Our father among the saints Grēgorios III, Pope of Rome

Saint Grēgorios of Rome

The twenty-eighth of November is the feast-day in the Orthodox Church of Saint Grēgorios of Rome, also known as Pope Gregory III. I have already presented on this blog a hagiography of Pope Gregory I, or Grēgorios o Dialogos, who did so much to promote the spread of Christianity in England. Like the first Gregory, the third Gregory in the Roman See did much to help spread the light of Christ into the northern reaches of Europe. A native of Syria, the third Gregory was instrumental in the fight against iconoclasm from the West.

Saint Grēgorios [Gk. Γρηγόριος, L. Gregorius, Syr. Grigorios ܓܪܝܓܘܪܝܘܣ, Ar. Ġrîġûriyûs غريغوريوس] was born in Syria around the year 669 to a father named Yûhannâ. He spent much of his early life there, though historians are not aware of many of the details of his early life. We know that he became a priest, and we also know that he had lived in Rome for some time before his election to the Papacy. It is likely that, like his predecessor Saint Sergios, he and his family were refugees from the Islâmic conquests and persecutions of Christians in the Levant, though we cannot be sure based on the sources we have.

We do know, however, that he had a high reputation as a priest in Rome for virtuous conduct and diligent pastoral care. He loved the people of Rome, and in turn he was beloved by them. Upon the repose of his illustrious Italian prædecessor, Pope Gregory II, Grēgorios was proclaimed Pope by popular acclaim in the city of Rome. Even so, Grēgorios waited for about a month to receive consecration, which indicates that he sought the confirmation and blessing of the Byzantine exarch of Ravenna, Eutychios, before taking office. Grēgorios did indeed love the people, but he had no desire to owe his office to a mob, and we can see that he sought the legitimacy of Constantinople as well as of the people of Rome.

But once in his office, Grēgorios did not bow to Constantinople – only to God. Though he had previously been involved in the arguments over the veneration of icons, and had appealed to the Emperor Lēon III the Isaurian to exercise moderation in his religious policies. But once he became Pope, Saint Grēgorios came forth at once with blunt condemnations of iconoclasm, sending legates and letters to Lēon urging him to desist from the destruction of holy images. Lēon responded with brute force, sending forces across the Mediterranean and seizing Papal properties which were under his jurisdiction, in Calabria and Sicily. However, the Emperor lost many of his men at sea and proved unable to control the Papacy directly, and Grēgorios was not cowed, but continued speaking out in favour of the veneration of icons. Most regional rulers ended up siding with the Pope over the Emperor in this case.

Similarly to his prædecessors of the same name, Grēgorios took a close and paternal interest in the well-being and good order of the Church in the northern reaches of Europe, among the Germanic tribes. In faithful England, Grēgorios affirmed the rights of the Bishopric of York in the election of Ecgberht to the office. He also blessed Saints Tatwine and Nóðhelm, in succession, as primates of Canterbury. He continued the support of Gregory II for the mission of Saint Boniface among the heathen in Frisia and northern Germany, naming him an archbishop and blessing him to establish two Benedictine cloisters – one in Fritzlar and one in Amöneburg. He met with Boniface in person at least once, in 738, having received him with great hospitality in Rome and conversed with him for a long time on spiritual topics. Saint Boniface asked the holy Pope of Rome to send with him back to Germany a helper, in the person of his nephew Willibald. At once Grēgorios sent for the monk and was at once impressed with him. In particular, we may imagine, Pope Grēgorios was happy to discuss with Willibald his travels as a pilgrim in Syria and the Holy Land. Saint Grēgorios sent Willibald with his uncle back into Germany to serve as an aid and support in his missionary efforts. Later Willibald himself would be made a bishop at Saint Boniface’s hands in Eichstätt.

Saint Grēgorios’s relations with other Teutonic nations were not nearly as cordial as those he enjoyed with the English. Much of his ten-year papacy was spent in power struggles with the Lombardic king Liutprant – who, although he was a pious Christian, generous and hospitable to the likes of Saint Boniface, was nonetheless politically ambitious and had territorial designs on the Italian Peninsula. Grēgorios managed to fortify the ancient walls of Rome in the hopes that it would ward off a Lombard attack, and in addition met in person with Liutprant to attempt to use moral suasion to ward him away from Rome. This worked for awhile, but with Liutprant continuing to make violent manœuvres on the frontier – and capturing four cities in the Duchy of Rome – he was compelled to seek aid from the Frankish king Charles Martel. Long story short: Martel promised help, but that help never came. It was in the midst of these political troubles that Saint Grēgorios reposed in the Lord, on the twenty-eighth of November, 741. A few days later, the cardinals of Rome chose Saint Zacharias, a Greek, as Grēgorios’s successor in office.

I have remarked on several occasions about the special link which præ-Schismatic Old England seems to have enjoyed with Antioch, and with the Christian East in general. Though this link was often (but not always) mediated, gæographically and administratively, by Rome, it still arguably goes back to the Princes of the Apostles themselves. The most prominent and most profound impact of Antiochian spirituality upon the English nation comes through the literal tutelage England enjoyed under the rule of Saint Theodore of Tarsos. Saint Theodore’s contemporary Saint Sergios provides another link between Syria and England. The cultus of Saint Ia in Cornwall, which shares some intriguing parallels with the Mesopotamian martyress under the Persians of the same name, provides another possible link, as does the patronage of that great Levantine Saint George of Lydda and the mediæval body of legend surrounding Saint Joseph of Arimathæa. To all these we must add the relationship that our Saint Grēgorios enjoyed with Saint Willibald, who had sojourned in that land for a significant portion of his life, and with his uncle Saint Boniface.

It is to their great credit that Syrians like Saint Grēgorios III did not take advantage of the old Anglo-Saxon talent for civilisational humility, borne perhaps in part out of a realisation that they lived at the ‘bottom’ of the world, but instead took the opportunity to guide, to nurture, to foster an Old English spirituality. That spirituality today exists as merely a shadow, an echo. The overbearing arrogance of the Normans, the expropriation of Church lands, the misguided zeal of centralising church ‘reformers’, the sustained repression of the English peasantry and the shift toward an œconomy of greed all contributed to the suppression of this native spirituality. Mercantilism, colonialism, capitalism, industrialisation and high finance have all taken a great toll upon the English people. The massive death toll and material deprivation that the British ruling class has unleashed upon the world – including upon Syria and the Arab world, a deprivation which continues to this day – often overshadows the much quieter impoverishment of English spiritual life by that same class.

Yet this echo of spiritual Old English reverence for the Eastern end of the Mediterranean can still be heard in English literature and art: in figures like the Syriac-versant Lancelot Andrewes, for example. Our good Dr Samuel Johnson, who wrote Rasselas, may be counted here with distinction; John Ruskin and William Morris, also. To this we may also add the more contemporary travel literature and journalistic work of Patrick Seale, of William Dalrymple, of the late, lamented Robert Fisk and the blessedly very much alive Jonathan Cook. For these things we must still thank our saints like the holy Pope Grēgorios III. Holy hierarch Grēgorios, beloved archpastor and gentle tutor of the Christian north, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Holy Martyr Dasios of Durostorum

Saint Dasios of Durostorum

The twentieth of November is the feast-day in the Orthodox Church of the holy martyr Saint Dasios of Durostorum, a young and handsome Roman soldier of the Legio XI Claudiana, stationed on the Danube River, who was martyred in the early fourth century. He was the first of the martyrs to be slain at Durostorum during the persecutions of Emperor Diocletian. The centre of his cultus is in Italy, in the city of Ancona whence his relics were moved for protection against the marauding Avars. But he is also reverenced among Orthodox Christians particularly in the Balkans.

Dasios [Gk. Δάσιος, L. Dasius, CS Дазий] was a youthful and vigorous soldier of the Roman legions, who was openly allowed to have been a Christian under prior Roman Imperial administrations. With Diocletian’s ascent to power, however, the Christians among the Roman soldiery were faced with a difficult choice: to keep their positions by denying Christ and swearing fealty to the Emperor as a living god; or else to face ritual humiliation, torture and execution. Pagan festivities were often used as pretexts for detecting and persecuting Christians, and Dasios was no exception to this. Because his features were so fine, he was chosen by lot to be the sacrificial ‘king’ of the festival of Saturnalia. He refused this honour, and told his fellow-officers that: ‘Since I am fated to die, it is better that I die for Christ as a Christian.’

