Life of Gregory Thaumaturgus 931–947

those gathered: “It is not for human beings, brothers, to bound the movement of water with limits; such a thing is the work of the divine power alone, to shut in the rush of the waters within limits. For so the prophet says to God: ‘You set a boundary which it will not pass.’ The nature of the elements is subject to Christ alone, the Master of creation, and remains for ever in whatever places it is assigned. Since, then, God is the one who lays down laws of limits for the waters, he alone by his own power could fetter the disorder of this river too.” He spoke; and as if inspired by a more divine thought, he prayed in a loud voice that Christ would come as his ally for the task before him, and fixed the staff he carried in his hand in the damaged place of the bank. The ground there, being soaked and spongy, easily gave way into the depth, yielding to the weight of the staff and the hand of the one fixing it. Then, having prayed to God that this might become a kind of bar and barrier against the disorder of the waters, he went back again, showing by the deed that everything done by him was worked by divine power. For soon afterwards the staff, having taken root in the banks, became a tree; and the plant was set as a boundary to the stream, and to this day the plant is a sight and a story for the local people. For whenever that Lycus, swollen into a torrent by heavy rain, rushes along flooding and roughened as usual, fearsome as it roars in its current, then, having touched the foot of the tree with the edge of its water, it swells up again in the middle and draws its stream together, and as if afraid to come near the tree it passes the place by with an arched wave. Such was the power of the great Gregory, or rather of God who worked the wonders in him. For the nature of the elements was shown to be like a subject, changing at his commands as he saw fit, so that a lake was changed into wheat-bearing land, and the ravines of the water were inhabited, the staff having secured safety for the inhabitants. To this day the tree is called “the Staff,” a memorial of Gregory's grace and power preserved for the local people for all time. Which of the prophets' wonders do you wish to set beside these by comparison? Shall I mention the dividing of the Jordan, which Elijah made by striking it with his mantle before his ascent, and after him Elisha, the heir of the mantle and the spirit? But in their case the water was split for the prophets alone at the time of need, and through the

stream the Jordan became passable, opening its stream only so far as to let the prophets' feet walk through on the dry bed; in the time after, for the rest of mankind, it was as it had been before. But that Lycus, once driven back from its disorderly rush, makes Gregory's wonder last for ever, remaining for all later time as the great man's faith made it at the moment of the wonder. And the aim of what was done was not the astonishment of the onlookers but the safety of those who lived by the river. So, though the wonder is equal (for the nature of water gives way equally to the prophets and to the imitator of the prophets), if one may speak boldly, what was done by this man excels in kindness, since through it the safety of those living near was secured, the water being fettered once for all at that point of the stream and remaining immovable thereafter. Now since such wonders spread everywhere through the country, and were believed to be worked by the power of faith in Christ, all desired to share in that faith attested by such wonders; the preaching advanced everywhere, the mystery was effective, and zeal for the good increased, as the priesthood was established among all so that through all the faith might abound and grow. So an embassy comes to him from a neighbouring city, asking him to come to them and establish their church through the priesthood. The name of the city was Comana, and all its people together asked as a favour that the great man be their guest. He came to them and spent some days with them, kindling still more their desire for the mystery by what he did and said. When it was time for their embassy to reach its end, and for someone to be appointed high priest of their church, the opinions of all those in authority busied themselves with those who seemed to excel in eloquence and birth and other distinction. For they thought that, since the great Gregory had these things, the one who came to this grace ought not to lack them either. As the votes were divided in many ways and different people chose different men, the great man waited for some counsel to come to him from God about the matter. And just as Samuel is remembered not to have been overawed by bodily beauty and stature in choosing a king, but to have sought a kingly soul, even if it happened to be in a despised body, in the same way he too disregarded the efforts made on behalf of each of the candidates and looked at one thing only: whether anyone, even before his proclamation, carried the priesthood in his character through the care of his life and his virtue. While the others brought forward their candidates with praises, each promoting his own man, he bade them look also to those of humbler outward condition (for it was possible that even among such

