Jeremiah

Holy Venerable Jeremiah, an ascetic of Palestine († in the first half of the sixth century), was a disciple of Venerable Sabbas the Sanctified. According to the Life of Saint Sabbas, written by his contemporary Cyril of Scythopolis, in the year 491, soon after the founding of the Great Lavra, there came to the venerable Sabbas Jeremiah, a God-⁠bearing man glorious for divine gifts, an Armenian by birth, with two disciples, Peter and Paul. Venerable Sabbas allowed them to settle in a cave, gave them a small cell and allowed them to perform in the small church, on Saturday and Sunday, the order of psalmody in Armenian. The number of Armenians in the monastery grew gradually, and in 501 Venerable Sabbas moved them to the church made by God (the cave church of Saint Nicholas). Allowing the Armenians to perform the psalmody and read the Gospel in their own language, he ordered that they partake of the Holy Mysteries together with the Greeks.

The Life also tells of another Jeremiah, a deacon of the Great Lavra, who, with Venerable Sabbas and some other of his disciples, arrived in April 529 at Constantinople, on the commission of Peter, patriarch of Jerusalem, to ask Emperor Justinian I to remit the taxes of the two Palestines laid waste by the Samaritans. While the emperor consulted his officials about the petition, Venerable Sabbas stepped aside and prayed. Jeremiah asked why he had withdrawn from the emperor, and the venerable one answered: They, my son, are doing their work, and we must do ours. On returning to Jerusalem in September 533, Venerable Sabbas published the emperor's decrees and divided the funds received among the monasteries he had founded. Jeremiah, dissatisfied with the division of the money, left the Great Lavra and settled about five stadia north of the cave monastery. Learning of it, Venerable Sabbas took several monks faithful to him, tools, money and provisions and in a short time built there a chapel and cells. Venerable Sabbas appointed Jeremiah superior of the community and enjoined him to live according to the rule of the Great Lavra. In the opinion of E. Schwartz, the editor of the Life of Venerable Sabbas, Jeremiah, the deacon of the Great Lavra, is not one and the same person as Jeremiah the Armenian.

In S. V. Bulgakov's Handbook for Clergy, among the venerable ones commemorated on Cheesefare Saturday, the disciples of Venerable Sabbas are mentioned: Anthimus, Aphrodisius, Domentian and Jeremiah (the Armenian).

He is commemorated on 13 March (new style, a movable day), in the Synaxis of All the Venerable Fathers Who Shone in Ascetic Labour.