Holy Martyrs Gourias, Samōnas and Abibos of Edessa

Saints Gourias, Samōnas and Abibos of Edessa
القديسين الشهداء غوريا وصامونا وحبيب

The fifteenth of November is the feast-day of Saints Gourias, Samōnas and Abibos, confessors and martyrs of Edessa. Gourias and Samōnas and Abibos suffered for Christ at the end of the third century and at the beginning of the fourth century, respectively. According to Patriarch Makarios III (Zaym), all three were Syriac in origin, and hailed from villages near Aleppo. Gourias hailed from the village of Qaṭma north of ‘Afrîn; Samōnas from ‘Anadân 12 kilometres north of Aleppo; and Abibos from Tal ‘Adâ in Salamîya. Unlike a lot of the other early martyrs of the East, the cultus of these three saints still seems to be fairly localised to the Christian East: the Orthodox Church (and Antioch in particular), as well as the churches in the Assyrian tradition, whether in communion with the Latins or not. However, all three martyrs are quite important in the Orthodox tradition, and Abibos in particular is revered among the great martyrs of the Antiochian Church.

Saints Gourias [Gk. Γουρίας, L. Gurias, Ar. Ġûryâ غوريا] and Samōnas [Gk. Σαμωυάς, L. Samon, Ar. Ṣâmûnâ صامونا] were friends, priests and ‘preachers of the Word of God’. During the reign of Diocletian, the two friends played a significant rôle in strengthening the faith of the local Christians. They were arrested and brought to trial, where they were ordered to give sacrifices to the idols of the pagan gods. They refused and instead boldly confessed their faith in Christ before the præfect, Antoninos. As punishment, the two martyrs were beaten and hung up each by one wrist for five hours straight while heavy weights were suspended from their ankles. Then they were cast into an oubliette for three and a half months, with no food and little water. However, Gourias and Samōnas endured everything with patience. One of their fellow-prisoners overheard the prayer spoken by Samōnas, from whose eyewitness it was later transcribed:

O Lord my God, against Whose will not a single sparrow falls into the snare. It was You Who made room for David in his sorrow (Ps 4:1), Who proved the Prophet David stronger than lions (Dan 6), and granted a child of Abraham to be victor over torture and flames (Dan 3). You know also, Lord, the infirmity of our nature, You see the struggle set before us. Our foe strives to snatch us, the work of Your right hand, away from You and to deprive us of the glory which is in You. With Your compassionate eye watching over us, preserve in us the inextinguishable light of Your Commandments. Guide our steps by Your light, and make us worthy of Your Kingdom, for You are blessed unto ages of ages.

That night the guards took Gourias and Samōnas out of the prison, led them out of the city gates and had them beheaded. The faithful of Edessa went out to retrieve their bodies, and even the soil which had borne their precious blood, and brought them back into Edessa with incense and psalms praising God, to be tended and buried reverently.

About three decades after this, during the persecution under the reign of the last pagan emperor Licinius, a hue and cry went up on the orders of the governor Lucian for a deacon of Edessa named Abibos [Gk. Άβιβος, L. Habibus, Ar. Ḥabîb حبيب], who had been truly assiduous in promoting the true Faith, reading the Holy Scriptures to the people in the outlying villages around Edessa. Rather than be hunted down and run to earth, and rather than endangering his mother in whose house he lived, Abibos surrendered himself willingly to his persecutors, who brought him to the trial. Abibos freely and willingly confessed Christ there.

The governor ordered Abibos to be flogged and flayed, and then scourged with iron hooks. After these tortures Lucian, who was infuriated by the ineffectiveness of the torture upon the martyr, sentenced him not to be beheaded but rather burned alive. The executioners prepared the fire, and Abibos willingly went into the fire himself. Praying to the Lord the whole while, he surrendered his soul and achieved the victory. When the fire died down, his mother and his relations came to retrieve his body, which they discovered had been unharmed by the flames. They sought permission, and were given it, to bury his body next to those of Gourias and Samōnas, that they together might be honoured as martyrs for Christ. Later, a church was built on the site in honour of the martyrs.