He was apprehended and interrogated by his commanding officer, a man named Bassos, before whom Dasios openly denied the divinity of the Roman Emperor. For this act, as was supposed, of lèse-majesté, Dasios was hauled before the co-emperors Diocletian and Maximian themselves. Again and again he confessed Christ before them, refused to acknowledge them as gods, and moreover openly denounced the impiety and error of the whole of the festival. Many who were there at Durostorum thereafter came to believe in Christ. For this, Saint Dasios was cruelly tortured and given over to be beheaded by the sword. The execution took place on the twentieth day of November – the twenty-fourth day of the lunar cycle – at the fourth hour; his executioner was a man named Aniketos, also called Iōannēs. In this way, the holy martyr of God received the crown of his victory and was welcomed into the company of the saints.

His relics were buried in Durostorum – later Silistra in Bulgaria – by local Christians. They were popularly venerated even shortly after his death, and a Vita was written in the fourth century not long after his martyrdom. When the Turco-Mongolic Avars invaded Thrace in the 500s, however, the relics of Saint Dasios were moved to Ancona in Italy for safer keeping. They were enshrined in the Chiesa di San Ciriaco there, in an exquisite marble sarcophagus, and continued to receive the adulation of faithful Christians at that resting place. In 2002, in a gesture of goodwill toward Orthodox Christians, Pope John Paul II on a visit to Silistra in Bulgaria made a gift of Saint Dasios’s right upper arm to the Metropolia of Dorostol, in a marble sarcophagus which was a careful replica in miniature of the one in Ancona. Holy martyr Dasios, bold confessor of Christ before the pagans, pray unto Christ our God for the salvation of our souls!

Holy Martyrs Viktōr and Stephanida of Damascus

Saints Viktōr and Stephanida of Damascus

The eleventh of November is the feast-day of another pair of early Syrian martyrs for Christ, Saints Viktōr and Stephanida of Damascus. These saints lived during the second century and were persecuted during the reign of the Emperor of the Porch, Marcus Aurelius. These saints enjoy a universal cultus which is of a singular importance in our modern time. Saint Stephanida, on account of the etymology of her name, has been invoked by the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches for protection and aid against the novel coronavirus.

Saint Viktōr [Gk. Βίκτωρ, L. Victor, Ar. Fîktûr فيكتور] was born in Italy, and was a loyal Roman soldier who served in the Army and was stationed in Damascus. The governor of Damascus at that time was named Sebastianos. Though it is unclear from the evidence whether he had the Emperor’s express sanction to do so, Sebastianos began a ruthless purge of the Christians from the army ranks in his præcinct, by ordering all the soldiers under his command to offer sacrifices to the idols. Naturally, the young Italian refused to make this sacrifice, and when Sebastianos ordered him to do so, invoking his loyalty to the Emperor, Viktōr replied: ‘I am a warrior under command of the Heavenly King. Him only will I serve. I reject your foul idols!’

The military commander then ordered that Viktōr’s limbs be locked into vices and that his digits, both fingers and toes, be broken and torn from their sockets one at a time. The young soldier endured this pain and various other torments that were inflicted upon him, calling upon the name of the Lord. Then the executioners brought food to him, which had been laced with a deadly poison by a pagan sorcerer. Again Saint Viktōr prayed to the Lord, and he swallowed all of the tainted food. The poison did Viktōr no harm, and all who were there marvelled and feared to see it. The sorcerer, who saw his arts defeated by the holy martyr, abjured his powerless idols and was converted to faith in Christ. Another wonder wrought by the martyr was that soldiers with diseases of the eye were cured and their sight restored.

But the executioners began to rend and burn the martyr’s flesh. Upon seeing this, the young bride of one of the tormentors, a fifteen-year-old girl of Ægyptian descent named Stephanida [Gk. Στεφανίδα, L. Corona, Ar. Kûrûnâ كورونا] could bear no longer, and ran to the martyr to tend to his wounds and plead for mercy. But seeing what he had already endured, and the wonders that the holy martyr had wrought, she opened her mouth and glorified Christ before the governor. The cruel Sebastianos ordered that the young girl be seized, that two young palm trees be bent to the ground, and that the girl’s limbs be tied to each. The palm trees were then released and the young martyr for Christ was torn bodily between them – in this way she earned the glorious crown which her name foreshadowed.

During his torments, Saint Viktōr prophesied that death would take the executioners within twelve days, and that the governor would be overthrown within twenty-four days. Sebastianos ordered that the saint be beheaded, and he too went to the glories of the life æternal and received the laurels due to Christ’s athletes. And as Saint Viktōr had prophesied before his death, so the doom of the executioners and the governor all came to pass.

Local Christians took their relics and buried them with honour in Damascus. However, they soon found their way to Rome where they were celebrated and venerated by many pilgrims. In the year 997, the Saxon king Otto III had the relics brought from Rome to Aachen in Germany, where they were enshrined in the Cathedral. The cultus of these two saints has been particularly popular among woodsmen and among gamblers, but in the 1300s with the approach of the Black Death, Germans began to pray to Saint Stephanida for protection from the plague, and several villages which sought her intercession were spared from the ravages of the disease. Today many are seeking her intercessions against the novel coronavirus, on account of the Latin form of her name, Saint Corona. Holy martyrs Viktōr and Stephanida, fearless witnesses to Christ before the pagans, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Apolytikion for Saints Viktōr and Stephanida of Damascus, Tone 4:

Your holy martyrs, O Lord,
Through their sufferings have received incorruptible crowns from You, our God.
For having Your strength, they laid low their adversaries,
And shattered the powerless boldness of dæmons.
Through their intercessions, save our souls!

Learning from the restorers of Moldova

In the West we seem to be sliding down a slippery slope towards a diabolical post-humanism. There exists a certain project, something along the lines of what CS Lewis imagined in That Hideous Strength, which the highest-profile global élites – the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg – want to put into action. I am convinced that they already believe themselves to be something not-quite-human, more-than-human, and are attempting to implement measures that will reduce those who are not in their clique to a realm of the less-than-human. I think Elon Musk tends to be the one who has the least verbal filter when it comes to things like a post-Earth society for the one-percenters or man-machine interfaces. But these are priorities which are shared across at least the Western billionaire caste.

Personally I am not sure that they can be stopped by conventional means. It may end up taking a full-scale civilisational collapse to bring about their downfall: a collapse we seem to be in the middle of already. Then: there was also a wealthy élite class that thought they were going to rule forever. Then: there was also a protracted state of political crisis that the élite class could not and did not care to address. Then: when the structures of the state fell down around them, hastened by barbarian invasions, they retreated into their own private infrastructure and left the rest of humanity to fend for themselves. Then: Benedictinism and land-sharing schemes rose to fill the void, and at least some semblance of culture was preserved.

I admit, I do not have much respect for the attempts, at least in America, to throw weight behind a purely negative cultural counter-elitism which has nothing of substance to offer. There is nothing true, or good, or beautiful about the Trump brand, which was and always will be a façade, a ruse to fool the gullible. Likewise with the attempts in some corners of Europe – such as Poland and Hungary – to attempt to decree a better order, inspired by a Gothic æsthetic, back into existence from the commanding heights. (We can see how well this is working out.) These soi-disant saviours of Western civilisation only hurry its ruin.

I know, and I have been told several times by my frustrated comrades, that my outlook is fairly bleak and cynical, and that I do not seem to have a way out. It’s true. I don’t. Speaking from a local perspective: I have no love or respect for a cruel, crass status quo ante which could suffocate George Floyd without a qualm. But I have even less love or respect for the sort of blind, unfeeling rage that only wants to tear it all down – or, worse still, the cold indifference that can look on as one’s own city burns and applaud the people doing it from a vantage of safety. I am angry, and have been for a long time, at those who saw the death of a man undeserving of death, and used it as an opportunity for plunder. I still seethe at the attempt to justify looting behind words of high principle, as though the first reaction upon seeing a murder in the street is to break into your neighbour’s house and steal his tableware! George Floyd’s murder is deserving of justice. How is justice for him achieved by out-of-state agitators setting fire to our town? How is justice for him achieved by leaving the black protesters in the daylight to take the blame? How is justice for him achieved by pundits living in safety, piously folding their hands? Yes, I accuse them all: both the nihilists and the fascists. Sadly, we now have a ‘woke’ liberal centre that is fine with such nihilists in its midst. And we now have a far-right that is fine with fascists in its midst.

