ON ST. ATHANASIUS OF MEDIKION, CONFESSOR, NOT A BISHOP, STEWARD OF THE MONASTERY OF MEDIKION IN BITHYNIA,
ABOUT THE YEAR DCCCXIV.
A HISTORICAL SYLLOGE.
Athanasius, steward of the monastery of Medikion. (Bl.)
BY V. D. B.
Sole §. His name in the sacred Fasti. His Life known from the deeds of St. Nicetas, hegumen of Medikion. His office in the Byzantine logothesion; his flight to the monastery of Symbola; his father's violence; his withdrawal to Medikion; the office of steward and of deacon; a tree growing from his breast, a sign of holiness.
When our Daniel Papebroch, being engaged in illustrating the Acts of St. Nicetas, St. Athanasius, steward of Medikion, whose name is inscribed in few fasti, hegumen of Medikion, had come upon St. Athanasius, steward of the same monastery, he wondered that he was called a saint by Ferrari in the Topography of the Roman Martyrology, because he had found him as yet inscribed in no sacred fasti Acta SS., vol. I of April, p. 260.: and indeed, although with incredible diligence innumerable Greek and Slavic calendars were sifted and examined in composing the Slavic Ecclesiastical Year, which goes before this volume, yet his name was nowhere found except in the Moscow calendar brought to light in the year 1818, and in the Menology of Demetrius of Rostov or Lives of all the saints who are venerated by the Greco-Russian church: of which a new edition came out at Moscow in the year 1852. In that calendar and Menology his feast is rightly announced on the present day; but in the Menology neither a Life of him nor a eulogy has been inserted, both because his deeds, mixed with the labours of St. Nicetas, had been narrated at the 3rd day of April, and perhaps because his cult seemed rather scanty. Which cult however (as will appear below) was begun immediately after his death. Wherefore Chastelain, although he was ignorant of the Slavic sources, did not hesitate to inscribe his name in his Universal Martyrology.
[2] [and his Acts are to be excerpted from the Acts of St. Nicetas, his master and second father of Medikion,] As I have just intimated, the chief praises of St. Athanasius, his disciple, are known from the Life of St. Nicetas, hegumen of Medikion. And this Life is of the highest authority, seeing that it was accurately written in Greek by Theosterictus, another disciple of St. Nicetas, within five years from the death of his master Ibid., p. 253.; and from this source principally we shall draw what follows. St. Nicephorus namely, a summary of whose life has been inserted in our Acts at the 4th day of May, at the close of the VIII century, had founded a monastery, Medikion by name, in the maritime part of Bithynia on the Propontis. When St. Nicetas, a native of Caesarea of Bithynia, formerly a sacristan of a church and then, having left everything, a companion of Stephen the anchorite, had betaken himself there, he was admitted by the holy founder and joined to his very small flock. And the good man so advanced in the virtues that, although he had not yet completed the seventh year in the monastery, he was promoted to the rank of the priesthood by the will of St. Nicephorus, his hegumen, by St. Tarasius, who from the year 784 to 806 held the patriarchal throne of Constantinople Art de vérifier les dates, vol. I, p. 264 and following.: indeed St. Nicephorus also committed the administration of the monastery to him. Which change, since the fame of St. Nicetas was very great, had the effect that new disciples flocked from every side; so that within a few years they were gathered to the brotherhood up to the number of a hundred.
[3] [he was first an accountant in the Byzantine logothesion; then he hid himself in the monastery of Symbola, whence he was dragged by force by his father.] "Further, such as our most holy father Nicetas was in respect of virtue, such also was the one whom the Lord of all took care to place under him to hold the second place after him; Athanasius, I mean, a reverend and admirable man, whose virtue it is not possible to set forth in passing, and whose love toward God, which he showed from the very beginning, having lately renounced the world, the angels themselves (as I think) admired. For since he was very dear to his father and thoroughly taught in letters and had been received at Constantinople to share in the logothesion or administration of the public treasury , as a writer of public documents; his parent supposed that through his son he would attain no common honours in the world. But when he learned that the youth, despising everything and having crossed the Bosphorus, had hidden himself in one of the monasteries, named from Symbola, and situated in Bithynia, to the east of Prusa ; he violently dragged him back from there, and, the monastic habit having been cast off, clothed him even against his will in precious garments. Then he said to his father: 'Do you suppose, O father, that I am to be hindered by silken garments from following the purpose of my soul? The whole world is for me an object of contempt: for what will it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul?' And his father, shutting him up, thought that he could be drawn away from his excellent mind. But the fearless young man, taking greater courage there, tore the silken garments in pieces; and, clothed in others by the father's order, did the same to these also. Whence his parent, enraged, beat his son so mercilessly that his back festered from the intolerable blows and needed the care of physicians. And when he said that it could not come about that he should be moved from his resolve, however much his father should cut him limb from limb; the parent, pricked in spirit and flooded with tears: 'Go, son,' he said, 'and pursue the good way which you have chosen, with Christ as your leader, who may deliver you from all the snares of the devil.'"
