Deir Hajla (the Monastery of St. Gerasimus) sits in the flat, desolate plain between Jericho and the Dead Sea, a Greek Orthodox monastery built around one of the most beloved stories of the desert fathers: the monk who tamed a lion.
St. Gerasimus and the Lion
According to tradition, the 5th-century monk Gerasimus was walking in the desert when he encountered a lion with a thorn in its paw. Gerasimus removed the thorn and bandaged the wound, and the lion became his devoted companion, following him like a dog and serving the monastery by guarding the donkeys. When Gerasimus died, the lion lay on his grave and died of grief. The story (which may have been confused with the similar story of St. Jerome, leading to the artistic convention of depicting Jerome with a lion) is depicted in icons and frescoes throughout the monastery.
The Holy Family
The monastery also marks a tradition that the Holy Family rested at this spot during their flight to Egypt after the angel warned Joseph to flee from Herod: “Get up, take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt” (Matthew 2:13). A cave beneath the monastery is venerated as the place where Mary, Joseph, and the infant Jesus stopped on their journey south.
The Monastery
The current monastery, rebuilt in the 19th century on ancient foundations, is a small, walled compound in the middle of the desert plain. The interior is decorated with icons and frescoes, and the monks maintain the monastery’s tradition of hospitality to visitors. The isolation of the setting, with nothing but flat desert stretching to the Dead Sea, creates an atmosphere of extreme solitude.
Anchorites of the Jordan Valley
The area around Deir Hajla was not only the site of Gerasimus’s laura but also home to some of the most extreme hermits in the Judean Desert. The flat, sun-scorched plain between Jericho and the Dead Sea was dotted with individual hermit cells, small structures or natural shelters where monks lived in total isolation. These were the anchorites (from the Greek anachoresis, meaning “withdrawal”), monks who had graduated from communal monastic life and chosen to live entirely alone.
An anchorite near Deir Hajla would live in a small mud-brick cell or a cave in the marl cliffs, sometimes with only a single opening for light and the delivery of bread and water. He would spend his days in prayer, reciting the Psalms from memory, and weaving palm-frond baskets to sell through the monastery. Some were walled in by their own request, receiving food through a slot, and seeing no human face for years at a time. The laura of Gerasimus served as their anchor: the anchorites were technically attached to the laura and would receive their weekly bread from it, but otherwise lived in complete solitude.
Cyril of Scythopolis and John Moschus both describe visiting anchorites in this area and recording their stories. One monk had lived alone for 40 years without speaking. Another had memorized the entire Bible. A third refused to leave his cell even when the Jordan flooded the plain, trusting that God would protect him. These stories, collected in “The Spiritual Meadow,” made the Jordan Valley anchorites famous throughout the Christian world.
Today, the flat desert around the monastery still feels like the edge of the world. The isolation that drew the anchorites here in the 5th century is still palpable.
Visit with Hoshen Tours
Deir Hajla is a quiet stop in the desert that tells two of the best stories in Christian tradition. Hoshen Tours includes it in Jericho itineraries and desert monastery tours. For the full story of the monastic movement, see Desert Monasticism in the Judean Desert.