The Greek Miracles of *Menas (6), ascribed to Timothy of Alexandria, recounts how Menas (soldier and martyr buried at Abu Mena, S00073) rescued from rape a Samaritan woman who was travelling to the saint's shrine as a pilgrim. Written in Greek in Alexandria, probably in the 5th/6th c.
E07446
Literary - Hagiographical - Collections of miracles
Timothy of Alexandria, Miracles of Menas (CPG 2527, BHG 1256-1269)
Miracle 6. The Samaritan woman (BHG 1262)
Summary:
A Samaritan woman, after suffering from chronic migraines for three years, is encouraged by Christian women to pray at Menas’ shrine. Keeping the pilgrimage secret from her husband, she departs with her friends for the shrine. On their way, they lodge at an inn by the lake, and the innkeeper attempts to rape her. While he is about to assault her with a sword, she invokes Menas, and the offender’s arms are instantly paralysed. The saint appears on horseback, breaks down the doors of the inn and rescues the woman. She goes to the shrine, requests from the chief presbyter (archipresbyteros) to be baptised, and spends the rest of her life as a nun at the shrine. Later, the innkeeper comes to the shrine, with his arms still paralysed and holding the sword, and for seven days implores the saint for forgiveness. Menas appears in a dream and orders him to follow the instructions of the steward (oikonomos) of the shrine. Next morning, the oikonomos asks him to go down to the saint’s crypt (katabasis) where the archipresbyteros anoints his arms with oil from the saint’s lamp, and his arms are healed. The man donates all his fortune to the shrine, and spends the rest of his life there, serving together with the woman he had attempted to rape.
Text: Pomialovskii 1900.
Summary: E. Rizos.
Burial site of a saint - tomb/grave
Burial site of a saint - crypt/ crypt with relics
Non Liturgical ActivityBequests, donations, gifts and offerings
Consecrating a child, or oneself, to a saint
MiraclesMiracle after death
Miraculous protection - of people and their property
Punishing miracle
Healing diseases and disabilities
RelicsContact relic - oil
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesEcclesiastics - lesser clergy
Women
Jews and Samaritans
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 16 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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