So where are the people who are building things of beauty – or at least doing the best to preserve what things of beauty they already have? Where are the people who genuinely feel there is something worth saving on this earth? Where are the people who can look at their past and not see only shame and brokenness? Where are the people who can look at their present and still feel some glimmer of hope? Don’t look now: I think they may be in Moldova.

Moldova was – and is – one of the poorest countries in Europe. (Long story short: it got hit hard by Western-imposed shock therapy and never recovered.) It is riven by culture war battles over whether or not it is culturally Romanian. It is riven by a political crisis in the breakaway province of Transnistria that is still unresolved. But its political leadership, under Igor Dodon and the PSRM, has been heavily investing in public infrastructure – things like parks, playgrounds and schools – and also trying to reinvigorate Moldova’s public architecture, including its distinctive mediæval religious architecture, by sending young architects to Italy to study reconstruction and restoration.

Any idiot can tear down a statue. It takes real talent, real creative ingenuity and constant effort, to conserve what is already beautiful in the public space, and then add to it. One of the things that the Moldovan architects had to learn, in the key architectural difference between reconstruction and restoration, was humility. The restoring architect has to restrain his own ego, to quiet his own judgement. If an architect wants to preserve something effectively, he first has to sit down and learn how the original was built. And once he has done that and he is ready to proceed himself, he can’t copy the original too perfectly, lest later builders coming after him who might have better techniques for restoring old buildings want to improve on his work without damaging what is left of the original.

There is wisdom in what Igor Dodon is doing in his country – quietly and almost unnoticed. It’s not glamourous, it doesn’t grab headlines. He isn’t blaming other countries for what has gone wrong in his own. He isn’t telling the Molodaya gvardiya to go out and tear down statues of Ștefan cel Mare. On the contrary, his party lays claim to the great Prince Ștefan’s material and cultural legacy! But he is sending out young Moldovans to learn how to care for what is old and beautiful. Left parties in the West desperately need to take a leaf out of the book of the Moldovan socialists. (And right parties, too, for that matter.)

Venerable Makarios the Hermit of Mesopotamia

Saint Makarios of Mesopotamia

The twenty-third of October is the day on which we venerate Saint Makarios of Mesopotamia, a Roman by birth who ran away from his father’s house and became a hermit in the deserts of what is now northern Iraq. There are two sources that allude to Makarios, a short Life and a long Life. Saint Nikodēmos of the Holy Mountain recommends that Orthodox Christians only read the shorter of the two Lives, as the longer one has spurious Gnostic and occult interpolations, and may be spiritually harmful to readers.

Three monks from the Monastery of Saint Asklēpios, who were named Sergios, Hyginos and Theophilos, went out into the world in order to seek a sign from God that would be of benefit to their salvation. They found a cave, deep in the deserts of Mesopotamia, from which wafted a heavenly sweet scent. The three men approached the cave and saw a queer old hermit, his face and body covered entirely by hair and a long beard that reached his knees, and wearing no other clothing. As he saw the approach of the three young monks, the hermit fell on his face on the ground in prayer, and remained there until he was sure that the monks were flesh-and-blood rather than images presented to him by the Evil One. Then the hermit brought them into the cave, which he shared with two wild lions. Sergios, Hyginos and Theophilos asked the hermit to tell them his story, and he did so.

His name, it turned out, was Makarios. His father John had been a senator in Rome, and he had been brought up in great wealth and luxury. When he had reached adulthood, his parents had him betrothed to a bride against his will. On the night of his wedding, even on the threshold of the bridal chamber in the midst of the festivities, John fled his father’s house and took refuge with a certain widow. For a full week he entreated the Lord with fervent prayers and with tears to save him. When the time came for him to leave the widow’s house, he met in the street an old man, dressed in noble robes and of a winsome demeanour. The man bade him follow. Makarios instantly trusted the man, and went with him, following him out along the road to the east. The two travelled together for three years, until one day they came to the mouth of the cave where Makarios dwelt thereafter. In a vision the hermit had sometime afterward, the old man appeared to Makarios and told him that he was the Archangel Raphael, who had once guided Tobias in his travels. The archangel then entrusted him to God’s care, along with two lion cubs, which had lately lost their mother.

Soon after he had first moved into the cave, he beheld an astonishing beauty visiting at the mouth of the cave. Makarios began to speak with the girl, and as he told her his story, she related to him that she also had fled from a forced marriage in Rome. Makarios, being young and inexperienced, lacked the discernment he needed to escape the snares of the Evil One, and he welcomed her into his cave to spend the night. For the first time in his life, the fiery darts of lust assailed him, and he slept with the girl. As soon as this was done she vanished, for she had been an apparition. The Evil One exulted because he had succeeded in tempting the ascetic to sin in thought and deed.

Makarios understood at once, how seriously he had fallen. He fell upon his face and wept bitter tears. He resolved to quit his cave and find another place where he might repent and atone for his sin. But as he was leaving the cave, he saw the same old man greeting him again – the Archangel Raphael. The archangel gently urged him not to seek out a new place but to return to his own cave, because if he stayed in his cave God would hear his prayers. Makarios redoubled his ascetic efforts and kept to a strict regimen of fasting and vigils, mortifying his will absolutely, and attempted to recover the purity of his soul. This he had done for many long years until the three monastic brethren had come upon him.

After they had heard this story to the benefit of their souls, Saint Makarios entertained the monks, and then sent them on their way with his blessing. The three of them departed, and left Makarios to his solitary struggle. So he continued, until at last he fell asleep in the Lord. No earthly man attended him; but he was welcomed into the presence of the angels and of the company of saints. Holy ascetic Makarios, who showed the way of repentance and struggle to the monks, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Apolytikion for Saint Makarios of Mesopotamia, Tone 8:

By a flood of tears you made the desert fertile,
And your longing for God brought forth fruits in abundance.
By the radiance of miracles you illumined the whole universe!
O our holy father Makarios, pray to Christ our God to save our souls!

Holy Apostle and Evangelist Luke

Saint Luke the Evangelist

Today is the feast-day in the Orthodox Church of Saint Luke the Evangelist. The importance of Saint Luke to the development of the Christian faith and the Orthodox Church in particular cannot be overstated. He authored two of the books of Holy Scripture – the Gospel account bearing his name, and also the Book of Acts: the single largest contribution to the Greek-language Scriptures by any single author. It is on account of Luke that we even have a comprehensive account of Christ’s early life, and it is also on account of Luke that we have an account of what happened to the followers of Christ in the immediate wake of His Crucifixion and Resurrection. Luke’s account of Christ emphasises the social and historical dimensions of His life on earth, and also the universal importance of His ministry. Although devotion to this great saint is universal, he was born and raised in Antioch, and thus is glorified and venerated among the Antiochian saints.

Saint Luke [Gk. Λουκᾶς, L. Lucas, Ar. Lûqâ لوقا], a Greek by parentage, was raised in Antioch. Luke was probably from a fairly well-to-do family, because he was versant in Greek philosophy, in art, and in the study of medicine. He became a physician upon reaching adulthood, and having been in contact with Jews among his patients in Antioch he may have been drawn to their prophetic religion, and may have come to believe in the Jewish God. According to the tradition of the Church, when Luke was a young man he had occasion to visit Jerusalem, and was called out to the nearby village of ‘Imwâs – which is to say, Emmaus – near ar-Ramla:

Now behold, two of them were travelling that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was seven miles from Jerusalem. And they talked together of all these things which had happened. So it was, while they conversed and reasoned, that Jesus Himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were restrained, so that they did not know Him. (Lk 24:13-16)

The companion of Luke on this journey is named in his account as Kleopas, identified in Orthodox tradition as the brother of Saint Joseph. Luke does not name himself as the other companion – in keeping with the literary custom used also by Saint Mark and by Saint John. Jesus, who was disguised such that Kleopas did not know Him, asked the two men why they were sad. Kleopas had entertained the hopes, common among Jesus’s disciples, that the Messiah would come and restore the righteous reign of the Hasmonean Kingdom, and rule in the name of the Heir of David in perpetuity. After the Crucifixion, these worldly, political hopes were utterly dashed. He said to Jesus that ‘certain women of our company’ had come to the tomb and found it empty, but in so saying he revealed his unbelief.

