ORATION OF MICHAEL CHONIATES, MOST HOLY METROPOLITAN OF ATHENS, DELIVERED ON THE FEAST DAY OF PALMS.
The most noble of kings, the prophet David, admiring the immense beauty of the sun and its tireless speed, himself says, *As a bridegroom coming out of his bridechamber, it shall exult as a giant to run its course. Its going forth is from the end of heaven, and its circuit even to the end thereof: and there is no one that can hide himself from his heat* (Ps. XVIII, 6 ff). For the most wise man was indeed amazed at this great star, how it rises in the eastern horizon shining with such beauty like a bridegroom, and with giant-like speed and vigor makes its way to the diametrically opposite horizon, its beauty and appearance not at all obscured by such volumes of years, nor dissipated by force, but always exulting in the same manner, surveying the whole universe with no labor, and filling it with the vital outflowing of its most brilliant light. But as for me, who see Christ himself, the Sun of righteousness and Creator of the stars, proceeding in a new procession, I am moved to sing the same words as David, namely that he, proceeding like a bridegroom from his bridechamber, has truly exulted as a giant to run his course through the midst of Jerusalem, exulting spontaneously with a spectacle of triumph unheard of in all ages and overcoming every miracle. And A indeed his going forth is from the highest heaven; for thence, moved in no way by place for the sake of our salvation, he began to cut his path; and his circuit is even to the end of heaven, namely to the lowest parts of hell; for there the course of his dispensation reached its end, so that not even those infernal places should hide themselves from his heat; and thence again, as if from the west, a morning star arises, he is restored to the same seats of heaven. But first, since he was bound by the cords of death, he allowed nothing other than to shine among the dead while descending into hell, and, sending forth a certain divine voice, he raised the four-day-old [Lazarus] from the dead, whom he drew forth alone from the cages of souls, whose victory the procession today proclaims, and establishes a triumph from the present moment; namely, that most mild King of Sion, not on a horse adorned with golden trappings, or on another golden chariot, but on a poor little ass, B conveyed with few attendants, having fulfilled a skirmish against hell, the King of glory approached the prey of hell, and took thence the most beloved Lazarus as his first spoils. By the sound of a single voice he terrified the strongholds of the tyrant, and from the midst of the jaws of the one who devours all things, the good Shepherd drew out his own sheep. The robber held Lazarus caught in his cavern; but soon, upon hearing the Lord's voice, he trembled, and allowed the man, brought back to life, to emerge to the breeze of light. For it was not right for him to sleep into death like one born of a woman, but to be awakened, he who was most beloved to Life itself. O voice of immense virtue, or rather, omnipotent voice! By which the gates of death are opened in fear, and the janitors of hell stood frozen with stupor, and the four-day-old dead man leaped forth. Truly, he is the lion's whelp C of Christ; and now he has terrified the beast with his roar alone: *For the lion shall roar* (Amos III, 8), he says, *and who will not fear?* But in a short time he himself also, lying down, will sleep: yet when he has entered the lists with death as if in a wrestling match, he will utterly vanquish it. Now, indeed, he has subdued the trembling and huge sea-monster with his voice alone from afar: soon, however, he is to be swallowed into his jaws after the manner of Jonah, from whose burst belly he shall draw out all those whom he had swallowed from the beginning of time. Although Lazarus was earth, and into earth he had gone, yet it was Christ who had fashioned man from the earth (Gen. II, 7); from which even by his cry, as if by his breath, he poured life back into the dead figure. Already indeed the carcass was stinking, resolved by decay and corrupted; but the voice of Christ was the odor of life to him. For he was forbidden to go any further, as Christ commanded, *Come forth* (John XI, 44), who leads out prisoners in strength; likewise those who dwell in the sepulchers.
Let Lazarus D now sing with David: *You have not left my soul in hell, nor have you given your holy one to see corruption* (Ps. XV, 10), and, *You have filled me with gladness with your countenance: for I have not been delivered to oblivion, like a dead man from the heart* (Ps. XXX, 13); but to me, dead,
you have done wondrous things.* Indeed, Christ manifested many magnificent works, by which He willed that His glory be made manifest to the Jews who were bereft of understanding; and He raised many from the dead, namely, the centurion’s servant, the daughter of Jairus, and the widow’s only son. And truly, those who were dead, having heard, *Maid, arise* (Luke VIII, 54), and, *Young man, I say to you, arise* (Luke VII, 14), were immediately obedient to the command, and the resurrected saw the light; but they, even seeing, did not see, and hearing, did not hear. Therefore, even for the final work of the raising of Lazarus, which surpassed all in the novelty of the miracle, as if its power were greater, He applied a remedy. For those former dead He raised immediately; but this one, when he had already putrefied, and was dissolving into the elements of which the structure of the body was composed. And there, indeed, He touched the bier of the deceased and B took the girl’s hand, restoring life by the touch of His life-giving body; but here, He repaired life by a voice alone—a voice, indeed, which the Jewish people did not hear, as those whom, according to David (Ps. XLVIII, 15), death would shepherd; who, like sheep, because of the blindness from which they suffered, would place them in the netherworld: but Lazarus, like a sheep of Christ, immediately sensed the voice of the Shepherd calling him back, and, having been dismissed from the abyss of hell, returned to the One calling. And that they asserted they knew Moses, but did not know the Lord (John IX, 29), He manifests more clearly today, triumphing freely and proceeding in more royal attire; finally producing nursing infants, who might recognize their Lord and be witnesses that it is the Lord Himself who guards the little ones (Ps. CXIV, 6), and whom David prophesied to have perfected praise out of the mouth of infants and nursing babes (Ps. VIII, 3); Zechariah C indeed foretold the King of Zion, meek and saving, and who would be carried on a donkey (Zach. IX, 9). For when the Scribes and Pharisees, while the prophets and Moses are read, have a veil imposed upon their hearts (II Cor. III, 15), and holding the key of knowledge, not only do not enter themselves, but prohibit those who wish to enter (Luke XI, 52), the mouths of infants, which are of Christ, are loosed for the utterance of prophecies, and those for whom the use of tongues is denied, babbling children, explain the obscure things of the Scriptures most clearly; and they teach the deaf parents, and those who stop their ears like asps (Ps. LVII, 5). The children, taught by God, having taken the Davidic psalter, and having read the songs that are suitable and appropriate for Him, behold the Sun of justice clearly with the sharpness of an eagle’s vision, and open them to their parents who do not wish to see acutely, nor are they renewed by the youth of an eagle, but are blinded by the age of the letter: *Hosanna*, they say; *Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel* (Ps. CXVII, 26). Scarcely do the infants not point with the finger and proclaim that this is the King of Zion, that meek saving one. For *Hosanna* has the same force as, *Save, I beseech*. Yet, the miracle did not turn those who were uncircumcised in heart D into infants: for they were old and rotten wineskins (Matth. IX, 17), nor could they contain the wine of grace as new ones, nor were they capable of the Spirit. O the blindness and the callousness! The ox recognized its owner, and the donkey the manger of its master (Isa. I, 3); but Israel did not recognize its King, but was found more irrational than the ox and more stupid than the donkey in knowing its Lord; and that, while the infants in no way carried the ox on their tongue, but proclaimed the King sitting upon the donkey, and moving in procession today, and fulfilling what was once revealed in prophecy (Gen. XLIX, 11); namely, to bind to the vine His own foal, which is the new people from the nations, whom no one had yet shackled with a yoke, to bind them to the vine transplanted from Egypt (Ps. LXXIX, 9). Indeed, let us understand the power of these miracles which are in the mystery; or rather, let us ourselves exhibit the miracles of the celebration in us. Let us be made friends of Christ, like Lazarus; let us make wisdom and virtue our sisters; and if at any time it happens that we are infirm like men, or even fall asleep unto death, and have been buried as if in a certain cave in the present age, the One who is the life, Christ, will be present, and with the great voice of the evangelical documents He will cry out: *Come forth* (John XI, 44) from the death of the age; and as He says in another place, *Arise, let us go hence* (John XIV, 31), transferring us from there, and leading us out from the death of the age; and immediately we shall go forth from the age, and with no one prohibiting, we shall proceed to life, although shackled in our members, which is most new and unheard of; namely, held fast even by the bonds of the flesh: for from that which is to bind the soul, the body is called by the Greek word *dēma* (as if you were to say a bond) by the wise. Nothing, however, prohibits that we surpass the constraint of this world that brings death, while we hear the voice of the Lord alone, and go out to Him outside the camp, as those who have not here a lasting city (Hebr. XIII, 13), as the divine Apostle speaks, nor cast away the hope of restored life, even if we stink for four days by the lust of the world; for we have lived dead throughout four ages, childhood, adolescence, virility, and old age, and have arrived at dissolution itself: indeed, Christ knows how to raise those who were dead in sins (Coloss. II, 13). To these, let us put on the character of the beast of burden before the Savior, as David the author says, so that we may carry Him in the procession for us as He proceeds against death. Let us spread our garments for Him, namely, subjecting the flesh to the spirit, let us cultivate humility. If it is not yet permitted to [take] trees set by the streams of waters (Ps. I, 3), such as the palm, or the cedar of Lebanon, or the fruit-bearing olive (of which kind that just Job was like, of which kind the divine David [was] to grow): or let us take branches from those holy trees, namely the shoots of virtues, with which those [trees] luxuriating abounded, and with applause…
The First Homily on Palm Sunday
A and let us offer them to the Savior. If we have been just men, truthful, without crime, worshippers of God, abstaining from every evil thing, we shall have become trees of perfect stature after the manner of Job, who said that his age would grow old like the trunk of a palm tree; and again, we shall be like David’s fruit-bearing olive tree, if we likewise become emulators of his courage and mildness, so that we may be found pleasing to the heart and, because of his character, acceptable to God. But if, through our sluggishness, we cannot imitate the whole of their virtue—their flowers, their abundance of fruit, their patience, their struggles of labor, or at least David’s mildness or modesty, in that he even called himself a worm and not a man—yet let us cultivate peaceful manners with those who hate peace, a spirit that holds no grudge for injuries, gentleness, and again, like Job, unshakable constancy in temptations, to deliver the poor from the hand of the powerful, to help the orphan who lacks a helper, to put on justice, and to clothe ourselves with judgment as with a cloak; to be an eye to the blind, a foot to the lame, a father to the invalid. If we exhibit the works of these virtues, we have cut off branches from the trees sufficient for God, and we have worn the worship of the Savior.
