ON ST. DEMETRIUS THE KEEPER OF THE SACRED VESSELS.
CommentaryDemetrius, keeper of the sacred vessels (St.)
From various sources.
[1] Among the Easterners, the one who was in charge of the furnishings of the Church was called Scevophylax, that is, one who holds the vessels of the church, as Codinus Curopalates says in his work on the offices of Constantinople: having in his power the furnishings of the Church. The office of Scevophylax: There were three classes of them at Constantinople in later centuries: of Priests, of Deacons, and of Readers, the chief of all of whom was called the Great Scevophylax, or Great Keeper of the Vessels. At Jerusalem also, as we said on January 20 in the Life of St. Euthymius, the Scevophylax was Anastasius the Chorepiscopus, to whose trust was committed the custody of the sacred vessels of the Holy Resurrection during the time of Patriarch Juvenal, whom he then succeeded in that supreme dignity in the year of Christ 458.
[2] The feast of St. Demetrius: Concerning St. Demetrius the Scevophylax we have found only this in the Greek Menaea and in Maximus of Cythera: "On the same day, of our holy father Demetrius the Scevophylax," that is, the keeper of the sacred vessels. In the seventh ecumenical council, or the second of Nicaea, in the fifth session, various treatises of the ancient Fathers were read aloud by Demetrius, "the most reverend Deacon and Scevophylax," that is, the keeper of the vessels. This is perhaps the same man who, as one distinguished for his zeal for the faith and his learning, may afterward have rendered outstanding service to the Church against the impious Iconoclasts.