Житие святого отца нашего Мефодия, патриарха Константинопольского

A native of Sicily in 3914, Saint Methodius of Christ in his youth took on the monastic form, succeeding in a virtuous life. During the reign of Leo the Armenian 3915, an iconoclast, he held the position of apocrisiary under His Holiness Nicephorus, Patriarch of Constantinople. Patriarch Nicephorus sent Saint Methodius to the pope in Rome 3917 with one instruction concerning church affairs; here, in Rome, he deliberately stayed for quite a long time, because the wicked Leo, having overthrown the most holy Nicephorus from the patriarchal throne, elevated him to the iconoclast heretic Theodotus of Melissia, nicknamed Cassiter 3918. After the death of King Leo and the false patriarch Theodotus, Saint Methodius returned from Old Rome to New Rome in 3919. In the rank of presbyter, he served the Lord in truth and reverence, tirelessly fighting against the iconoclastic heresy, which was especially intensified at that time: according to Leo the Armenian, Michael Valvos or Travlos, also an iconoclast heretic, ascended the royal throne 3920; The patriarchs in his days were ungodly people. And blessed Methodius took upon himself a great feat, arguing with heretics and putting them to shame. For such activities, the wicked king languished Saint Methodius in torment and prison, as the Greek Zonara 3921 reports about this: he reports that Michael Travlos at the beginning of his reign showed himself to be a merciful ruler: he freed many holy fathers, imprisoned by Leo the Armenian for the veneration of icons, from bonds and imprisonment, but then, after quite a considerable time, Michael canceled This, inspired by hypocrisy, was a good deed and, without hiding its evil wickedness, raised a persecution against the Orthodox. With anger, he took up arms against Saint Methodius and Euthymius, Bishop of Sardis - we don’t even talk about many others who suffered many from him. He sent Euthymius into exile for venerating icons, and imprisoned Saint Methodius in prison in Akrit in 3922. The same Zonara describes the wickedness of Michael Travlos in the following way: he imitated in everything, according to him, King Copronymus 3923; favoring the Jews, he ordered to fast on Saturday; not believing in the resurrection of the dead, Michael ridiculed the hope of a blessed life beyond the grave; mocked the predictions of the holy prophets, argued that demons do not exist and did not consider nasty carnal deeds to be a sin: considering Judas the traitor as a saint, Michael thought that the latter would be saved. He hated book teaching and prevented parents from sending their children to Orthodox schools, so that, having studied the Holy Scriptures, they would not expose his madness, but, being ignorant and uneducated, would follow his heretical error. So says Zonara. Saint Methodius courageously resisted the evil king, like a wise shepherd, knowledgeable in the Divine Scripture, Orthodox dogmas and traditions of the holy fathers; for this he, as a confessor of the truth, endured not only bonds and prisons, but even wounds. After the death of Mikhail Travlos, his son Theophilus 3924 reigned - heir not only to the throne, but also to his father’s evil faith. Theophilus tortured many for the honest veneration of holy icons, however, loving book learning, he renovated the deserted schools of Constantinople and ordered classes to begin in them again. He also freed Saint Methodius from captivity, as the Greek historian Michael Glykos reports: in an unprecedented and miraculous way, God delivered Methodius from a gloomy prison: Theophilus, out of love for knowledge, often spent time reading books; One day the king came across a book, the contents of which were unclear to him; one of those close to him remarked to Theophilus that Methodius, imprisoned in Akrit, was known for his ability to explain passages in books that were difficult to understand. The king immediately sent an order to bring Saint Methodius to him from prison; Having seen him, after a conversation he realized that Saint Methodius was a wise man, and freed him out of respect for him. Having received freedom, Saint Methodius again entered into a verbal struggle with the heretics, teaching to give the holy icons the honor and worship worthy of them; by this he again incurred the wrath of the iconoclasts: the activities of Saint Methodius in defense of Orthodoxy became known to the king, who was very angry with the saint of God, hiding his discontent until a more convenient time. During these days, the Greeks were at war with the Saracens in 3925, and there was a need for the king himself to be present with the army. Going to the regiments, the king took Saint Methodius with him, partly as if for the sake of prayer, partly for conversations from scripture and solving perplexed questions, which, as the king was convinced, Saint Methodius was skillful in explaining. In reality, the king took the saint of God with him out of fear that in the capital, if Saint Methodius remained in it, popular indignation against the iconoclasts would arise: the people loved the saint as a holy and teaching man, well versed not only in the field of spiritual, but also civil government; That’s why the king did not leave him in the capital during his absence, but took him with him. But, by God's permission, the Ishmaelites defeated the Greeks, destroying almost the entire army of the king, so that the latter barely escaped with