Thomas Malea

Thomas of Malea, known in Eastern Orthodox synaxaria as the Venerable Thomas of Mount Maleon (also Malea or Maleos), was a Byzantine monk and hermit of the tenth century. Before he entered the monastic life he had been a military commander. The surviving hagiographical notices describe him as strong and brave, a man who had taken part in many battles and received honors for his service. Despite that worldly distinction he came to regard military glory and the vanities of the world as empty, and he resolved to devote himself wholly to God.

He left the army, received the monastic tonsure, and for some years sought out experienced elders in order to be formed in the spiritual life. The sources stress his humility during this period of discipleship. After several years he obtained a blessing to withdraw into solitude and settled as a hermit on Mount Malea, the cape and upland at the southeastern extremity of the Peloponnese. The district was remote and windswept, a typical setting for eremitical asceticism in the middle Byzantine period.

Orthodox tradition ascribes to him the gift of healing. The sick came to his hermitage; he blessed them or laid his hands upon them, and they were restored. The same tradition holds that after his death he continued to grant healings to those who invoked him. No lengthy contemporary vita survives. The synaxarion notices do not record his place of birth, his family, or the precise year of his repose; they place him uniformly in the tenth century.

Saint Thomas of Malea is commemorated on 7 July in the Eastern Orthodox Church. His memory is preserved in Greek, Slavic, and other Orthodox liturgical calendars. He is remembered as a soldier who forsook rank for the eremitic life and as a wonderworking hermit of the Peloponnesian cape called Malea. Beyond the brief synaxarion account, further biographical particulars cannot be verified from reliable historical sources.