men of eminent holiness, and his history bears incident- al testimony to the extent of his travels. The The- baid, or Upper Egypt, as far as Tabenna, and Syene, Libya, Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, and even Kome and Campania, and, as he vaguely and boastfully states, the whole Roman empire, were visited by him, and that almost entirely on foot. In consequence of severe ill- ness, Palladius was sent by the other solitaries to Alex- andria; and from that city, by the advice of his phj^- sicians, he went to Palestine, and thence into Bithynia, where he was ordained bishop. He gives neither the date of his appointment nor the name of his bishopric, but intimates that it was the occasion of great trouble to him ; so that, '• while hidden for eleven months in a gloomy cell," he remembered a prophecy of Joannis of Lycopolis, who, three years before Palladius was taken ill and sent to Alexandria, had foretold his elevation to the episcopacy and his consequent troubles. As he was present with Evagrius of Pontus about the time of the latter's death, which probably occurred in 399, he could not have left Egj'pt till that year, nor can we well i)lace his ordination as bishop before 400, when he was present in a synod held by Chrysostom at Con- stantinople, and was sent into Proconsular Asia to pro- cure evidence on a charge against the bishop of Eph- esus. The deposition of Chrysostom (q. v.) involved Palladius in troubles, as we learn from his Lausiac His- tory. Chrysostom, in his exile, frequently wrote to " Palladius the bishop," exhorting him to continue in prayer, for which his seclusion gave him opportunity. All the foregoing particulars relate to the author of the Lausiac History, from the pages of which the notices of him are gleaned. We learn from Photius that in the " Synod of the Oak," at which Joannis or John Chry- sostom was condemned, and which was held in 403, one of the charges against him related to the ordination of a Palladius, bishop of Helenopolis, in Bithynia, a fol- lower of the opinions of Origen. The province in which the diocese was situated, the Origenistic opinions (imbibed from or cherished by Evagrius of Pontus), and the intimation of something open to objection in his ordination, compared with the ambiguous manner in which the author of the Lausiac History speaks of his elevation, seem conclusive as to the identity of the historian with Palladius of Helenopolis. He is, doubt- less, the Palladius charged by Epiphanius, and by Je- rome himself, with Origenism. Tillemont, however, at- tempts to show that Palladius the Origenist was not the bishop of Helenopolis. Through fear of his ene- mies, Palladius of Helenopolis fled to Rome in 405, where he probably received the letter of encouragement ad- dressed to him and the other fugitive bishops, Cyriacus of Syrmada, Alysius or Eulysius of the Bithynian Apameia, and Demetrius of Pessinus. At this time Palladius probably became acquainted with the monks of Rome and Campania. When some bishops and presbyters of Italy were delegated by the Western em- peror Honorius and pope Innocent I, and tlie bishops of the Western Church generally, to protest to the Eastern emperor Arcadius against the banishment of Chrysostom, and to demand the assembling of a new council for the consideration of his case, Palladius and his fellow-exiles returned into the East, apparently as members of the delegation. But their return was ill- timed and unfortunate : they were both arrested on approacliing Constantinople, and both delegates and exiles were confined at Athyra, in Thrace; and then the four returning fugitives were banislied to separate and distant places, Palladius to the extremity of Upper Egypt, in the vicinity of the Blemmyes. Tillemont supposes that after the death of Theopliihis of Alex- andria— the great enemy of Chrysostom — in 412, Pal- ladius obtained some relaxation of his punishment, though he was not allowed to return to Helenopolis or to resume his episcopal functions, and says that in the interval between 412 and 420 the Lausiac History was written. Palladius resided for four years at Antinoe, or
Antinopolis, in the Thebaid, and three j'cars in the Mount of Olives, near Jerusalem, and then also made his visits to many parts of the East. After a time he was restored to the bishopric of Helenopolis, from which he was transferred to that of Aspona or Aspuna, in Galatia ; but the dates of his restoration and his trans- fer cannot be fixed : they probably took place after the healing of the schism occasioned by Chrysostom's affair in 417, and probably after the composition of the Lausi- ac Histoi-y, in 419 or 420. Palladius probably died be- fore 431, when in the third general (first Ephesian) council the see of Aspona was held by another person. He appears to have been bishop of Aspona only a short time, as he is currentlj' designated from Helenopolis.
Palladius's principal, if not liis only work, is entitled H irpoQ Aavaoiva tvv TrpairrocnTov i<jTopia iripik- Xovaa ftiovQ baiujv TtaTipniv — Ad Lausum Prcepositum Historia, qua Sanctorum Patrum vitas compkctitur — usually cited as Historia Lausiaca, the Lausiac His- tory. This work, Palladius says, was composed in his fifty-third year, in the thirty-tlurd year of his monas- tic life, and the twentieth of his episcopate, which last date furnishes the means of determining several others in his personal history. The work contains biographi- cal notices and anecdotes of a number of ascetics whom Palladius knew personally, or of whom he received in- formation through others who knew them. The value of the work is diminished by the author's credulity (characteristic, however, of his age and class) concern- ing miracles and other marvels ; but it exhibits the pre- vailing religious tendencies of the age, and is valuable as recording A-arious facts relating to eminent men. The Lausus, or Lauson, to whom the work is addressed, was chamberlain apparently to the emperor Theodosius the younger. The first edition of the Greek text, but a very imperfect one, was that of Meursius (Leyden, 1G16). The Greek text and version were reprinted from the A uctarium of DuciBus, in the editions of the Bibliotheca Patrum (Paris, 1C44 and 1G54). It is prob- able that the printed text is still very defective.