ON ST. ELISHA THE PROPHET,
AT SAMARIA IN PALESTINE.
XXV CENTURY BEFORE CHRIST.
HISTORICAL COLLECTION.
On the twofold day of his cult, and his Relics at Alexandria, Constantinople, and Ravenna.
Elisha the Prophet, at Samaria in Palestine (St.)
BY THE AUTHOR D.P.
[1] It was Beda who first taught that Elisha—the Great disciple of Great Elijah (I had almost said the Greater), and twofold heir of his spirit—should be inserted on this day into the Latin calendars, On this 14th of June he is recorded by Beda in his genuine Martyrology, which I published before the second tome of March. After Beda, other and still other Martyrologists followed him, and finally today's Roman one. He opens the day thus: On the 18th of the Kalends of July, of Elisha the Prophet. Usuard, more long-winded after his manner, adds thus: By Usuard and others who lies at Samaria of Palestine (as the Blessed Jerome writes) where also the Prophet Obadiah rests. The Roman, having placed first the eulogy of St. Basil, in the second place: At Samaria in Palestine, of St. Elisha the Prophet, whose tomb the demons dread, as St. Jerome writes, where &c. The passage of Jerome, in the Epitaph of Paula, just as it is set forth illustrated by our Bolland at the 26th of January at number 18, is this: She passed through Shechem… and turning aside from there she saw … Sebaste, that is Samaria, which in honor of Augustus was named by Herod in the Greek tongue "Augusta." St. Jerome points to the miracles: There are laid Elisha and Obadiah the Prophets, and (than whom none greater among those born of women has arisen) John the Baptist, where she trembled, dismayed by many miracles. For she saw demons roaring with various torments, and before the tombs of the Saints men howling after the manner of wolves, barking with the voices of dogs, roaring like lions, hissing like serpents; and women suspended by the foot, their garments not falling down over their faces.
[2] The same Jerome, writing on Obadiah, says, His tomb, together with the mausoleum of Elisha the Prophet and of John the Baptist, is held in veneration at Sebaste; he shares them in common with Sts. Obadiah and the Baptist where it seems to indicate a cenotaph erected in common to both Saints, if not indeed to all three, at which, although empty of sacred bones, nonetheless the power of miracles persisted. Empty, I say: for in the Life of St. Artemius the Martyr, to be illustrated on the 20th of October, chapter 27 in Surius, it is read that, after Julian the Apostate gave the Gentiles power to enter the churches of the Christians and to do what they wished… drawing out the bones of the Prophet Elisha and of John the Baptist (as they supposed) from their coffins, and mixing them with the unclean bones of brute animals, even after the bones were scattered under Julian, they burned them; and sifted and winnowed the ash into the air. Ruffinus, book 2 chapter 18, says that it happened then that those savage men dispersed the aforesaid holy bones, and again gathered them and burned them with fire, and scattered the holy ashes, mixed with dust, through fields and country places: concerning which Julian himself, boasting in the Misopogon, says, "All the tombs of the atheists" (so he called the Saints) "the Gentile Syrians overturned at a sign lately given by me, so uplifted and exalted in their spirits that they avenged the crimes of those who violated the Gods even more sharply than my will desired." some of which were withdrawn from the fire by the pious, Yet, as in that confusion of affairs certain pious Monks from Jerusalem, as Ruffinus writes, mingled among those who were gathering the bones for burning, collecting them more diligently—so far as the matter allowed—and more religiously, secretly withdrew themselves, whether amid those who were stunned or those who were ignorant, and carried the venerable Relics to the religious Father Philip, as though Relics of the Baptist: so others were able to withdraw other Relics from the impious as Relics of the Prophet Elisha; certain indeed that they had true Relics, yet uncertain of which Saint.
