Cyril of Schitopolis, now fully translated into Romanian for the first time, is the biographer of the great saints of the palestinian wilderness Ephtimys and Sava, as well as of five other hermit saints of that time. These Lives are written for the soul of any Christian who loves the saints, but also for those who wish to know the monasticism of the past according to its sources. The book that you hold in your hand and will open, dear reader, contains the main historical document for our knowledge of palestinian monasticism in the 5th and 6th centuries, as well as of the ecclesiastical events connected with the second origenist crisis. Appreciated by scholars and lovers of beauty and the spiritual life alike, the Lives of Cyril are characterized by great historical rigor, a theological vision that is both philocalic and traditional, and a candor of expression that make them a book to which one returns again and again with pleasure and profit.

The present bilingual edition, with its thorough introductory study and its auxiliary apparatus, provides romanian theology with an ideal tool for initiation into a field that has been unjustly overlooked: the ancient lives of the saints.