someone might be found loftier in the wealth of the soul than those of more distinguished life), one of those presiding over the vote thought such a judgment of the great man an insult and a mockery, if, when the others had been chosen for eloquence and rank and the visible testimony of their lives, none of them was accepted for the priesthood, while some from among the menial workers were to be thought more worthy of such a grace. And at the same time, coming up to him in mockery, he said: “If you are ordering that these men, of such quality, chosen from the whole city, be passed over, and that someone from the riff-raff be taken up to preside in the priesthood, it is time for you to call Alexander the charcoal-burner to the priesthood; let us go over to him, if you like, and all agree on him.” So he spoke, disparaging Gregory's view and by this ironic vote finding fault with his strictness regarding the earlier candidates. But through what was said the thought came to the great man that it was not without God that Alexander had come up in the mention of those voted for and named. “And who is this Alexander,” he says, “whom you have mentioned?” Then one of those present, laughing, brought the man named into the middle, clothed in filthy rags that did not even cover his whole body, and at the same time showing his trade by his appearance, his hands and face and the rest of his body grimy from the charcoal work; for the others, Alexander standing such in their midst was a subject of laughter, but to that discerning eye what was happening and being seen gave great amazement: a man in extreme poverty and with a neglected body, looking to himself, and as it were exulting in the very appearance that was laughable to uneducated eyes. And so it was. For he had not come to such a life by the necessity of poverty; the man was a philosopher, as his later life made known, and loftier than the rest, so that he even attained martyrdom, finishing his course through fire. He tried, or rather made it his practice, to remain hidden, being superior to the good fortune pursued by the many, and counting this life as nothing, having his desire set on the higher and true life. And so that he might best succeed in his aim of virtue, he contrived to escape notice as such a man, hiding himself under the meanest of occupations as under an ugly mask. Besides, being in the full flower of youth, he thought it dangerous to the aim of chastity to make the beauty of his body visible, as if parading the good fortune of his nature; for he knew that such a thing

So that he might neither suffer anything unwanted nor become an occasion of passion to other people's eyes, he therefore willingly put on charcoal-burning like an ugly mask; through it his body was exercised by labours toward virtue and his beauty was covered by the grime of the coals, and at the same time what he gained from his labours was spent in service of the commandments. So Gregory took him aside from the assembly and inquired carefully into everything about him; then he handed him over to those around him, instructing them what they were to do, while he himself returned to the assembly and instructed those gathered from the matter at hand, setting before them discourses about the priesthood and through these sketching the life of virtue. He continued in such discourses, holding the meeting there, until his attendants, having carried out his order, came in, bringing with them Alexander, who had washed off in a bath the unpleasantness of the soot and was dressed in the great man's own clothes. For this is what he had instructed them to do. When all turned toward Alexander and were struck with wonder at what they saw, the teacher says to them: “Nothing strange has happened to you; you were deceived by your eyes and entrusted the judgment of beauty to sense alone. For sense is an unreliable test of the truth of things, since of itself it shuts off the way into the depth of the mind. And at the same time this was surely pleasing to the demon who is the enemy of godliness, that the vessel of election should lie idle, covered by ignorance, and that a man who would be the destroyer of his dominion should not come forward.” Having said this, he brings the man to God through the priesthood, consecrating him by grace in the customary manner. And when all were looking at the new priest and he was urged to address the church, Alexander showed at once, at the very beginning of his office, that the great Gregory's judgment of him did not lie. For his speech was full of meaning, though less adorned with the flower of diction. Hence one of the young men from Attica, an arrogant fellow who was staying among them, sneered at the plainness of his diction because it was not adorned with Attic elaboration; but they say he was corrected by a more divine vision: he saw a flock of doves shining with an extraordinary beauty and heard someone say that these were the doves of Alexander, whom he had made a laughing-stock. Which of these things should one admire more than the other: that the man was not put out of countenance by the vote of the dignitaries, and was not carried away by the testimonies of the prominent; or rather that he marvelled at the wealth hidden in the coals, and that God's testimony to his right judgment followed at once through the rhetorician's vision? To me each of them in itself seems such as to rival the other, and to stand first among almost all things remembered as wonders. For to stand against the impulse of the prominent

became the clearest mark of an unturning and lofty mind, for whom all the things that appear in the world were regarded alike, whether they tended to the greater and more distinguished or to the humble and obscure; assigning preference to virtue alone, and judging only a life in vice to be rejected, he counted as nothing all that in life is judged worthy either of pursuit or of dishonour. This is what he showed by what he did then. For seeking to find the one pleasing and worthy to God, he did not think wealth and rank and the distinctions of this world trustworthy enough to admit as testimony, none of which the divine word counted in its lists of good things. So this alone is not what is worthy of praise and wonder, that he did not give way to the efforts of the powerful, but that he also surpassed himself by what followed. For the one who merely rejects an unworthy vote, without supplying what is lacking to the need, has prevented the evil but has not done the good. But he, besides not agreeing to the worse, also found out the good, and so completed the good through both, neither allowing the evil a way in and bringing the good into action, so that the great Gregory's benefaction to the city was in both respects: he turned back the error they were committing through ignorance and brought to light, by himself, the good hidden among them. Since everything had gone forward according to the great man's mind with the alliance of the Holy Spirit, it would not be out of place to tell also an incident on the road, so that the grace present with the man may be shown through everything. Since it was plain to all that the man's first concern was to look to the comfort of those in need in everything, two of the Hebrews, either looking for gain or devising some ridicule against the man as one easily disposed to be deceived, lay in wait for his return. One of them, pretending to be dead, lay stretched out on his back at the side of the highway; the other, as if wailing over the one lying there, feigned the cries of mourners, and as the great man passed by he called out to him, saying that this wretched man had been suddenly seized by death and lay naked and unprepared for burial. He begged the great man not to neglect the holy rite for him, but, taking some pity on his poverty, to provide from what he had the last adornment to cast over the body. While the one was begging with these and similar words, the other, without delay, threw the cloak he was wearing over the man lying there and continued on his journey. When he had passed by and those who had played this trick on him were by themselves, that deceiver changed his feigned lament into laughter and bade the one lying there get up, cackling with pleasure at the gain the deception had brought them.

