ON SS. SIXTEEN THOUSAND OF THE EGYPTIAN MARTYRS.
ABOUT THE YEAR 252.
HISTORICAL COLLECTION. From a Manuscript metrical Hagiology of an Anonymous Abyssinian.
Sixteen thousand of the Egyptian Martyrs (SS.)
BY THE AUTHOR D. P.
[1] That Armenian, who inflicted death with his own hand on the aforementioned St. Ischyrion, and whose name would continue to be hidden, had not the Abyssinian Poet indicated him; can be seen to have succeeded in the Prefecture of Egypt the one whom Bishop Dionysius left without a name; and to have carried on the persecution, continued under Gallus and Volusianus after the Decii were extinguished. For the same Poet, after the aforesaid Martyrs, thus celebrates a huge multitude of others. I salute the Myriad and six thousand, who were numbered (namely among the Martyrs of Christ), because either they were burned by fire, 16,000 are reckoned as Martyrs or exiles: or, expelled outside, completed the contest of their passion, under the hand of the Armenian (certainly then presiding over Egypt). Would that they tread down the heads and feet of my enemies, and wherever I go may go with me. St. Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria at this time, in his epistle to Fabius of Antioch, in Eusebius, book 6 chapter 42, according to Valesius, after relating their Martyrdoms (concerning whom we treated above). But also several others, says he, throughout the towns and villages were torn apart by the Gentiles. Of those who throughout all Egypt were condemned by public judgment by the President, or driven into exile, and indeed in so great a number, he indeed makes no mention: but it is probable that his epistle, written not long after the promulgation of the edicts, does not proceed beyond the first year of Decius, nor reach the deeds of the years 252 and 253, in which Gallus and Volusianus reigned, and under whom the Armenian held the prefecture.
[2] Ludolf, in his Ethiopic monuments, found that the number of Martyrs and Confessors, nor ought this to seem incredible, under the persecution of Diocletian, rose to one hundred and fifty thousand slain for the faith of Christ, and seven hundred thousand compelled only to go into exile; namely from the year 284, so famous to the Alexandrian Christians, that from it they began a new Epoch of numbering the years, called the Epoch of the Martyrs, until 304; but as the Ethiopians found the number collected by the Egyptians, of those punished with death or exile throughout the whole Province under Diocletian; so they could also have found the number of those who, from the beginning of Decius until the start of Valerianus, during four years suffered or were banished, or were commonly reckoned to have been. For I would not wish to believe so great a crowd suffered on one day or in one place; since Eusebius, in book 8 chapter 9, exaggerating the gravity of the persecution carried on under Diocletian, while he himself was living in the parts of the Thebaid, if under Diocletian about 150,000 were slain, 700,000 banished. reports as a great thing, that now ten, sometimes twenty and more, sometimes even a hundred, men and women with little ones, were killed in one day, condemned to various punishments alternated by turns. Although thus too in chapter 8 the same Eusebius says, that the Egyptians who endured martyrdom at home, throughout that whole persecution, were nearly innumerable, with their wives and children: and in chapter 11 he relates that a certain city of Christians in Phrygia was, fire being thrown in, wholly burned, with the men, women, and little ones, invoking Christ as God: and so it could have happened, that, if not in the Decian persecution, at least in the Diocletianic, truly, in Jatrippa alone (to others Atribis is an episcopal city) 25,000 perished; elsewhere with a certain St. Hilaria 7,700 were slain; 6,485 with Stratonica; 6,130 with the Martyr Theodore; elsewhere 4,030 &c. as Ludolf relates from his Abyssinian Poet, in the Preface to the Ethiopic Calendars, citing the days July 25, March 20, February 28, and October 25.
[3] These things I have therefore set out, that the Reader may understand how no light support is to be conferred on our work from that Abyssinian Poet. For the reader would find there not only Saints, And these things from the Ethiopic Hagiology, whether Egyptian or Ethiopic, proposed to us as our subject; but also several feasts, especially Marian ones, opportune for the lovers of the Virgin (Parthenophiles). Namely a vigil, today, and a feast, to be celebrated tomorrow: whence the chant of each day thus begins; of the vigil indeed: As Elijah opened the door of rain, in the sixth month of the third year; so today was opened thy temple, Mary: but open my closed soul, that justice and peace may be infused into it. But on the very feast of the Dedication: I celebrate the Dedication of thy temple, Mary, built in that place, where thy son made the water of blessing gush forth. In thy name, [where also on this and the following day is noted the Dedication of a Marian church.] thy most useful name, may there be given to him who shall have prayed there at whatever hour, the best gift and the perfect donation. It would be worth knowing more distinctly the occasion of building that church, whose Dedication is here honored, for there seems to be indicated some miraculous fountain, found in that place.