ESICHIOL'ASCETTA, Saint. — Anchorite of the 8th century, easily confused with the one surnamed “the Thaumaturge”; perhaps for this reason his feast (6 March) is not fixed in the different Churches of the Syrians, Copts, and Greeks.
Very little is known about him. He was a native of the Andrapera region near Ancyra in Pontus, and he sought the solitude of Mount Maion, not far from Adranes in Bithynia, where he erected an oratory to the Apostle St Andrew. Warned by an angel of the approach of death, he terrified those present with the fear of hell, but he closed his life, full of wonders, in great peace, shining with divine splendour, during the reign of Constantine VI together with his mother Irene, that is between 780-97. His body, first placed before the iconostasis (of the oratory of St Andrew?), was later (808) transferred near the altar by Theophilatus, bishop of Amasia.
Of interest to historians is the discovery and use of the manuscript entirely devoted to him, from which the Greek Synaxarium drew these facts.