Venerable Faustus the Ascetic

Monastic Life and Succession

Faustus and his father Dalmatus received the monastic tonsure from Saint Isaac at his monastery near Constantinople, the community that later came to be known as the Dalmatian Monastery. Saint Dalmatus had served in the army of the Emperor Theodosius the Great before abandoning his military career to take up the monastic life with his son.

Faustus attained the heights of monastic practice and, like his father, excelled at fasting. After the death of his father, who had governed the community as igumen and was honored as a defender of Orthodoxy at the Third Ecumenical Council at Ephesus in 431, Faustus succeeded him as igumen of the monastery and proved a worthy successor.

The particular details of Faustus's ascetical life are not recorded in the surviving sources, which preserve chiefly his lineage, his reputation for fasting, and his succession to the leadership of the Dalmatian Monastery.

The Dalmatian Monastery

The monastery in which Faustus lived was founded by Saint Isaac of Dalmatia, who became its first abbot. Upon Isaac's death, leadership passed to his disciple Dalmatus, after whom the community came to be called the Dalmatian Monastery. Faustus belonged to this same line of succession, following his father as its head.