CONCERNING S. GERANUS THE ANCHORITE, ON A CERTAIN ISLAND OF EGYPT:
LIKEWISE S. MARTHA THE MARTYR.
From the Coptic and Abyssinian Calendars.
CommentaryGeranus, Anchorite in Egypt (S.)
Martha, Martyr in Egypt (S.)
D. P.
In Selden the name is wrongly expressed, The Coptic Calendars, which Selden inserted in his little work On the Sanhedrins of the Hebrews, were so faultily printed after his death, through the ignorance both of the typesetters in the Arabic, and of the copyists in expressing the Latin in Selden's version; that no one will easily recognize the above-titled Saint on page 402, where, on the 30th of Bouna, after the nativity of S. John the Baptist, we are bidden to read: "and of Cihema and Martha the Martyrs." But Job Ludolf in the Notes to his Ethiopic History, comparing the Calendar of this Church with the Coptic, so reads and translates the Arabic text, that it ought to be rendered in Latin: whose true reading the Ethiopic Verses show. "Abba Geranus, Martha the Martyr." Concerning Geranus the Abyssinian Hagiologist thus speaks on this day: "I say salutation to Abbot Geranus, who made for himself a fixed abode on an island": which you may understand to be some little one, such as the Nile has many in the Thebaid. When Satan had deceived him under the appearance of a beautiful wife, dismissed for God's sake, she probably consenting; and he repented of the fault committed; striking his breast with a stone more often and more violently, he broke his own mouth; so that thence there befell him "the portion of all the dead." His Life will suggest more, if ever it be found; now, desiring to be taught by Ludolf what "the portion of all the dead" is, I understand nothing other than the common lot of dying belonging to all, which was hastened for him by that rigor of penance. Concerning Martha the Martyr, passed over by the Hagiologist, I have nothing else to declare, than that she seems to be Egyptian, and so to have nothing in common with others of that name, who suffered elsewhere and on another day.