The Holy Fathers Slaughtered at Sinai and Raithou

In all four cases, sudden persecutions of the hermits had been recorded in texts, written by monks who were eyewitnesses. There is also an exceptional epigraphical testimony related to the martyrs of Raithou. The persecutions were later recorded also in the Synaxarion of Constantinople from the time of Symeon Metaphrastes, probably in the tenth or, at the latest, the eleventh century.

It happens that all four persecutions had definitely taken place before the well known establishment of Justinian’s fortresses, one in the valley of the Biblical Burning Bush in Sinai, and the other in ancient Raithou (Raya). Consequently, they can be roughly dated during the period from the 250s to the 540s. The martyrs Galakteon and Episteme had originally been a young Christian couple who together moved to the area of Mount Pouplion in Sinai, together with their former servant Ephtolmios, and they resided there in separate monasteries. They were both tortured and beheaded for their faith in Christ during the persecution of the Christians by the Roman Emperor Decius in the year 250. Their martyrdom, which was recorded by their companion Ephtolmios, suggests that all three were possibly among the first pilgrims, hermits, and martyrs of Sinai who are known to us by name.

The second group of martyrs comprise the Holy Forty Fathers of Sinai who had been living in hermitages at four distinct areas in the highest elevations of the peninsula – the vicinity of Mount Sinai that includes the area around the Biblical Shrine of the Holy Bush, Mount Horeb, and the nearby valleys where dependencies of the monastery of Sinai were later established. It has been historically accepted that this group of hermits of Sinai suffered around the years 373 to 378, the first known persecution by local tribes of pagan Saracens. A total of forty hermits were slaughtered for their faith in Christ, but only the names of two were recorded. Fortunately, the Egyptian monk Ammonios, coming from the ancient city of Canopos near Alexandria, who had been at that time on pilgrimage to the Shrine of the Holy Bush, wrote an eyewitness Report describing the dramatic events. He writes that during the attack, he had himself found refuge in the tower of the Bush along with the superior of the skete of the hermits, named Doulas, together with some other hermits and his companion pilgrims, who had also been travelling from the Holy Land to Sinai.

The third group of martyrs is the Holy Forty Fathers of Raithou who had also been living in hermitages scattered on the hills to the east of the central skete. Their martyrdom is described subsequently in the same Report of Ammonios. A rescued anonymous eyewitness hermit from the Raithou skete recorded nine names out of the total of forty hermits who had been slaughtered by Blemmyes, Nubian pirates, on the same day as those in Sinai. He also described in detail the architectural arrangement of the skete of Raithou as a typical skete around the central church (kyriakon) built in the middle of a courtyard, fortified by a wall that was not very high. It seems that only a person who had been there before the construction of the subsequent monastery, even for a short time, could possibly have made such a description.

Ammonios’ Report also mentions that a tomb for the Holy Forty Fathers of Raithou was afterwards created. Based on that, it has been recently suggested that the well known detached sixth century inscribed funeral slab of the forty fathers was originally placed at that tomb in Raithou. It seems that this inscription was relocated to the monastery of Sinai for commemorative purposes after the definitive decline of the Raithou monastery in the eleventh century. In Sinai, it was mounted on the south wall of the Chapel of Saint John the Baptist in the katholikon, which was soon afterwards renamed the Chapel of the Holy Fathers.

The fourth and last group of martyrs of Late Antiquity in Sinai was recorded in the Narrations, an unprecedented masterpiece, resembling memoirs perhaps but indeed of no known literary genre, written in seven chapters. It was composed by the anonymous, faithful, and learned hermit, the father of Theodulos. In the first four chapters, the author describes several travelers, whom he met in the city of Pharan, how he had been previously living as a hermit in Sinai along with one of his two children, how he was by force separated from his beloved son, and why he had found himself there, deeply mourning. He explained that there had been a sudden attack of the Saracens on the hermits when they had been attending the holy Liturgy at dawn, inside the chapel of the Bush. Two hermits were slaughtered on the spot and another sixteen further on, of which only the names of eleven were recorded. The authors’ son Theodulos was captured by Saracens and was meant to be sacrificed to the morning star at dawn on the following day. The next three chapters of the Narrations include the adventures of the author during the search for his son and his son’s captivity, their emotional reunion in the church of Elousa, a city of the Negev northwest of Sinai, and finally their return to Sinai, to resume their life as hermits.

The Narrations had recorded that this last slaughter took place on a particular Sunday, the fourteenth of January, but the year is not given. Traditionally, the monastery of Sinai dated the event to the fifth century, as the author was understood to be Nilos of Ankyra. As modern scholarship has recently established that they are two distinct persons, a redating of the Narrations between the years 532 and 551, and more precisely to the 540s, seems possible, that is, only a few years before the visit of a delegation of monks of Sinai to the Emperor at Constantinople and the subsequent construction of the Justinianic monastery at the site.

The Narrations clearly mention that for the sake of the pilgrims, it had been decided to celebrate the previous persecutions that had taken place on the twenty-eighth of December during Ammonios’ visit to Sinai, on the same day with the martyrs of the Narrations. The Synaxarion of Constantinople recorded, furthermore, that the Byzantine Emperor Anastasios the Second (565-578) had installed the relics of some ascetics of Sinai under the altar in the Church of Saint Paul that had been built inside the Orphanage complex in Constantinople. It seems that most probably around the year 570, the abbot of Sinai, possibly Gregorios, commissioned the above mentioned funeral slab, perhaps on the occasion of the recovery of the relics of the Holy Fathers of Sinai. The funeral slab was inscribed with a two line hymn on top, beneath which were three inscribed simple crosses, originally covered by sheets of wrought iron, that may represent the three groups of martyrs. A monogram found inscribed on the far right end of the inscription, possibly of the Mother of God the Hope (Θεοτόκε η ελπίς), was most probably inscribed to mark the ecclesiastical paradigm of that time, the new hymn. As the slab bears twice the monogram of the presbyter John, one comes to the conclusion that this is possibly John of Sinai, the author of the Ladder of Divine Ascent, who responded to the request of the other presbyter John, the Abbot of Raithou, to create this hymn. It may be that the presbyter John who had found Ammonios’ manuscript in the ancient city of Naukratis and translated it from Egyptian into Greek is the same John of Sinai who likely had the knowledge to write the life of the fathers of Raithou, and to revise the short Ammonios description of the slaughter at the skete of Raithou.

It seems that Saint John of Sinai’s efforts, probably to three successive requests by John, abbot of the monastery of Saint John the Baptist in Raithou, for the enhancement of the monastic tradition in that less conspicuous monastery (in relation to the famous monastery of Sinai), reached its peak some years later. John of Sinai, responding possibly for perhaps the third time to the request by John of Raithou, authored his masterpiece, “The God Inspired Tablets” in thirty steps, The Ladder of Divine Ascent.