The Greek Miracles of *Menas (5), ascribed to Timothy of Alexandria, recounts how Menas (soldier and martyr buried at Abu Mena, S00073) concurrently healed a crippled man and a mute woman, by instructing the former to attempt to sleep with the latter. Written in Greek in Alexandria, probably in the 5th/6th c.
E07445
Literary - Hagiographical - Collections of miracles
Timothy of Alexandria, Miracles of Menas (CPG 2527, BHG 1256-1269)
Miracle 5. The crippled man and the mute woman (BHG 1261)
Summary:
A crippled man seeks healing at Menas’ shrine and, after a long period with no success, he has a vision of the saint advising him to go and sleep with a dumb woman who is also staying at the shrine. The man is incredulous at the saint’s advice for him to commit fornication, but has the same dream three times and is convinced. His attempt to lie with her proves effective: the hitherto dumb woman wakes up and starts screaming, while the hitherto crippled man, in his panic, runs away like a young lad. He reveals his dream and everyone is amazed at the saint’s miraculous intervention.
Text: Pomialovskii 1900.
Summary: E. Rizos.
Burial site of a saint - tomb/grave
Non Liturgical ActivityVisiting graves and shrines
Incubation
MiraclesMiracle after death
Healing diseases and disabilities
Apparition, vision, dream, revelation
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.It was a popular miracle-story, though attributed to different saints (Kosmas and Damianos, Menas, or Merkourios) in different miracle-collections:
It is told in the Greek Miracles of *Kosmas and Damianos (brothers, physician martyrs of Syria, S00385), set at their shrine in Constantinople - see E08452. The only marked difference from our miracle of Menas is that in the Constantinopolitan miracle-story the two cured people get married at the end.
It is referred to in passing (again with an attribution to Kosmas and Damianos) by Sophronius of Jerusalem in Miracle 30 of his Miracles of Kyros and Ioannes - see E07359.
It appears (though here only partially preserved), with an attribution to *Merkourios (soldier and martyr of Caesarea of Cappadocia, S00225), as Miracle 2 in a Coptic collection of the Miracles of *Merkourios - see E01848.
The Miracles of Kosmas and Damianos, cited by Sophronius as his source and the most popular of all the collections in which the story occurs, is almost certainly the source for all these occurrences.
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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