ABBOT of Arsinoe, in Upper Egypt. He governed ten thousand monks, dispersed in the deserts and monasteries near that town. These religious men hired themselves to the farmers of the country to till their lands and reap their corn; joining assiduous prayer and other exercises of their state with their labor. Each man received for his wages twelve artabes, or about forty Roman bushels or modii, says Palladius: all which they put into the hands of their holy abbot. He gave to every one a sufficient allowance for his subsistence during the ensuing year, according to their abstemious manner of living. The remainder was all distributed among the poor. By this economy, all the necessities of the indigent in that country were supplied, and several barges loaded with corn were sent yearly by the river to Alexandria, for the relief of the poor of that great city. St. Serapion was honored with the priesthood, and with admirable sanctity applied himself to the sacred functions of the ministry: yet found time to join his brethren in their penitential labor, not to lose his share in their charity. His name is inserted by Canisius in his Germanic Martyrology on this day, from certain copies of the Greek Menæa. See Palladius, c. 76, p. 760; Rufin. Vit. Patr. l. 2, c. 18; Sozomen, l. 6, c. 28.
{640}
ST. SERAPION, BISHOP OF THMUIS IN EGYPT, C.
THE surname of the Scholastic, which was given him, is a proof of the reputation which he acquired, by his penetrating genius, and by his extensive learning, both sacred and profane. He presided for some time in the catechetical school of Alexandria, but, to apply himself more perfectly to the science of the saints, to which he had always consecrated himself, his studies, and his other actions, he retired into the desert, and became a bright light in the monastic state. St. Athanasius assures us, in his life of St. Antony, that in the visits which Serapion paid to that illustrious patriarch, St. Antony often told on his mountain things which passed in Egypt at a distance; and that at his death, he left him one of his tunics of hair. St. Serapion was drawn out of his retreat, to be placed in the episcopal see of Thmuis, a famous city of Lower Egypt, near Diospolis, to which Stephanus and Ptolemy give the title of a metropolis. The name in the Egyptian tongue signified a goat, which animal was anciently worshipped there, as St. Jerom informs us. St. Serapion was closely linked with St. Athanasius in the defence of the Catholic faith, for which he was banished by the emperor Constantius; whence St. Jerom styles him a confessor. Certain persons, who confessed God the Son consubstantial to the Father, denied the divinity of the Holy Ghost. This error was no sooner broached, but our saint strenuously opposed it, and informed St. Athanasius of this new inconsistent blasphemy; and that zealous defender of the adorable mystery of the Trinity, the fundamental article of the Christian faith, wrote against this rising monster. The four letters which St. Athanasius wrote to Serapion, in 359, out of the desert, in which at that time he lay concealed, were the first express confutation of the Macedonian heresy that was published. St. Serapion ceased not to employ his labors to great advantage, against both the Arians and Macedonians. He also compiled an excellent book against the Manichees, in which he shows that our bodies may be made the instruments of good, and that our souls may be perverted by sin; that there is no creature of which a good use may not be made; and that both just and wicked men are often changed, the former by falling into sin, the latter by becoming virtuous. It is, therefore, a self-contradiction to pretend with the Manichees that our souls are the work of God, but our bodies of the devil, or the evil principle.[1] St..Serapion wrote several learned letters, and a treatise on the Titles of the Psalms, quoted by St. Jerom, which are now lost. At his request, St. Athanasius composed several of his works against the Arians; and so great was his opinion of our saint, that he desired him to correct, or add to them what he thought wanting. Socrates relates[2] that St. Serapion gave an abstract of his own life, and an abridged rule of Christian perfection, in very few words, which he would often repeat, saying: "The mind is purified by spiritual knowledge, (or by holy meditation and prayer,) the spiritual passions of the soul by charity, and the irregular appetites by abstinence and penance." This saint died in his banishment in the fourth age, and is commemorated on this day in the Roman Martyrology. See his works, those of St. Athanasius in several places, St. Jerom, Catall. c. 99; Socrates {641}, l. 4, c. 23; Sozom. l. 4, c. 9; Photius, Col. 85; Tillem. t. 8; Ceillier, t. 6, p. 36.
Footnotes:
1. A Latin translation of St. Serapion's book against the Manichees,
given F. Turrianus the Jesuit, is published in the Bibliotheca
Patrum, printed at Lyons. and in F. Canisius's Lectiones Antiquæ, t.
5, part 1, p. 35. The learned James Basnage, who republished this
work of Canisius with curios additions and {notes}, has added the
Greek text, t. 1, p. 37.
2. Socrat. Hist. l. 4, c. 23.
ST. ENNA, OR ENDEUS, ABBOT
HIS father, Conall Deyre, was lord of Ergall, a large territory in Ulster, in which principality Enna succeeded him; but by the pious exhortations of his sister, St. Fanchea, abbess of Kill-Aine, at the foot of mount Bregh, in the confines of Meath, he left the world, and became a monk. Going abroad, by her advice, he lived some time in the abbey of Rosnal, or the vale of Ross, under the abbot Mansenus. At length returning home, he obtained of Ængus, king of Munster, a grant of the isle of Arra, or Arn, wherein he founded a great monastery, in which he trained up many disciples, illustrious for sanctity, insomuch that the island was called Arran of the Saints. His death must have happened in the beginning of the sixth century. The chief church of the island is dedicated to God in his name, and called Kill-Enda. His tomb is shown in the churchyard of another church, in the same island, named Teglach-Enda. See F. Colgan, March 21.
MARCH XXII.
ST. BASIL OF ANCYRA, PRIEST, M.
From the authentic acts of his martyrdom in Ruinart, Henschenius, and
Tillemont, t. 7, p. 375.