Life of Gregory Thaumaturgus 913–929

the cause of the living, holy fountain, holiness, the provider of sanctification; in whom is manifested God the Father, who is over all and in all, and God the Son, who is through all: a perfect Trinity, in glory and eternity and kingship neither divided nor estranged. There is, then, nothing created or servile in the Trinity, nor anything brought in, as if it did not exist before but entered afterwards. So neither was the Son ever lacking to the Father, nor the Spirit to the Son; but the same Trinity is ever unchangeable and unalterable.” Whoever wishes to be convinced of this, let him hear the church in which he preached the word, among whom the very characters written by that blessed hand are preserved even now. Does this not vie, in the greatness of the grace, with those tablets made by God? I mean those tablets on which the legislation of the divine will was imprinted. For as the account says that Moses, having gone outside what appears and taken his stand in his soul within the invisible sanctuary (for this is what the darkness hints at), learned the divine mysteries and through himself led the whole people in the knowledge of God, the same dispensation can be seen in the case of this great man too. For him the mountain was nothing perceptible or earthly, but the height of his desire for true doctrines; the darkness was the sight that others could not contain; the tablet was his soul; the letters on the tablets were the voice of the one who appeared; and through all these the revelation of the mysteries came to him and to those he instructed. Since, then, he had become full of boldness and courage through that vision, just as an athlete who has acquired from his trainer experience and strength enough for the contests strips confidently for the stadium and contends with his opponents, in the same way he too, having sufficiently anointed his soul by his own practice and by the alliance of the grace that had appeared to him, takes up the contests. For one must call his whole life in the priesthood nothing other than contests and struggles, in which he overcame through faith all the power of the adversary. For he at once raised himself from his remote place and set out for the city in which he was to establish the church for God. He knew that the whole region was dominated by the deceit of demons, that nowhere had a temple of the true God been built, but that the whole city and the region around were filled with altars, sacred precincts and images, the whole nation being zealous that the precincts of the idols and the temples be adorned and that the madness for idols might remain among men, strengthened by processions and rites and the pollutions upon the altars. So, as a brave soldier who has grappled with the commander of the battle line routs his subordinates through him, this great man too begins his deeds of valour with the demons themselves. In what way? As he was travelling the road from his remote place to the city, evening overtook him and a violent downpour held them back,

he goes inside a certain temple with those who followed him. That temple was one of the famous ones, in which a manifest visitation of the demons worshipped there came upon the temple-wardens, as oracular prophecy was worked by them. Having entered the temple with his companions, he at once terrified the demons by calling on the name of Christ; and having purified with the sign of the cross the air defiled by the fumes of sacrifice, he spent the whole night, as was his custom, awake in prayers and hymns, so that the place abominable with the gore on the altars and with the images was transformed into a house of prayer. When the night had passed for him in this way, he resumed his journey forward at dawn. When at dawn the temple-warden was offering the customary service to the demons, the demons, they say, appeared to him and said that the temple was inaccessible to them because of the one who had stayed in it; and he tried, using certain purifications and sacrifices, to settle the demons in the temple again by these means. But since, though he applied every attempt, his zeal had no effect, the demons nowhere answering his invocation as usual, the temple-warden, roused with rage and anger, overtakes that great man, threatening all the most terrible things: to denounce him to the magistrates, to lay hands on him, to inform the emperor of his audacity, namely that, being a Christian and an enemy of the gods, he had dared to go inside the shrines; that at his entry the power working in the temples had turned away, and the oracular working of the demons no longer frequented the places as usual. But Gregory put down the temple-warden's rash and uneducated anger with a lofty mind, setting the alliance of the true God against all the threats, and saying that he trusted so much in the power of the one who fought for him that he had authority to drive them out from wherever he wished and to settle them in whatever places he wanted, and he promised to give proofs of what he said at once. The temple-warden, wondering and astonished at the greatness of the authority, called on him to show his power on these very demons and to bring the demons back into the temple. Hearing this, the great man tore off a small piece of a book and gave it to the temple-warden, having written on it a word of command against the demons. The letters, word for word, were these: “Gregory to Satan: Enter.” The temple-warden took it and laid the leaf on the altar; then, having brought the customary

