Robert Wagman

CHAPTER IV

In order to avert evil, they devise many expedients, but the most used ones are: night guards, placed at several locations, who never rest at any hour of the night, keeping watch on the baby whether awake or asleep; lamps, lit before the sacred images, which also illuminate the entire bedroom; incense fumigations, with which they venerate the images themselves and they purify the whole house. Others attach to the cradle a head of garlic, which they believe to be a remedy against witchcraft and to guard against it. Others [attach] coral and other things not worth describing in detail. Others behave more religiously, placing a cross or an image of the Lord on the baby. And, so that you may see that the practices of modern Greece are not that different from those of ancient Greece, in order to avert similar evils, they turn themselves to God, the Blessed Virgin, and the other Saints, whom they consider to be a safe haven and a refuge from terrible fortune and its trials, and with different returns from their piety they procure for themselves a protection against evil. Hence, many people dip a piece of cotton or silk in the oil of the lamps lit before the aforementioned deities and stuff it into a hollow reed, so that the oil may be saved and not contaminated through contact with other things. After they return home, they anoint the chief body parts of their sick children with it and praise the saint from whose lamp the oil came. Nor does hope disappoint them, as they find a remedy to the illness without any other doctor. The oil is called ‘holy oil.’ Its use is a very ancient one, and even nowadays, in the Church, during the sollemn days of the titular saints or another high celebration, it is customary to anoint one’s face at the end of the office, as the author of the Typicon attests. From the latter I quote here the manner of this anointing and the days during which it takes place (ch.XII):

Then the priest gives the brothers the oil from the lamps of the saint. If the person presiding also ranks highly as a priest, he anoints the brothers himself, dipping two fingers rather than one, in this gesture of blessing. After the holy oil is given, a complete absolution follows. By this mark let also be marked all other sollemn days of the saints during which the holy oil is given. And thus let us also celebrate all the festivities of the Saints for which there are vigils.

[The oil] was given on September 8th, the birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary; on September 26th, the day of John the Baptist; on November 26th, the sollemn day of St. Demetrius (only if the ointment which perspires from his body is not enough; because if it is, the brothers anoint themselves with that); on November 13th, the feast of St. John Chrysostom; on November 21st, the day the Mother of God entered the Temple; on the morning of December 25th, Christmas day; on January 1st, the feast day of Basil the Great; on January 20th, the day of St. Euthymius the Archimandrite; on January 25th, the day of St. Gregory of Nazianzus; and January 30th, the day of the three Hierarchs, Basil, Gregory, and Chrysostom; on April 23rd, the day of St. George the Martyr; on May 8th, the day of St. John the Evangelist; on June 24th, the Birthday of St. John the Baptist; on June 29th, the day of the Apostles Peter and Paul; on August 7th, the day of the Transfiguration of Our Lord; on August 29th, the day of the beheading of St. John the Baptist. So writes Palladius in the Lausiac History about Macarius of Alexandria:

As he took pity on her and prayed for her sake, he anointed her with his own hands with holy oil and within twenty days sent her back to her town, healed.

And further on:

After anointing him with holy oil, he gave him back to his father, pouring holy water over him.

Cyril of Scythopolis writes in the Life St. Sabas:

After he established a refuge for himself on the highest spot and sprinkled the oil from the Holy Cross all over the place, he remained there during the days of Lent.

And in Ch. 63, a woman is freed from a demon when her whole body is anointed with oil from the Cross. Similarly, in the Life of St. Nilus the Younger, [some people], tormented by demons, are freed with the oil from the lamps:

Having summoned the person who was performing sacerdotal functions, he ordered him to go to the oratory, pour prayers over the sick man, anoint him with the oil from the lamps, and forgive him. When this was done, the youth’s health was immediately restored, as the demon, like a puff of smoke, went out of his nostrils.

See also what the same author writes further on. I will now report more recent events, which not everybody knows. George Pachymeres writes about Michael, the son of the elder Andronicus (Hist. 11, 10):

After he left there, he came to the coastal town of Pegae, where later, afflicted by sadness and depression on account of the events, he became seriously ill. He came close to dying, and would indeed have died (the doctors had given up hope), had not the mercy of the Virgin Mother of God shone forth. It would not be a bad thing to add this story to the rest of the narration. So there lay the king, drawing, one could say, his last breaths: for he had been seized by illness and was not responding to anything the doctors did. Messages were sent then to his father the Emperor. The urgency of the situation required haste, but a storm interfered and raised the seas against the ships.  Finally, after many days, they arrived, not without difficulties. And the letters which had been sent were not letters but rather, by that time, tears. They revealed what kind of illness it was, and for how many days the patient had been fighting it; for how many days and how many nights the illness had been ravaging him, and with which symptoms; with which medicines they were treating him and what was, finally, his current condition. And they implored that the doctors should send any remedy they had as soon as possible, if it was to arrive while the king was still alive. When the emperor had heard this terrible news, he despaired for the king’s life and began preparing himself for the worst. Nonetheless, he immediately sent back his doctors and the best resources he had; even though he placed part (or, to be more accurate, all) of his hopes in the mercy of God and His Most Praised Mother. For in circumstances such as these, he was the kind of man who would turn all the more strongly to Her, and he commanded Her praises be sung, although Easter was imminent. Then he began imploring Her even more, and he sent oil from the lamp and a monk from the monastery, generously loaded down with gifts.  As the monk then came off the boat, the ill man regained his senses, and although he had not yet seen the monk and was almost dead, he knew of his arrival from an auspicious dream in which an elegant woman seemed to to extract a nail from the sick part of his body. He began to ask, “See if a monk just came on shore, bringing with him the gifts of the Mother of God.” They went right away and discovered with their eyes what they had first apprehended with their ears. The monk’s arrival with the holy oil was the sick man’s return to life, accomplished not without a great miracle.

Nor is any different what Pachymeres writes, in the last chapter of book 11 of his Hist., of a mute and deaf man in Constantinople to whom the holy martyr Theodosia gave back both speech and hearing. For he, ‘anointed with the oil from the lamp’, gained back his health with the help of the aforementioned martyr. Blemmydes reports more about the powers and miracles of the same oil in the Life of S. Paul of Latra. Countless are the reports given by writers about the oil of the cross. Which, as I will mention later, would have to be one which had been either marked by the sign of the cross, or received from the very lamp which burns in front of the cross, whether at Jerusalem or elsewhere; or one which emanated from the cross itself, as from any sainty relics, whether once or in a continuous flow. And if no oil from the lamps should be at hand, they look very carefully for any of the fragrant herbs with which Greeks adorn their images. If neither herbs nor any small plant hung by anyone else can be found, then they themselves make the effort of picking some fresh, usually myrtle or holy basil or rosemary, and they draw it across individual parts of an icon with the sign of the cross and frequent remembrance and mention of the patient, on whose behalf all this happens, and once they’ve prayed for his health, they come back home, and then, having pinched off with their thumb and forefinger a leaf from that small branch, they rub with it the sick person’s eyes, ears, nostrils, face, and chest, whispering good wishes and prayers; the rest they keep before the images for a time, and, when needed, they turn again to its powers. This is also, because of the first application of the term, called the holy oil, although it is no oil.

NOTES

Forthcoming