A number of miracles attended the graves of the three holy martyrs. One of these is related in their hagiography. A certain fœderatus, a Goth, was sent to serve in Edessa. He saw and wanted a certain pretty and pious local young woman named Euphemia, and sought to take her to wife. He went to her mother, a widow of Edessa named Sophia, and asked permission to marry her, but the girl’s mother was understandably reticent. Before she gave him permission to marry Euphemia, she took him to the graves of Saints Gourias, Samōnas and Abibos and made him swear that he would never do her any harm, or insult her, but always love and cherish her.

After his term of service in Edessa was over, the Goth took Euphemia back to his homeland. As it turned out, he had deceived the poor girl: he was already married to a woman of his own tribe, and as per the tribal laws Euphemia was made to serve as the Goth’s bed-thrall, subservient to the Goth’s first wife in all things. The Goth threatened Euphemia with death, if she ever made known that they had married; and the Goth’s wife treated the girl horribly. Euphemia bore the Goth a son, but the jealous wife had the boy poisoned in the cradle. Moreover, before the evil woman died, she demanded that her husband bury Euphemia alive with her. The hagiography states that this appears to have been customary among the Goths who were still heathen. Thus threatened with death, and sealed in with the earth around her, Euphemia cried out to the three holy martyrs for protection.

The Lord preserved Euphemia from death. She was wondrously transported out of her grave and back to Edessa, indeed into the very church of the three holy martyrs, where her mother received her with joy. Euphemia told her mother what had befallen her, and when the Goth came to serve again in Edessa Sophia denounced him before the whole city. He was placed under arrest by the præfect and executed for his crimes. For this reason the akathist proclaims Saints Gourias, Samōnas and Abibos to be the ‘heavenly patrons of honourable marriage’. Their intercession is sought among those in troubled marriages and family turmoil. Holy saints Gourias, Samōnas and Abibos, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Apolytikion for Saints Gourias, Samōnas and Abibos of Edessa, Tone 5:

Christ our God, You have granted us the miracles of Your holy martyrs
Gourias, Samōnas and Abibos,
As a stronghold and protection.
Through their prayers, strengthen those in authority in every good deed,
For You alone are merciful and the Lover of Mankind!

A few words in honour of the Golden Mouth

Saint John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople
القدّيس يوحنّا الذهبي الفم رئيس أساقفة القسطنطينية

Because I have already written one of my ‘hagiographical’ blog posts in memory of Saint John Chrysostom, I feel that marking today, his main feast-day, with another such blog post would be rather redundant. At the same time, leaving the day unmarked here would also be a sinful oversight on my part, given how important Chrysostom’s writings have been to me and to my spiritual and intellectual development thus far.

Worthy of note is that Saint John Chrysostom is from a young age versed in the pagan philosophers, particularly Plato. His understanding of the Greek philosophers is apparently fairly profound, and we can see certain traces of their influence on him in his sermons. Chrysostom’s clear belief that there is a Truth that is foundationally real, is a Platonic belief. However, his sermons have nothing in them of the exoteric-esoteric distinction. One of the reasons, it has been posited, that Saint John’s sermons seem to have received so little attention from academic philosophers and theologians, is precisely because they are so little given to philosophical speculation, featuring so little of what is popularly termed ‘theology’. Chrysostom’s sermons are practical, straightforward, commonsense, aimed toward the common man. We can speak of a certain populism in the Golden Mouth’s style; however, it would be more fitting simply to call him a good Antiochian.

The tragœdy of the philosopher – a matter of particular significance to Strauss, Kojève, Grant – is his relationship to power. The search for a personal truth, an esoteric truth, a truth ‘within’ or ‘out there’ rather than the truth before your face… this leads to a certain position whereby it becomes possible to compromise with and acculturate oneself to power. Chrysostom follows the path of the philosopher, that much is clear, in his early præ-monastic life. It seems to me that he comes eventually to an understanding of the compromise at the heart of the philosopher’s calling, and the tragic choice it presents between individual seclusion and accommodation of power. It seems that ultimately, he rejects both choices.

