Theophanes of Mount Diabenos
Our Venerable Father Theophanes the Confessor and Faster, of Mount Diabenos
Venerable · Confessor · d. c. 300
Commemorated 9 September — Peaceful repose after confession under Carus and his sons
Theophanes the Confessor and Faster (†c. 300) was an ascetic of the generation before the great persecutions ended, born of pagan parents, who came to faith in Christ in his youth, was baptized, and fled secretly to an aged hermit on the mountain the sources call Dabis or Diabenos. After five years under the elder he spent fifty-eight years alone in his cave; coming down at last to preach Christ among the pagans, he converted many, was seized and tortured under the emperor Carus and his sons, survived his confession, and returned to the mountain, where he lived some seventeen years more and reposed in peace. He is commemorated on September 9.
Origins and early life
Theophanes was born into a pagan family — the sources do not name his country, and the mountain of his asceticism, called Dabis in the account the OCA transmits and Diabenos in the title of his commemoration, cannot be securely placed. In his youth he came to believe in Christ and was baptized, and, concealing his purpose from his pagan parents, left home secretly for the mountain, where an elder had already lived the ascetic life for seventy-five years. The Greek synaxarion knows him simply as "our venerable father Theophanes the Confessor, who lived in asceticism before Diocletian" — a notice that fixes his generation: his was the hidden monasticism of the third century, before Antony, before the peace of the Church, when the desert calling was rare and its records were thin.
Ascetic struggle
The elder taught the young man the Scriptures and the rule of the ascetic life. After five years the old man died, and Theophanes remained in his cave alone — for fifty-eight years, the account relates, in fasting, silence and prayer. The title "Faster" (νηστευτής) that the calendars attach to him remembers this: a lifetime's abstinence sustained across more than half a century of solitude.
Then, an old man himself, he came down from the mountain and began to preach Christ among the pagans of the region, and converted many to Christianity. This brought him before the authorities: by order of the emperor Carus (282–283) and his sons Numerian and Carinus (283–284) — so the account transmitted by the OCA, which garbles the names slightly — he was seized and subjected to torture. He endured his sufferings bravely and, the persecutors letting him go alive, earned the second of his titles: Confessor, one who suffered for the faith without dying of it.
Repose
Released, Theophanes returned to his mountain and lived there some seventeen years more, reposing in peace at the very end of the third century. The arithmetic of the tradition — five years under the elder, fifty-eight in the cave, the confession of 282–284, seventeen years after — yields a life of extraordinary length, and a repose about the year 300; the chronological tensions in the account are noted below.
Veneration and later cultus
Theophanes's commemoration on September 9 is ancient and universal in the Byzantine calendar — the Synaxarion of Constantinople carries him under this day — but his cultus remained modest: overshadowed on his own feast by the Synaxis of the Ancestors of God, he received no proper hymnography in the received Menaion, and no church or relic tradition of note attaches to his name. He stands in the calendar as a witness to the monasticism of the age of the persecutions, a confessor of the generation whose endurance prepared the freedom of the Church.
Feast and commemoration
September 9 (church date; Old Calendar civil September 22) is the sole and primary commemoration of Theophanes, kept within the afterfeast of the Nativity of the Theotokos. The day's proper services are those of the feast, of the Synaxis of Joachim and Anna, and of the martyr Severian; Theophanes is commemorated in the synaxarion reading at Matins, and where a fuller service is wanted the common of a venerable ascetic is used.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 8
With the streams of thy tears thou didst till the barren desert, and with sighings from the depths thou didst make thy labours bear fruit an hundredfold, and becamest a beacon to the whole world, shining with wonders: O Theophanes our venerable father, intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Theophanes would be depicted after the type of the early hermits: an aged monk in the analavos, long-bearded, holding a cross or a scroll of ascetic counsel, a cave and mountain behind him. No attested pre-modern icon of this Theophanes has been identified — depictions under the name "Theophanes the Confessor" belong almost without exception to the chronicler of Sigriane (March 12) — and no image is therefore stored for this entry; the gap is tracked in the the list of icons still being sought index.
Disputed questions
- The mountain. The OCA's title places him "of Mount Diabenos," its narrative "on Mount Dabis"; the Greek synaxarial notice names no mountain at all. No secure identification of the site has been made, and the entry asserts none.
- Chronology. The Greek synaxarion styles him the ascetic "before Diocletian" (reigned 284–305), while the narrative's own numbers — torture under Carus and his sons (282–284) and seventeen further years — carry his repose to about 300, within Diocletian's reign though before the great persecution of 303. The traditional numbers (5 + 58 + 17 years of ascetic life after his youth) also imply a life of a hundred years or more. The entry follows the calendars' round date of c. 300 and records the tension.
- Not to be confused with the far more famous Theophanes the Confessor of Sigriane, the chronicler (†818, commemorated March 12); nor with Theophanes the Faster of the Kiev Caves (October 11); nor with Theophanes the Hymnographer ("Graptos," October 11). The identical epithets have caused confusion in secondary literature; the September 9 saint is the third-century hermit alone.