Leontius the Shepherd

Our Venerable Father Leontius the Shepherd

Venerable

A monk called Leontius the Shepherd, commemorated in the Greek books on June 18 — the fourth Leontius of a day that is crowded with them — of whom the synaxarion records only that he reposed in peace. The Greek heading places his monastery or cell beyond the city (πέραν τοῦ ἄστεος), and the couplet of the day plays his epithet against the Chief Shepherd before whom he now stands: being a shepherd, thou standest now before the Shepherd, before the Chief of shepherds, O right-minded Leontius.

The record is one line and one couplet. Leontius bore the by-name the Shepherd, and the Greek heading of his notice locates him at a place beyond the city — a phrase that in the Constantinopolitan synaxaria normally means a monastery or cell outside the walls, and that has here lost the name of the house it once qualified. He reposed in peace: that is, he was not a martyr, and the Church honours him as one of the ascetic fathers.

The epithet is worth a moment, because it is all we have. In the hagiographic vocabulary ποιμήν is used in two ways: literally, of a saint who kept flocks — the shepherd-ascetics of the Egyptian and Syrian countryside, who worked with animals and prayed in the fields — and figuratively, of a pastor of souls. The couplet exploits both senses at once, and gives no help in deciding which was meant of the man himself:

Ποιμὴν ὑπάρχων νῦν παρέστης Ποιμένι, τῷ Ποιμενάρχῃ, ὦ Λεόντι' εὐθύφρον.

Being a shepherd, thou standest now before the Shepherd, before the Chief Shepherd, O right-minded Leontius. The word εὐθύφρων, "straight-minded" or "upright of judgment," is the one personal note the tradition has preserved about him.

Nothing else survives — no homeland, no century, no monastery that can be named, no miracle, no relics. This entry does not supply what the record does not contain.

Feast and commemoration

June 18 (church date; Old Calendar civil July 1). Greek usage only: he stands fifth in the Greek order of the day and is absent from the Slavonic books, from the Russian calendars, and from the modern English enumerations that follow them. No proper service is appointed.

Hymns

Apolytikion — Tone 8

In thee, O Father, was preserved unimpaired 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 overlook the flesh, which passes away, and to attend to the soul, which is a thing immortal. Wherefore, O venerable Leontius, thy spirit rejoices with the angels.

Iconography

No iconographic type is attached to this Leontius, and no image of him is known. He would be painted, if painted at all, in the ordinary manner of a monastic father: bearded, in the rason and koukoulion, the right hand raised in blessing or holding a scroll, the left at the breast; a painter working from the couplet might give him a shepherd's staff, though nothing in the tradition licenses it. Nothing has been stored.

Disputed questions

Which Leontius. June 18 carries at least four saints of this name, and the danger of conflation is real. He is not Leontius of Tripoli, the martyr who heads the day; not Leontius the Canonarch of the Kiev Caves; and not Leontius the Athonite, the myrrh-streamer of Dionysiou, who is well documented and of known date. He is likewise distinct from Leontius of Rostov (May 23) and Leontius of Jerusalem (May 14). The Greek books keep him separate from all of these, with his own couplet.
"Beyond the city" — which city? Almost certainly Constantinople, since the synaxarion of the Great Church uses the phrase of houses outside its own walls; but the notice does not say so, and the identification is not asserted here.