350 Martyrs,

ON THE HOLY 350 MARTYRS, ANONYMOUS MONKS, IN SYRIA SECUNDA.

From the Roman Martyrology.

In the Year 517.

The 350 Martyrs in Syria Secunda (SS.)

BY THE AUTHOR J. B. S.

However celebrated these Martyrs may be reckoned, slain in Syria in that monstrous predatory persecution of the Severians—let us say, or of the Dioscorites, or certainly of the Acephali, with the impious Emperor Anastasius conniving, or perhaps instigating, they were inserted into the Roman Martyrology, yet no memory of them ever existed anywhere in the ecclesiastical records, whether Greek or Latin, until Baronius inserted them into the Roman Martyrology at this day, with these words: "In Syria, of the holy three hundred and fifty monk Martyrs, who, for the defense of the Synod of Chalcedon, were slain by the heretics." In his annotations he could assign no source whence he received that band, except the celebrated letter of the four and twenty archimandrites and very many others, given to Pope Hormisdas, now most well known in the Councils, whence he also took those things which give credence concerning the huge slaughter of monks. Further, those tragic ravages of the raging scoundrels are described quite fully by the same most Eminent Annalist at the year 517 from number 50: but since these are now most widely published, it will be enough for a fitting notice of the matter here, if we briefly excerpt what Pagi contracted concerning them. Thus he writes in his Critica at the said year, numbers 3 and 4.

[2] and pursues their history briefly from the celebrated letter, In this and the preceding century the Maronites eminently protected the Catholic religion, and thence in the Roman Martyrology at the 31st of July is had what we have already related above. There exists concerning their slaying a little book of the twenty-four archimandrites to Hormisdas the Roman Pontiff, in which one reads: "Since Christ our God has constituted You as Prince of pastors, and teacher and physician of souls, and your holy angel; it is worthy to set forth the sufferings which have befallen us, and to show the merciless wolves who scatter the flock of Christ. Who these are, and who armed themselves against us, you have surely heard, Most Blessed one—that Severus and Peter, who never were reckoned in the number of Christians, who, day by day, assailing the holy Synod of Chalcedon and our most holy and most blessed Father Leo with a public anathema, who, esteeming the judgment of God as nothing, and trampling the venerable canons of the holy Fathers, causing bishops indeed to be produced by the sovereign power, and compelling them to mock the aforesaid holy Synod, afflicting them with inestimable torments, as we were going to the fold of the lord Simeon for the cause of the Church, lay in wait for us on the road—those lost, defiled men— and coming upon us slew of us 350, wounded some, and others indeed who had been able to flee to worship at the altars, they slew in that very place, and burned the monasteries."

[3] But in the petition of the same monks to John, patriarch of Constantinople, Pagi pursues. and to the fifth general synod, the aforesaid Maronite monks say: "A dread spectacle were the men lying there, who in religious struggles had contended even to gray hairs, naked, and cast out unburied, being more than three hundred, born of the second province of the Syrians, thrown out to be torn by dogs and birds." And in another of the aforesaid little books to Menas the patriarch: "And not reverencing their gray hairs, they did the work of the sword upon them, being about three hundred and fifty in number, and scattered their dismembered limbs." And let these things about the holy Martyrs, who are venerated on this day, be enough said. The things which are next subjoined concerning the admirable deeds of the Maronite monks, for the protection of the Catholic religion, do not properly pertain here; perhaps they will find their place elsewhere. Let curious readers look at what Faustus Naironus disputed more fully concerning these in his dissertation on the origin, name, and religion of the Maronites, printed at Rome in the year 1679, where from page 11 he pursues this whole history of the persecutions more fully.