Patriarchs, and in particulr towards its saintly desert-
dwellers of the monasteries.
Emperor Zeno had only two daughters, one f
whom in the prime of her youth and beauty, disappeared
suddenly. Sad and forlorn, the Emperor ordered a
thorough search he made to find her whereabouts. His
orders were carried out but all efforts to find her were in
vain. And the Emperor sorrowfully resigned himself that
she must have met her death.
The truth was that she had secretly attired herself
in men’s clothes, gone to port and taken the first ship to
Alexandria. From there she went to the monasteries in
the Western desert of Egypt where she sought to satisfy
the spiritual hunger of her soul. There Providence led her
to an old and venerable ascetic named Abba Pimoa to
whom she disclosed her identity and the reasons of her
coming, asking him to keep her secret and to guide her to
the path of truth and divine knowledge. The ascetic
complied with her wishes, made her his disciple and,
assigning to her a cave in the desert, started teaching her
to the lessons of spiritual discipline and growth. She kept
her masculine disguise, putting on the garb of a monk, and
came to be known in the area as ‘Father Hilarion”.
Because she grew no beard, it was thought that she was
an eunuch, and came to be so nicknamed. For twelve
years, she lived her life of seclusion, spending hours and
hours in prayer and devotion; and even though she
gradually learned to participate in the group worship of
her nearest monastery, she kept to herself much of the
time, and the only person who knew her real identify was
the ascetic, Abba Pimoa.
One day her sister developed an illness that no
doctor was able to cure. In desperation lest he lose his