MICHELE, MALEINOS, saint. - An ascetic of outstanding virtue, born at Carsianon in Cappadocia in 894. Even today he is little known, even in the East. The name Maleinos is not his family name, but that of the laura which he built on Mount Kimina in Bithynia, which M. governed as hegumen and where he died on 12 July 961.
While still very young he withdrew to Kimina (912), then into the desert and, having founded a monastery at Gerolimni (921), after four years he returned permanently to Kimina; there he was ordained priest (930). He was related by blood to the Byzantine imperial family, and was the spiritual father of St Athanasius, founder of Athos. His feast is on 22 July in the East (in the Venice Menaion of 1860, on 12 July).
BIBL.: Acta SS. Iulii, III, Antwerp 1723, p. 305; I. Martinov, Annus ecclesiasticus graeco-iliandus, Brussels 1863, p. 176 (or Acta SS. Octobris, XI, Paris-Rome 1869, p. 176); L. Petit, St Michel Maleinos, in Revue de l'orient chrétien, 7 (1902), pp. 543-603; H. Delahaye, Nota, in Anal. Bolland, 24 (1905), pp. 491-92. Emmanuele Candal