[3] Such may have been those which St. Athanasius received at Jerusalem and laid away as Relics of St. John the Baptist. Treating of this matter on the 2nd of May at number 333, we added and which were given to St. Athanasius, that they were brought to light and laid in their own temple under the emperor Theodosius. Now under this Patriarch, Theophilus held the See of Alexandria from the year 385; concerning whom, in the metrical Hagiology of the Abyssinians at the day 2 of Baunah, that is, our 27th of May, it is read that, seeing the miracles of Sts. John and Elisha, and how they saved a Gentile woman in peril of childbirth, he offered them thanks. There that day is called the "Manifestation of the bodies of John and Elisha, inseparably joined": where in the Coptic Calendar in Selden only this is read, others were translated to Alexandria in the year 463, "the Finding of the bones of John the Baptist of God." For he was chiefly named, because under his name most of all the church was then built and dedicated; but certain bones believed to be those of Elisha himself were afterward brought, concerning which Cedrenus says in his historical Compendium: "In the seventh year of Leo the Great, which was the year 463 of Christ, the Prophet Elisha was translated to Alexandria into the monastery of Paul the Leper": thus he who had healed the leper Naaman, and had made Gehazi a leper, was laid in the dwelling of a leper. From here, then, or even directly from Palestine, something of those same Relics seems to have been brought to Constantinople. and perhaps from here to Constantinople, For the most accurate Synaxarium of that City, which is preserved in our College of Paris, has added to the eulogy of the Saint, such as is set in print in the Menaea, a clause of this kind: "His commemoration is celebrated in his most holy oratory" (here called a Prophēteion, just as Martyria are the oratories of Martyrs). In the same Synaxarium again mention is made of him on the 17th of June, at the eulogy of Sts. Manuel, Sabel, and Ismael, where the feast of these is said to be kept in their Martyrion, "which is near the holy Prophet Elisha," that is, near his Oratory.
[4] There, in the Office of the whole day, Elisha alone was venerated, before St. Methodius was joined to him; where his cult was most famous, but the author of the Canon is entitled John the Monk, who altogether seems to be the Damascene; so similar is the poem to those which openly bear his name in the title, and are sometimes found even under the simple name of John. This is his Acrostic: "Rejoice, Prophet of God, most blessed." And all these things on the 14th of June, as though this day were the day of his death: for so it is expressly held in the metrical Ephemeris: "On the tenth and fourth Elisha obtained his fate: this fourteenth lays Elisha in the tomb." as though on the day of his birth into heaven: Nor does this Distich, prefixed to the eulogy, depart from this sense: "Horses bore Elijah, but the twofold Elijah angels bore into the heavens, like horses."
[5] In the same way the 14th of June is held sacred to St. Elisha, as also in Egypt not only by the Muscovites, imbued by the Greeks with the Christian faith, but also in their Calendar by the Copts in Selden; where at the 20th of Beunah, which corresponds to the 14th of June, the famine of Elisha the Prophet is commemorated; that famine, namely, which the Prophet foretold would last seven years, 4 Kings 8. And that this day was likewise celebrated by the Alexandrian Church is clear from the Abyssinian, in whose metrical Hagiology he alone is inscribed on this day, and is commemorated in a single Strophe thus: "Hail to Elisha, who from Elijah, when he ascended on high, asked for his spirit twofold: and Abyssinia: and having obtained great power in this, was able twice to raise the dead, and twice divided the river." And as for the dead, it is known to all: for who does not know that the son of the Shunammite was raised; and that the corpse which its bearers cast into the tomb of the dead man, terrified at the sight of robbers, came back to life? But the Jordan he indeed divided only once: yet the channel of the dried torrent, which in chapter 3 he ordered to be led into ditch after ditch, likewise the 16th of October. and without wind or rain filled with water, by a miracle no less, can and ought to be understood in this place.