Jesus rebuked him and Luke together for not having believed what the women had told them, which was true, and then began to expound those passages in the Hebrew prophets which hint at what the Messiah must suffer. When the three of them came to ‘Imwâs, Jesus wanted to go on, but Luke and Kleopas insisted that he stay with them. Jesus agreed, and when He came inside, and broke bread and blessed it, then all of a sudden Kleopas recognised Him, and Luke knew Him, and at once He vanished from sight. Thus Saint Luke was among the first to be given the honour to behold the Risen Lord, despite being a Gentile and despite being a newcomer to Jerusalem.

Saint Luke was quickly welcomed into the company of the Apostles, as he is numbered among the Seventy. The next we hear about Saint Luke is from the lips, or rather the pen, of Saint Paul – in whose company Luke was constant in brotherly and devoted attendance. He is mentioned in the benediction of Paul’s epistle to Philemon, along with Demas and the saints Mark and Aristarchos. He appears in a similar litany of ‘fellow workers’ in the benediction of the Pauline epistle to the Colossians. At the end of his second epistle to Timotheos, Paul complains that Demas and Saint Titos and Saint Kreskēs have all abandoned him, and that ‘Λουκᾶς ἐστιν μόνος μετ’ ἐμοῦ’ – ‘Only Luke is with me’.

If we take Luke’s account of himself in Acts as authoritative – that is to say, those places in Acts where he refers to the Apostles in the first-person rather than in the third-person – then we can assume that he accompanied Saint Paul from Trōada until he departs from Philippoi, where Saint Luke evidently stayed until Saint Paul returned there. From then on Luke accompanied the chief of the Apostles until his martyrdom.

The community of Christians put Saint Luke’s talents to good use. He wrote one Gospel account – in fact, the only account to be addressed to a specific person, Theophilos – and the Acts of the Apostles as a seamless continuation of the Gospel narrative. The Orthodox tradition identifies Theophilos with the governor of Achaïa in Greece, who went by that name. (This was one of the places that Luke visited after the martyrdom of Saint Paul.) In writing his Gospel, Saint Luke relied on primary source documents and eyewitness testimony. He may indeed have relied upon the eyewitness testimony of the Most Holy Theotokos, and he even depicted the likeness of the Most Holy Theotokos – thus becoming the first iconographer of the Church. As a historian, Saint Luke is meticulous, thorough, and responsible to the facts: his knowledge of contemporary political and physical gæography is impressive by Classical standards. (As it should be: he travelled in person to many of the places he speaks of!) Although he uses certain figurative language and inflates some figures to suit a didactic objective, this practice is fully in keeping with the histories of Herodotos and Thoukydidēs.

Saint Luke’s primary themes were the universality of the Gospel message – extended even to women, Samaritans, Gentiles, lepers and tax collectors; the particular care and concern Christ had for sinners; and the identification of Christ with the poor and sorrowful. Mary’s ode of praise, with all its social potentials, is found in the very first chapter of Saint Luke’s Gospel, setting the tone for his work. It is indeed Saint Luke who most strongly emphasises – in chapter 12, verse 48 of his Gospel, for example – the particular responsibility that those who enjoy material prosperity and political power have, to meet the needs of those who are materially poor.

If we consider Saint Mark to have been the founder of the allegorical-symbolic and philosophical Alexandrian school of exegesis (as the Copts claim), then it seems altogether fair to consider Saint Luke to have been the spiritual progenitor of the social-historical Antiochian school of exegesis. We can see præfigurations of Saint John Chrysostom in the Gospel of Luke; his concerns are much the same. Saint Luke emphasises the concrete, the factual, the present-right-in-front-of-you, in his Gospel account – and he also grounds his Gospel in the social concerns of the early Christian community. Note that Christ first appears right in front of Luke on the road to ‘Imwâs; also that He chides Luke for not having believed the women who were, in fact, right there to see the empty tomb!

According to Holy Tradition, Saint Luke was beheaded by the Roman government under Nero while preaching the Gospel. His grave and his final resting-place were located in Thēbai in Boiōtia, Greece. The relics of the Saint were plundered from Thēbai at some point in the Middle Ages – possibly during the Fourth Crusade – and brought to Padua, to the Benedictine Abbazia di Santa Giustina. The head of Saint Luke was bought by Karel IV of Bohemia, and brought to the Cathedral of Saint Vitus in Prague, where it still rests.

In 1992 the then-Metropolitan Ierōnymos of Thēba (now Archbishop Ierōnymos II of Greece), made a request of the Catholic bishop Antonio Mattiazzo of Padua to return a significant part of the relics of Saint Luke to their rightful resting place in Greece. As a result of his request, the relics in both Padua and Prague were subjected to a scientific investigation and compared. It was determined that the relics belonged to a man of Syrian descent, elderly at the age of death but vigorously built, who had died sometime between the years 72 and 416. The skull in Saint Vitus Cathedral and the body in the Abbey of Saint Justina were determined to have belonged to the same man. Bishop Mattiazzo, in a touchingly selfless gesture of goodwill, sent to Metropolitan Ierōnymos the rib of the man which rested closest to his heart, to be venerated at Thēba. Holy evangelist and apostle Luke, physician and iconographer who met the Risen Lord face-to-face, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Apolytikion to Saint Luke the Evangelist, Tone 5:

Let us praise with sacred songs the holy Apostle Luke,
The recorder of the joyous Gospel of Christ
And the scribe of the Acts of the Apostles,
For his writings are a testimony of the Church of Christ:
He is the physician of human weaknesses and infirmities.
He heals the wounds of our souls,
And constantly intercedes for our salvation!

Monastery of Saint Luke, Thēba, Greece

Holy Martyrs Kyprianos and Ioustina of Nikomēdeia

Saints Kyprianos and Ioustina

The second of October is the feast day of two more saints of the Antiochian Church, both of them being natives of Antioch who suffered martyrdom at Nikomēdeia in Asia Minor in the opening years of the fourth century, under the persecutions of Diocletian. These martyrs are the convert and former magician, Saint Kyprianos, and the beautiful virgin Saint Ioustina who was responsible for his conversion. Both of them are commemorated throughout the old Roman world, not just in the Orthodox Church but also in the Coptic and the Roman churches. Empress Saint Ailia Eudokia wrote the history of Saints Kyprianos and Ioustina in a beautiful poem in the mid-fifth century, which was referenced with esteem by Saint Photios the Great; however, the poem itself has been lost to history. The Metanoia (or Confession) of Saint Kyprianos still exists, and was used as a primary source by both Empress Eudokia and by Saint Gregory the Theologian, who also wrote about Kyprianos’s life.

Saint Kyprianos [Gk. Κυπριανός, Ar. Qubriyânûs قبريانوس] was born in Antioch to parents who believed in the pagan gods – and possibly in one of the syncretic mystery religions which were rife in the region throughout Late Antiquity. His parents had him dedicated as an infant to Apollo. Kyprianos, brought up thus in idolatry, had a remarkably adept mind – but he bent it upon wicked things. For the purposes of dazzling and defrauding the gullible, he began studies of astrology, fortune-telling and prestidigitation. He spent his youth in such pursuits, and also travelled widely: to the Acropolis, to Mount Olympus, Argos, Elis in Phrygia, the Ægyptian Memphis, Chaldæa and even India – all in order to study the occult arts and the secret knowledge of the magicians. In his Confession Kyprianos admits that he engaged even in orgiastic rites and sacrifices to the wicked powers, and even to the Evil One himself. In this way he accrued to himself power, prestige and reputation. By the time he returned to Antioch, he had made for himself a name as both a philosopher and a magician, and he used his powers accrued in this way in order to seduce young women.

