ON ST. FLAVIANUS, ANCHORITE IN THE EAST.
Commentary
Flavianus, Anchorite in the East (St.)
By G. H.
[1] The Greeks in the Great Menaea and Cytheraeus in the Lives of the Saints celebrate two Flaviani on the sixteenth of February: one, of whom we now treat, an anchorite, and the other the Bishop of Constantinople, whose Acts we give on the eighteenth of February, on which day the Latins venerate him, as inscribed in the Roman Martyrology. Concerning the former, the Greeks recite this couplet:
"Having passed through the time of transient life, Flavianus lives on to time everlasting."
This epitome of his life is added:
[2] "This holy Father of ours, having occupied the summit of a certain mountain and erected a small chapel, enclosed himself within it and confined himself there for sixty years, so that he saw no one and spoke with no one; but, turned inward upon himself, he set God present before him and nourished his soul with the contemplation of God, according to the word of the Prophet: 'Delight in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.' He would extend his hand through a narrow opening when receiving food that was brought to him; and lest he should by chance meet the eyes of those who wished to see him, he had made the window at an angle and in a winding shape. His food was legumes softened in water, and he took these only once a week. This rule of life he maintained for sixty complete years, changing nothing at all, neither in food nor in this lofty exercise. Endowed therefore with a great grace from God for performing miracles, by his prayers he killed a huge dragon, slew an asp, drove away the multitude of locusts that was accustomed to devastate that region, expelled a demon from a certain young man, healed by the sign of the Cross alone the breast of a distinguished woman that had been consumed by cancer, and by his prayers almost raised from death a certain man who had been struck by a horned viper (that is a kind of serpent) and was already expiring. When therefore the Saint had lived in this manner, he exchanged life for life and received in place of the laborious and troublesome one an eternal life free from old age and sorrow and abounding in all good things."
[3] So far the Menaea, without any indication of time or place. Our Raderus in his Annotations to the Menaea, not yet published, casts his eyes on the times of the Emperor Valens, when St. Aphraates (as is said on the seventh of April in the Roman Martyrology) defended the Catholic faith by the power of miracles against the Arians as an anchorite in Syria. Theodoret in book 4 of his Ecclesiastical History, chapter 24, treats of St. Aphraates, and in chapter 25 mentions Flavianus in these words: "At the same time the famous Julian, whom I mentioned above, was compelled both to leave his solitude and to come to Antioch. For when the Arians, nurtured in lies and well prepared for weaving calumnies, constantly affirmed that that great man favored their sect, the three luminaries of truth — Flavianus, Diodorus, and Aphraates — sent Acacius, a vigorous athlete of virtue who afterward governed the Church of Beroea very wisely, to Julian, a man outstanding in every kind of praise, asking him to show mercy to the infinite multitude of people, to refute the lie fabricated about him by his adversaries, and finally to confirm the doctrine of truth." So says Theodoret, which Nicephorus also relates in book 11, chapter 25. The same Theodoret treats of St. Aphraates in the Philotheus, or book 9 of the Lives of the Fathers, chapter 8, where Flavianus is mentioned repeatedly. But this Flavianus was then a Priest of Antioch; after St. Meletius (of whom we treated on the twelfth of February) he became Bishop of the same Church, whence arose the long-lasting schism, of which we treat elsewhere.