Alonius

ON SAINT ALONIUS,

ABBOT IN EGYPT.

From the Ms. Synaxarium and the Apophthegms of the Fathers.

ABOUT THE YEAR 400.

Alonius, Abbot in Egypt (S.)

BY THE AUTHOR D. P.

I began long since to observe, and more and more daily I am persuaded, that the names of most of the Egyptian Fathers, whose sayings and deeds are celebrated by the ancient collectors of such things among the Greeks, are also held inscribed in the Menaia and Synaxaria of the same Greeks; as those who must be presumed to have had a death congruent with their holy life; Among others added from the Apophthegms of the Fathers to the Synaxaria, and so to enjoy perpetual glory in heaven, and to be usefully honored on earth. But doing this, they seem also to have taken for them the day which was most convenient, as their birthday, when a certain one could not be otherwise defined; and they added to each name a Distich, to be recited after the Eulogies of the other Saints of that day. More copious than the rest in this kind is that Synaxarium, which we often call Chiffletian, often also Divionese, because we found it with our Peter Francis Chifflet at Dijon, where it is still preserved in the Library of our College. There on this June 4 I read, ὁ Ἅγιος Ἀλώνιος ἐν εἰρήνῃ τελεοῦται. Alonius here is counted, as having died in peace: "Holy Alonius dies in peace": and a Distich is added, with allusion to the name taken ἀπὸ τῆς ἅλωνος or ἁλωνίας, a threshing floor, whence ἁλωνίζω "I am on the threshing floor," ἁλωνίζομαι "I am carried to the threshing floor," which fits handfuls of grain carried to be threshed; and to the Saint himself, as carried to the heavenly threshing floor with the handfuls of the Elect, it is fitted. Here it is:

Ψυχῶν Γεωργὸν Ἀλώνιος ἡδύνει, Ψυχῆς ἁλωνιθεὶς καλῶν θιμονίαν.

"The Cultivator of souls Alonius delights, Thinking that when he dies, he goes to the heap of his soul."

[2] From the said things furthermore I judge it permitted to me to apply to him what among the Words of the Elders, whose sayings to Abbot Pastor. collected by an Anonymous Greek and rendered in Latin by Palladius, in booklet XV, no. 36 and 39, is thus read: "Abbot Pastor said: A Brother asked Abbot Alonius, What is contempt? And the Elder said: That you be below irrational animals, and you will know that they are not condemned … Again he said: Once when the Elders were sitting at table, Abbot Alonius was standing and ministering to them; and seeing him they praised him: but he answered nothing at all. Therefore one said secretly: Why did you not answer the Elders praising you? And Abbot Alonius said: Because if I had answered them, I would have been found delighted with my own praises."

[3] Another similar book of Apophthegms, ordered alphabetically according to the names of the Fathers, The same called Alonas and Allois, John Baptist Cotelerius found in the Royal and Colbert Libraries, and published among the Monuments of the Greek Church in tome 1 in Greek and Latin; in his Annotations observing, that he who in the Royal codex is called Alonius, in the Colbert is written Alonas. I add that he was also called Allois by others: for what under the name of Allois the aforesaid Palladian interpretation has, in booklet XI no. 5 and 6, they have under the names Alonius and Alonas; and Cotelerius renders them in Latin thus: "Abbot Alonius — otherwise Alonas — said: Unless a man shall say in his heart: I alone and God are in the world, he will not obtain rest. Again he said: Man, if he wills, from morning to evening, will come to the divine measure." A third, also passed over by Palladius, the codices produced by Cotelerius interpose between these two sayings in this manner: "He said again: Unless I had destroyed all, I could not have built and constructed myself." He responds to Agatho, They add also a fourth: "Once Abbot Agatho asked Abbot Alonius: How will I be able to hold my tongue, that it speak not lies? But to this question in the Colbert codex is so responded: Let your mind be ever fixed in the fear of God, and assiduously remember death, and you will never lie."

[4] These sayings require no explanation, since their sense is easy to all, having a sense exercised in spiritual progress; but not so the response to the other interrogation noted last, subjoined in the Royal Codex, about the necessity of not always saying what is true: whence Cotelerius renders it thus: "And Abbot Alonius said to him, to Agatho: Unless you have lied, you will commit many sins. He: In what way? The Elder responded: Behold two men before you have perpetrated murder, and one of them takes refuge in your cell. The Magistrate is present and seeks him, and asks you in these words: Did the slaughter occur in your sight? Unless you lie, you hand the man over to death. It is better that you dismiss him before God free of chains; for God knows all." But not thus did the Bl. Lidwina, virgin of Schiedam, think she should act; about whom, caught in a case of equal perplexity, her second Vita no. 19 on the 14th of April speaks thus:

