George the Chozebite
Our Venerable Father George the Chozebite
Venerable · b. mid-6th century, Cyprus — d. c. 625, at the Monastery of Choziba in the Judean desert
Commemorated 8 January — Repose; kept within the afterfeast of the Theophany
George the Chozebite (mid-sixth century – c. 625) was one of the great ascetics of the Judean desert, abbot of the Monastery of Choziba in the gorge of the Wadi Qelt between Jerusalem and Jericho. Born on Cyprus and orphaned young, he followed his elder brother Heraclides into the monasteries of Palestine, passing from the lavra of Calamon by the Jordan to the coenobium of Choziba, where he spent the rest of his long life in humility, obedience, and unsparing labour, and where he became the community's revered elder and head. He lived through the catastrophe of the Persian invasion of 614, when Jerusalem fell and the desert monasteries were sacked, surviving to gather again the scattered brethren and to die in peace amid the ruins. His life is known in unusual detail because his own disciple, Antony of Choziba, wrote it down soon after his repose — a first-hand portrait of Palestinian monasticism in its last age before the Arab conquest. He is commemorated on January 8, within the afterfeast of the Theophany.
Origins and early life
George was a native of Cyprus, born about the middle of the sixth century into a devout family. According to the Life composed by his disciple Antony, he and his elder brother Heraclides were left orphans while George was still a child, and the boy was raised for a time by an uncle. Heraclides, the elder, set out first for the Holy Land to venerate the holy places, and remained there, entering the lavra of Calamon near the river Jordan. George, still young and pressed by the uncle to marry and take up the world, fled to follow his brother. Arriving at Calamon, he was judged too young to be received into that austere community; Heraclides therefore placed him in the nearby coenobium of Choziba, where he could be formed in the common life under the guidance of elders before facing the solitary rigours of the lavra.
Ascetic struggle at Choziba
The Monastery of Choziba — in Greek τὸ Χοζιβά, from the Aramaic name of the place — clung to the cliff face of the Wadi Qelt (the torrent-bed the Old Latin and Byzantine pilgrims associated with the brook Cherith where the Prophet Elias was fed by ravens), on the ancient road that descends from Jerusalem to Jericho. It was already an old and famous house, gathered around the memory of five Syrian hermits who had settled there in the fifth century and reorganised as a coenobium by John the Chozebite, the sixth-century hermit and later bishop of Caesarea whose name the monastery long bore. Into this community George was received as a young monk, and here — apart from an interval spent again at Calamon with his brother — he passed the whole of his ascetic life.
Antony's Life dwells not on marvels but on the texture of George's sanctity: his radical humility, his refusal of honour, his eager taking-on of the meanest and heaviest tasks of the house, his long vigils and severe fasting, and his tender care for the poor, the sick, and the strangers who came to the monastery's gate on the desert road. He would gather the leavings of the brethren's meals and the scraps others discarded and make of them his own food, and he laboured in the fields and at every service as the least of the community. When his brother Heraclides died at Calamon, George was drawn still deeper into the ascetic life, and in time — against his own will, the tradition holds — the brethren of Choziba set him at their head. He governed less by command than by example, "having become," in the phrase of the synaxaria, "an angel upon the earth and a citizen of heaven."
The Persian invasion and last years
George's old age fell in the years of the great disaster that overtook Christian Palestine. In 614 the armies of the Persian king Chosroes II, allied with local forces, overran Syria and Palestine and stormed Jerusalem; the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was burned, the relic of the Cross carried off, and the monasteries of the Judean desert — Choziba among them — plundered and their monks slaughtered or scattered. Antony's Life preserves the memory of these terrors from within the community. George survived the sack, withdrawing for a time (with his disciple) to the ruined lavra of Calamon and the caves of the region, and afterwards returning to the devastated Choziba, where he laboured in his last years to gather again the surviving brethren and to restore the common life. Worn out by age and asceticism, he reposed in peace about the year 625, before the Arab conquest that would soon change the face of Christian Palestine for ever.
Hagiographic legacy
The Life of George is the work of Antony of Choziba (Antonius Chozibita), the saint's own disciple and cell-attendant, who wrote it within living memory of the events he describes. It is a document of the first rank for the history of Palestinian monasticism in the generation of the Persian wars, all the more precious because so much of that world was swept away soon after; the same Antony also compiled a collection of the Miracles of the Most Holy Theotokos of Choziba, the wonderworking icon and the Marian devotion for which the monastery was, and remains, renowned. Through Antony's pen George stands as a fully historical figure, not a saint of legend — one of the last great elders of the desert of the Jordan.
Feast and commemoration
George is commemorated on January 8 (church date; Old Calendar civil January 21), a day that falls within the afterfeast of the Theophany, so that his office in the Menaion is sung together with the hymns of the Baptism of Christ and yields precedence to them. The Greek, Slavic, and Antiochian calendars agree on the day, and keep him together with the venerable Domnica of Constantinople, the confessor Emilian of Cyzicus, and the martyrs of the day. He should not be confused with the earlier luminary of his own house, John the Chozebite (bishop of Caesarea, sixth century, kept October 3), the monastery's reorganiser after whom it was long named.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 1
Thou wast shown to be a citizen of the wilderness, an angel in the body, and a wonderworker, O our God-bearing Father George; by fasting, vigil, and prayer thou didst receive heavenly gifts, and thou healest the sick and the souls of those who run to thee in faith. Glory to him that gave thee strength; glory to him that crowned thee; glory to him that worketh healings for all through thee.
Original translation from the Greek
Kontakion — Tone 4
In thee, O Father, was preserved unfailing the image; for taking up the Cross thou didst follow Christ, and by thy deeds thou didst teach us to despise the flesh, for it passeth away, and to have care for the soul, a thing immortal. Therefore doth thy spirit, O venerable George, rejoice together with the Angels.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
George is shown in the settled type of the desert abbot: an aged monk, long white beard, in the dark tunic, analavos, and koukoulion of the great schema, one hand raised in blessing or holding a scroll, the other often bearing a cross — the image of the Palestinian ascetic elder. He is frequently depicted in the wall-paintings of his own monastery in the Wadi Qelt, which survives and is served to this day, and in Menaia and menologion cycles for January. No storable public-domain image of the saint that could be identified with certainty was found at the time of writing; the entry notes a wanted icon.