He ends up finding a different option, in the form of the Antiochian School of Catechesis. The teaching of Diodōros of Tarsos was clearly quite influential on Saint John. The Antiochian School is concerned primarily with the Truth of Christ as man… that is to say, the Truth that any person can touch and hear and see before one’s face. As such, the Antiochian approach to Scripture is one which seeks to situate it historically and socially. The allegorical approach of Origen and Cyril – the approach which tries to dig through layers of meaning in order to deliver esoteric truths to those select few hearers who are of a ‘superior’ quality – is something which Chrysostom deliberately eschews. Chrysostom chooses the Magian spirit of the Old Testament prophets, over the Apollonian spirit of the neo-Platonists.

Chrysostom therefore touches on certain political matters of his own time and place. However, even though his political preferences are shaped to the realities of fourth-century Byzantium, certain principles he touches on are valid no matter what setting they are in. His discourses on the love between a husband and a wife, for example, are timeless. Much of what he has to say is directly applicable to modern spouses, and is very justly taken to be part of the apostolic deposit. Likewise, Saint John’s discourses on wealth and poverty are applicable to any time or place. Saint John considers wealth to be a moral problem for those who have it, a distraction from spiritual matters; and he considers the poor to be bearers of an ascetic burden not of their own choosing, but to their credit as they choose to bear it.

Saint John Chrysostom’s teachings on œconomics, also, seem to be fairly relevant. He is a noted critic of the gold standard, claiming that gold has no intrinsic value, and indeed on purely utilitarian grounds appears to prefer the classical Laconic iron standard:

Let us not consider that wealth is anything great, nor that gold is any better than clay. The value of a substance does not come from its name but from what we think about it. For if we were to investigate the matter carefully, iron is far more necessary than gold. Gold brings nothing useful into our lives, but iron serves countless arts and supplies many of our needs.

And on the topic of usury:

Nothing, nothing is baser than the usury of this world, nothing more cruel. Why, other persons’ calamities are such a man’s traffic; he makes himself gain of the distress of another, and demands wages for kindness, as though he were afraid to seem merciful, and under the cloak of kindness he digs the pitfall deeper, by the act of help galling a man’s poverty, and in the act of stretching out the hand thrusting him down, and when receiving him as in harbour, involving him in shipwreck, as on a rock, or shoal, or reef.

And on the topic of public versus private ownership:

The possessions of the Emperor, the city, the squares, and the streets, belong to all men, and we all use them in an equal degree. Look at the economy that God has arranged. He has created some things that are for everyone, including the air, sun, water, earth, heaven, sea, light, and stars, and He has divided them equally among all men, as if they were brothers. This, if nothing else, should shame the human race. The Emperor has made other things common to all, including the baths, cities, squares, and streets. There is not the slightest disagreement over this common property but everything is accomplished peacefully. If someone tries to take something and claim it as his own personal possession, then quarrels arise. It is as if the very forces of natures were complaining, and as if at that time when God was gathering them from everywhere they were trying with all their might to separate among themselves, to isolate themselves from each other, and to distinguish their own individual property by coldly saying that 'this is yours but that is mine'. If this were true, quarrels and bitterness would arise, but where there is nothing of this sort neither quarrels nor disagreements occur. In this way we see that for us as well a common and not an individual ownership of things has been ordained, and that this is according to nature itself. Is not the reason that no one ever goes to court about the ownership of a public square the fact that this square belongs to all?

Saint John Chrysostom’s œconomics, in fact, seem to have much in common overall – at least in terms of first principles, though obviously the discretionary forms and details relating to technical capacity are understandably different – with the various left-populist movements that much later arose in Russia, in China, in the Balkans and in the Americas. We can even see, perhaps, some parallels between Saint John’s teaching and the Arab nationalism that would emerge around the same time.

