Symeon Stylites the Younger and Late

Antique Antioch Lucy Parker

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OX F O R D S T U D I E S I N B Y Z A N T I U M
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JAŚ ELSNER CATHERINE HOLMES
JAMES HOWARD-JOHNSTON ELIZABETH JEFFREYS
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CYRIL MANGO MARLIA MANGO
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Symeon Stylites the Younger
and Late Antique Antioch
From Hagiography to History

L U C Y PA R K E R
 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom
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For my parents
 Acknowledgements

This book began its life as an Oxford D.Phil. thesis. I am very

grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding my
doctorate. I finished the book while working as a British Academy
Postdoctoral Fellow, still in Oxford, and would like to thank the
British Academy for their support of my research. The book is
therefore a product of the rich and stimulating environment of the
History Faculty in Oxford. I am grateful to all the students and tutors
in Late Antique and Byzantine Studies with whom I have discussed
Byzantine religion over the years, and to David Taylor for inspiring
tuition in Syriac. I cannot imagine a better place to have worked on
this project. Of many debts, two stand out. I was first introduced to
Byzantine history as an undergraduate student by the late Mark
Whittow. Mark was a wonderfully engaging and kind tutor, and
remained a source of support, wisdom, and good humour long after
my student days. Like so many others, I miss him greatly. I am also
very indebted to my supervisor, Phil Booth. Phil has been unfailingly
generous and supportive to me, and his advice has greatly improved
my work. Among many kindnesses, he took the time to teach me
the basics of Coptic.
I am very grateful to everyone who has helped me in the process
of converting my thesis into a monograph. My doctoral examiners,
Averil Cameron and Vincent Déroche, gave me very helpful
suggestions and constructive criticism; I greatly appreciate their
support. After finishing my doctorate, I began working on the
‘Stories of Survival’ project in Oxford led by John-Paul Ghobrial.
John-Paul has been a wonderful mentor and friend, and I have
learned a great deal from him. I would also like to thank Elizabeth
Jeffreys, who was very encouraging when I first considered
publishing this book with Oxford Studies in Byzantium. I am very
grateful to Charlotte Loveridge and Cathryn Steele, my editors, and
to all the team at Oxford University Press for all their help
throughout the process of publication.
I owe a great deal to the support of my friends and family. I
cannot name them all here, but would especially like to thank Otone,
my house mate throughout most of the time I worked on this
project, for her unfailing friendship, support, and enthusiasm about
stylites. It has been a joy to talk about history, religion, and the
ancient world with Anastasia, Rosie, and Laura. My husband, Paul,
has been a constant source of encouragement. We first met each
other a few months before I finished my doctorate. Several years
later, we were in Scotland on our honeymoon when I found out that
my book had been accepted by OUP! I am so grateful for the love
and happiness that he has brought into my life.
My greatest debt is to my parents, Jo and Robert, for the support
of all kinds which they have given me over the years. I could not
have written this book without them, and I dedicate it to them with
love and gratitude.
 Contents

List of Figures
Note on Transliterations and Conventions
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Antioch and Northern Syria in the Sixth Century
Disasters in Antioch: A City in Decline?
Society and Culture
Conclusion
2. The Sermons of Symeon Stylites the Younger
The Early Christian Homily
Authorship
Genre
Style
Demons and Monks
Heaven and Hell
Rich and Poor
Conclusion
3. The Life of Symeon Stylites the Younger
The Hagiographer’s Worldview
Christology
Opposition and Crisis
Conclusion
4. The Life of Martha
Cult Promotion and Apologetic
 A Reorientation of Priorities
Liturgy and Ritual Practice
Conclusion
5. Hagiography and the Crises of the Sixth and Seventh Centuries
Saints’ Lives and Disasters
Context for Crisis: Heightened Expectations of Holy Men
Miracle Collections
Conclusion
Conclusion

Bibliography
Index
 List of Figures

0.1. Map showing the location of the ‘Wonderful Mountain’ (Mont Admirable),
where Symeon the Younger’s monastery was built, from Lafontaine-Dosogne
1967, pl. 1; reproduced with the permission of Peeters Publishers.
0.2. The remaining base of Symeon’s column on the ‘Wonderful Mountain’.
Photograph taken by the author in 2011.
0.3. Plan of Symeon’s monastery on the ‘Wonderful Mountain’, with his column in
the centre, from Van den Ven 1962–70, pl. 1a; reproduced by permission of
the Société des Bollandistes, Brussels.
0.4. The remains of the baptistery on the ‘Wonderful Mountain’. Photograph taken
by the author in 2011.
0.5. A column capital on the ‘Wonderful Mountain’. Photograph taken by the
author in 2011.
Note on Transliterations and Conventions

Any author of a book treating an area which used a range of

languages faces difficult decisions in terms of transliteration
conventions. I have tried to follow some clear principles, but, like the
scribes of Syriac manuscripts, I beg the reader to forgive any
mistakes. For names which have common English equivalents, I
have used these (thus John not Ioannes/Yuḥanon, George not
Georgios/Giwargis, Cyril not Kyrillos). When a name does not have a
widely used English equivalent, I typically use a simplified Greek
transliteration (Amantios, Dorotheos, Evagrios Scholastikos). I do,
however, use a Latinized transliteration for authors who wrote in
Latin (Marcellinus comes), for emperors (Tiberius and Heraclius),
and for martyrs whose names are paired with common English
names (thus Cosmas and Damian, not Kosmas and Damianos). For
place names, I typically use the commonly known English version.
For places with both Syriac/Arabic and Greek names, I use the name
most widely used in scholarly literature. For obscure place names
mentioned in hagiographies, I use a simplified transliteration from
Greek.
In the main text of the monograph, I provide all quotations in
English translation. If I have made the translation myself, or adapted
it from a published translation, I provide the original-language
quotation in the footnote, so that readers may check my
translations. If I have quoted from a published translation, I do not
provide the original language text, although I do provide a reference
to the relevant edition as well as the translation. For the Bible,
unless otherwise indicated quotations from the Old Testament are
from the New English Translation of the Septuagint (Oxford, 2007),
accessed online through http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/nets/edition/,
which includes updates from 2009 and 2014; quotations from the
New Testament are from The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New
Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha, 4th edn (Oxford,
2010).
 Abbreviations

ACO E. Schwartz et al. (eds), Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum

(Berlin, 1914– ).
CPG Clavis Patrum Graecorum (Turnhout, 1974– ).
IGLS Les inscriptions grecques et latines de la Syrie (Paris, 1929– ).
NETS A. Pietersma and B. G. Wright (eds), A New English
Translation of the Septuagint (Oxford, 2007).
NRSV M. D. Coogan (ed.), The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New
Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha, 4th edn
(Oxford, 2010).
Pauly-Wissowa A. Pauly, G. Wissowa, et al. (eds), Pauly’s Real-Encylopädie
der classischen Altertumswissenschaft (Stuttgart, 1894–1979).
PLRE A. H. M. Jones, J. R. Martindale, and J. Morris (eds),
Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, 3 vols in 4
(Cambridge, 1971–92).
SEG Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum (Leiden, 1923– ).
 Introduction

Shortly before the Persian sack of Antioch in 540, a local holy man
received a troubling vision. This holy man, Symeon Stylites the
Younger, was, according to his hagiographic Life, warned by God
that He was angered by the sins of the Antiochenes and was
planning to deliver them to the Persians. Symeon cried out to God,
imploring Him to change His mind and spare the city. The
hagiographer reports, however, that the saint received no response
from God, because His anger was at its peak. Symeon then prayed
again, fervently, and God provided an uncompromising reply:

I will surrender the city and I will not hide from you what I am going to do.
I will fill it with enemies and I will surrender the majority of those living in it
to slaughter, and many of them will be led off as prisoners.1

Symeon could not change God’s mind; destruction was unleashed on

Antioch. The hagiographer continues to claim that Symeon was able
to mitigate the damage wrought, and to protect some monks and
prisoners who invoked his name, but his initial petition for God to
spare Antioch went unheeded. This episode raises uncomfortable
questions about the position of the holy man as an intercessor
between God and his supplicants. Could a human, however holy, be
expected to change the mind of God? How could he reconcile
fulfilling his supplicants’ desire for protection with his obedience to
God’s will? And, most strikingly, how would his supporters react to
his failure to achieve protection for the community which he claimed
to defend?
This is a book about the authority of the holy man and its limits in
times of crisis. It investigates the tensions that emerged when
increasingly ambitious claims about the powers of holy men came
into conflict with undeniable evidence of their failures, and explores
how holy men and their supporters responded to this. It takes as its
central figure Symeon Stylites the Younger, who, from his vantage
point on a column on a mountain close to Antioch, witnessed a
period of exceptional turbulence in the local area. Symeon the
Younger was born in Antioch in c.521.2 According to Symeon’s
hagiographer, the saint’s father, John, was the son of two perfume-
sellers from Edessa. Symeon’s mother, Martha, had desperately
desired to remain a virgin but had to bow to her parents’ wishes to
marry John.3 After her marriage, she supplicated John the Baptist to
be granted a child to serve Christ; Symeon was born after this.4
Symeon’s sanctity was foreshadowed throughout his infancy: he
would only drink, for example, from his mother’s right breast,
spurning the left (in an echo of Christ’s division between the
righteous sheep on his right and the sinful goats on his left).5 When
Symeon was five, an earthquake struck Antioch; one of the victims
was the saint’s father, John.6 His life was thus marked from an early
age by the disasters that afflicted sixth-century Antioch. Not long
afterwards, a man in white appeared to Symeon and led him to a
monastery in the mountains, led by another stylite, John. Symeon,
now aged six, joined the monastery, and soon ascended a small
column next to John’s.7 This was the start of an exceptional career.
The child saint received numerous visions from God, and
surpassed the rest of the monastery in asceticism, provoking
jealousy among the monks.8 He soon began to perform miracles.
Ephraim, the patriarch of Antioch, came to visit him and spread his
fame within the city.9 After some time, he moved onto a 40-foot-tall
column, on which he stood for eight years.10 He foresaw John’s
death, and seems, although the hagiographer never states this
explicitly, to have taken over the monastery after this took place.11
After John’s death, Symeon redoubled his ascetic efforts, and
performed yet more miracles. Indeed, most of his hagiographic Life
consists of a vast array of miracle stories, with little clear narrative or
chronological structure. But this is interspersed with several key
events, some relating to Symeon’s own career and monastery, some
part of empire-wide events. Symeon, as we have seen, is said to
have prophesied the Persian sack of Antioch by Khosrow I in 540.12
In an ultimately unsuccessful effort to avoid his crowds of admirers,
he relocated his monastery to the ‘Wonderful Mountain’ (so named
by Christ in a vision), where he arranged for a new column and new
monastic complex to be built (see Fig 0.1).13 The base of this
column still stands today (see Figs 0.2 and 0.3).
Fig. 0.1 Map showing the location of the ‘Wonderful Mountain’
(Mont Admirable), where Symeon the Younger’s monastery was
built, from Lafontaine-Dosogne 1967, pl. 1; reproduced with the
permission of Peeters Publishers.
Fig. 0.2 The remaining base of Symeon’s column on the ‘Wonderful
Mountain’. Photograph taken by the author in 2011.
Fig. 0.3 Plan of Symeon’s monastery on the ‘Wonderful Mountain’,
with his column in the centre, from Van den Ven 1962–70, pl. 1a;
reproduced by permission of the Société des Bollandistes, Brussels.

