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 Apostle Euodios of the Seventy, Archbishop of Antioch

Saint Euodios of Antioch

Today, the seventh of September, is the feast-day of Saint Euodios, the holy successor of Saint Peter as the primate of Antioch – indeed, the second ever to hold the office.

Little is known for certain of the life of Saint Euodios [L. Evodius, Gk. Ευόδιος, Ar. ’Ifûdiyyûs إفوديوس], except that he was numbered among the Seventy Apostles of Christ (among whom he is also commemorated on the fourth of January), that he was deeply trusted by Saint Peter and that he was revered by Holy Father Ignatios the God-Bearer. He is mentioned first in the epistle of Saint Ignatios to his flock in Antioch: ‘Remember your blessed father Euodios, who was made your first pastor by the Apostles.’ For this reason it is often he, rather than Saint Peter, who is counted the first bishop of Antioch.

The Church tradition has it that it was Saint Euodios who first reclaimed the name of Christians for the followers of Christ, from Antiochians who used it against the new community as a term of abuse. Antioch had been a landing-spot for many Jews who followed Christ, as they fled persecution in places like Jerusalem (where Saint Stephen the Archdeacon was stoned to death); here they began to preach the risen Lord, and they were called ‘Christians’ largely to distinguish them from other followers of the Second Temple faith.

A homily on the Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary on the anniversary of her Dormition is attributed to Saint Euodios. In it, he asserts that she gave birth to Christ our God at the age of fifteen. Other writings of Saint Euodios are no longer extant; however, one which is attested indirectly by the fourteenth-century Byzantine Church historian Nikēphoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos is entitled The Star, or The Beacon. Saint Euodios served the Church in Antioch as bishop for twenty-seven years, between the years 39 and 66, and he was suffered martyrdom under the Emperor Nero. Holy Father Euodios, great and glorious apostle of Christ to the Antiochians, pray unto Christ our God for our salvation!

Hidden motives?

Well, it seems I got quite the response on social media to my last ‘political’ blog post here. Much of it was… let’s just say, uninspiring, but predictable. Allow me to quote some of the responses here, verbatim and unedited, to give my readers some idea of what they entail and the general tone and intellectual quality – or rather, the distinct lack thereof – of their contents.

Seems like you simply suffer of the reveres [sic] of Trump derangement syndrome.

Did I just catch a nauseating whiff of someone’s positive opinion of Donald Trump?

No. Of Putin.

So you’re saying that those of us who have witnessed Trump’s deference to Putin on TV and who have been told of his silence on Russian aggression and the payment of rewards for the killing of American soldiers in Afganistan [sic] are just intellectually lazy and basically gullible fools? I say, sir, what are your hidden motives here? Do you believe that the Orthodox Church in Russia is the servant of Putin, in view of his being the untitled Czar of Russia? Are you one of these people who believe that the Church should walk in lockstep with the Emperor, no matter what his title?

Practically all of this is utter rubbish. One needn’t dig very far into my writings, either here, or on Silk and Chai, or on Facebook, to understand that, to put it mildly, I’m not the world’s biggest fan of the current president, that I did not vote for him, that I have criticised ‘leftists’ who did support him, and that I have no intention of voting for him this November. And the fact that even a passage like this, in the piece of writing in question:

A historical connexion with Orthodox Christianity does seem to correlate to a certain hostility to capitalism of the sort that Trump represents, although that anti-capitalism cannot be said to be causally linked to the corpus of Orthodox doctrine or Liturgical practice (which is a shame!).

… can be taken as evidencing any sort of warm feelings or latent sympathy for Trump is so far removed from reality or even basic reading comprehension that it rather beggars belief. Particularly when my opposition to everything Trump stands for – greed, corruption, capitalism – is so clearly stated; and particularly when the Caucasian gentlemen proudly evincing such a lack of even the rudiments of basic English rhetoric are soi-disant fans (and one actual family member) of noteworthy English-language rhetorician David Bentley Hart. I’m not entirely sure what that actually says about how Dr Hart interacts with his family and his fan base. Suffice it to say that the most charitable tack in this case would be to not pass any comment at all.

