ON SAINT LEONIDES,
BISHOP OF ATHENS IN GREECE.
CommentaryLeonides, Bishop of Athens, in Greece (St.)
G. H.
Athens was the most renowned city of Attica, nay of all Greece most illustrious, since it was held to surpass other cities in prudence and learning. Athens, the arena of learning, Her first Bishop, in Eusebius book 4 chapter 3, is said to be St. Dionysius; after whom, in the same Eusebius, is given as his successor St. Publius the Martyr, whose Acts we gave on January 21. There was there also St. Aristides, a most learned man, who delivered a discourse on behalf of the Christian faith. When afterwards under the Christian Emperors the Roman Empire flourished, the great Doctors of the Church, Basil the Great and Gregory Nazianzen, set out from Asia to Athens, There St. Leonides was a distinguished Bishop, and there were perfected in letters. There also flourished St. Leonides the Bishop, with such splendor of virtue and learning,
that by his death Athens seemed to have put on some grime, which in the printed Menaia this distich indicates:
Σκότος συνέχε τὰς Ἀθήνας ἀθρόον, Δυνάντος ἀυταῖς ἡλίου Λεωνίδους.
Thick darkness at once overwhelms Athens, When Leonides, like a sun, sets for them.
Moreover his Acts, which we judge were once written, seem to have perished, and so only a bare memorial of him is found in the said printed Menaia and in various manuscripts: And he is venerated on April 15. from which we have noted those which we found at Milan in the Ambrosian library, at Paris in the Mazarine and another of the Dominican Fathers, and at Dijon with our Chifflet, and likewise in Maximus, Bishop of Cythera: and these words are read almost everywhere: τῇ αὐτῇ ἡμέρᾳ τοῦ ἐν ἁγίοις Πατρὸς ἡμῶν Λεωνίδους, Ἐπισκόπου Ἀθηνῶν. On the same day, of our father among the saints Leonides, Bishop of Athens.