The Syrian Desert Ascetics
Our Venerable Fathers John, Antiochus, Antoninus, Moses, Zebinas, Polychronius, Moses the Second, and Damian, Ascetics of the Syrian Desert
Venerable · d. 5th century
Commemorated 23 February — Commemoration of the Syrian desert ascetics of Theodoret's Religious History
On February 23 the Church commemorates a group of ascetics of the Syrian desert of the fifth century — John, Antiochus, Antoninus, Moses, Zebinas, Polychronius, Moses the Second, and Damian — hermits and mountain-dwellers of the region of Antioch and Cyrrhus whose memory is preserved chiefly through the Religious History (the Philotheos Historia) of Theodoret, bishop of Cyrrhus, the great chronicler of Syrian monasticism, who knew several of them himself. They belong to the golden age of the Syrian ascetic movement — the age of the stylites and the mountain solitaries — and are honoured together as labourers in the same desert and the same discipline of prayer, standing vigil, and severe abstinence. Of Antiochian and Syriac note, they are commemorated as a company on February 23.
The Syrian desert of the fourth and fifth centuries — the uplands and wildernesses around Antioch, Cyrrhus, and the Euphrates — was one of the great nurseries of Christian asceticism, rivalling Egypt in the severity and inventiveness of its solitaries. Its history was gathered by Theodoret of Cyrrhus (c. 393 – c. 460), who as bishop of the region set down in his Religious History the lives of thirty of its holy men and women, many of whom he had visited and served. The ascetics kept on February 23 are drawn from this world, and several from Theodoret's own pages; their notices are brief, in the manner of the synaxarion, and the tradition keeps them together as fellow-strugglers rather than telling a single connected story.
- John, an ascetic of the Syrian desert, is remembered as a disciple of Saint Limnaeus who lived some five-and-twenty years in the discipline of stillness and prayer.
- Antiochus and Antoninus shared John's manner of life and his solitude, companions in the same desert.
- Moses settled, the tradition says, upon a high mountain near a place called Rama, and there passed his life in ascetic labour; a second Moses is numbered among the company in the Slavic enumeration.
- Zebinas (Zebinus; in the Slavic books Zevin) was an aged and venerable ascetic famed for standing continually at prayer — he would not sit even to rest, but leaned upon a staff through the long hours of his rule, giving himself wholly to converse with God.
- Polychronius was the disciple of Zebinas, who took up his master's discipline and carried it on after him.
- Damian lived, the notices say, as a monk of the same region, at a monastery called Hieros (Ieros).
What binds them is not a common martyrdom or a single monastery but a common calling: the flight to the wilderness, the unceasing prayer, the standing vigils, the abstinence carried to the edge of what the body can bear, and the gift of stillness (hesychia) that the Syrian fathers sought above every other good. Theodoret, who wrote to preserve their memory "lest so great a treasure be lost," presents them as living proofs of the power of grace, and the Church, in gathering them onto one day, honours the whole company of the Syrian solitaries in these several names.
Feast and commemoration
February 23 (church date; Old Calendar civil March 8), on the universal Byzantine calendar, together with the great hieromartyr Polycarp of Smyrna, who leads the day. The Menaion lists the ascetics among the day's commemorations; their liturgical service, where kept, is supplied from the common of the venerable. Of Antiochian and Syriac interest, they are among the day's saints of that tradition, with the founder of the Unsleeping Ones, Alexander the Sleepless.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (from the common of the holy Fathers)
O God of our Fathers, who ever dealest with us according to thy forbearance: take not thy mercy from us, but by their supplications guide our life in peace.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
The Syrian ascetics are depicted, where they are shown at all, in the settled type of the desert fathers: aged and emaciated men in the monastic schema, with long beards and worn faces, bearing scrolls or crosses, sometimes ranged together as a company of solitaries against a mountain wilderness. Zebinas may be shown standing at prayer upon his staff, the mark of his ceaseless vigil. No pre-modern icon identified with certainty as this company has been located for storage; the iconographic type is described here in prose.
Disputed questions
- The roll of names. The received enumerations vary. The Greek and OCA lists give John, Antiochus, Antoninus, Moses, Zebinas, Polychronius, and Damian; the Slavic calendars (azbyka.ru, March 8 civil) add a second Moses ("Moses the Second"). The names and their order differ slightly among the books, as is usual with a company of ascetics gathered from the synaxarion rather than from a single passion; the variance is noted and no fixed roll is asserted beyond the names the calendars transmit.
- Not to be confused — Polychronius. The Polychronius of this company (a fifth-century Syrian ascetic, disciple of Zebinas) is distinct from the hieromartyr Polychronius the Presbyter, slain by Arians and kept October 7, and from Polychronius, Bishop of Babylon, martyred under Decius and kept July 30. Three different saints bear the name.
- Not to be confused — Damian. This Damian, a Syrian desert monk, is not Damian of Esphigmenou, the thirteenth-century Athonite hesychast also commemorated on February 23, nor Damian the monastic-martyr of Philotheou; the single day carries three distinct saints named Damian.