The plague, which afflicted the eastern empire in the early 540s,
also affected Antioch and Symeon’s own monastery; Symeon had to
appeal to God to bring back one of his best-loved disciples, Konon,
from death.14 Symeon foresaw the death of Patriarch Ephraim and
the succession of the wicked Domninos.15 He predicted further
earthquakes which afflicted Antioch.16 He was ordained as a priest
(unlike his famous predecessor Symeon Stylites the Elder).17
Justinian’s agent Amantios came to Antioch in response to Symeon’s
prayer to punish the pagans and idolaters in Antioch.18 Symeon
foresaw the accession of Anastasios as patriarch of Antioch, of John
Scholastikos as patriarch of Constantinople, and of Justin II as
emperor.19 He healed Justin II’s daughter, but when the emperor
himself fell ill he refused Symeon’s advice to avoid wicked treatments
and to entrust himself to God, and consequently turned mad.20 This
is the last clearly dateable episode in the Life until it recounts
Symeon’s own death in 592.
This brief summary is enough to show that Symeon’s life was of
exceptional historical interest. It spanned most of the sixth century,
a century which has been the subject of intense historiographical
debate, seen sometimes as the end of antiquity, sometimes as the
start of Byzantium.21 The reign of the emperor Justinian (527–65)
was traditionally seen as a last golden age for the eastern Roman
empire; recent studies, however, have depicted it as a time of rising
social tensions and economic disparities, of Kaiserkritik, religious
dissent, and increasing eschatological fears.22 Others have seen the
later sixth century as a time of ideological change: of governments
adopting an increasingly religious tone and becoming ever more
reliant on saints’ cults, with, perhaps, a concomitant increase in
scepticism towards the cult of saints.23 All of these debates take
place with an eye towards the military disasters of the seventh
century: was the empire fundamentally weakened or riven with
tensions that made it more vulnerable to devastation first by the
Persian armies and, subsequently and permanently, by the new
forces of Islam? Late antiquity as a field of study has sometimes
been criticized for seeming to deny the possibility of any form of
decline or catastrophe; scholars have recently pushed back against
this with a renewed interest in crisis in multiple forms.24 Symeon’s
life offers a new perspective on the religious and social
developments of the sixth century, especially in the region of
Antioch. Hagiography, more perhaps than other sources, can offer
exceptional insights into living debates within society around
questions of religious belief, theodicy, and the role of saints within
the empire. This does, however, present a methodological challenge:
how to write history from a body of materials largely concerned with
glorifying the reputation of an exceptional individual, around whom
legendary material accumulated rapidly?
This book seeks to explore the relationship between saints and
society; between hagiography and history. Holy men have provided a
topic of great interest for late antique historians since Peter Brown’s
ground-breaking article of 1971 on the rise and function of the holy
man. In 1971 Brown famously portrayed the holy man in
anthropological terms as a mediator and patron within society;
historians have subsequently uncovered various other roles played
by holy men and women, from ‘commander’, to ‘teacher’, to
‘intercessor’, and combatant with demons.25 Brown himself has
shifted his emphasis from his original article, proposing various other
ways of understanding the holy man, including as ‘exemplar’ and as
‘arbiter of the holy’.26 Others have emphasized the diverse
behaviours of holy men, suggesting that we should not attempt to
generalize about their roles at all.27 All of these approaches are
fundamentally historical, seeking to uncover the reality of the lives
and behaviours of holy men. But there is always a certain
methodological tension that inevitably affects historical studies of
hagiography and saints’ cults. The problem, of course, is that
hagiography is not history, in the sense of quasi-objective modern
historiography.28 It is very difficult to untangle the complex
relationship between holy men, their cults, and their hagiographers.
Since Brown’s original article, it has become very apparent that
saints’ Lives cannot be read as straightforward, accurate reports of
the lives of holy men or women, even when stripped of their more
fantastic elements: hagiographers selected and shaped their material
to fulfil a wide range of purposes, from the panegyrical to the
personal and political.29 Some holy men may have been entirely
fictitious (although their Lives could still, of course, convey spiritual
truths); many probably existed, but this does not mean that the
majority of material found in their vitae is historically accurate.30
Literary approaches to hagiography have proliferated in scholarship,
revealing further aspects of hagiographers’ rhetorical techniques.31
The concept of a genre of ‘hagiography’, which encompasses texts of
a variety of forms, including biographic Lives, miracle collections,
accounts of martyrdoms, collections of sayings, and homilies, has
itself been called into question.32
Even if a historian abandons the ambition to assess the historicity
of the Life of a holy man and decides to focus instead on his cult and
posthumous representations, the relationship between hagiography
and cult remains complicated. Hagiography (whether in the form of
a saint’s Life or a collection of miracles) creates a particular vision of
a saint and his or her cult. This vision does not necessarily reflect a
generally accepted interpretation of the saint, who could mean very
different things to different people. Nor does it always represent the
‘official’ ideology of a cult, insofar as such an ideology ever existed.
This is perhaps most strikingly demonstrated by the fifth-century
Miracles of Thekla: the work was written by a maverick ex-member
of the clergy at her shrine at Seleucia in Isauria who had been
excommunicated by local bishops.33 But a whole host of examples
could be adduced to show that hagiography often represents the
interests of a particular individual, or group, rather than all of a cult’s
devotees. The several Lives of the fifth-century stylite Symeon the
Elder differ, sometimes significantly, in their accounts of his life and
in particular his death; these differences seem to reflect the diverse
interests of rival groups associated with his cult.34 The two surviving
miracle collections relating to the cult of Cyrus and John at
Menouthis, one written by the educated monk and future patriarch
of Jerusalem, Sophronios, and the other by an anonymous, possibly
non-clerical, devotee of the martyrs’ shrine, present drastically
different visions of proper cultic practice, of the requirements for
supplicants, and of salvation.35
Several saints’ Lives produced in monastic communities were
written in the context of internal controversy, often relating to events
following the death of the holy man. The Bohairic Life of Pachomios,
for example, seems to have been intended in part to defend
Theodore, a monk in Pachomios’s monastery at Pbow who later
became leader of the Pachomian confederation in very controversial
circumstances.36 The whole account of Pachomios’s life is bound up
with that of Theodore’s, and appears highly partisan: it is difficult to
believe that this emphasis would have been accepted by all
members of the Pachomian confederation. Hagiographic texts thus
embody a range of more or less particular interests, which do not
necessarily represent those of most devotees of the cult of the saint
in question. This point should not perhaps be pushed too far: even if
rival factions might have interpreted particular aspects of a saint’s
career very differently, it is likely that they would all have shared
some common ‘memories’ of his or her achievements, which are
reflected in hagiography. Nonetheless, it is clearly of critical
importance to establish, as far as possible, when, why, and by whom
any given hagiography was written.
How, then, is the historian to tackle the problem of disentangling
the saint as historical figure, from his posthumous cult, and from the
version of him represented in a hagiographic text? One option is to
avoid the pitfalls of hagiography by focusing on other sources
relating to holy men, including letters and sermons. Powerful studies
have been produced on, for example, the letter collection of the
sixth-century Palestinian holy men Barsanouphios and John, and the
various writings of the famous fifth-century Egyptian hegumen
Shenoute of Atripe.37 Little such evidence survives relating to
stylites, but Dina Boero has recently discussed the few letters
attributed to Symeon the Elder.38 A contrasting approach to the
problem of historicity is, in a sense, to discount it: to focus only on
the reality of the hagiographic text, rather than trying to relate it to
any real historical events or persons. This can be a very fruitful
approach, and is often necessary, especially when dealing with Lives
of saints which are almost certainly entirely fictitious.39 To my mind,
however, it is not entirely satisfactory when examining saints’ Lives
that do demonstrably bear some relationship to real historical events
and persons, particularly if they were written for audiences who
would have had some knowledge of the historical saint. Even if a
historian is interested in the hagiographer and his construction of the
holy man rather than in the holy man himself, it is only possible to
analyse fully the work of the former through an awareness of how
far he is constrained by real events and how and why he may have
distorted his account of the saint’s life. While the recent emphasis on
the ‘literary’ qualities of hagiography is to be welcomed, hagiography
is a form of literature which, perhaps more than most, cannot be
dissociated from society and historical events, particularly given how
often it is polemically or apologetically motivated.
The problem then remains, of course, of how to establish the
relationship between hagiography and historical events. When other
sources are available for comparison, the task becomes easier, but
often this is not the case. Unfortunately, it is not possible to accept a
hagiographic narrative on the grounds that it appears plausible: the
divergent accounts of the death of Symeon Stylites the Elder all
seem, independently, reasonably coherent and realistic, but they
clearly cannot all be true.40 Nonetheless, there are elements in
hagiography which I believe can be taken, with reasonable
confidence, to relate in some sense to actual events. In particular, it
is likely that pressure points—that is to say moments of significant
tension or opposition to the saint or his cult, which go beyond mere
hagiographic stereotype—must in most cases reflect real instances of
trouble, even if they are often recounted in highly misleading terms.
It is not uncommon for hagiography to contain elements of
apologetic, which would be unnecessary were they not a response to
actual controversy and a reflection of genuine concerns about
maintaining a saint’s reputation. It may therefore be possible, with
care, to isolate moments in texts in which hagiography and history
draw particularly close. This is certainly not to suggest a return to
the approach of extracting ‘historical nuggets’ from hagiography.
Rather, it is to emphasize that a hagiographer’s literary strategies
(from the structuring of the text to the use of biblical typologies) are
often a response to historical realia and that the one cannot be
understood without the other.41
There are other ways, too, of writing history from hagiography.
One productive approach is to look at hagiography comparatively
and systematically, and to trace developments in the genre over
time. If a development can be noted across numerous texts of a
similar chronological period, this must relate to some ideological or
societal change. The modern study of hagiography and holy men
has, however, too often adopted a synchronic approach: one flaw,
for example, in Brown’s indisputably brilliant work is that he tends to
speak interchangeably of holy men from the fourth to sixth/seventh
centuries, without questioning whether their roles remained the
same despite undeniable changes in the societies in which they
lived.42 It is, rather, necessary to adopt a diachronic approach, since
evolving opportunities and pressures within a changing society had a
determinative impact both on holy men’s careers and on how they
were presented by their biographers; hagiography was never a static
literary form.
There have been few surveys of hagiography across late antiquity,
although it is difficult to know whether this is a cause or an effect of
this dominant synchronic perspective.43 Recently, however, several
important studies have emphasized the need to situate hagiography
in its precise context, and shown that developments in hagiography
relate to wider social, political, and ideological trends. Thus Phil
Booth analyses the developing role of the sacraments in late antique
hagiography, arguing that this was linked both to the growing
dissociation of the anti-Chalcedonians from the imperial church and,
at least in some circles, to the political and military crises of the
seventh century.44 Matthew Dal Santo has shown that hagiographic
sources produced in the late sixth and early seventh centuries, in
both east and west, were characterized by signs of dissent and
scepticism, particularly about the possibility of posthumous
intercession by saints; he suggests that this was related to criticisms
of the Byzantine emperors, and more generally to the political and
economic tensions of the period.45 There is still, however, much
work to be done in assessing processes of change in late antique
hagiography.
Dal Santo’s book also reflects another important development in
studies of holy men: the realization that many Byzantines did not
accept the claims made about some (or all) saints’ miracle-working
powers and spiritual authority, on a wide range of grounds.46 The
ubiquity of references to scepticism about saints, which had earlier
been highlighted in an important article by Gilbert Dagron, has also
been emphasized recently by Antony Kaldellis.47 From a different
direction, Mischa Meier, in his monumental work on responses to
disasters in the reign of Justinian, has argued that crises in this
period caused severe damage to holy men’s reputations.48 The
insights of all these scholars have profoundly changed the way we
understand Byzantine hagiography and holy men. There remains
considerable scope, however, to build on this work. There is, for
instance, a need for more detailed studies of individual holy men, to
assess how the particular context of their careers shaped their
opportunities and the challenges they faced, and for literary-
historical analyses of hagiographies, to show how their authors
attempted to deal with scepticism. And much analysis remains to be
done of the development of hagiography across late antiquity, to
show how particular trends created both possibilities and pitfalls for
saints and their devotees.
These questions are at the heart of this book. Its primary focus is
the cult of the holy man Symeon Stylites the Younger. The surviving
material related to Symeon the Younger is abundant, and has
received uneven scholarly attention.49 This evidence includes a
letter, a theological quotation, and thirty sermons attributed to
Symeon himself; his lengthy saint’s Life, summarized above, which
appears to have been written by a member of his monastery shortly
after his death; a further hagiographic Life of his mother, Martha;
several other references to Symeon in contemporary and near-
contemporary sources, including the Ecclesiastical History of
Evagrios Scholastikos and the Spiritual Meadow of John Moschos;
and the physical remains of his monastery and cult objects
associated with it (see Figs 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5, as well as 0.2 above).50
Fig. 0.4 The remains of the baptistery on the ‘Wonderful Mountain’.
Photograph taken by the author in 2011.
Fig. 0.5 A column capital on the ‘Wonderful Mountain’. Photograph
taken by the author in 2011.

