Theophanes the Merciful

Our Venerable Father Theophanes the Merciful, of Gaza

Venerable · Righteous

Theophanes the Merciful was a householder of Gaza in Syria Palaestina, remembered for a single, complete virtue: he gave away everything. He took in strangers, tended the sick, and spent his whole substance on the poor until he himself was left in want; struck then by a disfiguring wasting illness, he bore it with thanksgiving, foretold the calm that would attend his death, and after his repose his body was found whole and fragrant, flowing with healing myrrh. No date is transmitted for him; he is commemorated on September 29.

The synaxaria preserve of Theophanes a short and carefully shaped account — the portrait of an almsgiver tried like Job. A citizen of Gaza, married, of some substance, he made his house a refuge: vagrants and travellers were taken in, the poor and the sick were helped, and he gave until his own property was exhausted and he lived in poverty among those he had relieved. The loss of his goods, the account insists, caused him no grief at all.

Then his health went the way of his wealth. He fell into a grievous disease: his body swelled, broke down, and became an open sore, and the suffering was long — and this too he endured in good spirit, giving thanks to God for all things. As he lay dying a violent storm raged, and his wife wept that she would not even be able to bury him properly. The dying man comforted her: the trial had lasted until now, but at the hour of his death, by God's will, the storm would cease. So it happened: as he gave up his soul, calm fell. And after death the body that had rotted in his illness was found cleansed of every wound, whole and fragrant, and it gave forth an abundant healing myrrh — the seal, the tradition read, on a mercy that God repaid in kind.

Feast and commemoration

September 29 (church date; Old Calendar civil October 12), under the principal commemoration of Cyriacus the Hermit. The OCA and the Russian calendar carry him on this day; the synaxarion of the received Greek Menaion for September 29 does not include his notice, though he appears in the fuller Greek synaxary collections. No proper service is transmitted.

Hymns

Troparion — Tone 8 (from the common)

In thee, O father, that which is according to the image was preserved unimpaired; for taking up the cross, thou didst follow Christ, and by thy deeds thou hast taught us to despise the flesh, for it passeth away, but to care for the soul, which is immortal. Wherefore thy spirit rejoiceth with the angels, O venerable Theophanes.

Original translation from the Greek

Iconography

No pre-modern icon of Theophanes the Merciful has been identified. He would be depicted as a layman of mature years distributing alms, or on his sick-bed in the manner of the righteous Job, whose trial his own mirrors.

Disputed questions

Date. No era is transmitted: the synaxaria place him in no reign and give no year, and this entry accordingly assigns no century.
Style of sanctity. Though a married layman, Theophanes is carried in the Slavic menologia and the OCA calendar among the venerable (прп., the style of monastic saints), while the shape of his story is that of a righteous almsgiver in the world; both classifications are recorded here.
Not to be confused with the several other saints Theophanes of the calendar — among them Theophanes of Mount Diabenos, the confessor and faster (September 9), Theophanes the chronicler of Sigriane (March 12), or Theophanes the Branded (October 11).