Saint Sabbas the Sanctified

Abbot and Monastic Founder
(439–532)

Saint Sabbas the Sanctified was born in 439 at Mutalaska in Cappadocia and entered a monastery as a child of eight, having fled from an unhappy family situation. He showed from his earliest years an extraordinary aptitude for the monastic life, and at the age of eighteen he went to Jerusalem, where he placed himself under the direction of the great Abbot Euthymius. After several years under Euthymius he was directed by his master to place himself under Theoctistus, and in this way he received a thorough formation in the cenobitic life before being given permission to live as a hermit.

He settled in a cave in the Kidron Valley, southeast of Jerusalem, and there attracted disciples who gathered around him, forming the nucleus of the great Laura that bears his name. The Mar Saba monastery, founded around 483 in a spectacular location in the Judean desert cliffs above the Kidron Valley, is one of the most ancient continuously inhabited monasteries in the world and remains an active monastery of the Greek Orthodox Church to this day, its white buildings clinging to the cliffsides above the gorge.

Sabbas governed this community and several other monasteries as archimandrite of all the Palestinian monks, with authority granted by the Patriarch of Jerusalem. He was a fervent defender of the Council of Chalcedon against the Monophysite heresy, and he made several visits to Constantinople to appeal to the emperor on behalf of orthodox theology and of the interests of the Palestinian monks.

He is credited with compiling the Jerusalem Typikon, the liturgical rule that has governed the divine worship of the Eastern churches to this day. He died on December 5, 532, at the age of ninety-three, having spent over eighty years in the monastic life. His feast is celebrated on December 5th.