3. So the child was raised devoutly and piously by his parents not unworthy of their hopes for him. When he became articulate in his speech and had reached the age of six, he was handed over by his parents to the aforesaid priest Leontios at the behest of his uncle Elias, who was a monk in the monastery of Kalathai. Because Elias had also heard by word of mouth about the miraculous character of the child’s birth, he said that it had certainly not happened without God’s aid, and for this reason he urged the boy’s parents to let him receive the proper attention for instruction in the holy letters. After three years had passed, they sent him away for instruction, on the orders of the same uncle, to a notary called George who lived at Oroboi. After he had spent another three years there, his uncle took him to the monastery with him to teach him about church matters and to have him as his attendant. However, when the boy saw that his uncle was well endowed with material necessities but gave away nothing at all from his possessions to the poor, he secretly took whatever he found and gave it to the needy. In the end, because Lazarus continued to do this, there was no way for him to escape detection, for when Elias looked for these things and could not find them he began to assail the boy with interrogations, blows, and insults; but he bore everything nobly and did not stop his good work. He would also take books from the church and, reading them by himself in solitude, would reap much profit from them.