And with regard to the last quote, again, even a modest perusal of my comments on church-state relations on this blog – both in general and specifically – evidence that I give a rather strong answer, and much the opposite of the one the author of the last comment assumes, to the question of: ‘Do you believe… that the Church should walk in lockstep with the Emperor?’ My answer is, quite simply, no. Allow me to direct you, sir, to my following pieces of commentary on church-state relations in Russia, which form a rather consistent thread going back over eight years:

• Where stands the Church?
• More silliness: the theological orientalism of SoJo
• Defending Russian Orthodoxy as Orthodox and as Russian
• More thoughts on Orthodoxy and nationalism
• (In)vested interests
• Americanism and intégrisme: theopolitics abound
• China, the Vatican and the Open Church
• Mechanöcephäly
• The Moscow Patriarchate and pension reform
• Why the worldview of Patriarch Kirill matters now
• Theopolitical questions abound

As you can see from a brief perusal of these posts, the common thread that unites them all is an equal-opportunity suspicion of all neatly-hierarchical configurations of the relations between church and state – including all three of papocæsarism, cæsaropapism, and sæcularism. Even with regard to Russian politics in particular, I am very far from being an uncritical supporter of Putin. In fact, I acknowledge and celebrate the instances in which the Russian Orthodox Church does support the civil rights of Putin’s domestic critics and those who protest his policies, as well as the instances in which clerics themselves do this. I am more than happy to see, for example, the Church speak out on behalf of Russia’s social safety net, or on behalf of the unborn, or on behalf of Russia’s indigenous ethnic minorities – and it usually has to critique state policy in doing any of the above. I am more than happy to see the Russian Orthodox Church speak truth to power, and it actually manages to do so far more often than the American churches collectively do with all their much-vaunted (and largely taken-for-granted) supply of freedom from state interference.

A bit more troubling, though, is that it seems that anyone who stops to examine, or seeks to question, the dominant Blob-driven media narrative surrounding foreign affairs in the United States – even doing so from the standpoint of wanting to preserve peace – is taken as having sinister ‘hidden motives’. In fact my motives are quite open. I don’t want America and Russia to go to war. I don’t see anything productive, or useful, or positive in the current frozen conflict, and ‘hot’ proxy conflicts, we seem to be in, all around Russia’s rather broad and wide front porch. I truly do not believe that Russia is intrinsically any worse than any other large nation-state with its own values, its own history, its own path dependencies and its own interests. I truly do believe that war is a racket that hurts ordinary Americans, and that consent is continually manufactured to keep that racket going, whether in Afghanistan or in Iraq or in Syria or in Yemen or in Somalia or anywhere else. Those are my motives; judge them as you please.

And so, in a slightly more civil vein, addressing this comment:

Hmm, I get the sentiment that the media harped on Russiagate to the point of absurdity but I’m not sure why you seem unwilling to admit that, per the senate committee, there seems to certainly have been in regular secret communication with state actors and utilized the intel they received…

I’m not sure what polling data tells us either… I don’t think anyone cares whether or not the majority of babushkas like Trump or not, nor do I think the claim was that the Russian public was helping or something.

Seems obvious that a country we’re (still) a global competitor with would benefit from a bit of chaos and destruction of our trust in our political apparatus (even if that doesn’t make them uniquely evil and the system was already in bad shape).

First of all, I think there is a bit of a double standard here, in the form of a motte-and-bailey fallacy. Russiagate is an archetypical Big Lie in the sense that it posits Trump as a literal asset of the Russian state, and it operates the way most Big Lies do, in simply making elliptical references to this position without ever explicitly articulating it in its most overt way. Repeat it often enough and people will believe it. Take, for example, that recent billboard in Manhattan telling people to ‘VOTE’ – for Biden, naturellement – ‘Because Russian lessons are expensive.’

It’s smarmy. It’s a snarl. It actually works on the same level as Trump’s own allusions to Mexico or to Muslims. That is to say: the authors of this billboard know that what they are saying is literally indefensible. If Trump wins reelection, he isn’t going to force us all to speak Russian, nor is Russia going to annex America at Trump’s behest. But by making the insinuation that he will, they are tapping into a broad web of innuendoes that was assiduously built up in the wake of the 2016 election that Trump is actually a Russian asset. It is also subtly making an inference about Russian language, or about Russian culture, that runs under the semiotic surface. Saying ‘Russian lessons are expensive’ in this pejorative context is almost to call Russian-speaking people – not the government, the people – frauds and cheats. It’s to look on the language as dirty, on the culture as dirty, on the people as dirty. Because the people who put up this billboard are, without a doubt, nice lily-white northern liberals, any response to an insinuation of bigotry on their part will be met with a chorus of craned necks, rapid disavowals, fervent hand-wringing and voluble umbrage of various sorts. But there is simply no avoiding the fact that at its root, Russiagate apologias of this sort are an expression of base, ugly, knuckle-dragging xenophobia. So, yes, sir. It is a materially-important fact that the ‘majority of babushkas’ have no love for Trump, have no use for Trump and have no desire to see Trump elected. Because that is the level of discourse we are at right now, sad to say.

