Cyril of Scythopolis in the Life of Euthymios mentions the shrines of *Polyeuktos (martyr of Melitene, S00325) and the *Thirty-three Martyrs of Melitene (S01750), which functioned as monasteries. The hero of the text, Euthymios, was born after his parents prayed at the shrine of Polyeuktos. Written in Greek at the New Laura in Palestine, in 555/557.
E06469
Literary - Hagiographical - Lives
Cyril of Scythopolis
Cyril of Scythopolis, Life of Euthymios 3 and 5 (CPG 7535 = BHG 647-648b)
3. Ὁ οὐρανοπολίτης Εὐθύμιος γονέων ὑπῆρχεν Παύλου καὶ Διονυσίας προσαγορευομένων, οὐκ ἀσήμων ὄντων, ἀλλὰ καὶ λίαν εὐγενεστάτων καὶ πάσηι τῆι κατὰ θεὸν ἀρετῆι κεκοσμημένων, πατρίδα δὲ καὶ οἴκησιν ἐχόντων Μελιτηνὴν τὴν τῶν Ἀρμενίων περιφανῆ μητρόπολιν. ἡ οὖν μακαρία Διονυσία ἐπὶ ἱκανὰ ἔτη συζήσασα τῶι ἀνδρὶ στεῖρα οὖσα οὐκ ἔτικτεν· δι’ ὃ ἐν πολλῆι ἀθυμίαι διάγοντες οἱ ἀμφότεροι ἐπὶ συχνὸν χρόνον διέμειναν δεόμενοι τοῦ θεοῦ ἐκτενῶς δωρηθῆναι αὐτοῖς παιδίον. καὶ γενόμενοι εἰς τὸν αὐτόθι πλησίον τῆς πόλεως ἱερὸν οἶκον τοῦ ἐνδόξου καὶ καλλινίκου μάρτυρος Πολυεύκτου ἐπὶ ἡμέρας πλείους τῆι προσευχῆι προσεκαρτέρουν, ὡς ὁ τῶν ἀρχαίων εἰς ἡμᾶς ἐνεχθεὶς περιήγαγεν λόγος, καὶ ἐν μιᾶι τῶν νυκτῶν εὐχομένων αὐτῶν μόνων θεία τις ὀπτασία φαίνεται αὐτοῖς λέγουσα· εὐθυμεῖτε εὐθυμεῖτε· ἰδοὺ γὰρ κεχάρισται ὑμῖν ὁ θεὸς παῖδα εὐθυμίας φερώνυμον, ὅτι ἐπὶ τῆι γεννήσει αὐτοῦ εὐθυμίαν ταῖς ἑαυτοῦ ἐκκλησίαις δωρήσεται ὁ τοῦτον ὑμῖν χαριζόμενος. αὐτοὶ δὲ τὸν τῆς ὀπτασίας καιρὸν σημειωσάμενοι ὑπέστρεψαν εἰς τὸν οἶκον αὐτῶν καὶ ἐκ τοῦ χρόνου τῆς κυήσεως γνόντες ἀληθῆ συμβεβηκέναι τὰ τῆς ὀπτασίας ἅμα μὲν τῶι γεννηθῆναι τὸν παῖδα Εὐθύμιον ἐπωνόμασαν ὑποσχόμενοι ἀναθέσθαι αὐτὸν τῶι θεῶι·
'3. The parents of Euthymios, the citizen of heaven, were called Paulos and Dionysia. They were not undistinguished, but indeed of most noble birth and adorned with every godly virtue. Their home and residence town was Melitene, the famous metropolis of Armenia. Blessed Dionysia, having lived with her husband for many years, did not give birth, for she was sterile. Being as a result much disheartened, the two of them continued for a long time to entreat God earnestly to give them a child. They visited the local shrine of the glorious and victorious martyr Polyeuktos, which is near the city, and they persevered in prayer for several days, as the account of the ancient monks that has come down to us has made known. One night, while they were praying alone, a divine vision appeared to them and said: “Be cheerful, be cheerful! Behold, God has granted to you a child who will bear the name of good cheer (euthymia), for He who is granting him to you will grant good cheer to His churches at his birth.” They noted the moment of the vision and returned home. From the duration of the pregnancy, they were convinced that the vision had been true, and when the child was born, they named him Euthymios, promising to dedicate him to God.’
5. (…) τραφεὶς μέντοι καὶ παιδευθεὶς ὡς εἴρηται, καὶ διὰ πάσης τῆς τῶν ἐκκλησιαστικῶν βαθμῶν ἀκολουθίας διεξελθὼν ὑπὸ τοῦ κατὰ τὸν καιρὸν ἐκεῖνον ἐπισκόπου χειροτονεῖται ἀκουσίως πρεσβύτερος τῆς κατὰ Μελιτηνὴν ἁγιωτάτης ἐκκλησίας καὶ ἐπιτρέπεται φροντίζειν καὶ προΐστασθαι τῶν περὶ τὴν πόλιν μοναστηρίων. ταύτην δὲ τὴν φροντίδα ἐνεχειρίσθη, ἐπειδὴ φιλομόναχός τε ὑπῆρχεν ἐκ παιδόθεν καὶ ὅτι ἐπιποθῶν τὴν ἡσυχίαν εἰς τὸ τοῦ ἁγίου Πολυεύκτου μοναστήριον καὶ εἰς τὸ τῶν ἁγίων τριάκοντα τριῶν μαρτύρων τὸν πλεῖστον διέτριβεν χρόνον·
‘Reared and educated as described, and after proceeding through the whole sequence of the ecclesiastical grades, he was ordained by the bishop of that time, despite his own reluctance, as priest of the most holy church of Melitene, and was charged with the care and running of the monasteries around the city. He was entrusted with this duty, because he had been fond of monasticism since childhood and, seeking solitude, used to spend most of his time at the monasteries of Saint Polyeuktos and the Holy Thirty-Three Martyrs.’