But the other stayed in the same posture, hearing nothing of what was said. When he used a louder voice and at the same time tried to rouse him with his foot, the one lying there no more heard the voice or felt the blow, but lay stretched out in the same posture. For he had died at the moment the cloak was thrown over him, having come in truth into the death he was feigning to deceive the great man; so that the man of God was not deceived, but the cloak became useful to those who received it for the very purpose for which he had given it. If such a work of the great man's faith and power seems grim, let no one be surprised, looking to the great Peter. For he too showed the power that was in him not only by his benefactions, showing the people the man lame from birth running and leaping, or healing the sufferings of the sick by the shadow of his body, cast on those the sun fell upon sideways as the apostle passed by; but when Ananias was contemptuously disposed toward the power that dwelt in the apostle, he condemns him to death, so that, I think, by the fear his case caused, everything contemptuous among the people might be brought to its senses by the fearful example, being taught not to fall into the same things. Fittingly, then, the imitator of Peter, having shown the greatness of his power through many wonders of benefaction, also made the one who tried to use deceit against the Spirit tell the truth about himself. For it was fitting, I think, that the destroyer of falsehood should change falsehood into truth even in the deceiver, so that it might become clear to all through this that everything said by the great man was true, and that whatever he accepted as true was no falsehood. So the Jews who in the way described mocked, as they thought, the great man's power became a lesson to others not to venture on deception against those for whom God becomes the accuser of what has been dared. After this, once, when an open-air gathering was held in one of the places of the country and all were struck with wonder at his teachings, a youth shouted to those standing around that it was not the teacher who was saying these things, but another standing beside him who was going through the words. When the boy was brought to him after the gathering broke up, the great man is said to have told those present that the youth was not free of a demon; and at the same time he took off the linen cloth from his shoulder, held it to the breath of his own mouth, and so threw it over the young man. When this was done, the youth began to be agitated and to shout, to fall down and toss about, and to suffer all the afflictions that come from demons. Then, when the saint laid his hand on him and calmed the agitation, the demon flew out of him, and he, restored to his right state, no longer said he saw beside the saint the one speaking with

him. For this too is one of his great wonders, that he performed the wonders of healing with no elaborate means, but that for the expulsion of demons and the healing of bodily illnesses the breath of his mouth, brought to the sufferer through the linen cloth, was enough. But to go through all his wonders in turn would take a long work and a speech beyond the leisure we now have; so I will mention one or two more of the things told about him, and with these I will bring my speech to a close. The divine preaching had by now spread everywhere, and all in the city and the region around had been converted to the godly faith of the doctrine; altars and temples and idols among them had been overturned, human life had already been cleansed of the pollutions surrounding idols, the foul fumes of sacrifices had been quenched, and the gore on the altars and the defilements from animal sacrifice had been washed away; and everywhere, place by place, all were zealously raising houses of prayer in the name of Christ. Then anger and envy entered the man who at that time presided over the rule of the Romans, because the ancestral objects of worship of his deceit were being neglected, while the mystery of the Christians was growing and the church was increasing in number throughout the inhabited world, rising to greatness through those who were constantly being added to the word. Thinking it possible to set his own bitterness against the divine power, and to stop the preaching of the mystery, to dissolve the assemblies of the churches, and to bring back to the idols those who had gone over to the word, he sends an order to the governors of the provinces, fixing a fearful threat of punishment against them unless they maltreated with all kinds of tortures those who worshipped the name of Christ and brought them back again by fear and the compulsion of tortures to the ancestral worship of the demons. When this fearful and godless proclamation had been announced to the governors, those appointed for this very purpose by the tyrant's cruelty having gone everywhere through the empire, there was a man ruling the province of that place who was such that he needed nothing from the higher authority, having cruelty at home by nature for his wicked impulse and bitterness and his hostility to those who believed the word. And he issues a fearful decree in public edicts: that they must abjure the faith or be punished with every kind of punishment and death. At that time nothing else, public or private, was done or pursued by those who had public affairs in hand except besieging and punishing those who held to the faith. Nor did the terrors lie only in the threats of words; along with them the varied array of instruments of punishment brought utter dismay, and

