Isidor d'Alexandria

Who they were

Isidore gave his large fortune to the poor and became an ascetic in the Nitrian desert. St Athanasius ordained him and took him to Rome in 341, but he spent most of his life as head of the great hospital at Alexandria, and he advised Palladius, author of the Lausiac History, when he came to Egypt.

In his eighties he was accused of sympathy with Origen, attacked by St Jerome and excommunicated by his bishop Theophilus. He fled to the desert and then to Constantinople to seek the protection of St John Chrysostom, and died there soon after, aged eighty-five, in 404.

The miracles

There was never a formal cause: he has been honoured as a saint since before the Church's formal processes began.

Why that counted as sanctity

A desert monk and hospital master of Alexandria who died under the protection of St John Chrysostom.

Connected on this site

• John Chrysostom Saint
  “He fled to the desert and then to Constantinople to seek the protection of St John Chrysostom, and died there soon after, aged eighty-five, in 404.” — this site's research