TEODOSIO the CENOBIARCH, saint. — Founder of the monastery of St. Teodosio, on a height in the desert of Judah, and archimandrite of the Jerusalem cenobites, whence his appellation; born at Magarisso (or Garisso) in Cappadocia around 424, he died in his monastery on 11 January 529. The name of T., besides appearing in the Eastern liturgical books, is found in the Marble Calendar of Naples and in the Roman Martyrology on 11 January.
In order to satisfy his desire to devote himself to the ascetic life, he left his homeland to go to Palestine: in the vicinity of Antioch he visited St. Simeon Stylites to seek his advice and, having arrived in Jerusalem, in 451 placed himself under the direction of the ascetic Longinus, one of the most venerable spoudaei who lived in the Tower of David. Around 455 the noblewoman Ikelia, founder of the monastery in the Old Cathisma, situated between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, obtained from Longinus that T. transfer there with other Hagiopolite monks; at her death, the devout Ikelia left the temporal administration of the monastery to T., who, fearful of the office of hegumen to which he had been appointed, fled to Metopa, near the anchorites Marinus and Lucas, and settled in the cave which tradition said had been the refuge of the Magi. The continual arrival of disciples induced him, between 460 and 470, to build there a monastery where the practice of arts and crafts was combined with the strictest asceticism. Charity was generously practiced there: pilgrims and beggars received daily distributions of food; sick religious and foreigners, rich and poor alike, were received in separate hospitals; veterans of the solitary life in a gerontocomium; devout benefactresses in a nosocomium; and the energumeni, that is, the insane, in their own hospice. While, for the Divine Psalmody, the monks of Greek, Slavonic (Bessi), and Armenian speech assembled in separate churches, for the celebration of Holy Mass they all went to the Greek Church. For the insane, it was celebrated in their private oratory. The fame of the sanctity and administrative abilities of T., hegumen of no fewer than 400 monks, quickly spread throughout Palestine, so much so that in 493 he was chosen as archimandrite of all the cenobites of Jerusalem (cf. J. Pargoire, Archimandrite, in DACL, I, II, col. 2744; P. de Meester, De monachico statu iuxta discipl. byc., Città del Vaticano 1942, p. 195).
T. and his great friend St. Saba (v.) adopted an extremely energetic attitude on the occasion of the struggle against the Monophysite and anti-Chalcedonian inclinations of the Emperor Anastasius. T. and St. Saba were responsible for organizing the grandiose monastic assembly (10,000 men) in the Church of St. Stephen in Jerusalem (late 516 or early 517), during which the patriarch John was compelled to anathematize Severus of Antioch. It was then that the venerable T., before descending from the ambo, uttered the apostrophe that deeply moved the already electrified assembly: “If anyone does not believe in the 4 Councils as in the 4 Gospels, let him be anathema.” Despite the decree of exile issued immediately afterward by Anastasius, T. and St. Saba, having once again assembled the entire Palestinian monastic population, sent the Emperor a vigorous protest, a sort of formal refusal of the attempt to make them accept communion with Severus of Antioch. After the death of Anastasius (518), T. governed for another 11 years the monastery, which had taken on the appearance of a veritable city, situated on a height from which Jerusalem and Bethlehem could be seen. Patriarch Peter of Jerusalem presided over the funeral of T., the great luminary of the desert of Judah, whose body was laid in the cave he had chosen as his refuge more than half a century earlier. The monastery of St. Teodosio, today Dejr Dōsi, destroyed
in the 15th century, was rebuilt at the beginning of our century by the Greek monks of Jerusalem.
d'hist. et de philol. orient., II, Bruxelles 1951, pp. 240–46 and passim. A. Pietro Frutaz