ON THE VERY MANY HOLY MONKS,
MARTYRS AT TEKOA IN PALESTINE.
From the present Roman, and the VI Conference of John Cassian.
ABOUT CCCCX.
CommentaryThe Very Many Holy Monk-Martyrs, of Tekoa in Palestine.
BY G. H.
[1] The tablets of the present Roman Martyrology celebrate the memory of these Martyrs on this XXVIII of May in these words: At Tekoa in Palestine, of the holy Monk-Martyrs, who in the time of Theodosius the Younger were slain by the Saracens: Memory in the Fasti, whose sacred Relics the inhabitants collecting, held them with the utmost veneration. Baronius, to whom the recognition of the Martyrology had been committed, and the amplification permitted, from those whom he could then have as better authors; in the Annotations afterwards made and published, does not explain, whether he found them anywhere ascribed to the fasti of the Saints, which elsewhere he not undiligently notes; whence we gather that he himself, by the power given to him, used it also so, that those whom he knew once to have been deemed worthy of the cult of the Saints, and yet knew not on what day of the year, he himself read for them on this one by his own judgment. This nevertheless I know not why dissimulating, and as if treating of another's work, nor precisely knowing whence they were taken, he ascribes in the Notes, that they seem to be those of whom John Cassian treats in the sixth Conference on the slaying of the Saints chapter 1 and following: The words of Cassian are these.
[2] In the parts of Palestine near the village of Tekoa, which merited to bring forth the Prophet Amos, from Cassian. is a most vast solitude, stretched out with most ample extension as far as Arabia and the dead sea. In this Monks of the highest life and sanctity dwelling very long, were suddenly slain by the roving little brigands of the Saracens. Whose bodies, although we knew them snatched with so great veneration both by the Pontiffs of that region, and by the whole people of the Arabs, and laid among the Relics of the Martyrs; so that innumerable peoples flocking together from two towns, proclaimed a most grievous combat to themselves, and the contention proceeded even to the conflict of swords for the holy plunder, while they strove among themselves with pious devotion, which of them should more justly possess their sepulchres and relics; some indeed glorying in the vicinity of their dwelling, others in the propinquity of origin; we nevertheless, moved either by our own offense, or by that of certain Brethren not moderately scandalized on this side, and inquiring why men of so great merit and so great virtues were thus slain by the little brigands, and the Lord permitted so great a crime to be perpetrated against His servants, that He delivered men wondrous to all into the hands of the impious: sad we went to St. Theodore, a man singular in active conversation… To whom when we had poured forth a complaint of the slaying of the aforesaid men, wondering at so great patience of God, that He had permitted men of that merit to be thus slain, so that they who ought also by the weight of their sanctity to free others from temptation of this kind, did not even snatch themselves from the hands of the impious; or why God had granted so great a crime to be admitted against His servants; Blessed Theodore answered: This question is wont to move the souls of those, who possessing little of faith or knowledge, think the merits of the Saints or the rewards, which are not rendered in the present, but are laid up for the future, to be restored in the brevity of this temporal life. These and other things Cassian, which can be read in him.
[2] The same in other places also treats of the discipline of the ancient Monks through Palestine and the rest of the East, namely book 3 of the Institutes chapter 3 and book 4, and elsewhere expounding their discipline. chapter 19, 20 and 21; which seem to be able to be applied also to those Monks in the desert of Tekoa, here praised. But would that Cassian had indicated the names at least of those two towns, which claimed to themselves the sacred Relics of the bodies; perhaps we could more easily render a reason, why in the monasteries of Palestine, for whose uses St. Sabas and others ordained the Typicon of the ecclesiastical offices, no memory of those Martyrs is found. Meanwhile it will be permitted to suspect, that, the bodies being distracted (as has been said), and the Laura which those holy Monks had built for themselves remaining thenceforth desolate (for there is afterwards no mention of it in the Life of St. Euthymius and others, in which the Desert of Tekoa is named several times) there was no one who cared to write the history of the martyrdom, by the benefit of which they would have remained venerable to all the monasteries of the Holy Land; who little by little came into oblivion, the dominion of the Saracens growing strong in all the towns of Palestine, and the cult of the Saints famous in them vanishing.