c. 6th century - c. 625
A native of Cyprus who became abbot of the monastery of Choziba in the Judean wilderness, renowned for humility and ascetic labor.
Our Venerable Father George the Chozebite, Abbot of Choziba
George the Chozebite was a Byzantine-era monastic ascetic, born on the island of Cyprus toward the end of the sixth century and remembered as abbot of the monastery of Choziba in the Judean wilderness.
Orphaned young, he was drawn to the monastic life of Palestine and rose to lead the coenobitic community of Choziba, set on the cliffs of the Wadi Qelt between Jerusalem and Jericho. He is commemorated for his strict asceticism and is one of the principal saints associated with that monastery, which eventually took his name.
George was known for a rigorous ascetic discipline. Together with his brother he abstained from wine, both at the lavra of Calamon and at Choziba, and he kept an all-night vigil that extended from Saturday evening through Sunday afternoon.
As head of the monastery he set an example for the monks through fasting, vigil, and physical labor, and one account describes that he lived as an angel upon the earth.
The monastery of Choziba stands in the Wadi Qelt, in the Judean wilderness, on a cliff overlooking the valley along the ancient Roman road from Jerusalem to Jericho. It grew out of a lavra established around 420, when monks settled near a cave associated by tradition with the prophet Elijah, and was reorganized as a coenobitic community dedicated to the Mother of God by John of Thebes between roughly 480 and 530.
The monastery became closely identified with George and eventually took his name, being known thereafter as the Monastery of Saint George of Choziba. During the Byzantine period it held a chapel dedicated to Saint Stephen and a church honoring the Virgin Mary.
In 614 the monastery was destroyed in the Persian incursion, in which the fourteen monks then dwelling there were killed; their remains are kept in a chapel outside the monastery walls. The site was largely abandoned after 614 and was restored centuries later, beginning in 1878 under a Greek monk, Father Kalinikos, with the work completed by 1901 with the help of the Jerusalem Patriarchate.
George's portrait appears among thirty-six saints painted on the burial-cave walls at the Monastery of Mar Saba, where he is identifiable by inscription; the archaeologist A. E. Mader proposed that these paintings date to the period between his death and the Arab conquest of Jerusalem in 638.
The monastery of Choziba preserves the relics of three of its saints: John of Choziba, George of Choziba, and the more recent John (Iacob) the Romanian (1913-1960).