[4] He returns to the monastery of Symbola; "In this manner the illustrious young man returned to that monastery which I named above, entering upon the monastic contests in it without sloth. [where he lives in the greatest poverty. He is invited to Medikion, where under St. Nicephorus and St. Nicetas the cathegumen he becomes steward:] And he so abased himself, that he would suffer none of those things which are admired in the world to be brought in to him. You yourselves, most of you, having known the man by experience, can confirm this that I say from his most worthless garments; than which no one ever used any more abject, although by race according to the world he was born very noble, as I have said. And being such, he was invited by our holy fathers to this our monastery, and was persuaded by the renowned Nicephorus to be joined as second to our most holy father Nicetas. They were both therefore one heart and one soul in different bodies, keeping all things in a tranquil state: and they themselves, directed by St. Nicephorus, ruled the whole brotherhood; and in both ways, as much with one another as with their superior, they were bound by indissoluble charity; so that no contention ever arose among them, no dispute. And they were true shepherds and skilled physicians of spiritual sicknesses, bearing the care of the flock with all solicitude and caution; the one indeed cutting (for he was by nature more inclined to this), and the other, soothing the wound with certain honey-flowing words, tended the incision, since he was of a milder disposition; and again the one bore the care of those things which pertain to the body; and the other attended chiefly to spiritual things: yet so that each busied himself with both."
[5] what the parts of each were in this administration. And this government departed somewhat from the common law. St. Nicephorus namely was never an archimandrite (which title among the Orientals is usually given to the heads of the greater monasteries and corresponds roughly to the abbots of the Latins); but he was content with the title of hegumen or prior; and so his Life, at Munich among the Greek codices
preserved at number 366 Hardt, Catalogus codd. mss. bibl. reg. Bavaricæ, vol. IV, p. 85., is inscribed Βίος ἤτοι πολιτεία τοῦ ὁσίου πατρὸς ἡμῶν Νικηφόρου ἡγουμένου γενονότος τοῦ Μιδικίου. Nevertheless, being more eager for quiet and pious leisure, he had passed almost all the care to SS. Nicetas and Athanasius; so that, as Theosterictus is a witness Acta SS. vol. I of April, p. 259., St. Nicetas was rather often asked to take up both the name and the consecration of hegumen; but as long as Nicephorus was among the living, he refused to take it up. St. Nicetas therefore bore the title of cathegumen or sub-prior, as long as St. Nicephorus lived; and the name of steward was given to St. Athanasius. Which latter office was very much in use in nunneries, but less in monasteries of men. If therefore things had been carried out according to order, St. Nicephorus would have laid down the office of hegumen, which he bore only in name, and St. Nicetas would have been called hegumen and St. Athanasius cathegumen: for these were in reality the offices they filled. Among the Greeks, namely, whatever names may be used, the government of monasteries depends for the most part on two heads, of whom the one is altogether subject to the other and depends on him. The former, whether he be called archimandrite or hegumen, is similar to the rectors or superiors who preside over the colleges and houses of the Society of Jesus; the latter, who is called cathegumen or steward, fills the parts of minister and procurator at once, and his care extends both to domestic discipline and to temporal affairs [Cf. Vincent, archbishop of Karlovci, Letter on the ordering of monasteries, p. 48 and following.]. Hence it is understood by what right St. Athanasius rebuked others. Note also that the man, formerly an accountant, was not unwisely placed over temporal affairs.