But this is what Russiagate apologia looks like at its most kneejerk, scattershot and intellectually-lowbrow: its ‘motte’ form. The ‘bailey’ form of Russiagate apologia – that is to say, the most intellectually-defensible form of the Russiagate myth – is the continued prosecution of the DNC email hacking scandal of 2016. To refresh my readers’ memories, the story goes like this. A hacker, or group(s) of hackers, supposedly working on behalf of the Russian government, managed to access nearly 20,000 emails from a server operated by the Democratic National Convention, and submitted this email archive to WikiLeaks which then published them on its website. This was done, supposedly, with the collusion of certain members of the campaign to elect Donald Trump, with the express intent of discrediting Hillary Clinton and materially compromising her chances of winning the election.

Even at its most intellectually defensible, Russiagate is still a total fiction. As I pointed out before, and as a number of reputable journalists of the American left (such as Matt Taibbi) have pointed out repeatedly, the Mueller investigation turned up nothing and went home. The problem is that that hasn’t stopped the political class from making hay of it for the purposes of distraction. So, when the investigation has already been done, found nothing, and thrown in the towel, it really doesn’t mean that much that the DNC has opened a new lawsuit (after having lost one already) or that a Senate Commission has issued a statement that contravenes much of what the actual investigation it is based on has said or failed to say. At this point, further harping on an already spectacularly-poor showing by the Democratic Party in a national election does little but point to the pathetic impotence of said party: its creative bankruptcy, its lack of ideas, its moral impotence and its abandonment of any semblance of responsibility for its own failures.

Let Trump’s record on Russia speak for itself – it’s voluble enough, and there’s little in it for a peacenik like me to like. Trump has, according to the Brookings Institute (no friend of the administration or of Russia):

• identified Russia and China as America’s ‘adversaries’
• restricted exports to Russia
• repeatedly issued sanctions against individuals in the Russian government
• authorised provision of lethal weapons to the Ukrainian government
• bombed Russian and Syrian forces in Dayr az-Zûr (2017)
• expelled Russian government workers in New York, Washington and Seattle
• unilaterally withdrew from the INF treaty limiting nuclear armament buildup
• sanctioned Russian banks providing aid to the Venezuelan government

Saying that Trump is somehow an agent of the Russian state when he continually attacks Russian state instruments and economic interests, often with far blunter instruments than Obama did, is rather ludicrous. That more than anything else, is why I commend the ‘babushkas’ of Russia, and the people of East Germany, Bulgaria and Slovakia, for not buying the cockamamie that the American intelligence community keeps pumping out, for not buying the pusillanimous self-pitying sob stories of the American Democrats, and also understanding that Trump is not their friend. On all points, in consideration of the available evidence, I happen to agree with them.

Holy Martyrs Iouventinos and Maximinos of Antioch

Saints Iouventinos and Maximinos of Antioch

Today in the Holy Orthodox Church is the feast-day of two martyred soldiers of Julian the Apostate, the Saints Iouventinos and Maximinos, who were stripped of their ranks and executed in the year 363. They are honoured and commemorated in both the West and the East, though for us their feast-day falls on the fifth of September, and for our Latin brethren their feast falls on the twenty-fifth of January.

Iouventinos [L. Juventinus, Gk. Ιουβεντίνος] and Maximinos [L. Maximus, Gk. Μαξιμίνος] were among the armour-bearers (the technical term is hypaspistai ὑπασπισταὶ) of Julian’s entourage. In classical times, armour-bearers were among the most élite rank of trusted troops in the Greek, and later Roman, army. We may thus assume that Iouventinos and Maximinos were both highly skilled in combat, renowned for bravery and politically astute enough to ascend the ranks. They were present with Julian’s army when the emperor was planning to launch his reckless, wicked war of aggression against Sâsânian Persia, which he was staging from the city of Antioch, the native town of both men.

Julian’s overall presence in Antioch was broadly resented for several reasons. His desire to restore the temple of Apollo at Daphnē was one major sticking point. His impious treatment of the relics of Saint Babylas whom we commemorated yesterday, in seeking to restore the Temple of Apollo, led to a mass demonstration among the Christians of the city. Later, when the Temple of Apollo caught fire, Julian blamed the Christians and closed the Cathedral in Antioch while he began an investigation which turned up no evidence of foul play. In addition, Julian led an austere, puritanical lifestyle which clashed somewhat with the more hedonic habits of the Antiochians, and which they were (rightly) wont to view as hypocritical. In his Ecclesiastical History the Blessed Theodoret of Kyrrhos refers to Julian’s ‘mask of moderation’.

