The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus - Coptic ...

240
EVAGRIUS
were many other things which he did that require indeed a separate
treatment. 111
35 At that time there was also Thomas, who pursued this life in Coele
Syria. He came to the city of Antiochus to collect his monastery’s
annual stipend, which was allocated from the church here. 112 Anastasius,
the steward of the church, struck him over the head with his hand since he
was constantly pestering him; when those present showed anger, he said
that neither would he receive nor Anastasius give again. 113 And both
things came to pass, [185] since one day later Anastasius terminated his
life, while Thomas on his return journey migrated to the ageless life in
the hospice for the sick in the suburb of Daphne. They placed his corpse
in the tombs of the foreigners. But after a ¢rst and then a second had
both been deposited, his body was found on top of both of them, a very
great miracle of God, Who proclaimed him even after death (for they
had been thrust aside and dispatched far away); in amazement at the
holy man they reported this to Ephrem. 114 And his all-holy corpse was
transported to the city of Antiochus with public celebration and procession,
and received honours in the cemetery after terminating by its translation
the current visitation of the disease of plague. Down to our time
the sons of the Antiochenes magni¢cently celebrate the annual festival
111 Krueger, Symeon ch. 2, argued that Leontius, the seventh-century biographer of
Symeon, invented his hagiography on the basis of the information in Evagrius; Mango,
‘Leontios’ 30, suggested that he had access to a written source in the form of a paterikon,a
collection of disconnected anecdotes, which was probably also available to Evagrius.
112 The burial of Thomas, the apocrisarius (an o⁄cial representative, a suitable position
for someone who collected the monastery’s annual stipend) of a monastery near Apamea, is
also recorded in Pratum Spirituale 88, and referred to in the Life of Martha (the mother of
Symeon the Younger) chs. 24, 28.
113 This prediction is not otherwise attested.
114 According to Pratum Spirituale 88, Thomas died at the Church of S. Euphemia at
Daphne; the day after his burial in the foreigners’ grave, the clergy attempted to bury a
woman’s corpse in the same tomb, but her corpse was £ung out, and the same process
happened on the following day; the clergy then reported the occurrence to Patriarch
Domninus of Antioch (545^59), who had the corpse translated to the Antioch cemetery
and a small chapel built for it. Cf. Life of John the Almsgiver ch. 45 for a similar miracle.