09 — Veneration and Legacy
The closing, assessing section of the guide: the feast of St. Euthymius the Great on 20 January — the very day of his death in 473 — and the cult, the office, and the liturgical memory that the Orthodox churches keep; and a sober weighing of his place in history, as a founder of Palestinian monasticism, the architect of the alliance between the desert and the patriarchate, and the decisive monastic voice for Chalcedon in Palestine — held against the candid fact that nearly everything we know of him comes from a single, unusually reliable source.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Desert Father; father of Palestinian monasticism)
This final section is the capstone of the guide. Having traced Euthymius from his birth at Melitene (377) through the founding of his lavra, the Saracen mission, the Chalcedonian struggle, the sources, the asceticism and miracles, the disciples, and his place beside Sabas and Theodosius, it now asks how he is remembered and what, soberly weighed, his significance amounts to.
Two questions divide the section. The first is cultic: when and how is Euthymius commemorated, and what does the liturgical tradition make of him? He died on 20 January 473, aged about ninety-six, in the lavra east of Jerusalem that he had founded; the Church keeps his feast on that same 20 January — the death-date is the feast-date — with a troparion and kontakion in the Menaion, and his memory is carried in the Greek, Slavic, Georgian, and Antiochian churches and in the Roman martyrology. The second is historical: what is his real place in the story of monasticism and of the Chalcedonian East, and how does the way he is remembered stand against the documentary record — a record that is, almost in its entirety, the Life written by Cyril of Scythopolis some eighty years after his death.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| feast-and-cult.md | The death on 20 January 473 and the burial; the feast kept on that day across the Orthodox churches and in the Roman martyrology; the title “the Great” (ho megas); the place of Euthymius in the Synaxarion and the Menaion; the troparion and kontakion; his commemoration in the Greek, Slavic, Georgian, and Antiochian traditions; the lavra and monastery (Khan al-Ahmar) as a place of pilgrimage; and the churches and dedications that bear his name |
| legacy-and-assessment.md | A sober assessment of Euthymius’s place in history: as a founder of Palestinian monasticism and of the lavra-cenobium pattern, the generation before Sabas; as the architect of the alliance between desert and patriarchate; as the decisive monastic voice for Chalcedon in Palestine and in the recovery of the Empress Eudocia; the way he is remembered against the single-source problem; his significance for the Chalcedonian East and the later Byzantine and Sabaite tradition; and an honest weighing of what can and cannot be claimed |
See Also
- Sabas and the Next Generation — the heir through whom Euthymius’s legacy passed into the classical Judean monasticism of the sixth century
- The Palestinian Monastic Trinity — Euthymius beside Sabas and Theodosius, and the lavra-cenobium synthesis assessed here
- Veneration — the parallel treatment of the cult in the preceding section, here focused on the feast and office
- Cyril of Scythopolis’s Life — the single great source behind both the cult and the assessment
- Against the Monophysites — the Chalcedonian stand that is the core of the historical legacy
- Orthodoxy: Monasticism — the ascetic tradition Euthymius helped to found
- Orthodoxy: The Ecumenical Councils — Chalcedon (451), the council whose cause Euthymius carried
- St. Sabbas the Sanctified — the greatest of the disciples, the lawgiver of the Judean desert
References
- Cyril of Scythopolis. The Lives of the Monks of Palestine (Life of Euthymius, Life of Sabas). Translated by R. M. Price. Cistercian Studies 114. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1991. (Cited by the section numbering of the Schwartz edition.)
- Binns, John. Ascetics and Ambassadors of Christ: The Monasteries of Palestine 314–631. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.
- Chitty, Derwas J. The Desert a City. Oxford: Blackwell, 1966.
- Flusin, Bernard. Miracle et histoire dans l’œuvre de Cyrille de Scythopolis. Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1983.
- Perrone, Lorenzo. La chiesa di Palestina e le controversie cristologiche. Brescia: Paideia, 1980.
- The Menaion for the month of January (the office and Synaxarion notice for 20 January).