LIFE AND CONVERSATION AND MARTYRDOM AND PARTIAL NARRATION OF THE MIRACLES OF THE HOLY AND GLORIOUS PHYSICIAN-SAINTS CYRUS AND JOHN
1. Our God-leading Word, the Christ and God of us who is truly the Truth, A loudly proclaims in the Gospels thus: "All things are possible to the one who believes" (Mark 9:23). And Paul, that herald of apostolic excellence, with Christ Himself supplying the words within him, declares to us with an admirable voice that "hope does not put to shame" (Rom. 5:5). Relying on these urgings, I have felt myself stirred up by the charity of our Savior who loved us and gave Himself up for our sake—and by the approaching aid of the saints—to undertake a labor greater than my own strength, in order to commit to literary monuments, for the benefit of the readers, those things which I have long desired: the marvels worked by the blessed Cyrus and John, their most illustrious struggle for God the Christ, and a few miracles or healings out of the many which we ourselves—though far lower than all publicans—saw with our own eyes and, by divine grace through them, partly experienced for our own salvation.
2. Now this renowned Cyrus was B a citizen of the greatest city founded by Alexander; as to the parents from whom he was born according to the flesh, we do not know. But by spiritual generation he had God as his Father, who regenerated him through water and the Spirit, and the Orthodox Church of the Father as his mother. By profession he was a physician, and his workshop is seen even to our own times in the temple of the Three Children, where even today the spiritual healings of the holy martyrs overflow. How it came about that Saint Cyrus placed his workshop in the temple of the Three Children should, I think, be said in passing; for I know it would confer great benefit upon those who encounter it.
3. The great Apollinaris of the truth... C of those who were pleading, that he ought to be deposited in the temple, which he himself through much desire had established for them. This venerable and universal man, failing in no way to carry out this pious command, reached Babylon, and, handing over those wondrous letters to the saints, spoke these things to them: "Saints, the bishop of God and your servant sends this letter of supplication to you, which when you have received, give D your response..."
A When these words had been spoken, the youth in the middle arose, extended his hand, took the letter, and reclined again, but gave no response to the messenger. For the whole week the modest abbot brought back no answer, and therefore, with the business unfinished, he returned to the archbishop and reported everything.
4. But the bishop, who was blameless in faith and pure in conscience, and most dear to God, again sent the abbot, who was acceptable to God, away with these words: "Return again, and in my name entreat the saints; if they will not receive you or the prayers of the one who sent them, you shall bring back this letter, which we shall receive in the place of relics, as if it had been received and sanctified by them." B The abbot submitted to the Father, whom he obeyed in all things both in word and deed, and returned to Babylon. He again approached the saints with suppliant prayers: "O three thrice-blessed martyrs, the bishop of God sends me to you once again; do not despise the pontiff who builds such a great and illustrious temple for you, and who burns with such longing for you." When the saints still gave him no answer, the abbot, moved by a certain divine inspiration to carry out the commands of the archbishop, put his hand to his breast to offer the deposited letter. The saint received it, and as the abbot was withdrawing the letter, the hand followed, which he most piously venerating and kissing, C carried back to the city of Alexandria as an inestimable treasure. Therefore God does not confound the hope of him who had fulfilled the holy commands.
5. When the great bishop of God received it, he rejoiced and in his exultation led his nephew to enter into spiritual nuptials. The consecration of the temple having been proclaimed to the people, he was inebriated with divine joy, and, accompanied by the whole assembly of the clergy, he most piously deposited the precious and venerable hand, still holding the received letter, as was fitting, sanctified the Church, and laid his hands upon his nephew, saying: "Behold your bride," indicating the Church, "you shall care for her, as is fitting." This being done, he contributed much to the young man's progress in virtue and great confidence in God; he made him an incessant lover of chastity and demonstrated him to be a worker of divine virtues, for the youth always carried out the orders of the revered bishop.
6. The physician, therefore, as has been said and as we have already D indicated a little earlier, was Cyrus. He practiced the art not in his mind but in its form; for he did not heal only the bodies of those suffering, but he brought out the souls that were worthy from the disease of unbelief; and visiting the sick, he did not console them with the writings of Galen or Hippocrates or others of the same kind, but led them to strength and life with the words of the prophets, the apostles, and the evangelists, numbered them in the flock of Christ, and made them partakers of the heavenly kingdom.
A 7. When the enemy of all that is good, the devil, saw him leading many to Christ, he denounced him to the prefect of the city through wicked men, saying, "A certain Galilean physician, by his skill, has seduced almost the entire population of the city and turned them away from the worship of the gods; and him whom the Jews crucified, Jesus, he proclaims as a God to be worshipped, and he is causing our ancestral religion to vanish." Provoked by these things and burning with bitter rage, the wretch ordered the holy man to be arrested immediately. The blessed one, learning of this, went to Arabia on the coast of Egypt, and settled in a village called Tzoten. He changed not only his dwelling but also his appearance: he shaved his head and put on the monastic habit. Having risen above a lowly and corruptible way of life and having ascended to higher things, he became superior from that time on in both action and contemplation; he no longer healed the maladies of bodies with various drugs or used the aid of herbs, but by prayer alone and by godly teaching, he delivered souls and bodies from painful and incurable sufferings.
