Misplaced Pages

#705294

47-579: Euthymius' vita was written by Cyril of Skythopolis , who describes him as the founder of several monasteries in the Judaean desert , while remaining a solitary monk in the tradition of Egyptian monasticism . He nevertheless played a decisive role in helping the decisions of the Council of Chalcedon (451) prevail in Jerusalem, in spite of the majority of the monks in the region opposing it. Euthymius

94-424: A pejorative reference to biographies and histories whose authors are perceived to be uncritical or excessively reverential toward their subject. Hagiography constituted an important literary genre in the early Christian church , providing some informational history along with the more inspirational stories and legends . A hagiographic account of an individual saint could consist of a biography ( vita ),

141-447: A church. When other monks came seeking instruction, Euthymius and Theoctistus built a lavra over the cave church. Theoctistus became hegumen of the monastery. Theoctistus died at an advanced age in 451 and is commemorated on 3 September. Hagiography A hagiography ( / ˌ h æ ɡ i ˈ ɒ ɡ r ə f i / ; from Ancient Greek ἅγιος , hagios  'holy' and -γραφία , -graphia  'writing')

188-556: A description of the saint's deeds or miracles, an account of the saint's martyrdom ( passio ), or be a combination of these. The genre of lives of the saints first came into being in the Roman Empire as legends about Christian martyrs were recorded. The dates of their deaths formed the basis of martyrologies . In the 4th century, there were three main types of catalogs of lives of the saints: The earliest lives of saints focused on desert fathers who lived as ascetics from

235-641: A heretic seventeen years after the First Council of Ephesus at the 448 AD Synod of Constantinople, and later again in 451 at the Council of Chalcedon . According to Nestorius, all the human experiences and attributes of Christ are to be assigned to 'the man', as a personal subject distinct from God the Word, though united to God the Word from the moment of conception. The fathers of the Synod of Constantinople argued that in opposition to this Eutyches had inverted

282-560: A largely illiterate audience. Hagiography provided priests and theologians with classical handbooks in a form that allowed them the rhetorical tools necessary to present their faith through the example of the saints' lives. Of all the English hagiographers no one was more prolific nor so aware of the importance of the genre as Abbot Ælfric of Eynsham . His work Lives of the Saints contains set of sermons on saints' days, formerly observed by

329-603: A miraculous cure effected by Euthymius for Terebon, the son of the Saracen chief called "Aspebetus" by Cyril (in fact probably the Persian title of the man, " spahbed "), led the latter and his entire tribe into adopting Christianity, with Aspebetus being baptised as Peter. Maris, Terebon's uncle, financed the construction of a monastery, the tribe settles around it in an encampment, "parembole" in Greek, and Euthymius intervened with

376-738: A phrase that today applies to churches such as the Coptic Church , the Armenian Orthodox Church , and the Syrian Orthodox Church . They were wrongfully accused of agreeing with Eutyches about "one nature" in Christ and of rejecting Christ's dual consubstantiality (with the Father and with us men); however, Oriental Orthodox churches prefer to be called "Miaphysites" and are against the teachings of Eutyches. This

423-399: A rough cavern on the banks of a torrent . When many disciples gathered around them, they turned the cavern into a church and built a monastery which was placed in the charge of Theoctistus. Euthymius, despite retaining his solitary lifestyle, gave direction for the others. Next, he is credited with establishing the monastery of Caparbaricha in 422. Cyril of Skythopolis is describing how

470-432: Is a biography of a saint or an ecclesiastical leader, as well as, by extension, an adulatory and idealized biography of a preacher, priest, founder, saint, monk, nun or icon in any of the world's religions. Early Christian hagiographies might consist of a biography or vita (from Latin vita , life, which begins the title of most medieval biographies), a description of the saint's deeds or miracles, an account of

517-460: The Church of Scientology is commonly described as a heavily fictionalized hagiography. Eutyches Eutyches ( Ancient Greek : Εὐτυχής ; c. 380 – c. 456) or Eutyches of Constantinople was a presbyter and archimandrite at Constantinople . He first came to notice in 431 at the First Council of Ephesus , for his vehement opposition to the teachings of Nestorius . At

SECTION 10

#1732765525706

564-604: The Cornish-language works Beunans Meriasek and Beunans Ke , about the lives of Saints Meriasek and Kea , respectively. Other examples of hagiographies from England include: Ireland is notable in its rich hagiographical tradition, and for the large amount of material which was produced during the Middle Ages. Irish hagiographers wrote primarily in Latin while some of the later saint's lives were written in

