Daniel of Scetis
4th-century Egyptian Christian monk
Daniel was an Egyptian Christian monk who lived around the 4th century in the desert of Lower Egypt. He is considered a Desert Father.
He was a disciple and biographer of Arsenius the Great. Daniel was a disciple of Arsenius up to his death in 449 A.D.
Accounts
Daniel was born in Egypt sometime during the 4th century AD. As a monk, he spent 40 years in a cenobium before practicing asceticism alone. Some sources about his life vary on details, others give varying accounts of different events in his life. One story tells of how he was continuously kidnapped by bandits, managing to escape each time, until the last occasion when he knocked his kidnapper out with a rock and fled. Going to Alexandria later to repent, a certain Archbishop Timothy rebuked him for taking matters into his own hands and not trusting God, who had saved him the first times. Nonetheless, he let him go, stating that he did not commit murder but rather "killed a wild beast." He went to Rome, Constantinople, Ephesus, Jerusalem, and Antioch, and all the bishops told him the same. He returned to Alexandria and, overwhelmed by guilt, confessed this act to the magistrate's court, for which he was jailed for 30 days until the court delivered his confession to the magistrate. After his release, he was interviewed by the magistrate, who let him go, telling him, "Go, pray for me, abba.
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This entry incorporates text from “Daniel of Scetis” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.