Lazaros of Mount Galesios

Lazaros of Mount Galesios, also known as Lazarus the Galesiote or Lazarus the Wonderworker, was a Byzantine monk, priest, and stylite of the eleventh century. His life is known chiefly from a long biography composed soon after his death by his disciple Gregory the Cellarer. He was born in the village of Neara, near Magnesia on the Maeander in western Asia Minor, in the Thrakesian theme of the Byzantine Empire. His baptismal name was Leo. Raised in a Christian family, he left home as a young man against his relatives’ wishes, intending to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He first received the monastic tonsure at the monastery of Saint Menas near Attaleia in Pamphylia and took the name Lazaros.

From Asia Minor he continued to the Holy Land. He lived for a number of years at the lavra of Saint Sabas in the Judaean desert, a principal centre of Palestinian monasticism, and was ordained to the priesthood. He also spent time as a hermit in the desert. In the early eleventh century he left Palestine and returned to Asia Minor. After a period in the region of Ephesus he withdrew to Mount Galesios (Galesion), a height north of Ephesus above the Cayster valley, which became the setting of the rest of his life.

On Mount Galesios Lazaros adopted the life of a stylite, remaining for many years on a pillar in the tradition of earlier pillar saints of the Christian East. Disciples gathered around him, and he organized them into monastic communities. He founded three monasteries on the mountain, dedicated to the Savior, to the Theotokos, and to the Resurrection. While continuing to live as a stylite he served as spiritual father of these houses. His asceticism, reputation for miracles, and role as a guide drew monks, lay visitors, and occasional notice from the imperial court in Constantinople, including in the reign of Constantine IX Monomachos. Relations with the metropolitan see of Ephesus were at times strained over jurisdiction and the independence of the Galesiote monasteries.

Lazaros died on 7 November 1053 at his community on Mount Galesios and was buried there. Gregory the Cellarer’s Life, written within a few years of the saint’s death, is a major source for Lazaros himself and for Byzantine monastic practice, stylitism, and provincial religious life in the eleventh century. He was venerated as a saint in the Byzantine Church; his feast is observed on 7 November in the Eastern Orthodox calendar. The monasteries of Mount Galesios remained active after his death and formed an important monastic cluster in western Asia Minor until the region was transformed by the Turkish conquests of the later eleventh century.