ANDREA SALOS, saint. - Of Scythian birth but not a Slav, he lived from 880 to 946. Having come as a slave to Constantinople, his master, the protospatharios Teognostos, had him learn Greek and used him as a notary. After a vision at the age of 36, A. devoted himself to prayer and solitude, leading until his death an intense and rigorous ascetic life, not without bold eccentricities, which earned him the epithet “fool for Christ.” The Byzantine rite celebrates his feast on 2 October.
The Life (PG III, 621–888), written by his spiritual director Nikephoros, has an uncertain chronology. Among the sources to be noted are: the Life of Symeon Salos, the Pratum Spirituale (PG 87, 2932–36), and some apocryphal visions of Daniel foretelling the coming of the Antichrist and the end of the world (cf. A. Vassiliev, Anecdota graeco-byzantina, Moscow 1893, pp. xx–xxv). One critic even goes so far as to regard this Life as a fanciful composition written around the year 1000 (cf. Byzant. Zeitschrift, 21 [1912], pp. 317 ff.).