B 8. At that time, when Diocletian was governing the Roman scepter impiously and had incited persecution against the Churches everywhere, John (who was an illustrious man, noble by birth, though not yet designated as a citizen of the faith, but distinguished in military rank) reached Jerusalem to offer most acceptable prayers to God. He came into Egypt, where fame had drawn him to the holy Cyrus, and lived among them in a shared dwelling. He made much progress in virtue while observing the healings performed by Cyrus.
But as the persecution grew more intense, and Cassianus, who was sacrificing to the Greek vanity at Canopus, discovered the place where three virgins, betrothed to Christ, were residing, he sent men to pursue the virgins and bring them, together with their mother, to Syrianus, the prefect of the city. When the holy Cyrus heard that they had been captured, he was struck with fear lest, in horror of the torments, the young girls might renounce Christ and deny the faith, for they were very tender in years; for the eldest, Theoctista, was fifteen years old; the second, Theodote, was completing her thirteenth; Eudoxia, the youngest, was in her eleventh year. Their mother, Athanasia, was named appropriately; for she became an heir to the true immortality together with her most beloved offspring. On their account, as we have said, the holy Cyrus and John were afraid, and therefore they penetrated into the city, so that they might encourage those who were fragile in age and sex to the contest, make them superior to the torments, prepare them by persuasion for the kingdom of the Bridegroom Christ, impose upon them the crown of chastity, and grant them a joy and gladness that has no end.
D 9. But the hateful enemy again, through his painful servants, made our holy ones manifest to the prefect; and having been clearly identified to the ruler, his mind was darkened. Before they [were brought] to the prefect's...
tribunal, the servants reported that two men, a monk and a soldier, were misleading the virgins who had been brought, not allowing them to offer the customary worship to the gods, and were acting tyrannically against the Caesar, not obeying his commands, but preaching a certain Jesus as the eternal King. Syrianus, that heaven-hated governor, gnashed his teeth at these words and ordered that they too be brought by the soldiers before his judgment seat, and said B to them: "O wretches and enemies of the blessed gods, worthy of death, why do you not allow the virgins to yield to the edicts of the Caesar? Or have you perhaps shown yourselves to be the tyrants of the Roman emperor, being of the abominable religion of the Christians? Repent, therefore, and appease the greatest gods for yourselves, and you shall receive honors from the king that are not at all ordinary." But they answered him: "We, O Syrianus, do not crave dishonorable honors; for the things that are seen are temporal; nor will we offer the worship due only to God to the images of demons; nor will we deny Christ, the Creator of all, whom we have as our eternal King. In vain do you threaten us with death, for we are stronger than death; we do not cast our eyes toward the end of this life, but toward the crown of glory and immortality."
10. Groaning and gnashing his teeth at them, Syrianus C said: "You ought to have been persuaded by the benevolence of the law to secure your salvation; but since you are gripped by pride, blows will force you to yield to the emperor's commands." Having said this, he caused the virgins to be brought before him and ordered every kind of torture to be displayed before the eyes of the holy ones. He willed that they be cut with wool-combers and clubs, burned with fire, treated with vinegar, and that their mangled limbs be rubbed with garments made of camel hair. Having applied every kind of torture, as has been said, he saw that the martyrs were stronger and more constant, as though they were suffering in the bodies of others. Because they spoke against him ever more vehemently, he poured boiling pitch upon their feet; yet, by the imitation and the bold contradiction of the martyrs, many were converted to the faith; and from the constancy of the saints and the cheerfulness of their countenances, many conjectured that the reward for this struggle would be D the life of immortality. He ordered the martyrs with their devout mother to be tortured. But the virgins kicked against the prick, and being inflamed by the noble example of the martyrs, they overcame the president; at last he passed this sentence, that their heads should be severed, and thus he joined the brides, along with their mother, to Christ.
