late 4th – early 5th century
Born to wealthy parents in Constantinople, he forsook his comforts for a strict ascetic life in a Thracian monastery, wearing only a rough hair shirt, from which he received his surname.
Our Venerable Father Theodore Trichinas, the Hair-Shirt Wearer
Theodore Trichinas was an ascetic of the early Byzantine period who renounced the wealth of his family for a life of severe self-denial. He is venerated as a monastic saint (Venerable), and his memory is kept on April 20. His surname, Trichinas, means "the hair-shirt wearer" and derives from the single rough garment of hair that he wore throughout his life.
According to the synaxarion he was born at Constantinople to wealthy and pious parents but left his home and former life to enter a monastery in Thrace. There he gave away his possessions and lived in extreme austerity, clothed only in a hair shirt and sleeping on bare stone to deny himself bodily comfort.
The defining mark of Theodore's life was its austerity. Having given away all that he had, he owned nothing and clothed himself, according to the tradition, not in ordinary garments but in a single rough garment of hair worn for the whole of his life. From this came his surname Trichinas, rendered in English as "the hair-shirt wearer." He is also said to have slept on a stone rather than a bed, both to avoid bodily ease and to keep himself from sleeping overmuch.
Theodore is venerated as one of the revered ascetics of early Orthodox monasticism. The synaxarion relates that a healing myrrh flows from his relics, and a canon in his honor is ascribed to Saint Joseph the Hymnographer. The Church commemorates him on April 20.