It happened, however, that there was a certain young pagan named Aglaïdas who had been taken with a fleshly desire for a girl named Ioustina [Gk. Ιουστίνα, Ar. Yûstînâ يوستينا], who was well-born, both remarkably beautiful and desirable – and also a Christian. Her parents had been Greek pagans of Antioch as well, but they were converted by their daughter’s zealous faith in Christ. Her pagan suitor Aglaïdas approached her repeatedly, making known his own wealth and virtues and beauty and eligibility – but to no avail, for Ioustina would neither yield herself, nor be yoked unequally with an unbeliever. And so the suitor applied to Kyprianos, and urged him to use his magical arts of seduction upon the girl. Kyprianos, however, upon seeing Ioustina, was likewise smitten with her and decided he would get her for himself instead. But no matter how many incantations and oaths Kyprianos made to the powers he served, they were of no avail against one girl, who had only her faith for her armour and only the sign of the Cross as her weapon. Yet these served her well, because even the powers of the Devil melted and fled before her when she professed her faith in Christ, and made the sign of the Cross. Saint Gregory the Theologian adds to this that Ioustina practised fasting and prayer, and was given the gift of tears, and asked for the Blessed Mother of God’s protection for a virgin in the throes of danger.

Kyprianos was stunned and appalled at how ineffective were all his charms and potions and divinations and sacrifices – the fruits, so he imagined, of a lifetime of broad travel and education – against this mere girl’s simple prayers. Not being unintelligent or without a certain grace, Kyprianos began to consider that the power of Christ was greater than that of the demons and the pagan gods. But the Evil One, seeing that he stood to lose an instrument by which he had already misled many souls into their perdition, began to work upon Kyprianos’s soul, and tried to destroy him. Kyprianos called upon the God of Ioustina for aid, and the Devil could not lift a finger against him. But then the Evil One tried subtler means to work upon him, and tried to convince him that those already sworn to him, even Christ would not be able to save. And Kyprianos began to despair.

He went among the people of Antioch and began to ask about Christ. For three days he wandered the streets, going without food or sleep. But none who were Christians would answer him, because they knew his reputation for devilry, and they believed that it must be some trick of his. One priest, however, was bold enough to receive Kyprianos, having been given to know by God that the sorcerer was beginning to repent. This priest, in fact, was a fellow-pupil of Kyprianos from childhood, named Eusebios. First Eusebios, seeing Kyprianos’s hunger and weariness, bade him into his house to eat and rest. Then he put Kyprianos’s fears to rest, assuring him that – as he had already discerned – the Devil was a liar, and that it was by Christ’s grace that he had already sought him out in order to repent. Christ came to save sinners, and he would not turn away even a servant of the Devil who sincerely repented!

The following Sunday, Eusebios took Kyprianos and led him into the assembly of the Christians in Antioch, and instructed him to stand with the catechumens – to watch when they watched, to listen when they listened, and to depart when they departed. The Liturgy was held in the early hours of the morning before the dawn, for Christians then were not free to hold the Liturgy in the daylight hours. The effect upon the former wizard was dramatic, seeing the devotion of these people to a God who had died upon the Cross. He recounts that he heard a choir of angels singing to God, with voices singing their ‘Alleluia’ more sweetly than those of men. The Christians were surprised, to say the least, to see such a notorious sorcerer among them, but upon seeing Eusebios introducing him. The bishop, however was not impressed, and would not believe that Kyprianos was sincere.

The next day, Kyprianos brought his grimoires and astrological calendars and other unholy books before the bishop, and burned them. He then gave all his money and property to the poor. Once the bishop was convinced of Kyprianos’s sincerity, the former wizard joined the catechumenate formally. He went through the catechumenate, and was baptised in the name of the Holy Trinity in the fullness of time. During this time, too, Aglaïdas too was converted to Christianity, and gave all his wealth to the poor. Inspired by these two conversions, Ioustina offered herself up to be tonsured, and consecrated to perpetual virginity. Saint Gregory recounts in touching detail, the personal change that was wrought in Kyprianos’s character: he became meek, modest, serious, God-loving, and contemptuous of the same worldly pleasures and riches he had chased in his early life. He begged to be allowed, and was given leave, to become a verger in the Church, responsible for cleaning the floors and the altars, an office which he served humbly and unstintingly in for seven years. According to Saint Eudokia, Kyprianos was made a porter, and subsequently a priest. He may have been appointed a bishop in Damascus or another city in Syria. During his bishopric, so many pagans converted to Christ that their temples fell into disrepair by the time of Diocletian’s reign.

Whatever the case, Saint Kyprianos was arrested and brought before the governor at Tyre, during the persecutions of Emperor Diocletian. Ioustina, having joined and been made abbess of a community of virgins in Damascus, was also seized and brought before the same governor. The agent of Diocletian had both of them brutally tortured, tearing apart their flesh with scourges and iron hooks. After this they were sent to Nikomēdeia (now İzmit in Turkey), which was where the Emperor was then residing. After reading the letter that accompanied them from Tyre, Diocletian ordered that the martyrs at once be beheaded, and the sentence was carried out outside the city on the banks of the Gallus River. In this way the former wizard, and the pure-hearted young girl whose prayers to Christ saved him, together with a guard named Theoktistos who was seen talking to them en route and was sentenced to death with them, attained the glorious and incorruptible crown of martyrdom. Their relics were attained later, by Christian pilgrims from Rome who brought them back; a pious woman named Rufina had them translated into a church built in their memory. Saints Kyprianos and Ioustina now lie beneath the Basilica of Saint John in the Lateran in Rome.

In the Orthodox Church, Saint Kyprianos is still taken as a symbol of the power of repentance, even to one who willingly placed himself for so long in the clutches of the Evil One. The proud, well-educated son of Antioch, by the grace of Christ, by the prayers of Ioustina and by the belief of his friend Eusebios, made himself the lowliest servant of Christ’s Church for seven years, and thus attained to mastery of himself. Holy martyrs Kyprianos, Ioustina and Theoktistos, witnesses to the power of Christ over all the devils, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Apolytikion to Martyrs Kyprianos and Ioustina, Tone 4:

By sharing in the ways of the Apostles,
You became a successor to their throne.
Through the practice of virtue,
You found the way to divine contemplation, O inspired one of God;
By teaching the word of truth without error,
You defended the Faith, even to the shedding of your blood.
Hieromartyr Kyprianos, entreat Christ God to save our souls.

Basilica of St John of the Lateran, Rome

Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Thekla, Protomartyr of Antioch

Saint Thekla of Antioch

Today in the Holy Orthodox Church, the twenty-fourth of September, we commemorate one of the holiest women of Antioch and of the Early Church, Saint Thekla of Antioch, who was a follower of Saint Paul and a bold witness among the pagan Greeks and Romans. The great deeds and holy life of Saint Thekla illuminated many thousands of souls in the Near East, and bore witness to the divine illumination and the unburning fire of Christ. She did this even as she repeatedly showed herself proof against the flames of lust and the flames of fire with which the pagans tried to scorch her. With great celebration together with the Christians of Syria we honour her memory today.

Saint Thekla [L. Thecla, Gk. Θέκλα, Ar. Taqlâ تقلا] was born in the city of Iconium [which is modern-day Konya in Turkey] in the year 16. Her parents were rich and illustrious, and Thekla grew up into a marvellous beauty whose affections were highly sought-after. Her parents found it not difficult at all to arrange a suitable match for her, a youngster by the name of Thamyris. When Saints Paul and Barnabas came into Iconium to preach the good news of Christ’s resurrection, Thekla was intrigued and wished to join the crowds to hear them. Her mother Theokleia, however, forbade it, and kept her confined to the house. However, the will of God for this his martyr could not be so easily thwarted. The young girl found that she could go out onto the balcony from her room, and the air carried the words of the Apostle from where he stood to the balcony where she sat, for three full days and three nights while he preached.

St Paul’s preaching enthralled and electrified Thekla, and she was especially drawn to Paul’s preaching on the subject of chastity. She began to desire with her whole heart to serve the Lord and to embrace Christ crucified and risen. Both Thekla’s mother Theokleia, and her betrothed Thamyris, noticed the abrupt change in Thekla’s demeanour, and they went to the governor of Iconium to complain about Saint Paul’s preaching. In order to pacify the crowd, which was growing more and more incensed by the preaching of the two apostles, the governor had Saint Paul and Saint Barnabas arrested and thrown into prison.