To these things, let us abstain from evils: let us imitate the simplicity of infants, for of such is the kingdom of heaven. Out of the mouth of these also, God has now perfected praise. If you are a child of the Church, be humbled as one weaned upon his mother. Do not cling to malice and pride, but cling to the nurse in the spirit. Why do you fight with God, being carried away by madness against the bride of Christ? A mother’s curse tears up foundations. But if she is also the bride of Christ, what will not her curse accomplish? Do not, you who through baptism have been made a son of God, be changed into a viper’s brood, biting and devouring her who brought you forth in spiritual birth; nor be found ungrateful, you who, fattened by milk like an ass, kick against your nurse. Let the scourge terrify you, with which Christ, having braided it today, drove away the contemners and those who profaned the house of prayer. Let the traitor’s rope terrify you, lest you also fall into it, who for the sake of the money-box betrayed his master; nor be made a partner in the plan of those wicked men with whom it was agreed, with Caiaphas and Pilate, to strike the shepherd and scatter the sheep. For up to this point I omit speaking D of Korah, Dathan, and Abiron, whose seditious conspiracy against Aaron the earth, opening up and swallowing them alive, thrust down into hell along with their families. And I will make no mention of Samuel, whose injury, when he was spurned, God took upon Himself. “For,” He says, “they have not spurned you, but Me.” But we are not Samuel, nor Elias, nor Aaron, who called upon the Lord, and He heard them in the pillar of cloud that B spoke to them: nor are we gods, nor sons of the Most High; but we die like men, and we fall like one of the princes. You object to these things truly, good man; and we, indeed, say such are we; but from where has a new Daniel suddenly arisen for us? Who gave you the presbyterate, that you should pass judgment upon judges, and that you should enlighten the eye, or be a foot, or a hand, or an ear, and feed and rule the pastor of the sheep, and put the student over the teacher? Whose lions' mouths have you stopped? Whose dragon have you destroyed in the belly without stone or club? What mysteries of the future have been revealed to you? Oh, the blindness, whereby you see the splinter in your brother’s eye, and do not notice the massive beam in your own! We are not Samuel, nor Aaron; for we do not keep the testimonies of God and the mandates of God as they did, which He gave to us. Not for that reason, however, if you do not despise or judge others, will you be justified; or, what is more miserable, will you be immune from punishment, partly because Christ teaches that you should follow what the priests say, and not inquire too curiously into2 what they do; and partly because Paul urges that you should obey those who are set over you, and be subject to them, since they keep watch as those who are to render an account for our souls. See, I have been commanded myself to watch and to examine more diligently what concerns you, as one about to render an account for you; I have not commanded you to execute the same roles upon me. Read to me the law that I should inspect the leprosy of the people, and pronounce him who suffers from this sickness either clean or unclean. Spare, therefore, the dignity, and have reverence for that which is more venerable than the Aaronic and Samuel’s priesthood and order. They served the shadow of things to come, but we have been anointed with the anointing of Christ’s priesthood. Who is to be held in greater abomination than Caiaphas, who condemned Christ? Yet, nevertheless, such a man acts as the high priest of that year by prophecy, and that tongue which consigned Christ to death yields itself as an instrument to the Spirit. Thus God knows how to honor the priesthood, so that for its sake He even breathes the Spirit into those who are impious; you, however, when it would behoove you to revere the priesthood and to spare our infirmity more readily; you, on the contrary, use it as an occasion and pretext to presume what is not allowed, and you join with those youths who mocked the bald head of Elisha, when they did not know how many, and with how many gifts of the Spirit, that head was adorned. See, therefore, that you also, having become prey for wild beasts, may be taught not to mock a prophet because he is bald and hairless, clearly lacking the hair of youth, but to revere and worship him, because he is anointed by the Spirit, just as also by the ointment that descended upon Aaron’s head, unto his venerable beard. These things have been said by me paternally and for the sake of discipline, not with the desire to reprimand or to avenge. For let not a fraternal injury be of such weight that it completely...
destroys the patience of those whose celebration we are currently keeping; for how long is that forbearance and gentleness of Christ, which not only endures and bears with an undisturbed spirit the most shameful spitting, blows, and buffeting, but even (prays to) God and the Father for those who upon the cross acted as His accusers, that He might reconcile all things and bind them into one bond of concord? May He also, joining us together in one spirit and one mind, lead us to think and speak the same thing according to Christ. To Him be glory forever and ever. Amen.
LETTERS OF MICHAEL ACOMITANTUS CHONIATES TO EUSTATHIUS, ARCHBISHOP OF THESSALONICA
A I. To Lord Eustathius, Archbishop of Thessalonica. Woe is me! How much time has passed since I received a letter from your Holiness, most blessed master, so that I might know accurately how your journey went and how you arrived in the city of the Thessalonians? Does this city, newly wedded to you, perhaps not permit you, after the manner of women stirred by jealousy, to turn your eyes toward the queen city of Constantine, much less to send her the fruits of your affection, being dedicated solely to her? Is it not so? But she complains of perfidy; she accuses you yourself of inconstancy in love. In this she is deceived, by your sacred head! Meanwhile, your friends suffer from longing; for they yearn to recover you, who have been snatched from their eyes. Thus, the sun and health are valued most highly when a harsh winter, or disease, or some other evil has broken in. B Thus the Athenians calumniated Socrates as long as he lived with them; but when he had drunk the poison, they exalted the wisdom of the dead man to heaven, and did not cease to desire from the bottom of their hearts the man whom they had previously spurned. We, too, feel the love with which we have always embraced you growing within us. Now, therefore, most wise man, since you see how much you are loved, at last write back to us. Spare, I entreat you, my ears, which are dinned by the clamors of those who inquire how you are. May God protect you for many years!
C II. To Lord Eustathius, Archbishop of Thessalonica. This man is fortunate among all others. For previously it fell to his lot to live with your Holiness, but now, after he had been for some time deprived of the sight of your countenance, which is venerable even to the angels themselves, he has—by the will of fortune—gained the opportunity of seeing you again, just as a traveler in the summer heat seeks rest in the shade of a beech tree. But we, vexed by the longing for you, are now deprived of all consolation, since you, the only zephyr in which we took delight, inhabit beloved Thessalonica, breathing no breath of relief to us any longer. To whom, if not to us, oppressed by calamities...
did you write as to those being burnt up, or what climates did you call fiery compared to ours, as if they were more scorched than the one at Thessalonica? We, indeed, even if we were relaxed by being drawn out, would have been reduced to ash had your letters not rescued those of us who were failing with their breezes. O woe! For even if the Euxine brings a bright north wind that cools the surroundings, another, hotter fire consumes my bowels due to the absence of your holiness. Do not distrust me. Whenever I wish to empty my soul of its sorrow, already overburdened, or to discuss with a more authoritative mind those things I do not well understand among my readings, or to ask something or seek counsel, and I look hither and thither in my mind and see no one, I am immediately brought by the flock to the great shepherd of the Thessalonians, and with groans I call upon my father in the spirit, the teacher, the comforter, the good counselor, the most capable in all things for which one might have need. And upon these, the smoke of my groaning rises from my chest, signaling the fire smoldering within—which, as if by certain extinguishing instruments, namely your letters, is moderated, but not entirely extinguished. O letters! Because others are continuously fitted and composed onto others, one might not inappropriately call them steps, by which you do not hesitate to descend toward us who are of the earth in your providence, you who have long since ascended the paths of virtues and still do so now; so that from this, even if you are not enrolled in the choir of angels, you are nonetheless to be considered not even a little inferior to the angels, seeing as you ascend and descend the same ladder as they. B I, on the other hand, despairing of my own affairs, feared that I might be snatched from the eyes of Providence, unaware that you had been added to me as a faithful guardian angel, who not only administered my affairs like before, but showed the way in letters, provided everything necessary for cultivation, and whatever else was needed. Finally, having no regard for time or space, you renew the desire for yourself in us, like a divine book in which our names are recorded. May the light of the Thessalonians fare well and impart its light to us through the nocturnal battles of this life. C
III. To the Archbishop of Thessalonica, the Lord Eustathios.
I will exalt you, most divine master, because you sustained me when I was wavering, lest I fall, or you lifted me up when I had fallen, just as one takes up a child barely skilled in swimming with one's hands and holds him above the water so he is not absorbed by the waves. D For I, even if I was emerging from the abyss of affairs to drink the salt water of pusillanimity, was nevertheless unable to reach the shores of life. But you, a precious good sent from heaven, the illuminating eye of Christ, when you knew in what state I was, extended a salutary letter; and immediately the one who had fallen was standing, and the one who was all but absorbed by the waves was held back by a strong hand. I have not, indeed, seen the veil that once helped Odysseus, tossed by the sea's waves, in a wondrous manner.
B Yet the letter I carry upon my chest has accomplished our full and entire salvation, and this, indeed, at a time when we had no hope of such a boon, knowing the busy life of your Holiness; I would sooner have been persuaded that this Ethiopian mail-carrier of yours could be transformed into a person of fair complexion than to have just now received a letter from your most sacred soul; him whom you matched quite fittingly with Moses, by reason of his coming down as if from a cloud, all shrouded in shadow. But I also reason with what follows, that he brings these letters of yours as if they were tablets from God. Might it be, O Master, that he encountered a burning bush somewhere while traversing the mountains, and then, not understanding to turn away his gaze, his face became blackened by this? But he who travels as far as us and delivers white news about you shall be assigned the rank of an angel of light and a son of day, even if he is shadowed by a skin of black flesh. And may you always, like a teacher and father, lead back those who fall away from what is good. The rampart of our terrible and difficult neighbor has for the present been reduced to nothing, and a myriad of crows caw over it. Whether he might contrive something else besides, I do not know. I lamented, I swear by your wisdom, the rotten old man, who, forgetting that he was building his own funeral pyre, applied himself to building lofty mansions against his neighbors, which were wind-swept in other respects, which were proven to be airy, and which, like breezes, were dissolved and blown away. Of the discourse on fasting we have not yet tasted, and of the monody, only as much as if someone were bringing in a table laden with many fine dishes, but before one could touch them, he whisked it away, leaving the guest gloating and barely having touched them with his eyes. May God grant you a long life.
IV. To the same Archbishop of Thessalonica.
C Behold again a man heavily laden with the vapor of letters, you will say, seeing our courier, and with every right. For whatever we write is empty vapor and at the same time a token of our ardent love. If you love it because it rises from the city that imbued you with learning, tell us; for it is a pleasure to us. Vapor is what never ceases to be, which is why the one who carries it is black as an ink-pot. However that may be, when he returns to us, he appears fair to look upon and splendid, after he has gazed upon your face and been girded by your epistolary belt. By questioning him, your Holiness will learn how we ourselves fare. May the Lord, your prayers having been heard, be gracious to me!
V. To the Lord Eustathius, Archbishop of Thessalonica.
D Most holy master, I know well that your most sacred soul is the same, no less so in the immutability of other virtues than in your disposition toward us; for you have not learned to turn away from any good, but rather to be more firmly rooted in it. And while you do not pay much attention to letters written out of friendship, you look rather into the soul, and from there you take the pledge of love. I know that you, the lover of humanity, pity our affairs now more than before; and pitying us more, you sympathize more intensely; and what...
I do not know, I hesitate to boast about—that this is a merit of any great importance which even the publicans manage to perform. But I pray to Him who loved us, as the cause of this mutual love, that He might grant you a healthy and long life. This devout monk is the brother of the late Demetrius of Thessaly, and he stands in need of your assistance. Let him, therefore, enjoy your benevolence, both because of the fatherly disposition you held toward him and because of our own request. May God be propitious to me through your most holy prayers. A
VI. TO DOMINUS EUSTATHIUS, ARCHBISHOP OF THESSALONICA
I wish I were with you, most holy master, to be a sharer in your grief and to sing a dirge along with our Jeremiah, or indeed our Ezekiel, for your city is afflicted with the same calamity as the holy city of old. But since at this critical time we are separated, I send these letters to you as witnesses of my mourning. What a city has been captured by the enemy! The first, indeed, after the first, and truly queen of all! How great a misfortune for the Romans did the sun see! Alas, the baneful force of the Italian arms! How many ships with their very crews did the Sicilian sea swallow up! What a great city it has inundated! O the malevolence, O the Telchines! B Alas for the envy which, hostile to the prosperity of the city, creeps over land and sea, and has utterly destroyed that which was protected on both sides! Of what sin, pray, was the holy city guilty that it could not be saved by the entreaties of its patron martyr, nor by the venerable archbishop, nor by the supplications of all the pious? For who would not have offered pious prayers for Thessalonica, as for a common fatherland and a shared place of refuge? But we have been proven to have prayed in vain; for God, I think, has deemed it right that the cup of bitterness be drunk by all, and because of this He has betrayed our common delight. Whom among all did Thessalonica not show hospitality to, whether coming from or going to Byzantium, or anywhere else? For, situated like a heart in the center C of the Roman Empire, it was to be placed second only to Byzantium, and was in many respects its equal, and it now lies scourged by a common plague. Nor is it a marvel, most holy one, that you have suffered more than the rest. For God, who measures the strength of all, imposes an onus proportionate to each, and while He spares the effeminate man who has the strength to carry nothing, He proposes the hardest perils to be undergone by the very strongest—among whom you are clearly to be numbered—as they are destined to derive honor from them. Wherefore it would be absurd of me to have wished to console a man who teaches us ourselves all wisdom, and whom may God preserve for many years! D
MONODY ON THE MOST HOLY ARCHBISHOP OF THESSALONICA, LORD EUSTATHIUS
A O execrable age! O unfortunate mortals that we are! How shall I deplore the magnitude of this calamity? Whence shall I draw words to sufficiently testify to my grief? For a long time I have been consuming my pain in silence, with only mute tears shed. Indeed, the report of Eustathius' death struck my mind like thunder, like an unexpected bolt of lightning, and I emit nothing but smoke, the evident sign of the inner agony by which I am tortured. At first, I could not and would not believe in such a new disaster; for a long time I received the report as incredible, that the most brilliant star had fallen from heaven and that Eustathius had been buried in the earth.
