Dometius of Dionysiou
Our Venerable Father Dometius the Hieromonk, Fellow-Ascetic of Saint Dionysius, of the Monastery of Dionysiou on Mount Athos
Venerable · Priest · d. c. 1405, at the monastery of Dionysiou on Mount Athos
Commemorated 25 June — Repose in peace, kept with Saint Dionysius the founder
Dometius was a hieromonk of the Holy Mountain, the confidant and fellow-ascetic of Dionysius of Korisos, founder of the monastery of the Honourable Forerunner — Dionysiou — on the south-western cliffs of Athos. The Greek notices describe him as "a most discerning and Spirit-bearing man," and as counsellor, friend and fellow-struggler of the founder; the two kept their hesychia together in the caves above the monastery known as the Vouleftiria, the "places of counsel," which are said to take their name from the taking of counsel between them. He outlived Dionysius by some seventeen years and reposed in peace about 1405. Almost nothing else is transmitted, and his memory is kept on June 25, the founder's day, with which it has always been joined.
What is transmitted
The record of Dometius is a few lines in the Athonite synaxaria, and this entry does not manufacture more. He was a priest-monk — the notices give him the rank of hieromonachos — and he belonged to the first generation of the community that Dionysius of Korisos gathered on the rock called Nea Petra after the chrysobull of Alexios III Grand Komnenos of Trebizond in 1374. What is said of him is said in relation to that founder: he was his counsellor (σύμβουλος), his friend, and his fellow-ascetic (συνασκητής), and the epithets the Great Synaxaristes attaches to him are "most discerning" and "bearer of the Spirit" — the vocabulary of the discernment of spirits, which in Athonite usage marks a man whose judgement other monks sought.
The Vouleftiria
The place associated with the two is the group of caves and cells in the ravine above the monastery called τὰ Βουλευτήρια, "the councils" or "the places of counsel." Athonite tradition explains the name from the practice of Dionysius and Dometius, who withdrew there to pray and to take counsel together over the affairs of the young house — where to build, how to feed the brethren on a shelf of rock, what to ask of the emperor. Whether or not the etymology is the true one, it preserves the substance of what the tradition wants remembered about Dometius: that the founder of Dionysiou did not decide alone, and that the man he decided with is a saint of the Mountain in his own right.
Repose
Dionysius died at Trebizond about 1388, on the journey to obtain money for the painting of the church. Dometius remained on the Mountain and reposed peacefully at the monastery about 1405 — the year the Greek notices give, without a day. He is styled ὅσιος, the title of the monastic saint who dies in his bed, and no martyrdom, no miracle-list and no relic-translation is claimed for him.
Feast and commemoration
June 25 (church date; New Calendar civil June 25, Old Calendar civil July 8), kept with Dionysius of Korisos, whose day it primarily is; the Greek listings run the two names together — "Saints Dionysius and his companion Dometius." The commemoration is Athonite and Greek, carried into the calendar of the Orthodox Church in America; it is absent from the Slavonic books. At Dionysiou the day falls immediately after the monastery's own panegyris of the Nativity of the Forerunner (June 24), within its leavetaking.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 8 (common of a venerable father)
By a flood of tears thou didst make the barren desert fruitful; with sighs from the depth thou didst bring thy labours to a hundredfold increase; and thou wast made a beacon to the whole world, shining with miracles, O Dometius our father. Intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.
Iconography
Dometius is painted as an elderly priest-monk of the great schema: the black mandyas, the analavos embroidered with the instruments of the Passion, the cowl thrown back or drawn over the head, a long white beard, a scroll in the hand. He is not given a founder's model of the monastery — that attribute belongs to Dionysius — and where the two appear together, which is how he is nearly always shown, he stands at the founder's left hand, slightly behind, in the attitude of the synaskētēs. The natural setting for such a pair in Athonite painting is the refectory or the narthex of the katholikon, among the fathers of the house.
No image of him has been located that could be verified for this collection. Wikimedia Commons returns nothing under either the Greek or the English form of his name; the Menologion of Basil II, the usual first resort for a thinly documented saint of the fixed calendar, covers only September to February and predates him by four hundred years in any case. The entry is listed in the the list of icons still being sought index.
Disputed questions
- The date. c. 1405 is what the Greek Athonite notices transmit; some give only "in the early fifteenth century." Nothing turns on the difference, and no day of the month is recorded — his memory is kept on the founder's day.
- Not to be confused with the other Dometii. The name is common in the calendar. He is not Dometius the Persian, the fourth-century venerable-martyr of Nisibis and Cyrrhus stoned in the reign of Julian (August 7); not Dometian of Melitene (January 10); not the Dometius of the company of Leontius, Dometius, Terentius and Domninus. The epithet ὁ Διονυσιάτης, "of Dionysiou," is what fixes him.
- How much of a distinct cultus? He has never had a service of his own; he is commemorated in the Athonite books within the memory of the founder, and appears in the English calendars as "Venerable Dometius of Dionysiou," against which the OCA's own life-page carries the frank note that no information is available. That is an honest statement of the record, and this entry does not go beyond it.