Barsanuphius the Great and John the Prophet
Our Venerable Fathers Barsanuphius the Great and John the Prophet, of Gaza
Venerable · d. 6th century (Barsanuphius after 543; John shortly after Abba Seridus)
Commemorated 6 February — Commemorated together, within the afterfeast of the Meeting
Barsanuphius the Great (†after 543) and John the Prophet (†mid-6th century) were two hesychast elders of the monastery of Abba Seridus at Thavatha near Gaza, in Palestine, in the age of Justinian — the "Great Old Man" and the "Other Old Man." Both lived in strict enclosure, seeing almost no one; Barsanuphius, an Egyptian by birth, passed some fifty years walled in his cell in unbroken silence, and John dwelt eighteen years in the cell his master had left him. Yet from their reclusion they became the most sought spiritual fathers of their region, directing hundreds of monks and layfolk entirely by written answers, dictated through the abbot Seridus. That correspondence — the great Book of Questions and Answers, some eight hundred and fifty letters — is one of the treasures of Orthodox ascetic literature, a manual of discernment, humility, and unceasing prayer whose disciples included Dorotheus of Gaza and the young martyr Dositheus. The two elders are commemorated together on February 6.
The monastery of Seridus at Thavatha
The setting is the flowering of monastic life around Gaza in the late fifth and sixth centuries — the coastland of southern Palestine that, since the days of Hilarion the Great, had been sown with monasteries. At Thavatha, a little south of Gaza, stood the cenobium governed by Abba Seridus, and it was made illustrious by two recluses who dwelt beside it.
Barsanuphius, called the Great and "the Great Old Man" (ὁ Μέγας Γέρων), was an Egyptian by origin who had come to Palestine and, seeking the utmost stillness, shut himself into a cell walled up beside the monastery. There, the tradition says, he lived for some fifty years in the strictest enclosure, eating a little bread, seen by scarcely anyone, and speaking to no one face to face. So complete was his seclusion that when a doubting bishop refused to believe a living man could endure such a life and suspected the cell was empty, Barsanuphius came out once — only to wash the feet of the assembled brethren, and then withdrew again, and was never seen again in the body. All his direction of souls he gave in writing, dictating his answers to Seridus, who wrote them down and carried them out.
His disciple John, surnamed the Prophet (ὁ Προφήτης) for his gift of foresight and discernment, and known as the "Other Old Man," entered the very cell Barsanuphius had first occupied and lived there in like enclosure for eighteen years, imitating his master in silence, ascesis, and virtue. To him Barsanuphius entrusted much of the answering of questions, so that between the two elders the whole spiritual government of the community and its many petitioners was carried on.
The Book of Questions and Answers
Because the two Old Men would not teach aloud, their teaching survives in a form almost unique in the tradition: a vast body of letters of spiritual direction, questions put by monks, clergy, and layfolk of every condition, and the elders' answers, gathered after their death into the Βίβλος — the Book of Questions and Answers, or Correspondence (Ἐρωταποκρίσεις), some 850 letters in all. It is a living record of the diakrisis, the discernment, at the heart of Eastern spiritual fatherhood: on prayer and the unceasing invocation of the Name, on the passions and their cure, on obedience and the cutting off of one's own will, on how far to trust a thought, on bodily illness borne with thanksgiving, on the measure to be kept in ascesis, and always on humility as the ground of all. Its counsel is gentle, exact, and free of severity for severity's sake; the Great Old Man signs his letters with blessings and with the promise to bear his disciples' burdens before God. The book was read and honoured through the whole later tradition — cited by Theodore the Studite and Symeon the New Theologian, drawn on by the compilers of the Philokalia, and never out of use among Orthodox monastics.
Among those formed at Thavatha under the elders' direction were Dorotheus of Gaza — later himself a celebrated abba and author of the beloved Spiritual Instructions, who as a young monk put many of the questions preserved in the book — and the youth Dositheus, Dorotheus's disciple, whose swift sanctification in perfect obedience, though he died young and had practised no great austerities, became a classic lesson of the school. Through Dorotheus above all, the teaching of the two silent elders passed into the mainstream of Orthodox ascetic writing.
Repose
The end of the elders is bound to the community they served. John the Prophet, gifted with foreknowledge, foretold that he would die shortly after the abbot Seridus; when Seridus reposed, John followed him within a short space (the tradition says about a week or two). After John's death, Barsanuphius — who had already withdrawn beyond all human converse — fell wholly silent, giving no more answers, and passed the remainder of his days in unbroken stillness until his own repose. Barsanuphius is reckoned to have died after 543; the exact years of both elders are uncertain, and belong to the middle of the sixth century, in the reign of Justinian. Their memory is kept as that of the two great hesychasts of Gaza, teachers of discernment and of the prayer of the heart.
Feast and commemoration
The two elders are commemorated together on February 6 (church date; Old Calendar civil February 19), within the afterfeast of the Meeting of the Lord, their office sung with the hymns of the Meeting. The Greek and Slavic calendars keep them jointly on this day. Barsanuphius is also honoured locally in the West of southern Italy (Oria in Apulia claims his relics and keeps his memory), a cult carried thither in the Byzantine period.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 8
In you, O Fathers, was that which is according to the image saved with all exactness; for taking up the Cross, you followed after Christ, and by your deeds you taught the disdain of the flesh, for it passeth away, but the care of the soul, a thing immortal. Wherefore, O venerable Barsanuphius and John, your spirits rejoice together with the Angels.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Barsanuphius and John are depicted as aged monastic elders in the schema — long grey beards, monastic koukoulion and analavos — often shown together, one holding a scroll of spiritual counsel, in token of the written teaching by which alone they were known. Because both lived in total enclosure, their portraits are few and belong to the later tradition rather than to the sixth century; a securely identified pre-modern image of the two together, in a licence-clean reproduction, has not been found, and an icon is wanted.
Disputed questions
- Dates and details. The chronology is inexact: Barsanuphius is documented as living in 543 and is thought to have died not long after; the length of the enclosures (fifty years for Barsanuphius, eighteen for John) and the single emergence of the Great Old Man are given by the tradition and the introduction to the Book, not by dated record.
- Not to be confused with the later Russian hierarch Barsanuphius (Varsonofy) of Kazan (†1576), bishop of Tver and one of the wonderworkers of Kazan, a wholly different saint of a different land and age; nor is this John to be confused with the many other saints named John. These are the two Old Men of Gaza, of the sixth century.