B Thus, amidst tears and groans, I remained speechless and bereft of my senses until I discovered, oh grief, that the report was true. But although I mourn the manifest calamity no less, even now my tears choke my voice. Yet, when my grief does not impede my voice, I will find some measure of relief, and I will perform the debt owed to my departed friend. But what, in the end, shall I do to best manifest my pain? Shall I remain silent, like those who, according to fable, were changed into trees or stones by dint of their excessive grief? Or shall I wail and groan, as I have been doing, following the example of those who, according to the Prophet, make their lamentation like dragons and their mourning like ostriches? Both seem to me to be appropriate, given the magnitude of the calamity. Woe to our common misfortune! Woe to the loss of the world! One star of life remained, one torch for letters,
A one luminary of the world, one sun of the sacred order. But a thing unheard of even in story: this too has been extinguished, and has deserted us forever. How, O sun, did you endure no longer to see this earthly sun, who was among mortals what you are among the stars? But now a black gloom incubates over the entire world, and darkness and moonless night pursue life; we, wandering like the Egyptians of old, long for the shepherd who has been snatched away, who in pastoral wisdom stood out among all men, as a shepherd among his flock; we, friends of philosophy, mourn the king of the sciences, the parent of eloquence. For with greater justice could Eustathius boast of the royal name than that Attic sophist; the holy synod also seeks its own eye and that voice which had proclaimed words worthy of a king far and wide.
B The city of Thessalonica, yesterday most happy, today is most unfortunate, because, deprived of such a son, with how much mourning does it call back its bridegroom, its good shepherd, its wise teacher, its savior, its tutelary genius, its defender—in a word, its column, to speak with Pindar, immovable—and whatever other laudable and salutary thing or name can be thought of! Thus, consumed by grief, it lies on the ground as if it had been captured and destroyed a second time, and it fears lest it experience worse. For previously, when the Italians were invading by land and sea and destroying the walls, it was snatched from the hands of the enemies by our Eustathius, who by the fame of his virtues so moved the enemies themselves that they did not dare to look upon his face; nay, the fierce army fell down of its own accord at his feet. But now, deprived of such a great bulwark, it lies miserably on the ground, as if taken by force and defended by no walls anymore.
C What, then, does the queen of cities do in this crisis of affairs? Will she bear this misfortune more easily or with more difficulty, he to whom Eustathius returned the benefits bestowed upon him with interest and with pledges of a grateful heart? For whatever he had, while he lived in it, he generously bestowed as treasures of wisdom upon those who love the fine arts; for he was the prytaneum of eloquence, the universal hearth of wisdom, a garden open to none, a field fertile under divine auspices, a fountain of eloquence ever-flowing. D Hence it came about that students could reap gratis, drink gratis, and no longer thirst for the discipline of the arts and letters. For in a short time, without preludes, without prolegomena, without contests or preliminary studies, anyone who approached him felt himself imbued with philosophy, as if he had come out of the school of Aristotle himself. For although he might languish in the deep stupor of ignorance, as soon as he had offered that spiritual food, the student departed as if inspired by the Muses themselves. But the fruits of this tree of wisdom were not bitter like the leaves of the laurel; nay, they were sweeter than the letter which
A Ezekiel consumed in his prophetic dream. For the graces of Eustathius’s discourses distilled like honey, as if they were simple, separate drops of nectar; whence the doctrines, entering even to the marrow of his listeners’ souls and being burned in directly, were preserved unwashed by the currents of forgetfulness. For a lesson impressed upon the soul with pleasure is engraved upon a more retentive tablet of the mind, so that one might sooner need a remedy for this—and regarding this, too, there was an old saying about a certain sophist, that he made his audience retentive through some Chaldean sorcery. With such a drug, O you who are the palace of all the Graces B and more alluring than the Sirens’ spells, you etched memory into the depths of your students, and persuaded them to believe as truths, for the future, things that were previously considered myths. Just so, you also deposited in them in a brief time, through your discourses, which were always adapted to every logical method, that which was of wide learning and knowledgeable in many things. For you did not unfold the mind only through the reading of books in our daily communal studies—or clarify if any part of the interpretation was darkened—but you also brought together a great many other things by mixing them in, not pridefully wandering into irrelevant digressions, but receiving the cue from the topic itself as it arose, and conducting the digression not "outside the door" (as the saying goes), but, as if the lion were revealed by his claw, the whole was structured according to the proverb.
But I am not able to recount these things without weeping; C for, having recovered a little from the sorrow, O those present, I fall back again into lamentations. For I myself, filling out that circle of his students, was cherished by him with greater warmth, and drank from a larger chalice of wisdom. For this reason, the memory of these things striking my heart turns it, and, pressing the blood in it, squeezes out tears, which flow down in clots of blood. Yet one must try to rise up again, and as it is possible, dam up the tear, so that we may not only discharge the duty to the man by mourning, but also marvel at some of his good qualities. For it is necessary here too to commemorate a just man with moderate praise interwoven with lamentations; and this not with a refined rhythm or a melody that would be inappropriate. For music in mourning, according to the Wise Man, D is an untimely tale.
We said a moment ago that it is never permissible for the same persons to be initiated into great and small mysteries at once, nor, indeed, to dance and hold the torches and oversee at the same time. For the proverb knows it is ignorant and dangerous to "learn the potter’s art in a wine jar." Yet under him, as he initiated them into the orgies of the logical arts, one immediately trod the vestibules of the Muses, and at once also the most secret parts of the palace, and there was nothing of the initiation that remained entirely inaccessible to the newly initiated. Indeed, if one of those attending brought a book of poetry under his cloak, he needed to learn the laws of meters, and the rhythms of harmony, and the unfolding of the etymology of words, and to be enthralled by the myths of historical deeds; then he would return having been a complete spectator of these things, and not at all uninitiated in the more mystical ones. For he did not strive to satisfy the desire for these only for the mystes, but also
to tear away the veils of fables and enter within, observing a spectacle inaccessible to the many. How many, approaching as infants, A instead of milk, received the more solid nourishment of instruction, and in being matured, had their intellectual senses brought back to life; and those who yesterday were stammering with their tongues, today spoke clearly and articulately. Shall I tell of what is more novel? How many, until then, thought that they had mastered grammar to such a degree that they promised to lead others in the art, until, by that rule and, as they say, by the plumb line, they recognized their own state. How many until then thought they were sacrificing to the Graces of rhetoric, until they had heard the Sirens of Eustathius. How many until then thought they were profound in philosophy, until they compared themselves to that man who was skilled in the arts and understood all branches of knowledge. Then, having recognized themselves—and first having well philosophized concerning themselves, that as those who knew nothing, they might clearly know—they exchanged, for the rest, being for seeming. For this reason, turning about and becoming as if they were newly taught children, they loved, and even now, just beginning, they would become disciples under him, who was teaching them in return, and they would grow old while learning. B When I saw those who were constantly arriving and departing, I would be reminded of the Homeric image; for just as swarms of bees issue from a hollow rock, so too, from the beehive of Eustathius, swarms of countless philologists would daily fly down and fly away in clusters, and if any others were in any way reaching for virtue, they stood in need of one to set them in order. For he was a living law of virtue, and the greatest exhortation toward virtue, not only being heard, but even just by being seen. O venerable countenance! O dignified manner, more to be revered than that of Pericles or Xenocrates, C by mere appearance making sober those who beheld him, and changing those who looked upon him, molding them toward the adornment of their characters! O discourses, sinking into the mind, and yet dripping with all manner of graces! O those words, which neither played the fool with lewd witticisms in the manner of the stage, nor were they loathsome with a bitterness that is sour and unripe, but were tempered with a holy salt, as the Apostle prescribes, seasoned with divine grace, such that the listener would gladly pass the whole day, forgetting his home like those among the Lotophagi! O supreme self-control! O ingenious wisdom! O soul unshaken in trials, and making its calling firm by its deeds! How great a wealth of virtue, how great a flow of wisdom has flowed away with the man who has passed on, having left us only his memory, and the wonder and tears at that very memory! Who will give me the tongue of Eustathius, that I may admire the virtue and tongue of Eustathius as he deserves? For I am ashamed to think that these praises are equal to my reproaches. D For that man alone, as it seems, displayed a life unparalleled by others, and a tongue that rivaled his life, and he was perfect in both; while we dart about like shadows. Indeed, as one set forth as both beautiful lights, of life and of speech, as if on the height of two lampstands, the philosophical and the archiepiscopal throne, he is raised on high; having been established in the one a little earlier, and in the other later. And while the ancient Israel was on its journey, a pillar of cloud led them by day, and by night a pillar of fire; but Eustathius did not lead in turns, but here as a refulgent orator, and there as a spiritual light shining forth in his life (for the cloud is a symbol of the Spirit). But when he shone forth oratorically (the way of the word) by way of a chariot, he shone forth spiritually as well; and when
A he could offer it. For when he celebrated the glorious deeds of kings or the glory of illustrious patriarchs, students of every kind, as if enticed by an Orphic lyre, flocked to him from everywhere, in whose lips resided thunder and lightning more than in Pericles himself, who surpassed the force of Demosthenes and the vehemence of Polemon; who knew how to grant novelty to the ancients; who formed whatever he said, while preserving its dignity, in some new way and with some new color due to the abundance of his unique genius, being equally averse to ostentation and harshness, [defects which are peculiar to those who, not being able to attain to the true sublimity of oratory, descend to bombast and, with loosened reins, annoying to all, rattle along just like those empty chariots in Homer]. For even if they love and value the charm of speech, those suitors do not grasp its unique love any more than Ixion grasped Juno or the suitors grasped Penelope; nor do they see that they have been deceived by some simulacrum or by the arts of prostitution. There were also those who, in the manner of novices, would use unusual words and tropes, yet they achieved neither what they attempted, nor in poetry, nor in prose discourse, where they stitched a purple cloth onto base bodies, nor did they succeed in rhetoric. For on this [base] form of their own they did not impose a native garment (just as Alexander is said to have worn a Persian garment over his Macedonian cloak), until Eustathius, by his bold oratory, emerged as the savior of the art of rhetoric, which at that time was chiefly in such a state that it was being erased from the choir of the arts; B he, by teaching the principles of art up to this point and by exhorting those who had imprudently neglected the rules of rhetoric to imitate the ancient models, restored them in a short time to the new cultivation of that art than which nothing was more ancient to our ancestors. If, therefore, students of this kind were to compare their own declamations with the writings of Eustathius, they could not fail to see the huge distance, such as there is between stagnant water and the Pactolus, which glides down from the top of Lebanon with a pleasant sound, to speak with Solomon; thus, whoever considers the eloquence of our author to be merely sophistical will be, to me at least, an unfair judge. For not as the Macedonians believed that Alexander had been restored to them in Pyrrhus of Epirus due to his speed in fighting and the sharpness of his character C, was an image of some illustrious orator placed by Eustathius before the eyes of the listeners; rather, the one figure of Eustathius displayed whatever is most distinguished and is the archetype of oratorical grace, just as some artist, by taking from many women what each offered of excellence, creates a painting perfect in all its parts, D flowing with the murmuring [stream] — if one might say so — from Lebanon, according to the Song of Solomon, as many as trace back the stream of the man's words to the primal fountain the sophist who flows from there.
