"Give Blood and Recieve the Spirit"
December 24, 2024
The Venerable Daniel the Stylate reposed on this day in 493.
A fresco from the church of Panagia Mavriotissa in Kastoria (XII c.)
In 395 emperor-brothers Arcadius and Honorius partitioned Roman Empire into, consequently, Eastern and Western parts. In 409, the Urban Perfect Anthemios stabilized the situation with bread supplies to Constantinople stopping hungry riots. In the West the first Visigoth King Alaric received 5.000 of gold as a pay from the Roman Senate.
409 is the year when the future saint was born in the village of Merafa near today’s city Samsat (ancient Samosata) in the Turkish South-East. His parents were childless for a long time and consider a boy’s birth to be a miracle. And he received his name in a miracle way. A boy lived nameless for five years. Then his family visited a monastery where an abbot opened in the sanctuary a book of Prophet Daniel. Thus, a boy became Daniel.
When Daniel became 12, he ran away from home became a monk in a nearby monastery. This was the time when the St. Symeon the Stylite (390-459), who carried out his monastic struggle near Antioch, became famous. St. Daniel having visited him and received instructions went to Constantinople and began living in abandoned Hellenistic temple, which had reputation of the den of demons.
After the nine years in the seclusion St. Sergios, a disciple of St. Symeon, who just reposed brought the saint’s cowl (kukulion) to St. Daniel. St. Sergios persuded St. Symeon to erect a pilar in two human heights and continue there St. Symeon’s feat. This stylite was in the desert not far away from Constantinople. In 461 St. Daniel began his ascetic labors as a stylite.
This tower in Um er-Rasas, Jordan, might have been a home of a stylite
One of the goals of a stylite to mortify the flesh.In the course of 32 years that St. Daniel remained on his pillar he developed wounds on his feet. Once his disciples found him covered with ice (after that he permited to build a roof).
Emperor Leo I, was known as a butcher, either because of his line of work before ascension to the throne or because of his cruelty. The bust is Louvre
Because of many miricles peforomed through St. Daniel’s inercession Emperor Leo I “the Phracian” (r. 457-474) built St. Daniel a new pilar and organized there a new monastery. St. Symeon’s relics were brought there from Antioch. Leo ordered presbyter’s ordination for St. Daniel, but he refused to lower down a ladder for St. Patriarch Gennadios (r. 458-471). Therefore the patriarch performed a sacrament underneath the pilar and then St. Daniel allowed him to ascend so that they may commune together.
St. Daniel’s icon from Ferapontovo Monastery in the Russian North. Beginning of the 16th c.
St. Daniel lived in the time of bitter theological debates, when Emperor Zeno (474-475, 476-491), published Henotikon, a document based on the compromised between the adherants of the Council in Chalcedon (454) and these who believed that Christ had only one nature (Monophysites). St. Daniel became embroideled in this conflict. Patriarch Akakios (472-489) invited his supported and the saint was carried around (he could not walk anymore) in the city’s processions against Henotikon.
The saint knew the day of his departure from the early life and also made arrangments for taking his body down the pilar.
Source
L.V. Lukhovitskii, T.A.Artiukhova, “Daniil Stolpnik,” Pravoslavnaia Entsiklopedia
A documentary about a contemprory Georgian stylite
A Priest Who Knew the Russian Church Abroad
Archpriest Michael Artsimovich passed away on this day in 2002.
The future Fr. Michael was born in Berlin in 1922. His grandfather had been a governor in several provinces of the Russian Empire. In 1919, his father married Fr. Michael’s mother, a widow with three children, whose father was killed by the Bolsheviks in Kiev in 1918.
In 1926, the family moved to Paris, where Michael attended a Russian school. The family was pious and faithful to the ROCOR. Michael became a priest later in his life when he was 60 years old. Before that, he served as a subdeacon to various bishops. In the school in Paris, Michael was sat next to Alexander Schmemann, who became his close friend. Fr. Alexander recalled that the latter never attempted to “poach” him for the “Evlogian” Exarchate.
After World War II, Michael moved to Argentina. He had to provide for three children and worked secular jobs. In an interview, Fr. Michael said priests employed outside of the church should be an exception and not the norm.
In 1963, Subdeacon Artsimovich returned to the ROCOR diocese, serving as a warden of churches in Hamburg and Frankfurt. In 1980, Archbishop Pavel (Pavlov) ordained him a priest. In 1982, Fr. Michael moved to Meudon in Paris. He remained in this parish until his death. When, in 2001, a group of clergy went into schism, Fr. Michael remained with the Russian Church Abroad.
Just yesterday I learned from Messanger of German Diocese (Vetnik Germanskoi Eparkhii) that on August 16, 2024 Vadim Esikovskii passed away in Germany at the age of 85. Vadim Aleksevich was a warden of the ROCOR cathedral in Munich. Mr. Esikovskii belonged to the same White Russian emigration as Fr. Michael and similarly followed the same route from post War World II Europe to Argentina and then back to Europe.
“The face” of the Russian Church Abroad is being changed it is less and less the Church of White Russians and their descendants and more and more Church of the Soviet and even more Post-Soviet people and converts.
““The stream of Time, irresistible, ever moving, carries off and bears away all things that come to birth” (Alexiad Byzantine Princess Anna Komnena by 1083-1153). We all will leave this world one day, but the Church of Christ will last forevr.
Source
“My odna Tserkov’, Odno Telo” [“We Are One Church, One Body,”] Russkii Pastyr’, no. 41 (2002).