fumes and pollutions, he saw again what he used to see before the demons were driven out of the idol-temple. When this had happened, he came to the thought that there was a divine power with Gregory, through which he had proved stronger than the demons; and overtaking him again in haste before he reached the city, he asked to learn the mystery from him, and who that God was who had the nature of the demons under his control. When the great man told him briefly the mystery of godliness, the temple-warden reacted as one uninitiated in divine things would likely react, and thought it too small for the notion of God to be persuaded that the Divine had appeared to human beings through flesh. Gregory said that faith in this is not established by words but has its credibility from the wonders that happen; and the temple-warden asked to see yet another wonder from him, so that he might then be brought through what happened to assent to the faith. Then, they say, that great man performed the great wonder, the most incredible of all. For the temple-warden asked that one of the huge stones that lay before his eyes be moved without a human hand, through the power of faith alone, and be transferred to another place at Gregory's command; that great man, without delay, at once commanded the stone, as if it were alive, to move to the place the temple-warden pointed out. When this happened, the man at once believed the word; and leaving everything, family, house, wife, children, friends, priesthood, hearth, possessions, he made being with the great man, sharing his labours and that divine philosophy and instruction, take the place of all he had. Before these things let all the technical ingenuity of speech-writers fall silent, which magnifies wonders by some rhetoric and exalts them to something greater. For the wonder in what has been told is not such as to become less or greater than itself by the power of the speaker. For what could anyone say beyond what has been said that would add to the wonder? And how could anyone lessen the hearers' amazement at what happened? A stone draws away from stones those enslaved to stones; a stone becomes a herald of divine faith and a guide to salvation for the unbelieving, proclaiming the divine power not by any voice or word, but by what it did showing the God proclaimed by Gregory, whom the whole creation obeys as subject on equal terms; not only what is sentient and breathing and living, but whatever lies outside these also receives the command of his servant as though it did not lack sensation. For what hearing has a stone? What perception of the authority of the one commanding? What power of moving is in it? What arrangement of limbs and joints? But the power of the one commanding becomes all these and such things for the stone. Looking at this, that temple-warden at once understood and loathed the deceit of the demons practised to lead human nature astray, and went over to the true God, reckoning from what was done by the servant

the inexpressible power of the Master. For if the servant's power is so great as to move by a word what cannot be moved, to give orders to things without sensation, and to command lifeless things, how great an abundance of power is it fitting to recognize in the Master of the universe, whose will became, as it were, the matter, the structure, and the power of the world itself and of everything in it and of the things beyond it! Beginning from this his deeds of valour against the demons, and leading the temple-warden about with him like a trophy over the vanquished, and having first struck the nation with amazement by the report, he now rode into the city with confidence and boldness, not making a show with chariots and horses and mules and a crowd of followers, but escorted all around by the virtues. The whole population of the town had poured out en masse as if to look at some new spectacle, and all were eager to see who this Gregory was who, though a man, has authority like a king over those they held to be gods, carrying and leading the demons by command wherever he wished, and evicting and settling them from wherever he wanted at his pleasure, like slaves, and who brings along that minister, as if he had enslaved him by some authority, a man who had disdained the honour in which he formerly stood and exchanged all he had for life with him. With all of them in this frame of mind and waiting for him before the town, when he came up to them, all gazing intently at him, he passed the people by as if they were lifeless matter, turning to none of those he met, and walking straight to the city, and so brought them into much greater amazement, appearing to those who saw him greater than his report. For that, entering a great city for the first time, with no previous acquaintance with so many, he should not be overawed by so great a people gathered on his account, but should look only to himself and to the road, as if walking through a desert, turning to none of those crowded around him, this seemed to the people beyond the wonder worked on the stone. For this reason, though those who had received the faith before his oversight were very few, as has been said before, he went in hemmed in on all sides by those escorting him, as though the whole city honoured his priesthood. Now from the moment he took up philosophy he had freed himself from all things together as from a burden, and he had none of the necessities of life, no field, no place, no house, but was everything to himself (or rather virtue and faith were his native land and hearth and wealth). So when he was within the city, and there was no house

