350 Martyrs,

ON THE HOLY 350 MARTYRS,

ANONYMOUS MONKS,

IN SYRIA SECUNDA.

From the Roman Martyrology.

In the Year 517.

The 350 Martyrs in Syria Secunda (SS.)

BY THE AUTHOR J. B. S.

However celebrated these Martyrs may be reckoned,

slain in Syria in that monstrous predatory persecution

of the Severians—let us say, or of the Dioscorites,

or certainly of the Acephali,

with the impious Emperor Anastasius conniving,

or perhaps instigating, they were inserted into the Roman Martyrology, yet no

memory of them ever existed anywhere in the ecclesiastical records, whether Greek or Latin,

until Baronius inserted them

into the Roman Martyrology at this

day, with these words: "In Syria, of the holy three hundred and fifty

monk Martyrs, who,

for the defense of the Synod of Chalcedon, were slain by the heretics."

In his annotations he could assign no source

whence he received that band,

except the celebrated letter of the four and twenty archimandrites

and very many others, given to Pope

Hormisdas, now most well known in the Councils,

whence he also took those things which give credence concerning the huge

slaughter of monks. Further, those tragic ravages of the raging

scoundrels are described quite fully by the same most Eminent

Annalist at the year 517

from number 50: but since these are now most widely published, it will be enough

for a fitting notice of the matter here, if we briefly

excerpt what Pagi contracted concerning them. Thus he

writes in his Critica at the said year, numbers 3 and 4.

[2] and pursues their history briefly from the celebrated letter, In this and the preceding century the Maronites

eminently protected the Catholic religion, and thence in

the Roman Martyrology at the 31st of July is had

what we have already related above. There exists concerning their

slaying a little book of the twenty-four archimandrites to

Hormisdas the Roman Pontiff, in which one reads:

"Since Christ our God has constituted You as Prince of pastors,

and teacher and physician of souls,

and your holy angel; it is worthy

to set forth the sufferings which have befallen us,

and to show the merciless wolves who scatter

the flock of Christ. Who these are, and

who armed themselves against us, you have surely heard,

Most Blessed one—that Severus and Peter, who never

were reckoned in the number of Christians, who,

day by day, assailing the holy Synod of Chalcedon

and our most holy and most blessed Father

Leo with a public anathema, who, esteeming the judgment

of God as nothing, and trampling the venerable canons

of the holy Fathers, causing bishops indeed

to be produced by the sovereign power, and compelling them

to mock the aforesaid holy Synod, afflicting them

with inestimable torments, as we were going

to the fold of the lord Simeon for the cause of the Church,

lay in wait for us on the road—those lost, defiled men—

and coming upon us slew of us 350,

wounded some, and others indeed who

had been able to flee to worship at the altars, they slew in that very place,

and burned the monasteries."

[3] But in the petition of the same monks

to John, patriarch of Constantinople, Pagi pursues.

and to the fifth general synod, the aforesaid

Maronite monks say: "A dread spectacle

were the men lying there, who in religious struggles

had contended even to gray hairs, naked, and cast out

unburied, being more than three hundred, born of the second

province of the Syrians, thrown out to be torn

by dogs and birds." And in another of the aforesaid little books to

Menas the patriarch: "And not reverencing their gray hairs,

they did the work of the sword upon them, being about three hundred

and fifty in number, and scattered their

dismembered limbs." And let these things about the holy

Martyrs, who are venerated on this day, be enough said.

The things which are next subjoined concerning the admirable deeds

of the Maronite monks, for the protection of the Catholic religion,

do not properly pertain here;

perhaps they will find their place elsewhere. Let

curious readers look at what Faustus Naironus disputed more fully

concerning these in his dissertation on the origin, name,

and religion of the Maronites, printed at Rome in the year

1679, where from page 11 he pursues this whole

history of the persecutions more fully.