ON BLESSED JOHN THE SOLDIER.
Under Julian the Apostate.
The cult among the Greeks, the eulogies, the public veneration at Constantinople.
John the Soldier, venerated among the Greeks (St.)
BY THE AUTHOR J. P.
This blessed John—a name fruitful of very many synonymous Saints—we rejected yesterday among the Passed-Over, from the printed Great Menæa and the sacred records of the Ethiopian Church, reserving him to this day; The cult from the Greek records on which he is inscribed (and indeed somewhere with greater solemnity) in various other Greek Tables. In our copies excerpted from the Ambrosian library he is reported in these words: Μνήμη τοῦ μακαρίου Ἰωάννου τοῦ στρατιώτου. That is: The memory of blessed John the soldier. A eulogy follows; concerning which, as also concerning others, a little later. To the Ambrosian copies the announcement of the Basilian Synaxary agrees. In our Supplement to the printed Menæa, which is established from the Sirmond-Chifflet copies, in place of the Greek announcement I find written in Latin letters "of John the commander"; to which is soon subjoined this distich:
Εἰ βαρβάρους οὐκ οἶδα δαίμονας τέως, Ἕως τελευτῆς εὐπρεπὲς Χριστοπλῖτα.
That is: Nowhere among the barbarians do we know the Blessed, until you, O Soldier of Christ, fall with honor. To what the poet alludes we bring forth in our observation, number 5; but as to his saying that he does not know the Blessed among the barbarians, understand it either in a very accommodated sense, that the Blessed are not to be found promiscuously among them; or apply it to the Taifali alone, concerning whom below; of whose number the poet knew that John alone was blessed.
[2] The title of "commander" is given to our Blessed one also in our other Ambrosian copies, it is established. which contain a catalogue of Saints, excerpted thence and arranged through the months. The Arabic-Egyptian Martyrology has thus: The memory of St. John the soldier. In the Greco-Muscovite Ephemerides in our work, before volume I of May, page 38, he is called John the soldier, martyr; which title is also given to him in the Slavo-Russian Menology; both because to his name are prefixed those two capitals S. M., which signify "holy martyr"; and because he is there said to have suffered in the year 364. But of this matter it will be spoken below. Now the eulogy, which is read printed in Greek at the foot of volume 1 of the month of July, we render into Latin thus:
[3] The eulogy here rendered into Latin, This man served as a soldier under Julian the Prevaricator. Being sent out, therefore, together with other soldiers, to stir up persecution against the Christians, to those indeed who saw him he appeared a persecutor; but secretly he stood on the side of the Christians: to these indeed, before they were seized, signifying flight; but to those, after they had been seized, secretly seeing to it that they should withdraw themselves by flight. And he not only exhibited an affection of compassion toward them, but also furnished to the needy those things which were suited both to prayers and to fastings. Besides, by the visitation of the sick and the consolation of the afflicted he adorned his life, and fitted it to honesty. His life thus finished, he rested in the Lord, and was laid away in the place where strangers were laid. But afterward he became known to a certain woman by a revelation; to whom, standing by, he made manifest the things done by him in life, and by what name he was called. Working also many other miracles, he restrains the flight of servants. Ὁ Παραβάτης, "the Prevaricator," was the ancient name given to Julian the Apostate, as is evident from Theophanes. He reigned from the year 361 to 363; whence you can determine the time in which Blessed John lived.
[4] Similar things occur in the eulogy which is among the excerpts of the Ambrosian library, and collated with another; of which last a few additions which we preserve; in which, however, the Saint is set down as στρατευόμενος ἐν τῷ νουμέρῳ τῶν Ταϋφάλων, "serving as a soldier in the numerus of the Taifali"; and as having been laid away ἐν τῷ τόπῳ λεγομένῳ Πανδέκτῃ, "in the place which is called Pandectes." Now at the end, after the apparition made to the woman concerning the Saint, it is added: Λέγεται δὲ οὗτος ὁ Ἅγιος καὶ ἄλλα μὲν θαύματα ποιεῖν, ἐξαιρέτως δὲ τοὺς δρασμοὺς ἐπέχειν τῶν οἰκετῶν, καὶ τὰ σύλα καταμηνύειν, καὶ τοὺς φῶρας φανεροὺς καθιστᾶν. That is: This Saint is said to work other miracles too, but especially to restrain the flight of servants, and to indicate stolen goods, and to make thieves manifest. Furthermore, as to what is here said, ἐν τῷ νουμέρῳ τῶν Ταϋφάλων, understand it "in the military numerus or cohort" (see each Glossary of Cangius) "of the Thaiphali or Taifali," for in both ways it is written in Ortelius; and it is a Scythian nation, according to Zosimus, book 2. The peoples beyond the Danube, in Dacia, were about the river Hierasus; whom Eutropius relates to have been conquered by the emperor Trajan. Of these also make mention Aurelius Victor in his account of the emperor Gratian, Ammianus 31, the Book of Notices, and the Genethliac Panegyric addressed to the emperor Maximian. But without the aspirate they mostly write "Taifali." John the Goth seems to hold them for the Triballi.
[5] So Ortelius; which we transcribe on his faith, dispensing with further labor: are here expounded by us. and indeed what is to our purpose here, and ought to suffice us, we wish this alone to be observed: that by the military order or phalanx in which Blessed John served, can be understood, according to what has been said, that which consisted of soldiers of the barbarian nation of the Taifali; to which the author of the verses adduced above, number 1, alluded; for we do not see what else he could have meant. But now, as to what concerns the name Pandectes; if truly, as is said above, that name adhered to that place; it could have been so called ἀπὸ τοῦ πανδέχεσθαι, "from receiving all," from the fact that it received the corpses of all strangers, as a common and dishonored receptacle of that baser kind of men. But let this our conjecture avail as much as it can avail. Concerning the sepulchres which in antiquity were called Polyandria, it is established from the History of the conversion of St. Joseph the Count, on the twenty-second of this month, page 249.
[6] [Blessed John is somewhere said to have been a Martyr; which is not proved to us: a temple at Constantinople] But as to the Greco-Muscovite and Slavo-Russian records alleged above saying that our Blessed one was a martyr; by no means can we in this matter support them; concerning which the Greeks reveal nothing, neither in the announcements nor in the eulogies just produced. Meanwhile, that his name did not lie obscure, but was honored with public veneration at Constantinople, is gathered from our cited Supplement, where these things are noted: Ἡ δὲ τούτου σύναξις τελεῖται ἐν τῷ σεπτῷ ἀποστολείῳ τοῦ ἁγ. ἀποστ. καὶ εὐαγγ. Ἰωάννου τοῦ Θεολ. πλησίον τῆς ἁγιωτάτης μεγάλης ἐκκλησίας. That is: His feast day is celebrated in the venerable apostolic temple of the holy Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian, near the most holy great church—the church of Sophia, concerning which Cangius treats in Christian Constantinople, book 3, from page 5. A little more concerning this temple of ours Cangius will give in Christian Constantinople, book 4, page 113. And these indeed are the things which offer themselves to be said concerning our Blessed one; would that they may furnish occasion that his Acts, if anywhere they lie hidden and abstruse, may come forth from darkness into light.
Notes* or Εἰς?
* perhaps τὰς σύλας, "spoils, plunders"