CHAPTER XXXVI

ACCOUNT OF A MIRACLE IN THE PATRIARCHATE OF MENAS

WHEN Anthimus, as has been already mentioned, was removed from the see of the imperial city, Epiphanius succeeds to the bishopric; and after Epiphanius, Menas, in whose time also occurred a remarkable prodigy. It is an old custom in the imperial city, that, when there remains over a considerable quantity of the holy fragments of the immaculate body of Christ our God, boys of tender age should be fetched from among those who attend the schools, to eat them. On one occasion of this kind, there was included among them the son of a glassworker, a Jew by faith; who, in reply to the inquiries of his parents respecting the cause of his delay, told them what had taken place, and what he had eaten in company with the other boys. The father, in his indignation and fury, places the boy in the furnace where he used to mould the glass. The mother, unable to find her child, Wandered over the city with lamentations and wailings; and on the third day, standing by the door of her husband’s workshop, was calling upon the boy by name, tearing herself in her sorrow. He, recognising his mother’s voice, answered her from within the furnace, and she, bursting open the doors, saw, on her entrance, the boy standing in the midst of the coals, and untouched by the fire. On being asked how he had continued unhurt, he said that a woman in a purple robe had frequently visited him that; she had offered him water, and with it had quenched that part of the coals which was nearest to him; and that she had supplied him with food as often as he was hungry.

Justinian, on the report of this occurrence, placed the boy and his mother in the orders of the church, after they had been enlightened by the laver of regeneration. But the father, on his refusal to be numbered among the Christians, he ordered to be impaled in the suburb of Sycæ, as being the murderer of his child.

Such was the course of these occurrences.