Polybius of Rinocorura
Our Father among the Saints Polybius, Bishop of Rinocorura, disciple of Epiphanius of Cyprus
Venerable · Bishop · Wonderworker · d. 5th century, at Rinocorura in Egypt
Commemorated 12 May — Commemorated with his teacher Epiphanius of Cyprus
Polybius was the travelling companion, biographer and spiritual son of Epiphanius of Cyprus, and it is largely to him that the Church owes the Life of that great hierarch: after the death of the disciple John, who had begun the record, Polybius continued it, writing down the deeds and miracles of his teacher as he witnessed them. When Epiphanius returned from Constantinople in 403, having withdrawn from the intrigue against John Chrysostom, he sent Polybius away to Egypt with the words "Go into Egypt; and after my death I will take thought for you." Polybius obeyed, left before his master's burial, and in Egypt was consecrated Bishop of Rinocorura on the desert frontier between Egypt and Palestine. He was famous there for asceticism and for wonderworking — the tradition remembers that at his prayer rain fell in a drought and the fields yielded abundantly — and reposed in great old age in the fifth century. He is commemorated on May 12 with Epiphanius.
The companion and biographer of Epiphanius
Polybius belonged to the household of disciples that gathered round Epiphanius on Cyprus. The Greek Life of Epiphanius — the text behind every later synaxarion notice for May 12 — was written in two hands: John, a robber whom Epiphanius had converted in the desert of Spanidrion and baptised, began it and carried it as far as his own illness and death; Polybius took it up and finished it. He accompanied Epiphanius on his journeys, and so was present for much of what the Life recounts, including the last voyage.
That the Life is a work of disciples, and reads like one, is the reason it must be handled with care as history — it is warm, credulous in places, and contains at least one demonstrable legend (the "empress Honoria" made Epiphanius's sister). But it is also the reason the Life preserves what no chronicler would have thought to record: the old bishop's habits, his almsgiving, the discernment at the altar, the words spoken on shipboard as he died.
Bishop of Rinocorura
When Epiphanius came back from Constantinople in 403, having gone there at the urging of Theophilus of Alexandria against John Chrysostom and having left the capital abruptly on realising how he had been used, he gave Polybius a parting charge: to go into Egypt, with the promise that after his own death he would take thought for his disciple. Polybius went, obeying before he could see his teacher buried — a detail the Life records without softening, as the cost of obedience.
In Egypt he was made bishop of Rinocorura (Rhinocorura, the modern el-Arish), the see on the coastal road at the border of Egypt and Palestine, in the arid strip between the Nile Delta and Gaza. It was a poor and thinly settled diocese, dependent on scanty rain, and the one thing the tradition remembers of his episcopate belongs to exactly that geography: in a drought he prayed and the Lord sent rain, and the harvest that year was abundant. He is remembered besides for keeping the ascetic strictness he had learned in Cyprus, and for the gift of miracles. He reposed at an advanced age, in the course of the fifth century.
Feast and commemoration
May 12 (church date; New Calendar civil May 12, Old Calendar civil May 25), kept with Epiphanius of Cyprus, whose feast draws his two disciple-bishops — Polybius and Sabinus — after it. He has no proper service and appears in the appended notices of the day; the Greek synaxaria and the OCA both list him. His memory is kept in Cyprus with the other companions of Epiphanius, and locally in the Egyptian tradition of the see of Rinocorura.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of a hierarch)
O God of our Fathers, who deal with us ever according to Your gentleness: take not Your mercy from us, but by the prayers of Your hierarch Polybius, guide our lives in peace.
Iconography
Polybius is painted as a hierarch — phelonion, omophorion, the Gospel in the left hand, the right blessing — with a dark or greying beard, in the general bishop-type; where he is distinguished at all it is by being set at the side of Epiphanius, sometimes holding a scroll or an open codex in his character as his master's biographer, which is the one attribute proper to him. Cypriot and Egyptian compositions of the companions of Epiphanius show him with Sabinus and with the disciple John. No pre-1900 icon of him has been located for this collection.
Disputed questions
- The name of the see. The Greek notices give Ῥινοκορούρων — Rinocorura in Egypt — which the English translations render variously as "Rinocyria," "Rinocyrea" and "Rhinocorura." Some calendars, misreading the phrase "disciple of Epiphanius of Cyprus," style him "Polybius, bishop in Cyprus"; the sources place his see in Egypt.
- Dates. Nothing is transmitted beyond "the fifth century" and "at an advanced age." If he was already a grown disciple before 403 and died old, a repose somewhere in the 430s or 440s is plausible but is not attested.
- Authorship of the Life. The transmitted Life of Epiphanius in its surviving Greek form is later than the fifth century in its final redaction; the attribution to John and Polybius belongs to the text's own claim about itself, and modern scholarship treats the Life as a composite work resting on genuine disciple-material. The tradition of Polybius's authorship is reported here as what the Church has received, not as a settled critical result.