The Spiritual Meadow (also known as the Pratum spirituale, Leimonarion Λειμωνάριον, or New Paradise) is a Greek book by John Moschus (d. 619 or 634) written in the late sixth to early seventh century. The text is composed of anecdotes from Palestinian and Egyptian monasteries from the travels of John during his travels with Sophronius, his friend, as they seek out spiritual edification. In all, it contains several hundred narratives, biographies, and collections of sayings.^[1]

No critical edition has been published yet of the manuscripts of the Spiritual Meadow, although one is in preparation by Bernard Flusin and Mme Marina Flusin based on manuscript Φ.^[2]

A French translation was published by Rouët de Journel in 1946, an Italian by Riccardo Maisano in 1982, and an English translation by John Wortley in 1992.^[3]

In the Spiritual Meadow, John Moschus narrates his personal experiences with many great ascetics whom he met during his extensive travels, mainly through Palestine, Sinai and Egypt, but also Cilicia and Syria, and repeats the edifying stories which these ascetics related to him.^[4][5]

The Spiritual Meadow contains stories of various patriarchs and bishops such as Theodotus of Antioch, Elias I of Jerusalem, Ephraim of Antioch, Gennadius of Constantinople, Eulogius of Alexandria, Patriarch Amos of Jerusalem, John Chrysostom, Pope Gregory I, Patriarch Apollinarius of Alexandria, Synesius, and Athanasius of Alexandria. There are also stories of Byzantine emperors such as Anastasius I Dicorus and Zeno.^[3]

The work teems with miracles and ecstatic visions and it gives a clear insight into the practices of Eastern monasticism, contains important data on the religious cult and ceremonies of the time, and acquaints us with the numerous heresies that threatened to disrupt the Church in the East.

In Quranic studies, beginning with Roger Paret, a number of historians have proposed similarities between Quran 18:65–82 with a story in a (still unedited) manuscript of the Spiritual Meadow.^[6] In the story as it appears in Moschus there is:^[7]

an angel of God (equivalent to the mysterious “servant of God” in the Qurʾān) who acts in ways that mystify an old and pious monk. The angel steals a cup from a pious man, strangles the son of another pious man, and rebuilds the wall which belonged to an impious and inhospitable man. The angel explains that the cup which belonged to the first man had been stolen. The son of the second pious man was to grow up to be an evil sinner; by strangling this son the angel allowed him to die before he fell into sin. Beneath the wall of the impious man lay hidden treasure, and by rebuilding the wall, he kept the man from finding this treasure and using it for evil. These line up closely to the Qurʾānic “Moses and the servant of God” passage.

A substantial number of manuscripts of the Spiritual Meadow exist, in Greek and other European languages. Manuscripts vary substantially however, as additions were made to some whereas other manuscripts contain selections of the tales, sometimes with varied ordering. This issue was already recognized in the 9th century by Photios I of Constantinople, who commented in his Bibliotheca: "Read a book composed of 304 tales ... The compiler has given the book the name Meadow ... And in all the books in which the tales are preserved you will not find an equal number, but in some they are divided into 342, with the number increased in part by the division of some chapters, and in part by the addition of tales."^[8]

The 15th-century Latin translation of the work by Ambrose Traversari was done from a 12th-century Florentine codex known as Laurentianus Plut.X.3 (== F). This is also the most complete manuscript. The Florentine manuscript contains a numbering from 1 to 301, which Traversari preserved, but was renumbered to go up to 219 by Lippomano in his 1558 Latin version, which has now become the standard numbering.^[9]

There are two Vatican manuscripts, called Vat. gr. 663 and 731. There are also two 10th and 13th century Georgian manuscripts at Iviron on Athos and at Sinai respectively containing selections of almost 90 chapters.^[10] An Arabic version of the text is known, called the 'Book of the Garden', and several manuscripts of it are also available. Old Slavonic manuscripts are called F. An Ethiopic patericon is also known. Coptic and Syriac versions are not known.^[11]

A few print editions and early translations of the text are as follows:^[12]

• A Latin translation, by Ambrose Traversari, is printed in Migne, Patrologia Latina, LXXIV, 121–240, and an Italian translation made from the Latin of Traversari was published in 1475 (Venice, 1475; Vicenzo, 1479).
• A Greek text was edited by Fronton du Duc in Auctarium biblioth. patrum, II (Paris, 1624), 1057–1159.
• A better edition was brought out by Cotelier in Ecclesiae Graecae Monumenta, II (Paris, 1681), which is reprinted in J.-P. Migne, Patrologia Graeca (PG) 87:3:2851–3112.

John Wortley's 1992 translation of the Spiritual Meadow contains the following 240 chapters.^[3]

• Booth, Phil (2017). "Moschus and the Meadow". Crisis of Empire: Doctrine and Dissent at the End of Late Antiquity. University of California Press. pp. 90–139.
• Chadwick, H. (1974). "John Moschus and His Friend Sophronius the Sophist". The Journal of Theological Studies. 25 (1): 41–74. JSTOR 23962231.
• Paret, Roger (1968). "Un parallèle Byzantin à Coran XVIII, 59–81". Revue des études byzantines. 26: 137–159.
• Reynolds, Gabriel Said (2018). The Qur'an and the Bible: Text and Commentary. Yale University Press.
• Wortley, John (1992). The Spiritual Meadow. Cistercian Publication.
• Wortley, John (2016). "Foreword". In Ihhsen, Brenda Llewellyn (ed.). John Moschos' Spiritual Meadow: Authority and Autonomy at the End of the Antique World. Taylor & Francis.