11. Again he tortured the martyrs Cyrus and John, and like waves beating upon rocks, he was broken in his resolve. But since he could not turn the saints from their purpose, neither by blandishments, nor by exhortations, nor by warnings, nor by the promise of the greatest honors, as he thought, nor by lashes, nor by boiling pitch, nor by hot water, nor
by the engines of torture for the limbs, was the Syrian wearied. And he delivered this sentence against them, saying: “Cyrus, leader of the Galileans, and John, of one mind with him, who have not yielded to the decrees of the Emperors, and have not chosen to serve the greatest gods, shall undergo the penalty of death.” By this judgment they vindicated for themselves the crown of immortality on the thirty-first day of January, on which, having kept the faith, they completed their course and struggle. The virgins and brides of Christ were Theoctista, Theodata, and Eudoxia, and the mother who bore them and piously nurtured them, Athanasia; there was also Cyrus, the abbot most acceptable to God, and John, the soldier, joined to them in faith and honor. They laid the holy virgins along with their mother at the eastern part of the church of Saint Mark, in one coffin; but the illustrious Cyrus and his fellow-soldier John they buried in the same church of the Apostle and Evangelist Mark, in a single sarcophagus. B
12. A considerable time having passed, C when the [influence] of the Hellenic tyranny was being purged away, and Christians had gained control of the scepter of the Roman Empire, Theodosius the Great held the kingdom, and adorned it with the works of the faith, as ecclesiastical books of the historians testify, and as the facts themselves proclaim to all. Let us therefore record one virtue of his as a proof of what has been said. They say that a war was stirred up against the Emperor from the western parts of the realm: most numerous nations rose up by mutual consent; nations were mixed with nations, rushing down like torrential streams from a mountain, and the swelling sea, and their number was like the waves of the Ocean and its sand. Since the pious Emperor could not reach other nations to enter into a pact, as is done in the violent movements of wars, according to his custom he fled to God, and invoked Him as a faithful helper, as is the habit to call upon D faith as an auxiliary in the movements of war, when one is weak.
13. For having learned that in Scetis (this is a desert so named near Egypt) there lived a man, an Egyptian by race, but endowed with every divine virtue, and deemed worthy of divine grace, and being a worker of the greatest miracles, he wrote immediately to Theophilus as follows (for he was known as the shepherd of Christ’s flocks in Alexandria at that time), that he should send the aforementioned marvelous man to the Emperor, and that the pontiff should exhort the holy man to pour out suppliant prayers to God on behalf of the war; for the Emperor trusted confidently and hoped strongly that all things would turn out for the best. The bishop therefore ran to the holy man and told him everything, and asked that the saint should come to Theodosius. But Senuphius (for this was the name of the most blessed man), begged that the high priest grant him pardon, saying that he was a sinner and calling himself an unprofitable servant of the Lord. But when he had not obtained pardon, he stood facing east, and the mantle which he wore on his shoulders...
A he took with his hands and raised it toward heaven. He cried out to Him, “Lord Jesus Christ, our God, grant to this staff and this mantle the same power which You have given to me, Your sinful servant.” And having given them to the high priest, he spoke to him thus: “Send these to the emperor and write that he should wrap his head in the mantle, and holding the staff in his hand, he should go forth against the array of the enemy before the entire army. For if indeed Christ our God has accounted me His servant, and has heard my prayer, He will grant the victory by these means, on account of the faith in God.”
14. When these things were received, the crown-wearing Theodosius put the mantle upon his head for safety, and holding the staff in his right hand, he went forth to the war B as the first of his most faithful army. When the barbarians saw him, they were immediately turned to flight and slaughtered one another, receiving neither weapon nor wound from the army. Until the end, the pious emperor desired to be adorned with this saving head-covering rather than with any diadem. The people of Alexandria celebrate a popular festival for this event every year, and they name this festival “the Image.” They have an image of Theodosius in which his head is seen covered with the mantle, and in his right hand is the staff, and through that very festival they proclaim the miracle, with his head covered by the mantle and holding the staff in his right hand, always preaching the miracle through this annual celebration.
15. By divine grace and with the cooperation of the faithful and pious Emperor Theodosius, the president of the Church and steadfast shepherd of the flocks in Alexandria, Theophilus, filled with divine zeal, C overthrew all the objects of worship of the Greeks, so to speak, and adorned the whole city with houses of prayer. He also built a great and wondrous temple to the Apostles in the place called Canopus. It is situated outside the city, at a distance of twelve stades, being very distinguished, so that it was venerable even to the children of the Greeks; for there, as they say, the assembly of the gods was thought to be. The entire path leading there from the city was paved with stones and straight, decorated with porticoes and numerous baths. There were twenty-four baths, which, according to the assertion of witnesses, were destroyed to such an extent that only mere traces remain. Furthermore, the market abounds in a supply of goods. But at a distance of two stades from the city of Canopus lies a village, D called Menuthis, formerly a dwelling-place of demons and a habitation of evil spirits; there also the divine Theophilus built a temple to the Evangelists.
16. After the falling asleep of Theophilus, the great Cyril, a lover of piety and a destroyer of those who corrupt the faith, took up the helm of the Church. Seeing some of the simpler Christians going there under the pretext of healing, but to the great detriment of their souls, because of the idol, he thought most vehemently about dissipating the phantoms of Menuthis. Having poured out many prayers to God, he saw an angel receiving his petitions and signaling to him...