Onesimus of Magnesia

Our Venerable Father Onesimus the Wonderworker, of Magnesia

Venerable · Wonderworker · b. early 4th century, Caesarea in Palestine — d. 4th century, at his monastery in Magnesia

Commemorated 14 July — Repose at his monastery at Magnesia in Asia

Onesimus, called the Wonderworker, was a monastic father of the fourth century, born at Caesarea in Palestine and formed in the monastic life at Ephesus, who afterwards went inland to Magnesia on the Maeander and founded there the monastery in which he passed the rest of his days. The tradition remembers him for the miracles that gave him his epithet, and the Greek synaxarion keeps him on July 14 with a distich that plays, as the Church often does, on the meaning of his name — Onesimus, the "profitable" one — and on the Lord's promise that his burden is light. He is not the Apostle Onesimus of the Seventy, the runaway slave of Philemon.

The record is short, and honest brevity serves it better than expansion. Onesimus was born at the beginning of the fourth century at Caesarea in Palestine, the city of Origen's library and of Eusebius, at the moment when the persecutions ended and the monastic movement was spreading out of Egypt across the eastern provinces. He left for Ephesus, the metropolis of Asia, and entered a monastery there; the shift of a Palestinian into an Asian house is itself a sign of how quickly the new institution had become an international one.

Later — the sources give no year — he moved inland to Magnesia, one of the two cities of that name in Asia (the greater being Magnesia on the Maeander, the see whose bishop Damas received a letter from Ignatius of Antioch), and there founded a monastery of his own, over which he presided and in which he died. The single thing the tradition insists on is that he worked many miracles, and it is under the title thaumatourgos that the Greek books enter him. Nothing of the manner of his repose is transmitted.

His memory in the Menaion is carried by the couplet appointed for the day, which turns on the sense of his name — Ὀνήσιμος, "the profitable" — and on Matthew 11:30: Gladly did I take up thy light burden; and bearing it I come to thee, O Word, thine own Onesimus.

Feast and commemoration

July 14 (church date; New Calendar civil July 14, Old Calendar civil July 27). The commemoration is carried by the Greek Menaion — "our venerable father and wonderworker Onesimus" — and by the Slavic and OCA calendars alike; it has no proper office, the day's service being that of the Apostle Aquila. Where his memory is kept with a service, the common of a venerable is used.

Hymns

Troparion — Tone 8 (common of a venerable father)

By the streams of thy tears thou didst till the barren desert, and by thy sighing from the depths thou didst bear fruit an hundredfold in labours; and thou wast made a beacon to the whole world, shining with miracles, O Onesimus our father: intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.

Original translation from the Greek

Iconography

Onesimus is written in the ordinary type of the monastic father: an elder in the black habit and mantle, bearded, holding a scroll or with the hand raised in blessing, without distinguishing attributes — his miracles are not of a kind that gave rise to a particular sign, as the bull did for Antipas or the crocodile for Hellius. He appears in the menaia icons for July among the saints of the fourteenth day, beside the Apostle Aquila. No pre-1900 icon of him alone has been identified for this collection, and a search of Wikimedia Commons under his Greek, Russian and English names returned nothing.

Disputed questions

Not to be confused with Onesimus the Apostle of the Seventy (February 15 and November 22), the slave of Philemon whom St Paul begot in his bonds, made bishop and martyred at Rome about the year 109. The two are three centuries and a state of life apart; the confusion is easy because the Menaion styles the apostle simply "Onesimus" and because the name, common among slaves and freedmen, recurs.
Which Magnesia. Asia had a Magnesia on the Maeander and a Magnesia ad Sipylum, and the synaxarion does not say which. The Maeander city, closer to Ephesus where he was professed and a bishopric of long standing, is the likelier, but the point is not settled. It is worth noting that the Martyr Justus, kept on this same day, was also condemned by the governor of a Magnesia — a coincidence of the July 14 roll that has occasionally been read, without warrant, as a connection.