611-567: The Ge'ez language are known as gadl (Saint's Life). There are some 200 hagiographies about indigenous saints. They are among the most important Medieval Ethiopian written sources, and some have accurate historical information. They are written by the disciples of the saints. Some were written a long time after the death of a saint, but others were written not long after the saint's demise. Fragments from an Old Nubian hagiography of Saint Michael are extant. Jewish hagiographic writings are common in

658-526: The Martyrology of Tallaght and the Félire Óengusso . Such hagiographical calendars were important in establishing lists of native Irish saints, in imitation of continental calendars. In the 10th century, a Byzantine monk Simeon Metaphrastes was the first one to change the genre of lives of the saints into something different, giving it a moralizing and panegyrical character. His catalog of lives of

705-620: The patriarch of Jerusalem , Juvenal , to ordain Peter. Euthymius is credited to be the founder of the monastery, known as the monastery of the Paremboles. Apparently Aspebetus/Peter did indeed become a priest around 427, while also remaining a phylarch , i.e. a tribal chief allied to the Empire. He even received the rank of a bishop with the title "Bishop of Parembolæ", i.e. "of the Camps", given

752-437: The 16th. Production remained dynamic and kept pace with scholarly developments in historical biographical writing until 1925, when Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (d. 1938) placed an interdiction on Ṣūfī brotherhoods. As Turkey relaxed legal restrictions on Islamic practice in the 1950s and the 1980s, Ṣūfīs returned to publishing hagiography, a trend which continues in the 21st century. The pseudobiography of L. Ron Hubbard compiled by

799-421: The 448 Synod of Constantinople and the 451 Council of Chalcedon , Eutyches was condemned for having adopted an equally extreme, although opposite view. He himself, however, would reject this interpretation of his thought. Eutyches was an archimandrite of a monastery outside the walls of Constantinople, where he ruled over 300 monks. He was much respected and was godfather to Chrysaphius, an influential eunuch at

846-518: The 4th century onwards. The life of Anthony of Egypt is usually considered the first example of this new genre of Christian biography. In Western Europe , hagiography was one of the more important vehicles for the study of inspirational history during the Middle Ages . The Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine compiled a great deal of medieval hagiographic material, with a strong emphasis on miracle tales. Lives were often written to promote

893-468: The Byzantines - no other than the ancient Masada of Roman-era fame. When large crowds followed him to this place also, he decided to return to the neighbourhood of the monastery of Theoctistus, where he took up his abode in a cavern. Every Sunday he came to the monastery to take part in the divine services. At length, because numerous disciples desired him as their spiritual guide, he founded in 420, on

940-683: The English Church. The text comprises two prefaces, one in Latin and one in Old English , and 39 lives beginning on 25 December with the nativity of Christ and ending with three texts to which no saints' days are attached. The text spans the entire year and describes the lives of many saints, both English and continental, and harks back to some of the earliest saints of the early church. There are two known instances where saint's lives were adapted into vernacular plays in Britain. These are

987-475: The Sikh Janamsakhis ) concerning saints, gurus and other individuals believed to be imbued with sacred power. Hagiographic works, especially those of the Middle Ages , can incorporate a record of institutional and local history , and evidence of popular cults , customs, and traditions . However, when referring to modern, non-ecclesiastical works, the term hagiography is often used today as

SECTION 20

#1732765525706

1034-482: The assertion to the opposite extreme, asserting that human nature and divine nature were combined into the single nature of Christ without any alteration, absorption or confusion: that of the incarnate Word . Although this accorded with the later teaching of Cyril of Alexandria, Eutyches was accused of having gone beyond Cyril in denying that Christ was " consubstantial with us men", by which he did not intend to deny Christ's full manhood, but to stress His uniqueness. In

1081-793: The case of Talmudic and Kabbalistic writings and later in the Hasidic movement. Hagiography in Islam began in the Arabic language with biographical writing about the Prophet Muhammad in the 8th century CE, a tradition known as sīra . From about the 10th century CE, a genre generally known as manāqib also emerged, which comprised biographies of the imams ( madhāhib ) who founded different schools of Islamic thought ( madhhab ) about shariʿa , and of Ṣūfī saints . Over time, hagiography about Ṣūfīs and their miracles came to predominate in

1128-419: The court of Theodosius II. The patriarch of Constantinople , Nestorius , having asserted that Mary ought not to be referred to as the "Mother of God" ( Theotokos in Greek, literally "God-bearer"), was denounced as a heretic; in combating this assertion of Patriarch Nestorius, Eutyches was claimed to have declared that Christ was "a fusion of human and divine elements", causing his own denunciation as

