saint martyrs of Alexandria killed by the Arians

SAINT MARTYRS OF ALEXANDRIA KILLED BY THE ARIANS

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The Saint Martyrs of Alexandria who were killed by the Arians in 372

in the Church or Saint Theonas

and from 372 to 379 in Egypt


Translated from

LES SAINTS D’EGYPTE,
LECTURES EDIFIANTES, INSTRUCTIVES, AGREABLES
PAR

LE R.P. PAUL CHENEAU D’ORLEANS

DOCTEUR EN DROIT CANONIQUE


JERUSALEM
COUVENT DES RR. PP. FRANCISCAINS, CUSTODIE DE TERRE-SAINTE
1923

VOL. I PAGES 587-592



TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY MELEKA HABIB YOUSSEF

2002



Bibliography
Authors to be consulted:

THEODORET DE CYR, Histoire Ecclésiastique, Vol. IV, chapter 21 and what follows.

SAINT GREGORY OF NAZIANZE, in laudem Heronis, sermon 23

RUFINUS, Histoire Ecclésiastique, Vol. II, chapter 22

SOCRATE, Histoire Ecclésiastique, Vol. IV, chapter 21

SOZOMENE, Histoire Ecclésiastique, Vol. VI, chapter 19



See the details of this persecution in

the life of Saint Melas of Rhinocolure who was one of its victims.



====================================================



TEXT



The archdeacon Boutros who was the faithful fellow of the labors and perils of Saint Athanassius, was called to become his successor on the See of Alexandria. The great Patriarch had designated him to the choice of his people who acclaimed his name. This election was not to the taste of the prefect Palladius who was a very fanatic heathen. He gathered the people of the same religion as his, together with some Jews, encircled the Church where resided the new patriarch Boutros II, and summonned him that he had to empty the place very quickly, otherwise the emperor would act energetically. The newly elected patriarch yielded face to the tempest. The passions of different kinds which had been constrained in respect by the influence of Saint Athanassius during his life, and which now had become at ease, could freely run their course.

The emperor Valens had sent a secret mandate to his stately representative, the prefect Palladius, that he had to be favorable to all the undertakings of the Arians. Such a mission was well in tune with the sectarian spirit of Palladius who without delay, seized the Patriarch Boutros II and shut him in jail. He enthroned Lucius at his place and ascribed all the churches to the Arians. These outrages against the liberty of worship were the equivalent to a declaration of war; Alexandria was starting to live the worst days of its history.

The emperor had issued decrees to give the buildings to the Arians, but he continued to take them; and nobody doubted that the projected assault was the signal for a bloody persecution and the occasion for customary horrors.

(see, Vie de S. Athanase, page 550 in the same volume; and see also Les Martyrs des Ariens 17, 21 et 26 Mars.)

These horrors surpassed in their wickedness, all that had been seen before.

The first church to be invaded, was the church of Saint Theonas which was the Cathedral then. The scenes of disturbance which happened through the agency of this scandalous team, have been described by the expulsed Patriarch Saint Boutros II himself. The author (R.P. Paul Cheneau) will do nothing but to translate his long narrative, shortening some rough descriptions, and mitigating many details which would be in our days, too coarse for a work that respects its readers.

(This letter of the twenty-first patriarch of Alexandria Saint Boutros II has been kept for us by THEODORET DE CYR, 386-457, in his Histoire Ecclésiastique, Vol. IV, chapter 22)

Extract
from the writings of Saint Boutros II,
21st Patriarch of Alexandria.
Therefore our church (the church of Saint Theonas) was besieged by an innumerable troop of heathens and Jews; they smashed the doors and entered, singing blasphemous songs and idolatrous hymns; then there were shoutings and roarings followed by endless applause. They attacked the virgins who were consecrated to the Lord, and made their pure ears hear the most inconvenient language; then, joining acts to words, they snatched their clothes and made them ramble in the most humiliating condition in the streets of the city while the passers-by jeered them. Whoever showed pity or disapproval, was unmercifully beaten on the spot. A great number of these saint girls were subjected to violence, and many died under the sticks with which these frenzied people strucked their heads.

