After his return from the New Laura <where he had stayed for five months, in AD 507, to supervise the building>, (Sabas) passed some days in seclusion <in the Great Laura>, then, in the time of Lent, he took with him one Paul, an elder excellent in many virtues, and went to a ravine near Castellion, to the west, at a distance of 15 stadia from the Great laura, and having found in the northern cliff a large and untouched cave, he settled in it with Paul until the Festival of the Palms. After Easter (Sabas) took Theodoulos and Gelasius <the master mason>, Paul himself and other brothers and returned to the site with them; and in short, with God’s help, he transformed the cave into a church, and step by step he established there a very famous coenobium, which he called ‘(monastery) of the cave’. (Sabas) appointed the blessed Paul administrator of the place and gave him three brothers from the laura, George, Cyriacus and Eustathius; and God was pleased to make the place grow and spread out widely. But why speak at length? The coenobium of the Cave, that our holy father Sabas established with so much sweat, lies before our eyes.
After the blessed Paul came to death in Christ, Cyriacus and Eustathius in turn succeeded to the abbacy; for George, having been sent to Alexandria, met there the archbishop Zoilus <Patriarch of Alexandria, 540-551> and was appointed by him bishop of Pelusium. And this is all about the monastery surnamed ‘(monastery) of the Cave’.
(transl. Leah di Segni)