Two of the Georgian Lives of the Thirteen Syrian Fathers claim

that their heroes had contacts with Symeon (in a reflection of the
strong connections established between Symeon’s cult and Iberia).
The dating of these texts is uncertain, and most in their surviving
versions are probably a product of the tenth century at earliest;
nonetheless, some scholars think that the Lives have sixth-/seventh-
century cores.51 There is also a significant body of later Byzantine
and eastern Christian material associated with the saint and his
monastery.52 Many of these sources have been almost totally
neglected in modern scholarship; most notably, the sermon
collection and the Life of Martha have never been translated into a
modern language.53
 This book seeks to make a major contribution to the study of
Symeon’s cult. It provides a new perspective on Symeon’s
relationship with Antioch, it presents a historically-informed analysis
of the literary sources associated with the saint, and it makes
accessible some materials—in particular his sermon collection and
the Life of Martha—which have hitherto been little used by late
antique historians. It does not offer a comprehensive study of the
stylite’s cult; it focuses primarily on the literary evidence, only
occasionally referring to the archaeological material, which remains
in need of further specialist study. Rather than synthesizing all the
surviving evidence, it uses three key texts associated with Symeon—
his sermon collection, his Life, and the Life of his mother Martha—to
uncover a new perspective on the holy man, exploring the limits of
his authority in times of crisis. It seeks to embed the study of the
saint in the study of his environment: sixth-century Antioch and the
natural and military disasters that it faced. It uses Symeon’s life as
an entry point into exploring ideological responses to crisis in the
sixth- and seventh-century Roman east. In a sense, the book is a
study less of a particular saint’s cult over time than it is of a
historical moment, when increasingly high expectations of holy men
came into conflict with undeniable evidence of disaster and failure.
Any holy man’s career, and cult, can only be understood in its
precise social, economic, political, and religious context: the first
chapter therefore introduces Antioch and northern Syria in the sixth
century, exploring the series of disasters which hit the city during
Symeon’s lifetime. It addresses the scholarly debate about the state
of the Roman empire in this period, arguing that the severity (or
otherwise) of the economic and practical consequences of disasters
did not necessarily correlate to the scale of their cultural,
psychological, and ideological ramifications. After this, the main body
of the book analyses three key texts associated with the cult.
Chapter 2 discusses the sermon collection attributed to Symeon,
which sheds light on how a holy man could construct his own
spiritual authority. Whereas Symeon’s hagiographer presents his
healing miracles as the basis of his popularity, the sermons reveal
the power of the stylite’s own rhetoric: starkly polarized in his
thought, he eschews the compromises adopted by many clerical
preachers, focusing on the opposition of demon and monk, rich and
poor, and heaven and hell. Although the sermons are shorn of
specific references to their social context, they do suggest that
Symeon at times played a divisive role in society, exploiting social
tensions to increase his authority. In particular, Symeon’s sermons
are extremely hostile to the wealthy, going so far as to associate
wealth with paganism, a theme which recurs in other texts
associated with the stylite.
Chapter 3 examines the Life of Symeon the Younger, which
shows how the recently deceased leader was memorialized by his
disciples to perpetuate his cult posthumously and, particularly
interestingly, how they dealt with controversial aspects of his career.
It argues that at one level the Life can be read as an extended
apologia for Symeon’s failure to protect Antioch and its environs
from the natural and military disasters of the sixth century. The
hagiographer adopts various biblical models to attempt to exculpate
Symeon of accusations of failure, but the difficulty of the situation
leads him into inconsistencies and problematic theological claims. He
also adopts a more aggressive approach, finding scapegoats to
blame for the disasters: in particular, he targets the rich of Antioch,
whom he depicts as sinful pagans. Chapter 4 addresses the Life of
Martha, in which a new saint, the stylite’s mother, is created for the
cult, revealing its continued need for development in the seventh
century. The Life contains signs that the promotion of Martha’s cult
was controversial, perhaps because of her exceptional position as
the mother of an ascetic holy man. I argue that the promotion of
Martha’s cult was intimately bound up with the desire to encourage
liturgical participation at the shrine. Thus her Life contains an
original and inclusive vision of holiness, which eschews most
traditional emphases of the Lives of female saints, such as celibacy
and asceticism, focusing instead on the redemptive powers of liturgy
and the sacraments. Martha’s hagiographer also steers clear of most
of the polemical and apologetic themes so prominent in the Life of
Symeon. He adopts a different approach to the challenges facing
saints in this period of crisis, avoiding more ambitious claims about
his subject’s miracle-working powers, and moving the responsibility
for successful miracles away from the exceptional powers of holy
figures towards the proper ritual and cultic behaviour of supplicants.
Chapter 5 takes a step back and situates the Lives of Symeon and
Martha in the context of broader hagiographical trends in the sixth
and seventh centuries. Symeon’s hagiographer’s struggles to justify
disasters are echoed in other near-contemporary saints’ Lives,
including those of Nicholas of Sion, George of Choziba, and
Theodore of Sykeon. I argue that holy men had by this period
become particularly prone to accusations of failure in times of crisis
because of ideological developments across late antiquity: in
particular, growing claims about the thaumaturgic powers of saints
and the increasing association between holy men and the empire.
The Life of Martha reflects a different, but possibly complementary,
development in hagiography: the emergence of posthumous miracle
collections which, with the important exception of the Miracles of St
Demetrios, do not describe extravagant miracles performed for the
benefit of large groups of people but instead include only small-scale
miracles (almost always healing miracles) which help only one or two
people. In these collections, the onus for performing the miracle
tends to be shifted away from the saint and onto the supplicant; a
miracle will only take place, usually, if the supplicant fulfils various
preconditions, be they practical or spiritual. This narrower focus, as
well as this change of emphasis, was certainly suitable for a time
when the more ambitious claims of many living holy men’s
hagiographers had been called into question by plague, earthquakes,
and conquest. Taken together, these sources have considerable
implications for scholarly understandings of the social position of the
holy man, of Christian attitudes to theodicy, and of the state of the
Byzantine empire in the sixth and seventh centuries.
This book thus takes hagiography seriously as a genre that is
both literary and deeply historically embedded. It is committed to
exploring new ways of writing history from hagiography. It presents
the first detailed study of the unusually extensive literary material
relating to an important late antique holy man, Symeon the Younger.
It examines not only the Life of Symeon, a text which has received
limited scholarly attention, but also the stylite’s sermon collection
and the Life of Martha, both of which have been almost totally
neglected. It provides a new reading of these texts, arguing that
while Symeon’s sermons and Life offer an aggressive approach to
dealing with the saint’s critics, the Life of Martha reveals a
reorientation for Symeon’s cult in the seventh century. It argues that
this process reflected wider changes in approaches to the holiness in
the late sixth and seventh centuries, as a result both of long-term
religious developments and of the particular circumstances of this
momentous period in eastern Roman history. It thus seeks to
contribute to a diachronic understanding of the holy in late antiquity:
to show how holiness evolved with the society that conceived it.

Symeon Stylites the Younger and Late Antique Antioch: From Hagiography to
History. Lucy Parker, Oxford University Press. © Lucy Parker 2022. DOI:
10.1093/oso/9780192865175.003.0001

1 Παραδώσω τὴν πόλιν καὶ οὐ μὴ ἀποκρύψω ἀπὸ σοῦ ἃ μέλλω ποιεῖν.

