141 Representations of travel motivation is usually referred to as the Younger, to distinguish him from his late-antique namesake, Euthymius the Great.455 Euthymius is probably attested in a contemporary document: it seems likely that Euthymius the Younger is the same Euthymius who is mentioned in a record as the buyer of property for the Andreas monastery of Peristerai in 897.456 Euthymius founded this very monastery, according to his Life. There is therefore little doubt about the historicity of Euthymius as a monastic leader. His Life is transmitted in four manuscripts, all of which provide (roughly) the same text.457 The name of the author of the Life is known to us, as it is mentioned in the text itself: Basil.458 The author claims to have been one of Euthymius’ followers and to have known him personally in the last 23-27 years of the saint’s life. In the fourth year after founding the monastery at Peristerai in 871,459 Euthymius would have tonsured Basil as a monk (c. 875). After his tonsure Basil was sent to live in one of Euthymius’ anchoritic cells.460 Basil thus experienced monasticism in a lavra and potentially received his monastic training in a cenobitic setting in Peristerai before he was tonsured. At the time of writing he was not a monk anymore, but held a position in the church hierarchy, which he refers to at the end of the narrative.461 Earlier in the narrative Euthymius predicted this as well.462 The term used for Basil’s position, ἀρχιερεύς is variously interpreted to mean archbishop or bishop.463 Although the diocese is not specified, it seems likely that Basil stayed in the region of Thessaloniki, or Thessaloniki itself, as Basil was present at the translation of the 455 In addition to scholarly convention we also find the qualifier ‘the Younger’ in one fifteenth-century manuscript, Athonensis Βατοπεδίου 546 (=V): τοῦ ὁσίου πατρὸς ἡμῶν εὐθυμίου τοῦ νέου τοῦ ἐν Θεσσαλονίκη. Three of the four manuscripts also add in the title that Euthymius was a saint of Thessaloniki (in addition to manuscript V, manuscripts M and L also mention in the title: βίος τοῦ ὁσίου πατρὸς ἡμῶν εὐθυμίου τοῦ ἐν Θεσσαλονίκη). See the Notes to the Texts in Greenfield and Talbot (2016), p. 649. 456 PmBZ 21912. 457 See Petit (1903), pp. 162–164; Greenfield and Talbot (2016), pp. 643–644. 458 In chapter 35 Euthymius predicts the future of the author and calls him by his name, Basil. Life of Euthymius 35. 459 The dating formulas used in the text are problematic, because they provide us with the years 870, 871, 872 or 879. 871 is the most accepted date in scholarship. For a brief discussion of the date see Greenfield and Talbot (2016), note 29.6, pp. 669-670. 460 Apparently in addition to the cenobitic monastery at Peristerai, which Euthymius had founded and led, anchoritic cells somewhere else were also connected to the monastery. Because of the use of the plural (ἐν τοῖς ἀναχωρητικοῖς αὐτοῦ κελλίοις; Life of Euthymius the Younger 34.1) this most likely refers to a lavra where a few disciples would live together in separate cells and thereby living a more solitary life for contemplation; It has been suggested that this lavra is the one at Brastamon, where Euthymius had stayed with a few disciples before he founded the monastery at Peristerai, see Lilie et al. (2013c) (=PmBZ 20858). 461 ἧς ὀρθοδοξούσης ὡς ἀρχιερεῖς ἐξηρτήμεθα: ‘upon which I, as bishop, depend as the teacher of correct doctrine’. Life of Euthymius 39.3; translated by Talbot in Alexakis (2016). 462 Life of Euthymius 35. In addition, in chapter 34 the narrator foreshadows that after his monastic life he would prefer to live in a city. 463 It has been assumed that Basil was the archbishop of Thessaloniki after 904, see e.g., Petit (1901), p. 221. Basil’s name and the title ἀρχιεπίσκοπος of Thessaloniki is mentioned as the author of the Life the Ms Athonensis Βατοπεδίου (dated 1422), See Notes to the Texts in Greenfield and Talbot (2016), p. 649. However, the two earlier manuscripts do not mention this, so this identification may be a later invention. Talbot has instead translated ἀρχιερεύς with bishop Alexakis (2016), p. 125. See also PmBZ 20858. 3
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