As mentioned above, Julian’s plan to embark on a needless, hubristic military campaign against the Persians – who were traditionally the enemies of Rome, but who at that time posed no threat to Rome’s borders and indeed sought more peaceful relations – was popular among some of the senior officers of the army, but it also served to alienate him from the Antiochians. We must remember, after all, that Antioch’s gæographical position rendered her vulnerable to Persian attack, and the Antiochians keenly remembered the repeated sieges of Šâh Šâpur II against their city. The notables of Antioch were eager to give peace a chance, which was not high on Julian’s list of priorities.

But Saints Iouventinos and Maximinos actually became embroiled in Julian’s ‘food politics’ in Antioch. There was some long-standing dispute between Julian and the Antiochian notables over food prices and supply, with Julian accusing them of hoarding at the expense of the citizens. It is unclear whether or not Julian was justified in this accusation, but he certainly didn’t help matters when he personally decided to offer extravagant, bloody sacrifices of flesh meats to the pagan gods in public festival. He scattered the blood throughout the main marketplace, befouling the bread and meat and fruit and vegetables which were being sold there. And two of the people who were overheard, at a military banquet, to object strongly to this vulgar display of waste and despoiling of the city’s food supply were his own Antiochian armour-bearers, Iouventinos and Maximinos.

One of their fellow-officers, who was present at the banquet, reported them to Julian, who had them seized and brought before him. Evidently he expected Iouventinos and Maximinos to recant and to show the requisite loyalty to him and to the idols he worshipped. But the effect upon the two of them was much the reverse. Having been brought before Julian, they took the opportunity to upbraid him to his face, both for his wasteful extravagance in defiling the food with sacrificial blood, and for his apostasy from the Church. Incensed, the apostate emperor had the two of them stripped of their rank, tortured and beheaded. Thus, the two armour-bearers exchanged worldly rank and status for an everlasting heavenly glory in their martyrdom, and put to shame the pagan impiety of the apostate emperor.

Julian had the word put out that the two soldiers had been executed for mutiny, in order to prevent them from being venerated as martyrs. But the citizens of Antioch, when they heard of what had happened to Saints Iouventinos and Maximinos, at risk of their lives went and claimed their remains. They interred the two armour-bearers in a magnificent tomb, which soon became a site of veneration for the Christians of Antioch. Blessed Theodoret was not the only Antiochian hierarch to pay reverence in writing to these two martyrs – Saint John Chrysostom also wrote a homily in their honour. Holy saints Iouventinos and Maximinos, 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

The spellbreaking power of the Elbe

Eastern Europe truly is a very different place from Western Europe, in part because many of the illusions and lies that our elites have concocted for us about political realities simply shatter and vanish upon contact with Eastern Europe. And by ‘Eastern Europe’ I do count those areas of what is more properly called Central Europe, which begins in the Elbe River basin and includes what used to be East Germany.

Take Russiagate, for example. Russiagate was always a lie – and a flimsy lie at that, but no less dangerous for being flimsy. The American journo class, and especially MSNBC, tried incredibly hard to paint Trump as an agent of Russia, someone who served primarily Russian interests, who was elected essentially at Russia’s behest. The lie was repeated so baldly and so repeatedly that the Putin-Trump ‘bromance’ and the Russian ‘love affair’ with Trump became articles of faith. The only problem is that none of it is actually true, and the Russiagate story is used to play centrist Americans for suckers. Neither Putin, nor the Russians who elected him and continue to support him, ever had much use for Trump, save for the fact that he wasn’t Hillary Clinton.

Indeed, the Pew poll that came out at the beginning of this year regarding attitudes toward Trump and America worldwide still support this view. Russians really don’t like Trump, who has a confidence rating of 20%. For comparison, Trump polls as well or better in Canada (28%) and every single Western European country surveyed – the UK (32%), the Netherlands (25%), France (20%), Spain (21%), Italy (32%) – except Germany (13%). On the other hand, despite the growing impatience with him, Russians do still love Putin, and the same Pew data gave him a rating of 73%.

But what do I mean when I say the Elbe dispels political illusions? I mean precisely this: the lie of Russiagate becomes ever more untenable the closer you actually approach Russia. Where the Russiagate story about election collusion and Trump being a Russian agent has purchase, one would expect to see equally or near-equally low approval ratings for both Trump and Russia. And indeed, in Western Europe this is generally the case, with Russia receiving approval ratings about on par with Trump there, according to Pew data collected in February this year. This is not necessarily a good indication that they ‘buy’ the Russiagate story, however. It may simply be the case that Western Europeans see both Trump and Russia as threats to their interests.

But the Elbe breaks this spell, hard, in two different ways. First of all, one sees the expected low approval ratings for Russia in Poland (33%) and the Ukraine (32%). However, both countries show markedly higher approval for Trump. Poland, in fact, is the only country in Europe where a slim majority (51%) have confidence in Trump to do the right thing in world affairs, whereas in the Ukraine a plurality (44%) believes the same. Intriguing, no, that significant portions of the populations in Poland and in the Ukraine approve of Trump but do not approve of Russia? If Trump were Russia’s agent, wouldn’t one expect to see those numbers closely coincide, as they do in Western Europe?

