08 — The Monastery Through the Ages

The afterlife of the foundation: the long history of the Great Lavra — Mar Saba — from the death of its founder to the present, and the fortunes of his relics across fifteen centuries. Where the rest of the collection treats Sabbas and his own age, this section follows the institution he left behind: a monastery that survived the Persian sack, the Arab conquest, the Crusades, and the Ottoman centuries, that became under Islam the workshop of John of Damascus and the cradle of Arabic Christian theology, and that lives still in the gorge of the Kidron under the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Desert Father; founder of the Great Lavra)

St Sabbas died in 532, but the lavra he founded did not die with him; it became one of the most durable institutions of Eastern Christianity. This section traces that durability. The first file follows the continuous — or very nearly continuous — life of Mar Saba across the empires that have ruled the Holy Land: the catastrophe of the Sasanian invasion of 614 and the memory of the Sabaite martyrs, the Arab conquest of 638 and the paradoxical golden age it opened, the towering presence of St John of Damascus and the turn to Arabic Christian theology in the Sabaite milieu, the monastery’s role as a centre of manuscript production, and its later fortunes through the Crusader, Ottoman, and modern periods down to the strict regime — the long offices, the absence of electricity, the enclosure barred to women with its Women’s Tower — under which the lavra lives today. The second file follows the relics of the founder himself: buried at the lavra, carried in the medieval centuries to Venice, and returned in 1965 by Pope Paul VI in the era of the lifting of the 1054 anathemas. Throughout, miracle and incorruption claims are reported as the tradition attests them rather than asserted as bare fact (METHODOLOGY §3.5), and dates and details that the sources do not secure are flagged as disputed.

Files in This Section

File Description
Mar Saba, the Living Monastery The continuous life of the Great Lavra from the sixth century to the present: the Persian sack of 614 and the Sabaite martyrs; the Arab conquest of 638 and life under Islam; the golden age of Sabaite theology and hymnography — above all St John of Damascus, who lived, wrote, and was buried there — and the turn to Arabic Christian theology associated with the Sabaite milieu and Theodore Abū Qurrah; the monastery as a centre of Greek and Arabic manuscript production; the Crusader, Ottoman, and Russian-supported centuries, the earthquakes and rebuildings; and the strict regime of the living monastery today.
The Relics The relics of St Sabbas: his death and burial at the lavra in 532; the veneration of his relics, held in the tradition to be incorrupt; the medieval translation to Venice (the church of San Antonino); and the documented modern return — the 1965 restoration of the relics to Mar Saba by Pope Paul VI in the era of the Paul VI–Athenagoras rapprochement and the lifting of the 1054 anathemas.

See Also

References

  • Cyril of Scythopolis. Life of Sabas, in The Lives of the Monks of Palestine. Trans. R. M. Price, intro. and notes John Binns. Cistercian Studies 114. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1991.
  • Binns, John. Ascetics and Ambassadors of Christ: The Monasteries of Palestine 314–631. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.
  • Patrich, Joseph. Sabas, Leader of Palestinian Monasticism. Dumbarton Oaks Studies 32. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1995.
  • Chitty, Derwas J. The Desert a City. Oxford: Blackwell, 1966.
  • Griffith, Sidney H. The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.
  • Louth, Andrew. St John Damascene: Tradition and Originality in Byzantine Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
  • Common Declaration of Pope Paul VI and the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I (7 December 1965).