LAZAROS OF MOUNT GALESIOS

Saint Lazarus was one of the very few great founding fathers of monastic life. But unlike Anthony the Great, Hilarion of Gaza, Benedict of Nursia, and later Athanasius of Athos and Sergius of Radonezh, he is much less well known. The reason for this is the rapid disappearance of his monasteries shortly after his death. Lazarus died seven months before the division of the Churches in 1054. Was there not some prophetic connection between the saint’s broken will and the fate of Christianity in a truly biblical symbolism?

1 On July 30, the Church celebrates the memory of Saint Lazarus of Mount Galesios. This name has no connection to Galicia in Spain or any other place with a similar name. The Galesios Mountain was in Asia Minor. Lazarus was a great ascetic and mystic. His detailed biography was recently published in a critical edition.

2 He received an excellent and very pious education. He began his monastic life near present-day Antalya. His childhood dream was to settle in Jerusalem. Over time, he did indeed visit the Holy Land and even became a monk at the Monastery of Saint Sava. There he was ordained a priest by the Patriarch of Jerusalem.

3 When the Fatimid Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and other holy sites in 1009, Lazarus was forced to return to Asia Minor and settle on the right bank of the Little Meander River, north of Ephesus. He spent his life in asceticism on the 764-meter-high Mount Galesios.

4 Lazarus was a great teacher of asceticism and founder of monastic communities such as Benedict of Nursia, Athanasius of Athos, and his contemporaries Anthony and Theodosius of Kiev-Pechersk.

5 The life of Saint Lazarus is detailed and highly instructive. He was a pillar stylite, meaning he spent days and nights on a pillar, like the early Syrian ascetics. His favorite saint of ancient Christianity was Simeon the Stylite. Lazarus lived three times on different pillars, in different places on the same mountain, each time founding a new monastery thanks to the disciples who came to him. Thus, three main monasteries were established, then a fourth, an auxiliary monastery, which was, however, the most numerous, and finally a fifth, a women’s convict. The benefactor of the saint’s monasteries was Emperor Constantine Monomakh (1042–1055), the one whose name gives rise to the story of Monomakh’s Cap, one of the symbols of the future Russian autocracy.

6 It is noteworthy that Lazarus had his first ascetic experiences in his youth in a small community near the historic Chapel of Saint Marina. The Church celebrates his memory on June 17 (30), which coincidentally coincides with the feast day of Lazarus. To paraphrase the great 17th-century theologian, Bishop Cornelius Jansenius (1585–1638), who called Saint Augustine the “matrix of all conclusions,” we can say that God is the source of all coincidences in our lives.

7 Lazarus was not only an outstanding ascetic and experienced spiritual teacher, but also a very courageous man. Once, according to the saint’s biography, he began to climb the nearest mountain in the winter cold and thick fog. Suddenly, he encountered a bear. Lazarus sang psalms, and the animal, amazed that the voice of God spoke to him, went home in peace.

8 “What I love must die,” sang our contemporary Till Lindemann in his 2019 album, six months before the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic. When Saint Lazarus left this world in late autumn, on November 7, 1053, surrounded by his disciples, he signed a previously prepared spiritual testament. Everything indicated that the holy monastic mountain he had founded would flourish. But soon after his departure, nothing remained of his monasteries. The reason for this was likely the spirit of rivalry between the brethren.

9 Seven months after Lazarus’s death, on July 16 (29), 1054, literally on the eve of the day on which the commemoration of the transfer of Lazarus’s relics would henceforth be celebrated, the highest representatives of the heads of the Roman and Constantinople churches cursed each other in the Hagia Sophia. The excommunication was signed with Eucharistic blood from the chalice and then placed on the altar table. “What I love must die.” It turned out that what happened to the monasteries of Saint Lazarus after his death prophetically reflected, on a small scale, what would happen to the entire Church.