[6] All the nations thus agreeing on the 14th of June, I cannot nevertheless firmly persuade myself that this is the true Birthday of the Prophet; because all seem to have taken their example from the Greeks, who are not unaccustomed to venerate the day of holy bodies translated to themselves as the day of Passion or of Death. Yet older Martyrologies Thus (to say nothing of others) the 15th of August, on which the garment of the Mother of God was placed in the Blachernae, was ordered to be held as the day of the Falling-asleep, or (as the Latins call it) the Assumption; which, before the institution of that feast, was commemorated on the 18th of January, according to the Hieronymian Martyrology. The same Martyrology, in the Corbie and Lucca copies together with one of Monte Cassino, opens the 29th of August thus, "the Repose of St. Elisha the Prophet," which in a very old copy of the Queen of Sweden is called "Deposition," but is placed after the Beheading of the Baptist. And lastly, in absolutely the final place in the Reichenau and Roman manuscript of St. Cyriacus, again there is "Repose." But the same day is simply begun with the name of Elisha the Prophet in other very ancient manuscripts contracted from the Hieronymian, they report the Repose on the 29th of August. namely the Augsburg one of St. Udalric, the Paris one of Labbe, and the Gellone one. So far the older Martyrologies of the Latins. The Abyssinians too are not consistent with themselves as to the day. For there is found among them, by an older institution most likely, St. Elisha commemorated on the 19th of Babah, which corresponds to the 16th of October, where their Poet says: "Hail," he says,
to Elisha, who obtained a name which is interpreted "Savior and Guardian." When he had risen up among Israel in place of Elijah, he healed the unwholesome water with a seasoning of salt, and brought up the sunken axe from the waters, and the Abyssinians on the 16th of October. casting into them the bark of a tree. The Vulgate and the LXX say the miracle was done by a piece of cut wood. But Beda, in his little work on Hebrew names, writes that Elisha is rendered "the Salvation or Protection of God": to which the Abyssinian Poet seems to have looked; and, omitting the first part of the name, by which God is signified, considered only the latter part.
[7] I think it superfluous to transcribe the eulogy from the Greek Menaea; for the things that are written by some about the golden Calf His Life is to be sought from Scripture. uttering a bellow when the Saint was born, taken from Rabbinical fictions, do not deserve to be brought in here; but his other Acts the books of Kings so set forth that there is need of no explanation. Yet whoever wishes for them, let him consult Daniel a Virgine Maria, in Part 4 of the Carmelite Mirror, where he will find a Life, digested from the sacred Letters and the Fathers, with a Handful of the immense virtues shining forth in it. For since after Elijah, Elisha also greatly illustrated by his dwelling Mount Carmel, on which that Order had its beginning, the whole Order venerates both with equal right, Special cult among the Carmelites. and indeed with a double Office with an Octave. Nor is that institution recent. Lezana, in Tome I of the Annals of the Order, page 287, cites a General Chapter held about the year 1399, in the Convent of Selva in the Province of Tuscany, by which it was ordained that an Office be celebrated every year concerning St. Elisha himself: Offices in the Order are also cited of the years 1462 and 1495. Between these two terms, or perhaps a little earlier, we have a little page printed on parchment, containing the formula for announcing to the Martyrology nine feasts of the special Saints or Patrons of the Order (I believe, because no more were then counted) where, after the Blessed Peter Thomas, Andrew of Florence, Cyril the Priest, Angelus, and Simon, of all of whom we have treated successively, in the sixth place and for the 18th of July, it is prescribed to read thus: "At Samaria of Palestine, which is also called Sebaste, of St. Elisha, the foremost of the Prophets,… Whose sacred body, even dead, gloriously distinguished by the raising of a dead man, Ravenna venerates with fitting honor."