A For just as the Macedonians, fighting against Pyrrhus of Epirus, thought they beheld the look, the speed, and the movement of Alexander, and the shadows and imitations of his own impetus in the heat of battle, so too did I not wish the listeners to imagine in the writing of Eustathius the character of any one of those who were famous for their eloquence; rather, they should see one single vision, in which the best elements of all the best had been refined and worked up into one unimaginable beauty of speech. Just as one of the wise men, by imitating the best parts of the most beautiful women of his own time—insofar as he surpassed the others—wrote a most beautiful image.
As, therefore, if someone there were to attribute the entire beauty of the icon to one feature alone, because of its resemblance to some one of the lady’s parts, he would seem a ridiculous judge of painting, so here also, if one were to compare him who has been most excellently harmonized out of all [the ancients] to one of the ancients in only one of the parts of his speech, he would not see the man—as it is right to see him—just as one would not have admired the whole sun by measuring it with a single ray. One might be a judge of the man not unworthy, if he would emulate the wise poet and, as he, when describing Agamemnon, says his eyes and head were like Zeus, his belt like Ares, and his chest like Poseidon, so also this one here might compare the person now being praised: one thing to this one, another to that, and another to another, in each of the virtues, according to which B he was judged to be in the first rank over the others; and perhaps in this way we might depict the omni-harmonious polyphony of Eustathius.
I, however, to conclude the speech regarding his speeches (for the occasion does not allow me to go through them in detail): how great was his enthymematic and fertile power! How great the intensity! What force, whenever he might breathe! How great the cleverness and the unimaginable grace, smiling upon the roundness and elegance of his interpretation, along with the polished charm of his thoughts! This I say: if any profit exists in our present life for any art or science of speech, it is reserved for the listener or emulator of the wisdom and exquisite language of Eustathius. For it suffices for all, for the purpose of splendor and dignity in speech, instead of countless forms, if one might trace back even dimly to one of his own peculiar traits. Thus, the whole literary world has turned toward him as if toward some inspired god; and whatever he might utter, it is a divine voice and a law standing above all technical skill, and a motionless canon of canons, and, as with the Pythagoreans, it is presented as the *Ipse dixit*.
I would not, therefore, marvel if such a citadel of virtue and wisdom as this has been claimed by two continents; just as this city of ours C is said in myths to have once been the favorite of certain gods, and to have as symbols of the amorous strife the sprout of the olive and the crescent-shaped, windless swell of the Piraeus; for such indeed is the innovation regarding this matter. Lycia’s chief city, O man of excellence—who surpass everyone with the purity of your soul—wooed you; for it was fitting for you to shine forth for the Church as a prelate after the likeness of Christ, you who had already clothed yourself in justice as in a priestly garment. But before you could begin the priestly epithalamium, beloved Thessalonica, having recognized and envied her rival, feigned widowhood so that she might possess the bridegroom. A fierce struggle therefore broke out between both Churches, and one might truly say that Europe and Asia contended for which of them would possess you; for each is zealous for you, in so far as you D
were theirs as a spouse, and furthermore, delighting in the eastern sky and the myrrh of your native land, it was painful to them to be placed after another. The other, the first among the cities of the West after the imperial city, and stained with the precious blood of martyrs, bore it ill to be deprived of you, a man so great and of such stature. Therefore, she left nothing untried, neither in word nor in deed, until she became your spouse. Indeed, I am certain it will never come to pass that you should be joined to a better; for a future age will never bring forth a man like you. For as once Philopomen was the last of the distinguished Greek commanders, so in this era, which is prolific in its works and a devourer of things, time brought you forth to the light as the last of the A bishops in Christ.
Who then, besides you, shall be born with equal dignity of character, a thunderbolt of eloquence, an orator, a holy judge, saying [what I may say] as if from the throne of Christ, delivering oracles as if from the heights of Sinai? Who will ever equal you in the sanctity of your life, B or who in the power of your eloquence? Furthermore, to follow the course of your thoughts or to hear you teaching was granted to very few, to those whom it delighted to hear the sound of the divine voice at the foot of the mountain. Thus, the more everyone took delight in your presence, if by chance a rapacious animal appeared—whether a lion as a tax collector about to devour our very vitals, or a spotted panther, that is to say, a domestic tyrant, or a wolf, a foe and lurking enemy of the flock, and advanced—all these in your presence remained in a hidden place, lest they be struck by your words as if by so many stones. And what is to be wondered at, since not even kings themselves could endure to look upon you with an unmoved countenance or an equal mind, but, rather, behaved like pupils, obedient to your word and modest? C The Psalms proclaim the name of God as holy, as light, and indeed as a consuming fire. The many-eyed Seraphim do not look upon His face directly, but obliquely and with semi-opened eyes, and they spread their wings but little. In like manner, this visible sun will be the most delightful star only to those who are content to enjoy its rays. But whoever has dared to gaze upon it with direct eyes will not do so with impunity, but will suffer the greatest detriment to his sight. Thus, no one, unless he be utterly imprudent and rash, would approach you, who render the divine sun palpable, speaking empty things or doing what is unfitting; for whoever was rebuked by you thought he suffered the same as if the earth were to gape open before his feet. For in transmitting the arts of the Muses, you employed both true doctrine and discipline, unlike that energetic man who, as Homer testifies, D would accuse even the innocent of fault. Likewise, you compelled the souls of the guilty and accused, by reason—not by vehemence—to confess their fault and to admit the rebuke of their life, leading them to repentance. Thus, to you, most venerable man, chaste beauty...
A and an honorable incantation followed you everywhere as a rampart of holiness. Those men who at first seemed least worthy of you, you led to repentance by the aid of reason and discourse, and sometimes by the help of purifying water. That Clearchus, a Laconian by birth, as Xenophon testifies, was grim of countenance and very raucous of voice; yet that was in no way an obstacle to his being a splendid and cheerful leader for his soldiers in battle. Your gentleness of character smiled upon those who encountered you with a pleasant tenor at all times, and that was true even when you blazed with righteous anger against the wicked. For who, once rebuked by you—provided he was not of a base spirit—was not content, hearing words more consolatory than vituperative, esteeming them as roses more than thorns? Thus, your mansuetude was not without a sting, where there was need to give force to your admonitions; nor was your sharpness lacking in pleasantness: for each was associated in a most happy mixture. You yourself know well that none of those things which you either labored over with sweat or composed in play escape the students of letters, inasmuch as your matters, repeated by word of mouth in the forum and public streets, have passed into proverbs.
The death of so great and so good a man was followed by the mourning of all the citizens, C especially of that city which, like a wife deprived of her husband, sits on the ground oppressed by grief, nay rather, rejecting all consolation, cast down upon the tomb of the departed, she indulges so much in sorrow that her tears flow over her cheeks, to speak with Jeremiah. For the crown had already fallen from her head, and the wife preferred to be buried rather than to be deprived of her spouse; indeed, if it were granted, she was prepared to sacrifice herself to her husband, as Panthea, the most loving wife of her husband in Xenophon. She, mourning and groaning, would have said almost these things: "Who, without a profound groan, who without tears, could have heard the news that was brought? Woe is me! The excellent shepherd has departed who gave his life for me; the wise man has passed away who excelled in manifold virtue, my prelate, the great Eustathius, a name venerable and most celebrated! Woe is me, for I have lost the spouse to whom I was once happily wed, and who is now snatched from me by death; who lately, to speak with David, D clothed me in scarlet in delights and provided...
me with golden ornaments for my person—that is, with most splendid discourses. But now that he is silent, I am stripped of my finery and go about clothed in black garments, in a darkness of widowhood blacker than any soot. Let no one bring the news of Eustathius’s death to long-lived Rome, nor let it be announced to the Italian cities under its authority, lest the arrogant and proud rejoice at our calamity and take heart to launch attacks upon matters of dogma, which until now they have not dared to do, fearing the invincible eloquence of his tongue. The man of whom the whole world was not worthy has fallen; he who sustained me, he who raised me on high, has fallen—alas! And how shall I, wretched as I am, not fall now that my support has been withdrawn? What insolent surge of waves will not overwhelm me, having lost such a great breakwater, against which every tide used to strike and break into foam? Oh, what a meadow of graces has death, warring against me, laid waste; a meadow which even the Sicilian war, though it destroyed all divine and human structures, spared as if it were some untouchable and sacred grove! Oh, how the balsam of wisdom has been poured out B to the last drop, the scent of which—perfuming my witness to this fact—would draw every lover of beauty to it! I, like the bride in the Song of Songs, was strengthened with balsams—and with double balsams: that which exhaled from the blood of martyrs and that which exhaled from the labors of the episcopate. And from the fragrance of both, according to Paul, I tasted yesterday the sweet scent of life in Christ; but now I am suffocated by the most chilling odor of death unto death. What a mouth, overflowing with graces, and what an axe of articulate freedom of speech, has finally closed! What grace of lips, breathing myrrh, has been poured out upon the earth! What a tongue, breathing fire, has been extinguished! What a voice has flown away! O figure and face, statue of self-composure, citadel of reverence! O eyes, angels of the steady peace within, O lamps of modesty, O chambers of temperance, where have you gone? Come hither, O venerable Philosophy. Come hither, Rhetoric, who flourished so greatly because of him. Accompany us too, Grammar, with your retinue—as many as comprise the circle of learning. For I call you as "the wise women," according to the prophet, to mourn, or rather to mourn with me, as fellow-widows for our common spouse. For this man was not merely a husband to two sister-sciences, according to the divine Jacob, but was quite simply the husband of all. Nor did he beget twelve leaders of a single people, but leaders for almost all of the churches across the Roman Empire. C For this reason, I call upon all cities, orphaned of a common forefather, to engage in lamentation with me in spirit; but before all others, I call upon the grandmother of all, New Zion, whose most excellent son, whom she loved uniquely, has passed away, according to the words of the prophet. For in this way, I shall form a more tragic circle for a common concert of mourning, as befits a common calamity. For just as the Egyptians, with Joseph and his family, mourned Jacob for a long time, so do many foreigners, alongside the Romans, follow with their own longing the apostolic salt of the earth, the evangelical sun of the universe, who poured forth the splendor of virtue and wisdom from here to there. For this sun did not emit its rays upon me alone, but upon the entire life-giving earth. But now, when the common lighthouse of all lies extinguished, not a brief darkness, but a long-lasting—nay, eternal—one occupies the land, now that the tomb has devoured the shining star. Through these shadows, to rapacious animals and thieves, with a just
A fear, what calamities shall I, unhappy as I am, not suffer? I shall surely be exposed to the tax collectors; I shall surely be devoured by the customs agents, as a ready and accessible prey, abandoned to these man-eating beasts. For that great shepherd of mine will no longer watch over me, and with his ten thousand waking eyes he will no longer keep guard over me by night and by day; for he sleeps a sleep that is truly all-powerful and longer than his wont. His sling of words is motionless, no longer casting down evil beasts. For he was another shepherd, a David striking the bear and smiting the lion, if ever one should come upon the flock under his care, which he even snatched from their mouth, “as when,” it is said, “a shepherd rescues two legs or a piece of an ear from the lion’s mouth.” For he would either cry out silently to the Lord, or petition kings, and the trouble would at once fly away like a cloud. But now, alas, even such a man as this has been snatched away by a death B falling in the night, when he had reclined upon his bed to doze for a short time from his daily labors, without even bestowing a final word upon me, without leaving final instructions, without saying farewell. How then, poor wretch that I am, shall I survive, having been deprived of such a man?
