The Friends of Mount Athos Book Reviews
© 2006
The Synaxarion: The Lives of the Saints of the Orthodox Church: Volume 5: May, June. By Hieromonk
Makarios of Simonos Petra; translated from the French by Mother Maria (Rule)
and Mother Joanna (Burton). Ormylia, 2005. 690 pages. ISBN 960-518-247-5. Price
h/b £36.00. Available from UK distributor Orthodox Christian Books Ltd or from
the Holy Convent of the Annunciation, 63071 Ormylia, Greece.
This able and readable translation of Hieromonk MakariosÕs masterly contemporary
Synaxarion volume 5 is
the second in the series of six to be translated by Mother Maria (Rule) and
Mother Joanna (Burton), who were also responsible for volume 4. The first three
volumes were wonderfully translated by a very dear friend, Christopher Hookway,
before his death in 2000. A review of volume 4 by Professor Andrew Louth of the
University of Durham is to be found in the Friends of Mount Athos Annual Report
for 2003, pp. 67–9.
The
Synaxarion is a
collection of the lives of the saints, and in this volume we find the saints
commemorated in May and June listed according to the date the Orthodox Church
remembers them. As Professor Louth explains in his 2003 review of volume 4, Fr
Makarios has used the standard Synaxarion of the Greek Church, itself based on the tenth-century
Synaxarion of Constantinople, as revised by St Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain among others. For the
first millennium, saints of the whole Church are included, though saints of the
Byzantine empire receive the greatest attention. Fr Makarios also includes
western saints of the first millennium including a number of Celtic and
Anglo-Saxon saints, such as St Columba (9 June), with a contemporary icon by
Aidan Hart, well known to readers of this Report. Fr MakariosÕs sources for the
second millennium are largely Greek, but he supplements these from Slav and
Romanian traditions. There is outstanding a sixth and final volume of the
series that will cover July and August.
The
translation reads well and the present reviewer, who, unlike Dr Louth, is
neither a scholar nor a linguist, was impressed by the high standards of this
volume as well as its four predecessors, though there are a number of
unfortunate typographical errors, as in previous volumes. The colour
illustrations of icons from the Protaton in Karyes, from Patmos, from Staro
Nagorichino, from the Hermitage in St Petersburg, and from the monastery of
Simonos Petra are all of high quality, and there are hundreds of black and
white illustrations of icons of the saints beside their entries, which adorn
the text and enhance the volume. The print is clear and very legible, and the
Convent of Ormylia is to be congratulated on the very high standard they are
maintaining in all these volumes.
Friends
of Mount Athos will find many Athonite saints here: the Holy New Martyrs
Euthymius, Ignatius, and Acacius of the skete of the Forerunner, St Nicephorus
the Hesychast, St John and St Euthymius, founders of the monastery of Iviron,
St Gabriel the Iberian who received the icon of the Porta•tissa at Iviron, the
venerable Euphrosynius also of Iviron. There is St Peter the Athonite, St
Niphon the Athonite, St Callistus, monk of the Great Lavra, a disciple of St
Gregory the Sinaite at the skete of Magoula, later monk of Iviron and Patriarch
of Constantinople, St Dionysius founder of Dionysiou Monastery, St David monk
of St AnneÕs skete and new martyr, and St George the Hagiorite, Abbot of
Iviron. English readers will find here St Augustine of Canterbury, St Dunstan,
and St Alban, and from the Celtic Church St Kevin of Ireland, St Comgall of
Bangor in Ireland, as well as St Columba of Iona already mentioned.
Two
lives that particularly caught the attention of the reviewer were those of St
John Maximovich, Archbishop of Shanghai, Brussels, and San Francisco, who died
on 19 June 1966, and St Nicolas Cabasilas, friend of St Gregory Palamas and
author of A Commentary on the Holy Liturgy and The Life in Christ, two masterpieces of Orthodox Christian literature.
The
society of the Friends of Mount Athos is to be congratulated, together with the
Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius, for supporting the publication of this
volume, as are Hieromonk Makarios of Simonos Petra and the nuns of Ormylia, for
all their efforts in the production of this beautifully produced Synaxarion.