[6] St. Athanasius, as deacon, most piously assists St. Nicetas at the altar. Under such great spiritual physicians, therefore, discipline and monastic beauty flourished in a wonderful manner. "When, therefore," are the words of Theosterictus, "the divine mysteries were performed, our great father Nicetas stood at the sacred table, as though he were standing by the very throne of God, offering and accomplishing the sacrifice. And St. Athanasius assisted with his mind intent on the matter, holding the liturgical fan (Goar in the Euchologion P. 137. will supply a figure); (for he was a deacon, and afterwards also a priest.) With fear and trembling, and watering his venerable cheeks and breast with a shower of tears, he thus accomplished the whole sacred liturgy. And when they had thus purely and irreproachably wrought the undefiled and immortal mysteries, they sanctified the whole people by communion in them and dismissed them in peace" Acta SS. vol. I of April, p. 257; cf. the Greek text, ibid., p. XXIV..
[7] [He dies a holy death and is crowned with glory after death, above all in that a cypress grew from his breast.] Meanwhile St. Nicetas took anxious care to rule and advance each and all in the path of virtue; so that Medikion seemed as it were an earthly paradise. "Further, the great Athanasius," I again adduce the sayings of Theosterictus Ibid., p. 259., "our faithful and prudent steward, after he had for many years cared excellently for the temporal affairs of the monastery, had endured many contests with the holy father Nicetas, and had accomplished very many outstanding deeds in the monastery, fell into an infirmity; from which he also died. And when at his last breath, gathered around his bed, we were praying him to remember us before God, to whom he was being taken up, he said at the last: 'You will know for certain whether I have any power with him and enjoy the good so studiously sought.' Having said these things, stretching out his feet becomingly, he gave up his spirit into the hands of the Lord on the twenty-sixth of the month of October. Caring for his burial, we laid him up in a tomb of his own, as is our custom (for we do not have, as in other monasteries, one common monument for all the dead, but we fit a place to the liking of each, and there make his monument), and we heaped earth on him, according to what was said: 'Dust you are and into dust you shall return.' There therefore we deposited the relics of this blessed man. And that his monument might not be obscure, but might become manifest to all, the God of all caused the shoot of a cypress to spring up above him from the breast of the venerable man; whence it comes about that many, coming with great faith, embrace this plant, and taking leaves from it carry them away with them as a remedy for diseases."
[8] [The time of his death; the site of Symbola and Medikion. Whether this saint is the same as St. Athanasius in the tree.] From what follows there, it can in some way be determined at what time St. Athanasius died: "But our father Nicetas," says Theosterictus then, "not a little afflicted by such a separation, thereafter laboured under a doubled burden, watching over the advantage of the brethren. Then not long after, Nicephorus also, the common father of all, died." Wherefore St. Nicetas was compelled to accept the ordination and appellation of hegumen; and this was conferred on him through the imposition of hands by St. Nicephorus, who then (namely from the year 806) held the patriarchal throne at Constantinople. St. Athanasius and his father St. Nicephorus of Medikion therefore died after the year 806; indeed, since the latter, as is said in the Menology of Basil and other books of that kind, suffered many things for the cult of the holy images under Leo the Armenian, who in the year 814 renewed the persecution against the Catholics, it is necessary that he reached this year. But since in the following year or 815 St. Nicephorus the patriarch was driven into exile, and he thereafter led his life far from Constantinople until the year 828, in which he departed from among the living; it must be that SS. Athanasius and Nicephorus of Medikion died before the departure of St. Nicephorus the patriarch: for otherwise St. Nicetas could not have been ordained hegumen by this most holy prelate after the death of St. Nicephorus of Medikion. We marked at the beginning, therefore, that St. Athanasius went away to the heavens in the year 814. Concerning the monastery of Symbola, where the same blessed man began the monastic life, and that of Medikion, where he happily ended it, we do not wish to add anything; since in the previous volume of our work Acta SS. vol. X of October, pp. 917 and 918. we have indicated their site with as much accuracy as was permitted. On account of the cypress which grew from the breast of St. Athanasius, our Martinov conjectured In the present volume, p. 261. that this saint is the same as the one who in the Constantinopolitan triptych, published at the beginning of May in the Acts of the Saints Acta SS. vol. I of May, p. LXII., is called Athanasius in the tree; but must not rather some Athanasius be understood who lived in a tree after the manner of the stylites? We do not find more concerning St. Athanasius of Medikion.
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