foundation · 308 · Gaza
Jerome wrote his Life and Sozomen follows it, so the whole of him comes through one channel. The story is that he was born near Gaza to pagan parents, was sent to Alexandria to study, was baptised there, and went out to see Antony — stayed two months, found the crowds around him unbearable, and came back to find his parents dead. He gave his inheritance away and went into the strip of sand between the sea and the marsh south of Maiuma with a sackcloth tunic and a cloak Antony had given him. What happened next is the pattern of the whole tradition: people came, some stayed, and a monastery grew where a man had gone to be alone. Sozomen credits him with being the first to bring the Egyptian discipline into Palestine, which is the claim that puts him in this dataset.
To do in Palestine what he had watched Antony doing in Egypt — alone, at fifteen, with nothing.
Palestinian monasticism, and a man so besieged by admirers that the rest of his life is a series of escapes.