When Saint Thekla heard of this, she stole out of her house and used her golden bracelets to bribe Paul’s gaoler, and having gained admittance to his cell, fell at his feet and kissed the chains and shackles that bound him. She spent hours kneeling at the feet of the Apostle, listening to him discourse upon Christ, upon His good news to the poor, and upon the virtues of faith and hope and love. She was gone long enough that her mother and her affianced grew worried, and they asked her servant where she was. The servant said that she had gone to visit one of the strangers in Iconium, who had been imprisoned. From this they were able to gather that she had visited Paul. At this, Thamyris and Theokleia went again to the governor, in a crowd of mingled Jews and pagans, and demanded that Saint Paul and Saint Barnabas be stoned at once and expelled from the city (Acts 14:19). The sentence was carried out, and they were left for dead outside the city, but the Lord preserved them both.

The governor scolded Thekla for her foolishness, and ordered her to return home to her mother and to her fiancée. Thekla refused, however, saying that she wished to retain her virginity and to serve the Lord Christ always. Her mother implored Thekla with tears, and then breathed threats against her which mounted in their severity, but still her daughter refused to return home. This sent her mother into a rage, and she demanded of the governor that the girl be severely punished if she did not obey him. The governor granted Theokleia’s request, and threatened Thekla that if she did not return home at once, she would be burned at the stake. The young martyr, however, was not moved by such threats, and would not forsake her Heavenly Bridegroom.

The governor then arranged for a stake to be righted in the arena, and Thekla approached it herself without fear, seeing a vision of the Lord beckoning her to Him, giving her strength. She was tied to it, and the fires were lit under her. But no sooner was this done than black clouds began to brew above her, and the skies opened up with thunder and lightning, heavy rain and hail. The fire around her damped down and died at heaven’s command. In embarrassment and anger, the governor then commanded that Thekla be banished forever from the city, and thrown out at the same gate that Saint Paul had been.

There, Thekla met Saint Paul, and told him of her trial and of the wonder by which she had been spared from death by fire. She asked the Apostle to baptise her, but Saint Paul, having a præmonition, refused the young girl, saying that God would accomplish this in His own time. However, the Apostle allowed Thekla to travel with him to Antioch. As they were entering the great city, it so happened that a young man of means named Alexandros chanced to see Thekla’s face, and was consumed with a desire for her. Alexandros tried to force himself on her, but Thekla fought him off, and being protected by God the force of Alexandros came to nothing. He was publicly humiliated – by a young girl at that – in front of the city. His pride could not endure this. He went before the governor of Antioch and demanded that Thekla be put to death for having shamed a nobleman. This governor agreed, and declared that Thekla was to be fed to wild beasts in the colosseum. Thekla asked only that her virginity be preserved until then, which the governor allowed. She was given into the custody of a high-born woman named Tryphaina, who kept her in her house until her day of execution.

Thekla was led to the arena, and a lioness was loosed upon her. Instead of attacking her, however, the proud animal instead went to her feet and curled up like a tame house-cat. The crowds were astonished. Next a bear was set loose upon Thekla, but as the animal attacked her, the lioness reared up and did battle with the bear, killing it. A lion was then set loose, and the lioness again did battle to protect Thekla, but though she managed to kill the lion, the lioness herself succumbed to her wounds. Then all manner of beasts were unleashed upon Thekla, who by this time had managed to free herself and dove into a pool where the aquatic predators were kept. In this manner she was baptised in Christ, and the water animals left her alone. Alexandros asked that the saint be given over to him, and he had her strung between two bulls to be torn apart. However, as this punishment was being prepared and the bulls were urged in opposite directions, by a wonder of God the bonds that held Thekla slid free of her wrists and ankles, and she emerged from them unharmed. She was again released into Tryphaina’s custody, where the noblewoman took care of her for eight days more. Thekla preached the good news of Christ to the noblewoman, and Tryphaina sought to be baptised along with all her house. Tryphaina gave Thekla many rich presents when she departed – gold, jewels and silks of immense worth.

Again Thekla went to seek out Saint Paul, who was then preaching in the town of Myra on the Lycian coast (now Demre in Turkey). She told him of everything that happened to her since they had come to Antioch, including her baptism in the pool full of aquatic beasts. Saint Paul marvelled at Thekla’s faith, and blessed her. Thekla gave to Paul all of the gold and jewels and precious things that Tryphaina had given her, to be distributed among the poor and hungry and homeless as the Apostle saw the need. She then departed back into Syria.

Saint Thekla lived for many years in the Syrian mountains, in holy solitude and prayer and vigil. She passed her life in such a way, præfiguring the disciplines of many great ascetics and anchoresses who would come to grace the Syrian deserts. However, clearly she retained much of her beauty well into middle age, and despite the harsh mode of life that her discipline enjoined upon her. She was seen by a pagan youth as she was praying amongst a lonely outcrop of rock, and inflamed by an evil desire the young man attempted to rape her. As he cornered her, Thekla prayed to Jesus Christ that He would protect her as He had done so often before. At that moment a cleft opened in the rock behind her, and Thekla was able to slip through it and out of the reach of the evil-minded young man.

Saint Thekla continued in her devotions until the age of ninety, praying in seclusion in a cell on a lonely mountain pass in the southwest of Syria. Her bodily needs were met by a holy well that sprang up there as she prayed, whose waters had restorative properties. She was not unknown to the people there, and she gave wisdom and comfort to the people who came to her, and in particular the young women. She managed to convert many of the outlying villages and towns to Christianity. When she reposed in the year 106, a group of young women came to her cell to honour her, and built a complex around her anchorage where they could live as virgins consecrated to the Lord. This complex would become Dayr Mâr Taqlâ, a Patriarchal Monastery of the Church of Antioch consecrated in 1935, situated in the Christian village of Ma‘lûlâ in southwestern Syria – one of the few places on earth where Aramaic is still spoken as a living, vernacular language. It has long been a site of pilgrimage for Orthodox and other Christians in Syria, and is registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Saint Thekla is venerated broadly throughout the Christian world, however, not just in Syria. She is taken as a symbol of feminine strength by the Christian women of Ægypt, many of whom went on to preach the gospel of Christ to their fellows. Among the Catholic and Anglican Christians of the West she is honoured as well, being the patron of Tarragona in the Catalan country of Spain, of Chamalières in France, as well as of a cathedral in Milan, Italy. Her cultus even spread as far as Wales – not an unknown thing by any means – where there is a Llandegla and a holy well named in her honour in the Welsh northeast, in Clwyd. It is and ought to be a matter of deep shame for the Christians of the West – including those of the UK and France – that the neoconservative and neoliberal elements in their governments all colluded in a brutal attack on Saint Thekla’s earthly homeland, and funded and supported the Sunnî radicals who would murder her followers and despoil her resting-place.

Because this was one of the holy sites of Christianity which was most affected by the civil war in Syria. The three thousand Christians of Ma‘lûlâ were persecuted and forced out of their homes in September of 2013 by the radical militants of Jabhat an-Nuṣra, who burned and looted the homes and holy places of the people living there – and the Dayr Mâr Taqlâ was not exempt. Many priceless icons and relics dating back hundreds of years were smashed or plundered. An-Nuṣra also kidnapped twelve of the nuns of the Dayr, though forty of them stayed in the monastery until the town could be liberated in April of the following year by the soldiers of the Syrian Arab Army and Ḥizbu’llâh. Our selfless Shi‘ite and ‘Alawî brothers restored the monastery of Mâr Taqlâ to the Orthodox nuns; we owe them our deepest thanks, and the faith of these followers of ‘Alî ibn ’Abî Ṭâlib puts to shame the faith of us Christians in the West. Forgive us sinners, Saint Thekla! Holy mother of the Church, equal to the Apostles, pray unto Christ our God that we may be saved!

Apolytikion to Saint Thekla, Tone 4:

You were enlightened by the words of Paul, O Bride of God, Thekla,
And your faith was confirmed by Peter, O Chosen One of God.
You became the first sufferer and martyr among women,
By entering into the flames as into a place of gladness.
For when you accepted the Cross of Christ,
The demonic powers were frightened away.
O all-praised One, intercede before Christ God that our souls may be saved!

