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| - Isidore was Egyptian by birth and from a prominent Alexandrian family, which included Alexandrian Patriarchs Theophilus and Cyril. He studied all the secular disciplines, but as a youth withdrew from the world, renouncing his riches and earthly glory, so that he might devote himself entirely to the spiritual life. For a short time he taught rhetoric in Pelusium in Egypt; but soon his love for the things of God led him to flee to the desert as a solitary. After a year of ascetical life, he returned to Pelusium, where he was ordained to the priesthood. After a few years he retired to a monastery where he spent the rest of his life, eventually becoming abbot. From the monastery he wrote thousands of epistles full of divine grace and wisdom; of these more than two thousand still survive.
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abstract
| - Isidore was Egyptian by birth and from a prominent Alexandrian family, which included Alexandrian Patriarchs Theophilus and Cyril. He studied all the secular disciplines, but as a youth withdrew from the world, renouncing his riches and earthly glory, so that he might devote himself entirely to the spiritual life. For a short time he taught rhetoric in Pelusium in Egypt; but soon his love for the things of God led him to flee to the desert as a solitary. After a year of ascetical life, he returned to Pelusium, where he was ordained to the priesthood. After a few years he retired to a monastery where he spent the rest of his life, eventually becoming abbot. From the monastery he wrote thousands of epistles full of divine grace and wisdom; of these more than two thousand still survive. During his lifetime, he came to be a great and energetic defender of the Orthodox Christian faith, writing (according to the historian Nicephorus) more than ten thousand letters to numerous individuals, giving reproach, counsel, encouragement, comfort, and instruction. At the time of the persecution of St. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, while the populace was split into two factions, one for Chrysostom and the other against, Abba Isidore sided with the golden-tongued saint. He wrote to Patriarch Theophilus that St. John was a great light of the Church, and he begged him to avoid rancor against the exiled archbishop.
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