[5] "While the maidservant of the Lord, afflicted with as many diseases as there are recounted, was tumbled like a ball under the hand of the Lord; it happened that two men quarreled in the street, otherwise indeed than St. Lidwina, and after words came to blows: but one of them, either weaker or more cowardly than the other, taking flight, entered the little house in which the Virgin lay, that he might be saved in it. And at once more raging than a boar, the enemy follows his fleeing adversary, and addresses the mother Petronilla with foaming mouth saying: Where is that son of death? Has he not entered your house? But she, seeing that with sword drawn the man pursued the man as if thirsty for blood, immediately, with trembling, denied that the man had entered. But he, as if furious, running to the little chamber of the daughter, asked in like manner as before, whether his enemy was there. She responded: The man whom you seek, by whom the fugitive was pointed out to the seeker as I think, is here. Wonderful to tell! As if struck with blindness, looking around everywhere,

he saw no one: but changed into meekness by the Virgin's response, he departed; and the man who was sought, going free, gave thanks for his safety. But the mother, having felt something human, when she had thought her daughter to be betraying the man, and so feared by her response that he should perish; began with reproaching words and a slap to rebuke her crucified daughter, saying: O insane and impious one, what is this that you said? could not be seen by the would-be killer. Why do you betray the man, fleeing the sword of the most impious enemy? But this she said overcome by natural piety, thinking that by her officious lie she had rendered a most pleasing service to the Lord. But she, with much patience receiving the slap of her mother, said: My faith was such, O mother, that the truth might be powerful to save the soul of the man, who had fled to me. From which word the mother was quieted, and innocent blood was saved on that day: for the right hand of the Lord performed virtue, and truth was stronger than the woman: indeed for the sake of truth, and meekness, and justice, our Lord Jesus Christ deigned to make this beginning of signs in his spouse."

[6] But just as this holy Virgin, with God specially comforting and directing her, did not think that the truth, so in appearance harmful, should be concealed in words, but the opinion of Alonius is not to be rejected on that account and rightly did so was proved by a divine miracle; should the opinion of Alonius be disapproved, which afterwards S. Francis also is said to have approved by a similar response? If the word "lie" offends anyone (whom does it not offend taken absolutely?), let him hear with what simplicity those things are said to be described by the Cotelerian Collector, in his Preface, which it will also be useful to have noted for many other things. "It should be known," he says, "that the holy Fathers, who were followers and masters of the monastic life, speaking more simply, once inflamed with divine and heavenly love, accounting as nothing all things distinguished and precious among men, before all things contended to do nothing for ostentation; but by hiding, and concealing most of their brave deeds from excess of humility, they completed the way prescribed by God. Wherefore no one could accurately describe this life of theirs: but those who took much labor in this matter, committed to letters a few things either excellently said or done by those men … in the manner of narrators, in simple and uncomposed speech; for they looked to this one thing, and naming a lie according to the use of the common people. to profit as many as possible." But also a simple and uncomposed speech most of these Saints used, as being inexperienced in subtler literature: and thus whatever locution, in the obvious and first sense of words contrary to truth, although it could and even should be taken otherwise, they called a lie.

[7] And let these things have been said by occasion. I return to Alonius, whose age I seem able to define, The Saint seems from the age of the two named here, Agatho and Pastor, by the Greek name Poemenis, by Paschasius Pimenius. About this last, of whom we shall treat at greater length with the Roman Martyrology on the 27th of August, it is established that he was known to S. Arsenius, and lived in the age of Theodosius the Younger. For in the Apophthegms, interpreted by Rufinus, no. 19, "the Blessed Elder Pœmen says to the Brothers, There was a certain Monk recently at Constantinople in the times of Theodosius the Emperor"; and from another translating, Pelagius no. 66 says: "A certain Egyptian Monk lived in the suburb of the city of Constantinople; and while Theodosius the Younger Emperor was passing through that street," etc. But he died in the year 450, and his times Pœmen surpassed by living, to have died about the year 400. although S. Arsenius knew him as an old man in Rufinus above no. 40. Agatho moreover must have been contemporary with both, since in Pelagius booklet X no. 62, "Abbot Abraham, who was the disciple of Abbot Agatho, asked Abbot Pastor." From these furthermore I gather that S. Alonius, of whom, as of an Elder and one who had died before, Pastor speaks; and whom, as a younger, Agatho consults, flourished in the age of Theodosius the elder, and so pertains to the boundaries of the IV and V centuries in such a way that he could even by dying have preceded the same Emperor, who died in the year 395.