small remnants of his regiments; Then the wicked king revealed his anger towards Saint Methodius, which he had hitherto hidden in his heart: “That’s why God gave our enemies victory,” said Theophilus, “because there are idolaters among us.” To this Saint Methodius objected: “The Lord, mocked by Christians in His holy icon, became angry with them and allowed the enemies to gain victory over us. Filled with rage, the king exiled Saint Methodius after the cruel scourging of 3926 to imprisonment on an island: here he ordered him to be imprisoned along with two robbers in a deep tomb cave, where no sunlight could penetrate. So Saint Methodius appeared as a living dead man, like Jonah in the belly of the whale, staying in the bowels of the earth and thanking God. One fisherman was entrusted with delivering him food and, moreover, such meager food so as not to die of hunger; the tormentors wanted to continue the life of the saint of God, and with it, his suffering in that tomb. During this imprisonment of Saint Methodius, Tsar Theophilus tortured the two holy confessors Theodore and Theophan for the veneration of honest icons: an inscription was burned on their faces with a hot iron, testifying to their worship of the holy icons, after which the tsar sent the martyrs into captivity. Their path lay past the island where Saint Methodius languished, imprisoned in a tomb cave. Having accidentally met with a fisherman feeding a prisoner, the holy confessors learned from him everything in detail about the saint of God. Not having the opportunity to see Saint Methodius, because the people leading them to prison were very strict, Theodore and Theophanes wrote the following greeting to him, which the same fisherman undertook to deliver to its destination: “To the living, as to the dead sitting in a tomb, to the earthly, going around the mountainous countries and to the one wearing bonds, they write chained, having “faces inscribed.” Having read this greeting sent with the fisherman and learned from the latter about the exploits of the holy passion-bearers, Saint Methodius thanked God, who had given them such courage. Then he responded to their greeting in turn with the following letter: “Buried before death and bound in bonds, he greets those prisoners, each of whom, having a “marked face,” is written in the book of life.” Saint Methodius remained in his grave confinement until the death of King Theophilus, and when (one) coffin received the dead man in truth 3927, then the other coffin, like a whale that spewed out the prophet Jonah from the belly, gave the world a “living dead man” 3928. When death covered Theophilus' eyes with grave dust and shut his wicked lips, putting silence on his blasphemous tongue, then the glorious confessor saw the light of day and again opened his lips to preach piety. After the death of Theophilus, his son, Michael III, reigned, and his mother Theodora ruled during his childhood 3929. The first concern of the ruler was concern for the peace of the church, completely disrupted by iconoclasm: one hundred and twenty years passed from the days of the first iconoclast king Leo the Isaurian 3930 to the death of Theophilus; During this time, the icon of Christ was desecrated by Christians, and an angry God brought about considerable disasters on the Christian kingdom for this. During these years, the Saracens, having captured many Christian countries, took many of their inhabitants as captives to their region. At the same time, the Greco-Roman state was divided into two kingdoms: meanwhile, earlier the king of New Rome or the Greek also owned Old Rome, so that East and West were united under the scepter of one Greek king. But due to the development of the iconoclastic heresy, associated with the fierce bloody torment of many confessors of piety, the West broke away from the power of the Greek kings, installing its own king. Therefore, the Greek king was forced to rule only Greece, and even then not all of it, because Palestine with the holy city of Jerusalem, Syria, Arabia, as well as Egypt with the regions subject to it, were taken by the Saracens. God allowed all this for the sins of Christians who had fallen from piety into heresy and desecrated the holy icons. Taking into account the latter circumstance, the pious Queen Theodora, filled with God-inspired reason, made every effort to ensure that, having destroyed the accursed iconoclastic heresy in the Christian kingdom, she would establish orthodoxy, returning the veneration of honest icons as a precious adornment to the bride of Christ, the holy Church. She ordered the release from bonds and imprisonment, and also the return from exile of all confessors of piety, so that they would come to a council in Constantinople, which would return the holy icons to the churches with due honor. By this decree, Saint Methodius was also released from the tomb. On the patriarchal throne, like an abomination of desolation in a holy place, still remained the false patriarch John, nicknamed Annius 3931, a heretic and sorcerer, enthroned by King Theophilus, and since the holy fathers did not want to have communication with him, the pious Queen Theodora deprived the aforementioned false patriarch of the throne and expelled him from The church is like a wild boar from the vineyard. By the grace of God, the holy confessor Methodius was elevated to the patriarchal throne to the inexpressible joy of all Orthodox. This erection of Saint Methodius, which took