anywhere for him to rest, neither of the church nor his own, and those around him were troubled and at a loss how he could be lodged and with whom he could find shelter, the teacher says to them: “Why are you at a loss about this, as if you were outside God's shelter, as to where you should rest your bodies? Does God seem a small house to you, if indeed in him we live and move and are? Or are you cramped under the heavenly roof, and seek some other lodging besides it? Let your one zeal be for each person's own house, the one built up by the virtues and raised to the height. Let this alone grieve us, that such a dwelling should not be ready for us; for enclosures of earthly walls bring no gain to those who live in virtue. Rather, it would be fitting for those defiled with vice to be eager for walls, because a house often becomes a covering for hidden shame. But for those whose life has been earnestly spent in virtue, the walls have nothing to conceal.” As he was going through these things with those who were with him, one of the notable men, counted among the first in family and wealth and other power, came up (the man's name was Musonius). When he saw many eager in the same zeal to receive the man in their own houses, he got ahead of the others and seized the favour, begging the great man to be his guest and to honour his house by entering it, so that it might become more dignified and celebrated in its later life, as time passed on the memory of such an honour to later generations as well. And since many others also ran up and begged for the same, Gregory judged it just to grant the favour to the one who had begun first, put the others off and returned their honour with kind words, and lodges with the one who had come first. If the history of the things told about him is a plain narrative without adornment, our speech having willingly left aside the embellishments devised for events by some ingenuity, this itself would be no small testimony, for those who judge matters rightly, that the wonders of the one remembered are in no way magnified by invention, but that the memory of his deeds suffices for the most perfect praise, like a natural beauty in a face, made to bloom by no fussy art of cosmetics. Though those catechized in the word before were few in number, before the day had passed and the sun had set, so many joined at the encounter that the multitude of believers was enough to form a people. Dawn, and again the populace at the doors, men and women and children, and the aged, and those who had some bodily affliction from demons or some other harm; and in their midst he, fittingly for the need of each of those gathered, by the

power of the Spirit divided himself: preaching, examining together, admonishing, teaching, healing. For he drew the many to the preaching above all by this, that sight agreed with hearing, and through both the signs of the divine power shone out in him. For the word astonished their hearing, and the wonders done for the sick astonished their sight. The mourner was comforted; the young man was brought to self-restraint; the old man was cared for with fitting words. Slaves were taught to be well disposed to their masters, those in power to be kind to their subjects; the poor man was taught that virtue is the one wealth, whose possession lies open to all at will; the man who prided himself on his wealth was admonished as befitted him, being taught that he is the steward of what he has, not its lord. Distributing to women what was suitable, to children what was proportionate, to fathers what was fitting, and becoming all things to all, he soon gained for himself so great a people, by the co-operation of the Spirit, that he set about building a church, all serving the work with their money and their bodies. This is the church whose building he began; one of those after him adorned it worthily of him; it is shown to this day. That great man, as soon as he took office, laid it down in the most conspicuous part of the city as a kind of foundation and base for his own priesthood, and he completed the work by a divine power, as later time bears witness. For once, in our own times, when a very severe earthquake struck the city, and almost everything was utterly destroyed, all the public and private buildings being thrown down and laid waste, that church alone remained unbroken and unshaken, so that through this too it is plain with what power that great man took hold of the affairs of his time. But these things were shown by the divine power many years later as a testimony to the great man's faith. At that time, when everyone in the city and the region around was astonished at his apostolic wonders, and believed that everything he said and did was said and done by divine power, they thought that no other court had more authority for them even in the disputes of daily life, but every case and every tangle of affairs hard to unravel was resolved by his counsels. So good order and peace were present, in common for all and for each individual, through his grace, and there was much increase of good things, privately and publicly, with no vice cutting into their concord with one another. It would perhaps not be out of place to mention one of his judgments, so that, as the proverb says, the whole fabric may become plain to us from its fringe. For the divine Scripture too, though Solomon gave many judgments to his subjects,

was content to present the man's whole understanding through one. When he was judging between the two mothers, since the wrong could not be proved, each of them alike refusing the dead child and laying hold of the living one, he resolved to track down the hidden truth by an ingenious device. For since the wrong had no witness, and the suspicion of falsehood and of truth weighed equally on both, he brought in nature as his witness to the truth, concealing the aim of his intent by a clever threat. For by ordering, as it seemed, that the bodies of both the living and the dead child be cut in two equally with a sword and the halves of the children be assigned to both women, he handed over the judgment of the matter to nature, the witness of truth. For when the one gladly accepted the order and urged on the executioner, while the other, moved in her motherly heart, admitted defeat and begged that the child be spared (for she would be grateful if the infant were saved in any way at all), the king made this the test of truth and grants the winning vote to the one who had willingly given way, reasoning that the woman who did not shrink from the slaughter of the child stands accused by nature of not being the mother of the one whose death she was hastening. What judgment of the great Gregory, then, shall we recount? Two brothers, young in years, who had just divided their father's inheritance between themselves, laid claim to one lake, each contending to have all of it, and neither admitting the other to a share in the property. The teacher, then, becomes the arbiter of the case. Going to the place, he used his own laws for the arbitration, leading them to reconciliation, urging the young men to come to terms in friendship and to value the gain of peace above the gains of revenue. For peace, he said, remains for ever, for the living and the dead; but the enjoyment of revenues is temporary, while the condemnation for injustice is eternal; and he said whatever else he was likely to say to calm the disorder of youth. But when the exhortation had no effect, and youth was inflamed and burned up into anger, swelling with greater hope of gain, and an army was being prepared on each side from those under their control, a mass of hands thirsting for blood, led by anger and youth, and the time of the clash had been fixed, the battle being about to break out from both sides on the next day, the man of God remained on the banks of the lake and, persevering through the night in vigil, showed a wonder like that of Moses upon the water: not splitting the depths into two parts with a stroke of a rod, but by prayer drying it all up at once,