Πληρώσω γὰρ ταύτην ἐκ τῶν ὑπεναντίων καὶ παραδώσω τοὺς πλείονας τῶν
κατοικούντων αὐτὴν ἐν σφαγῇ· πολλοὶ δὲ ἐξ αὐτῶν καὶ αἰχμάλωτοι ἀπαχθήσονται:
Life of Symeon 57 (p. 51).
2 The principal source for his biography is his hagiographic Life, on which see
Chapter 3 below.
3 Life of Symeon 1 (pp. 2–3).
4 Ibid. 2–3 (pp. 3–6).
5 Ibid. 4 (pp. 6–7); cf. Matthew 25:31–46.
6 Ibid. 7 (p. 8).
7 Ibid. 10–13 (pp. 10–12).
8 Ibid. 14–23 (pp. 12–19).
9 Ibid. 25 (pp. 21–2).
10 Ibid. 34 (p. 33).
11 Ibid. 36 (pp. 34–6).
 12 Ibid. 57–64 (pp. 50–6).
13 Ibid. 65–7, 95–6, 112–13 (pp. 56–8, 73–4, 90–3).
14 Ibid. 69, 124–9 (pp. 59–60, 106–22).
15 Ibid. 71–2 (pp. 60–3).
16 Ibid. 78, 104–6 (pp. 66–8, 81–7).
17 Ibid. 132–5 (pp. 124–7).
18 Ibid. 160–5 (pp. 141–8).
19 Ibid. 202–6 (pp. 176–8).
20 Ibid. 207–11 (pp. 178–81).
21 Allen and Jeffreys 1996; A. M. Cameron 2016, esp. pp. 28–32.
22 Social tensions: Sarris 2006; Bell 2013; dissent and eschatology: Meier 2003.
23 A. M. Cameron 1979 is a classic study of the increasingly religious tone of
government in the later sixth century, although she has somewhat stepped away
from this argument recently. For scepticism towards saints’ cults in this period, see
Dal Santo 2012.
24 For critical surveys of the concept of and historiographical approaches
towards ‘late antiquity’, see e.g. Bowersock 1996; James 2008; Marcone 2008. For
recent studies exploring crisis in later late antiquity, see e.g. Meier 2003; Allen and
Neil 2013; Booth 2014.
25 For the holy man as commander, see Lane Fox 1997; for the role of teacher,
Rousseau 1999b; for the holy man as intercessor, Rapp 1999; for the saint as
combatant with demons, Brakke 2006.
26 See e.g. Brown 1983, 1995.
27 Whitby 1987.
28 Lifschitz 1994 argues that the distinction between hagiography and
historiography is an artificial one created in the nineteenth century and
inapplicable to earlier centuries.
29 See e.g. the articles gathered in Howard-Johnston and Hayward 1999,
especially those by A. M. Cameron, Rousseau, Rapp, and Magdalino.
30 On the relationship between reality, truth as understood by the Byzantines,
and fiction, see Kaldellis 2014a, esp. pp. 116–18.
31 For a recent statement of hagiography’s literary worth, see the articles
collected in Efthymiadis 2014a.
32 See e.g. Van Uytfanghe 1993, 2011; Lifschitz 1994; Rapp 1999. For a
summary of the debate, see Efthymiadis 2014c, esp. pp. 8–9.
33 On the text’s author, see Dagron 1978, pp. 13–16. On the Miracles as a
whole, see also Johnson 2006b. On Thekla’s cult, see Davis 2001.
 34 No consensus has, however, been reached on which precise groups the
different texts were associated with. Bernard Flusin argued that the Syriac Life was
written by the saint’s monastic disciples at Telneshe, whereas the Greek Life by
‘Antonios’ was probably associated with a relic cult of the saint at Antioch (Flusin
1993). Dina Boero has recently argued that the Syriac Life originated not among
Symeon’s disciples at Telneshe, but at a church there, and represents clerical
interests (Boero 2015).
35 The anonymous collection is edited and discussed by Déroche 2012; see
also, on Sophronios’s collection, Booth 2014, pp. 44–89.
36 For a discussion of Theodore’s relationship with Pachomios (although one
which perhaps underestimates the unreliability of the literary sources), see
Rousseau 1999a, pp. 178–91.
37 On Barsanouphios and John, see Hevelone-Harper 2005, and, looking at
various letter collections, Rapp 1999, pp. 63–81. On Shenoute, see e.g. Schroeder
2007; López 2013. Unlike Barsanouphios and John, Shenoute has been
immortalized in hagiography, but both Schroeder and López prioritize his own
writings. For further examples of studies based on holy men’s own prose, see
below pp. 55–6.
38 Boero 2015b, pp. 54–74.
39 This is the approach adopted by e.g. Derek Krueger, in his study of Leontios
of Neapolis’s Life of Symeon the Holy Fool (Krueger 1996, p. 6).
40 See Lane Fox 1997, pp. 181–5; Magdalino 1999, pp. 83–4. On the different
versions of the Lives of Symeon, see above p. 6, and Harvey 1998.
41 As is evidently the case in e.g. the sixth-century Life of Eutychios by
Eustratios Presbyter, powerfully analysed in A. M. Cameron 1988 and 1990.
42 Holy men discussed in Brown’s original article of 1971 include Antony (fourth
century), Symeon Stylites the Elder, Daniel the Stylite, Hypatios (all fifth century),
Sabas (sixth century), and Theodore of Sykeon (sixth–seventh centuries). He does
acknowledge that the characteristic ‘holy man’ emerged at different times in
different regions.
43 One exception is Barnes 2010, but in general he analyses his selection of
texts sequentially, rather than comparatively. Another important recent exception
is Bartlett 2013.
44 Booth 2014, passim (esp. ch. 1).
45 Dal Santo 2012.
46 See also the various essays collected in Sarris, Dal Santo, and Booth 2011.
47 Dagron 1992; Kaldellis 2014b. Other scholars to allude to signs of doubt
surrounding saints and their miracles include Marie-France Auzépy (Auzépy 1995)
and Peter Brown (Brown 1995, esp. pp. 72–3), although, as Booth notes, the latter
implies that ultimately holy men managed to conquer scepticism and achieve
harmony (Booth 2011, p. 128 n. 48).
48 Meier 2003, esp. pp. 354–5, 415–21, 426, 543–5, 555.
49 A useful introduction to the textual and literary materials associated with
Symeon’s cult has recently been published by Boero and Kuper 2020.
50 Texts attributed to Symeon: Symeon Stylites the Younger, ‘Letter to Justin II’
(see pp. 111–12 below); Monothelite Florilegium (see pp. 130–1 below); for the
sermons, see Chapter 2 below. For the Life of Symeon and the Life of Martha, see
Chapters 3–4 below. Other near-contemporary references: Evagrios Scholastikos
5.21 (p. 217), 6.23 (pp. 238–40); John Moschos, Spiritual Meadow 96 (cols 2953–
6), 117–18 (cols 2981–4). On Symeon’s monastery, see Lafontaine-Dosogne 1967,
pp. 67–135; Djobadze 1986, pp. 57–115, 204–5; and for an important new study
Henry 2015, with Belgin-Henry 2018, 2019; on cult objects linked to Symeon’s
cult, see esp. Lafontaine-Dosogne 1967, pp. 140–58, 169–96; Vikan 1984, pp. 67–
74; Volbach 1996.
51 Symeon the Younger is mentioned in the Life of Abibos Nekreseli 2 (pp. 77–
8). The dating of this text is not certain, but for an argument that it was written in
the seventh century, see Martin-Hisard 1985–6, I, pp. 164–5. Symeon also appears
in the Life of Shio Mgvilemi: for the relevant quote, see Loosley Leeming 2019, p.
65. Unfortunately, I have not been able to consult these texts because I do not
know Georgian, but for useful English summaries, including discussion of the
complex textual history of the Lives of the Fathers, see Loosley Leeming 2018,
2019; Matitashvili 2018 (reference to Symeon on p. 20). On links between
Symeon’s cult and Iberia, see Van den Ven 1962, pp. 53*–71*, 160*–2*, 216*–
21*; Martin-Hisard 2006–7, pp. 128–9, 159–61; Loosley Leeming 2018, esp. ch. 4.
Iberians play a prominent role in the later part of the Life of Martha (54–70, pp.
298–312). Peeters 1950, pp. 161–2, argued that Martha’s Life was actually written
in Georgian rather than Greek (several manuscripts of a Georgian version of the
text survive), but this is highly implausible, as shown by Van den Ven 1962–70, I,
pp. 68*–77*; II, 250*–1*.
52 See for an introduction to this material Van den Ven 1962–70, I, pp. 214*–
21*, and for a study of literary production at Symeon’s monastery in the eleventh
century, Glynias 2020.
53 I am now preparing an English translation of the Lives of Symeon and
Martha for the Liverpool Translated Texts for Historians series; Charles Kuper is
preparing a translation of the Life of Martha.
 1
Antioch and Northern Syria in the
Sixth Century

Northern Syria contained some of the greatest cities of the Roman

empire. Most notably, Antioch, situated on the Orontes River less
than 20 kilometres from the Mediterranean, played a prominent role
in the political, cultural, and economic life of the region. Late antique
Antioch has been the subject of considerable scholarly attention.
Most studies, however, have focused on the fourth century, as this
period is richly attested through the voluminous works of two of the
most famous late antique Antiochenes: the pagan orator Libanios
and the Christian bishop John Chrysostom. Various recent works
have drawn upon these sources to explore Antiochene religious
culture and identities.1 In contrast, later periods of Antiochene
history have been relatively neglected. There is a scholarly need for
a history of Antioch in the sixth and seventh centuries, beyond the
narrative presented in Glanville Downey’s classic monograph.2 This
book will contribute towards this goal, alongside the studies of other
scholars who have worked on sixth-century Antioch, such as Pauline
Allen, Wendy Mayer, and Lee Mordechai.3
The dearth of work on this later period is largely due to the
perception that there is a lack of surviving evidence.4 Yet sixth-
century Antioch, at least, is hardly bereft of interesting source
material. The renowned miaphysite leader Severos, patriarch of
Antioch from 512 to 518, does not fall short of Libanios and
Chrysostom in terms of his historical significance—or in his literary
prolificacy. Admittedly, Severos was only based in Antioch for a brief
period, and many of his extant works are not focused on the city,
but several of his letters, as well as his extensive Cathedral Homilies,
do deal with Antioch, and remain, despite a few important studies,
underexploited by historians.5 Two key sixth-century
historiographical sources were also produced in Antioch, and have a
strongly local focus: the Chronicle of John Malalas, and the
Ecclesiastical History of Evagrios Scholastikos.6 Major events in
Antioch were also recorded by historians across the empire,
including Prokopios, Zacharias of Mytilene, and John of Ephesus.
Other insights into Antiochene society in this period come from a
diverse range of sources associated with the city, from the homilies
and letters of its other patriarchs to the Life of Symeon the Younger
itself.7 There are undoubtedly gaps in the extant source material: as
discussed below, archaeological evidence is particularly lacking. The
written sources illuminate some events and themes, such as the
activities of the city’s bishops, much more clearly than others. The
countryside surrounding Antioch—including the area where Symeon
the Younger’s monastery was situated—is less well served by the
evidence than the city itself. Nonetheless, enough survives to enable
a discussion of many key aspects of the region’s history.
This chapter will consider three key contested themes in the
sixth-century history of the city and its environs. First, it will examine
natural and military disasters and their significance. Archaeological
evidence provides important nuance to the picture of crisis given by
the textual sources; nonetheless, Antioch and its surrounding
countryside do seem to have experienced exceptional difficulties in
the sixth century. Second, it will consider social and economic
tensions, arguing that, while there is no firm evidence of heightening
social divisions in this period, latent socio-economic tensions were
widespread and could break into the open in times of crisis. Third, it
will consider religious and cultural relations, arguing that Christian
communities in Antioch were fractured as much by tensions and
disagreement over proper Christian identity and attitudes towards
the pagan past as they were by Christological divisions. Explosive
conflicts over paganism in sixth-century Antioch reveal the potency
of these debates and indicate that cultural conflicts were intimately
linked with, but did not directly correlate to, economic and social
tensions. All these themes will be contextualized in terms of broader
debates about the sixth-century eastern empire. Yet the focus
throughout will be on a detailed analysis of the evidence from
northern Syria itself, as it is unsafe to generalize from material from
other regions and to assume that patterns were consistent across
the Byzantine east.8

Disasters in Antioch: A City in Decline?

