Constantia of Paphos

The Holy and Righteous Constantia of Paphos, disciple of our Father among the Saints Hilarion the Great

Righteous · d. c. 372, in Cyprus

Commemorated 25 August — Her repose in Cyprus on hearing that Hilarion's body had been taken away

Constantia is remembered for a single grief. She was a devout woman of the district of Paphos in Cyprus whose daughter and son-in-law had been snatched from death by Hilarion the Great — the founder of Palestinian monasticism, who spent the last years of his life hidden in the Cypriot hills — and after his repose she would not leave his grave. She kept night-long vigils at the tomb and spoke to the saint as to one present, using the conversation to rouse herself to prayer; miracles were reported of her. When Hesychius, Hilarion's disciple, secretly took up the body and carried it back to Palestine, Constantia was told that the tomb was empty — and, according to Jerome, who records the whole of it within a few years of the event, she died on the spot. The Church of Cyprus keeps her as a saint with a full office, and her troparion names her the protectress of Paphos. Her memory is on August 25.

Hilarion in Cyprus

The whole of what is known of Constantia belongs to the last chapter of another life. Hilarion the Great, who had brought the monastic life from Egypt to Palestine and had become so famous that he could not be left alone, fled successively to Egypt, to Sicily, to Epidaurus in Dalmatia, and at last to Cyprus, where he settled about 365 in a wild and almost inaccessible place some miles inland from Paphos, on the site of an old and haunted pagan temple. He was then near eighty. His disciple Hesychius searched the Mediterranean for him and found him there.

Even in that seclusion the sick were brought to him, and among the healings Jerome records is the one that concerns this entry: the daughter and son-in-law of a woman named Constantia, who had been poisoned — Jerome says by a philtre or malignant drug — and whom Hilarion delivered by anointing them with blessed oil. Constantia is described simply as sancta, a holy woman: she was a laywoman of the district with a married daughter, not a nun, and no monastery or rule is ascribed to her.

The vigils at the tomb

Hilarion died in Cyprus about 371, in his eightieth year, and was buried where he had lived. The Cypriots kept the grave, and Constantia kept it more faithfully than anyone. Jerome's phrase is precise and unusual: she passed her nights in vigil at the sepulchre of the saint, and would converse with him as though he were present, and by that converse stirred herself up to prayer. It is one of the earliest descriptions in Christian literature of what would later become the ordinary devotion at a saint's tomb, and it is recorded not as an oddity but as a commendation.

The Cypriot tradition adds that she was granted the working of miracles, and that the place of her vigil became a holy site in its own right.

Her repose

Hesychius, unwilling that so great a father should lie among strangers, kept vigil at the tomb for some ten months, feigning a wish to live at the holy place; then he secretly took up the body — found, the tradition says, entire and fragrant — and carried it by ship to Palestine, to the old monastery at Majuma near Gaza, where it was received with a great concourse of monks and townspeople.

When the news reached Constantia that Hilarion's body had been carried into Palestine, Jerome writes, she immediately expired. He records it as the plain measure of her love for the servant of God. The date is about 372. Her death left Cyprus with the empty tomb and Palestine with the body, and the rivalry of the two shrines — which is itself the earliest witness to the strength of Hilarion's cultus — begins with her.

Veneration in Cyprus

The Cypriot chronographers preserved her memory when the Greek synaxaria elsewhere had let it go. She is named by the chronographer Cyprian and by Stephanos Lusignan, the sixteenth-century Dominican historian of the island, who says that she "died of unbearable sadness" at the news of the theft of her master's body. The Church of Cyprus composed a full liturgical service for her, in which she is styled the protectress of Paphos, and it is from Cyprus that her commemoration on August 25 has passed into the wider calendars.

Feast and commemoration

Constantia is commemorated on August 25 (church date; New Calendar civil August 25, Old Calendar civil September 7). She is a Cypriot commemoration that has entered the general calendars: the OCA lists her by name on this day, and the Church of Cyprus keeps her with a proper service at Paphos. She is not among the day's principal commemorations, which are the return of the relics of Bartholomew and the repose of Titus, and the Greek Menaion appoints her no office in the general books.

Hymns

Apolytikion — Tone 4

In thee, O Mother, was the divine image preserved with exactness: 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 righteous Constantia, thy spirit rejoiceth with the angels.

Iconography

No pre-modern image of Constantia has been located, and she has no established type. Modern Cypriot icons painted for her feast at Paphos show her as a matron in the maphorion, veiled and mantled in the manner of the holy women, with her hands raised in prayer or holding a cross, and sometimes beside the tomb of Hilarion or with the saint himself, who is painted as an aged monk in the schema — the pairing that expresses the whole of her story. Those icons are the work of living painters and are under copyright; none can be stored here. The Menologion of Basil II, the usual first resort for minor saints, covers only September to February and so cannot supply an August commemoration. No image was stored for this entry.

Disputed questions

Not the city of Constantia. Constantia is also the Christian name of Salamis, the metropolis of Cyprus and the see of Epiphanius — so that "Constantia of Cyprus" in an index may mean a place and not a person. The woman of this entry belonged to the region of Paphos, at the other end of the island.
Was she a nun? The Cypriot service and some modern lives speak of her as an ascetic, and the OCA notice says she "dedicated herself to ascetic pursuits" at the grave. Jerome, the only early witness, describes a married woman with a household. This entry classes her as righteous — a lay saint of the world — and notes the ascetic language as later.
The date and the day. Jerome gives no dates; the reckoning of Hilarion's death to 371 and hers to about 372 is inferred from the chronology of the Life. Why her commemoration should fall on August 25 rather than near Hilarion's own day (October 21) is not explained in any source consulted.