and at dawn he showed the lake as dry land, dry and without moisture, so that it held no remnant of water even in its hollows, though before the prayer it had been like a sea. Having judged these things by the divine power, he withdrew again to himself; and for the young men the verdict given by deeds dissolved their quarrel. For since the thing over which they were preparing war against each other no longer existed, peace took the place of anger, and nature recognized itself again in the brothers. And even now one can see clear signs of that divine verdict. For around what was once the lake some traces of the flooding of the water are still preserved to this day; but all that was then deep and at the bottom of the water has been changed into groves and dwellings and meadows and ploughland. In this judgment, I think, not even that famous Solomon himself would dispute the first prize. For what is so great in virtue, to save the baby at the breast between two mothers, for whom it was quite the same with respect to survival whether it was nursed by the one who bore it or by the other, as to award safety to two young men? They had just entered on the affairs of life, in the prime of youth; at the very flower of their age their anger had driven them mad toward murdering each other, and they were shortly to present a bitter sight to the people of that time, arming their hands against each other, in a case where the expectation was either that both would be destroyed by each other or that one would certainly come into the pollution of fratricide, to pass over those ranged on each side with equal anger, for whom the only limit to their onslaught against each other was the death of their opponents. He, then, who by his prayer annulled the sentence of death already ratified against them by the generalship of the evil one, and reconciled nature to itself again, and changed their zeal for slaughter into the joys of peace, how much more fittingly would he be admired for his judgment than the one who detected the harlot's wickedness? As for the wonder at the water, how a navigable place was at once changed into dry ground, and the lake became a plain and a hollow, and how what was formerly in place of a sea now yields a harvest of fruits, I think it better to be silent about this than to go through it in a speech unable to rise worthily with the story. For what such thing have we learned among the recorded wonders that could come to equal this by comparison? Joshua the son of Nun stopped the stream of the Jordan, but only while the ark was in the water; when the people had crossed and the ark had passed through, he gave back to the stream its usual course. In the Red Sea the bed of the depths is laid bare of water, the sea being pushed aside by the wind; but the time of the wonder was the passage of the army, made on dry land along the

depths. After that, the surface of the water becomes one again, and what had been divided for a short time flowed together. But here what was once done remained as it was done, so that the wonder is not disbelieved because of time, being attested for ever by what can be seen. Such, then, is what is told and shown about the lake. After this another wonder of the same kind is shown and remembered from him. A river flows through their region, which signals the roughness and wildness of its stream by its very name: it is called the Lycus, the “Wolf,” by those who live near it, because it is destructive. It comes down already large from its springs in Armenia, the country supplying it with an abundant stream from the mountains above. Flowing deep everywhere beneath the foot of the cliffs, it is made much rougher by the winter torrents, taking into itself all the streams that flow together from the mountains. In the flat part of the country through which it passes, often hemmed in by the banks on either side, it overflows the bank at some point on the side and floods everything beyond with its stream, so that it continually brings unexpected dangers upon those who live by the place, the river often invading the fields at dead of night or even by day. As a result, not only plants and seeds and cattle were destroyed by the rush of the waters, but the danger touched the inhabitants themselves, who were shipwrecked in their houses without warning in the flooding of the water. Since the wonders already achieved by the great man had spread through the whole nation, those who lived by the river in that district rose up, men and women and children, the whole population, and became suppliants of the great man, begging him to provide them some deliverance from their troubles beyond hope. For they said that God in him could do all things that are impossible to human devices and thoughts. For they had left out nothing that lay within human counsel and power, having tried everything, stones and embankments and whatever else is usually devised against such evils, and had been unable to hold out against the force of the evil. And so that he might above all be moved by them to pity, they asked him to become an eyewitness of the disaster, and to learn that they were not able to move their dwelling, and that death always lay before them at the onrush of the water. When he came to the place (for no reluctance hindered his zeal for the good), needing neither carriage nor horses nor anything else that could carry him, but leaning on a staff, he travelled the whole road, discoursing at the same time on philosophy with those who shared the road with him about the higher hope, in which he always spent his time as his chief concern, making everything else secondary to the more important pursuit. So when the turning of the stream was pointed out to him by those who had led the way, and the very sight declared the disaster, the place having been gouged into a deep ravine by the onrush of the waters, he says this to