(Saint Gregory of Nazianze positively says that some women were literally cut to pieces; and Rufin adds that the persons who had vowed themselves to celibacy (men and women) suffered from such violence as the heathen persecutions do not offer any example.)

But why should I tarry over these details, which are unhappily common to every such upheaval; when I have to describe unheard-of profanations, by which no history was ever polluted until now?

When they absolutely mastered the sacred place, they let an adolescent who was disguised as a woman, mount on the altar. They had painted his eyes with antimony, as they do to idols.

[Egyptian women used to make-up their lips red; their eyes were surrounded with a black strip which extended to the temples, and nearly touched their hair. The powder which they used for this, was a mixture of antimony and of very finely pulverised charcoal, that enhanced the whiteness of the complexion giving brightness to the look, and protected the eyes against ophtalmia.

(“Au temps de Ramsès”, by MASPERO, page 12)].

At the very place where we celebrate the Holy Mysteries, this youngster starts to dance and to jump, affecting the most lascivious postures, and making shameful gestures, while a band of madmen dance frantically around the altar yelling vile songs.

A young man who was known by everybody for his lewdness, climbs on the pulpit completely naked, and starts from there to vomit against the Lord Christ, the most filthy blasphemes. The sweetness of drunkenness and the practice of the least acknowledgeable debaucheries, are exalted at the place where we teach piety, modesty and temperance.

It is perhaps at this moment that Saint Boutros escaped from his prison, and embarked in disguise on a ship to Italy.

The saint continues:

Having withdrawn, I was given a successor. It was a certain Lucius, who was unfaithful to the truth, a chief of thieves, a wolf that entered into the sheepfold, a second Arius. His election was not the result of the vote of the orthodox bishops, and the clergy, and the faithful, as is required by the sacred laws. He made his official entry, but neither the priests, nor the clerical men, nor the sacred crowd accompanied him. His retinue was not composed of monks singing hymns or psalms, no; there walked besides him the imperial treasurer Count Magnus,

(Count Magnus is the same financial superintendant who had, under the reign of Julian the Renegate, set on fire the church in Beyrouth in October 362),

together with Euzoius, who was once a deacon in Alexandria, and a follower of Arius, and afterwards, the plague of the Church of Antioch of which the arian Valens had made him the Patriarch.

( Euzoius was a deacon in Alexandria. He was accepted again into the Church in 335, after having submitted a confession of faith which appeared to be orthodox, to the emperor Constantin. He was promoted Patriarch at the place of Meletius. He baptised the emperor Constantin at his death-bed. When Jovien succeeded on the throne after Julian the Renegate, Euzoius made intrigues to the sovereign in order to make him replace Saint Athanassius by a creature whom he, Euzoius, had chosen, the thing that resulted into the disorders which we know. He did not stay more than one year on the See of Antioch.)

Troops had been mobilised to escort and protect this trio of ungodly men.

The first thing which these satraps did, was to send soldiers to seize nineteen priests and deacons, pretending that they were arrested because of some horrible crime. Some of those who were arrested, were more than eighty years of age. When they arrived, the prefect repeatedly asked them to deny their faith; that was an absolutely indispensable matter in order to conquer the favour of the emperor. And as these worthy ministers of God refused, he shouted saying:

“Abjure, you wretched, abjure; make yourselves arians, God will forgive you this weekness; because it is necessity which compels you to that. Subscribe immediately to the faith of your eloquent bishop Lucius. Honours will be the reward of your obedience; in case of resistance, you will be tortured”.

Without exception, all of them persisted in the true faith, inspite of the multiplied attempts of Palladius in order to bring them to apostasy. [the authors of the time accumulated upon this Palladius the most disgracing attributes: “he is an ungodly, a scoundrel, a vile corrupted person, a real demon” (Saint Gregory of Nazianze)]

The prefect kept them for a long time in jail, anticipating a moment of weekness from their part. Finally, when he dispaired from bringing them to act according to his aims, he set up a temporary tribunal near the port, so that a greater multitude of lawless people could decry them; then he violently issued a decree of banishment against all of them; they had to leave Alexandria instantly, and go to Hierapolis in Phenicia, which was yet a completely heathen town.