place more by God’s than by human election, was predicted even earlier by the Venerable Ioannikios the Great, about which his life says this: Hegumen of the Agavron monastery Eustratius once asked the Venerable Ioannikios: – Father, how long will the holy icons be trampled underfoot (and how long will this state of affairs continue), in which the Churches do not return, the persecutors are increasing and the flock of Christ is being plundered by wild animals? The Holy Father answered this: - Wait a little longer, brother, and you will see the manifestation of the power of God: someone named Methodius will take over the church administration, illuminated by the Divine Spirit, he will lead the Church in truth, destroy heresies, establish the Church with Orthodox dogmas, create silence and unanimity; those who resist will be humbled by the right hand of the Most High, This prophecy of the Monk Ioannikios clearly came true on Saint Methodius. After the death of Tsar Theophilus, he was installed as Patriarch of Constantinople, as a man worthy of such a great rank, as a strong pillar of orthodoxy and an unshakable affirmation of piety, as a warrior adorned by the martyrdom of Christ, foreshadowed by God and predestined by a perspicacious husband for the great service of the bishop. Saint Methodius, together with the blessed queen Theodora, convened a Local Council in Constantinople, which confirmed the dogmatic definitions of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, convened during the reign of Constantine and Irene, in Nicaea for the iconoclasts in 3932. Those who did not accept the dogmas of this Ecumenical Council were anathematized by the Local Council, assembled under Saint Methodius. Having brought joy to the Orthodox, turning church turmoil into peace, storm and excitement into silence, the fathers of the cathedral with great triumph in the first week of Holy Pentecost brought honest icons into the Church of the Lord. And there was great joy not only in Constantinople, but also in all those places under heaven where Orthodox Christians were located. When Orthodox Christians everywhere celebrated spiritual triumph, envy tormented the hearts of those in whose souls the iconoclastic heresy was rooted: such were the already mentioned, dethroned, false patriarch Annius and his brother Areabor, who had the rank of senator and sat in the royal chamber; such were some others from among the high-ranking nobles and people of lower rank. Not knowing what to do, out of malice they came up with ways to slander Holy Methodius. For gold, the heretics hired a noble woman of like minds with them - her son was a priest in Smyrna - so that, according to their instructions, she would go to the queen and the educators of the young king and tell them that the newly installed patriarch Methodius had committed fornication with her. The slanderers did this in the calculation that it would be more convenient for them to blaspheme both the teaching of Saint Methodius, who defended the veneration of honest icons, and the icons themselves, if the patriarch could be dishonored by spreading a bad rumor about him among the people and thereby disgracing his name. The woman, trained by the heretics, went to the queen and the educators of the young king, openly slandered Saint Methodius in front of everyone, bringing a complaint against her innocent husband. In order for her slander to be accepted as truth, she shed tears, as if she had suffered violence from the newly installed patriarch. They were surprised at such an act of the high priest, which gave rise to a great temptation; immediately the rumor spread throughout the city, confusing the Orthodox, and bringing joy and triumph to the wicked. Heretics laughed at the Orthodox: “This is the kind of patriarch you have, this is who you follow.” When the slander reached His Holiness Methodius himself, he was perplexed where exactly it could have originated. But having a clear conscience, in his soul he rejoiced at the undeserved disaster, at the same time the patriarch was sad, seeing such a great temptation among the people and the ridicule of heretics against the Orthodox. How does this great saint act, a man innocent in hands and pure in heart, who has kept his body immaculately clean from his mother’s womb? Wanting not so much to clear himself of false accusations, but rather to take away the temptation from the Church and stop the lying lips of heretics, the patriarch decided, sacrificing his shame, to reveal the hitherto unknown illness from which he suffered and which clearly revealed the high priest’s inability to engage in carnal sinful mixture. Having sent the princess to the chamber, the patriarch asked for a fair trial that would investigate the matter between him and the aforementioned wife. Appearing before a court consisting of honest persons, the patriarch, not wanting to argue with a shameless woman and wanting to indisputably testify to his innocence and convinced, moreover, by the emerging need to put aside natural shame, the observance of which was especially obligatory for a person of his rank, Holy Methodius exposed the “secret place” of his body, engulfed in disease, so that the “native flesh” was, as it were, mortified; and everyone learned how false the woman’s slander was, since they saw that it was impossible for such a sick person to commit a carnal sin. And the Orthodox rejoiced that temptation was destroyed in the Church and reproach was