On the other side, we have countries where Russia polls highly, but Trump does not. Bulgaria has a remarkably high degree of trust in Russia (73%), but Trump is even more unpopular there (26%) than in Canada or Italy. Likewise Slovakia – a solid majority of the country trusts Russia (60%), which is far more than can be said for Trump (34%). And finally Greece, where Russia generally (58%) and Putin personally (52%) sway a majority of the population’s trust, but where Trump (25%) is as thoroughly distrusted as in Western Europe. Even in East Germany, this same pattern seems to hold: 43% of East Germans have a favourable opinion of Russia – markedly more than in West Germany (33%). But East Germans also seem to loathe Trump every bit as much as their West German neighbours do, with an approval rating in the high teens. It’s very much the case that the closer one gets in proximity to Russia, the more ludicrous the idea that the Russian state or, even more so, the Russian people are invested in Trump seems to be. And that seems to hold regardless of what opinion one has of Russia.

One of the notable analyses that accompanied the Pew study was the degree to which European support for Trump was predicated on domestic political objectives and orientation. The new nationalist right parties tend to have far warmer feelings for Trump on average than their countrymen – even when those new nationalist right parties are also Russophobic, as in Poland and Hungary. On the other hand, warm feelings for Russia simply do not seem to be driven as much by ideological considerations, at least in Eastern Europe. As I have said before, pro-Russia parties in Eastern Europe tend to fall as much on the political left or even in the centre as on the right.

And to a certain extent, I believe ideology does matter. A historical connexion with Orthodox Christianity does seem to correlate to a certain hostility to capitalism of the sort that Trump represents, although that anti-capitalism cannot be said to be causally linked to the corpus of Orthodox doctrine or Liturgical practice (which is a shame!). These Orthodox countries do, after all, seem to have done a better job on the whole of keeping their social services and transfer mechanisms intact despite the onslaught of neoliberalism against them. The fact that the countries which are traditionally within the Orthosphere seem to be particularly cool toward Trump and warm toward Russia does seem to indicate a certain ideological distaste for what Trump represents, over-against that which Russia represents. These are taken, with good reason, to be two different things.

But what does seem to matter in these countries, is not ideology, but culture, which in some ways underlies politics more deeply than ideology does. Bulgaria has a deep and abiding connexion to its Orthodox roots, going back to the Seven Saints. Bulgarian literature has a strong Russophile streak – for example, Ivan Vazov’s famous novel! And of course there is the long history of peasant rebellion which this literature implies, which is echoed in the interwar distributist governance of Aleksandar Stamboliyski. In particularly the eastern part of Czechoslovakia, too – and Carpathian Ruthenia in particular – there was a strong streak of both peasant rebellion and cultural attachment to Russia, which has carried its echoes into modern-day Slovak politics.

It’s actually a bit sad, because the data I’m drawing on here really are hidden in plain sight. It’s just that convenience and force of habit weigh more heavily with the average consumer of news media than truth does, and therefore this intellectually-lazy and baseless association of Trump with Russia continues unabated, to be used – as it inevitably will be – as a blunt instrument and as an accusation of disloyalty against the opposite ‘side’ in American electoral politics. What a truly sorry time we live in, where even the people who claim to be on the side of ‘facts’ and ‘reason’ are simply blind to both. What few hopes I have left for sanity in the West, are actually in the East of the West… in the Elbe Basin and beyond.

Venerable Symeōn Stylitēs the Elder of Antioch

Saint Symeōn the Elder Stylite

The beginning of the new ecclesiastical year in the Orthodox Church, the first of September, is also the feast-day of Saint Symeōn the Elder Stylite of Antioch. Saint Symeōn is perhaps one of the best exemplars of the tendency within the fathers of the Syrian desert toward idiosyncratic and unique forms of asceticism, combined with absolute mortification of the individual will. As such, it is quite common for us moderns – myself included in that, honestly – often not to know what to make of him.

Saint Symeōn [Gk. Συμεών ὁ Στυλίτης, Ar. Sim‘ân al-‘Amûdî سمعان العمودي] was born around the year 386 in a village called Sis, which is in the Jabal al-Lukkam in the region of Kilikia (modern-day İslâhiye near the Turkish-Syrian border). His parents were Syriac-speaking Christians – his father may have had the Greek name of Syphōkiōn or Sisōtiōn, and his mother may have been named Martha, though this appears to be a confusion with St Martha the mother of the younger Symeōn Stylitēs – and they had him baptised ‘when he was small’. He, along with his brother Shemsi, were the only two of their parents’ many children who lived to adulthood. Saint Symeōn worked tending his father’s animals, and spent long days labouring in the pastures. Symeōn was not literate – even as a young adult his hagiography indicates he had little knowledge of the Scriptures. These three facts taken together indicate that his parents were not well-off, and may be counted as among the rural fallahîn of their day.

