The life of St Cyriacos of Palestine
In Palestine he sought out the wilderness community of Euthymius the Great, who, recognizing something unusual in the young man, tonsured him into monastic life himself and placed him under the care of the elder Gerasimus in the community by the Jordan. There Cyriacus kept a rule as strict as any around him, sleeping little, eating only every other day, and giving himself entirely to prayer and the community's common labor. In time he withdrew further, seeking out the remote Rouba desert, where he lived in solitude for some five years. He also lent his voice against the spreading Origenist teaching that troubled the Palestinian monasteries in his later years, standing with those defending the older faith. He lived to a great age, dying in 557 at the cave of Chariton, and much of what is remembered of him comes down through the biography written by Cyril of Scythopolis, who drew on Cyriacus's own long memory of the desert fathers he had known. He is kept distinct in the Church's memory from an unrelated bishop of the same name, Cyriacus of Jerusalem, martyred centuries earlier under Julian the Apostate.