[8] The Relics were brought to Ravenna in the year 718. John Palaeonydorus, in his Trimerestus book on the beginning and progress of the Order, published about the year 1596, book 1 chapter 4, having adduced the words which I gave from Cedrenus, as if from Sigebert of Gembloux, interpolated thus I know not where and when (for the autograph, from which Miraeus reprinted, has nothing of the kind), says, "Afterward, by the Emperor Theodosius, it was laid up at Ravenna, in the year of the Lord seven hundred and eighteen, in a monastery of Monks." This Theodosius was the one of Adramyttium, made Emperor in the year 715, and deposed the next year; but, having become a Cleric and devoted himself to quiet, he lived for some time after, and according to Cedrenus died at Ephesus, being even believed to have worked miracles. He could—while Leo the Isaurian, to whom the Empire had yielded, was exercising his tyranny against the images—have sought safety for himself across the sea, and have had a reception at Ravenna among the Basilian Monks of the Greek rite; to whom, if not the Body, by Theodosius of Adramyttium after the year 716. at least he may have brought some notable Relics; those very ones, perhaps, which we presume to have been brought to Constantinople, on account of the more solemn cult there and the prophetic oratory. That they were certainly received and held by the people of Ravenna as such is plain from book 1 of the Statutes of Ravenna, rubric 32, on the Visitation of churches and the giving of tapers, in Hieronymus Fabri, among the sacred Memorials of ancient Ravenna, page 228, where it is said: "The body of St. Elisha the Prophet lies in the Boroughs of Ravenna, at the church of St. Lawrence in Caesarea, in the chapel of Sts. Gervasius and Protasius: into the church of St. Lawrence, whose feast is on the 14th of June." Hieronymus does not express the year of the decree's enactment, but calls it an old statute.
[9] The aforesaid chapel was built and dedicated there in the year of Christ 425, and the chapel was founded in the year 425 as an inscription noted, once to be read there in golden letters thus: "To Stephen, Protasius, and Gervasius, the blessed Martyrdom, and to himself as a Memorial, Lauritius dedicated it, on the day of the 13th of the Kalends of October, in the consulship of Theodosius for the eleventh time and of Placidus Valentinian." That church is found to have had a Regular Benedictine Abbot in the year 954; then, deprived of inhabitants, in the year 1265, to have been given to the Regular Canons, who remained there until 1603; it was overthrown and lost: when it was destroyed for the fortifying of the city, a small shrine nonetheless being left for a memorial; which itself was abolished a hundred years afterward, on account of a new canal then led through there. What became of the Relics of St. Elisha no one knows: for neither do the Regular Canons have them, except a head which is in the church of St. Apollinaris: having been translated thence to the Portuensian church of St. Mary: but in the church of St. Apollinaris the New, once of the Benedictines, now of the Observant Minorites, a certain Head is shown, believed to be that of St. Elisha: concerning which Saracenus says in the Carmelite Menology, "there is no reason for us to doubt, because grave authors testify that it is piously venerated there." If he had found these, the aforesaid Hieronymus would doubtless have named them; yet since the Head itself is still shown, there is no reason for us to seek authors: and it was likely brought there by the Benedictines, when they deserted the suburban monastery of St. Lawrence: nor is there reason for it to be less believed that in that dispersion of holy bodies under Julian the Head of the Prophet was saved, than it is believed that the Head of the Baptist was saved, buried elsewhere, which is now shown at Amiens.
[10] Yet I confess that in a matter so ancient nothing certain can be had: for it too easily happens in such cases that the sameness of name introduces a confusion of persons. But although no other St. Elisha has hitherto become known from the Synaxaria of the Greeks, nevertheless in the Life of St. Marcellus, Superior of the Acoemetae at Constantinople, on the 29th of December in Surius, chapter 22, unless you wish to suspect that these are of another, a certain Elisha is greatly praised, Superior of a Monastery which was at Dessa (perhaps Edessa is to be understood), who, receiving with hospitality one of the disciples of Marcellus, declared to him by divine knowledge his whole manner of life and the very form of his body, though never seen. If he, after death, was held a Saint in his monastery (and he flourished after the year 400, namely Elisha of Edessa. being a contemporary of Marcellus), his body could have come to Theodosius of Adramyttium, the Emperor, or the Cleric who had been Emperor, and been believed to be the body of the Prophet; as men in a doubtful matter are everywhere wont to turn their thoughts to the better-known person; because each more readily supposes what pleases him more, whence often arises that contention of many about one and the same Relic.