Early on, young Symeōn showed certain dispositions for the life of seclusion and holiness. He worked tirelessly for his father. As a result, although he was small and scrawny in stature, still he was nimble on his feet, deft with his hands, and capable in the strength of his body. As he worked in the pastures he collected resin from the sweetgum trees, and burned it as incense, even though he did not yet understand the importance of this. Even though he had no direct knowledge of the Scriptures, still he was cheerful in disposition, gentle in demeanour and loving in his actions to all. He made sure that his brother and his fellow-workers, those whom he met, ate their fill before eating himself – if he ate at all.

When he was thirteen years old and tending his father’s flocks he entered a Church, roughly 60 kilometres away from what is now Aleppo, where he heard the Epistles of St Paul being read. He asked the elder in the Church what the meaning was of the passage that he had read, and what it meant to fear God. The elder, who was a bit sceptical of this rustic child asking him such serious questions, asked him why he wanted to know. Symeōn humbly replied that it was because he was ignorant and unlearned that he wished to know about God. The elder replied to him that if he kept the fasts, prayed continuously, humbled himself before his neighbours, loved his father and mother, and obeyed God’s commandments through His priests, then he would inherit the Kingdom. The elder then told him that these things could best be done in a monastery. Symeōn then fell on his face before the elder and resolved to follow the ways of God.

When he was eighteen, Saint Symeōn presented himself to the abbot of the same elder, whose name was Timothy, and begged to be admitted into the fellowship. After ascertaining that the youth was not a criminal or fleeing a debt, Abba Timothy allowed Symeōn to join the monastery and handed him to the brothers to teach him the rules. The first four months he spent there without complaint or trouble, diligently learning the Psalter. Whatever he was given, whether food or money, he gave it to the poor, eating for himself only once every week. He also imposed in secret an ascetic extremity upon himself of binding his flesh with a coarse, heavy rope from the monastery well.

The other monks began to complain about him, that he was following his own rule rather than the rule of the abbot. This was a very serious charge, as it showed to them that Saint Symeōn had not mastered the cœnobitic discipline of obedience but rather followed his own will. Upon discovering that he had bound his flesh with the rope, the abbot became angry and told Symeōn to leave the monastery – but not before the brothers had tended to his festering wounds from the rope and nursed him back to strength. Symeōn went in solitude to an old dry well where many unclean spirits dwelt, and these spirits went and assailed the abbot with loud voices, clamouring for him to give them Symeōn. By this Abba Timothy understood that Symeōn was in fact a holy youth, driven not by pride or by vainglory but instead by a sincere humility. Abba Timothy begged Symeōn to return, and even sent five brothers to bring him back by force. At the monastery Abba Timothy and all the brothers prostrated themselves at Saint Symeōn’s feet and begged his forgiveness for their sin against him, but Symeōn heaved a great sigh, fell on his face in reply, and asked the monks not to add to his burden as an unhappy sinner – and further agreed to accept Abba Timothy’s rule as a father and as a servant of God. He stayed in that monastery a year longer.

When Saint Symeōn left again, he removed himself to a small cell of dry stone walls nearby the monastery, by the village of Galanissa, and stayed there for three years. Many folk went and sought him there to ask his guidance and prayers. Then he beheld a vision of a man in a splendid raiment, who told him to take the stones of that place and build himself a pillar, on which he would stand in constant prayer, exposed to the elements. He built his little pillar four cubits – about two metres – high, and lived on top of it for four years. His reputation for wisdom and holiness continued to spread, and throngs of people came to him. Desiring further solitude, Saint Symeōn built his column again and it became 12 cubits (6 m) high, and he lived upon it for twelve years. The same crowd again came to him and disturbed his peace, and he built his column again 20 cubits (9 m) high, and he lived upon it for another twelve years. Then the people built two cathedrals near him, and another column which was 30 cubits (14 m) high. He lived upon this column for four years.

During this time he worked numerous wonders. Those who came to him possessed by devils were exorcised. Those who came to him with diseases and infirmities, even leprosy, were healed of them. Those who came blind were restored their sight, and those who came to him deaf were restored their hearing. By means of his holy life and deeds of mercy, Saint Symeōn converted many to the Christian faith. Among these, Saracens, Persians, Armaceni, Laoti and other ‘strangers’ (allophyli) are mentioned in his Life. Another account mentions Persians, Medes, Saracens, Ethiopians, Iberians [i.e. Georgians] and Scythians among those who held the Stylite in veneration.

