ON SAINTS MENAS, DAVID, AND JOHN,
Monks and Martyrs among the Greeks.
CommentaryMenas, Monk Martyr among the Greeks (St.)
David, Monk Martyr among the Greeks (St.)
John, Monk Martyr among the Greeks (St.)
D. P.
The Monastic Order has given frequent martyrdoms, both in the East under the Saracens, and in the Empire of Constantinople under the Iconoclasts; which, sometimes described in lengthy Acts, are sometimes found merely indicated in the sacred Fasti of the Greeks; and that in so few words that neither the place nor the time of the contest can be attained with any diligence in investigating. Slain by arrows To this last class belongs a triad of Martyrs, proposed in the printed Menaea in this way: "Τῇ ἀυτῇ ἡμέρᾳ, τῶν ἁγίων τριῶν Μαρτύρων, Μηνᾶ, Δαβὶδ καὶ Ιωάννου." — "On the same day, April 12, of the holy three Martyrs, Menas, David, and John." In the manuscript Menaea of Dijon, communicated to us by our Pierre François Chifflet, the same Saints Menas, David, and John are celebrated, and honored with the title "Ἀββάδων" (Abbots): Justinian in Novella 123 remembers this word, when he says, "Κελεύομεν τοίνυν τὸν Ἀββᾶν ἠ τὸν Ἀρχιμανδρίτην, τοὺς ἐν ἑκὰστῳ μοναστηρίῳ προβάλλεσθαι, μὴ πάντως κατὰ τοὺς βάθμους τῶν μοναχῶν." — "We therefore order the Abbot or Archimandrite to be set in each monastery, not indeed according to the grades of the monks." But we think the title of Abbots here is taken more broadly, in the way it is very frequently applied in the Lives of the Fathers to all senior monks who hold no other office. The kind of Martyrdom is of such a sort as you would rather suspect to have been inflicted by Saracen robbers from ambush through a sudden irruption, than commanded by any public power, however tyrannical—as is expressed in the following distich:
Δούλους Θεοῦ, τρεῖς Ἀββάδας παθοκτόνους. Τοξεύμασι κτέινουσιν ἀνθρωποκτόνοι.
Three Abbots, servants of God, killers of the passions, perhaps by Saracens The killers of men slay with arrows.
There is a more elegant play in the Greek of the twin compound than the poverty of the Latin language, in verse or prose, can attain by imitation: in such brevity it is enough for us to have found the manner of death expressed. If it please to believe that the Saracens were the authors, you will give place to the second conjecture, that the slaughter was carried out in Palestine, in Palestine. where they are read to have raged the most: the same conjecture is favored by the title of Abbots, more common to Palestinians and Egyptians than to Greeks. The same may perhaps receive strength from certain Additions to Usuard, in which on this very day is named "John the Hermit in Palestine": but in those which we often cite under the name of Greven the Carthusian, with Palestine omitted, only the name of "John the Hermit and Confessor" is placed. Certainly many of this name lived there; and perhaps some would prefer to think that the Palaiolaurite, who is venerated on April 19, is the one expressed in the said Additions. Galesinius celebrates the three aforementioned Martyrs in his Martyrology with these words: "In Greece, of the three holy Martyrs Menas, David, and John; who, pierced by the cast of darts, are crowned as distinguished by admirableness of piety"; afterwards he adds in his Notations that their martyrdom is celebrated by the Greeks with many odes: but we could not thus far obtain them.