taken away from the sons of piety. The heretics were covered with shame and their wicked lips were stopped; their illness turned on their heads and their mockery brought shame and destruction to themselves. When the judges asked His Holiness Methodius how the illness came to him, he, discovering his illness, revealed the cause of it, which he had not told anyone about before: “When,” he said, “I was sent by His Holiness Patriarch Nicephorus to the Pope in Rome and stayed there, at that time, through the action of the dirty trick of the flesh, the Angel of Satan, a strong carnal lust, combined with excitement, attacked me carnal ouds; I struggled with lustful passion for many days and nights, exhausting myself with fasting and vigil and killing myself with all sorts of labors, and since the passion still did not leave me and it seemed to me that I was already close to falling, I threw myself with tears before the holy Supreme Apostle Peter, committing myself to his help and asking him for relief: I prayed to him that with the grace-given power granted to him by God, he would deliver me from the carnal abuse and thus did not allow my body, consecrated for purity, to be desecrated. When I fell asleep a little in sadness, the holy Apostle Peter appeared to me and touched the secret parts of my body with his right hand; from this touch I felt severe pain, as if someone had burned the sore spot with fire; I moaned a lot. The Apostle Peter said to me: “From now on you will no longer experience the warfare of the flesh.” “I immediately awoke from sleep and found myself with the same damage as you have already seen.” This story of Saint Methodius touched his judges: they declared him innocent; They ordered that woman to be punished so that she would tell who taught her to slander the innocent and pure bishop of God. And immediately the executioners appeared to take her for torture; She, seeing a naked sword, prepared fire, sharp thorn sticks, was greatly frightened and, without bringing the matter to execution, revealed the truth: she named everyone who hired and taught her by name, reported on the large amount of gold received from the instigators, and indicated the place where it was placed in her house. The judges sent trustworthy servants to the woman's house; They went and, indeed, found gold at the place indicated by the woman, which they brought to the judges. The latter pronounced the death sentence both on the woman and on those who taught her to slander Saint Methodius. His Holiness the Patriarch, being in his kindness a faithful and true follower of the Lord, not only did not allow the death sentence to be carried out, but freed his enemies from the wounds that lay ahead of them; he imposed on them only one punishment, so that on all leading holidays they would come ceremoniously with lighted candles from the Blachernae 3934 Church of the Most Pure Mother of God to the Cathedral Church of St. Sophia and here at the gates of the church they would listen to the anathema, which was carried out. Then the blasphemous heretical lips fell silent and the iconoclastic heresy was completely destroyed in Constantinople by the grace of God, prayer and the incessant zeal of the saint of God, His Holiness Patriarch Methodius, who emerged from the undeserved misfortune inflicted on him with even greater glory. His enemies were not given what David asks of God for those who sin: “fill their faces with dishonor, so that they may seek your name, O Lord” (Ps. 82:17). Blinded by malice with a petrified heart, they added new, no less bitter deeds to their first evil deeds. The above-mentioned false patriarch John, who is also Annius, the culprit of all evils, was sent to bow to one monastery; During his stay there, seeing the holy icons of Christ the Savior and the Most Pure Mother of God and the holy Angels again renewed by pious zealots after the iconoclastic destruction, Annius ordered his deacon to gouge out the eyes of those holy icons. The deacon acted as ordered. This was announced to the faithful Queen Theodora. Jealous for Christ God, she ordered to gouge out the eyes of the false patriarch himself, but then, persuaded by the requests of some senators, she replaced the first punishment with scourging: the queen ordered two hundred blows with hard whips to be applied to the false patriarch, worthy of countless torments and many deaths; for during his power he tortured many Orthodox Christians to death and, even while in captivity, did not cease to dishonor the holy icons. His Holiness Patriarch Methodius, after all the church turmoil and after the many misadventures he suffered for the icon of Christ, spent the rest of his life at the helm of the church in peace and silence, adorning the patriarchal throne in Constantinople with his angelic face and angelic life, leading the flock of verbal sheep of Christ to the truth and feeding in the pasture of inspired teachings. Under his influence, the veneration of holy icons increased, in which, in fact, the faces depicted on them were revered; at the same time, he also took care that in Constantinople the honor worthy of them would again be given to the honest relics of the saints of God; during the days of the reign of the iconoclasts, honorable relics were desecrated like icons - they were spat on, they were trampled underfoot, dragged through the streets with desecration, thrown into swamps and dung, and sometimes destroyed, burned or drowned; Only those relics