During the later fifth and early sixth centuries the most creative developments in Eastern Christian monasticism occurred not in Egypt or in Syria, but in Palestine, through the work of St Euthymius and St Sabas. Cyril recounts their lives with striking vividness. He writes as an insider, basing himself carefully on the evidence of those who knew the two saints personally and describing with unusual topographical accuracy the monastic world in which he was himself living. 

Translated by: R. M. Price
Introduction and notes by: John Binns