteries became victims of the imperial terror of the iconoclasts. Thus, the Holy Mountains suffered not only from robbers, but also from those who were formally Orthodox, that is, “their brothers”.

9 The iconoclast emperors considered monks to be idlers, believing that they were leaving the world only to avoid mobilization. When monks defending icons fell into the hands of the “iconoclastic police”, the reprisals against them were very cruel. The monks were beaten, tortured, forced to renounce icons, their tongues were cut out, and their faces were tattooed with blasphemies. Some of them, along with entire monasteries, were burned alive.

10 Thomas’s military past forced him to be especially careful and hide his identity as much as possible. Asceticism was not just a personal choice for him, but a way of self-preservation; the desire to remain anonymous, which all monks are obliged to strive for, was almost the only way to stay alive.

11 It turns out that the absence of any specific details in the life is due not to the forgetfulness of his contemporaries, but to historical necessity. The assumption that St. Thomas really lived in Bithynia is partly confirmed by the fact that a river with the supposed name Malea once flowed there.