But although these parallels exist and are worthy of note, they are to a certain extent misleading. Saint John’s œconomic principles are not laid out in a political programme, but are fundamentally tied up with the Magian prophetic spirit, the one which undergirds the Hebrew Scriptures in particular. His particular insistence – whether in his teaching on marriage or in his teaching on property – on forgoing any notion of ‘mine’: this comes directly from the witness in the Scriptures to the fact that the Hebrews were called out by God to live as strangers in a strange land, and to extend hospitality to all who came among them. It is in this spirit, the Antiochian spirit of holding the Scripture up as a reflection first of their own time and place, and subsequently looking for the practical ways in which to obey the commandment that comes before our face, that the Golden Mouth’s writings must be read.

Holy Father John, chief among the exegetes and most inspired of pastors, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Thoughts on American politics and the Crucifixion

The recent American elections have got me thinking, of all things, of the trial and the Crucifixion of Christ. This should not be so surprising. We Americans invest our once-every-four-years selection of a new President with all the pomp and bluster and self-importance of an ancient pagan festival. Half of the country bands together to revile the other half, to recriminate the other or to exult in triumph. The other side is made the scapegoat for all of the country’s problems. There is something inherently religious – religious, but not Christian – about the entire election cycle. It is every bit as much a rite of sacrifice and catharsis as the execution of criminals once was, even as late as in Victorian England.

And where is Christ in all of this? This is what I have kept asking myself. But the answer, as to any question, should be obvious. Christ is where He always was, and is, and shall be. He stands before the world as its just (and thankfully merciful) Judge, and his Judgement Seat is the Cross. It is not man who has put Christ to trial, but Christ in the Crucifixion who has put the guilt of man to trial, and even in this act saved us from death. Because even though the names and the labels and the material conditions have changed or even in some cases reversed, that does not mean that the fundamental spiritual realities underlying them have changed. We are still being judged by the Cross.

There exists, now, in our culture, a new set of individual purity codes and debt obligations, which are being enforced not by a physical Temple with a physical priesthood as under the Second Temple religion, but instead by the academies and the producers of popular culture. ‘Wokeness’ is the new standard of purity. It is the new Puritanism, the new Pharisaism. Just as the Second Temple was complicit with Roman hegemony, so too is ‘wokeness’ complicit with capitalism. Those who denounce the loudest the structures and contingencies of oppression and power through the lens of ‘critical theory’ are considered to be the most righteous. But this righteousness, now as then, is a fickle thing. No matter the inward fervour with which it can be put into play, no matter the tithing of mint and dill and cumin that the performers of this new righteousness affect publicly (especially on Twitter, now that Tumblr is more or less passé), the fullness of the Law is beyond them, and those who are righteous will inevitably falter and stumble. Not only this, but those who falter and stumble publicly are subject to public shaming, public ridicule, loss of jobs, threats against families.

The Second Temple housed the forces of religious conservatism and religious authority. Nowadays we can see that the forces of religious reaction no longer belong to what was several decades ago termed the ‘religious right’. The institutions of cultural and intellectual production have long been in the hands of – not the left, strictly speaking, but people who broadly consider themselves to be well-meaning and ‘progressive’, ‘enlightened’, ‘egalitarian’. The Sanhedrin of the age, the religious authority in American society, does not belong to the Evangelical right. It belongs – as it has long belonged – to the liberals. The long-standing legitimacy crisis within liberalism has eroded much, but not all, of its cachet. The punitive, vengeful, sadomasochistic form which liberalism has taken particularly in the wake of the 2016 election is an almost revivalist attempt to shore up the public prominence which it once enjoyed – just as the Pharisees sought to reinvigorate Second Temple practices by reforming the religion and insisting on the oral tradition as well as showing themselves to be upholding the purity codes.

The other side, among the people who were reviled and outcast, their œconomic and social status stripped away from them by the religious authorities, some of them (particularly the tax collectors) sought refuge in the power apparatus of the Herodian state, and the cult of Cæsar. The strongman figure of Tiberius and the notoriously-corrupt and -libertine puppet government of Herod were the civil authorities of their day – remember that Herod in particular was promising to Make Judæa Great Again, and through his building projects he was going to restore it to the prominence it once had under the Hasmoneans, even though he was simply not capable of following through on that promise.

