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| Chapter I. Description of the wilderness, and the question about the death of the saints.
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Chapter I.
Description of the wilderness, and the question about
the death of the saints.
In the district of
Palestine near the village of Tekoa which had the honour of producing
the prophet Amos,1363
there is a
vast desert which stretches far and wide as far as Arabia and the dead
sea, into which the streams of Jordan enter and are lost, and where are
the ashes of Sodom. In this district there lived for a long while monks
of the most perfect life and holiness, who were suddenly destroyed by
an incursion of Saracen robbers:1364
| 1364 Saraceni
(Σαρακηνοί) a
name given by the classical geographers to a tribe of Arabia Felix,
famous for its predatory propensities. Jerome speaks of the “mons
et desertum Saracenorum quod vocatur Pharan” (Liber de situ et
nominibus sub voce Choreb) and elsewhere describes their predatory
habits (Liber Heb. Quæst in Genesim) “Saracenos
vagos…qui universas gentes…incursant.” By the seventh
century the name had become a merely general term equivalent to Arab,
and was accordingly adopted and applied indifferently to all the
followers of Mohammed by the writers of the middle ages (cf. the
Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, sub voce). | whose
bodies we knew were seized upon with the greatest veneration1365
| 1365 There is no mention
of these martyrs in the so-called Martyrologium Hieronymianum, but they
are commemorated on May 28, in the Roman Martyrology. | both by the Bishops of the neighbourhood
and by the whole populace
of Arabia, and deposited among the relics
of the martyrs, so that swarms of people from two towns met, and made
terrible war upon each other, and in their struggle actually came to
blows for the possession of the holy spoil, while they strove among
themselves with pious zeal as to which of them had the better claim to
bury them and keep their relics—the one party boasting of their
vicinity to the place of their abode, the other of the fact that they
were near the place of their birth. But we were upset by this and being
disturbed either on our own account or on account of some of the
brethren who were in no small degree scandalized at it, inquired why
men of such illustrious merits and of so great virtues should be thus
slain by robbers, and why the Lord permitted such a crime to be
committed against his servants, so as to give up into the hands of
wicked men those who were the admiration of everybody: and so in our
grief we came to the holy Theodore, a man who excelled in practical
common sense. For he was living in Cellæ,1366
| 1366 Cellæ, which
was, according to the passage before us, between the deserts of Scete
and Nitria, apparently derived its name from the cells of the monks who
congregated there. This at least is the explanation of the name given
by Sozomen (H.E. VI. xxxi.) who speaks of a region called κελλία,
throughout which numerous little dwellings (οἰκήματα) are
dispersed, whence it obtains its name. Sozomen also speaks (c. xxix.)
of Macarius as priest of Cellæ, a fact which gives some ground for
conjecturing that Cellæ may be identified with Dair Abu
Makâr, one of the four monasteries still existing in the deserts
of Nitria and Scete, probably founded by the saint whose name it bears
(Macarius). See A. J. Butler’s “Coptic Churches of
Egypt,” vol. i. c. vii. | a place that lies between Nitria and
Scete, and is five miles distant from the monasteries of Nitria, and
cut off by eighty intervening miles of desert from the wilderness of
Scete where we were living. And when we had made our complaint to him
about the death of the men mentioned above, and expressed our surprise
at the great patience of God, because He suffered men of such worth to
be killed in this way, so that those who ought to be able by the weight
of their sanctity to deliver others from trials of this kind, could not
save themselves from the hands of wicked men (and asked) why it was
that God allowed so great a crime to be committed against his servants,
then the blessed Theodore replied.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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