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Life of St Porphyry, Bishop of Gaza

Mark the Deacon, tr. Hill, 1913

Chapter 2

For it is strange that tragic poets and other such writers¹ should spend their speech on laughter and old wives’ fables, but that we should suffer men who are saints and worthy of remembrance to be given over to forgetfulness. What punishment shall I not justly suffer, if I commit not to writing the life of a man, so beloved of God, that may teach us² to love wisdom through him, who strove zealously after the heavenly life? We shall tell the history of his wars and his standing up not only against the leaders and champions of the madness of idols,³ but even against a whole people filled full of all madness. For he remembered the words of the blessed apostle, whereby he saith: ⁴ ‘Take up the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the terrible day,⁵ and having overcome all to stand.’ Having put on this whole armour the said apostle went in unto the fight; but Porphyry also, having like adversaries, and as mighty, and being set to a conflict like unto the apostle’s, was crowned with an equal victory, and did raise up a trophy in the midst of the city of the Gazaeans, even that holy church⁶ of Christ which he did found. But that which gave him the victory was not his human nature, but his purpose, which drew unto itself the divine grace: for the love of Christ being exceeding hot within him, he had power to suffer and to do all things. How many warlike onslaughts did this man abide at the hands of his adversaries; how many plottings and mockings did he endure!

Notes

other such writers, i.e. especially writers of comedy, to whom, by a chiastic construction, the ‘laughter ‘refers, while ‘old wives’ fables’ refers to the writers of tragedy.
that may teach us. Literally: the life of a man so beloved of God, a life, teaching philosophy, of him who strove earnestly after the heavenly life.
madness of idols. εἰδωλομανία and the corresponding adjective -μανής are used by Mark, though not exclusively, in preference to the milder εἰδωλολατρία, -λατρης.
Eph. vi. 13.
terrible day. Mark’s text has φοβερᾷ (probably by a mere slip of memory) instead of πονηρᾷ, which is the reading of the New Testament MSS.
holy church, ἁγίαν ἐκκλησίαν. The epithet here seems to have a purely general sense. Usener (Legenden der heiligen Pelagia, p. 38), commenting on the phrase where it occurs in c. 20, says that it means the chief church in the city, under the immediate control of the bishop. But in many places, as in the phrase σχολάζειν τῇ ἁγίᾳ ἐκκλησίᾳ (c. 31), it can hardly have any such special sense; and here, although the church founded by Porphyry happens to have been the cathedral church, the addition of the qualification τοῦ Χριστοῦ seems to indicate that the adjective is used quite generally.