What is incontestably true may be summed
up almost in one paragraph.
He was born in A.D. 450, or thereabouts, in the city of Kallisto, in
Crete. He was an only child, a beautiful but unruly boy, the despair of
his widowed mother. At the age of thirteen he encountered, one evening,
an elderly man of thoughtful mien, who addressed him in familiar
language. On several later occasions he discoursed with the same
personage, in a grove of laurels and pines known as Alephane; but what
passed between them, and whether it was some divine apparition, or
merely a man of flesh and blood, was never discovered, for he seems to
have kept his mother in ignorance of the whole affair. From that time
onward his conduct changed. He grew pensive, mild, and charitable. He
entered, as youthful acolyte, a neighbouring Convent of Salacian monks,
and quickly distinguished himself for piety and the gift of miracles.
In the short space of three years, or thereabouts, he had healed eight
lepers, caused the clouds to rain, walked dryshod over several rivers,
and raised twenty-three persons from the dead.
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