Account of the lives of monks of his age
After visiting a large number of the monasteries in Syria, Egypt, and the West, he applied
himself to the composition of a work giving an account of the lives of the monks of that
age, down to the time of Heraclius. It was addressed to Sophronius or Sophronas, his friend
and pupil, who accompanied him on his travels, and became subsequently patriarch of
Jerusalem. The work was entitled
Λειμών or
Λειμωνάριον, or
Νέος
παράδεισος. In the editions it is divided into 219 chapters; Photius speaks of
it as consisting of 304
διηγήματα, but mentions that in
other manuscripts it was divided into a larger number of chapters. In compiling it Moschus
did not confine himself to giving the results of his own observations, but availed himself
of the labours of predecessors in the same field. His narratives contain a plentiful
sprinkling of the marvellous. He every where attacks the heresy of Soerus Acephalus. The
style of the work, as Photius says, is mean and unpolished. But Joannes Damascenus and
Nicephorus assigned Sophronius himself as the author of the work, from which it has been
supposed that it was in reality mainly his work, though the name of Joannes Moschus was
allowed to stand as that of the writer.
Editions
The work was first published in an Italian translation, and incorporated in several
collections of lives of the saints.The Latin translation of Ambrosius Camaldulensis is in the seventh volume of Aloysius
Lipomannus, Venice, 1558. It appeared in Greek and Latin in the second volume
of the Auctarium Bibl. Patrum Ducaeanum, Paris, 1624, and in
the Bibliotheca Patrum, Paris, 1644, 1654.