The traditional narrative of Antioch’s fate in the sixth century is one
of decline. Literary sources relate that the city was smitten by a
procession of devastating disasters including fire in 525, severe
earthquakes in 526 and 528, a sack by the Persians in 540, the
plague from 542 (with repeated recurrences later in the century),
and further earthquakes in the 550s, 577, and 588.9 Much modern
scholarship, heavily reliant on these texts, has continued this picture
of crisis: thus Downey wrote that the Persian sack in 540 ‘brought
the real greatness of Antioch to a close’.10 Even historians who have
argued that near eastern cities remained prosperous throughout the
sixth century have often viewed Antioch as an exception.11 Recently,
however, attempts have been made to revise the common picture of
sixth-century Antioch, on the grounds that archaeology suggests
that the city remained prosperous well into the seventh century.12
This chapter will address the question of decline directly, first looking
at the picture of crisis painted in the literary sources, before
comparing this to the impression gained from the archaeological
evidence from the city and the nearby countryside. It will suggest
that, rather than contradicting the literary sources, the
archaeological evidence provides limited support for their picture of
difficulties in Antioch, while encouraging the historian to adopt a
nuanced approach to exploring the effects of disasters.
Archaeologists have recently proposed new models for
understanding disasters that shift scholarly emphasis away from
establishing any straightforward objective measure of the severity of
a disaster towards understanding societal reactions to disasters and
their diverse effects. Effects could vary greatly between different
areas of the city and between different social groups, while,
importantly, cultural, psychological, and ideological developments did
not necessarily correspond exactly to economic conditions.

The Literary Evidence

Symeon the Younger’s birth, in c.521, coincided, approximately, with
the beginning of Antioch’s age of insecurity. Although the previous
decade had seen political and ecclesiastical instability, with a rapid
turnover of patriarchs of different Christological opinions, it was only
in the 520s that serious disaster struck.13 In 525, during the
patriarchate of the Palestinian Chalcedonian Euphrasios, a severe fire
broke out in the city, outbreaks of which seem to have recurred for
months.14 The fire is presented in the sources as damaging in itself
but also as God’s warning of the worse crises that were to come:
thus John Malalas (whose account of the fire underlies most later
descriptions) reports ‘this conflagration foretold God’s coming
displeasure…many houses were burned and many lives lost and no
one could discover the source of the fire’.15 ‘God’s displeasure’
manifested itself in full in the next year, 526, in the form of a
devastating earthquake.16 Malalas again provides a vivid description
of the destruction caused by the quake:

The surface of the earth boiled and blazed, setting fire to everything, and
foundations of buildings were struck by thunderbolts thrown up by the
earthquakes and were burned to ashes by fire, so that even those who fled
were met by flames, like those who remained in their houses…. As a result
 Christ-loving Antioch became desolate…for nothing remained apart from
some buildings beside the mountain. No holy chapel nor monastery nor any
other holy place remained which had not been torn apart.17

The chronicler continues to describe the human effects of the

disasters, stating that the victims included many visitors who had
come to the city for the feast of the Ascension, as well as the
patriarch, Euphrasios. Although he notes that God miraculously
saved from death some of those who had been buried in the
earthquake, including pregnant women and young children, he
claims that the death toll was extremely high: 250,000 victims.18
As Malalas continues to report, the emperors dedicated
considerable resources to the reconstruction of Antioch after this
crisis. But disaster soon struck again, in 528, when the city was hit
by another severe earthquake.19 Although the death toll was
apparently much lower than in 526 (only 5,000 lives), the physical
damage to the city was considerable: ‘the buildings that had been
reconstructed after the former shocks collapsed, as did the walls and
some of the churches.’20 This second earthquake—presumably
because it followed so soon on the heels of the stronger disaster,
and impeded the repair efforts—also appears to have had a
significant ideological and emotional impact,21 as it prompted the
emperor to rename the city Theoupolis, city of God, presumably as
an appeal to God to restore his favour to the city.22 Numismatic as
well as literary evidence attests that the city’s new name was used
widely, if not exclusively.23
These disasters are mentioned not only by Antiochene authors
but by writers from across the empire, which suggests their unusual
severity and exceptional ideological impact. Prokopios refers to an
‘exceedingly violent earthquake’ in the city during the reign of Justin
I.24 Marcellinus Comes includes the earthquake of 526 in his Latin
chronicle of the period, even though his predominant focus is on
Constantinople and the Balkans.25 So too Theodore of Petra, in his
Life of Theodosios, describes his hero, a prominent Palestinian holy
man, foreseeing God’s anger coming to the east; he continues to
recount that:

After six or seven days, the news was brought that the great metropolis of
the Antiochenes, as a result of a dreadful earthquake, had completely
collapsed on the very day on which the great Theodosios had predicted the
collapse, just as the prophet Jeremiah [had predicted] the capture of
Jerusalem.26

And the bureaucrat John Lydos, based in Constantinople,

emphasizes the damaging effects of the disasters in Antioch on the
resources of the praetorian prefecture:

‘There was need of money, and without it none of the imperative tasks
could be done.’ In order, however, that nothing of whatever was necessary
for overturning the prosperity might be neglected, tremors, springing and
splitting the earth from its roots, crushed Seleucus’ Antioch, having buried
the city by the mountain situated above it, so that no distinction between
mountain and city was left to the site, but the whole thing was glen and
rocks, which erstwhile used to shade the Orontes as it flowed past the city.
The prefecture, therefore, had to rain down over it an immense amount of
gold meanwhile for the removal of the mounds which had been heaped up
as a result of the collapse and had swollen up to a high rough terrain, for it
was not safe to neglect the capital of the Syrians after it had been cast to
the ground.27

This was not the end of the troubles which Antioch caused to the
public finances. Lydos moves on directly to recount the next major
disaster to strike the city, the Persian sack of 540:

As the city, however, was recovering, just as if from nether gloom, with
much toil, abundance of funds, and collaboration of trades, after Justin had
reached his end, Chosroes the evil genius with a vast army invaded the
Syrias through Arabia, and, when he had captured by war the recently
collapsed city because it had appeared to him easily subdued as it was
unfortified, he burned it down, after working incalculable massacre, and
indiscriminately looted the statues with which the city was embellished,
including marble tablets, carved stones, and paintings, and drove away all
Syria to the Persians. There was no farmer nor contributor any longer for
the public treasury, and yet, whereas revenue was not being brought in to
the empire, the prefect was obliged to support the civil servant and to
 furnish the government with all its customary expenses at a time not only
when he was being deprived of the taxes from the Syrians, which even
alone used to turn the scale for the authorities, but, besides, was also being
hard pressed to supply added outlays too great to be counted both for the
captured cities and for the contributors, if perhaps any chanced to have
escaped the Persians’ bondage and to be wandering about in the deserted
ruins of sites that used to be admired long ago.28

Lydos may, perhaps, have exaggerated the financial effects of these

disasters in Antioch as part of his broader lament for the decline of
the praetorian prefecture.29 Nonetheless, it is clear that Khosrow I’s
sack of the city in 540 was widely perceived as a major
catastrophe.30 The best-known account of the disaster is provided by
Prokopios in his History of the Wars. He narrates the events leading
up to and during the sack in some detail, culminating with his
famous reflection:

But I become dizzy as I write of such a great calamity and transmit it to

future times, and I am unable to understand why indeed it should be the
will of God to exalt on high the fortunes of a man or of a place, and then to
cast them down and destroy them for no cause which appears to us. For it
is wrong to say that with Him all things are not always done with reason,
though he then endured to see Antioch brought down to the ground at the
hands of a most unholy man, a city whose beauty and grandeur in every
respect could not even so be utterly concealed.31

Other authors, in contrast, were quick to identify the cause of the

disaster. Thus the miaphysite chronicle of Pseudo-Zacharias of
Mytilene presented the city’s sack as God’s punishment for Ephraim
and other Chalcedonian bishops’ rejection of Severos of Antioch and
acceptance of Chalcedon, while, as we shall see, Symeon the
Younger’s hagiographer blamed it on paganism among the
Antiochene population.32 This highlights one reason why disasters
could prove ideologically destabilizing: severe calamities demanded
an explanation, opening the way for rival political, religious, and
other groups to interpret the crises to suit their particular purposes,
and, perhaps, to subvert dominant ideologies.33
 The year after the Persian army had plundered Antioch, plague
broke out in the eastern empire. In the next year, 542, it reached the
much-afflicted Syrian city.34 The so-called ‘Justinianic plague’ was
described by numerous contemporaries, including Prokopios and
John of Ephesus, but the author to give most information about its
appearance in Antioch is the local church historian, Evagrios
Scholastikos.35 Evagrios—who moves straight from his account of
the Persian invasion to describing the plague, emphasizing their
chronological proximity—draws his readers’ attention to a particularly
damaging feature of the plague: its repeated recurrences throughout
the later sixth century. In contrast to the largely depersonalized
narrative of the earlier Antiochene chronicler Malalas, Evagrios
explicitly states ‘I decided to interweave my own affairs also into the
narrative’.36 Thus he not only gives a general account of the
development of the plague, but also describes how subsequent
outbreaks had affected his own life, from his childhood to the
present day:

At the outset of this great misfortune I was affected by what are called
buboes while I was still attending the elementary teacher, but in the various
subsequent visitations of this great misfortune I lost many of my offspring
and my wife and other relatives, and numerous servants and estate
dwellers, as if the indictional cycles divided out the misfortunes for me. Thus
as I write this, while in the 58th year of my life, not more than two years
previously while for the fourth time now the misfortune struck Antioch,
when the fourth cycle from its outset had elapsed, I lost a daughter and the
son she had produced, quite apart from the earlier losses.37

His moving account is suggestive of the difficulties of recovering

from a calamity which kept recurring. Although there is no reason to
think that Antioch was affected by the plague more severely than
other major urban centres, it is possible that its effects were felt
particularly keenly in the context of the previous disasters to strike
the city.
Antioch’s difficulties persisted in the later sixth century. As well as
the repeated outbreaks of plague, earthquakes and invasions
continued to pose a threat. The 550s saw several serious
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the Companies disposing, who are to fynde them dyett during that
time, and tenne pounds more to Mr Higgeson towards his present
fitting him and his for the voyage.
Francis Higgison.
Samuel Skelton.
A TRUE RELATION OF THE
LAST VOYAGE TO
NEW ENGLAND
 A trve relacon of ye last voyage to new
England, declaring all circustances wth ye
maner of ye passage wee had by sea, and
what maner of countrey & inhabitants we
found when we came to land: & what is ye
present state & condicon of ye English
people yt are there already.

