St. Isidora the Simple

In the Egyptian convent of Tabennisi, there was a humble nun named Isidora who used an old dishrag to veil her head. The other sisters, lacking charity, deemed her an ignorant fool, relegating to her the lowliest chores, treating her with contempt, going so far as to play cruel tricks upon her. Isidora suffered these things without complaint. One day, the nuns received a visit from the hermit Saint Pitirim. In a vision, an angel had told him to go to the convent, explaining, “There you shall find an elect vessel full of the grace of God, and you shall know her by the crown that shines above her head.” After recounting the vision, Pitirim asked to see all the nuns. It was only when Isidora arrived that the hermit finally saw the aforesaid crown, a ring of light round about the lowly nun’s rag-veiled head. Pitirim thereupon fell at her feet, to which she responded by asking for his blessing. Repenting of their past conduct, the other nuns now began to honor and revere Isidora as a saint in their midst. To escape this adulation, Isidora left to spend the rest of her life as a hermitess.