HAVING renounced the world, he passed some years in the monastery of St.
Seridon, near Gaza in Palestine, in the happy company of that holy
abbot, John the prophet, the blessed Dorotheus, and St. Dositheus. That
he might live in the constant exercise of heavenly contemplation, the
sweetness of which he had begun to relish, he left the monastery about
the year 540, and in a remote cell led a life rather angelical than
human. He wrote a treatise against the Origenist monks, which Montfaucon
has published in his Bibl. Coislin. The Greeks held this saint in so
great veneration, that his picture was placed in the sanctuary of the
church of Sancta Sophia in Constantinople, with those of St. Antony and
St. Ephrem, as we are informed by the Studite monk who wrote the preface
to the Instructions of St. Dorotheus, translated into French by abbot
Rance of la Trappe. The relics of St. Barsanuphius were brought in the
ninth century to Oria, near Siponto in Italy, where he is honored as
principal patron, on the 7th of February. The Greek Synaxaries have his
office on the 6th of this month. Baronius placed his name in the Roman
Martyrology on the 11th of April. See on him Evagrius, (who finished his
history in 593,) l. 4, c. 33. Pagi ad an. 548, n. 10. Bulteau, Hist.
Mon. d'Orient. l. 4, c. 9, p. 695.