The Life of Saint Symeōn recounts one of his temptations by the Evil One, who disguised himself as an angel of light and appeared to the saint in a fiery chariot, beckoning him to be taken bodily into heaven. Saint Symeōn lifted his right foot to ascend the chariot, and then lifted his right hand to make the sign of the Cross. As soon as he had made the Cross, the angel and chariot vanished like vapour, and thus Symeōn knew this apparition to be of the Devil. In shame, Saint Symeōn spoke to his foot: ‘Don’t come back down, but stay like that until my death, until the Lord summons me, a sinner!’

His thigh had been wounded by the Devil, and this wound soon festered and became infested with maggots. The assistant of the stylite, a youth named Antûn, witnessed this. Symeōn asked Antûn to bring him back up the pillar those maggots which had fallen off him, and doing so the saint put them back on his leg, bidding them eat what the Lord had given them. When a certain Saracen king (basilikos) went to visit him, a maggot fell from the pillar and the king ran and caught it in his hands. Saint Symeōn asked why he did that, for such a thing made him feel ashamed. But the king told the saint that it was in fact no maggot, but instead a precious pearl – and so it was. Saint Symeōn told the king that it was given to him as such for his faith, and the king took it and withdrew.

At one time the saint’s mother came to visit him, but in general women were not allowed to enter the place where his pillar was. When he heard her voice, Symeōn called out to her: ‘Wait just a little while and we shall see each other again, God willing.’

His mother began to weep and loose her hair, and asked him: ‘My son, why do you do this? As thanks for bearing you I am filled with grief. For the milk I have fed you you have given me tears. For the kisses I showered you with, you gave me back pains of the heart. And for the labour with which I raised you you gave me the most painful wounds.’

This saying caused Saint Symeōn, and all who were with him, to weep. He bade her: ‘Dear mother, be at peace a little while, and we shall see each other in the place of eternal rest!’

His mother continued to entreat him to let her look upon him, not as a stranger in the kingdom of heaven but as her own flesh and blood in this life – or at least, that she might die swiftly so that she might the sooner see him, and his father who had already gone before. Three days and nights she spent at the foot of his column, and on the fourth she gave up the spirit, and the monks picked up her body and brought it up to Saint Symeōn. Saint Symeōn wept over his mother’s body and prayed to God that she might enter into the company of His saints. After this, the people built a pillar for Saint Symeōn, 40 cubits (18 m) high, upon which he lived for sixteen years, until he died.

Saint Symeōn wrought many more wonders upon his new pillar. One of these is an intriguing, peaceable variation on the hagiographic tales of ascetics who slay dragons. In Saint Symeōn’s Life, there was a dragon that lived near him in the region of Aquilo, which had taken a splinter of wood in its eye and lived in great agony and blindness. The dragon slithered its way to Saint Symeōn’s pillar, twisted itself into coils in humility, and then prostrated itself before the saint of God. Saint Symeōn prayed over the serpent, and pulled the sliver out of its eye. It measured a cubit in length. Although the crowds kept their distance out of fear of the dragon, they praised God when they saw that Symeōn had healed it. The dragon lay there prone for a long while as the people walked past, and then it gathered itself up, bowed its head in the direction of the monastery, and went in peace back to its den. No one came to any harm. This episode is intriguing in that the saint healed rather than slew the serpent.

There are numerous other miracles in Saint Symeōn’s Life, which says of these that they are too many to count. He cured a certain woman of an intestinal worm three cubits long, when no doctor could dislodge the parasite. He caused a bountiful holy spring to appear in a cleft in the earth on the eastern side of Abba Timothy’s monastery, during a season of dire drought. His prayers, uttered over earth from the monastery, felled a man-eating leopard that was terrorising the countryside and killing fallahîn and their animals. Two petitioners who came to Saint Symeōn’s pillar after having killed a pregnant doe were stricken dumb on account of their crime; the doe was laid with reverence within the monastery walls.

There is another tale of an Antiochian brigand named Ionathas, who committed many evil crimes. When the authorities caught up with him, he ran to earth and sought sanctuary at the base of Saint Symeōn’s pillar. He confessed his many crimes and wicked deeds to the holy man, and he spoke of his desire to repent. Saint Symeōn enjoined him sternly not to try him, or to return to his life of crime. When the authorities came to the monastery seeking Ionathas, they bade the saint give the brigand up to them. They also recounted to Symeōn his many crimes, told him that he had already been tried, found guilty and sentenced to be fed to wild beasts, and said that there would be a riot in Antioch if he were not brought to justice.