Faithfully recorded according to ye very truth for ye satisfaction of

very many of my loving friends, who haue earnestly requested
to be truly certifyed in these thinges.
Written from new England July 24, 1629.

It. any Curious Criticke yt lookes for exactnes of phrases or expert

seaman yt regard propriety of sea-termes &c
 A TRVE RELACON of ye last voyage to
new England made ye last Sumer, begun ye 25th
of April being Saturday, Anno doi 1629.

THE copany of New England consisting of many worthy gentlemen in ye

citty of London, Dorcester & other places, ayming at ye glory of God, ye
propagacon of ye gospell of Christ, ye conversio of ye Indians, & ye enlargemt
of ye Kings maties dominions in America, & being authorised by his royall
letters patents for yt end, at their very great costs & chardgs furnished 5
Ships to go to new England, for ye further setling of ye English plantacon yt
yy had already begun there.
The names of ye 5 Shipps were as followeth. The first is called ye Talbot,
a good & strong shipp of 300 tunnes, & 19 pieces of ordinance & served wth
30 mariners. This ship carried about an 100 planters, 6 goates, 5 great
pieces of ordinaunce, wth meale, oatemeale pease, & all maner of munitio
and provisio for ye plantacon for a twelve month. The second ye George,
another strong ship also, about 300 tunnes, 20 pieces of ordinance, served
wth about 30 mariners; her chiefe carriage were cattell, 12 mares, 30 kyne,
& some goates: also ther gad in her 52 planters & other provision. The 3d is
called ye Lyons whelpe, a neate & nimble ship of 120 tunnes, 8 pieces of
ordinaunce, carrying in her many mariners & about 40 planters, specially
fro dorcester & other places thereabouts, wth provision, and 4 goates.
The 4th is called ye 4 sisters, as I heare of about 300 tuns, wch fayre ship
carried many cattell wth passengers & provision.
The 5th is called ye Mayflower, carrying passengers & provision.
Now amongst these 5 ships, ye George hauing the speciall & urgent
cause of hastening her passage sett sayle before ye rest about ye midst of
April. And ye 4 Sisters & ye Mayflower being not throughly furnished,
intended as we heard to sett forth about 3 weeks after vs: But we yt were in
ye Talbot & ye Lions whelpe being ready for or voyage by ye good hand of
Gods providence hoysed or sayle fro Graues end on Saturday ye 25th of
April about 7 a clocke in ye morning. Having but a faynt wynd
[April 25] we could not go farre ytday, but at night wee ancred against
Lie wch is 12 miles fro graues end, & there we rested yt night & kept
[26] Sabbath ye next day.
On monday we sat forward & came to ye flats, a passage soewhat
[27] difficult by reason of ye narrownes of ye channell & shallownes of ye
water: & going ouer this wee were in soe daunger: for or ship being heavy
laden & drawing deepe water was sensibly felt of vs all to strike 3 or 4
tymes on ye ground: but ye wynd blowing soewhat strong we were carried
Swiftly on, & at last by Gods blessing came safe to ancre at Gorin roade.
Tewsday we went a little further, & ancred ouer agt Margret
[28] Towne, staying for a wind for ye downes.
Wednesday we came safely though wth much turning & tacking
[29] thorow ye gullies into ye downes, & stayed yt night.
Thursday, Fryday & Saturday ye wind blew hard fro
[30. May 1. 2.] south west & caused or ship to daunce, & diuers of or
passengers & my wiffe specially were sea sicke. Here ye Kings ship called
ye Assurance pressed 2 of or mariners. Here we saw many Porpuses
playing in ye sea wch yy say is a signe of fowle weather.
Sabbath day a windye day & could: we kept Sabbath staying
[May 3] still at ye downes.
Monday God sent vs a fayre gale of wind north: n: East, whereby
[4] we came merily fro ye downes: & passing Dover we saw 6 or 7 saile
of dunkirkes, wafting after vs: but it seemed yy saw or copany was too
strong for ym, for then wee had wth vs 3 or 4 ships yt went for ye Straits: so
yy returned backe fro pursuing vs any longer. But sayling wth a good wind
wee went speedily, & at night came neere ye Ile of Wight but being darke
wee durst not put into ye channell, but put backe for sea roome 4 houres, &
then other 4 houres sayled backe agayne ye same way.
Tewsday early in ye morning we entred ye channell ye wind being
[5] weake & calme, & passed by Portsmouth very slowly; but in ye
afternoone ye wind quickened, & wee were forced to ancre a little on this
side Cowcastle but ye wind growing more favourable wee weighed & came
to ancre again right against Cowcastle thinking to stay yt night, ye wind
 being very calme. Here I & my wiffe & my daughter Mary & 2
[May] maids & soe others wth vs obtained of ye mr of ye shipp to go a
shoare to refresh vs & to wash or linnens, & so we lay at Cowes yt night.
But ye wind turning when wee were absent, yy hoysed sayle & left vs there,
& ancred 8 miles further ouer agt Yarmouth about 8 of ye clocke at night.
Wednesday betyme in ye morning ye shalope was sent fro ye shipp
[6] to fetch vs to Yarmouth; but ye water prooued rough & or weomen
desired to bee sett on shoare 3 miles short of Yarmouth, & so went on foote
by land & lodged in Yarmouth yt night.
On Thursday & fryday there Mr Beecher allowed by ye copany
[7. 8.] gaue mee 40s to make or provisio of what things we would for the
voyage.
Saturday we went to board agayne: & this day wee had 2 other
[9] men pressed to serve ye Kings Shippe; but we got one agayne by
intreaty.
The Sabbath next day we kept ye shipp where I preached in ye
[10.] morning; & in ye afternoon was intreated to preach at Yarmouth,
where Mr Meare & captayne Borley entertained vs very kyndly, & earnestly
desyred to bee certified of or safe arrivall in new England, & of ye state of ye
countrey
Monday morning blew a fayre wind fro East S: E: And ye lions
[11] whelpe having taken in all her provisio for passengers, about 3 of ye
clocke in ye afternoone wee hoysed sayle for ye Needles, & by Gods
guidance safely passed yt narrow passage a little after 4 a clocke in ye
afternoone. And being entred into ye sea, fro ye top of ye mast we discerned
4 sayle of shipps lying southward fro vs. But night coming on wee tooke in
or long boate & shalope. And ye next day we had a fayre gale of
[12] Easterly wind yt brought vs towards night as farre as ye Lizzard.
Wednesday ye wind still houlding Easterly, wee came as farre as
[13] ye lands end, in ye vtmost part of Cornewall, & so left or deare natiue
soile of England behind vs; & sayling about 10 leagues further we passed
ye Isles of Sillie & launched ye same day a great way into ye maine ocean.
And now my wiffe & other passengers began to feele ye tossing waues of ye
westerne sea, & so were very sea-sicke.
And this is to be noted, yt all this while or passage hath bene vpo ye coast
of England, & so ought truly to be accounted ye first day of or parting wth
ould England.
 Thursday ye same Easterly wind blew all day & night; & ye next
[14] day; so yt soe of ye seamen thought we were coe by this
tyme 100 leagues fro England, but toward night ye wind was
[15] [May] calme.
Saturday we were becalmed all day. This day met vs a little shipp
[16] of Bristoll yt came fro Christopher Ilands.
Sabath being ye first Lords day we held at sea was very calme,
[17.] especially in the morning, but we were disturbed in or morning
Service by ye approach of a Biskaniers shippe, a man of warre, yt made
towards vs, & manned out his boate to viewe vs: But fynding vs too strong
for him he durst not venture to assault vs, but made off.
This day my 2 children Samuel & Mary began to be sicke of ye small-
pockes & purples together, wch was brought into ye ship by one Mr Browne
wch was sicke of ye same at Graues End, who it pleased God to make ye
first occasio of bringing yt contagious sicknes among vs, wherewth many
were after afflicted.
Monday calme still, ye wind being no: w: blowing a little towards
[18.] euening, but contrary to or course.
Tewsday wind so: w: as little helpfull as ye former & blowing uery
[19.] weake. This day ye mr of or ship, my selfe & another went aboard
the Lions whelpe, where Mr Gibs made vs welcoe wth bountifull
entertaynemt. And this day towards night my daughter grew sicker & many
blew Spots were seene vpo her breast, wch affrighted vs. At ye first wee
thought yy had bene ye plague tokens; but we found afterwards yt it was
onely an high measure of ye infectio of ye pockes, wch were strucke agayne
into ye child, & so it was Gods will ye child dyed about 5 of ye clocke at
night, being ye first in or shipp yt was buried in the bowells of ye great
Atlanticke Sea; wch as it was a griefe to vs her parents, & a sorrow to all ye
rest as being ye beginning of a contagious disease & mortality: so in ye
same judgemt it pleased God to remember mercy in ye child, in freeing it fro
a world of misery wherein otherwise shee had liued all her daies. For being
about 4 yeares ould a yeare since, wee know not by what meanes, sweyed
in ye backe, so yt it was broken & grew crooked, & ye joynts of her hipps
were loosed & her knees went crooked pittifull to see. Since wch tyme shee
hath had a most lamentable payne in her belly, & would oft times cry out in
ye day & in her sleep also my belly, wch declared soe extraordinary
distemper. So yt in respect of her wee had cause to take her death as a
blessing fro ye Lord to shorten her miserie.
 Wednesday a wett morning, ye wind was W: S: W: & in ye
[May 20] afternoone N: W: & by W: both being contrary to or course,
wch was to saile W: & by S: Thus it pleased god to lay his hand vpo vs by
sicknes & death & contrary winds; & stirred vp soe of vs to make ye moton
of humbling or selves vnder ye hand of God by keeping a solemne day of
fasting & prayer unto God, to beseech him to remooue ye continuance &
further increase of these evills fro vs. wch was willingly condescended vnto
as a duty very fitting & needfull for or present state and condicon.
Thursday, there being 2 ministers in ye ship, Mr Smith & my selfe,
[21] we endevoured together wth others to consecrate ye day as a
solemne fasting & humiliacon to almighty God, as a furtheraunce of or
present worke. And it pleased God ye ship was becalmed all day, so yt we
were freed fro any encumbraunce: And as soone as we had done prayers,
see & behould ye goodnes of god, about 7 a clocke at night ye wind turned
to n: e: & we had a fayre gale yt night as a manifest evidence of ye Lords
hearing or prayers. I heard soe of ye mariners say, yy thought this was ye
first sea-fast yt euer was kept, & yt yy neuer heard of ye like perfourmed at
sea before.
Fryday ye wind fayre, & east northerly, & for or purpose for new
[22.] England. it did blow strongly & carried vs on amayne wth tossing
waues, wch did affright ym yt were not wonted to such sights.
[May]
Saturday ye same wind blowing but more gently. Now we were
[23.] coforted wth hope of my sonne Samuels recovery of ye pockes.
The 2 Lords day, a fayre day, an orderly wind & prosperous.
[24.]
On Monday a fayre frummegale, ye wind South S: W:
[25] Tewsday about 10 of ye clocke in ye morning, whilest we were at
prayers a strong and sudden blast came fro ye north, yt hoysed vp
[26.] ye waues & tossed vs more then euer before & held vs all yt day till
towards night & then abated by little & little till it was calme. This
day Mr Goffes great dogg fell ouer board & could not be recouered.
Wednesday, ye wind still no: & calme in ye morning, but about
[27.] noone there arose a So: wind, wch encreased more & more, so yt it
seemed to vs yt are land men a sore & terrible storme; for ye wind blew
mightily, ye rayne fell vehemently, ye sea roared & ye waues tossed vs
horribly; besides it was fearfull darke & ye mariners maid was afraid; &
noyse on the other side wth their running here & there, lowd crying one to
another to pull at this & yt rope. The waues powred ymselues
[May 27]
 ouer ye shippe yt ye 2 boates were filled wth water, yt yy were
fayne to strike holes in ye midst of ym to let ye water out. Yea by ye violence
of ye waues ye long boate coard wch held it was broken, & it had like to haue
bene washed ouerboard, had not ye mariners wth much payne & daunger
recouered ye same. But this lasted not many houres; after which it became
a calmish day. All wch while I lay close & warme in my cabine, but farre fro
hauing list to sleepe wth Jonah; my thoughts were otherwise employed as
ye tyme & place required. Then I saw ye truth of ye Scripture Psal. 107, fro
ye 23 to ye 32. And my feare at this tyme was ye lesse, when I rememberd
what a loving friend of myne, a minister accustomed to sea stormes said to
mee yt I might not be dismayed at such stormes, for yy were ordinary at
seas, & it seeldome falls out yt a shipp perisheth at storms if it haue sea-
roome, wch I ye rather wryte yt others as well as my selfe by ye knowledge
hereof may be encouraged & prepared agt these ordinary sea-stormes.
Thursday So: wind: calme at night: On fryday a boistrous
[28 29] wind blowing crosse, but was allayed towards night wth a
showre of rayne. Saturday So: w: wind, but faire & quiett.
[30]
Sabbath day being ye 3 Lords day, fayre & calme; wee saw
[May 31] abundance of grampas fishes, 2 or 3 yards long, & a body as
bigg as an oxe.
Monday ye wind westerly & calme: but besides or being
[June 1] stayed by contrary winds we began to fynd ye temperature of
ye ayre to alter & to become more soletry & subject to vnwholsome foggs.
For coming now to ye height of ye westerne Islands, soe of or men fell sicke
of ye scuruie & others of the small pockes, wch more & more increased: yet
thankes be to God none dyed of it but my owne child mencond. And
therefore, according to or great need we appointed another fast for the next
day.
Tewsday we solemnely celebrate another fast. The Lord yt day
[2.] heard vs before wee prayed & gaue vs aunswere before we called;
for early in ye morning ye wind turned full East, being as fitt a wind as could
blowe. And sitting at my study on ye shipps poope I saw many bonny fishes
& porpuses pursuing one another, and leaping soe of ym a yard aboue ye
water. Also as we were at prayer, vnder ye hatch, soe yt were aboue saw a
whale puffing vp water not farre fro ye shippe. Now my wiffe was prettily
well recouered of her sea sicknesse.
Wednesday a fayre day & fyne gale of full East wind. This day my
[3.] selfe & others saw a large round fish sayling by ye ships side about a
 yard in length & roundnes euery way. The mariners cald it a
[June] sunne fish; it spreadeth out ye finnes like beames on euery side
4, or 5.
Thursday & fryday ye wind full E: we were carried wth
[4, 5.] admiracon on or journey. By this wee were more then halfe way
to new England. This day I saw a fish very straunge to mee, yy call it a
caruell; wch came by ye ship side wafting along ye top of ye water. it
appeared at ye first like a bubble aboue the water as bigg as a mans fist,
but ye fish it selfe is about ye bignes of a mans thum, so yt ye fish it selfe &
ye bubble resembleth a shipp wth sailes, wch therefore is called a caruell.
Saturday wind direct E: still. The 4 Sabb: we kept at sea the wind
[6 7] full full Easterly till noone, & then it came full So: E: a strong gale yt
night & ye next day till night.
[8]
Tewsday ye same wind held till 9 a clock in ye morning: & then a
[9] great showre wch lasted till about 7 at night, & then it was a very
calme. There we sounded wth a dipled lyne aboue 100th fadome &
found no bottome. This day we saw a fish called a turkle, a great & large
shell fish swiming aboue ye water neere ye shippe.
Wednesday wind northerly a fyne gale but calmish in ye
[10] afternoone.
Thursday ye wind at no: an easye gale & fayre morning we
[11 June] saw a mountayne of Ice shyning as white as snow like to a
great rocke or clift on ye shoare. it stood still & therefore we thought it to be
on ground & to reach ye bottome of ye sea. For though there came a mighty
streame fro ye no: yet it mooued not, wch made vs sound, & we found a
banke of 40 fathom deepe whereupo we judged it to rest: & ye height aboue
was as much. Wee also saw 6 or 7 pieces of Ice, floating on ye sea, wch
was broken off fro ye former mountayne, we also saw great store of water
fowle swiming by ye shipp wthin musket shott, of a pyde colour & about ye
bignes of a wild ducke, about 40 in a copany, the mariners call ym hag
birds. Toward night came a fogge, yt ye lions whelp was lost till morning.
And now we saw many bony toes porpuses and grampases every day
more & more.
Fryday foggie & calmish, ye wind northerly in ye morning, but
[12] about noone it came S: E: a dainty loome gale wch carried vs 6
leagues a watch.

