Name Mar Awgin Role Saint | Died 379 AD | |
Venerated in Armenian Apostolic Church
Assyrian Church of the East
Coptic Orthodox Church
Syriac Orthodox Church | ||
Episcopal visit by h h mar awgin kuriakose chaldean syrian church of the east trivandrum parish on 13 nov 2011 5
Mar Awgin (died 363 AD), also known as Awgin of Clysma or Saint Eugenios, founded the first cenobitic monastery of Asia and is regarded as the founder of monasticism in Mesopotamia.
Contents
- Episcopal visit by h h mar awgin kuriakose chaldean syrian church of the east trivandrum parish on 13 nov 2011 5
- In Egypt
- In Mesopotamia
- References
In Egypt
Originally, Saint Eugenios was a pearl-fisher from the island Clysma or Kolzum near Suez in Egypt. After having worked for 25 years, he joined the monastery of Pachomius in Upper Egypt, where he worked as a baker. He is reported to have possessed spiritual gifts and worked miracles, and draw some following from among the monks.
In Mesopotamia
About 70 monks accompanied him when he left Egypt for Mesopotamia, where he founded a monastery on Mt. Izla above the city of Nisibis.
The location was well chosen, for Nisibis lay on the eastern edge of the Roman Empire, which had just embraced Christianity as the official religion. The rest of Mesopotamia was under Sassanid rule, which tried to revive the Zoroastrian religion and occasionally persecuted the Christian population.
The community on Mt. Izla grew rapidly, and from here other monasteries were founded throughout Mesopotamia, Persia, Armenia, Georgia, and even India and China.
A crisis occurred during the 6th century: to please the Zoroastrian rulers, the Assyrian Church decided all monks and nuns should marry. Many subsequently transferred into the Miaphysite Syrian Rite Church and spiritual life declined in the Assyrian Church as a result. But the reforms were soon reverted. Abraham the Great of Kashkar founded a new monastery on Mt. Izla, and he and his successor Babai the Great revived the strict monastic movement. Married monks were driven out, the teaching of the church was set on a firm orthodox basis, and Assyrian monasticism flourished for another thousand years.