Symeōn answered them thus: ‘He who led him here is greater than I. He protects people like this, for such is the kingdom of heaven. But if you feel you are able to enter here, come and seize him. I will not do so myself, for I fear the Lord God who sent him here.’

The authorities began to tremble. None of them moved to lay hold upon Ionathas. Instead they left the monastery for Antioch, where they told of what had happened. For a full week thereafter, Ionathas clung to the base of Saint Symeōn’s pillar. At the end of the seven days, he begged Symeōn’s permission to leave. The saint chided the bandit for being so eager to go back to his wicked life. But this was not what Ionathas meant. He gave up the ghost, then and there at the base of the pillar.

When word reached Antioch of the brigand’s death, again the authorities came to claim the body. But Saint Symeōn again answered them: ‘He who led him here came with a company of the heavenly host. He has the power to cast your whole city and everyone in it down to hell. He has welcomed this man’s soul to him, and I was fearful that He might also take me. So please cause no more trouble to me, the humble sinner.’ Upon hearing this, the Antiochian authorities again departed in great fear, and told of what had happened.

It was the custom of Saint Symeōn to make a full prostration upon his pillar every Friday. One Friday he did not arise, even the Sunday following. His assistant Antûn became afraid, and climbed up the pillar to find his master making no response to him. Only after a long while did Antûn stoop down to listen for Saint Symeōn’s breath, only to find there was no life within him – only the sweet odours of balsam and incense rose from his body. Antûn wept bitterly over his master’s body, kissed his eyes and made him decent, and then began to lament his departing. Saint Symeōn then appeared in a vision to Antûn, and told him that he would not abandon the pillar or the monastery or the people that he loved, but had gone to his rest in the Lord – and then exhorted Antûn to continue his labours diligently.

Antûn reported his master’s death to the Bishop of Antioch – at that time it would have been Martyrios – and to the Roman Army commander Ardaborios. They came with a great throng, brought down the saint’s body and laid it upon the altar. As they did so, birds flew overhead such that everyone could see and hear, singing songs of mourning. The outpourings of grief could be heard, Antûn tells us, for seven miles around, and even the mountains, fields, trees and sky wept.

As he lay in state upon the altar, Bishop Martyrios of Antioch tried to clip a portion of the saint’s beard to keep for a relic, but the hand that tried it was stricken with paralysis, and only after many prayers were spoken over him was he healed. Thereafter the Bishop forbade anyone – including himself – to touch the body, which was a source of grief to many in the region.

As the bier bearing Saint Symeōn passed Meroë, a man who had been deaf and dumb for forty years passed in front of the procession. This deaf-mute man had coveted another man’s wife when he was younger, and then broken into her tomb after she died, which was why he had been thus stricken. He fell to the ground before the saint, and began to speak, giving thanks to the saint for the gift of his speech and for forgiveness of his sin, and pledged to watch over and serve the saint as long as he lived.

Saint Symeōn was brought into Antioch, and the entire town turned out of their homes with gifts of gold and silver, singing psalms and hymns to bring him in procession into the church, before being returned to be buried near his pillar. This had been a matter of great dispute between Antioch and Constantinople, both of which claimed his relics for their own, but Antioch had the stronger claim to the saint as the pillar had been Saint Symeōn’s dwelling-place for so many years – though later Byzantine soldiers would exhume him and have him translated on dubious terms to Constantinople. Many wonders were wrought at his tomb, even more than he had done in life – and the deaf-mute who had been cured fulfilled his oath and served at the saint’s tomb until the day of his death.

Antûn, the faithful servant of the saint, had a new monastic church built around the saint’s relics at the base of the pillar. This is the Qal‘at Sim‘ân, or the ‘Fortress of Symeōn’. This church has been among the architectural victims of the bloody Syrian Civil War that has plagued the country since 2011. Occupation by the Kurdish YPG and the Sunnî fundamentalist Ahrâr aš-Šâm both took their toll on the building, though a Russian air strike hit the Qal‘at in May of 2016, badly damaging the site and knocking over what was left of Saint Symeōn’s pillar. The Turkish armed forces currently occupy the church, and have turned it into a military ‘observation post’. Holy Saint Symeōn, ascetic of the Syrian desert, elevated by the grace of God, pray unto God for us, and forgive us sinners!

Apolytikion to Saint Symeōn the Elder Stylite, Tone 1:

You were a pillar of patient endurance,
Having imitated the forefathers, O Venerable One:
Job in suffering, and Joseph in temptations.
You lived like the bodiless ones while yet in the flesh, O Symeōn, our Father.
Beseech Christ God that our souls may be saved.