[101] At the time there
was a severe drought in the metropolis of Pessinus and the fruits of their
produce were withered. When the people of this metropolis learned that Christ’s
servant was being hosted by Bishop Aemilianus at Aligete, they hurried to him.
Their dignitaries together with the clergy and a sizeable crowd came to the
aforesaid monastery of the Theotokos, which was 15 miles distant and, after
begging Bishop Aemilianus, took the servant of Christ and led him off to their
own city to feast him and for their land to receive rain from heaven through his
prayer.
About six miles from their city
there was a garden, and in this garden there was a swarm of locusts that were
destroying the vegetables that had recently sprouted. When the garden’s owner
learned of the presence of the divinely inspired man, he
ran three miles from his garden to meet him, and falling before him, reported the
damage that the locusts had caused in his garden. (“The Life of our holy father
Theodore, archimandrite of Sykeon, written by George his disciple, priest and
leader of the same monastery” (c. AD 613) in Theodore of Sykeon: The Life by
George and the Encomium by Nicephorus [trans. Michael Whitby and Richard
Price; Translated Texts for Historians 87; Liverpool: Liverpool University
Press, 2022], 177)
The Greek of the material in bold can be found in André-Jean
Festugiére, Vide De Théodore De Skyéôn, 2 vols. (Brussels: Société Des Bollandistes, 1970), 1:81:
Γνους δε την παρουσιαν του θεοφορου
ανδρος . . . .