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Pilgrimage in the Holy Land

St John Phocas, tr. Stewart, 1889

Chapter 17

Returning, then, to the Holy City, not by the valley, but across the neighbouring mountain-ridge, at a distance of six miles from it, you will find the monastery of our holy father Theodosius the Cœnobiarch.¹ This monastery is encircled by various towers, and about an arrow-shot in front of it is the chamber in which, as we read in his ‘Life,’ extinguished coals were lighted in the saint’s hand. In the midst of the monastery, on a rising ground, stands the church, which has a circular roof, and beneath it a grotto, in which is the tomb of the saint, and adjoining it several chambers, in which lie the relics of great saints. When you descend the steps into this grotto you will find on the side of it the mouth of another grotto, into which the disciple of Saint Basilius entered, and, at the saint’s bidding, chose his own tomb, as we are told in the Lives of the Fathers, lay dead therein, and afterwards for forty days at the time of service was seen singing hymns together with the saint and the brethren.

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