Martyrius: Lavish Living for Monks

Home > Magazines > BAR > September/October 1995

Four miles east of Jerusalem on a hilltop in the Judean desert on the road to Jericho sits Ma‘ale Adummim, a modern city of over 20 thousand people. In its midst is one of the largest, most important and most elaborate ancient monasteries in the Holy Land—the monastery of the fifth-century monk Martyrius.1 We excavated the site from 1981 to 1984. The remains of the monastery were well known, but had never been excavated. We uncovered not only the church, refectory, stables and hospice, but some of the most beautiful mosaics ever unearthed in the Holy Land. Martyrius originally […]

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Endnotes

See Yitzhak Magen and H. Hizmi, “The Monastery of Martyrius at Ma‘ale Adummim,” Qadmoniot 71–72 (1986), pp. 62–92; Magen and R. Talgam, “The Monastery of Martyrius at Ma‘ale Adummim (Khirbet el-Murassas) and its Mosaics,” in G.C. Bottini, L. Di Segni and E. Alliata, eds., Christian Archaeology in the Holy Land. New Discoveries. Archaeological Essays in Honor of Virgilio C. Corbo ofm, Studium Biblicum Franciscanum Collection Maior 36 (Jerusalem, 1990), pp. 91–152; L. Di Segni, “The Monastery of Martyrius at Ma‘ale Adummim (Khirbet el-Murassas): The Inscriptions,” idem., pp. 153–163; Magen, “The Monastery of Martyrius at Ma‘ale Adummim,” Ancient Churches Revealed (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1993), pp. 170–196.