John Moschus, a monk from a monastery near Jerusalem, set off with a companion in about AD 575, to tour the Christian centres of the eastern Mediterranean. He thought of the world as a spiritual meadow, where wild flowers of every kind grew in profusion. Like a bee, he visited one blossom after another, gathering tales from ordinary people in many occupations, in the belief that heroic deeds and unselfish service were not confined to the great and famous.

The result was a unique piece of early investigative travel journalism, woven together by John Moschus into a book which he called 'The Spiritual Meadow'. Ralph Martin provides us with a selection of some of the best stories from the complete work, in a new and lively translation from the original Greek.