ON ST. PUBLIA, ABBESS, AT ANTIOCH IN SYRIA,
About the year CCCLXIV.
SYLLOGE
Containing chiefly the illustrious deed of St. Publia and her memory in the sacred Fasti.
Publia, abbess, at Antioch in Syria. (S.)
BY J. B.
When in the years 362 and 363 the emperor Julian was girding himself at Antioch of Syria — which is a patriarchal city on the river Orontes, once ennobled by the chair of St. Peter — St. Publia's for the Persian expedition, and was striving by various underground ways to overturn the Christian cause, he found not a few, whether men or women, who defended the faith of their fathers with the greatest freedom; as Theodoret, bishop of Cyrus or Cyrrhus in Euphratensian Syria in the fifth century, relates at greater length in book 3 of the Ecclesiastical History. Among these St. Publia, a widow, was distinguished, who not only presided over a choir of sacred virgins but also discharged the office of deaconess in that illustrious church; which dignity indeed none obtained but most select women, conspicuous alike for sacred learning and for chastity of life and uprightness of manners. And indeed that St. Publia was not unworthy of that place, even a single illustrious deed gives proof, which Theodoret, just praised, transmitted to posterity, in Valesius's edition. Theodoret committed it to writing when those who had seen the event could still be alive. For in chapter IV, after narrating the conversion to the Christian rites of the son of a heathen priest, brought about at the same time by the diligence and counsels of a certain deaconess, he adds: These things I heard him relate when he was already an old man. There is no reason, then, why the testimony of a man otherwise most weighty on this matter could rightly be rejected. And it runs thus, book 3, chapter 19, Henri de Valois being the translator.
[2] There was in these times a certain Publia, most well known and most celebrated for the excellence of her virtue and for her outstanding acts. her illustrious deed, She, having been bound for some time by the yoke of matrimony, offered to God a fruit plainly admirable. For John, he who was for a very long time the chief of the priests at Antioch, and who was often indeed elected by common suffrages to rule the Apostolic See (namely that of Antioch, founded by Peter the prince of the Apostles), yet always declined that honour, was born from her womb as from an excellent soil. She therefore, having with her a company of virgins who had professed perpetual virginity, assiduously praised God the Creator and Saviour. And when the emperor was passing by, they all sang psalms together in a louder voice, judging that wicked man worthy of contempt and mockery. And they sang especially those Psalms in which the weakness of idols is derided, and said together with David: The idols of the gentiles are silver and gold, the works of the hands of men. Then, having set out their stupidity, they added: Let them that make them become like unto them, and all that trust in them. When Julian had heard these things, struck with great vexation, he ordered them to be silent thereafter while he himself was passing. But Publia, making light of the emperor's orders, filled the choir of virgins with greater confidence, and as he passed by ordered them again to sing: Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered. Gravely moved by this, he ordered the Mistress of the choir to be brought to him, and on seeing a venerable old woman he neither pitied the grey hairs of her body nor paid honour to the virtue of her soul;
but he commanded one of his attendants to strike her on both cheeks, and to make her cheeks bloody with his hands. But she, counting this insult in the place of the highest honour, returned to her chamber: and thereafter did not cease to lash the tyrant, as she was wont, with spiritual songs: in plainly the same manner in which David, the writer and master of those songs, had been accustomed to repress the evil spirit by which Saul was agitated.
[3] and her memory in the sacred Fasti, both Latin, Nicephorus Callistus, book 10 of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter X, relates the same things as Theodoret, but does not seem to have had anything to add over and above Theodoret's words. You will find hardly anything more if you consult the Fasti, whether Greek or Latin, in which Publia is inscribed. The Basilian and Sirletian Menologies, the Menaea, Maximus Margunius and Sirmond's Synaxarion treat of her at the 9th day of October: and of the Latins, Greven and Molanus at the 8th day of June, at which she was entered in our Work among the Passed-over. The Roman Martyrology at the 9th day of October has only this: At Antioch, of St. Publia, abbess, who, as Julian the apostate was passing by, singing with her virgins that saying of David: The idols of the gentiles are silver and gold; and: Let them that make them become like unto them; was struck with blows by the emperor's order and gravely rebuked. I knowingly pass over other martyrologists of more recent note, since neither in these is there fuller mention of the deeds of St. Publia. It remains, therefore, that I touch on a few things from the Menaea and the Sirletian Menology, which bring something a little more to the matter.