The people who once had power and privilege under the former order of things are often wont to turn to such a strongman as Tiberius or Herod in order to reorient themselves, and give themselves again a sense of meaning, direction and purpose. This is precisely the impulse which causes many to turn to a new Cæsar, a new Herod – all the while imagining in the foolish vanity of their hearts that he is a new Cyrus or a new David.

Still others who are wholly disaffected turn toward radicalism – and look to take what was denied them with the dagger, the rope, the raised fist. The Zealots, the Sicarii: I can well understand what it is that motivates them, for it also motivates me. If I am honest with myself, my sinful and erring heart is indeed with the Zealots. These are the ones who truly do yearn for a return to the age of prophecy, the ones whose hearts truly do respond to Messianic promises. In a way, the Zealots – that is to say, the socialists, the communists, the radicals, the political insurrectionaries – are the closest to Christ, for they too shared in the Crucifixion. They too were seen as a threat to Rome and to the Temple.

And there are yet others who think that they can wash their hands of the entirety of political life, who proclaim themselves separate and disaffected from the system. These are the ones who think of politics as a matter for speculation. Though they cloak themselves in the language of prophecy and philosophy – ‘what is truth?’ – and even though they look upon the face of Christ, in the end they turn Christ over to His executioners. Often times they do not themselves understand the position from which they speak. Many would be ashamed to think of themselves as standing on the side of Pilate rather than of Christ. But a neutrality, or a passive-ism, or an anarchism, which looks upon the struggle of the masses for dignity with cold sneers and disdains from getting the hems of their robes dirty… what is this if not the spirit of Pilate?

In our political life, in other words, we are still crucifying Jesus. The woke liberals accuse Christ of blasphemy still. The nationalist right claims no King but Cæsar. The left asks for the release of Barabbas. The libertarians, anarchists and others who say they ‘hate politics’ and hold themselves aloof – they wash their hands along with Pilate. I think Fr Seraphim of Mull Monastery of All Celtic Saints put it best, when he says that ‘both sides fail Christ’. Indeed, all sides do. And yet we must exercise political agency, for if we do not then we are making a show of washing our hands while the instruments of death surround us and serve us. This is the conundrum of our times, and it is one which we must each face.

We can see from the Gospel how, where, and with whom Christ stood. We can see from the Gospel that God does take sides. That in itself should be discomforting to those who would make Christ into an easy ‘ally’ of liberalism, conservatism, radicalism or the apolitical tout court. Christ was and still is radical, but His radicalism was not of the same internal nature as the radicalism of the Zealots. Still, we must remember two things: being on the same ‘side’ as Christ is not enough, and God does overcome every possible form of political division. Christ reached the hearts of tax collectors and agents of the state like Zakai and Matthew. Christ reached the hearts of religious scholars and Pharisees like Nikodemos and Joseph of Arimathæa. Christ reached the hearts of Zealots like Simon and Dismas. According to the Church tradition, Christ even reached the heart of one who stood by and told her husband to do nothing: Claudia Procula.

It is not possible at all for our politics to be a complete reflection of the justice of God, and for that there will and must be an answer. And for that reason the political life – and particularly the political life we lead, in ‘the belly of the beast’ – must be accompanied by a profound spirit of penitence, by the spirit of Lent.

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.)

Holy Martyrs Galaktiōn and Epistēmē of Homs

Saints Galaktiōn and Epistēmē

Today, the fifth of November, is the feast-day in the Orthodox Church of two holy Syrian martyrs of the city of Homs: Saints Galaktiōn and Epistēmē. At first husband and wife, they also struggled together as ascetics, and they went together into their martyrdom for Christ after a lifetime of such struggle. The hagiography of Saints Galaktiōn and Epistēmē, though it bears the marks of historicity and indeed of first-hand witness, nonetheless displays something of a Christian answer to the pagan understanding of erotic love.

