Gregory of Omirits

Origins and calling

The Life of Gregentios makes him the son of pious parents named Agapius and Theodota, filled with grace from his youth and marked already by gifts of healing and wonderworking. Serving as a deacon at Mediolanum (Milan), he heard his future foretold by a hermit, and then confirmed by a second, spirit-bearing elder living an ascetic life in the mountains. The tradition surrounds this elder with wonders — Gregory saw him first as a fiery pillar moving through the air, and by night standing above the ground — and through him received his commission: he was to go to Rome and pray in the church of Saints Boniface and Aglaïa, thence to Alexandria, and at last to the city of Negran (Najran) in the land of the Homerites, to preach the Gospel. When Gregory pleaded his own unworthiness and wished only to remain a disciple, the elder disclosed a secret known to no one else — a vision in which the chief Apostles Peter and Paul had laid a bishop's omophorion upon him — so that he could no longer doubt.

Passing through Carthage in North Africa, where he served for a time as deacon, Gregory came to Rome, prayed at the church of Saints Boniface and Aglaïa and at the tomb of the Apostle Peter, and there received fresh confirmations of his calling in visions of the two Apostles.

Bishop of the Homerites

The historical setting behind the Life is the destruction and restoration of Christianity in Himyar. The Jewish Himyarite king Dhu Nuwas (called Dunaan in the Life) had massacred the Christians of Najran — the martyrs commemorated with Arethas on October 24 — whereupon the Ethiopian (Aksumite) emperor Elesbaan invaded, overthrew Dunaan, liberated Najran, and restored the faith. But the whole native clergy had been killed, and so Elesbaan sent to the Patriarch of Alexandria for a bishop and priests. While the patriarch prayed, the tradition says, the Apostle Mark appeared and named the deacon Gregory as the man to be ordained priest, consecrated bishop, and sent to the Homerites; at his consecration a fragrance as of myrrh filled the church.

Arriving in the land of Homer, Gregory set the Church in order, preaching to pagans and Jews alike. After three years Elesbaan returned to Ethiopia, leaving the nobleman Abramius (Abraha) as king, whom Gregory crowned and anointed, and who decreed the baptism of his subjects.

The disputation with Herban

It was against this decree of compulsory baptism that certain prominent Jews appealed, arguing — reasonably enough — that men should believe willingly and not under force, and asking leave to hold a public debate on the faith, with the promise that if the Christians prevailed the Jews would accept baptism. Forty days were granted for preparation, and the debate itself ran for several days. Gregory refuted the arguments of the chief Jewish elder, Rabbi Herban (Ervan), drawing his proofs only from the Old Testament. When Herban, defeated in argument but unwilling to yield, demanded that Gregory show him Christ, Gregory answered that the request was presumptuous — it was with God, not with a man, that Herban now contended — but that the Lord might grant it to convince him. Praying aloud, rehearsing the whole mystery of the Incarnation and invoking the power of the Cross, Gregory called on Christ to reveal Himself; and the tradition relates that the earth quaked, the heavens opened in the east, and in a radiant cloud the Lord appeared, with a voice heard by all. Like Saul on the Damascus road the Jews were struck blind, believed, implored the bishop's help, and were healed at their baptism. Herban himself was baptised with the name Leo.

Gregory guided the Church of the Homerites for some thirty years more. He is said to have reposed in the year 552 and to have been buried in a crypt of the cathedral at Zafar (Afar).

Later legacy and disputed questions

• The Gregentios dossier. Three related Greek texts transmit his memory: a Life, a code of civil Laws of the Homerites (Nomoi tôn Homêritôn), and the long Disputation with Herban (Dialexis). Modern scholarship (notably the critical edition of Albrecht Berger, 2006) treats the dossier as a literary and probably rather late composition — most likely put together in tenth-century Constantinople — that gathers the memory of the real sixth- century events of Najran and Himyar around the figure of a holy bishop. How much of the person of Gregentios is historical, and how much the disputation and the theophany owe to the genre of anti-Jewish dialogue, are open questions.
• The historical core is nonetheless firm: the massacre of the Christians of Najran by Dhu Nuwas (c. 523), the Aksumite intervention under Kaleb Ella Asbeha (Elesbaan), and the installation of the Christian king Abraha are all attested independently of the Life.
• Name and see. He appears in Greek as Gregentios, archbishop of Taphar (Zafar) among the Homerites; the Slavonic and English calendars render this "Gregory of Omirits" ("of Homer"). He is not to be confused with the many other saints named Gregory.