Acts of Martyrs and Saints (Vol 1 of 7): Acta Martyrum et Sanctorum 9781463213176

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ACTS OF MARTYRS A N D SAINTS

ACTS OF MARTYRS AND SAINTS

Acta Martyrum et Sanctorum

Volume 1

Edited by PAUL BEDJAN

Introductory Material Translated by CLAUDE DETIENNE

GORGIAS PRESS

2008

First Gorgias Press Edition, 2008 The special contents of this edition are copyright © 2008 by Gorgias Press LLC

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. Published in the United States of America by Gorgias Press LLC, New Jersey This edition is a facsimile reprint of the original edition published in 1890-1897.

ISBN 978-1-59333-682-0 (Set) ISBN ISBN ISBN ISBN ISBN ISBN ISBN

978-1-59333-683-7 978-1-59333-684-4 978-1-59333-685-1 978-1-59333-686-8 978-1-59333-687-5 978-1-59333-688-2 978-1-59333-689-9

(Volume (Volume (Volume (Volume (Volume (Volume (Volume

1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7)

& GORGIAS PRESS 180 Centennial Ave., Piscataway, NJ 08854 USA www.gorgiaspress.com

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standards. Printed in the United States of America

Foreword Translated by Claude Detienne In the whole field of the father, so vast and so fruitful, we find huge wealth and precious treasures at almost every step, which disclose ineffably God's wisdom and the infinite mercy that dispenses so liberally its graces and favours. - The publication of the 1st volume of "Lives of Martyrs and Saints" that we have just finished, will allow all our brothers to make the most of its varied and extensive production, the majority of which had remained buried until now and is not known to our fellow countrymen. It is a great joy for our heart to think that those edifying lives of our first fathers in faith will inspire them with the same feelings of generosity and sacrifice which made those men such great saints. ... With God's help, we hope soon to be able to publish the second and third volumes of this interesting work. First and foremost, we want to warn our readers that the specific goal of our work is to put in the hands of our beloved Oriental public good books that stimulate and induce them to practice virtue. Therefore we had to remove or correct some passages of the lives. Their authors, whether known or not, orthodox or heterodox, seem to be men of letters or poets rather than theologians. We have also corrected spelling mistakes, which are so numerous in those writings, and we have vocalized almost all of the lives. While pursuing our goal, we also wanted to meet the wishes of our European readers, keeping scrupulously to all details which would interest them. Now a word about every life or group of lives.

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1° The excellent Mr. Guidi, professor at the University of Rome, lent us the manuscripts of the lives of St. Peter and St. Paul. A note at the end of the story of St. Peter seems to attribute it to St. Clement, while the story of St. Paul is silent on the name of its author. 2° For the story of St. Mari, we used the learned and scholarly publication of His Grace Mgr. Abbeloos, magnificent rector of the University of Louvain, as well as a manuscript sent to us by our dear fellow Mr. Salomon. It is a copy that he had made in Mavana, from the manuscript of Sath We divided the story into chapters and composed their titles. 3° The Lives of the Martyrs Sharbel, Barsamia, Shmona, Guria and Habib were taken from Cureton's Ancient Syriac Documents. 4° The story of St. Abdalmassih was copied from the Reverend Jesuit Father Corluy's publication. 5° Eusebius of Caesarea's discourse on the Palestinian martyrs was taken from Cureton's History of the Martyrs in Palestine, but the passages in square brackets [] were taken from the 2nd volume of Assemani's Acta Martyrum. 6° Mr. Salomon sent us the story of the martyrdom of St. George; it is in an ancient manuscript without any date or author's name, but it must have been written in Mesopotamia by a not very skillful hand. Mr. Guidi was kind enough to collate our copy with a Vatican manuscript (only for this life); so we restored the text in many places where it was unintelligible after having taken out two passages. At the bottom of p. 46 in the manuscript - which corresponds to p. 280 in the printed volume - we read these words Sjuc (Tifov o'i ia^tsiiots is), which seem to find 2

support in the following passage (p. 284, 1. 12) cifro.N A-i•'• 1 •.¿^a; but such an age does not suit his rank of tribune. 7° The first part of the story of the eight martyrs of Ephesus (The Seven Sleeping Brothers) had been published by Tulberg, and the second part by Mr. Guidi. Besides those two publications, Mr. Guidi agreed to lend us a copy of the first part made by Mr. Wright's own hand from a London manuscript. 8° A summary of the story of the Himyarite martyrs had been published by Assemani (B. O. vol. 1, 364) and by Cardinal Mai (Script. Veter. Vol. 10, 348). Guidi published the whole text and we followed his edition. Passages between square brackets [] are taken from Assemani and Mai. 9° The second Finding of the Holy Cross was taken from the manuscript sent to us by Mr. Salomon, which contains the martyrdom of St. George 10° The Life of St. John Bar Melki (Son of the Kings) comes from the same manuscript. The passages in square brackets [] are taken from another writing, which was made at Tekie, near Ardishai, Urmiah, Persia, in 1740. The two copies are very similar mainly, but their writing is completely different. To note the variants, we would have had to reproduce the entire second manuscript. Yet we will point out some passages which give a different version of some facts, so the reader will be able to make the comparison. Thus: I. In our text, John speaks directly to his father to request a book of the Gospels, whereas, according to the other manuscript, he does this through his mother. II. In the first manuscript, he dismisses the servant who is with him before joining the monk who must take him away; in the second manuscript, he sends him back to the city from the seashore; III. According to our text, he goes back to his father's house because of a

3

divine revelation, and according to the other one, he is urged to do this by the demon and pursued by temptation; IV. In our manuscript, the porter builds a hut for him; in the other one, John himself builds it with the porter's permission; V. According to the first text, Our Lord appears to him to announce the day of his release; according to the second, an angel announces the good news; VI. According to our manuscript, his mother is urged to visit him in the absence of his father; according to the other one, the father himself persuades her to go to that poor man. The text we adopted seems to us more natural and truthful. 11° The Life of Blessed Mariani was taken from the same volume as the preceding life. 12° Mr. Salomon had the Life of St. Zeia transcribed from an ancient manuscript owned by his church in Jilou. 13° That worthy missionary also obtained for us a copy of the story of St. Shalita, kept in the church of the saint at Ardishai, Urmiah, Persia. He also sent us in 1887 a copy of the story of St. Yonan, but as it was not quite up to the mark, we explained our problems to our Roman friend, Mr. Guidi. He was as kind as always to put at our disposal a copy he had made of that life from two manuscripts of the Propaganda. Collating both, we saw that Mr. Salomon's copy seemed to be nothing but a summary of the second one, except for the preface that was completely different. Therefore we adopted Mr. Guidi's text putting in square brackets the passages we borrowed from the Persian copy, and we inserted that preface in a note at the bottom of the page where the introduction of Mr. Guidi's manuscript ends. Finally, we cannot silence the touching kindness of Mgr.

4

Lamy, professor at the University of Louvain and president of the Maria Theresa College, who lent us all the books and gave us the information we needed for our publications. We owe him infinite gratitude for that. May this work contribute to the good of our brothers! That is the only reward and the sweetest consolation we seek. ANS-LEZ-LIEGE, 29th July 1890. PS. The printing of this first volume was finished when Manuscript Sachau Nr. 222 of the Berlin Royal library was kindly put at our disposal. We found in it very interesting variants and reproduced most of them in a supplement at the end of this volume for our readers' convenience.

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