st. john of damascus (676-749 - Cristo Raul

"
"
THE MONASTERY OF ST. SABAS. 9
depths One below." uniform hue of tawny yellow
pervades alike the walls of the convent and the
weather-worn cliffs to which they cling ;
and though,
in the opinion of one writer, the wild grandeur of
its situation renders this monastery the most extra
ordinary building in Palestine," the general impres
sion drawn from the view of it seems to be that of
utter dreariness. But perhaps no better descrip
tion can be given than in the words of one of the
latest visitors l to it. After speaking of the terrible
heat that prevailed, unrelieved by a blade of grass or
a breath of wind, the writer continues : the silence
of the desert surrounds it, and only the shrill note of
the golden grackle, or the howl of a jackal, breaks
this solemn stillness. Not a tree or shrub is in sight ;
walls of white chalk and sharp ridges shut out the
western breeze, and the sigh of the wind in the trees
is a sound never heard in the solitude. The place
seems dead. The convent and its valley have a
fossilised appearance. Scarcely less dead and fossil
are its wretched inmates, monks exiled for crimes or
heresy, and placed in charge of a few poor lunatics.
Ladies are not admitted into the monastery, 2 but we
were provided with a letter to the Superior. A little
iron door in a high yellow wall gives admission from
1
Conder : "Tent Work in Palestine," 1878, i., p. 302.
2
What Miss Beaufort, writing in 1861, deservedly calls a
"vulgar trick,"
had been lately played upon the monks by
an enterprising lady traveller, who "entered the monastery in
men s clothes, concealing her hands in her pockets while going
over the whole building ;
but whilst taking coffee her sex was
discovered, and she was immediately expelled by the justlyoffended
monks."