Text: Schwartz 1939.
Translation: Efthymios Rizos.
Cult building - independent (church)
Cult building - monastic
Martyr shrine (martyrion, bet sāhedwātā, etc.)
Non Liturgical ActivityVisiting graves and shrines
Incubation
MiraclesFertility- and family-related miracles (infertility, marriages)
Apparition, vision, dream, revelation
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesWomen
Ecclesiastics - lesser clergy
Ecclesiastics - monks/nuns/hermits
Source
Born in Scythopolis in c. 525, Cyril was the son of a lawyer serving the bishopric of the city. He grew up in an environment closely linked to the clergy and monasteries of the Chalcedonian Orthodox community of Palestine. During a visit to Scythopolis in c. 531-2, Sabas the Sanctified blessed little Cyril and marked him out as a future monk. Cyril was indeed tonsured, and left for Jerusalem in 543. At the advice of John the Hesychast, he joined the monastery of Euthymios in the same year, where he stayed for ten years. He was chosen to join the 120 monks who reclaimed the New Laura for Orthodoxy, after the expulsion of the Origenists from it in 553. In 557, he was preparing to move to Sabas’ Great Laura, after which nothing is known about his life. All the information concerning Cyril's life is deduced from his writings.Cyril’s only known work are the Lives of the Monks of Palestine (Μοναχικαὶ Ἱστορίαι), a collection of seven monastic biographies of uneven length. The most extensive and important works of this corpus are the lives of Euthymios and Sabas, founders of the two monasteries which defined Cyril’s own life as a monk. In the epilogue of the Life of Euthymios, the author informs us that he conceived the idea of the work, while living at the monastery of Euthymios and witnessing various miracles of that saint. In the early to mid 540s, he started collecting notes of stories which were orally recounted by older monks, but was only able to turn them into a coherent narrative when he moved to the New Laura (555-558).
The Life of Euthymios was apparently the first of these biographies to be composed, starting in c. 556, at the request of Georgios, abbot and founder of a monastery near Cyril’s native Scythopolis. The Life of Sabas was either slightly later, or roughly contemporary. The third major biography is the Life of Ioannes/John the Hesychast, Cyril’s personal mentor, which was written while its hero was still alive at the age of 104, in 557/558. The briefer Lives of Kyriakos, Theodosios, Theognios and Abraamios are probably the last to be written by the author. By including these figures, which were closely connected with Sabas and his monastery, Cyril produced a gallery of hagiographies of the main Chalcedonian monasteries of the Judaean Desert, which resembles and perhaps follows the model of Theodoret’s Religious History.
For the manuscript tradition of the texts, see:
http://pinakes.irht.cnrs.fr/notices/auteur/843/
Discussion
On the context of this passage see E06468.This passage provides an interesting attestation of the function of two prominent shrines of the city of Melitene. It appears that Euthymios' parents practised a form of incubation at the shrine of Polyeuktos, in expectation of having a child.Interestingly, the vision which announced the good news of the child's conception is not explicitly identified as the saint's apparition.
The passage also informs us that the martyria of Melitene functioned as monasteries by the early 5th century.
Bibliography
Text:Schwartz, E., Kyrillos von Skythopolis (Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur 49.2; Leipzig, 1939).
Translations:
Baldelli, R., and Mortari, L., Storie monastiche del deserto di Gerusalemme (Abbazia di Praglia, 1990), 97–191.
Festugière, A.-J., Les moines d'Orient, vol. 3, part 1, Les moines de Palestine: Vie de saint Euthyme (Paris, 1962), 55–144.
Price, R., and Binns, J., Cyril of Scythopolis, Lives of the Monks of Palestine (Cistercian Studies Series 114; Kalamazoo, 1991), 1-92.
Further reading:
Flusin, B., Miracle et histoire dans l'œuvre de Cyrille de Scythopolis (Paris, 1983).
Flusin, B., "Palestinian Hagiography (Fourth-Eighth Centuries)," in: S. Efthymiadis (ed.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography I: Periods and Places (Farnham, 2011), 199-226.
Hombergen, D., The Second Origenist Controversy: A New Perspective on Cyril of Scythopolis' Monastic Biographies as Historical Sources for Sixth-Century Origenism (Rome, 2001).
Efthymios Rizos
19/12/2018
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00325 | Polyeuktos, soldier and martyr of Melitene | Πολύευκτος | Certain | S01750 | Thirty-three martyrs of Melitene | Τριάκοντα τρεῖς μάρτυρες | Certain |
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