Saint Galaktiōn [Gk. Γαλακτίον, L. Galation or Galacteon, Ar. Jalâktiyyûn جلاكتيون] is the son of well-to-do pagan parents in Emesa – modern-day Homs in Syria – named Kleitophōn and Leukippē, who are themselves accounted as saints after their conversion. (These names, it should be noted, are also the protagonists of a contemporary Greek romantic comedy by the rhetor Achilleus Tatios, which also takes place in the city of Tyre in Phœnicia.) This couple, although wealthy, nonetheless had a problem: Leukippē was barren. Being desirous of children, Kleitophōn made generous gifts of gold and valuables to the pagan temple, but it was to no avail, and the couple remained childless.

At that time, the city of Emesa was ruled by a governor named Secundus, who was a cruel and zealous persecutor of Christians. He set up the instruments of torture on public display in the streets, and further issued a proclamation that anyone suspected of belonging to the ‘sect of the Galilean’ was to be handed over for punishment. And so it was the case that many were handed over, and still more Christians gave themselves up voluntarily to martyrdom, being unwilling to let their neighbours suffer on their account.

Among these was a man named Onouphrios, an elderly priest, who used a disguise of beggar’s rags to hide his office. He went from door to door in Emesa, begging alms – and when he saw the opportunity, he preached the Gospel of Christ. It so happened that amidst this persecution he came to the threshold of Leukippē’s home, and he asked for alms. Leukippē herself came out and attended to Onouphrios, but the wise priest sensed that the woman was troubled. He asked her about it, and Leukippē revealed her family situation to him. Onouphrios consoled her, and taught her that the one true God does not turn His back upon those who come to Him in prayer.

Leukippē believed, and consented to be baptised a Christian. It so happened that several months after her baptism, by a wonder of God, she conceived, and it was revealed to her in a dream that her son by Kleitophōn would become a true follower of Christ. She was joyful at this news, but still kept it from her husband until after their child was born. Upon hearing this, Kleitophōn also assented to be baptised, and the two of them raised their son together in the Christian faith.

Galaktiōn grew up strong and handsome, and his inward virtue was every bit as comely as his person. Kleitophōn and Leukippē saw to it that he received the best education, the wisest teachers. Inwardly, however, he was drawn toward the Church, and harboured an ambition to enter the monastic life. When he reached the age of twenty-four, his mother Leukippē departed this life. His father desired to see him marry, however, and so he found a young woman named Epistēmē [Gk. Επιστήμη, L. Epistemia, Ar. ’Ibistimiyya إبستمية], who was his match in every way. She was fittingly named, for she had all manner of knowledge and wit, in addition to being outwardly attractive; and most importantly yet, she was meek, decorous and kind-hearted. She was, however, still a pagan.

Galaktiōn had kept his monastic ambitions secret from his father, and so when he told him that he had arranged a marriage for him, Galaktiōn, understanding the Law to honour his father, went along. He visited Epistēmē several times before their marriage, and during that time he spoke to her of the Good News of Christ and convinced her to accept baptism in secret – along with one of her family’s servants, a man named Eutolmios. After their marriage, Galaktiōn and Epistēmē agreed between themselves each to retire separately into a monastic community, and they left Homs and travelled into Ægypt, where they parted ways amicably and each went into a different monastery – one for men, the other for women – on Mount Publion, which is near to Sinai. Eutolmios also became a monk, and entered the cell together with Galaktiōn.

The husband and wife each toiled and struggled in their separate cells for several years. Epistēmē received a vision during her labours, that she and Galaktiōn were standing together before a radiant King seated upon a throne, and that this King bestowed crowns upon them. This was a foreshadowing of the martyrdom that was soon to befall them.

During the reign of Trajan Decius, one detachment of Roman soldiers discovered the monasteries on Mount Publion, and moved to seize them and the monastics living there. The mountainous terrain being familiar to these holy men and women, most of them were able to flee and hide from the Romans with ease; however, Galaktiōn alone chose to remain in his cell, reading from the Psalter. That is where the soldiers founded him, arrested him, beat him and dragged him out of the monastery down the mountain.

