St. Barsanuphius, Anchoret


HAVING renounced the world, he passed some years in the monastery of St. Seridon, near Gaza in Palestine, in the happy company of that holy abbot, John the prophet, the blessed Dorotheus, and St. Dositheus. That he might live in the constant exercise of heavenly contemplation, the sweetness of which he had begun to relish, he left the monastery about the year 540, and in a remote cell led a life rather angelical than human. He wrote a treatise against the Origenist monks, which Montfaucon has published in his Bibl. Coislin. The Greeks held this saint in so great veneration, that his picture was placed in the sanctuary of the church of Sancta Sophia in Constantinople, with those of St. Antony and St. Ephrem, as we are informed by the Studite monk who wrote the preface to the Instructions of St. Dorotheus, translated into French by abbot Rancé of la Trappe. The relics of St. Barsanuphius were brought in the ninth century to Oria, near Siponto in Italy, where he is honoured as principal patron, on the 7th of Feb. The Greek Synaxaries have his office on the 6th of this month. Baronius placed his name in the Roman Martyrology on the 11th of April. See on him Evagrius, (who finished his history in 593.) l. 4. c. 33. Pagi ad an. 548. n. 10. Bulteau, Hist. Mon. d’Orient. l. 4. c. 9. p. 695.	1