CONCERNING SAINT LUKE,
HERMIT AMONG THE GREEKS.
An account from the Manuscript Synaxary of the College of Dijon.
Luke the Hermit, among the Greeks (S.)
BY THE AUTHOR D. P.
When Peter Francis Chifflet, our colleague, dwelling at Dijon in Burgundy in the year 1662, lent to us as we passed through there the Manuscript Synaxary of that College, while we tarried at Paris, that we might transcribe it so far as we should judge needful; it presented to us, found nowhere else, this S. Luke the Hermit; as one who on the present day consummated his life in peace, ἐν εἰρήνῃ τελειοῦται, and it prescribes that to him this Distich should be sung:
Παρῆλθε Λοῦκας· ἀλλ᾽ ἐμοὶ τούτου λόγοι, Καὶ τοῖς ἐφεξῆς σαλπίσουσιν, ἐν βίῳ. He seems to have written sermons,
Luke has passed away: but his sermons live for me, And for those who shall hereafter celebrate them.
Which things do not seem to ought to be understood of Sermons uttered by mouth; otherwise the distich, composed immediately after his death, would have no great weight for the proof of his cult; and the τὸ ἐφεξῆς, looking to those who shall be hereafter, would be rather that of one vowing than of one asserting.
[2] It is most likely, then, that this kind of Verse is to be understood of one already long dead, everywhere held a Saint, and, while still living, having written Homilies. And it only remains to be wished, and that in Europe in the Middle Ages; that those very Homilies may somewhere have been preserved, and, brought forth into the light, may increase the Library of the Greek Fathers. And in such a case perhaps from them something might be drawn out concerning the place and time in which he lived. If from that very Synaxary, in which alone this Saint is found ascribed, it be permitted to form a conjecture; since by various indications it makes itself seem to be written in some Province of Greek Europe (Macedonia perhaps or Achaia), it might be supposed to pertain to one of these. Nor do we dare to suppose any very great antiquity for him, whose name neither, nor whose writings, in the more flourishing times of the Eastern Empire, became known.
[3] in which the Orthodoxy of such men was rather doubtful, And because, when it is a question of Greek Saints of the ninth or tenth century, from Synaxaries written in the eleventh or twelfth century, the true sanctity of the same is not proven with sufficient certainty: because, the East being then prone to schisms and heresies, no sufficiently certain judgment is left concerning the orthodoxy of such men (for it is established that some Anchorites and Monks thus inscribed in the Synaxaries were stained with the errors of Palamas and the like)—for that very reason we the more desire to bring forth this Luke's writings, which would bear testimony concerning his doctrine. Under this caution we leave Luke among the Saints, as we found him; and so too their true sanctity. dismissing the more certain judgment to God and to time. The books which we have concerning the Lives and Sayings of the Fathers, up to the Spiritual Meadow of John Moschus, do not extend beyond the seventh century; and they treat for the most part of Monks and Anchorites, celebrated in the East: of Western ones, subject to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, we have nothing similar, except a very few Lives of men celebrated on Athos and elsewhere, and those Menaea and Synaxaries which we so often allege: to which we grant this favor, that those praised in them, though otherwise unknown, we hold for true Saints; until some certain reason cause one to be doubted of specially.