From her vantage point Epistēmē could see the groom she had parted from when she entered the cloister, and she begged her mother superior to be allowed to share in Galaktiōn’s fate for Christ’s sake, for it had been he who had brought her to Christ. With tears in her eyes, the mother superior allowed her to leave. She too was apprehended by the soldiers. The two saints Galaktiōn and Epistēmē suffered great torments for their Lord. They were condemned to death; their hands were severed at the wrists and their feet at the ankles. Their tongues were removed, and finally they were beheaded. In this way they did truly receive the crowns that had appeared in Epistēmē’s vision.

It was Epistēmē’s former servant, Eutolmios, who went and reclaimed the relics of Christ’s holy martyrs and had them buried decently. The account we have of this Life of the two saints, in fact, comes to us from Eutolmios, who put his account together based on what he himself had seen and heard. The fact that he attributed to Galaktiōn the heritage of a pagan love story only renders more poignant his own love and the love of Epistēmē, as models of a Christian erōs which transcends even death. Holy martyrs Galaktiōn and Epistēmē, betrothed fellow ascetics in life and fellow witnesses to Christ in death, pray unto Him who loves mankind to save our souls!

Apolytikion for Saints Galaktiōn and Epistēmē of Homs, Tone 4:

Let us the faithful honor these two betrothed athletes:
Galaktiōn and modest Epistēmē.
Their ascetic labors blossomed into martyrdom, therefore we cry to them:
“Glory to Him who has strengthened you!
Glory to Him who has crowned you!
Glory to Him who through you grants healing to all!”

Venerable Pimen the Athonite of Zographou

Saint Pimen of Zographou

The third of November in the Orthodox Church is also the feast-day of the holy and venerable Athonite father, Saint Pimen of Zographou. Another of the humble and gentle spirits in the mould of Saint Ivan of Rila and Saint Dimităr of Basarbovo, he belonged to the same nation that they did: the Bulgarian nation. He is a singular light in the dark times of the Ottoman occupation of Bulgaria, who with his own hands restored and built churches throughout his old homeland, and decorated them with beautiful frescoes.

Saint Pimen [Bg. Пимен] was born in the city of Sofia. His parents were elderly, and his mother had hitherto been barren before his birth. One night in a dream, his mother received a vision from the Holy Theotokos in a white raiment, surrounded by a multitude of ascetics. The Mother of God gave the woman to know that she would lift the barrenness from her, and also that she would bear forth a son, whose occupation in the world was indicated by those around her in the apparition. Departing from her, the woman was filled with joy, and she conceived.

She bore her son on the twenty-ninth of June, 1540. Because it was the feast-day of the leaders of the Apostles, she christened her son with the name of Pavel. From when he was young, his parents sent him to study with an elderly hieromonk named Toma, who had been on Athos when he was younger but who then served in the Church of Saint George the Greatmartyr in Sofia. The venerable Toma taught young Pavel not only his Cyrillic letters, but also how to read Holy Scripture, and as well the arts of church singing and iconography.

After his parents died, so too did young Pavel’s mentor meet his repose. On the fortieth day after his death, the hieromonk Toma appeared to Pavel in glory, and bade him go to the Holy Mountain, which would be the site of his salvation. And so Pavel took all he had – everything that his parents had left him – sold it and divided it amongst the poor of Sofia, and brought himself to the Monastery of Zographou on Mount Athos. It was here that he took the tonsure, along with the monastic name of Pimen.

Zographou Monastery, Athos, Greece

Young Pimen took quite readily to the monastic life. He was humble, thinking of himself only as a sinner, and showed himself to be kindly and gentle to all. It was natural that the other monks would come to him for a word, and his brother-monks took to calling him ‘the young Abba’. He was not, however, without enemies, for the Evil One works his way in everywhere, and preys upon the hearts of the heedless and unsuspecting. One monk became bitterly jealous of Pimen’s virtues, and took his cloak and cast it into the fire. The cloth, however, did not catch light – instead, wherever it touched the fire, the fire was extinguished. And just as the cloth extinguished the fire, so too did Pimen’s humility and goodwill overcome the malice sown in the hearts of his brethren by the wiles of the ancient enemy.

