ON SAINT PHARMUTHIUS
Hermit in Armenia.
3RD CENTURY.
CommentaryPharmutius, hermit in Armenia (Saint)
D. P.
We gave the Life of Saint John in the Well on March 30, from a Vatican MS rendered into Latin by Cardinal Sirleto. We ascribed him to Armenia, Age and anchoretic life of the Saint because Cybistra, whence he had gone forth into the nearby solitude, is placed by more careful Geographers under Comana as a metropolis: although Carlo da San Paolo in his Sacred Geography attributed it to the Tyanian Metropolitan of Cappadocia Secunda. For however it may have been of old, in a later time certainly the name of Armenia spread more widely: and this same Paul just cited writes that Cybistra is today called Armenach, as is Comana itself—I do not know whether he is sufficiently mindful of himself in both places. The time in which the same John lived was that of some persecution against the Christians, and no other can more conveniently be assumed than the last and most fierce, which lasted until the reign of Constantine the Great; when through fear of punishments very many hid themselves in trackless solitudes, among whom John himself was one, as appears from the Acts.
Acts with Saint John "in the well" Now let these things be said here concerning the place and time, that it may be understood where and when Pharmuthius, the instructor and nourisher of the aforementioned John, lived. For John, having left Cybistra, betook himself to the cave of this holy old man, an Egyptian by origin; then, when he had descended into a well and persevered in it for forty days without food or drink, an Angel came to the Egyptian bringing him food and said: "Arise, Pharmuthius, and bring food to John." The same Life goes on to narrate how John took the food brought by Pharmuthius, and being strengthened by his teaching against diabolical temptations, asked that he should no longer
be solicitous for him. In a short time the disciple himself appeared more learned than his instructor. The devil was plotting to draw the young man out of the well by any means. Therefore, feigning the likeness of a servant of his mother, he approached Pharmuthius and persuaded him to become the author of a proposal that John should see his mother again. Pharmuthius asked for a delay of one night, and during his prayer he endured continual agitations of thoughts, so that he could not finish his prayers; and from this alone he could and should have held the cause of the unknown guest under suspicion. On the following day, nevertheless, he went with him to John, and received a deserved rebuke; and led by it to the recognition of his error, he departed weeping and saying: "O devil, how much you have deceived me: but having me as a plaything, you mocked me, and a boy overcame you: now, however, I myself an old man will propose to you a new contest, and I shall overcome your actions."
Cult among the Greeks It is credible that the outcome answered to this excellent resolution, with the prayers of Saint John himself aiding his caretaker; but lacking the Acts of his life, we can pronounce nothing certain. What, however, we have hitherto set forth and can be fully read in the aforecited Acts, presume him, of whom we have treated, to be the very one whose memory is kept in the Menaea of the Greeks, and from these in Maximus Cytheraeus, with the title "of our Holy Father," and with one distich alluding to his name, which he has in common with the eighth month of the Egyptians, thus:
Ἐξῆλθε Φαρμούθιος ἐκ τῶν ἐνθάδε, Φαρμουθὶ μηνὶ δῆλον ὡς Ἀπριλίῳ.
"Pharmuthius left these earthly things in the month Pharmuthi, which gave its name to this one (we call it April)."
Meaning of the name That is, since this Egyptian Pharmuthi, the Barmuda of the Copts, so coincides with our April, that beginning on March 27, it reaches the Kalends of April on its own sixth day, as appears from Selden book 3 On the Synagogues of the Hebrews, chapter 15. From that month the name is derived, and that the penultimate is to be pronounced long the measure of the Greek verse teaches. The presumption, moreover, that this Pharmuthius named in the Acts of Saint John is the same whom here the Menaea commemorate is confirmed by a geographical reason, teaching that to the Patriarchate of Constantinople (from whose present-day usage the Menaea are mostly received) belongs Cappadocia, Lycaonia, and Armenia, the confines of which regions this Saint must have illustrated by his anchoretic life; since not far from John, and hence from Cybistra and Baratta (for from this place came Chrysius, who says that he buried John), he inhabited the cave above indicated.