The Lives of the Saints Volume 1 - St. Patrick's Basilica

desert, being sixty years old, some time before Palladius visited Egypt
in 388. Henschenius, in his Notes on the Life of St. Auxentius,[1] and
Bollandus[2] take notice that in certain Menæa he is honored on the 21st
of March; yet they have not given his acts on that day. Baronius
confounds him with St. Serapion, the Sidonian martyr. See Pallad.
Lausiac. ch. 83, and Leontius in the Life of St. John the Almoner.
Footnotes:
1. Henschen. Not. in Vit. S. Auxentii, ad 24 Feb {} 3 Febr.
2. Bolland ad 23 Jan. p. 508, t. 2, Jan.
ST. SERAPION,
ABBOT of Arsinoe, in Upper Egypt. He governed ten thousand monks,
dispersed in the deserts and monasteries near that town. These religious
men hired themselves to the farmers of the country to till their lands
and reap their corn; joining assiduous prayer and other exercises of
their state with their labor. Each man received for his wages twelve
artabes, or about forty Roman bushels or modii, says Palladius: all
which they put into the hands of their holy abbot. He gave to every one
a sufficient allowance for his subsistence during the ensuing year,
according to their abstemious manner of living. The remainder was all
distributed among the poor. By this economy, all the necessities of the
indigent in that country were supplied, and several barges loaded with
corn were sent yearly by the river to Alexandria, for the relief of the
poor of that great city. St. Serapion was honored with the priesthood,
and with admirable sanctity applied himself to the sacred functions of
the ministry: yet found time to join his brethren in their penitential
labor, not to lose his share in their charity. His name is inserted by
Canisius in his Germanic Martyrology on this day, from certain copies of
the Greek Menæa. See Palladius, c. 76, p. 760; Rufin. Vit. Patr. l. 2,
c. 18; Sozomen, l. 6, c. 28.
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ST. SERAPION, BISHOP OF THMUIS IN EGYPT, C.
THE surname of the Scholastic, which was given him, is a proof of the
reputation which he acquired, by his penetrating genius, and by his
extensive learning, both sacred and profane. He presided for some time
in the catechetical school of Alexandria, but, to apply himself more
perfectly to the science of the saints, to which he had always
consecrated himself, his studies, and his other actions, he retired into
the desert, and became a bright light in the monastic state. St.
Athanasius assures us, in his life of St. Antony, that in the visits
which Serapion paid to that illustrious patriarch, St. Antony often told