Of the holy Barses, and of the exile of the bishop of Edessa and his companions.

Chapter XIV.—Of the holy Barses, and of the exile of the bishop of Edessa and his companions.

Barses, whose fame is now great not only in his own city of Edessa, and in neighbouring towns, but in Phœnicia, in Egypt, and in the Thebaid, through all which regions he had travelled with a high reputation won by his great virtue, had been relegated by Valens to the island of Aradus, ⁷¹⁷ but when the emperor learnt that innumerable multitudes streamed thither, because Barses was full of apostolic grace, and drove out sicknesses with a word, he sent him to Oxyrynchus ⁷¹⁸ in Egypt; but there too his fame drew all men to him, and the old man, worthy of heaven, was led off to a remote castle near the country of the barbarians of that district, by name Pheno. It is said that in Aradus his bed has been preserved to this day, where it is held in very great honour, for many sick persons lie down upon it and by means of their faith recover.

Footnotes

117:717

An island off the coast of Phœnicia; now Ruad. The town on the opposite mainland was Antaradus.

117:718

Oxyrynchus on the Nile, at or near the modern Behnese (?) was so called because the inhabitants worshipped the “sharp-snout,” or pike. Strabo xvii. 1. 40.