Publius of Zeugma
Our Venerable Father Publius the Ascetic, of Zeugma in Syria
Venerable · b. early 4th century, at Zeugma on the Euphrates — d. c. 380
Commemorated 25 January — Repose of the ascetic Publius of Zeugma
Publius of Zeugma (early fourth century – c. 380) was a Syrian ascetic and monastic founder, one of the desert fathers of the region of the Euphrates whose lives Theodoret of Cyrrhus recorded in his Religious History. A man of senatorial rank and wealth from the city of Zeugma on the Euphrates, he renounced the world, distributed his goods to the poor, and settled on a mountain three miles from the city, where a community gathered around him. There he founded two monasteries side by side — one of Greek-speaking and one of Syriac-speaking monks — with a common church in which the two choirs praised God each in their own tongue, morning and evening; and over both he presided as a strict and loving father, admitting no private property and no relaxation of the rule. He reposed about the year 380, and is kept on January 25.
Publius was born, in the early fourth century, at Zeugma, a city on the western bank of the Euphrates in the province of Euphratensis, and was, our one source says, of senatorial family and considerable wealth. Coming to the love of the ascetic life, he sold all that he had, gave the price to the poor, and withdrew to a hill about three miles from the city to live as a solitary in prayer and severe abstinence.
His reputation for holiness drew disciples, and Publius, receiving them, shaped his solitude into a coenobium. He would suffer none of the monks to own anything of his own, not so much as a book or a garment, and himself went by night among the cells with a lamp, examining what each man kept, praising the frugal and reproving any who had gathered more than need required. When men of two languages came to him, he built two houses — one for the Greeks and one for the Syrians — and set over each a superior; and he raised a single common church, in which the two communities met at the beginning and the end of each day and offered the psalms and prayers each in its own tongue, singing in turn, so that the one praise of God rose up in two languages together. This ordering of a bilingual monastic brotherhood, remembered by Theodoret with admiration, is Publius's chief memorial and a witness to the mingling of Greek and Syriac Christianity on the Euphrates frontier. He governed his community into old age and reposed about the year 380; his successors ruled the two houses after him.
Feast and commemoration
Publius is commemorated on January 25 (church date; Old Calendar civil February 7), the day of the great Gregory the Theologian, among whose fellow-commemorations of the day he is numbered in the synaxaria. The Greek, Slavic, and Antiochian calendars keep him on this day; the older Western martyrologies, following the Latin translation of Theodoret and the Lives of the Fathers, commemorate him on January 25 as well.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 8
In thee, O Father, was the divine image preserved with exactness; for taking up thy cross, thou didst follow Christ, and by thy deeds thou didst teach us to despise the flesh, for it passeth away, but to care for the soul, a thing immortal. Therefore doth thy spirit, O venerable Publius, rejoice together with the angels.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Publius is depicted as an aged monastic father in the dark tunic, analavos, and mantle of the great schema, with a long grey or white beard, holding a scroll or raising his hand in blessing — the common type of the desert ascetic. No securely identified early portrait icon of him is stored here; the saint wants an icon.
Disputed questions
- Not to be confused with the hieromartyr Publius, Bishop of Athens (kept March 13), the second-century bishop-martyr of the Athenian church, nor with the African martyr Publius (also called Pompeius) among Africanus, Pompeius and Terence (also March 13). This Publius is the fourth-century Syrian ascetic of Zeugma, founder of the two bilingual monasteries on the Euphrates.