1302–1380
Saint Athanasius the Meteorite
Founder of the Great Meteoron monastery, who lived in constant stillness on the rocks of Meteora.
Biography
Athanasius (born Andronikos) was born in 1302 near Nea Patra and was orphaned of his father as a child. When the Franks seized his homeland in 1319, he fled to Thessaloniki and then to Mount Athos, where he met Gregory of Sinai and later became a monk under the elder Gregory the Politan.
Because of Turkish raids on Mount Athos, he left with his elder for mainland Greece and eventually settled on the sheer rocks of Meteora, where he founded the monastery of the Great Meteoron, living in constant stillness until his death in 1380.