St Sabas's Monastery

(Local Name: Mar Saba) West Bank.

Altitude: 240m/785ft

Situation and characteristics

The historic old Greek Orthodox monastery of St Sabas (Mar Saba) lies 18km/11mi from Bethlehem in the Judaean Hills, here sloping down towards the Dead Sea, on the Israeli-occupied west bank of the Jordan. The monastery is reached by way of Bethlehem or from Jerusalem on a road which runs southeast via Abu Dis. Its watch-tower can be seen from afar rising amid the barren Judaean Hills. The last stretch of the road runs downhill, to end immediately in front of the entrance to the monastery.

History

In the almost vertical rock walls of the Kidron gorge to the west of St Sabas's Monastery are innumerable caves which were inhabited by hermits in the early Christian centuries. One of these was occupied by the young Sabas, who - like the founder of the monastery of St Theodosius - was a native of Cappadocia (born 439). In 457 he entered a monastery in Jerusalem, but in 478 left it to seek solitude in the Kidron valley. Here there grew up a community of anchorites, and in 492 Sabas founded the monastery which bears his name on the slopes of the gorge opposite his first cave. Sabas gained a great reputation not only in Palestine but also in the capital of the Empire, Constantinople, and at the great age of 90 he traveled to that city and persuaded the Emperor Justinian to rebuild the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. After his death in 532 at the age of 93 his tomb became a place of pilgrimage, and many daughter houses were founded by monks from his monastery. The monastery was destroyed and its monks slaughtered by the Persians in 614 and the Arabs in 636. Nevertheless it survived, and in 712 it received within its walls a man whose impact on the world of Orthodox Christianity was no less powerful that that of Sabas. This was John of Damascus. Born about 650, the son of a noble Arab Christian family, John rose to high honor at the brilliant court of the Omayyad Caliph in Damascus, representing the Caliph's Christian subjects. At the age of about 50, however, he "preferred the humiliation of Christ to the treasures of Arabia", left Damascus and became a monk at Mar Saba. When an edict issued by the Emperor Leo III in 726 initiated the iconoclastic movement which resulted in the destruction of countless icons and was not finally brought to an end until 843, John of Damascus, from his base in St Sabas's monastery, became the most prominent defender of the veneration of images, for which he set out the theological justification in three famous speeches directed against the iconoclasts. Here too he wrote his treatises against Islam and against deviations from Christian orthodoxy (Nestorianism, Monophysitism). His most important theological work, the "Fount of Wisdom", was also written in the monastery. When John of Damascus died at a great age (according to tradition at 104) about 750 he was recognized as the greatest theologian of his day.

The monastery's two leading figures were not destined to remain undisturbed even in death. The remains of St Sabas were taken to Venice in the 12th century by the Crusaders; and when, in 1838, the Russians rebuilt the monastery after its destruction in the early 19th century they carried off the remains of St John of Damascus to Moscow. In 1965, however, in pursuance of his policy of reconciliation between the Roman Catholic and the Eastern churches, Pope Paul VI returned the relics of St Sabas to the monastery.