The Mount of Temptation. Photo: Pravoslavie.ru
The Mount of Temptation—a holy place—towers over ancient Jericho. We walked up there in 2006. I remember how difficult the ascent was: the searing heat, as if we had been placed inside a huge oven, the steep rocky path running between the mountain and the precipice, and on top of this the continual thirst. It probably couldn’t have been any other way, because we were climbing to the place where the devil tempted Christ during His forty-day prayer (Lk. 4:1-13).
Do you remember the Gospel of Luke? If Thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread, satan said insinuatingly, prompting the fasting Christ to a lack of abstinence. The Lord replied to the tempter: Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God. But the devil would not let up, deciding to try and tempt the Savior with fame and wealth, lifting Christ up to a high mountain and showing Him all the countries of the earth in one moment: All this power will I give Thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it. If Thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be Thine. Jesus said to the evil interlocutor, Get thee behind me, satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve. Then the enemy of the human race attempted to incite pride in Christ—he took Him to Jerusalem and placed Him on the pinnacle of the Temple, offering: If Thou be the Son of God, cast Thyself down from hence: For it is written, He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee: And in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. Jesus Christ, being one of the Divine Persons of the Holy Trinity, replied humbly and simply, It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. And, ashamed, the devil departed for a time. Obviously, the “descendants of the Orthodox”1 should remember this conversation to the end of their days to prevent satan from gaining victories over us.
At the beginning of our ascent, the Sarantarion Monastery (“the Monastery of Temptation”) was visible like a stone ribbon encircling the mountain’s amber-sandy heights, like bright swallow nests stuck to the rocks. But as we approached our destination, the monastery began to grow and transform itself before our eyes, and eventually became a spiritual fortress that can only be taken by a humble spirit and quiet prayer. Knocking on the high iron doors, we crossed the monastery threshold and immediately entered a long narrow gallery; on one side there were wild rocks, and on the other stood the stone cells of the monks. It seemed to me that the whole monastery was an endless bright corridor, resembling my life, “chained” to creative “slavery”, without the right to any mistakes or tiny holidays. The monastery had a small Church of the Annunciation, cut in the mountain. It was there that we were heading, passing through a cave connected to the church, in which, according to tradition, the Lord prayed in solitude for forty days.
The Church of the Annunciation is situated in a natural cave, but its sanctuary is on a platform built over the precipice. First, I saw a carved wooden iconostasis surrounded by light walls, and then the church itself stretched along the cliff, with a well in the corner.
To the right of the sanctuary, a staircase rises up into the cave-chapel, called the “First Temptation”. There is a sanctuary here; the altar table is a stone on which, according to tradition, the Savior prayed, preparing for His earthly ministry. Over the centuries, the stone resembling a miniature mountain has become smooth, as if polished, from countless touches, kisses and tears. Above the sanctuary is an icon of the Savior with His arms raised, praying to God the Father for humanity gone astray. Looking up at the high dome, I trembled: Christ the Almighty, the Heavenly King and Judge, was gazing at me from the icon. Under His penetrating gaze, my soul became agitated, and I immediately wanted to apologize and say that I lived improperly in this wonderful world. In a sincere prayerful mood, I continued my acquaintance with the hidden life of ascetics invisible to the world.
In one of the walls of the cave connected to the church, there was an opening into a small stone cell, where St. Chariton the Confessor, the founder of the famous Faran Lavra and the Jericho Lavra of Douka, is believed to have struggled from 340 A.D. This is how eremitic life began on the Mount of Temptation. Now let me give you a short account of the history of the monastery, as described in an article in The Orthodox Encyclopedia (in Russian) by K. Panchenko and N. Lisov.
Afterwards the Lavra of Douka became known as the Monastery of St. Elpidius after the famous ascetic Elpidius, St. Chariton’s successor, who headed a group of hermits on the Mount of Temptation in the late fourth century and is mentioned in the Lausiac History (the Narrative of the Lives of the Holy and Blessed Fathers) by Palladius, Bishop of Helenopolis.
Unfortunately, in 614 the ancient monastery was destroyed during the Persian invasion, and the monks left it. Nevertheless, the memory of how this place is linked with the Gospel events remained, which is confirmed by the texts of the early twelfth century pilgrims. During the Crusades, the revival of the monasteries of the Judean Desert and the Jordan Valley commenced. At that time (before 1116), several Catholic monks started struggling on the Mount of Temptation. Around 1133–1134, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem established the governing body of the Quarantine (“forty days”) on the Mount of Temptation, and construction work began in the monastery. In the twelfth century, the monastery was visited by pilgrims, and its most detailed description was made by Theodoric (1175). He recounted that the monastery stood in the middle of the mountainside, and it was incredibly hard to climb up to it. The ascent was without steps or a path, through an impenetrable cleft, then along a serpentine path, passing through three gates, behind which travelers were welcomed by the Church of the Holy Cross. To its right was the tomb of a saint named Peregrine. Apparently, Elpidius (mentioned above) was known under this name back then. Nowadays, no traces of the church or the tomb survive. The main monastery church, dedicated to the Fasting of the Lord and the First Temptation, was sixteen steps up in the cave. According to tradition, Christ stayed here during His fast. This church stood on the site of its earlier Byzantine predecessor. Now it is the Church of the Annunciation of the Theotokos. At the top of the mountain, all pilgrim writers pointed out the site of the Savior’s Third Temptation, but for unclear reasons, the twelfth century authors did not mention the chapel there. The ruined structures and the apse of a Byzantine church found at the summit of the mountain in the late nineteenth century indicate that a small church existed there as early as the Byzantine era and may have stood in the twelfth century. According to Theodoric’s testimony, there was a garden with a spring at the foot of the mountain, where pilgrims who went to the Jordan River camped under the protection of the Knights Templar and Knights Hospitaller.
