The Greek Miracles of *Menas (2), ascribed to Timothy of Alexandria, recounts how Menas (soldier and martyr buried at Abu Mena, S00073) rescued from drowning the servant of a man who had promised to dedicate a silver plate at the saint's shrine. Written in Greek in Alexandria, probably in the 5th/6th c.
E07442
Literary - Hagiographical - Monastic collections (apophthegmata, etc.)
Timothy of Alexandria, Miracles of Menas (CPG 2527, BHG 1256-1269)
Miracle 2. The man who promised to dedicate a plate (BHG 1258)
Summary:
A certain Eutropios from Alexandria has two silver plates produced, intending to dedicate one of them to Menas. When the vessels are produced, the one with the saint’s name turns out to be more precious. The man decides to keep it for his own use and dedicate the less precious one to the shrine. He embarks on a vessel to cross the lake, but during the journey his slave falls into the water with the plate. Eutropios is distressed and prays the martyr to save his slave. Two days later, the servant comes out of the sea with the plate in his hand, and says that he has been saved by the martyr and two handsome men who took hold of him for three days and brought him back to the land. They visit the shrine and Eutropios dedicates there the two plates and his slave.
Text: Pomialovskii 1900.
Summary: E. Rizos.
Burial site of a saint - tomb/grave
Non Liturgical ActivityVow
Prayer/supplication/invocation
Pilgrimage
Consecrating a child, or oneself, to a saint
MiraclesPunishing miracle
Miracle after death
Miraculous protection - of people and their property
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesSlaves/ servants
Source
The collection is preserved, not always intact, in 69 manuscripts, on which see:https://pinakes.irht.cnrs.fr/notices/oeuvre/9359/
Discussion
For the context of this story, see E07440. This story is Miracle 3 in the Coptic collection of Menas' miracles (see E01222).Bibliography
Text:Pomialovskii, I., Житие преподобного Паисия Великого и Тимофея патриарха Александрийского повествование о чудесах св. великомученика Мины (Zhitie prepodobnago Paisiia velikago, i Timofeeia patriarkha Aleksandriiskago Povestovanie o chudesakh sv. Velikomuchenika Miny), (St Petersburg, 1900), 61-89.
Further reading:
Delehaye, H., "Les recueils antiques de miracles des saints," Analecta Bollandiana 43 (1925), 5-85, 305-325.
Efthymiadis, S., "Collections of Miracles (Fifth-Fifteenth Centuries)," in: S. Efthymiadis (ed.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography II: Genres and Contexts (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 106.
Efthymios Rizos
07/04/2019
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00073 | Menas, soldier and martyr buried at Abu Mena | Μηνᾶς | Certain |
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