were preserved untouched, which the hand of the pious hastened to hide in the ground from the hand of the wicked. All this led to the fact that even the rumor about the relics of the holy saints of God disappeared in Constantinople; That is why Saint Methodius of Christ made every effort to once again enrich Constantinople with honest relics and teach the Orthodox how to venerate them. First of all, he solemnly transferred from the place of initial burial to the capital the relics of the Monk Theodore the Studite, which remained incorrupt even after eighteen years from the day of his repose to God. Then he transferred to Constantinople the honest relics of Patriarch Nicephorus, which rested at the site of his imprisonment; this transfer by Patriarch Methodius of the relics of his master, for whom he was an apocrisiary and who sent him to Rome, is spoken of in detail on the 13th day of the month of March. Finally, like a precious treasure, he prepared his much-labored, long-suffering and purity-sanctified body for the church of Constantinople as an incorruptible relic: he was already approaching his death, which he himself foresaw and about which he received a prediction from the Monk Ioannikios. Having predicted his patriarchate at the beginning, he subsequently predicted his death. Both of them, gifted with foresight from the Holy Spirit, foresaw each other's death, as it is said about this in the life of the Monk Ioannikis. In the fifth year of Michael’s reign, the holy Patriarch Methodius, foreseeing the approaching departure to the Lord of the Monk Ioannikios, came to him with all his clergy, asking for his last blessing and prayers. The Monk Ioannikis, having sufficiently talked with Saint Methodius and taught those who came with him the Orthodox faith, predicted to Patriarch Methodius that he, after his death, would not hesitate to move from temporary to eternal life; then, after prayer and a final farewell, they parted. The Patriarch returned to his place, and the Monk Ioannikios remained in his cell, praying and preparing for his death. On the third day after the departure of the patriarch, our venerable and God-bearing father Ioannikis departed to the Lord (November 4); seven months later, June 14, His Holiness Patriarch Methodius also rested in the Lord on 3935. Thus the prophecy of the Monk Ioannikis came true that the patriarch would not hesitate after his death to depart into eternity. Upon the repose of Holy Methodius, great weeping and sobbing arose throughout the entire Church of Constantinople, which had lost such a great father and universal lamp; he was buried with the honor befitting a bishop so high in life and service. Saint Methodius shepherded the Church of Christ for four years and three months and then passed into a life unimpaired by time; numbered among the holy hierarchs, he appeared before the Chief Shepherd and the Great Bishop, who has passed through heaven, our Lord Jesus Christ, glorified by all the saints, to Him and from us sinners be honor and glory with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen. You labored on earth as if you were incorporeal, and you inherited heaven as Methodius, as if you expounded worship at the end of icons: having endured more labor and illness, you did not cease boldly denouncing the swept away icons of Christ. Sicily is one of the large islands of the Mediterranean Sea; It is separated from the mainland by the Strait of Messina. Leo V the Armenian reigned 813–820. Apocrisiaries were temporary or permanent representatives of the bishops of the most important churches under the person of the sovereign, who were in charge of all relations between their church and its representatives with the supreme authority. Rome, the main city of the Roman state, is located in the middle part of Italy and is located on both sides of the Tiber River, where it flows into the sea. Theodore I Cassiter was patriarch in 815–822. Those. Constantinople or Constantinople. Michael II the Tongue-Tie reigned from 820 to 829. Zonara John - Byzantine historian and canonist, contemporary of Emperor Alexius Komnenos (1080–1118). The first place in merit among Zonara's literary works belongs to his commentary on the full text of church rules. Another major work of Zonara is his “´Επιτομη ιστοριων” - a chronological account of the events of world history from the creation of the world to the accession to the throne of Emperor John Komnenos (1118). In addition, letters, lives of saints, hymns, etc. remained from Zonara. Probably near Cape Akrit. Constantine Copronymus occupied the throne from 741–778. Theophilus reigned 829–842. Theophilus ordered to beat St. Methodius on the cheeks, and his jaw was so broken that St. Methodius was left with an ugly scar. As patriarch, St. Methodius cut the ends of the hood and tied them around his jaw to hide the scar, out of respect for the confessor, and all the monks, following his example, began to wear a hood with slits. 842–855 Michael III the Drunk reigned 855–867. Leo III the Isaurian reigned 716–741. He was patriarch in 832–842. Vlaherna is a locality in Constantinople. Died in 847; ruled the Church for 4 years and 3 months too. Saint Methodius compiled rules for those turning to faith, which were accepted by the Church as a guide: three rites regarding marriages, rules of repentance and several church songs; after St. Methodius left several pastoral teachings. 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