Saint Theodosius the Cenobiarch

Saint Theodosius, known as the Cenobiarch, was a monk from Cappadocia who in the fifth century founded a great monastery of common life in the Judean Desert, not far from Bethlehem. He was a friend of Saint Sabas and with him defended the faith of the Council of Chalcedon. The Church commemorates him on January 11.

He was born about 424 in Mogariassos, a village in Cappadocia, in present-day Turkey; the exact year is not known. In his youth he served in church as a lector and cantor. His life was written by his disciple Theodore, later bishop of Petra, and by Cyril of Scythopolis. In the middle of the fifth century, under Emperor Marcian, Theodosius set out for the Holy Land. According to Theodore, he visited Saint Simeon Stylites on the way.

In Jerusalem he was received by the monk Longinus, who lived by the Tower of David. On his advice Theodosius settled at a church of the Mother of God that the devout Hikelia had founded on the road to Bethlehem. When he was to become its superior, he withdrew into the desert. He learned from disciples of Saint Euthymius and then made his home in a cave on a hilltop, a few miles from the city. According to an old tradition, the Magi from the East spent a night in it on their way back from Bethlehem.

In time disciples came to him. Thanks to the gifts of an official from Constantinople, Theodosius built a guesthouse above the cave and then a monastery. Beside it rose separate hospitals for monks, for lay people, and for the poor, a home for the aged, and a place of care for brothers who had lost their reason. The monks came from different countries, so Greeks, Armenians, and others prayed in separate churches in their own languages and gathered together for the Eucharist. At the founder’s death the community numbered about four hundred monks.

At the end of the fifth century Patriarch Sallustius of Jerusalem entrusted him with the care of all the monasteries of common life in the Church of Jerusalem and placed the hermits under Saint Sabas. Hence the name Cenobiarch, that is, superior of the cenobites, monks living in community. The two friends defended the teaching of the Council of Chalcedon on Christ, true God and true man, when Emperor Anastasius I supported its opponents. In 516, in the Basilica of Saint Stephen in Jerusalem, thousands of monks under their leadership declared for the council. According to tradition, the emperor sentenced Theodosius to exile, from which the old man returned after the ruler’s death in 518.

Theodosius died on January 11, 529, having named his successor, Sophronius, before his death. The Roman Martyrology calls him a centenarian, and tradition holds that he reached the age of one hundred and five. He was buried in the cave where he had begun his life as a hermit.

Theodosius lived long before the canonization process came into being and has been venerated as a saint since antiquity, also in the Churches of the Byzantine tradition. On the site of his monastery, east of Bethlehem, there stands today the Orthodox Monastery of Saint Theodosius, rebuilt at the turn of the twentieth century.