On his thirtieth birthday, on the feast-day of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, the Bishop of Edessa Pamfil Vodenski visited the Zographou Monastery. Against his will, the Bishop of Edessa made the young monk Pimen into a priestmonk, to serve at Zographou. Each time the young priestmonk served the Liturgy, it was with tears in his eyes as he gave to all the Body and Blood of Christ. He also gained the gift from God of wonderworking prayer. He conducted an exorcism upon one of the brethren who was tormented by dæmons, and on another occasion one brother was bitten by a poisonous serpent and died. Saint Pimen raised the brother to life again and expelled the atter by his prayers.

So that he would not fall victim to vainglory, he implored the abbot to allow him to go into some secluded place and there live the life of an anchorite. With great reluctance the abbot assented, and so Pimen left Athos for the woodlands nearby. He built a simple hut of sticks for himself, and ate only chestnuts and wild weeds for his food. He only ventured into Athos to partake of the Holy Elements. On one occasion he was visited by two brother-monks, when a wildfire broke out and threatened to engulf the enclave. But Saint Pimen made the Sign of the Cross and prayed to heaven, and at once a stormcloud blew up and a torrential downpour began, extinguishing the fire before it could reach the saint’s hut.

Thus he spent twenty-five years in his little hut near Athos. One day as he knelt in prayer he was visited in a vision by Saint George of Lydda, who was the patron both of his home church in Sofia and of the Zographou Monastery. The mighty soldier and meek martyr told Pimen that it was God’s will that he sojourn again among his own people and blood kin, who were like a flock of lost sheep without a shepherd to guard them from the beasts.

Saint Pimen – good Orthodox monk that he was – at once suspected himself of vainglory and did not believe the vision, thinking it to be possibly dæmonic in origin. And so he went to one of the elders of Athos and asked him his advice. Only when the elder perceived Saint Pimen’s vision to be genuine did he accept a blessing from the abbot, and departed into Bulgaria. He took with him a monastic disciple who was also named Pamfil, who would later commit Saint Pimen’s Life to writing. It was with sad joy and with many tears that the brothers came forth to bid farewell to Pimen, and they went with him to the borders of the lands of Zographou.

Over many years Saint Pimen travelled throughout Bulgaria. He went first to Sofia and into the villages around there, then spent some time in the Petritsoni Monastery of the Holy Dormition in Bachkovo, in southern Bulgaria. He sojourned in the north as well: in Vidin, in Silistra, in other towns. Everywhere he went, he preached the Word of God and strengthened the Bulgarian people in their faith, and worked many wonders of healing with his prayers. One man of Silistra, born blind and given his sight by the saint, asked to be tonsured a monk. Though reluctant at first, seeking to be assured that it was the man’s own will, he at last granted the man’s wish.

Saint Pimen also built churches wherever he went, or else renovated old ones which had fallen out of use under Turkish persecution, harassment and harsh taxes. He is credited with having built up or repaired as many as three hundred parish churches and fifteen monasteries with his own hands, as well as decorating them in beautiful frescoes and icons. His buildings were inspired by the Balkan Tărnovo School of architecture that characterised both Zographou and Petritsoni: compact rectangular floor plans and arched reliefs in the high stone walls. Two examples of his work are the Assumption Monastery in Cherepish, which became an important centre for calligraphy and illumination in early modern Bulgaria, and also the Suhodol Monastery of the Holy Trinity. Toward the end of his life he returned to Cherepish; it was there that the venerable saint reposed at the age of eighty years, in the year 1620. Holy venerable Pimen, builder of churches and upbuilder of the faith among the Bulgarian people, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Cherepish Monastery, Stara Planina, Bulgaria