ON ST. ABRAHAM THE HERMIT, IN UPPER EGYPT,
BEFORE THE YEAR 367
SYLLOGE.
Abraham, disciple of St. Pachomius, in Upper Egypt. (S.)
BY V. D. B.
§ Single. The memory of St. Abraham; the time of his dwelling at Tabennisi; his retirement; his homeland; the severity of his life.
The memory of St. Abraham is preserved by Michael of Atrib. Michael, bishop of Atrib and Melij in Lower Egypt, wrote in Arabic about the year of the martyrs 1141, that is of Christ 1425, a Synaxary or Martyrology of the Coptic church of Alexandria, of which two copies exist in the Vatican library [Mai, Scriptorum veterum nova collectio, volume IV, part II, page 93 and following and page 121.], a third in the Medicean library at Florence Steph. Evod. Assemani, Bibliotheca Medicea Orientalis, page 164 and following., a fourth in that of Paris Cited here and there by Quatremère in his Geographical Commentaries on Egypt., and perhaps others elsewhere. In it St. Abraham, disciple of SS. Pachomius and Theodore, is praised at some length at the present day; and he could not but be recorded in the calendars which Stefano Evodio Assemani gathered from the other Vatican codex and from the Medicean. In the Medicean calendar, then (as for brevity's sake I may so designate it), at the 30th day of Paophi or Babe, which corresponds to the 27th day of October, his memory is announced in these words: The repose of the holy, great and most pious Abraham the hermit; and in the Vatican: The repose of the holy father Abraham, anchorite of Manuph, contemporary of St. Pachomius the great and of Theodore his disciple. We also have a certain Latin abridgement of the same Synaxary, which in the year 1633 was made at Rome for the benefit of Melchior Inchofer by Simon Moyses, an alumnus of the college of the Maronites in the City; from which abridgement we transfer the following: St. Abraham, that monk, after his dwelling with St. Pachomius, which was for the space of twenty-three years, lived in a hut for sixteen years; and ate only beans with a little salt; and rested in peace, in the presence of St. Theodore, disciple of St. Pachomius.
[2] [He has as masters at Tabennisi and elsewhere SS. Pachomius and Theodore, and before the year 367. Why he is called of Manuph.] From this we first of all learn at what times St. Abraham lived. For St. Pachomius began to admit companions about the year of Christ 313 and in the year 348 or 349 the last
day in Christ was reached by him [Acta SS. volume III of May, page 291. Compare Butler, Lives of the Fathers etc. at the 14th of May.]; St. Theodore, however, his successor in the administration of the monastery of Tabennisi, was born in the year 314 and departed from among the living in the year 367 or the following [Ibid. at the place cited. Compare Tillemont, Mémoires ecclésiast. volume VII, page 758 and following.]. Since therefore St. Abraham lived twenty-three years with St. Pachomius, he must have come to Tabennisi before the year of Christ 325; and since he gave up his spirit to God in the presence of St. Theodore, he could not have got past the year 367. The site of Tabennisi was first found by Fr. Sicard, missionary of the Society of Jesus in Egypt, a day's journey from Tentyra (Denderah) along the river Nile [Mémoires du Levant, volume VII, page 41. Compare Quatremere, Mémoires géogr. et hist. sur l'Égypte, volume I, page 281 and following.]. On the origin of the name we have spoken elsewhere Acta SS. volume X of October, page 581.. When St. Abraham withdrew from there to dwell alone in a hut, he did not go far; for otherwise St. Theodore could not have been present at his death. For this reason, if he is called anchorite of Manuph, either some Manouph or Menouf is to be understood in the vicinity of Tentyra or Diospolis Parva; although I find no place there whose word-form approaches Menouf or Manouph, in Quatremère's geographical commentaries on Egypt Mémoires géographiques etc., in the Catalogue of place-names of the provinces of Thebes and Girgeh Description de l'Égypte, volume XVIII, part III, page 39 and following. and in Makrizi's History of the Copts Wüstenfeld, Macrizi's Geschichte der Copten, 1845.; or rather Assemani called him anchorite of Manuph because he sprang from Manuph: which city, commonly called Menouf, is the head of the province of Menouf, far distant from Tabennisi towards the north, seen by some as the same as ancient Prosopis [Description de l'Égypte etc. page 222; Univers Pittoresque, Egypte moderne, page 176.], by others situated in the same place as the Panouphres of the Copts Compare Parthey, Vocabularium copticum, page 500.
[3] [He is praised for abstinence; he is easily distinguished from other hermits of the same name by the teaching of St. Pachomius.] The abstinence of St. Abraham is praised because he ate only beans with a little salt. This is certainly a great severity of life. For those at Tabennisi who were content with one food had their sobriety proclaimed; those who fed only on bread, water and salt were held to be distinguished men [Compare the Preface of St. Jerome to the Rule of St. Pachomius, in Bivar, de Veteri Monachatu, volume I, page 269, number 15.]. But not to eat bread and to use beans alone as food was plainly beyond usage. For beans were held by the Egyptians to be the worst diet, since they were said to stir up wind, to be difficult of digestion and to produce troubled dreams [St. Clement of Alexandria, Stromata book III, chapter III, in Migne, Greek Patrology, volume VIII, column 1127.]; so that in some nomes they were not sown and, if any came of their own accord, they were touched by no one Mongez, Dictionnaire des antiquites, under Feve.: from which things superstition and false opinions were mostly not absent. But St. Abraham conquered all these things; and thus he is rightly and deservedly lifted up with special praise for having lived on beans. In salt there is no praise, since it is no less necessary than air and water. The name of Abraham was common to several other Egyptian hermits; whom the reader will easily find in the Lives of the Fathers, in the collections of Apophthegms, in the Catalogue of Coptic manuscripts of Georg Zoega, and in other books of the kind. Among them no one occurs to me whom I would dare to call the same as St. Abraham, disciple of St. Pachomius. I should not wish to run through the names and deeds of each; lest on the occasion of one St. Abraham, now little known, I should seem to be writing the life of others much more celebrated. The Ethiopians seem to distinguish him from these by the appellation of the Poor; certainly in the Ethiopian calendar edited by Ludolf there comes forward today Abraham the Poor.