Venerable Euthymius the Great

Euthymius the Great (377 – 20 January 473) was an abbot in Palestine. He is venerated in both Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. Euthymius' vita was written by Cyril of Skythopolis, who describes him as the founder of several monasteries in the Judaean desert, while remaining a solitary monk in the tradition of Egyptian monasticism. He nevertheless played a decisive role in helping the decisions of the Council of Chalcedon (451) prevail in Jerusalem, in spite of the majority of the monks in the region opposing it. The vita of Euthymius has been written by Cyril of Scythopolis. Euthymius was born in Melitene in Lesser Armenia in 377, in a pious family of noble birth. According to Christian tradition, his parents, Paul and Dionysia, had prayed for a son at the church of Saint Polyeuctus in Melitene. When the child was born, they named him Euthymius, meaning "good cheer". Euthymius was educated by Bishop Otreius of Melitene, who afterwards ordained him and placed him in charge of all the monasteries in the Diocese of Melitene. In 405 or 406, at twenty-nine or thirty years of age, he secretly set out on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and remained for five years there in an anchoritic cell he built for himself in a cave near the laura (settlement of monks) of Pharan, about six miles east of Jerusalem, at Ein Fara in Wadi Kelt. In 411, Euthymius withdrew into the wilderness (Greek eremos) with a fellow hermit from Pharan, Theoctistus (see below), living in a rough cavern on the banks of a torrent. When many disciples gathered around them, they turned the cavern into a church and established a monastery. Because the cave location was not suitable for a laura, it developed into a coenobium (communal monastic settlement), the first of its kind in the Judaean Desert.