ANDREA SALOS, saint. - Scythian by birth but not Slavic, he lived from 880 to 946. Having come as a slave to Constantinople, his master, the protospatharios Theognostus, had him learn Greek and employed him as a notary. After a vision, at the age of 36, A. devoted himself to prayer and fasting, leading until his death a life of intense and rigorous asceticism, not without bold eccentricities, which earned him the appellation of “fool for Christ.” The Byzantine rite celebrates his feast on 2 October.
The Vita (PG 111, 621-888), written by his spiritual director Nicephorus, has an uncertain chronology. Among its sources should be mentioned: the Vita of Simeone Salos, the Prato Spirituale (PG 87, 2932-36), and certain apocryphal visions of Daniel foretelling the coming of the Antichrist and the end of the world (cf. A. Vassiliev, Anecdota graecobyzantina, Mosca 1893, pp. xx-xxv). One critic went so far as to regard this Vita as a fantastic production written around the year one thousand (cf. Byzant. Zeitschrift, 21 [1912], p. 317 ff.).