Hierapolis is the ancient Tibekhat and Baalbiqii of the Egyptian and Assyrian inscriptions. It was a town dedicated to Baal. The Greeks identified it with Helios, the sun.

“Under the reign of the Roman emperors Antonin le Pieux (138-161), and Caracalla (211-217), an imposing temple was erected inside a sacred enclosure dedicated to three divinities of Heliopolis: Jupiter, Mercurius and Venus; and another temple but a smaller one, was erected very near to that one, and was dedicated to the honour of Bacchus” (Meistermann, “Guide de Terre-Sainte”, page 545). These grandiose ruins are perhaps the most beautiful in the Middle-East.

The generous confessors of the faith went across the few steps which were separating them from some ordinary boat, while the arian and pagan crowd yelled, and the indignant protests of the faithful grievously echoed their shouts. The prefect with his unsheathed sword in his hand, pitilessly presided over their departure; he refused them to carry anything, not even some food for the crossing, unwilling to alleviate in any way the severity of their exile. When the crew who had been previously advised, had made their last arrangements, the prefect himself gave the order to sail and to take off the anchor. At the same moment, when the boat left the port, a frightening thunder-storm stroke, and the sea which was suddenly let loose, started to break enormous waves on the shore. This matter was believed to be a miracle, because there was nothing that made it predictable.

The departure of these innocent victims did not quieten the fanatism of Palladius. He prohibited any demonstration of sadness; mere tears were considered to be an offence. Twenty-three persons made this costly experience. They were incarcerated; they were beaten and tortured in jail; then they were deported, some of them to the mines Phenon, and some to the quarries of Proconnese,

[that is an island of the Protontide (the sea of Marmara). It is today the island of Marmara, which is famous for its marbles].

A Deacon who had carried comforting letters from the Pope Damasus, was joined to them. He was subjected to all the imaginable ill-treatments; he had his hands bound behind his back, he was imprisonned, beaten on his head with stones and daggers made of lead, and finally he was thrown with the others in the boat to the destination of Phenon.

The fury of that tyrant, the new Herod, turned to some young children; he tortured them; then he slaughtered them, and, extending barbarism to the limit, he prohibited anybody, whatever he was, even their parents, to mourn them or to bury them; their bodies were to be the prey of the hyenas and the vultures.

A Byzantine historian named Theophane the Confessor (758-818) says: “most of the faithful Christians, men, women and virgins, were shamefully cut to pieces by flagellation, and many of them died consequently”.

All Alexandria was thrust into grief; there was not a single house where death had not caused some mourning; and nevertheless, these appalling sceneries which were daily renewed, could not satisfy the arian rabble, that was thirsty of blood and lewdness.

The persecution reached the provinces and Count Magnus was delegated to recruit his victims there. Eleven of the most venerable bishops were snatched from their sees and were sent to Diocesarea, which was a completely Jewish town.

(Diocesarea is today Sephoris, near Nazareth. The Old Saint Melania, left Jerusalem in order to go to releave these confessors of the faith. She was arrested there and thrown into the shackles. When the emperor Valens knew who she was, he apologized to her, and gave her the permission to practice her charity towards the Christian prisoners. Sephoris is the native land of Saint Joachim, the father of the Holy Virgin).

Round-ups which were organised in the deserts at Nitria and especially at Scethis, brought the detention of more than three thousand hermits. Without resistance, these gave their heads to the executioners, who were operating in all impunity, while being sheltered from embarassing protestations, in these solitary and remote regions.

This appalling era of barbarism ended only after the death of the emperor Valens, who was killed near Andrinopolis in 378 during a battle against the Goths.

From the physical point of view, Valens had little advantages: he was short, his complexion was blackish, his eye was covered with a white stain on the cornea, that had the most unpleasant aspect. From the moral point of view, he had neither judgement, nor character; and he was subjected to the most ominous influences. A mere single expression of war expedition, rendered him pale.

In the following year Valentinian and Gratian subdued the arians, and the 21st Patriarch Boutros II returned to his throne. The people who had been disgusted from the excesses of Lucius, shamefully chased him away. Lucius turned to Constantinople to claim for the imperial assistance. But he never obtained it, and that was for due cause.


Meleka Youssef