1175-532: The cult of local or national states, and in particular to develop pilgrimages to visit relics . The bronze Gniezno Doors of Gniezno Cathedral in Poland are the only Romanesque doors in Europe to feature the life of a saint. The life of Saint Adalbert of Prague , who is buried in the cathedral, is shown in 18 scenes, probably based on a lost illuminated copy of one of his Lives. The Bollandist Society continues

1222-497: The emperor Theodosius II died. His successor, Marcian , married Theodosius's sister, Pulcheria . In October 451, Marcian and Pulcheria summoned a council ( the fourth ecumenical ) which met at Chalcedon , which Dioscorus attended and at which he was condemned. There the synod of Ephesus was called a "robber synod," at which, it was said, Dioscorus had threatened the bishops with death if they did not agree with him. That previous synod's proceedings were annulled and, in accordance with

1269-522: The genre of manāqib . Likewise influenced by early Islamic research into hadiths and other biographical information about the Prophet, Persian scholars began writing Persian hagiography , again mainly of Sūfī saints, in the eleventh century CE. The Islamicisation of the Turkish regions led to the development of Turkish biographies of saints, beginning in the 13th century CE and gaining pace around

1316-512: The hagiographer's native vernacular Irish . Of particular note are the lives of St. Patrick , St. Columba (Latin)/Colum Cille (Irish) and St. Brigit/Brigid —Ireland's three patron saints. The earliest extant Life was written by Cogitosus . Additionally, several Irish calendars relating to the feastdays of Christian saints (sometimes called martyrologies or feastologies ) contained abbreviated synopses of saint's lives, which were compiled from many different sources. Notable examples include

1363-402: The hero-warrior figure, but with the distinction that the saint is of a spiritual sort. Imitation of the life of Christ was then the benchmark against which saints were measured, and imitation of the lives of saints was the benchmark against which the general population measured itself. In Anglo-Saxon and medieval England, hagiography became a literary genre par excellence for the teaching of

1410-544: The historians Patrick T. R. Gray and George A. Bevan argue that "what [Eutyches] himself said gives us no reason to see him as having been anything other than a vigorous champion of a late Cyrillian position", that is, miaphysitism . Eutyches denied that Christ's humanity was limited or incomplete, a view that some thought similar to the Alexandrine doctrine. In any event, the energy and imprudence with which Eutyches asserted his opinions led to his being misunderstood. He

1457-572: The monasteries in the Diocese of Melitene. In 405/406, at about thirty years of age he secretly set out on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and remained for some time in a cave near a settlement of monks at a laura called Pharan , about six miles east of Jerusalem , at Ein Fara in Wadi Kelt . In 411, Euthymius withdrew into the wilderness with a fellow- hermit , - Theoctistus (see below ), living in

Euthymius the Great - Misplaced Pages Continue

1504-515: The more miaphysite strand in the teaching of Cyril of Alexandria, it was declared that the two natures are united in Christ (without any alteration, absorption or confusion) and 'come together to form one person and one hypostasis.' Eutyches died in exile, but of his later life nothing is known. Those who did not approve the Chalcedonian Council were later accused of being "Monophysites" and are nowadays known as " Oriental Orthodox ,"

1551-484: The nomadic nature of his flock, in which capacity he went on to attend the Council of Ephesus in 431. When the report of the miracle Euthymius had performed on Terebon, the name of Euthymius became famous throughout Palestine, and large crowds came to visit him in his solitude, he retreated with his disciple Domitian to the wilderness of Ruba, near the Dead Sea , living for some time on a remote mountain called Marda by

1598-486: The original life stories of their first saints, e.g. Boris and Gleb , Theodosius Pechersky etc. In the 16th century, Metropolitan Macarius expanded the list of the Russian saints and supervised the compiling process of their life stories. They would all be compiled in the so-called Velikiye chet'yi-minei catalog (Великие Четьи-Минеи, or Great Menaion Reader ), consisting of 12 volumes in accordance with each month of

1645-405: The popular heroic poem, such as Beowulf , one finds that they share certain common features. In Beowulf , the titular character battles against Grendel and his mother , while the saint, such as Athanasius ' Anthony (one of the original sources for the hagiographic motif) or the character of Guthlac , battles against figures no less substantial in a spiritual sense. Both genres then focus on