Many such things will Thessalonica lament and wail, yearning for him who is no longer present, and calling upon him in vain; and she will remember him especially in times of hardship. For you, most blessed and most wise of all bishops who have ever lived, you departed from here in peace, untouched by disease and delivered from every mortal hardship, having doffed your body like a light tunic, or rather having laid it aside—not having it torn away by the violence of one who grips and pulls at it. For long ago, by avoiding the attachments of this life, you had made your departure through the philosophical study of death; yet by touching upon it only lightly, with a brief step, as one might touch a sphere with a point on the surface, you were so far engaged with or attached to it C as not to be deprived of the natural and instrumental aids to virtue contributed by it to the soul. Having reclined, then, for a sleep that relaxes the limbs, you gave sleep to your eyes and rest to your temples; and you escaped notice, joining sleep to sleep, the continuous to the brief, the longest to the short, and the bronze sleep to the uncertain; and thus you fell into the sleep of the holy ones of God, most precious to God. No mortal hands closed your eyes or laid your limbs, chilled by the frost, upon the bed; but sleep, sweet and enchanting, lulled you—you who were joyful in spirit—and brought you through the gates of dreams to death, or, to speak more truly, ferried you from this place of sojourn into that fatherland beyond, just as D a certain heroic and much-wandering
wise man, while sleeping in a foreign isle, is carried back to the isle of his birth. For, A just as you rested according to the divine Jacob, while commanding your spiritual sons, lifting your feet upon the bed, you expired; at which time you beheld in reality, not in a dream, that ladder which you yourself had built stage by stage—establishing moderate self-restraint as the foundation, building upon that self-restraint the cathartic state of detachment, upon that detachment the mental operation, and upon that mental operation the base of deification underlying all things. Upon this ladder angels were surely ascending and descending, making the way toward the ascent for you and escorting you as you rose from the condition of a man who lived in the company of others and in earnest activity, to contemplation and purification, from one who contemplates to a mental state, and from the mental to God. Thus, also, the ladder of your life stood fixed upon the earth, but its head reached to heaven, upon which the Lord also rested, to whom you ascended from us who walk upon the earth, by means of this ladder of upliftment, guarded by God as He descended to the angels and ascended with them. I could say that you have finished your course as an apostle. B Truly, being kept in this life as in a prison, just like Peter, the leader of the apostles, you were bound by two chains, by sleep and by the bonds of nature. But the angel of the Lord stood by you, as he did by him in the night, and immediately those chains fell from you, and you departed from the prison unbound, and followed Him who was leading your soul. Perhaps you even seemed, like him, to see a vision and were in doubt whether what was happening through Him was true, until the iron gate opened of its own accord for you, and you went out into the city that has firm foundations, and truly and clearly you understood that the Lord had indeed sent His angel and delivered you out of the body of this death. Or rather, I would believe that the Lord Himself, coming in the middle of the night, found you awake under the lamp of discernment, which was burning, and with your loins girded with temperance. For even if your body slept, your heart was awake in another sense, having adorned its lamp as inextinguishable, like the wise virgins. Therefore, you were ready to meet that good Bridegroom when He came at an unseasonable hour of the night. C You, then, are truly a relic of the golden age long past; and because you lived according to the ancestral ways of that age, you have died while overcome by gentle sleep; or rather, having yoked together the twin sisters, sleep and death, you were harnessed to them and were carried straight to the land of the living, and as the gates of heaven were opened to you, you entered in rejoicing, arrayed in the garment of archiepiscopal glory, and were added to those who are tasked with performing the sacred rites in that place. D There, the company of those around Aaron and Samuel rises up to meet you and cedes the place of honor, revering you not only because you excel among the prelates of the Church in a marvelous way, but because your tunic was adorned with more pomegranates and golden bells than their tunic was; for which reason, as a preacher of the Gospel and as an orator, you surpassed the symbols of the dark law by your lightning flashes. There you shall have the men most adorned with gifts of intellect and spirit, the Clements and Dionysii, coming to meet you and rejoicing in you as a brother, who, following their example, have subjected Greek philosophy as a diligent servant to its holy mistress, Christian philosophy. They receive you, the most welcome newcomer of Basil and Gregory, and judge you worthy to be a co-heir with those who, like you, by prayers and...
have adorned the Church with a precious ornament, with brilliant discourses, and with dogmas radiant with the gospel, as if someone were to pour gold over silver. Or perhaps, do the matters regarding you not also seem enviable and incontestable to those who follow the zealous Phinehas? They draw you to themselves and seat you as an assessor, knowing that you have turned more people from alien transgressions than they have, and that you have corrected them with rebukes sharper than any lash. Above all, Christ, the Word, the living one, the self-wisdom, the creator of all, and the craftsman of all, has placed you at his right hand, as close as possible to his own throne, and sets before you a greater cup of wisdom, and offers you a new drink—the one which he truthfully promised would be drunk with the worthy in the Father’s kingdom. For, as Solomon says, God loves nothing except the one who dwells with wisdom. You, meanwhile, who abide with her constantly, were held fast by the allurements of wisdom alone; nay, you lived with her as if yoked in marriage, you died with her, and now, having been B liberated from all the miseries of the body, you have attained a rightful portion of her eternal fountain.
But if you look down upon us, the inhabitants of the earth, O dear soul—as indeed you surely do; for the mystical voice teaches us that this is the honorable reward for the just, such as you, or a pledge of the promised goods which "eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man"—do not spurn this sacrifice of tears that I offer to you, even though it is not poured out simply over your tomb (for I am not granted the consolation of embracing it, nor of drawing some comfort from it), and even though these tears are not sufficiently seasoned with the honey of your praises. Grant me, too, a drop of your grace; for to perform such C duties, provided you wish it, you are now more capable than ever before. We shall no longer see one another with our eyes, nor shall we converse through letters; for an immense space lies between earth and the starry heaven—that is, between us and you. Yet we do not despair that we shall one day be with you. This interval, indeed, must be crossed by us also, though it will be after some time. But another interval comes to my mind now, one far more horrible and no less than the distance between the bosom of Abraham and the abyss of hell, where it is not permitted to cross in either direction. You, indeed, dwell in the number of the blessed, but we must fear most of all that we might be condemned to the same punishment as the companions of that rich man burning in gehenna, and be separated from you forever; this separation, both present and future, weighs most heavily upon my soul. May God, by His mercy and for your sake, grant that we hear Moses and the prophets and believe in the D testimony of the Lord Christ, who rose from the dead, and that we may perform sincere repentance, so that we ourselves may not be cast down into that place of horrific torments, but be deemed worthy to offer holy [service] to God almighty with you.
[Already, at the present separation, I am exceedingly aggrieved, and I have feared the impending departure even more. May God, being propitious to you, grant us to hear Moses and the prophets, to obey Him who testifies to us and the Lord who rose from the dead, Christ, and to repent sincerely, so that we ourselves may not go away into those places of torment. May we be deemed worthy with you to offer to God a sacrifice of praise, entering into the inner sanctuary of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched and not man, and, standing before the intelligible altar that is there, to wait upon and serve Him more purely.]
MICHAEL ACOMINATUS CHONIATES MOST HOLY METROPOLITAN OF ATHENS MONODY ON THE FUNERAL OF HIS BROTHER, THE CHIEF JUSTICE AND PREFECT OF THE IMPERIAL BEDCHAMBER, NIKETAS CHONIATES
O calamitous announcement! O adverse and ill-starred rumor! No sooner did it strike my ears in the sudden and unexpected speech of men than they were immediately stirred with such terror as to cause—as is wont to happen to those who are delirious and out of their minds—a ringing and buzzing, and my very breast, consumed with sorrow, seemed to be pierced and run through as if by a sword. From this source, I think, they conceived those blood-red tears that my eyes now shed, much like those bloody drops which the scenic artistry of the common stage fashions for tragedies; so that it is a marvel that I have not myself turned into one of those stunned and possessed fanatics, and, deprived of all sense, petrified into some pillar. Yet, up to this day, I survive among the number of the living, not unaware into what miseries I have fallen, by the knowledge and consciousness of which I draw forth these plaintive cries and reciprocal sobs.
For it may well be that by this artifice the avenging Deity exacts punishment from me, lest perhaps, captured entirely in mind and bereft of my senses, I might be constrained by this extreme torture with dry eyes and devoid of sorrow; but rather, endowed with an integral mind capable of feeling sorrows, I am in consequence all the more acutely torn alive and seeing. For whatever is indeed deprived of sensation, that alone we call free from pain. But I, even if I should be transformed into some B or into that stony one, who (as in myths) distils tears in silence: or into her who is mentioned in Scripture and commonly called a pillar of salt (certainly sharing the same name as me, who seem to myself to be nothing else than insipid salt, and therefore cast out to be trodden underfoot by men), yet not even so have I escaped the Nemesis of the avenging Adrastia; for I pay more durable penalties, since, as one who is always destined to be the same, I am set forth to be mocked by all under a hostile divinity. Moreover, the pain penetrates much deeper even to my very liver, as I contemplate at close hand what a climax of evils insults my wretched soul, what a crown of sorrows accrues to previous evils, and, in short, how pernicious and unfortunate an outcome has been added to my affairs: what penalty, I ask, can now be imposed that is heavier than this?
C Hei mihi, dearest brother, hei mihi! How far removed from us you are! Not by such a distance as you were yesterday or the day before, surely—not by that chasm, for instance, which lies between Greece and Bithynia—but by one much wider and more remote: as far, indeed, as Orcus is separated from the region of the living. Woe is me, miserable that I am, that you have been admitted to those most distant places, from which no hope of return to us shines forth. Therefore, with all hope of seeing your children henceforth, or of being seen by them, [is...]
A cut off from your dearest sister. Who will grant me this, that I might redeem your life with my own death, as indeed I might perform that very thing which that divine David once looked for 3, and that in his son Absalom, who had violently risen against him, and had laid snares for his life? But if he did not shrink from pouring out his own life, provided he could save from death a son famous for such deplorable morals, who would not myself willingly desire to exchange life for death in your name, with all my prayers, especially when you are my brother, and of all my brothers by far the dearest, even though, if we are to take into account the discipline of the soul, you might seem to have been produced from the temperament of another’s multiple habits? Both of us, certainly, derived our origin from the seed of the same father, and the blood of the same mother: and since I am the eldest, I stepped forth first upon the threshold of birth; would that I had also stepped across the threshold of death first, and thus followed the other brothers as one from many! But when our father, most loving of his books as well as of his children, had brought us from Asia to Byzantium for the sake of learning, at the time I was reaching the years of puberty, he handed me over for training to the masters of the liberal arts and to teachers of living (for I had already laid the foundations of grammar and the method of composing useful verses). Afterwards, when much time had flowed by while I was settled there, our father placed him also into my hands, already nine years old, adjuring me that I should succeed him, as a vicar, in the duty of all—of father, I say, of foster-father, of pedagogue, and of teacher, in instructing my brother. And indeed, I performed the duty, the piety, and the diligence B of all of these; and while I fashioned myself to their countenances and the habits of their speech, and performed even more than is wont to be expected of a brother, I finally ascended—by their advancements—to the highest degree of fraternal piety and duty; nor did he lack the striving, in turn, with which he matched his heart to that same excellence of fraternal benevolence, and he contended with effort, except for the fact that he received far more benefits than he bestowed, all the while he lived among us to be formed in morals and liberal disciplines.
But as soon as the imperial court, which received me and him—not among the foot-soldiers, but among men of primary authority—welcomed us, without any delay and immediately we ceased to contend between ourselves in receiving and returning benefits. For both I and Athens are conscious of many benefits of his, not to be overlooked, often received: although he, in turn, received from us either none at all, or very few. But so far is it from being the case that this grace of fraternal love was severed, that even when closer bonds on both sides, and less dissoluble, C joined us together. But if some more hostile fate had intervened (as that natural sympathy is wont to exhilarate the minds of men with joyful things, and on the contrary to ulcerate them with sad ones), any one might easily infer for himself how much we, especially in that time, when we were established among strangers and were shut off from the companionship of friends and other intimates, and bereft of foreign aid, were pouring our mutual services into one another, and among the very inconveniences of a foreign region, were relieving ourselves with mutual consolation and the fomentation of our sorrows; for we were held by such love of our fatherland and desire for it, in which, not without a varied alternation of labors and midnight studies, we had conceived a knowledge of the liberal arts, with whose subtleties and sharpnesses we had exercised our budding talents. For I would betake myself to those who handled the disciplines and sciences of the ancients, while he, as much as his tender age allowed, always from his very cradle was instructed to grasp at everything better and more perfect, and was exercised in them little by little, and thus progressed, so that at length, as if with new-grown and strengthening feathers, and carried by the lightness of his wings through that circle of disciplines, and above all the sophists' subtleties, he could D thenceforth fly up toward those theorems also, which require a more sublime and august contemplation.
