The Monastery of St Hilarion, a fourth-century hermit who had studied under Anthony in Egypt, is among the oldest and certainly the most complex early Christian monasteries. Found at the archaeological site of Tell Umm el-’Amr, close to Deir al-Balah in the Gaza Strip, Palestine, the monastery had been on the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List for many years.

The author (left) discussing the conservation of the monastery with two French archaeologists.

I had the privilege of being involved with this site for the past three years, with my last visit there in August 2023. I was first sent to Gaza to evaluate a conservation project for the monastery that was undertaken by the ALIPH Foundation, and then last year I visited twice again as team leader of an international and Palestinian team tasked with preparing a conservation and management plan for a project financed by the French Agency for Development (AFD).

The monastery was also given substantial funding by UNESCO, the French and British governments (through the British Council) and other agencies.

As I had written in a previous article, Gaza is full of very important Christian sites from the first years of Christianity.

It is very important to safeguard this symbol of Palestinian national identity

It has the second most important port after Caesarea (from where St Paul departed before his shipwreck, according to the Bible). The Roman port, also on the UNESCO World Heritage List, has been mainly destroyed as have so many other important heritage sites in Gaza. The building that had most impressed me, however, was the Omari Mosque, which was originally a Byzantine basilica. When I visited the place for the first time, I felt like I was entering a Catholic cathedral as very little had been changed when it was turned into a mosque in the eighth century.

The baths area of the monastery.

The St Hilarion monastery has been spared major damage mainly due to the fact that last December it was granted ‘extended protection’ under the Second Protocol of the 1954 Hague Convention. I was allowed, in a rare occasion, to speak about its importance in a committee at which normally only diplomats and lawyers participate.

Earlier this year, the Palestinian ministry of tourism and antiquities wanted to go a step further and nominate the monastery for the UNESCO World Heritage List. I again had the privilege to lead a team, that included two Palestinian experts and a French archaeologist, that has been working on the site for the past 20 years. Such a dossier normally takes around a year to be prepared – this one was prepared in just five months.

The monastery has two distinct parts: the ecclesiastical part, which includes a complex of five churches and the largest crypt from the period, and a hostel and very complex bath area. Prominent features include very beautiful early mosaics and the burial place of St Hilarion. The monastery is situated very close to Wadi Gaza, which is the only source of fresh water in Gaza and thus very important for pilgrims, but also quite close to the port of Gaza.

St Hilarion, who is considered the founder of Palestinian monasticism, simply wanted to remain a man of prayer but his popularity grew very fast and pilgrims started coming to the monastery both from the west and the south. He tried to find more tranquil places and travelled first to Sicily (Ispica, where he was also extremely popular) and then to Cyprus, where he died. His body was then brought back to Gaza. We know a lot about him because St Jerome, a contemporary of his, wrote his biography.

The chapels area.

St Hilarion is respected in almost all of the Christian world, mainly however in the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. The monastery became a very important theological centre and many important persons are linked to it.

But by the eighth century, both due to an earthquake that struck the region and the advance of Islam, the monastery was abandoned and was eventually hidden under huge piles of sand for centuries. It was only rediscovered in the early 1990s.

Now that it is recognised as a World Heritage site, one hopes that the monastery will be protected. Whatever happens in the coming months, the humanitarian situation in Gaza is obviously the number one priority, but it is also very important to safeguard this symbol of Palestinian national identity, which also forms part of the history of mankind and indeed the history of Christianity.

Ray Bondin is the chairperson of the Malta National Commission for UNESCO.