The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus - Coptic ...

38
EVAGRIUS
Most of this man has been safeguarded up to this time, and along
with many priests I saw his holy head, indeed, while the widely celebrated
Gregory was bishop here, since Philippicus had requested that precious
relics should be sent to him for the protection of the eastern armies. 133
And the extraordinary thing was that the hairs which lay upon his head
had not been corrupted, but are preserved as if he were alive again and
associating with men. And the skin on his forehead was wrinkled and
withered, but still it is intact, as are the majority of his teeth, except for
those forcibly removed by the hands of devout men: 134 through their
appearance they proclaim what the nature, size and age of Symeon the
man of God had been. Next to the head there also lies the collar fashioned
from iron, with which the widely famous body persevered in the struggle
and shared the rewards from God; for not even in death has the beloved
iron abandoned Symeon. 135 I would thus have described in detail each
individual incident, providing a bene¢t both to myself and to the readers
from the account, if Theodoret, as I have already said, had not toiled
over these things more expansively. 136
14 Well now, let me also entrust to my history another thing which I
have seen. I yearned to see the precinct of this particular holy man. [24]
It is distant from Theopolis about 300 stades, 137 lying at the very peak
of the mountain. The local people call it ‘enclosure’, since the asceticism
of the all-holy Symeon, I suppose, bequeathed the appellation to the
133 Philippicus, magister militum per Orientem 584^7, 588^9: PLRE III. 1022^6, s.v.
Philippicus 3; Evagrius (vi.3) attempted to present his achievements as favourably as possible;
before the battle of Solachon in 586, Philippicus paraded an acheiropoietos image (a
miraculous icon of Christ) through the army (Theophylact ii.3.4^9).
134 The Life by Antony 29 reports that Patriarch Martyrius attempted to remove a hair
from Symeon’s beard as a relic, but that his hand shrivelled until the other bishops present
prayed to the saint and assured him that his body and clothing were intact and would not
su¡er any further tampering. However, according to the Life of Daniel 23, Symeon’s leather
tunic was conveyed to Constantinople by one of his disciples, Sergius, who presented it to
the stylite Daniel after failing to gain an audience with Emperor Leo.
135 This presumbly refers to the iron band which ¢rst served to chain Symeon’s leg to his
rock and then to attach himself to his column (Syriac Life 93 [Doran]).
136 Evagrius deliberately presented information that was not available in Theodoret,
RH 26, especially on Symeon’s death and his links with Antioch. Theodoret’s account is
signi¢cantly shorter than the other Greek Life by Antony (by about one quarter), and this
in turn is shorter than the Syriac Life, of which a version appears to have been available to
Evagrius (cf. n. 132 above). Only Theodoret’s account could claim stylistic merit.
137 60 kilometres.