ON ST. STEPHEN THE TRIGLIENSIAN HEGUMEN AND CONFESSOR AND ST. STEPHEN XYLINITES, AMONG THE GREEKS.
AFTER THE YEAR 815
CommentaryStephen the Trigliensian Hegumen among the Greeks (St.)
Stephen Xylinites among the Greeks (St.)
[1] Just as the illegitimate marriage of Constantine Porphyrogenitus and Theodote the Chambermaid, disapproved indeed by the most holy Patriarch Tarasius, but not punished with the extreme rigor of ecclesiastical discipline, From the Patriarch's dissimulation in dealing with the excommunicated Joseph drew away from his communion Plato, the Hegumen of the Saccudians, conspicuous for his reputation of special sanctity among the monks, and produced serious scandals in the Church of Constantinople, with all who openly professed to adhere to Plato's opinion being cast into exile by the angry Emperor: so upon Nicephorus, Tarasius's successor, himself also a Saint, as is clear from his Life given on March 13, it was turned as a reproach by St. Theodore, Hegumen of the Studites, that he did not abstain from communion with Joseph the Oeconomus, polluted by the union of those intestine nuptials. And so when, having been discovered to abstain from communion with the Patriarch, he was compelled to set forth the reasons for the opinion which he had until then dissimulated, so far was the dissension from being suppressed at its origin, that a most grievous fire breaking forth from this one spark brought on a confusion far more disastrous than the former.
[2] For all who were zealous for discipline and the canons followed Theodore's authority, the monks who separate themselves with Theodore as their leader, especially among the monks: but a Synod convened at Constantinople under the pretext of defending the Patriarch almost declared Joseph himself innocent, as if he had done and could have done everything through ecclesiastical dispensation, and condemned the monks as schismatics. Because this was nothing other than to veil the license of adultery under the name of dispensation and to bring it into the church against the express mandates of the Evangelical law, Theodore began more openly to attack the Moechian heresy and to call them the Moechinosynod who had presumed, at the direction of the Emperor Nicephorus, to approve Joseph's act or at least his restoration to the church. Their constancy was again followed by persecutions, prisons, they are harassed by the Emperor Nicephorus: and exiles: which in Baronius under the year 809, St. Theodore himself sets forth in a letter to Athanasius, who did not sufficiently approve of those whom Theodore called heretics being considered heretics, thinking it sufficient that they be charged as transgressors of the canons.
[3] Moreover, when enumerating among many others either long ago imprisoned with Plato or then bound or exiled with himself for this cause, there is especially named Stephen, and among them Stephen the Hegumen, that lover of virtue, the Superior, expelled with fifty-six disciples from his monastery, when together with one hundred and ten, and with him who had formerly been a Bishop (but then, it seems, lived as a monk among others under Stephen), he had condemned the Moechinosynod as a transgressor of the Gospel: as the letters sent by him testify. And would that those were now extant, or at least the text of Theodore's letters were in our hands complete, in the language in which they were written; very probably this Trigliensian; perhaps it would appear more clearly that this is the one of whom we have proposed in the title, the Trigliensian Superior or Hegumen: which we now leave to the reader to judge, from the agreement of circumstances and times alone, how probable it may seem.
[4] This is certain: that in neither Tarasius's harassment of the monks in the first instance, nor Nicephorus's in this second, was there any fault of theirs; for all that violence was exercised against their will, though they were unable to prevent it. no fault of the Patriarch, They should be excused because they relented somewhat from the strictest right, Tarasius indeed with the mad Emperor threatening that, following the example of his predecessors, he would become an enemy of sacred images unless he were permitted to carry out what he had conceived in his mind; Nicephorus lest that madman might devise something even more atrocious and more violently harass the church: as both are excused by Michael the monk who wrote the Life of Theodore, leaving it an open question which had acted more correctly and more in keeping with the times: whether those who thus dispensed and relented somewhat from what was fitting, or those who stood immovable in all things and did not deflect at all from the strictest right.
[5] But as soon as those were removed from the Empire who were feared to be about to overturn the entire state of the Church, Tarasius immediately expelled Joseph from the church, who as soon as he could was reconciled with the monks, Nicephorus declared the restoration of the same to be invalid and against the canons: and both strove, having sought the peace of those whom they seemed to have offended by their dissimulation, to free the monks from harassment, the church from schism, and to cultivate mutual friendship most closely. And Theodore indeed, with his companions, rendered excellent service to the Patriarch against Leo the Armenian, who was striving to abolish again the veneration of images, as is fully described in the Lives of Sts. Nicephorus and Theophanes, he fought with them against Leo the Armenian, and in that contest he had as companion, as we believe, that same Stephen whose fortitude we saw praised by him earlier, the Abbot of the monastery called Triglia: whom all the Greek calendars, both printed and handwritten, which we have seen, number among the Saints: and indeed most of them on this 26th day, but on the 27th day the Menology of the Emperor Basil. Everywhere, however, his eulogy is woven in nearly these words, contracted into fewer by the author of the Menology published through Canisius. as also Stephen, Stephen was a Confessor of Christ under the reign of Leo the Armenian: who from boyhood embracing the religious life and becoming a monk, was appointed Hegumen of the monastery of Triglia on account of his outstanding manner of life, at the prayers and persuasion of the monks: where, helping many by the word of teaching and the example of life, at last, when the aforesaid Leo raised a persecution against the venerators of sacred images, since he too was called and pressed to abjure the adoration of the same and to sign with his own hand a sentence contrary to the orthodox faith, and would not allow himself to be persuaded, but on the contrary charged with impiety those who were pushing him to it, he was first harassed with many torments and committed to prisons, he dies in exile, and finally cast into exile: where, worn out by sufferings and sickness, he departed to the Lord for whom he had endured many and great labors. The printed Menaea, as also the Chifflet manuscript, congratulate him with this distich prefixed:
Stephanus, worker of the divine vineyard, Standing before God receives the reward of his labor.
Worker of the divine vineyard was Stephen, and inscribed in the Greek calendars on the 26th, And the reward of his labor he received, offered to God.
In the new Greek Anthology the same eulogy is referred to the 28th of March, but at the beginning the title of Thaumaturge is added, which alone is placed in the rubric of that day, and with the title Thaumaturge on the 28th, the holy Stephanus the Thaumaturge: from which day you may understand that his feast was celebrated, from the Greek typicon indicating that the office of him and Hilarion was then to be performed. Genebrardus followed the same in his Calendar, and Molanus in the additions to Usuard. The Ambrosian Menaea, however, defer the memory of our Holy Father Stephen the Thaumaturge to the 31st day. From which it appears that after death he was illustrious for many miracles, and also the 31st. to whom the surname is commonly attributed by them: perhaps after his sacred body had been brought from the place where he had died back to his own monastery: which translation could have been the cause of celebrating his feast or his memory on different days. Likewise on the 26th, St. Stephen Xylinites, Besides this one, there was another of the same name surnamed Xylinites, whom we might call the Carpenter: whose Acts, age, place, and the reason for the name are equally obscure to us: only his veneration on this day has become known from the Synaxaries of Clermont, Mazarin, and the Dominican one often cited elsewhere, which mention him in this form: The memory of our holy Father Stephen Xylinites. But the Clermont manuscript also interposes the memory of St. Abraham in Latros between the eulogy of the first Stephen and the commemoration of the second: and Abraham of Latros. on which single testimony, because we dare not rely sufficiently, we defer treating of Mount Latros in Caria, not far from Miletus, and those who led their lives upon it, until December 15, when we shall give the Life of St. Paul of Latros.