03 — The Cenobium and the Lavra
The institutional and human shape of Euthymius’s monasticism: the lavra of solitary cells set over the lower cenobium that trained its novices, the rule of stillness (hesychia) that governed both, and the great missionary episode in which the Saracen phylarch Aspebetos — baptized Peter and consecrated bishop of the desert Camp (the Parembole) — brought the nomads of the steppe into the Church. This section presents Euthymius the founder of a monastic system and Euthymius the apostle to the Arabs, drawn almost wholly from Cyril of Scythopolis’s Life of Euthymius and checked against the conciliar record.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Desert Father; father of Palestinian monasticism)
The two faces of Euthymius shown here belong together. The first is the architect of a particular monastic order: not the pure cenobium of Pachomius nor the pure anchoritism of Antony, but the lavra — a colony of separate cells and caves disposed around a common church, bakery, and refectory, where monks lived as semi-anchorites in the silence of their cells five days a week and gathered on Saturday and Sunday for the synaxis and the common meal. Beneath and before the lavra stood the cenobium, the house of full common life founded with his lifelong companion Theoctistus, which served as the training-school where novices were formed before any of them was ever admitted to a solitary cell. The pattern — cenobium as gateway, lavra as goal — is Euthymius’s distinctive contribution to the monasticism of the Judean desert, and it is treated in the-monastic-pattern.md.
The second face is the missionary. Cyril’s Life makes the desert around Euthymius not empty but peopled — by the nomadic Arabs (the Saraceni of the sources) whose tents moved across the steppe of the Jordan rift. The conversion of their chief Aspebetos, the healing of his paralyzed son Terebon, the baptism of the man as Peter, and his consecration as the first bishop of the Parembole — the “Camp” of tent-dwellers settled near the lavra — make up one of the major episodes of the whole Life and one of the earliest documented chapters in the Christianization of the Arabs of the Roman limes. Bishop Peter would later subscribe among the fathers of the Council of Ephesus (431), the point at which the desert episode touches the firm ground of the conciliar record. This is the subject of the-converted-saracens.md.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| the-monastic-pattern.md | The lavra and the lower cenobium as a single system; the formation of monks (novices trained in the cenobium, then admitted to solitary cells); the rule of stillness (hesychia); the discipline of manual labor, prayer, and the Saturday/Sunday synaxis; Euthymius’s reluctance to take novices and his preference for the few. |
| the-converted-saracens.md | The conversion of the Saracen chief Aspebetos, baptized Peter, after the healing of his son Terebon; Aspebetos made bishop of the Parembole (the Camp of the tent-dwellers); the desert mission to the nomadic Arabs; and Bishop Peter’s later attendance at the Council of Ephesus (431). |
See Also
- The Lavra of Euthymius — the desert of Jerusalem — the founding of the lavra and the lower cenobium that this section’s pattern systematizes
- The Lavra of Euthymius — father of the desert — Euthymius as founding father of Palestinian monasticism, the generation before Sabas
- Asceticism and Miracles — the ascetic and the solitary — the love of stillness and “the cell” that underlies the monastic rule
- The Disciples — Sabas and the next generation — the men formed by this pattern, above all Sabas, who carried the lavriot order forward
- Sources — Cyril of Scythopolis’s Life — the single dossier from which nearly all of this section is drawn, and its reliability
- Orthodoxy: Monasticism — the wider ascetic tradition into which the lavra and cenobium fit
- Orthodoxy: The Ecumenical Councils — the Council of Ephesus (431), at which Bishop Peter of the Parembole subscribed
References
- Cyril of Scythopolis. Life of Euthymius. In R. M. Price, trans., Cyril of Scythopolis: The Lives of the Monks of Palestine (Cistercian Studies 114). Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1991. (The principal source for both files; cited by the section numbering of Eduard Schwartz’s critical edition, Kyrillos von Skythopolis, Texte und Untersuchungen 49.2, Leipzig 1939.)
- John Binns. Ascetics and Ambassadors of Christ: The Monasteries of Palestine 314–631. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. (The lavra/cenobium system; the Parembole and the Saracen federates.)
- Derwas J. Chitty. The Desert a City: An Introduction to the Study of Egyptian and Palestinian Monasticism under the Christian Empire. Oxford: Blackwell, 1966. (The narrative of the Judean desert from Antony to the Arab conquest.)
- Bernard Flusin. Miracle et histoire dans l’œuvre de Cyrille de Scythopolis. Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1983. (Cyril’s method and the place of the miraculous, including the healing of Terebon.)
- Lorenzo Perrone. La chiesa di Palestina e le controversie cristologiche. Brescia: Paideia, 1980. (The Palestinian church and its bishops in the conciliar era.)
- The Council of Ephesus (431), subscriptions of the bishops. (For the attendance of Peter, bishop of the Parembole / of the Saracen camp.)