The Sarantarion Monastery on the Mount of Temptation
In 1187, the Ayyubid army captured Jericho and expelled the Latin monks from the Mount of Temptation. The thirteenth century European pilgrims continued to mark this place of worship in their guidebooks, but, as a rule, they did not mention the monastery there. Nevertheless, the monastery lived on, and Orthodox monks struggled in it. St. Sava I, Archbishop of Serbia, visited it in 1235 and made donations to its inhabitants. Fourteenth century authors, such as James of Verona, Ludolf von Sudheim, and John Mandeville, confirmed the presence of Greek or Georgian monks in the monastery. Perhaps monks did not live on the Mount of Temptation permanently. The Russian pilgrim Archimandrite Agrefeny wrote about the monastery around 1375, without mentioning its monks. In 1384, a group of Italian pilgrims found the lone Greek hermit there, presumably the last inhabitant of the Mount of Temptation.
In the late sixteenth century, the Russian merchant Trifon Korobeynikov visited the monastery, and wrote, “There is a high and steep mountain in that desert, made of rock... There is a cave in that mountain, and in the cave a stone, like a table, and thereon Christ sat and fasted for forty days and forty nights.”
Now let us digress a little and recall the small balconies overlooking Jericho. They were very light, even fragile and very high above the precipice. I can’t help but remember the legend related by the merchant Korobeynikov, that here “the Lord cursed the devil, blew on his face, the rocky mountain parted, and the devil fell through the earth. And there is a chasm in that place to this day. And there are two sazhens (c. 14 feet) from the Lord’s place to that precipice.” Indeed, an abyss opened up below us—steep cliffs, and between them a 500-yard chasm. Not all of our pilgrims ventured out on these balconies. But if you don’t look down, what a beautiful view you have! The city of Jericho and the multicolored patches of fields of the Jericho Plain were clearly visible. Palm trees stood in them, looking like flowers and reeds from above, and in the distance stretched the “moonscapes” of the stone desert... The expanse was perfectly visible all the way to the Dead Sea. I couldn’t help but remembered how, blinded by pride, the devil showed his Creator all the kingdoms of the earth and promised to give them to Him if God would worship him. A vivid picture opened before my eyes, convincingly showing us that devil worship will certainly take a madman to the Dead Sea.
But let’s return to our topic. In 1697, the English traveler Henry Maundrell wrote that some Greek monks spent Lent in the crevices of the Mount of Temptation in imitation of the Savior. However, the traveler himself encountered armed Bedouins in the caves who demanded a large sum of money for the right to climb the mountain. Of the Russian authors of the eighteenth century, only Monk Serapion climbed the mountain in 1749.
The Valley of Sorrow. Photo: Pinterest
The monastery ruins were first examined and described by scientists in 1873. It is especially interesting to read the diaries of Archimandrite Antonin (Kapustin), the head of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem in 1865–1894. During his first visit, the archimandrite found the monastery in desolation. However, in 1874, a Russian monk, Arkady (Konyukhov), moved to live here, sending letters to Russia with appeals for donations. Gradually, at the risk of his life (mountain life conditions and attacks by Bedouins), he began to restore the ancient ruins and even at times celebrated prayer services for Russian pilgrims. By the early 1880s, the small church had been restored in the cave of the Lord’s Fasting. During those years the Mount of Temptation became a place of spiritual feats for Russian ascetics, including the famous Marina the Cave-Dweller and the retired Major General Ya. I. Kraevsky, who had fought in the Crimean War and participated in annexing Central Asia. He decided to spend the rest of his life as an anchorite in the desert in the Holy Land, learned Arabic for this purpose, and in July 1880 started living in the Mount of Temptation’s cave. Renowned Russian benefactors provided financial assistance to Monk Arkady in the construction of the monastery—for instance, Baroness A. A. Fitingoff, who visited the Holy Land in 1886, and a Moscow merchant, pilgrim and philanthropist P. D. Kaverin.
In May 1883, Archimandrite Euthymius, Abbot of the Monastery of St. Gerasimos of the Jordan, installed a Greek iconostasis at the church. In February 1885, Monk Arkady left the Monastery of Temptation. Further organization of the monastery is associated with the name of the energetic Greek Archimandrite Abraham of the Peloponnese, who became the head of this monastery in 1893. As stated in a guide to the Holy Land published in Russian, “without sparing himself, Archimandrite Abraham built a holy monastery over the yawning precipice and steep cliffs, remarkable for such splendor and graciousness that it appears before our eyes in the form of a suspended town; he extended the church—that is, the holy cave, and decorated it with church utensils.” In the mid- twentieth century, the Church of the Mother of God was rebuilt.
Now, as elsewhere in the Holy Land, probably because of the decline of faith and love, there are surprisingly few monks in monasteries. In the late twentieth century, Abbot Gerasimos and the Russian Nun Joanna (Obolenskaya) struggled at the Monastery of Temptation. In our time, only the abbot remains. The monastery caretaker receives intercession lists for health and repose, as well as donations to the church. We saw the lone monk only from afar. It is chilling to the bone to live alone in the wild mountains, combining the conditions of the hermit’s life with their inherent temptations. This is for highly spiritual individuals, while we are shrinking violets, and there is no one to live at the monastery on the Mount of Temptation right now.
Our pilgrims walked down into the valley at sunset. I admired the sun, which had softened and stopped burning my face, and the earth, mountains, and sky, slightly “gilded” by its light, and I thought that I had seen at least a glimpse of how holy people live. Today, I have come to know my spiritual poverty and found the joy of coming into contact with the history of the Orthodox faith, having seen the past two millennia of Christianity in one day.
