ON ST. LEO, CONFESSOR.
Notice from the Greek tables.
Leo, Confessor among the Greeks (S.)
J. P.
The Menaeum of Chifflet and the Supplement to the printed Menaea from the Synaxary of Sirmond and the Manuscript of Chifflet exhibit to us St. Leo, with the following announcement appended: Ὁ ὅσιος Λέων ἐν τῇ Μάνδρᾳ ἐν εἰρήνῃ τελ. St. Leo died in peace in the Mandra. He is applauded with these two little verses:
Ἐκ γῆς ἀπελθὼν ἐντρυφᾷ τερπνοῖς Λέων, Ὧν εἶχεν ἐν γῇ τὰς ἀποῤῥοίας πάλαι.
Leaving the earth, Leo abounds in delights, whose outflowings he had drunk of old while living on earth. Mandra, which occurs here, has a twofold meaning, one appellative, the other proper. For first it signifies any monastery, the metaphor taken from the folds of sheep or goats, which are called mandrae; secondly the temple dedicated to St. Symeon the Stylite near Antioch; concerning which Evagrius treats in book 1, chapter 14, and Du Cange at greater length in the Glossary of middle and low Greek. And I here understand by Mandra a monastery or place, near or neighboring to the said temple: just as Roger, King of Sicily, wished the archmonastery of St. Salvator of Messina to be called Mandra by a peculiar term, as is in his diploma in Rocco Pirro, in the first Notice of the Archimandritate of Messina, page 4.