But when, having already assumed the manly toga, he had grown into that age where one of the many paths of this life had to be chosen, upon which he might insist or enter, at that time (alas, that I should not be able to wipe away the scar of the state of the republic, then changed by an unheard-of novelty, with dry eyes!), at that time, I say, the first occasion of dissent dared to arise, which would separate with a different condition of life the conjunction of brothers who thought one and the same thing. And to me indeed (whom our parents from boyhood had inaugurated, as the first-fruits of their offspring, into the ministry of the sacred altar) private life was above all things smiling. And so I sought one thing from the Lord: that I might be placed over his holy temple, and not apply my mind to such small affairs, as the common crowd of men is wont to be overwhelmed with, but rather consume the good hours in literary leisure, and in unrolling the writings of the ancients. He, however, before he had given any certain specimen of scholastic achievement, or even of those things which are of knowledge and science, of his own accord placed himself in that state and institute of life which is more prone to human actions, more eager for the republic, and finally more exposed to cares, than is expedient for him who wishes to philosophize seriously. But in order that what he had proposed to himself, and had set before his own mind, might succeed under better auspices and more to his benefit, he also applied caution and diligence. And so, the faculty and copiousness of speaking, and the science of civil law, as much as he could, [he...]
collected, and transcribed them into the ledgers of his heart, and at length he emerged a living table of laws, a breathing commentary. Then, the tyranny being abolished and the empire revived, he also returned to resume the imperial business, as if by a right of postliminy. A work truly so much the more commendable, as it followed upon the legitimate steps of the Republic, and seemed to have withdrawn so far from the yesterday’s tyranny, or even to have resisted it from the opposite pole. He was, moreover, adorned with another magistracy. Although he was not immediately sent into Thrace to take charge there of rebuilding fortresses and fortifying cities, and to conduct the levies of the military orders, he fulfilled that duty a little later. But at the time when he began to enter into consultations with us about embarking on a way of life, A (because household affairs must be well managed, and he who aspires to the helm of greater and more common concerns must first exercise himself in his private house as if in a small republic), he first thought of establishing his family by contracting a marriage with a woman of singular example, one who seemed to have been granted by the gift of God, the Best and Greatest, likely to be a frugal consort in domestic cares, and who had come into the power B of her husband especially for this purpose: that there might be a union of flesh and children on both sides, which no passage of time could ever dissolve; and that he might accomplish from such a manner of living that the husband’s marrow should suffer no harm or detriment therefrom, just as the wise man's maxim beautifully advises. When this intention of my brother had become known to many—how can I recount how many leading young men eagerly sought to bind themselves to us by affinity? Not with such a crowd of drunken revelers C as once besieged Penelope, did suitors, interpreters of marriage, and as it were matchmakers, flock to him; some attempted to arrange marriages for their daughters, others for their sisters. They strove to outdo one another with magnificent and glorious display, and even with a certain self-advertisement of those things by which each hoped that he might exert himself to the utmost—straining every nerve of his youth and industry—to win the marriage of one so much sought after by the prayers and competitions of so many noble suitors. And so, some boasted of the preeminence of their birth, or form, or both; others, on the contrary, guarded themselves, as if fully armed, with the gravity of their opinions and the weightiness of their words; so that my brother, doubting and hesitating, imposed upon me no small burden of duty, by committing D the selection of his in-laws to my judgment, and affirming that he would embrace, first and foremost, whatever happened to please me on this matter, and whatever I deemed necessary to be done. O truly brotherly soul, who would commend and entrust everything he owned to me, and whose plans received their force and effect from me, no differently than from some divinity! By which, by Hercules, it was most clearly shown how inclined to virtue was my brother—nay, the very pupil of all liberal letters—that he deemed nothing among all things that exist in the nature of things to be more ancient or more worthy of observation: not wealth, not the dignity of form, not the brilliance of lineage, not the celebrity of fame—although he was of an age that is accustomed to be easily ensnared by the mockeries and allurements of such fortune—yet he grew cold toward these toils, while he applied himself, more indulgently and fervently than is fitting, to the task of increasing his ancestral and paternal affairs, ennobling his lineage, and mending and caring for his body. For he put aside all the suitors, and especially those who spoke of and promised the largest dowries—not without excellence and greatness of mind—and preferred the probity and good nature of the illustrious Belissariotae, [who] delights her husband, etc.
A yielded easily to them—people whom the same communal life and that sort of fellowship and partnership in the same masters of the arts had joined to our own intimacy. For that brother of mine took as his wife their sister, who had been reared chastely and modestly within the walls of her father’s house, in the sight of her excellent parents; a man whom not so much necessity and affinity, as a harmony of character, had made most similar to the Belissariotae. And so, just as brothers in soul no less than in body, they lived together in one house; they partook of their daily meals from the same table; they rejoiced in the same things, and were moved in their turns by the same; they went together to the forum, the temple, the public assemblies, and the palace. From there again, not singly but in pairs, as was their custom, they returned home, showing themselves to be such wondrous companions to one another that they were already spoken of by all as an enviable pair of kinsmen, and a most blessed guarantee, and they were heard of as the most conspicuous examples of temperance. Certainly, as long as they lived as bachelors, that noble pair of brothers spread their reputation everywhere among men; but after they were joined by honorable marriage to all, and in the immaculate bed, then indeed the one who was my brother became a kinsman to them as well. These men, as if melted together in their very marrow and innermost entrails, began to cling to one another so closely that anyone would have judged that they had coalesced into a single mass, which could not have been torn nor severed by any span of time—this for the chief reason that, while the Belissariotae might consult for the interests of the Republic in the city according to their dignities, my brother, however, not only in the city but also in the provinces and municipalities, as I have said, was sent by one emperor after another and presided over the sum of affairs.
Time, to be sure, is everywhere open and exposed to change; it took empires away even when emperors were still alive, and transferred the scepters snatched from the hands of the Scepter-bearers to others, and from them again to others. Yet continuous succession of emperors kept my brother’s honors and magistracies whole and unimpaired, nor interrupted by the succession of anyone; nay, those who followed seemed almost to vie with their predecessors in benevolence toward him, adding something further to his former honors, as they were struck with wonder at the man’s virtue, and considering that they lost as much from their own imperial authority as his honors were diminished.
Nor was it only the common and plebeian men—to whom there is scarcely any path open to honors, and whose weaker and more obscure standing usually hinders their efforts—who frequented the palaces, estimating at highest price the honor bestowed by the emperors and hunting for public offices by whatever art they could, given over to greed. B But those men also, of whom I am speaking, used to gather there along with those who were lovers of virtue and honesty, and used to bring back home from there—having purchased them at a great price—magnificent and large gifts, or even some more luxurious pearl-strings, emeralds, and carbuncles, thinking it better if they purchased the prerogatives of dignities for a price than if they were voluntarily adorned by them.
The emperors, having experienced their certain singular and outstanding virtue—as they far surpassed them in their contempt for gain and private utility, [comparable to] Aristides in temperance, [like] Hippolytus, Bellerophon, and Joseph, and finally [like] Minos in observance of the law—these emperors, who were strictly not venal, placed them in charge of affairs at home and abroad; they opened to them the gates of their treasuries and private chambers; they entrusted their most cherished possessions to them no less than to their most intimate friends. In the end, they appointed them in the open and manifest administration of the city as Great Logothetes, Ephors, and Polyarchs. C For by their virtue, as if in a certain kingdom, they so adorned the helms of the cities that they were rather illustrated by their honors, rewards, or splendor—bestowed by the munificence of the Augusts—than they themselves were by them. Nay, indeed, to say what is the case, they were created by the Augusts as the ornaments of their most illustrious times, and as certain common Harmostae and teachers of morals to govern the Republic according to the prescription of the laws; such magistrates as that most ancient Rome had known, having performed their duties in every grade of honor with the greatest celebrity of their own name, who in turn were considered to be the ornaments of that city—which at that time was easily flourishing as the prince of all others, and was extending the boundaries of its empire far and wide—an ornament for the whole world in common, and a common utility for human society.
To expedite the matter in a few words, the bulwarks of human prosperity are safe indeed, but the Lighthouse and the harbor, by whose aids those things were preserved, have saved us from shipwreck (5). D Yet how can this be, that I should run through the virtues of such great men so succinctly and in so few words? That I should pass over very much in silence? Partly, indeed, confused by the fact that I am moved and persuaded by an affection more vehement and excited than by those good qualities of theirs—of which they were possessed in life and of which they were deprived in death, not without great detriment to our age—and partly, indeed, looking ahead more cautiously, lest anyone carp at this oration as one that has forgotten its proposed argument and, as the proverb has it, has made a greater addition to the Thylakos. Since the new Sion, no less than that old one, deserted by its own people in such a crisis of affairs, has fallen into the hands of enemies and has been utterly destroyed. Whatever also had escaped the enemy’s hands for a refuge, or for the benefit of light armor, Nicea, the metropolis of Bithynia, com-
- A manded, and there they now live in exile, who yesterday congratulated their fellow citizens on their joy, and today, oh the pain, join their grieving sighs. Those who were once an ornament to a blessed city are the same ones today who bring comfort to an unhappy one. For they themselves, by the things they said and the things they suffered—attentive as they were to wisdom and great-souled discipline—brought no small consolation, and they added no small goad toward the assumption of courage to those of a lackluster heart and duller nature.
Thus, just as Ezekiel and Daniel, when they were faint of heart in Babylon, cried out: "Our bones are dried up; our hope, our despair indeed, has vanished," 1 and restored them with very appropriate conversations, so long as it was granted to enjoy the benefit of their presence, and to experience them as fellow-mourners and comforters, those others, without a doubt, felt the missiles of fortune more lightly, and did not at all consider themselves to be exiled from their own fatherland, as they even then displayed the very finest gifts of their city and the heads upon which the governance of the commonwealth relies. For the true form of a city does not depend on its walls—however much those may be skillfully built by the hands of men—or on lofty roofs, or porticoes, or an adorned marketplace; but it depends upon the probity, honesty, and piety of its men. Whoever is endowed with these, even if he lodges under an oak tree, becomes a guest of a better nature, and is meanwhile more worthy to be enrolled by any city into its catalogue of citizens—not to mention the world itself, as vast as it is, which is utterly unworthy of such character. B All these things, like the foundations of a pious city, those present men fulfilled even by a mere nod, inasmuch as the form of a well-constituted commonwealth was more deeply impressed upon their souls, just as if they were the living laws of it, and a kind of bulwark of a surviving Constantinople.
