Johann the dwarf

John the Dwarf ( Greek Ιωάννης Κολοβός , Arabic ابو يحنس القصير (Abū) Yuḥannis al-Qasir ; * 339 ; † 405 ), also Saint Johann Colobus or Saint Johann Kolobos , was one of the early founders of the early Christian Egyptian church .

Icon of John the Dwarf.

Life

John the Dwarf was born in the city of Bubastis in Egypt to poor Christian parents. At the age of eighteen he and an older brother moved to the desert of Sketes , where he became a disciple of Saint Pambo and a good friend of Saint Pishoi . He was celibate and taught his way of life to several other monks, including Arsenius the Great .

John the Dwarf is best known for his obedience. The most famous story about it is that one day Saint Pambo gave him a piece of dry wood and ordered him to plant and water it. Johann obeyed and watered it twice a day, although he had to fetch the water about 12 miles away. After three years, the piece of wood germinated and grew into a fertile tree. Pambo picked some fruits from this tree and went to all the elderly monks and said, “Take, eat of the fruit of obedience”. The legendary tree of St. John the Dwarf, known as the Tree of Obedience, is said to still stand in the abandoned monastery of St. John the Dwarf in the Nitrian desert.

After the departure of Saint Pambo, John was ordained a priest by Pope Theophilus and became abbot of the monastery that he founded around the tree of obedience. When the Berbers invaded Sketes in 395, Johann fled to the Sketian desert on Mount Colzim near today's city of Suez . Here he died too. His feast is celebrated on October 17th in the Roman Catholic Church, in the Coptic Orthodox Church and on November 9th in the Eastern Orthodox Church, on the 20th Paopi . The monastery of St. John the Dwarf in Sketes is abandoned today.

Web links

• Saint John the Dwarf
• Ortodox Church of America, Feasts and Saints

Individual evidence

1. ^ Alban Butler: St. John the Dwarf, Anchoret of Sceté , In: The Lives of the Saints , Vol. IX, 1866
2. ↑ Saint John the Dwarf , The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as broken. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.