The Lives of the Saints Volume 1 - St. Patrick's Basilica

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parents, through the intercession of the martyr Polyeuctus. His father
was a noble and wealthy citizen of Melitene in Armenia. Euthymius was
educated in sacred learning, and in the fervent practice of prayer,
silence, humility, and mortification, under the care of the holy bishop
of that city, who ordained him priest, and constituted him his vicar and
general-overseer of the monasteries. The saint often visited that of St.
Polyeuctus, and spent whole nights in prayer on a neighboring mountain;
as he also did all the time from the octave of the Epiphany till towards
the end of Lent. The love of solitude daily growing stronger in his
breast, he secretly left his own country,{186} at twenty-nine years of
age: and, after offering up his prayers at the holy places in Jerusalem,
chose a cell six miles from that city, near the Laura[1] of Pharan. He
made baskets, and procured, by selling them, both his own subsistence
and alms for the poor. Constant prayer was the employment of his soul.
After five years he retired with one Theoctistus, a holy hermit, ten
miles further towards Jericho, where they lived together on raw herbs in
a cave. In this place he began to receive disciples, about the year 411.
He committed the care of his monastery to Theoctistus, and continued
himself in a remote hermitage, only giving audience on Saturdays and
Sundays, to those who desired spiritual advice. He taught all his monks
never to eat so much as to satisfy their hunger, but strictly forbade
among them all singularity in fasts, or any other common observances, as
savoring of vanity and self-will. According to his example, they all
retired into the deserts from the octave of the feast of the Epiphany
till the week before Easter, when they met again in their monastery, to
celebrate the office peculiar to Holy Week. He enjoined them constant
silence and manual labors: they gained their own subsistence, and a
surplus, which they devoted as first-fruits to God in the relief of the
poor.
St. Euthymius cured, by the sign of the cross and a short prayer,
Terebon, one half of whose body had been struck dead with a palsy. His
father, who was an Arabian prince, named Aspebetes, an idolater, had
exhausted on his cure, but to no purpose, the much-boasted arts of
physic and magic among the Persians, to procure some relief for his son.
At the sight of this miracle Aspebetes desired baptism, and took the
name of Peter. Such multitudes of Arabians followed his example, that
Juvenal, patriarch of Jerusalem, ordained him their bishop, and he
assisted at the council of Ephesus against Nestorius in 431. He built
St. Euthymius a Laura on the right hand of the road from Jerusalem to
Jericho, in the year 420. Euthymius could never be prevailed upon to
depart from his rules of strict solitude; but governed his monks by
proper superiors, to whom he gave his directions on Sundays. His
humility and charity won the hearts of all who spoke to him. He seemed
to surpass the great Arsenius in the gift of perpetual tears. Cyril
relates many miracles which he wrought, usually by the sign of the