But after that pair of brothers, celebrated for their fame in holiness, was summoned to that heavenly commonwealth a few days before, and not long after, that brother of mine—who had joined the yoke as a third, and performed the same senatorial duties as they, and was assumed together with them and enrolled in the eternal senate—then those Megalopolitans of ours, who had moved to Nicaea, perceived them taken away from them. Then, with one accord, they recognized themselves stripped and despoiled of the ornaments of their former glory; then, finally, they frankly professed themselves to be nothing but miserable exiles and outcasts, and altogether driven from the city. Wherefore, they fell into mournings as bitter as if that city itself, at that very moment in time, had been conquered by a sudden incursion of enemies and had crumbled in ruin. For indeed, when it had been despoiled of all its most excellent things, and had seen its own most wealthy treasury exposed to the plundering of the enemy, how much—alas!—the bond of the Christian commonwealth has been severed! C Oh, what a unity of the city has fallen apart! What a heap of good things has been overturned! What a triple cord 8 of probity and honesty—not indeed of calamities, according to that wise
aphorism
—disturbed, or tore apart by the violence of surrounding circumstances, but death alone, dissolving the golden chain of those men and scattering it one by one, has at last reduced to nothing. And since that most clement man, that best of men, Michael, had first yielded to fate, there remained as much from that easy and simple soul as the Megalopolitan colony had reserved for its own uses; proposing to itself, as the sole consolation for its griefs meanwhile, that rich and many-gifted John; that man, I say, who was said to excel the remaining citizens in counsel and prudence, and to be a living example of a best-constituted commonwealth.But after a few days had passed, and our colony was orphaned of this brother too, who followed the others, and performed the funeral rites for him, my brother Nicetas remained, whom that city proclaimed as the one in whom alone all the virtues of the two preceding ones shone forth, and on whose account it had conceived no small expectation in its heart. As soon as it lost him last in the shipwreck—rather, failing under immoderate griefs today, as if overwhelmed by waves and sunk to the bottom—once his death was heard of, it cannot be said into what mourning Asia fell, and how much more sadly Europe replied to the lamenting city, as soon as she was made more certain of the common loss of all. But if that universal-like fate brought such a disaster to both continents (whether each had already experienced your probity, or the fame of the things handled so excellently by you had reached their ears), so that they bore your death so grievously—oh, dearest and most holy soul to me—what manner of groanings and complaints must we, I ask, impose? We, if any account is to be taken of status or kinship (for the origin of our race is the same), are afflicted in countless ways. We, I say, to whom a heap of infinite services has come from you, to whom has accrued every species of honor through your virtue, who claim for ourselves, by a kind of right, no small praise from the things excellently achieved by you; when now at last, without any delay and suddenly, we see ourselves deprived of the splendor of your name—the race, otherwise manifold and proletarian, which is spread far and wide through all the regions of Asia and Europe, and is ennobled by the auspices of your name—whom, however, it was by no means fitting to be separated at this time, or for each to mourn alone at home, but rather to gather in one place, and, surrounding your tomb, with me as the miserable leader of the mourning and precentor of the funeral dirge, it was appropriate to testify to our grief with the saddest harmonies and laments, not having…
A been moved, it is reported, as Joseph’s army was when it performed the rites for Jacob. For if we had organized our mourning in this way, there would have been nothing at all that anyone could have justly reproached us for lacking in this matter.
But truly, since we are now separated from one another, my wife—a woman indeed worthy to live out the life of the crow in the common saying—is sitting in some corner, surrounded by her children, both the older and the younger, who are prostrate on the ground and dressed in mourning garments; and she laments with a miserable wail, bereft of her husband, and they bereft of their father. As for the children who are older in years, one after another wanders in I know not what places, mourning in silence by himself and pursuing a mournful, solitary song. Finally, our other relatives and kinsmen, as many as inhabit Asia, have transmitted the acts of this tragic grief to those who dwell in Greece.
B I, for my part, by far the most unhappy and wretched brother, having obtained today and the day before yesterday ample material for grief from another source—both from my public misfortunes and my own private ones (9): especially for the reason that the most opulent and most celebrated Athenian temple (that, I say, holy Lady, most august temple, which is consecrated to the Mother of God, and which forever stands in need of such a guardian), having been entrusted to me, and whose spiritual altar I served, and over which, by performing the sacred ministry as best I could, I diligently watched—was, in my presence, alas! and before these very eyes, plundered and devastated by wicked sacrilegious men. I, however, who for three decades had been implanted there as if in the court of the Lord, was torn away like a dry and utterly useless trunk, caught by the blast of a more violent storm, and carried now to shores overwhelmed by various waves, or cast upon some rugged cliffs, now pushed into a deep valley by the surging of the tide; an exile, as it were, in these places, without clergy, without any celebration of holy days, without a city, and finally, like a desert owl, a menial inhabitant, I complain in silence to myself of the public and private ruin. Now, however, if this kind of grief is not to be dragged out further by me, at least the memory of it will never be erased.
But that passing of a most beloved head, which has come upon my many evils like the tenth plague of the Egyptians—namely, the slaughter of the firstborn—has drawn every wailing, every lament, every dirge, and, in short, all tears toward itself. For he, who prepares a life for his own indignation, seems to have presented to me certain manifest gymnasia of torments, and on top of that to have heaped up this struggle, which is indeed the greatest and ultimate one, and not entirely without danger. From this it happens that those previous wounds are lacking, even though there is no gap in the copy, but this one, struck home with a sure blow, penetrates to the innermost recesses of the soul; nor can it even be determined whether the smoke of temptations has risen from the indignation of the Divinity, which might predict a future fire, and draw out frequent tears from the eyes, after which the fire of afflictions might burst forth. But the present day shows that the punishments I am now suffering are far hotter and more lasting, for the coals have been kindled, which seem to be such that they can never be extinguished or restrained from feeding upon the blood of my heart. C From which it results that those tears have abandoned me, either because that water which used to drip from my head has been exhausted by my former evils, or because I am now struck by a greater fear, and so my heart, after having been afflicted in a thousand ways before, has at last withered like hay; nor, henceforth, can such a river of tears or fountain of mournful words gush forth from it as the magnitude of that perturbation itself requires, so that, with the burden of that grief which I have conceived in my mind finally cast off, I might become lighter and more agile. Wherefore, this fetus of grief—intolerable with dry eyes and mute sobs—must now necessarily be endured, and I shall die along with it in the short remaining course of this miserable life, if there is anything that seems to remain, and I shall lie cast into a part of some subterranean abyss and marine gulfs: and so I shall be joined to my brother—the elder to the younger, the decrepit man to one in the prime of life and the roughness of old age.
O divine providence, which no industry or conjecture of any man can fathom, you who govern divine and human affairs in ways ineffable; what mind, I ask, would dare to entrust itself to the fatal abyss of your judgments and swim in it! Even if it be most addicted to the study of philosophy, could it resolve the knots and untie the entanglements? I am indeed consumed by grief, which so goads me that I am forced to speak of such a thing, from which there is a danger that the mark of rashness might be branded upon me. How is it that I, white-haired, a useless weight on the earth (10), who am pressed by heavy old age, and am nothing, as they say, but a wound into which all the fates of nature have flowed, should remain a captive longer in this earthly prison? It is certainly a spectacle neither sufficiently suitable to the distinct order of things, nor is it now such that it should be exposed to the light of the sun. But he who had not yet set foot upon the threshold of old age, much worthier to enjoy a longer life, especially for the reason that he was the preserver of a wife and many children, had outshone his ancestors by his own virtue, and had contributed much to the common utility of the whole world, as the crown of my glory and splendor, and who day by day brought a certain harmony to this life of mine: he, I say, was snatched away by a premature death, which has brought me near to insanity, and not without loss to the community, to strangers, and to his kinsmen. For without him…
A so great a good, which the wise are wont to assert belongs to the just man, was also reserved for us. Where now, I ask, do those people dwell, who, relying on the genuine kinship of blood, and who, as kinsmen, used to approach him; and who, having obtained through his influence that which they had sought from the emperors, used to return home all the more quickly, receiving it freely, and returning thanks to the author of the benefits far more abundantly than to those who bestowed them? Surely of these, many, or even none at all, ever came forward here.
Come hither, all of you, and, endowed with the same grief as I, mingle the praises of our kinsman with my lamentations, so that we may bestow worthy tributes of praise upon the memory of this just man, and not adorn it with tears alone. For neither mode is alien to honor or propriety. Since the death of a just man provokes tears, and causes us to labor in our longing for him; yet those who seek from him examples of virtue to imitate cannot fail to honor his memory with praises. Where now, I pray, is that maiden of such noble countenance, upon whom the barbarian enemy, when our Megalopolis was first captured, was about to inflict rape, had not this keen lover of honesty and chastity, as soon as he saw it, taken pity on her! He, rushing upon the enemy without any delay, although he could not imitate Phinehas in defending her—however much our own man here burned with the same zeal as he did of old—at least claimed the maiden for himself, shouting aloud that she was his lawful wife, and complaining that he was being deprived of a faithful spouse, and for that reason was being afflicted in the most bitter ways. Therefore, by the tenacity of both hands, he grappled pancratiast-style with the enemy, whose mind was inflamed by love and madness, and drew her to himself; nor did he rest until, having snatched the maiden from the hands of the violent B enemy, he had restored the maiden to her father. Oh, let her too be present now, to bewail with lamentations, and groaning, and feminine wailing, the defender of her liberty—him, I say, by whom she was saved and rescued from rape, just as if he had long since been appointed guardian of her chastity and protector of her purity.
Oh, most noble deed! To which none of those ancient ones can respond. It is said that Hercules once liberated Hesione when she had been exposed to a sea monster; likewise also Perseus, Andromeda. But they were armed, and girt with iron, when they attacked the monsters, and finally bound the maidens to themselves in the bond of matrimony. This man, however, unarmed, invaded an armed monster, and covered him with so many little lies, and outwitted him with so many cunning traps—though he was truthfully a man of truth, and not at all a liar—so that he at last restored the untouched maiden to her father.
But Simeon and Levi extorted their sister from her ravishers, and she had already been violated and defiled; and this was achieved only with difficulty, and scarcely even without frequent circling in a dangerous round, and not C without innumerable slaughters, and the destruction of the whole city. Wherefore, they are not to be compared with our own man, who brought back the maiden intact and unharmed, contending with his speech alone, and without bloodshed. I surely know that my illustrious brother was adopted as a son to Abraham on account of his faith; nay, I would not fear to say boldly and freely that this our own man was far superior to those Abrahamic fathers. For Abraham, first before Pharaoh, and then before Abimelech, professed that Sarah was his sister, not his wife; as Isaac did with Rebecca. They, forsooth, terrified, were afraid to call them their wives, lest they should perish on their account; but this man, though the maiden had not yet been wedded to him in matrimony, nevertheless called her his own wife, drew her to himself, and claimed her as his own; by no means refusing, if the situation demanded it, to face the danger of death on her behalf.
But if Daniel asserted Susanna from the fury of violent lovers and unjust judges, yet he had first sat before the tribunal, and had led the judges (who were blinded by lust) apart, and had interrogated each one separately, and, convicted by their own judgment and condemned to death, had ordered them to be covered with stones; and in this way had liberated the chaste woman from an unjust sentence. But my delight, this man, who was by nature so constituted that no one of us would not desire to turn out like him in all his wishes—not judging as Daniel did, but accusing the enemy of the crime of adultery; not pretending, like Abraham, that he was the brother of the defiled one; not lying about that which he could deservedly incur reproach for, like Isaac (11), but, as a man for a maiden who was still crude, declaring himself to be her husband (which was as wise as it was manly), he deceived and repelled that violent ravisher.
Hence it is clear that these things which I now recount are far superior to those ancient ones; since they savor of Christ, and are thus far more excellent than that legal justice. For just as Christ gave Himself D in the name of the Church, although the Church nowhere yet existed, much less was betrothed to Christ (for we were still sinners when Christ died for us, as the Apostle says); she herself also, conscious of the disgrace which she had contracted for herself by her former impiety: "I am black," she says somewhere, "O daughters of Jerusalem"; so also my brother, for her whom he had not yet led as his wife, nor was even yet entirely going to lead, came near to pouring out his life, while he exposed himself to certain dangers; and he who had simulated the role of a husband, in truth performed the office of a father. And the father's natural love toward his children, and the defense of their safety, shone forth in him much more than in the one who had begotten the girl. For he indeed yielded to the victors, and sought safety in flight: but this man here
when she was being led away to defilement and harsh servitude, appeared as an avenger, and at length, after experiencing extreme dangers, set her free.