Dayr Mâr Taqlâ

Holy Father Sergios I, Pope of Rome

Saint Sergios of Rome

Today, the eighth of September, is the feast-day of the great eighth-century Syrian Pope of the Roman Church during its ‘Byzantine’ period, Saint Sergios. His family was Antiochian and sources universally acknowledge him as Syrian. He was known in particular for his vigorous interest in the English mission, and thus along with his somewhat elder contemporary Saint Theodore of Tarsos he may be considered one of the vibrant historical threads connecting the churches of Antioch and Old England. Saint Sergios is unsurprisingly venerated by both the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church.

Saint Sergios [L. Sergius, Gk. Σέργιος, Ar. Sarjiyûs سرجيوس] was the son of Antiochian parents – his father is named as Tiberios in the Latin sources. His family may have been fleeing the Râšidah conquests of the Levant, but they landed in Palermo in Sicily, in which city he was born in the year 650. He was educated in Sicily, moved to Rome in the 670s under Pope Adeodatus II, and ordained as a priest by the friend of the poor Pope Saint Leon II (who is also venerated by Orthodox Christians). He was appointed to a position as the cardinal-priest of the Chiesa di Santa Susanna at the Baths of Diocletian in Rome.

In 687, following the repose of Pope Conon, there was a succession crisis in the Papacy which led to two popes being elected in rapid succession: an archdeacon named Paschal and a priest named Theodoros, who were leaders of competing factions. In the wake of this competition, which threatened to blow up into an outright feud, the priests and cardinals of Rome – in order to broker a peace – chose the cardinal-priest Sergios as a neutral candidate to the Papacy, and he was accordingly elected Pope on the fifteenth of December in that year. Following this, the archdeacon Paschal went to Johannes Platinus, the agent of the Byzantine Emperor in Italy and also the Exarch of Ravenna, with a large sum of money demanding to be reinstated as Pope. Platinus thereafter did what he could to sabotage the pontificate of Saint Sergios – including trying to extort gold from the new Pope, and when that failed, stealing the holy vessels for the Eucharist and claiming they were possessed. (The common people of Rome very nearly revolted against Platinus for this abuse, but he restored the vessels after some more-or-less peaceable bartering.)

In his early years as Pope, Saint Sergios took an active interest in the English mission which had been begun by his predecessor in office Saint Gregory the Dialogist. He defended the reputation of Saint Wilfrið of York and ordered Ealdferð to restore him to his former bishopric in 691. In particular, he enjoyed significant contact with the West Saxon clergy including, likely, Saint Hædde of Winchester. It was at the latter’s behest that Cædwalla King was brought to Rome. Saint Sergios met him there and personally baptised him on the tenth of April; Cædwalla died ten days later of an old battle wound, and he was buried in St Peter’s Basilica. The Syrian pope also, meeting him with great warmth of brotherly affection, anointed and blessed the Northumbrian monk Saint Willibrord, who would carry the light of the Gospel among the Frisians.

Saint Sergios had gotten off on something of a wrong foot with the Exarch of Ravenna, which meant that politically speaking he had to toe a fairly fine line. Emperor Justinian convoked a synod in Trullo which addressed certain disciplinary and ecclesiastical issues – this council is considered a follow-up to the Fifth Œcumenical Council and is thus sometimes referred to as the Quinisext Council. No doctrinal matters were decided at this council, and the Roman pontiffs have generally taken an ambivalent stance on the canons produced. This goes back to Saint Sergios himself.

When the legate of Saint Sergios at Trullo, Basil of Gortyna in Crete, brought back the canons of the council at Trullo for Saint Sergios to sign, he refused to do so on the grounds that they were ‘lacking authority’ and that they introduced ‘novel errors’ in Church. However, later Roman bishops (such as Popes Constantine and John VIII) would later claim that Saint Sergios in fact did accept some of the canons of Trullo and cited them as authoritative. What appears likely is that Saint Sergios accepted the first fifty apostolic canons of the Quinisext Council, but not the latter canons that established Byzantine ecclesiastical disciplines as universally normative.

However, even though he was not willing to give up the local disciplines of the Western Rite, Saint Sergios was keen on maintaining both ecclesiastical and political unity with Constantinople. When Emperor Justinian II moved to arrest Saint Sergios’s legates, John of Portus and Bonifatius Consiliarius – and later ordered the bodyguard of Saint Sergios, a man named Zakarias, to arrest the Pope and deliver him to Constantinople. However, this attempt failed. Zakarias was thwarted by the efforts of both the Exarch of Ravenna and the local populace, and Zakarias very nearly lost his life. However, Saint Sergios himself forgave the Emperor and Zakarias, and did his level best to preserve the peace and good relations with New Rome.

Saint Sergios was not merely a political actor or a particularly active missionary, however. He was a noted lover of Liturgical forms and Church singing. He did much to enrich the life of the Church of Rome and even brought some usages of the Byzantine Rite into the Western Church, acting in the realm of sacred art and music as a bridge between Old Rome and New. He renovated a number of cathedrals in Rome during his Papacy. He was the first Western hierarch to celebrate the Eastern feast of the Elevation of the True Cross in the wake of the discovery of a piece of the True Cross in the Basilica of Saint Peter. He reposed in the Lord on the eighth of September, 701. Holy hierarch Sergios, peacemaker, friend of the poor and of the English Church, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Holy Hieromartyr Babylas, Archbishop of Antioch, and those with him

Saint Babylas of Antioch, along with Saints Ourbanos, Prilidianos and Apollonios

Today is the fourth of September, which is the feast day of the holy anti-Nazi martyr Bishop Saint Gorazd of Prague, who sheltered the Czech insurgents who carried out Operation Anthropoid in 1942. It is also, coincidentally, my daughter Eleanore’s birthday, who was born 70 years, to the day, after Saint Gorazd’s martyrdom. It is also the feast day of Saint Babylas, the twelfth (or thirteenth, if you count Saint Peter) Archbishop of Antioch, and a particular favourite of Saint John Chrysostom, who gave a touching homily in his memory. Saint Babylas was, like his Czech fellow hieromartyr with whom he shares a feast, a speaker of truth to power. He is commemorated alongside the young brothers Ourbanos, Prilidianos and Apollonios, and their mother Saint Christodoula, who were martyred alongside their bishop.

Saint Babylas [Gk. Βαβύλας, Ar. Bâbîlâ بابيلا] was born probably in the late second century, and was a native of Antioch. We may assume that he became a monk at some point. We also know that he succeeded Zebinas (Ozniophios) as the Archbishop of Antioch in the year 237. He continued as the Archbishop of Antioch through the reign of the Emperor Trajan Decius, who ruled from 249 to 251 – though the name of the emperor who executed Saint Babylas is not named by Chrysostom. Decius visited Antioch toward the end of his reign and held a huge festival in honour of the pagan gods. At that time, Saint Babylas held the Divine Liturgy in the great Church in Antioch, during the homily giving comfort and strength to his flock and admonishing them to stay steadfast through all trials. It so happened that the Emperor sought admission to the Church, for he was curious about the rites of the Christians – or so he claimed. However, when the Archbishop heard this, he went out of the church and blocked the path of the Emperor, refusing the Emperor admittance on account of his impiety, which he would not sanction within the house of God.

To save face – and because the Christians would have started a riot had he proceeded – Trajan Decius had no choice but to withdraw. But his heart was poisoned against Saint Babylas, and he sought revenge against the Archbishop for the slight to his imperial dignity. On the following day the troops of Decius set fire to the church, seized the Archbishop, and led him before the emperor. The emperor demanded to know the reason for Saint Babylas’s act of lèse-majesté, and the saint offered this reply: ‘Anyone who would rise up against God and want to desecrate His sanctuary, is not worthy of respect, but has become the enemy of the Lord.’

Trajan Decius then ordered Babylas to bow before the idols and make offerings to them, to expunge his crime against the Emperor, but no matter how he was cajoled or threatened he would do no such thing. Then the angry emperor ordered Saint Babylas to be bound in heavy chains and led through the streets in public disgrace. To this the saint replied: ‘Emperor, for me these chains be as venerable, as for thee is thine imperial crown; and the suffering for Christ for me is as acceptable, as is the imperial power for thee; death for the Immortal King for me is as desirable, as thine life be for thee.’

