Theoktistos

This article by Irina Gorainoff presents the figure of Theoktistos, a hermit monk originally from Thyatira in Asia Minor, who lived on Patmos until 1917. Through a biographical account combining direct testimonies and written sources, the author traces the ascetic journey of this contemporary hesychast: his successive hermitages, his spiritual struggles against temptation, his practice of the Jesus Prayer, and his singular relationship with living creatures. The article draws notably on the testimony of Protestant missionary William Edgar Geil, who met Theoktistos in 1896, as well as on the recollections of witnesses still living at the time. The theological contribution lies in the highlighting of a living continuity between the tradition of the Desert Fathers and twentieth-century Orthodox monasticism, illustrated by the figure of an ascetic rooted in the hesychast and eschatological tradition of Patmos.