O wisest brother, you were A undoubtedly ordained in the royal palace of the heavens, and therefore your tongue likewise swiftly recorded the sudden liberty of the virgin who was being abducted, like the pen of a ready writer. Furthermore, your lips were like a scarlet thread B by means of a brief and fortifying discourse, and, such was your zeal, they drew up a line [of defense] against the raging barbarian, and repressed his violent assault: and not only that, but that timely oration of yours, which did not prove false to the man at an untimely hour, but rather, devised in due time, struck a just blow against the unjust raptor. Oh, how could it be that you, to whom falsehood was never a habit, could have uttered a lie? For you have always detested falsehood no less than death itself. It is clearly manifest that, just as you were prepared, should circumstances require it, to pour out your life for the safety of the girl in peril, so too you did not shrink from lying and becoming a liar—you, an otherwise most earnest lover of the truth, who never defiled your lips with a lie. In truth, you accomplished this also by the imitation of Christ, who for our sake was made a curse C and went so far as to strive to become all things to all men: a guardian to those lacking one, a procurator and husband to widows, a father to orphans, a brother to the poor, a most faithful friend to friends, and one who observed the law of kinship toward his kin—as one who was the greatest of all, and, finally, a brother who loved his brother beyond all measure and as much as it was possible to love.
Wherefore, it was certainly not fitting that his death should so prematurely make his wife a widow, or his children orphans (since it pleases me to lose my mind once again), or that it should deprive me, his brother, of the only comfort I had left in this life, and that I should experience a life more bitter, and now all the more burdensome, as he had previously rendered it lighter and more vigorous. Although he was not with me, yet as often as it was reported that he was doing well and living, it refreshed me no differently than if he had breathed some vital air upon me. And just as that divine David said his own soul was so hedged about by such bitterness and such torment that it rejected consolation, but as soon as he fell into the mention of God, he was immediately exhilarated D: so also I myself, as often as I was pressed by the weight of present evils, as soon as some news would fly to me, by which the memory of my brother was refreshed, signaling that he was, of course, still living and doing well, I would immediately conceive a certain wondrous consolation in my soul. And if ever it happened that I received letters signed with the autograph of my dearest brother, then, then I would recall to memory that most pleasant sight and sweet conversation, and it seemed to me that I was receiving and kissing my brother’s entire head; and then those clouds of affliction which were poured around my soul—which, like a serene storm suddenly arisen, were scattered and vanished—and the welcome light of joy soon shone forth.
But now, having heard of his death, the sorrows of hell encompass me, the dark gloom of anxiety covers me, and the shadow of death attacks me: since that anchor of mine has been swallowed by the waves. Oh, what a loss I have suffered of that sacred anchor, by whose support I formerly, as governor of the Church of the Athenians, overcame all the waves: but now, tossed near to shipwreck by the manifold course of reciprocating waves, I have lost that anchor, and my life has been curtailed. For, depending entirely upon him, I have led my life—which is even referred to in the proverb as *atheōtos* [without God/without view]—up to this present time, and I have hesitated to obey death, which has long been calling me. But now, since that anchor of mine is useless, what place have I in this life? Or how much longer shall I be able to postpone the descent to the shades below, which abound in every kind of pain? Since this most wretched life seems to be prolonged for me so that I may suffer longer penalties and endure all kinds of torments; and that I may drink often from that cup which the Lord holds full of pure wine in His hands, from which all sinners are also wont to drink; but when I shall have drained it to the dregs, the time for departing hence will seem to be at hand, especially when I shall have endured all the penalties that can be expended by a mortal body.
Yet I do not depart from here with a willing and joyful soul, as if I were about to exchange this life for some good. For the fear that I might be snatched elsewhere, and once I have departed from here, be subjected to more severe torments—I, who have worn away my life with various sins—terrifies me. This is indeed a grave matter, but the following is more grave: if I were to be separated far from my brother by another, greatest, and most troublesome chasm, by which—as a medium for those who are tormented among the dead—the place of the happy is separated by a vast distance from the quiet of the blessed: to which place, indeed, I easily believe my brother has been translated from here. For it is clearly manifest to me that he was accustomed to strive with all his might and work to fashion and polish the rule of his life according to those archetypal examples, and that, while he was still among the living, he wished with all his prayers—so far as it was possible for him—that he might dwell and exult with them, especially since he sought out and collected relics and images of the saints from everywhere, and, having placed and consecrated them in temples he had built, he pursued them with the highest honors. For of all the saints who are inscribed in the roll of days of the entire year, there is none whom he did not venerate privately on the day dedicated to his commemoration, with festive and solemn rite, and by offering spiritual sacrifices, and by honoring him with hymns and the first fruits of all his produce. For he was not content with that worship which he paid in common with the other citizens in public assembly; the Church, too, in private…
consecrated to him, dedicated an annual festival to this saint, whom he saw honored everywhere among the nations: so that from his tent the voice of exultation and salvation, and the Psalm-singing of that just man, would be heard without ceasing. For these reasons, therefore, I know for certain that he has come to his friends and has been brought into the same everlasting tents in which they rest, that he enjoys eternal blessedness with them, and that he, being a most loving brother, intercedes even for us now, so that He who purifies the polluted—not unlike a smelting fire or a cleansing herb—may cleanse us too from the temptations to which we are here subjected, as if by fire and water, and may thus eventually lead us into His refreshment, and, having justified us by faith, may grant that we dwell together in the same place, and in the place of that wondrous, eternal tent. A
MEMORIAL TO THE EMPEROR, LORD ALEXIUS COMNENUS
We, the unworthy and humble servants of your Majesty, dare to request this of you. B The Athenian territory which we inhabit has long since been deprived of the citizens who were once very numerous, and it lies afflicted by evils of every kind; indeed, it is such that it could be compared to a Scythian desert. The cause of this is that we are oppressed by heavier taxes than neighboring peoples, for the publicans and tax collectors vex us with triple hardships; for they measure our sandy and unproductive fields not by a human standard or proportion, but by a flea-like one; indeed, they count the leaves of our vines just as they do the hairs of our heads. C Add to this that other exactions destined for the treasury are accomplished in other regions conveniently and without harassment, for the praetors very often remit debts, quite otherwise than with us, who, while inhabiting the very edges of Greece, endure the harshest trials of all. And the year just past bears witness that this is so. For when the construction of ships was ordered, a very large sum of money was demanded of us, yet no fleet was built. When later Pansias was patrolling the sea of the Stirians, new sums of money were demanded of us. Sgurus, also, at the praetor's [command], for the building of ships...
A in a large quantity, we were forced to pay, even against our will, beyond the limits of Thebes and Euripus; and even this payment was not required of us according to the ancient custom, but in addition to the tax already assessed, an extra portion was demanded of us, which they ought not to have levied.
But I have complained of the money exacted, and the extortions of pirates that we suffer. But how can we speak with dry eyes of the arbitrary vexations of the praetors? Of the praetor whom we now have, there is no need to speak, for he has no power to exact money under the title of tribute, let alone exercise jurisdiction, since the Chrysobull of the emperor prohibits him from having authority over Attica. B Nevertheless, the same man comes among us, accompanied by a crowd of, I will not say men, but of scoundrels, who live on plunder as if they were enemies who had invaded a barbarian land. There is another kind of robber, of the sub-taxers I mean, who daily demand five hundred measures each; likewise herds of cattle and fowl, and as much fish as the sea and vine as the province produces, without even the slightest delay. Doing these things for profit, as if they were our benefactors, they demand a sufficiently large amount, even of the gold that they [think] they deserve. And they insult the praetor himself who, before he has even saluted the Mother of God, [demands]—why he gave me this or that, or for some other reason—throws him into chains and fines him. So, living daily on our misfortunes, he exacts an ecclesiastical tax from us, quite ignorant of whether it is being extorted for the honor of the Most Saintly Mother of God or for some other purpose. And not only he: the logariastes, the protovestiarius, and others like them arrive, C and not before they have obtained money do they declare that they are releasing us. Finally, having begged them in vain that since we could not obtain it with the greatest difficulty, he granted it, and leaving the collectors, he departed with the booty. What beast of burden is not grabbed for public service? How often is what is taken, not once but twice, redeemed by its owner? Which of the things possessed have we not seen being grabbed and driven away by these inhuman monsters? D Cur, sacratissime domine, ista mala cervicibus nostris impendent? If the treasury loses its right, if the people emigrate, and if our region is so despoiled of men that it can no longer pay the tax, do you not see? But forbear to list the few [troubles] we suffer; we implore your Majesty to have pity on us, to set aside this calamity of ours, and not to impose heavier burdens. We ask for nothing new, nothing that could be detrimental to the kingdom. Above all, free us from the praetor's rapine, violence, and cruelty, and grant us a defender in your own name.
A And first of all, deliver us from the praetorian raid, the incursion, and the spoiling by the *derendarius* given to us—that magnificent grand *mystikos*—who, ruling over what is extorted by the praetors as if by decree, carries away from us [certain funds], and [requires] some other written notification and threat held over them to persuade them to the ultimate [hardship] if they do not hold back from the border of Athens. Furthermore, [we ask] for the *syndosia* of ships and to provide as many ships as the census of the former *logothete* of the *dromos*, the lord John Doukas, has imposed upon us, and no more than that; and that they should not, without an imperial mandate, demand a *syndosia* in place of the ships from us according to such a census. For even this at times is ventured against us, the wretched.
Since we have undergone many taxations—as we have set forth briefly above—we pray that the burden of a new taxation not be cast upon our land again, even if such a taxation is ordered for other low-lying districts, but that the *proskyneton* mandate of your holy Majesty, delivered to us for this purpose, be confirmed. And not only this one, but also those granted in various ways, and those [granted] to restrain those who attempt from the castles to hold and occupy our villages and rural stations in any way whatsoever. For this tends toward the breaking and destruction of the *droungoi*, and the destruction of the *droungoi* is the destruction of our entire district.
And if these things are done, we would be saved, and what is contributed by us to the public treasury would also be saved; and being saved, we shall not cease to pray for your holy Majesty, as unworthy servants who have dared to make these entreaties. C
IAMBI OF THE MOST LEARNED METROPOLITAN OF ATHENS, THE LORD MICHAEL CHONIATES
On the archetypal depiction of the same, that is to say, of the city of Athens:
Love for the long-famed Athens Inspired these lines to those at my side, And cooling the heat of longing; Since it was no longer possible, alas! to look upon That very city, worthy of song, Which the countless and long-lasting time Had hidden in stones, had caused to vanish in the depths, I suffer truly the passion of one gripped by love, Who, being unable to gaze upon the true sights Of what is desired, among things present, By looking at their images, as if by spoken word, Soothe the flame of their longings. I, a wretched man, a new Ixion, Loving Athens, as he loved Hera, Then clutching an image of the adorned one,
A Alas! What I suffer and both speak and write! Dwelling in Athens, I do not see Athens anywhere, But only miserable dust and empty bliss. Where, indeed, are those august things, O most wretched city? How they have all vanished and become like myths: Trials, judges, platforms, votes, laws, And the persuasive force of the orators’ harangues, Councils, public festivals, and the strategies Of those who fought on land and by sea. The all-varied Muse, the power of eloquence! The entire glory of Athens has perished; One cannot see even a faint token of it. I am to be forgiven, therefore, if, unable to see The city of the Athenians, worthy of song, I have set up a graphic image of it.
IAMBI OF THE MOST LEARNED METROPOLITAN OF ATHENS, THE LORD MICHAEL CHONIATES. On the former dignity of the city of Athens.
Love for the once most celebrated Athens dictated these words, as, amidst the shadows of past things, I seek solace for my burning desire. Nowhere, alas! are the ruins of that most splendid city to be seen, save for those foully heaped up and cast about over the centuries, to none more tearful than to me! Those who cannot look with their own eyes upon what they love are nonetheless content with an image of the loved object and burn with desire all the same. Woe is me! Who, like Ixion with Juno, am gripped by love for Athens, and have no power to describe the sorrows by which I am tortured! Dwelling in Athens, I see no Athens, B save for the foul ruins she draws along. Where, pray, are your sacred things, O most unfortunate city? All have departed into nothingness: tribunals, judges, the votes of the people, laws, the power of orators, councils, riches both terrestrial and maritime; the Muse herself, so various, the very force of eloquence, all the things that were the glory of Athens, have perished, with not even the vilest monument of the past age left behind. Wherefore, surely, it does not ill become me, dwelling in the midst of Athens, to produce a true image of this city for memory.