[4] and Greek; The Menaea indeed, in which Publia is named Ποπλία, say that Julian spared her further vengeance; yet that he had fixed it in his mind to put her to death when he returned from Persia: Ὁ δὲ θανάτος αυτῆς, they say, ἐν τῷ ὑποστρέφειν τὸν παραβάτην ἐταμιεύθη. But her death was put off until the return of the transgressor: which is not unlike the truth. For, as Theodoret writes in general in chapter 21, the wretch (Julian), deceived by oracles, both promised himself victory and, the Persian war being finished, was meditating a persecution of the Galileans (so he named the Christians for the sake of reproach); and if this had taken place, there would surely have been cause why the Antiochenes should fear for themselves before many, whose hatred against him he knew well, and whose sharp tongue Julian himself had attacked in the written Misopogon. But, he having been snatched from among the living in Persia in the year 363, as the Menaea add, Publia survived and passed her days in peace. In what year she passed to the blessed and immortal life Theodoret is silent: but the already grey old age of the holy Woman at that time does not seem to suggest that she long survived Julian. Biagio Terzi di Lauria, book 1 of Syria Sacra, chapter 32, writes that she died in the year 363; according to Sirmond's Synaxarion she survived her deed by one year. Let her have died, therefore, in the year 363, as Terzi says, or the following.
[5] Finally, if credit is to be given to the Sirletian Menology, whose son John was neither Chrysostom, John, priest of Antioch, mentioned by Theodoret, would have been none other than St. John Chrysostom, raised from priest of Antioch to the see of Constantinople; for that Menology expressly affirms that this John was the one surnamed Chrysostom: and if this were said truly, a huge heap of glory would surely accrue to St. Publia from it: but, as far indeed as appears from Theodoret, John of Antioch, of whom he speaks, could never be persuaded to undertake an episcopate, whether of Antioch or any other whatever; nor is St. John Chrysostom anywhere read to have been even once elected to the fillets of Antioch: and he had as mother not Publia but Anthusa, by his own testimony, and one indeed younger than could have been called by Theodoret a grey old woman when Julian was making war on the Persians: for since St. John Chrysostom was not born before the year 344, and was younger than his mother Anthusa by only about 20 years, she in the year 363 was only about forty years old. See Baronius in the Annals at the year 362, Hermant in the Life of St. John Chrysostom, Tillemont, volume XI of the Ecclesiastical Monuments, and Stilting, volume IV of September of our Work, at the 14th day of September, in the Commentary on the same Saint, §§3 and 4.
[6] To these writers may be added Henri de Valois, who in his Annotations to Theodoret or Theodorit nor John, bishop of Apamea, holds that the John mentioned by him in the place cited, archpriest of Antioch, was the one who was afterwards ordained bishop of Apamea by Meletius, prelate of Antioch; which he repeats in the Annotations on chapter 4 of book 5: to whose opinion indeed I would also gladly yield, were there not things by which I am held back from embracing it; and they are these: Theodoret had written, book 4, chapter 24, that when the patriarch Meletius had been driven into exile by Valens, the priests Flavian and Diodorus had sedulous care of the church of Antioch, to whom Aphraates the monk joined himself as a third: but in book 5, chapter 4, concerning Meletius, restored to his see by Gratian, he speaks in this manner: Moreover the divine Meletius appointed that Diodorus whom we mentioned above, who in that most grievous tempest kept the ship of the Church (of Antioch) unharmed, bishop of the people of Tarsus, and entrusted to him the province of the Cilicians. And the pontificate of Apamea he handed over to John; who, though himself also sprung of a famous family, was more illustrious by his own merits than by the deeds splendidly done by his ancestors. For both learning and sanctity of life were equally eminent in him. He, while the tempest raged, had ruled the assembly of the Orthodox there (this word is absent from the Greek text), having as helper in the work Stephen, most worthy of all praise, whom he made bishop of Germanicia.
[7] seems to have been. Theodoret therefore wished his reader to be carefully warned, by the words just reported, that the Diodorus of whom he treats here is the same of whom he had treated in book 4, lest the reader should seize from this a handle for erring; why then did Theodoret not apply equal caution in the case of John, of whom he had likewise treated in book 3, if in both places he was speaking of the same John, priest of Antioch? What if John and Stephen, of whom he treats in book 5, chapter 4, were priests not of Antioch but of Apamea, and on that account undertook to defend that church against the Arians after the example of Flavian and Diodorus, priests of Antioch? Certainly Theodoret does not declare John and Stephen priests of Antioch, but only affirms that they kept the Orthodox in the faith under the turbulent rule of the Arian emperor Valens, and on that account seemed worthy to Meletius, brought back from exile, for him to advance them to the episcopal dignity. The particle there can be referred to Apamea just as well as to Antioch, and it does not otherwise occur in the Greek text, and was added by Valois. Add to these that St. Publia is perhaps called the mother of St. John Chrysostom nowhere else than in the Sirletian Menology alone, the Greek Fasti praised above being silent about it. Finally, the other John did not shrink from the dignity of the episcopate of Apamea; but Theodoret seems to intimate that John, St. Publia's son, always declined the episcopal dignity. I have nothing more to bring forward about St. Publia: but whoever wishes to read more about deaconesses and the things that pertain to them in general, let him go to John Pien's Preliminary Treatise on the Deaconesses of the Church, prefixed to volume 1 of September.