produced fear in people before they had experienced them. Swords and fire and beasts and pits, and instruments for racking the limbs, and iron chairs over fire, and upright stakes on which the bodies of those who resisted were stretched and torn by the strokes of fearful claws, and countless other things devised by them for the many kinds of torture of bodies were contrived; and those who held these offices had one zeal: that none should be shown milder than another in excess of bitterness. Some informed; others pointed out; others searched for those in hiding. Others set upon those who fled; others, eyeing the possessions of the faithful, harried those who held to the faith under the pretext of piety, so as to get control of their property. There was complete confusion throughout the province and great helplessness, all being suspicious of one another: for fathers the goodwill of their children did not last through the terrors, nor did nature guarantee to children the faithfulness of fatherly care. Families were divided against one another, split over their religion. A son who held to Hellenism became the betrayer of his believing parents; and a father who remained in unbelief was the accuser of his son who had believed. And a brother for the same reason made war on nature, judging it a holy act to punish his own kin if he held to godliness. As a result the deserts were full of those driven out, and the houses empty of their inhabitants. Many of the public buildings had been set apart for the needs of those imprisoned; for the prisons were not able to hold the multitude of those punished for the faith. All the marketplaces and gatherings, public and private, instead of their usual cheerfulness, took on such calamities, some people being dragged off and others led away, others laughing or weeping at what was happening. There was no pity for infants, no honour for grey hair, no respect for virtue came over the enemies; but, as in captivity, every age was surrendered to the enemies of the faith. Nor did the natural weakness of their sex allow women to remain outside such compulsions; there was one law of cruelty against all, subjecting the one estranged from the idols to an equal measure of punishment for what was done, without distinguishing nature. Then that great man, seeing the weakness of human nature, that the many were not able to contend for godliness to the point of death, counsels the church to withdraw a little before the fearful attack, thinking it better for them to save their souls by flight than to stand in the battle line of the contests and become deserters of the faith. And so that people might be most fully persuaded that saving the faith by flight brought no danger to the soul, he counsels withdrawal by his own example, himself withdrawing before the others from the onrush of the danger. At the same time this was above all the concern of the rulers, that by subduing him as a general they might break up the whole battle line of the faith; and for this

reason they were eager to bring him into the hands of the enemies. He had reached a deserted hill, having with him the man who had at first been brought to the faith from being a temple-warden, who was now serving in the grace of the diaconate. The pursuers followed close on his track in a great crowd, someone having informed them of the place where he was hiding. Some surrounded the foot of the hill and kept guard, so that he might have no way of escape from any side if he turned to flight; others climbed the mountain, searching every part, and were already in the great man's sight as they ran straight up toward him. He bade the man with him stand toward God with firm and undoubting confidence and entrust his safety to him, stretching out his hands in prayer, and not let his faith be knocked away by fear even if the pursuers came near. He made himself an example of his instruction to the deacon, looking toward heaven with unmoving eyes and standing upright with hands outstretched; and so they were. The men who ran up toward them looked all around the place, searched with all care every clump of brush, every jutting rock, every hollow of a ravine, and went down again to the foot of the hill, supposing that the men they were looking for had turned to flight in fear and fallen into the hands of those posted around below. Since, then, he was not found by them, and was not with the others either, the man who had spied out the place where the great man was staying described it by its marks, and in it the searchers insisted they had seen no one, only two trees standing a little apart from each other. When the searchers had gone back, the informer stayed behind, and finding the great man himself and the one with him at prayer, and recognizing the divine protection through which they had been taken for trees by the pursuers, he falls down before him and believes the word. And the pursuer of a little before became one of the fugitives. They remained in the desert a long time (for the war against the faith prevailed, as the governor raged fiercely against those who were added to the word of godliness), and everyone had turned to flight. Since, in the great man's case, they had given up hope that he would ever fall into the hands of the pursuers, they turned their furious madness against the rest and searched everywhere through the province all alike, men and women and children, to whom the name of Christ was venerable; and they dragged them to the city and filled the prisons, making godliness the charge against them in place of any other wrong, so that at that time the courts were busy with none of the public business, or this alone was the zeal of the rulers, to devise every kind of maltreatment and every sort of racking against those who held to the faith.