Early medieval (6th century)
Feast: September 16
His most famous teaching uses a circle: the closer the points on the rim move toward the center, the closer they get to each other. The center is God.
Dorotheos came from a wealthy family and got a good education before entering the monastery of Abba Seridus near Gaza in the early 500s. He was assigned to care for the sick — a job that exhausted and frustrated him. He also had to manage a difficult fellow monk named Dositheos, who was young, impulsive, and dying. Dorotheos nursed Dositheos through his final illness, teaching him patience one small instruction at a time: eat a little less today, pray a little more, hold your tongue when you want to snap. Dositheos died at peace. Years later, Dorotheos founded his own monastery and began giving conferences to his monks — practical talks about daily life together. They're disarmingly simple. He compares the soul to a house: if you let a single weed grow in the courtyard, soon the whole thing is overgrown. He talks about how to answer when someone criticizes you (don't defend yourself; consider whether they might be right). His most quoted image is the circle: God is at the center, and people are points on the rim. The closer each point moves toward the center, the closer the points get to each other. Community and prayer aren't separate projects — they're the same movement. His writings have been standard reading in Eastern monasteries for fifteen centuries, not because they're brilliant but because they're useful.