Aphraates the Persian
Our Venerable Father Aphraates the Persian, Anchorite of Antioch
Venerable · d. c. 370–380, at Antioch
Commemorated 29 January — Repose of the Persian anchorite and confessor of the Nicene faith at Antioch
Aphraates (†c. 370–380) was a Persian of noble birth who forsook the fire-worship of his fathers for Christ, left his own country, and became an anchorite — first near Edessa and then outside Antioch, in a small cell by the Orontes, where he gave himself to prayer, fasting, and the healing of the sick. He is remembered above all for the boldness with which, in the reign of the Arian emperor Valens, he broke his solitude to come into the city and strengthen the Orthodox faithful against the heresy — answering the emperor, who rebuked a monk for meddling, that a man whose house was ablaze could not stay shut in his room. His life and words are recorded by his younger contemporary Theodoret of Cyrrhus. He must be kept distinct from the Syriac writer Aphrahat "the Persian Sage," with whom his very similar name causes him to be confused. He is commemorated on January 29.
From Persia to the desert
Aphraates was born in Persia, of a distinguished family, and reared in the religion of the Magi — the fire-worship of Zoroastrian Persia. Coming to the knowledge of Christ, he abandoned the faith, the wealth, and the homeland of his fathers, and crossed the frontier into the Roman East to live as a Christian and a solitary. He settled first in the region of Edessa, the great city of Syriac Christianity, taking up the ascetic life in a cell there; and afterwards he removed to the neighbourhood of Antioch, the metropolis of the Roman East, where he occupied a small hut outside the walls, near the river, and lived in severe abstinence, known to the city as a man of God.
Theodoret of Cyrrhus, who was born at Antioch a generation later and gathered the memory of the Syrian ascetics in his Religious History (the Philotheos Historia), devotes a chapter to Aphraates and writes as one who had heard of him from those who knew him. He describes the Persian's holiness, his gift of healing, and the reverence in which the whole city held him — pagans as well as Christians resorting to his cell for a blessing or a cure.
The confessor of the Nicene faith under Valens
The public act for which Aphraates is chiefly remembered fell in the reign of the emperor Valens (364–378), a zealous Arian, under whom the churches of Antioch were taken from the Orthodox and given to the heretics, and the Nicene faithful driven to worship outside the city. In that crisis Aphraates left his cell — against the whole habit of an anchorite's life — and came openly into Antioch to encourage the persecuted Orthodox and to lead them in prayer.
The tradition preserves the confrontation that followed. As Aphraates passed along the riverbank on his way to the Orthodox assembly, the emperor Valens, looking down from his palace, called to him and demanded where he was going. "To pray for your empire," the monk replied. Valens objected that a solitary who had renounced the world should keep to his cell and his quiet, not roam the streets. Aphraates answered with the parable that has fixed his memory: if he were a young girl kept at home and his father's house caught fire, would they blame him for running out to help quench it? The house of God is ablaze with the Arian fire, and I have come out to help put it out; when the flames are quenched I will return to my stillness. A servant of the emperor who insulted the holy man on that occasion was, the account adds, shortly afterward scalded to death in the imperial baths — a judgment the city read as the vindication of the saint, and which is said to have moved even Valens to spare him.
Miracles and repose
Theodoret records that Aphraates was granted the gift of healing, curing men and beasts by prayer and the sign of the Cross and by blessed oil, and that his intercession was sought across Antioch. He passed the rest of his days in his ascetic labour and reposed in peace, an old man, about the years 370 to 380 — after the death of Valens (378) in the reckoning that has him outlive the emperor whose heresy he had withstood. The Church numbers him among the venerable fathers.
Feast and commemoration
January 29 (church date; New Calendar civil January 29; Old Calendar civil February 11), in the Greek Menaion and the Slavonic calendars, on the day led by the translation of the relics of Ignatius the God-bearer. No proper service is appointed; the common of a venerable ascetic is used where his memory is kept liturgically.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 8 (from the common of a venerable father)
In thee, O Father, was preserved unfailingly that which is according to the image; for taking up the Cross, thou didst follow after Christ, and by thy deeds thou didst teach us to despise the flesh, for it passeth away, but to care for the soul, a thing immortal. Wherefore, O venerable Aphraates, thy spirit rejoiceth with the Angels.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
No verified pre-modern image of Aphraates the Persian has been identified on Wikimedia Commons under a secure attribution; the entry therefore stores no image and the saint is noted as wanting an icon. He would be depicted as an aged anchorite in the monastic schema, thin from fasting, with a long beard, holding a scroll or a cross — in the settled type of the desert fathers of Syria.
Disputed questions
- Aphraates the anchorite and Aphrahat "the Persian Sage." The saint of this entry — the Persian convert and anchorite of Antioch, the anti-Arian confessor of Theodoret's Religious History, commemorated January 29 — is to be distinguished from Aphrahat, the Syriac Christian writer known as "the Persian Sage" (Ḥakkima Parsaya), author of the twenty-three Demonstrations, who flourished earlier in the fourth century (c. 337–345) within the Persian Empire under Sassanid rule and is associated with the monastery of Mar Mattai near Nineveh. The two share a name (Ἀφραάτης / Aphrahat) and a Persian origin, and are frequently conflated in devotional and even scholarly literature — the more so because both are "Aphraates the Persian." They are, on the mainstream view, two different men: the homilist never left the Persian side of the frontier and wrote in Syriac; the ascetic crossed into the Roman Empire and lived at Edessa and Antioch. The standard reference works, and the separate catalogue entries kept for them, treat them as distinct persons; this entry follows that judgment, while noting that the identification has occasionally been proposed. Only the anchorite of Antioch is the saint of January 29.