1692-432: The presence of a large number of Egyptian monks, the council not only reinstated Eutyches to his office but also deposed Eusebius, Domnus, and Flavian, his chief opponents. The council's judgment conflicted with the opinion of the bishop of Rome, Leo , who, departing from the policy of his predecessor Celestine , had written very strongly to Flavian in support of the doctrine of the two natures and one person. Meanwhile,

1739-505: The right side of the road from Jerusalem to Jericho , a laura similar to that of Pharan, the Laura of Euthymius , later known as Khan al-Ahmar. The church connected with this laura was dedicated in 428 by Juvenal, the first patriarch of Jerusalem . Euthymius settled there for the rest of his life. When the Fourth Œcumenical Synod (451) condemned the errors of Eutyches and Dioscorus , it

1786-732: The saint's martyrdom (called a passio ), or be a combination of these. Christian hagiographies focus on the lives, and notably the miracles , ascribed to men and women canonized by the Roman Catholic church , the Eastern Orthodox Church , the Oriental Orthodox churches , and the Church of the East . Other religious traditions such as Buddhism , Hinduism , Taoism , Islam , Sikhism and Jainism also create and maintain hagiographical texts (such as

1833-517: The saints became the standard for all of the Western and Eastern hagiographers, who would create relative biographies and images of the ideal saints by gradually departing from the real facts of their lives. Over the years, the genre of lives of the saints had absorbed a number of narrative plots and poetic images (often, of pre-Christian origin, such as dragon fighting etc.), mediaeval parables , short stories and anecdotes . The genre of lives of

1880-591: The saints was introduced in the Slavic world in the Bulgarian Empire in the late 9th and early 10th century, where the first original hagiographies were produced on Cyril and Methodius , Clement of Ohrid and Naum of Preslav . Eventually the Bulgarians brought this genre to Kievan Rus' together with writing and also in translations from the Greek language. In the 11th century, they began to compile

1927-438: The study, academic assembly, appraisal and publication of materials relating to the lives of Christian saints (see Acta Sanctorum ). Many of the important hagiographical texts composed in medieval England were written in the vernacular dialect Anglo-Norman . With the introduction of Latin literature into England in the 7th and 8th centuries the genre of the life of the saint grew increasingly popular. When one contrasts it to

Euthymius the Great - Misplaced Pages Continue

1974-439: The surviving acts of the 448 Synod in which Eutyches presents his own defence, however, he himself rejects this understanding of his thought, and the doctrine that became known as "Eutychianism" is presented only by hostile parties as an interpretation of the implications of his thinking. In an overview of the proceedings against Eutyches, which they view as a type of imperial show trial directed against Cyril's radical supporters,

2021-511: The year. They were revised and expanded by St. Dimitry of Rostov in 1684–1705. The Life of Alexander Nevsky was a particularly notable hagiographic work of the era. Today, the works in the genre of lives of the saints represent a valuable historical source and reflection of different social ideas, world outlook and aesthetic concepts of the past. The Oriental Orthodox Churches also have their own hagiographic traditions. For instance, Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church hagiographies in

2068-506: Was accused of heresy by Domnus II of Antioch and Eusebius, bishop of Dorylaeum at a synod presided over by Flavian at Constantinople in 448. His explanations deemed unsatisfactory, the council deposed him from his priestly office and excommunicated him. In 449, however, the Second Council of Ephesus was convened by Dioscorus of Alexandria , who was under the impression that Eutyches had renounced Monophysitism . Overawed by

2115-483: Was an associate of Euthymius. He was an ascetic who lived in a nearby cell at the Pharan lavra . About five years after Euthymius arrived, they went into the desert for Great Lent, and found in a wadi a large cave where they remained praying in solitude for some time. Eventually shepherds from Bethany discovered them, and people from the area began to visit seeking spiritual guidance and bringing food. The monks then built

2162-582: Was born in Melitene in Lesser Armenia , in a pious family of noble birth. According to Christian tradition, his parents, Paul and Dionysia, had prayed for a son at the church of Saint Polyeuctus in Melitene. When the child was born, they named him Euthymius , meaning "good cheer". Euthymius was educated by Bishop Otreius of Melitene , who afterwards ordained him and placed him in charge of all

2209-601: Was greatly due to the authority of Euthymius that most of the Eastern recluses accepted its decrees. The Empress Eudoxia was converted to Orthodoxy through his efforts. The Church celebrates his feast on 20 January (for those Orthodox Christians who still go by the Julian calendar this date occurs on 2 February on the Gregorian Calendar ), the day of his death. Theoctistus (also spelled Theoktistos) of Palestine,

#705294