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Theophanes

9 September · commentary
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ON ST. THEOPHANES, CONFESSOR,

From the Greek Calendars.

About the year CCC, as is reported.

Commentary

Theophanes confessor (S.)

J. S.

The Sirletian Menology at this day makes mention of Theophanes the confessor in these words: On the same day the commemoration of our holy father Theophanes, The Saint's memory in the Greek Calendars: who in the times of the emperor Diocletian led the life of a monk. The Greek Menæa have plainly the same words, with only the word confessor added after the Saint's name. But in the same place, after this announcement, a more prolix eulogy is subjoined. Since that may be read there in Greek, I shall make it Latin and transfer it hither. But whether it be accurate and true in all things I cannot determine, since I do not know whence the author of the Menæa drew the deeds of Theophanes. Wherefore I leave the judgment to the reader, and faithfully render the Greek words in Latin.

ELOGIUM.

the eulogy itself He was born of gentile parents. But when he had embraced the Christian religion from a tender age, while yet a little one he saw a boy in peril from the cold, whom he clothed with his own garments. And when his father asked him, Where are thy garments, my son? he answered: I have put on Christ. Then the father said, Who is Christ? for we worship Mercury and Apollo. Then an angel of the Lord snatched away the Boy, as he was renouncing his own father, and led him into Mount Diabenus a, and committed him to a solitary man who had led the solitary life for seventy-five years. The old man, receiving him into the monastic state b, taught him sacred letters. And both were nourished by a divine angel. But when in the course of time the old man died, the Boy c persevered in the cave of the solitary life for fifty-eight years.

[3] Then, with an angel leading him, he went forth from his cave, from the Menæa. seated upon a lion, for sixty stadia; and everywhere he preached the faith of Christ. But when the emperors Carus, Carinus and Numerian d had seized him, they gave him a hundred κόνσους e; and then inflicted various torments upon him. But when they saw that no small multitude of men, because of the miracles which he wrought, were coming to Christ and being baptized by him, they were struck with shame and dismissed him, that he might practice the ascetic life. He returned therefore to his former cave, and when another seventeen years f had been spent in monastic exercise, so that the years of his ascetic exercise were now seventy-five in all, he departed to the Lord.

ANNOTATIONS.

Notes

a. What this Mount Diabenus may have been, I would rather not know than bring forward uncertain conjectures.
b. *Monastic* here is the same as *solitary*. If the things here narrated are true, that Theophanes embraced the solitary life not a few years before St. Paul, who is commonly believed the first hermit. But that is not incredible as regards the solitary life.
c. Although he is called *the Boy*, because the author had earlier assigned him that name, he had in all likelihood passed his boyhood years before the old man's death.
d. Carus, having been made emperor, joined his sons Carinus and Numerian to the empire. But if the things narrated are true, St. Theophanes was captured about the year 283, in which they ruled together. And so, if he had before that lived in solitude for fifty-eight years, he came to his aged master about the year 225. Further, the Saint's arrest is incongruously attributed to the emperors themselves; but he could have been arrested by some prefect of theirs, and dismissed by the same, since the persecution was not open.
e. The word κόνσους is either wrongly written, or wholly unknown to me. Hence I was unwilling to render it in Latin. Nevertheless the context suggests that blows were inflicted upon the Saint.
f. If after the year 283, in which he is said to have endured the harassment of the gentiles, he lived seventeen years, he must have died about the year 300. But I could wish that all the things narrated of this Saint rested on a better authority than the Greek Menæa are. Various men will be displeased by what is said of the angel snatching the Boy, of the lion carrying him, of the angels nourishing him along with his master, and doubtless by several other things. To me it is most displeasing that I find matters so memorable in no ancient writer.

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