[13]
 Saturday ye same wind till night, & we saw great store of
porpuses & grampases.
The 5th Sabbath, ye same wind, towards noone it began to be
[14] foggie, & then it rained till night we went 4 or 5 leagues a watch.
Monday a fayre day but foggie, ye same wind blowing but
[June 15] wth fresh gale carryed vs 7 leagues a watch. In ye afternoone
it blew harder, so ye sea was rough, & we lost ye sight of ye lions whelpe: it
being foggie we drumed for ym & yy shot off a great piece of ordinance but
we feared not one another.
Tewsday wind So: & by E: foggie till about 10 a clocke while we
[16] were at prayers it cleared vp about an houre, & then we saw ye lions
whelpe distant about 2 leagues southward. wee presently tackt about to
meet her & shee did ye same to meete vs, but before we could get together
a thick fogge came, yt we were long in fynding each other. This day we
sounded divers tymes, & found orselves on another banke, at first 40
fathom, after 36. after 33. after 24. wee thought it to haue bene ye banke
ouer agt chap Sable, but we were deceiued, for we knew not certainly
where we were because of ye fogge. After 3 or 4 houres copany we lost ye
lions whelpe agayne: & beate or drume & shot off a great piece of
ordinaunce & yet heard not of ym. But perceiuing ye banke to grow still yt
shallower we found it 27 & 24 fathoms. Therefore being a fogg & fearing
wee were too neere land we tackt about for sea roome for 2 or 3 watches,
& steered Southeast.
Wednesday very foggie still & wind S: and by w: & sounding
[17] found no bottome yt we could reach.
Thursday wind full w: & contrary to vs. This day a notorious
[18] wicked fellow yt was giuen to swearing & boasting of his former
wickednes bragged yt hee had got a wench wth child before hee came this
voyage & mocked at or daies of fast railing & jesting agt puritans, this fellow
fell sicke of ye pockes & dyed. Wee sounded and found 38 fathom, &
stayed for a little to take soe codfish & feasted orselves merily.
Fryday wind west still, a very fayre cleare day. About 4 a clock in
[19] y afternoone soe went vp to ye top of ye mast, & affirmed to or great
e

cofort yy saw land to ye north eastward.

Saturday wind So: w: a fayre gale: we sounded & found 40, 30,
[20] 22, & a little after no ground.
Sabb: being ye 6th Lords day; wind westerly but fayre & calme.
 Monday wind Easterly a fayre gale. This day wee saw a great
[21] deale of froth not farre fro vs: wee feared it might bee soe breach of
agt some new qvote.[2] Therefore ye mr of or shipp hoised out
[22] water
ye shalop & went wth soe of ye men to see what it was; but found it
onely to bee a froath carried by ye streame.
Tewsday ye wind n: E: a fayre gale. This day we examined
[June 23] 5 beastly Sodomiticall boyes, wch confessed their wickednes
not to bee named. The fact was so fowle wee referred ym to bee punished
by ye governor when we came to new England, who afterward sent ym
backe to ye copany to bee punished in ould England as ye crime deserued.
Wednesday wind no: E: a fayre day & cleare: about 9 a clocke in
[24] y morning we espied a shipp about 4 leagues behind vs; wch
e

