Venerable
Venerable Mark The Ascetic
V век
Venerable Mark the Ascetic (the Hermit) — a 5th-century Egyptian hermit and ascetical writer, author of spiritual-moral and polemical works included in the Philokalia; he spent forty years in ascetic struggle in the Nitrian desert.
Venerable Mark, called the Ascetic or the Hermit, struggled in Egypt in the 5th century (sources mention him as living after 430). According to tradition, he lived forty years in the world, and then sixty years in eremitic monastic struggle in the Nitrian desert.
He left a substantial ascetical and polemical literary legacy: spiritual-moral discourses on the spiritual law, on repentance, on fasting, as well as works against the Nestorians and Messalians. His writings were included in the Philokalia — the classic anthology of patristic texts on prayer and the inner spiritual life.
HONEST CAVEAT: the Orthodox Encyclopedia notes that the lives and miracles of several different 5th-century ascetics named Mark (Mark the Hermit/of Nitria, Mark of Athens, Mark of Arethusa) became confused with one another in various synaxaria in places, and some miracles were mistakenly attributed to him from the life of Venerable Macarius of Alexandria; this entry limits itself to the most consistently attested information.
His feast is kept on March 5/18.
IMPORTANT CORRECTION: the contaminated date shared with the entries mark_of_ephesus and mark_of_rome has been removed. The impossible era "4th-15th century" has been replaced with the 5th century. All 5 of the entry's former images (mark_the_ascetic_0—4) turned out on inspection to be either images of Venerable Paul of Thebes (with a direct Greek inscription "PAULOS... HO THEBAIOS") or scenes from the narrative cycle "Venerable Anthony the Great meets Venerable Paul of Thebes" — having nothing to do with Mark the Ascetic; they have been removed from the entry as unrelated.