Together with Saint Babylas, three children were brought before the Emperor – these were the aforementioned Ourbanos, Prilidianos and Apollonios. The three of them refused to abandon their archbishop, and stood together with him. When the Emperor demanded to know who they were, the saint replied that they were his spiritual children, and that they had attained to a high degree of spiritual and moral perfection. With that, the Emperor turned his blandishments and threats upon the children and upon their mother Christodoula, and when none of them would submit to worship the idols, he ordered them to be whipped heavily according to their ages: the eldest received twelve blows; the second, ten; and the youngest, seven. The executioner then led the children and their mother away, and later the Emperor told Saint Babylas that they had renounced Christ – however, Saint Babylas was given to know that what the Emperor told him was a lie.

The children, their mother, and Archbishop Babylas were then all sentenced to be tied to a tree-trunk, their flesh burned, and finally beheaded, and thus they all received the crown of martyrdom for Christ Jesus.

Saint Babylas, Saint Christodoula and the three youths martyred with them very quickly became the objects of fervent and heartfelt veneration among the Christians of Antioch, who offered prayers over their dear relics at the site of their burial. In the 350s, however, the relics were translated from their original resting-place into a shrine in the district of Daphnē, which for the pagans was sacred to Apollo. It was also renowned as something of a ‘red-light district’ in Classical Antioch, and its cypress grove was the site of trysts and prostitution both sæcular and otherwise. The relics of Babylas and those martyred with him were moved there in part to counteract the reputation of this district – as Chrysostom would say, ‘a physician to the sick’.

Chrysostom recounts that Julian the Apostate, when he visited Antioch, sought advice from the Oracle of Apollo in Daphnē, but the oracle gave no answer – and this was determined to be on account of the propinquity of the saint’s relics. As a result, Julian had the martyrs’ relics exhumed and moved back to their original resting-place. A few days later, however, on the twenty-second of October, the roof of the Temple of Apollo in Daphnē caught fire, destroying the statue of the god within. Julian, suspecting that Christians had been behind an act of arson, closed the Cathedral at Antioch while he ordered an investigation that turned up very little of use – though some spurious charges were laid at the feet of a lax worshipper who was careless with a candle. Saint John Chrysostom claims that the fire was caused by a bolt of lightning from heaven.

Saint John Chrysostom also alludes in his homily that a new church for Saint Babylas was constructed, the Kaoussie Church, on the order of his successor Saint Meletios, who took part in the construction with the work of his own hands. This church was built on the banks of the Nahr al-‘Âṣî (that is, the Orontes) specifically to house the relics of the saint. However, in the Middle Ages, the relics of Saint Babylas were said to have been removed from Antioch and installed in Cremona, Italy. Holy Saint Babylas, speaker of Christ’s Truth even before emperors, pray unto Christ our God for our salvation!

Apolytikion for Saint Babylas, Tone 4:

By sharing in the ways of the Apostles,
You became a successor to their throne.
Through the practice of virtue,
You found the way to divine contemplation, O inspired one of God;
By teaching the word of truth without error,
You defended the Faith, even to the shedding of your blood.
Hieromartyr Babylas, entreat Christ God to save our souls.

Kaoussie Church (or Martyrion of Saint Babylas), Antioch

Holy Virginmartyr Seraphia of Antioch

Saint Seraphia of Antioch
القديسة سرافيا الأنطاكية

The twenty-ninth of July in the Holy Orthodox Church is the feast-day of the holy virgin-martyr Saint Seraphia of Antioch. Although her legend primarily comes to us from Latin documents, she has gained a significant cultus in the Slavic tradition, where she is known as Seraphima. She is one of several Orthodox saints in the late classical Christian world, together with Saint Onēsimos of the Seventy, Saints Esperos and Zōē of Pamphylia, Pope Saint Kallistos, Saint Boniface of Tarsos and Saint Padrig of Armagh, who were slaves.

Saint Seraphia [Gk. Σεραφία, Ar. Sarâfiyâ سرافيا] was born to devout Christian parents in Antioch sometime in the late first century. During the persecutions of Christians under Trajan, Seraphia’s parents fled Antioch for Rome, where they resided. They died in Rome. Seraphia grew up remarkably beautiful, and she was sought after by many for marriage. However, she refused all suitors, sold her parents’ belongings and distributed the proceeds to the poor, and sold herself into slavery to a Roman socialite named Sabina, the daughter of a senator named Herodius Metallarius and the widow of a certain Valentinus. Seraphia worked without complaint, led a quiet life free of reproach, prayed every day to God, and beyond her own immediate needs gave away in charity whatever she earned or was given her. In this way her mistress too began to believe in Christ, and was baptised.

After Hadrian came to power, the persecutions against Christians lessened but were not wholly done away with; individual governors and judges were left oftentimes to exercise their own discretion when an accusation was brought against a Christian in public. It appears that such happened to Seraphia, who had a charge brought against her to the governor Beryllus. The first time Seraphia appeared before the governor, she went willingly and without fear, and she was accompanied by her mistress Sabina. Upon seeing her vouched for by such a noteworthy personage, the governor allowed her to leave, but he summoned her back a second time to answer the charge of being a Christian. He instructed Seraphia to make a sacrifice to the Roman idols, which naturally she refused to do, professing her belief in the one true God – Christ Jesus.

Beryllus then handed Seraphia over to two guards of Ægyptian descent, who attempted to force themselves on her at Beryllus’s design. Saint Seraphia called upon God’s name and asked Him to protect her. Before the two men could lay hands on her, there was a mighty earthquake and they were flung away from her, senseless. They could neither rise nor speak. Upon the following day, Beryllus having learned what happened, ordered Seraphia to restore the two guards to health and allow them to speak. Once Seraphia had uttered her prayer to the Lord, the two guards were able to get to their feet and found their voices again.

They related to the governor that as they had approached Saint Seraphia, an angel of the Lord had appeared before them, shielding her body from them and preventing them from coming near her. Beryllus was convinced that Seraphia was in fact a sorceress, and he again commanded her to make a sacrifice to the idols. When Saint Seraphia again refused, the cruel governor ordered her to be burned with torches and beaten with rods. The executioners beat Seraphia so hard that the rods they were using splintered, and as punishment from God for his cruelty one of the splinters flew into the right eye of Beryllus, and after three days made him blind in that eye. Unable to break the holy martyr of God or to sway her, Beryllus ordered that she be put to the sword and beheaded. In this way she met her martyrdom.

Sabina later came to collect the body of her beloved slave, and buried her with due reverence. It would later come to pass that Sabina herself, six years later, would also be beheaded for professing Christ, after being accused before the prefect Elpidius – and she is also recognised as a saint, with her feast-day falling on the twenty-ninth of August.

In light of recent op-ed pieces in media either condemning Christianity for, or attempting to excuse, its involvement in the classical institution of slavery, we need to properly remember both the failings and the promises inherent in the Christian project with regard to slavery. (We also need to bear in mind that the classical institution, however brutal, was far less so than the modern chattel form practised after the advent of capitalism.)

In remembering slaves and former slaves like Seraphia as saints, we are admitting their fundamental ontological equality with their mistresses like Sabina; and we are more than only implicitly rebuking worldly structures which hold some persons to be more equal than others. This is primarily a Liturgical witness and a Liturgical demand, but it prompts extra-Liturgical reflection and action. We need to learn from those of our saints who actively preached and urged direct political action against slavery, such as Adamnán of Iona, and those within Christendom who followed their lead in the logical direction, such as the German legal scholar Eiko von Repgow. Any lesser form of Christian witness would be at best incomplete, and at worst complicit.

Moreover, as Christians we are called upon to repent of complicity in unjust social systems like slavery. This was precisely the key demand of Saint John the Forerunner when he called the people out of the cities to repent and be baptised. Baptism was an act of political symbolism whereby the penitent washed herself clean of her own sins, including the social sins of the Herodian puppet state and its Roman masters. Some Christians, historically, did so repent. Many others did not. This is the fallen reality and the fallen history to which we are witness, without excuse or apology. And following this we must repent of our own complicity in contemporary forms of slavery, including that in Libya and that in the prison-industrial complex. The heavenly equality in sainthood of Saints Seraphia and Sabina demands as much from us.

In that spirit, Holy virginmartyr Seraphia, steadfast confessor of Christ before the pagans, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!