prooued ye lions whelpe, wch had bene a weeke separated fro vs. we
stayed for [blot (her)] copany. This day a child of goodman Blacke wch had a
cosumpcon before it came to shipp, dyed. This day we had all a cleare &
cofortable sight of America, & of ye Chap Sable yt was ouer agt vs 7 or 8
leagues northward. Here we saw yellow gilliflowers on ye sea.
Thursday wind still no: Ea: a full & fresh gale. In ye after noone
[25] wee had a cleare sight of many Islands & hills by ye sea shoare.
Now we saw abundaunce of makrill, a great store of great whales puffing
vp water as yy goe, soe of ym came neere or shipp: their greatnes did
astonish vs yt saw ym not before: their backs appeared like a little Island. At
5 a clock at[3] night the wind turned S. E. a fayre gale. This day we caught
mackrill.
Fryday a foggie morning, but after cleare and wind calme. We
[26] saw many scools of mackrill, infinite multitudes on every side our
ship. The sea was abundantly stored with rockweed and yellow flowers like
gilly-flowers. By noon we were within 3 leagues of Capan, and as we
sayled along the coasts we saw every hill and dale and every island full of
gay woods and high trees. The nearer we came to the shoare the more
flowers in abundance, sometymes scattered abroad, sometymes joyned in
sheets 9 or 10 yards long, which we supposed to be brought from the low
meadowes by the tyde. Now what with fine woods and greene trees by
land, and these yellow flowers paynting the sea, made us all desirous to
see our new paradise of New England, whence we saw such forerunning
signals of fertilitie afarre off. Coming neare the harbour towards night we
takt about for sea-roome.
 Saturday a foggie morning; but after 8 o’clocke in the morning
[27] very cleare, the wind being somewhat contrary at So. and by West,
we tackt to and againe with getting little; but with much adoe, about 4
o’clock in the afternoone, having with much payne compassed the harbour,
and being ready to enter the same, see how things may suddenly change!
there came a fearfull gust of wind and rayne and thunder and lightning,
whereby we were borne with no little terrour and trouble to our mariners,
having very much adoe to loose downe the sayles when the fury of the
storme held up. But God be praised it lasted but a while and soone abated
agayne. And hereby the Lord shewed us what he could have done with us,
if it had pleased him. But blessed be God, he soone removed this storme
and it was a fayre and sweet evening.
We had a westerly wind which brought us between 5 and 6 o’clock to a
fyne and sweet harbour,[4] 7 miles from the head point of Capan. This
harbour 20 ships may easily ryde therein, where there was an island
whither four of our men with a boate went, and brought backe agayne ripe
strawberries and gooseberries, and sweet single roses. Thus God was
merciful to us in giving us a tast and smell of the sweet fruit as an earnest
of his bountiful goodnes to welcome us at our first arrivall. This harbour was
two leagues and something more from the harbour at Naimkecke, where
our ships were to rest, and the plantation is already begun. But because
the passage is difficult and night drew on, we put into Capan harbour.
The Sabbath, being the first we kept in America, and the 7th
[28] Lord’s day after we parted with England.
Monday we came from Capan, to go to Naimkecke, the wind
[29] northerly. I should have tould you before that the planters spying our
English colours the Governour sent a shalop with 2 men on Saturday to
pilot us. These rested the Sabbath with us at Capan; and this day, by God’s
blessing and their directions, we passed the curious and difficult entrance
into the large spacious harbour of Naimkecke. And as we passed along it
was wonderful to behould so many islands replenished with thicke wood
and high trees, and many fayre greene pastures. And being come into the
harbour we saw the George to our great comfort then being come on
Tuesday which was 7 daies before us. We rested that night with glad and
thankful hearts that God had put an end to our long and tedious journey
through the greatest sea in the world.
The next morning the governour came aboard to our ship, and
[30] bade us kindly welcome, and invited me and my wiffe to come on
shoare, and take our lodging in his house, which we did accordingly.
 Thus you have a faithful report collected from day to day of all the
particulars that were worth noting in our passage.

Now in our passage divers things are remarkeable.

First, through God’s blessing our passage was short and speedy, for
whereas we had 1000 leagues, that is 3000 miles English, to saile from
Ould to New England, we performed the same in 6 weeks and 3 dayes.
Secondly, our passage was comfortable and easie for the most part,
having ordinarily fayre and moderate wind, and being freed for the most
part from stormie and rough seas, saving one night only, which we that
were not used thought to be more terrible than indeed it was, and this was
Wednesday at night May 27th.
Thirdly, our passage was also healthfull to our passengers, being freed
from the great contagion of the scurvie and other maledictions, which in
other passages to other places had taken away the lives of many. And yet
we were in all reason in wonderful danger all the way, our ship being
greatly crowded with passengers; but through God’s great goodness we
had none that died of the pockes but that wicked fellow that scorned at
fasting and prayer. There were indeed 2 little children, one of my owne and
another beside; but I do not impute it meerely to the passage; for they were
both very sickly children, and not likely to have lived long, if they had not
gone to sea. And take this for a rule, if children be healthfull when they
come to sea, the younger they are the better they will endure the sea, and
are not troubled with sea-sicknes as older people are, as we had
experience in many children that went this voyage. My wiffe indeed, in
tossing weather, was something ill by vomiting, but in calme weather she
recovered agayne, and is now much better for the sea sicknes. And for my
owne part, whereas I have for divers yeares past been very sickly and
ready to cast up whatsoever I have eaten, and was very sicke at London
and Gravesend, yet from the tyme I came on shipboard to this day, I have
been straungely healthfull. And now I can digest our ship diett very well,
which I could not when I was at land. And indeed in this regard I have great
cause to give God praise, that he hath made my coming to be a method to
cure me of a wonderful weake stomacke and continual payne of
melancholly wynd from the splene: Also divers children were sicke of the
small pockes, but are safely recovered agayne, and 2 or 3 passengers
towards the latter end of the voyage fell sicke of the scurvie, but coming to
land recovered in a short tyme.
Fourthly, our passage was both pleasurable and profitable. For we
received instruction and delight in behoulding the wonders of the Lord in
the deepe waters, and sometimes seeing the sea round us appearing with
a terrible countenance, and as it were full of high hills and deepe vallyes;
and sometimes it appeared as a most plain and even meadow. And ever
and anon we saw divers kynds of fishes sporting in the great waters, great
grampuses and huge whales going by companies and puffing up water-
streames. Those that love their owne chimney corner, and dare not go farre
beyond their owne townes end shall neever have the honour to see these
wonderfull workes of Almighty God.
Fifthly, we had a pious and christian-like passage; for I suppose
passengers shall seldom find a company of more religious, honest and
kynd seamen than we had. We constantly served God morning and
evening by reading and expounding a chapter, singing, and prayer. And the
Sabbath was solemnely kept by adding to the former, preaching twise and
catechising. And in our great need we kept 2 solemne fasts, and found a
gracious effect. Let all that love and use fasting and praying take notise that
it is as prevaileable by sea as by land, wheresoever it is faithfully
performed. Besides the ship master and his company used every night to
sett their 8 and 12 a clocke watches with singing a psalme and prayer that
was not read out of a booke. This I wryte not for boasting and flattery; but
for the benefit of those that have a mynd to come to New England
hereafter, that if they looke for and desyre to have as prosperous a voyage
as we had, they may use the same meanes to attayne the same. So letting
passe our passage by sea, we will now bring our discourse to land on the
shoare of New England, and I shall by God’s assistance endeavour to
speake nothing but the naked truth, and both acquaint you with the
commodities and discommodities of the country.
NEW-ENGLANDS PLANTATION
&c.
 NEW-ENGLANDS
PLANTATION
OR,
A S H O RT A N D T RV E
DESCRIPTION OF THE
CO MMO DIT IES AND
DISCOMMODITIES
o f t h a t C o u n t r e y.

Written by Mr Higgeson, a reuerend

Diuine now there resident.

Whereunto is added a Letter, sent by

r
M Graues an Enginere, out of New England.
The third Edition, enlarged.

L O ND O N.
Printed by T. and R. Cotes for Michael Sparke,
dwelling at the Signe of the Blue Bible in
Greene-Arbor, 1630.
 To the Reader.
REader, doe not disdaine to reade this Relation: and looke not here
to haue a large Gate and no building within: a full-stuffed Tittle with
no matter in the Booke: But here reade the truth, and that thou shalt
find without any frothy bumbasting words, or any quaint new-deuised
additions, onely as it was written (not intended for the Presse) by a
reuerend Diuine now there liuing, who onely sent it to some Friends
here, which were desirous of his Relations; which is an Epitomy of
their proceedings in the Plantation. And for thy part if thou meanest
to be no Planter nor Venturer doe but lend thy good Prayers for the
furtherance of it. And so I rest a Well-Wisher to all the good designes
both of them which are gone, and of them that are to goe.
M. S.
 NEW-ENGLANDS
PLANTATION.
LEtting passe our Voyage by Sea, we will now begin our discourse
on the shore of New-England. And because the life and wel-fare of
euery Creature heere below, and the commodiousnesse of the
Countrey whereas such Creatures liue, doth by the most wise
ordering of Gods prouidence, depend next vnto himselfe, vpon the
temperature and disposition of the foure Elements, Earth, Water,
Aire, and Fire (For as of the mixture of all these, all sublunary things
are composed; so by the more or lesse injoyment of the wholesome
temper and conuenient vse of these, consisteth the onely well-being
both of Man and Beast in a more or lesse comfortable measure in all
Countreys vnder the Heauens) Therefore I will indeauour to shew
you what New-England is by the consideration of each of these
apart, and truly indeauour by Gods helpe to report nothing but the
naked truth, and that both to tell you of the discommodities as well
as of the commodities, though as the idle Prouerbe is, Trauellers
may lye by autoritie, and so may take too much sinfull libertie that
way. Yet I may say of my selfe as once Nehemiah did in another
case: Shall such a Man as I lye? No verily: It becommeth not a
Preacher of Truth to be a Writer of Falshod in any degree: and
therefore I haue beene carefull to report nothing of new England but
what I haue partly seene with mine owne Eyes, and partly heard and
inquired from the mouths of verie honest and religious persons, who
by liuing in the Countrey a good space of time haue had experience
and knowledge of the state thereof, & whose testimonies I doe
beleeue as my selfe.
 First therefore of the Earth of New-England and all the
appertenances thereof: It is a Land of diuers and sundry sorts all
about Masathulets Bay, and at Charles Riuer is as fat blacke Earth
as can be seene any where: and in other places you haue a clay
soyle, in other grauell, in other sandy, as it is all about our Plantation
at Salem, for so our Towne is now named, Psal. 76. 2.
The forme of the Earth here in the superficies of it is neither too
flat in the plainnesse, nor too high in Hils, but partakes of both in a
mediocritie, and fit for Pasture, or for Plow or meddow ground, as
Men please to employ it: though all the Countrey bee as it were a
thicke Wood for the generall, yet in diuers places there is much
ground cleared by the Indians, and especially about the Plantation:
and I am told that about three miles from vs a Man may stand on a
little hilly place and see diuers thousands of acres of ground as good
as need to be, and not a Tree in the same. It is thought here is good
Clay to make Bricke and Tyles and Earthen-Pot as need to be. At
this instant we are setting a Bricke-Kill on worke to make Brickes and
Tyles for the building of our Houses. For Stone, here is plentie of
Slates at the Ile of Slate in Masathulets Bay, and Lime-stone, Free-
stone, and Smooth-stone, and Iron-stone, and Marble-stone also in
such store, that we haue great Rocks of it, and a Harbour hard by.
Our Plantation is from thence called Marble-harbour.
Of Minerals there hath yet beene but little triall made, yet we are
not without great hope of being furnished in that Soyle.
The fertilitie of the Soyle is to be admired at, as appeareth in the
aboundance of Grasse that groweth euerie where both verie thicke,
verie long, and verie high in diuers places: but it groweth verie wildly
with a great stalke and a broad and ranker blade, because it neuer
had been eaten with Cattle, nor mowed with a Sythe, and seldome
trampled on by foot. It is scarce to be beleeued how our Kine and
Goats, Horses and Hogges doe thriue and prosper here and like well
of this Countrey.
In our Plantation we haue already a quart of Milke for a penny: but
the aboundant encrease of Corne proues this Countrey to bee a
wonderment. Thirtie, fortie, fiftie, sixtie are ordinarie here: yea