Robert Wagman

CHAPTER XXIV

From these same Greek traditions, I shall also include one which is pious. On the feast of the Epiphany, when Christ our Lord was washed by John in the waters of the Jordan, all the people gather together. With candles (which they provide to each person in attendance), sollemn ritual prayers, and the rest of the ceremonial apparatus, the priests bless the waters using a type of blessing which they themselves call ‘The Great Blessing’. At the end that water is left for everyone to take. Some come running up to collect it with large vessels, others with small ones. They bring it home and after a careful sprinkling of the house, they pour the rest into the wine casks. Now, since these are full, they cannot take any water in. So from a hole in the cask they draw out as much wine as they pour in water. As confirmed by everybody’s testimony, if the extracted wine is given to religious institutions or to the poor, the wine in the cask is preserved, but if out of greed it is appropriated instead for private use, after a short time it turns into vinegar. Therefore on that day there is a great traffic across the entire town, of wine-filled jugs being carried here and there to the poor and to holy places—even to those who do not drink. I have heard from many people (who claim most assuredly, even swear, to have been present at the fact) that on the same day as in the rest of Greece, on that famous Mt. Athos which is renowned for its thirty-plus splendid monasteries, those venerable monks use to bless the water from rivers or wells or from whatever source is at hand. The most amazing thing of all, however, is this: at the foot of the mountain, right across from the water, is the Iviron monastery, founded by the Iberian fathers John, George, and others in honor of the Virgin, a beautiful structure built when the Iconoclast heresy was still raging. To save it from fire and the plots of evil men, some pious monks threw the icon of the Virgin into the sea. After not too long, the icon appeared to the locals, standing upright on the water and facing the coast. Many rushed to the place, and set out to reach the icon in rowboats and other kinds of small craft. But the image withdrew as they came close, moving back further into the deep. All the efforts of the people who had come were useless. Bewildered by the situation, they turned to the bishops and the other priests. And these, conspicuous in their sacred garments, with lamps, incense, and chanting, immediately set out for the place where they could see the icon, as it had been done before. But the image kept running away, mocking again and again their repeated efforts. So they resorted to prayers. Weeping and sighing they were asking God to show them what had to be done. And God let the Bishop know that the icon could not be reached unless those Iberians whom we mentioned before joined that sacred mission. When these came, the icon finally stood still and allowed them to hold it in their hands. Therefore the Iberians set it up in that very place and named after it the monastery which was built there later. Nearby is a sandy beach, characteristic of that monastery only, which stretches out for a little over  three hundred and fifty paces. From this shore the fathers of the monastery bless the waters on the day of Epiphany, during the feast of lights, with great crowds of people coming from all over the region. They begin by submerging the Crucifix, carried by the head of the procession, in a bowl or some other vessel filled with fresh water. Then they fasten the Cross to the point of a long spear and, streching out with their arms, plunge it as far and as deep as possible into the sea itself, while they sing this hymn at the top of their voice,

As you were baptized in the Jordan, my Lord, the cult of the Trinity became manifest. For the voice of the Father bore witness, calling you His beloved son, and the Ghost, in the shape of a dove, confirmed the truth of that speech. Glory to you, God Christ, who appeared and filled the world with light.

They repeat the hymn with the melody three times and while they sing, the salt water throughout that entire tract of shore turns fresh to the taste and most pleasant to drink. When they finish singing the hymn for the third time, it reverts back to salt water. For this reason everybody goes into the sea in mass: the delicate ones use goblets to verify the fact; others drink the water some other way, describing it to those who hesitate and inciting them to taste it, wondering at the abrupt transformation of the waters that happens in such a short time, and celebrating with such a great miracle the baptism of Christ every year. Those who attend the ceremony on that day also claim with great convinction that the water never gets stale or spoils. This, they say, is confirmed through personal experience and anybody who denies it is out of his mind. When things turn out differently, they interpret it as a bad sign for the future. The same is said of consecrated bread, which is also believed never to spoil or go bad. Thus Pachymeres gives a tearful account of one instance when it happened to go bad, describing the event as a wonder and a bad omen (Hist. Bk. 7, ch.28),

Then something occurred, terrible to see and hear, which confirmed what had been done at the time. Different people may try to explain it in different ways, but no one, in my opinion, could come close to the truth, no matter how extensive and exhausting an inquiry he might have conducted. ‘For who can really read the Lord’s mind? Who can reach the extreme depths of His wisdom?,’ said Job. But to affirm or believe that facts such as we can express with our words can somehow happen, with regard to divine things, would be speaking ‘in tune with madness’, as Pindar said. Since I undertook to give an account of what happened, however, it would not be fair for me to omit any event which may defy explanation. For the truth strenghtens the soul. What I might suffer from my future readers for speaking out would be no worse than what I would do to myself by remaining silent. [Omissis] Therefore, this event is also reported with the rest, as it bears the mark of divine providence: what it may portend about the past or the future, is, as is right, unknown. That particular Sunday which takes its name from the custom of eating cheese was approaching, and the tradition required the presence of the official who officiated the ceremony in church. This tradition was to fill the ciborium with as many presanctified breads as needed for the ritual acts prescribed by the liturgy. Thus, when the ciborium was opened to store the holy bread after the offering of the divine sacrifice, presanctified bread was readily available inside it. An onlooker would have guessed, not unreasonably, that this had to be one of the three breads destined to be offered on Great Wednesday. As I have already mentioned, however, it so happened that on that particular occasion the holy sacrifice could not be completed, because the absolution of the clergy which had taken place in that same church—presided by God only knows what sort of individuals—had lasted too long. Thus the bread reserved for the sacrifice had been left unused inside the ciborium. It had deteriorated to such a degree that it no longer even looked like bread: so far it was from being bread or resembling bread at all. Indeed it looked like some very black bit of treacle or another substance of this kind. As soon as he saw it, the priest was seized by a great fear, nor did he know what to do, since it could not be united with fresher pieces for the purpose of consumption. It was not so much what had happened to the bread that was upsetting, but its appearance, as there was no way to disguise it. So the priest showed the bread to the public asking with the greatest piety what was to be done. But the product of that terrible transformation precluded what was to be done, should have been done, and would have been appropriate. Revolted, the priest refrained from consuming the bread. But he could not sacrifice to God without consuming the offering. The public was equally divided between fear and perplexity; for they they were clueless about what to do. Yet fear paralyzed their minds, leading them to agree on the same point, that regardless of what could have happened to him, the priest should have consumed the stuff. He, on the other hand, had no desire at all to touch it, even with the tip of his lips. Emboldened by the public’s hesitation, he came up with an expedient that, although lacking in dignity, was by far more necessary than anything that had been devised before. It is appropriate that God should care and always have cared about venerable and sacred things. So the bread religiously discarded during that occasion was religiously deposited in that place, by the name of Holy Oven, which from ancient times had been dedicated to the storage of such things. But enough of this.

The notion that holy water—especially baptismal water—remains untainted is also found among the Latins, as Jacob Gretser shows with many examples in his work On Blessings bk. 2, ch. 10. The same is confirmed by our friend Barthold Nihus. At the nunnery of Althaldensleben near Magdeburg, where he said he was provost once, the baptismal water contained in the church’s public fountain remained uncorrupted and always as if fresh for sixty years, until it was poured out by a Lutheran steward who was imposed on these nuns around the year 1620. Still according to Nihus, in Belgium a lot of severely ill people were healed at once after a theologian of great repute, very well-known to him and us both, had them partake of the water used by the priest to wash the chalice at the end of mass: an event which pertains to the matters discussed above in ch. 6. [But enough of this.]

NOTES

Forthcoming