ISIDORE OF ALEXANDRIA, Saint. - Solitary of Mount Nitria, b. in 319 and d. in 404. He was a disciple of St. Anthony the Hermit and a companion of St. Macarius. Together with St. Athanasius he came to Rome and set out again with the matron Melania for the desert of Egypt.

His gentleness remained famous and, besides the gift of tears, the ease with which he fell into ecstasy while taking food. With the fathers of the hermitage Macarius and Pambo he struck the monk who owned property: "pecunia tua tecum sit in perditionem". He had much to suffer from the patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria, who had first wished to raise him to the episcopate and then expelled him not only from the Church of Alexandria, but also from the desert of Nitria. Together with the monks who were his disciples, they too banished from Egypt, he sought the protection of St. John Chrysostom in Palestine. It should be noted, however, that Metaphrastes wrongly refers this last fact to the namesake Isidore Pelusiota. Our I. has also been confused with the bishop of Hermopolis and with another Isidore, an Origenist priest.

Bibliography

BIBL.: Acta SS. Ianuarii, I, Antwerp 1643, pp. 1015-17, taken from Palladius, Historia Lausiaca, chaps. 1-2, and from the Acts of St. John Chrysostom.

Emmanuele Candal

@incollection{ec7_isidoro_di_alessandria_santo, author = {Candal, Emanuele}, title = {Isidoro di Alessandria, santo}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {VII}, pages = {252}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1951}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/isidoro-di-alessandria-santo} }

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Isidore of Alexandria, Saint

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