A Coptic Miracle of Menas (11), preserved in a Berlin Ms., recounts how a soldier exacted a tax on timber being transported as an offering to the shrine of Menas at Abu Mina; the saint punished him by having him dragged by the hair to the martyrium, and suspended there, after which he repented and donated gold to the shrine. Written in Sahidic Coptic; preserved in a manuscript of the 11th/13th c., probably from the White Monastery; the miracle-story itself probably dates to the later 6th c.
E08621
Literary - Hagiographical - Collections of miracles
Coptic Miracles of Menas, miracle 11, edited from Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin — Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Ms. or. oct. 409, fols. 27–28.
Summary:
The preserved text begins after timber offered to the shrine of Apa Menas has been loaded for transport on the Nile. A soldier approaches the men conveying it and demands payment of a telos (tax/toll). They protest that the wood has been vowed to the saint’s topos and should not be taxed, but the soldier refuses to relent. The men then pay him two silver keratia, while declaring their trust in the God of Saint Menas and predicting that he will repay double to the shrine. At once, while they are still speaking, the soldier is miraculously seized by the hair and dragged, without understanding what is happening, to the shrine of Saint Menas. There he is hung up by the hair in the middle of the martyrium and cries out that he has sinned against God and Saint Menas. After this public punishment, he is lowered to the ground and vows twelve gold solidi to the saint. He then goes home, brings gold and other gifts, offers them at the shrine, prostrates himself before the altar, does obeisance, and returns home glorifying God and Saint Menas.
Text: Piwowarczyk 2025.
Summary: Julia Doroszewska
Martyr shrine (martyrion, bet sāhedwātā, etc.)
MiraclesPunishing miracle
Miracle after death
Invisibility, bilocation, miraculous travels
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesSoldiers
Source
This miracle is preserved in a newly edited Sahidic Coptic fragment from Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin — Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Ms. or. oct. 409, fols. 27–28. The fragment forms part of the main Coptic collection of the Miracles of St Menas and corresponds to Miracle 11 in the standard numbering of the saint's miracle established from the Morgan manuscript M.590. The Berlin leaves come from a dismembered paper codex, probably from the White Monastery, and are dated on palaeographical grounds to the 11th–13th century.A version of this miracle-story is also known in Greek (see E07451), Arabic, and Ethiopic versions, but, as the editor of this Coptic fragment argues (Piwowarczyk 2025); the extant Greek version was not the direct source of the Coptic text, and the Arabic witnesses also show substantial variation.
Discussion
The term telos is a Greek fiscal word, borrowed into Coptic, meaning a tax, toll, customs due, or levy.A keration was a small unit of value and weight, originally one twenty-fourth of a gold solidus. The amount therefore represents a relatively modest or even symbolic payment. By contrast, the repentant soldier later promises twelve gold solidi. The solidus was the standard high-value gold coin of the later Roman and Byzantine world. The contrast between the two sums helps show that the episode is not concerned with an excessive tax rate, but with punishment for violating property dedicated to the saint and with the sinner’s subsequent restitution.
Bibliography
Text:Piwowarczyk, Przemysław, “A New Fragment of the Coptic Miracles of St Menas (Berlin Ms. or. oct. 409, fols. 27–28),” Journal of Coptic Studies 27 (2025) 185–207.
Further reading:
Delehaye, H., "Les recueils antiques de miracles des saints," Analecta Bollandiana 43 (1925), 5-85, 305-325.
Drescher,J., Apa Mena: A Selection of Coptic Texts Relating to St. Menas (Cairo, 1946).
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.
Jaritz, F., Die arabischen Quellen zum Heiligen Menas (Heidelberg, 1993).
Piwowarczyk, P. (co-ed.), The Miracles of St Menas in the Traditions of the Christian East, Vox Patrum 94 (2025).
Julia Doroszewska
19.04.2026
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00073 | Menas, soldier and martyr buried at Abu Mena | Certain |
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