Malchus of Syria was a fourth-century ascetic, the only child of a farming family near Nisibis, who chose monastic life in the desert of Chalcis over the marriage his parents intended for him. After several years as a monk, he learned of his father's death and left the monastery without his abbot's permission to travel home and claim his inheritance — a departure from obedience that, in the account preserved of his life, set in motion the trials that followed.
Traveling homeward with a group of pilgrims, Malchus was captured by Saracen raiders and sold into slavery. His master compelled him to take as wife another captive whose own husband had been sold to a different owner. Malchus refused to consummate the union and proposed to take his own life rather than break his monastic vow; the woman then proposed that they live chastely 'as brother and sister,' an arrangement he accepted while they concealed it from their master.
The pair eventually escaped captivity, were freed at a Roman fort, and returned to monastic life — Malchus to a men's monastery and his companion to a women's monastery, both at Maronia. He spent his remaining years recounting his trials as instruction for other monks on the value of monastic obedience. His story survives solely through Jerome's biography, written after Jerome interviewed Malchus and his companion in person while both were still alive.
