Euthymius

Saint Euthymius the Great, the most widely commemorated holy man of this name, was born in 377 in Melitene, chief city of the Roman province of Armenia Secunda, to Christian parents named Paul and Dionysia. The principal ancient source is the Life composed in the mid-sixth century by Cyril of Scythopolis, a monk of the Judaean desert writing within reach of Euthymius’s own disciples. That account presents his birth as the fruit of long childlessness and prayer; his father died while he was still a boy, and he was placed in the care of Bishop Otreius of Melitene. Otreius had him trained in Scripture and church order, made him a reader, later ordained him priest, and set him over the monasteries of the Melitene diocese.

In his late twenties Euthymius left Armenia for Palestine in search of a stricter desert life. He first lived at the lavra of Pharan near Jerusalem, a house associated with the earlier father Chariton. After some years he withdrew with his companion Theoctistus into a remote cave in a wadi of the Judaean wilderness. That settlement grew into a coenobium under Theoctistus, while Euthymius himself continued to prefer solitude. He later founded his own lavra on the plateau east of Jerusalem, on the road toward Jericho, which became one of the leading monastic centres of fifth-century Palestine. Disciples came from many regions; among those formed in his circle was the young Sabas, later Saint Sabas the Sanctified, who was trained in the coenobium of Theoctistus under Euthymius’s spiritual influence.

Euthymius’s reputation for asceticism and discernment drew not only Greek-speaking monks but also Arabs of the desert. Hagiographical tradition records the conversion of a Saracen phylarch, often named Aspebetos, after the healing of his son Terebon, and the later appearance of an Arab bishopric connected with that group. Euthymius was a firm supporter of the Council of Chalcedon of 451. Cyril of Scythopolis presents him as helping to turn the empress Aelia Eudocia, then resident in Palestine, away from anti-Chalcedonian teaching. The life of his lavra followed the classic Palestinian pattern: monks lived in scattered cells during the week, occupied with prayer and handwork, and gathered on Saturday and Sunday for liturgy and a common meal.

He died on 20 January 473 at his lavra, at the traditional age of ninety-six or ninety-seven, and was buried at the monastery he had founded. The community continued under his successors; the site, later known as Khan al-Ahmar, remained an important house into the medieval period. His feast is kept on 20 January in the Eastern Orthodox Church and in the Roman Martyrology. As a figure of the age of local and popular recognition of saints, he has no recorded papal or conciliar act of canonization in the later medieval sense. He is remembered as one of the principal organizers of Judaean desert monasticism in the century after Hilarion and Chariton, and as a teacher whose spiritual lineage runs through Sabas to the later lavras of Palestine.