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Life of St Porphyry, Bishop of Gaza
Mark the Deacon, tr. Hill, 1913
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The city of Gaza, in which most of the events related by Mark the Deacon took place, had in his day passed the meridian of its long history. It is first heard of some nineteen hundred years before that time, when we learn that it opened its gates to the Pharaoh Thothmes III on his way to the conquest of Syria. He made it his base of operations on this campaign. Whenever the city is mentioned during the next three centuries, it is as a possession of the Egyptians. And even to the present day, lying as it does on the borders of Palestine towards Egypt, it retains a strong Egyptian element in its character. After the Egyptians, however, about 1200 B.C., came another conquering race, the Philistines, making on the city an impression which it preserved even through later Egyptian or Syrian domination down to the period of the Roman Empire. To most of us, whose only authority for the history of Palestine is the Bible, Gaza is essentially the city of the Philistines; and not without reason, although we must remember that it was of earlier origin, and that the earliest stratum, Canaanitish or Syrian or Arabian, or whatever it may have been, always underlay the Egyptian and the Philistine. To understand the history of the place it is even more important to realize that the Jewish element did not enter into its making. In fact Gaza, much more than her sister Ascalon, showed herself consistently hostile to the Jews whenever she came into contact with them. We need not go back, for our present purposes, earlier than to Hellenistic times. When Jonathan Maccabaeus, at the time of the wars between Demetrius II and Antiochus VI, made an expedition through Philistia, the people of Ascalon ‘met him honourably. From whence he went to Gaza, but they of Gaza shut him out; wherefore he laid siege unto it, and burned the suburbs thereof with fire, and spoiled them. Afterward, when they of Gaza made supplication unto Jonathan, he made peace with them, and took the sons of their chief men for hostages, and sent them to Jerusalem’. In 96 B.C., after a desperate siege of a year’s duration, Alexander Jannaeus succeeded by treachery in getting possession of the place. He destroyed it utterly: venit calvitium super Gazam. Whether the new city which arose about a generation afterwards was founded on the same site, or, as is more probable, at some distance off, is a moot point. But, however that may be, it flourished not a little. It reckoned its years from the autumn of 61 B.C.; doubtless that was the time when it was decided to refound the place. Pompeius had granted the Gazaeans their ‘freedom’, and the foundation of the new city is generally attributed to Aulus Gabinius, who went to Syria as proconsul in 57 B.C.; but the adoption of the era of 61 shows that plans for the foundation must have been laid earlier. Gaza had not only an era, but (like Ascalon) a calendar of its own, which continued in use at least down to the sixth century after Christ, and probably until the Arab conquest in 635.
The place remained proud of its independence. The all-absorbing Herod the Great, it is true, acquired it in 30 B.C.; but after his death it again became autonomous, in the limited sense in which autonomy was understood of cities in a Roman province. Under the Roman government, Philistine and Jew perforce controlled their hatred of each other; but it is characteristic of their relations that when an opportunity occurred in the First Revolt against Rome, in 66, the Jews attacked and plundered and at least partly burned the hated city.
Hadrian, who took a great interest in this, as in all the cities of the provinces, visited it more than once; the most important occasion was in 130. For a short time the coins of the city bear a double date, one reckoned by the ordinary era, the other from the year of this visit. A public festival, the ‘Hadrianic panegyris’, was long celebrated annually in his honour; and it is probable that the coins bear this special date because they were issued annually to supply the unusual demand created by the influx of visitors to the festival. It is true that the Paschal Chronicle attributes the foundation of the panegyris to an earlier visit of the Emperor in 119, but the commencement of the new era in 130 is against it. To one of Hadrian’s visits, also, we may conjecturally assign the foundation of the great temple of the god Marnas, which Mark describes with a mixture of pride and abhorrence. For the temple is first represented on the coins of Hadrian himself. The ‘Olympian ‘Emperor who founded the great temple of Zeus on the sacred mountain Gerizim of the Samaritans would not be slow to recognize the claims of the ‘Cretan Zeus’ of the Gazaeans. It is said that after the suppression of a revolt of the Jews in A.D. 119, Hadrian selected Gaza as the place at which to sell his Jewish captives; the Gazaeans doubtless appreciated this privilege.
For centuries the city continued to prosper exceedingly. It was officially recognized by the imperial government as a sacred and autonomous city, enjoying the right of asylum. Eventually, we do not know exactly when, it attained the rank of a Roman ‘colony’. Mark’s praise of the city may be read in his fourth chapter. Antoninus Martyr, about a century and a half later, calls it civitas splendida deliciosa. In the fifth and sixth centuries it was the home of a school of rhetoric in which Procopius and Choricius are the most important names. It is, perhaps, not altogether unfortunate that Mark the Deacon lived too early to come under the influence of this school.
We can easily understand that in a place with a history of this kind Christianity had a harder struggle than was usual to gain a footing. … It was only natural that in all towns where interests, not merely religious or sentimental, but also financial, were involved in the pagan worships, the conditions affecting the establishment of the new religion, even though recognized by the imperial government, should have been more arduous than in country places. But when the town had the peculiar individuality of Gaza, the fight must have been especially hard. So it came about that Gaza was one of the last strongholds of Paganism to fall before the advance of Christianity. The history of that fall is told by Mark.
Unable at first to make much impression on Gaza itself (for even if Philip entered there, his mission hardly had any permanent result), the Christians, so to speak, drew their lines around it. Little Christian communities sprang up in the surrounding villages. A gradually increasing number of believers was to be found in the city; though when a person is described as ‘of Gaza ‘it is not always possible to say whether he belonged to the city or to its district. It may be that, as Duchesne thinks, the persecution under Diocletian was not so severe in Palestine as elsewhere. But of what persecution there was, Gaza and its district had a respectable share. Of the seven Gazaean virgins (mentioned by the Bollandists, August 31) who were put to the sword, we know no details, not even whether they suffered in the great persecution or at another time. But we have the story of a Christian maiden from the neighbourhood of Gaza, who, threatened with the stews, protested against the tyrant who allowed such monsters to represent him in the government of his dominions. She was put to the torture and burned, together with another poor woman, Valentina, who had protested on her behalf. Other martyrs connected with Gaza who figure in the calendar are Major, apparently a soldier of the Mauretanian legion (martyred about 303, and commemorated on February 15), Agapius, Thecla, and Timotheus (all commemorated on August 19); and Theë and Maiour (December 19). Thecla was apparently a native of Bizya in Thrace, but probably suffered at Gaza under Diocletian, being thrown to wild beasts. Agapius’s place of martyrdom is doubtful, but whether he suffered at Gaza or at Caesarea, he is mentioned by Eusebius along with Thecla in a way that seems to connect him with the former place. As to Timotheus, Eusebius definitely assigns his martyrdom to Gaza in the second year of the persecution, that is to say, 304. It is he whose shrine the Christians of Gaza visited on the occasion of their prayers for rain, as described by Mark in c. 20. Theë and Maiour (also mentioned in the same passage as sharing a shrine with Timotheus) belong to the later stage of the persecution, having suffered in 308, under Maximin II. It is probably a mere coincidence that another Timotheus, a deacon who was martyred far away in Mauretania, is also commemorated on the same day with them; the idea that it is this martyr whose shrine is mentioned by Mark in c. 20 is almost certainly mistaken. … But the foremost figure among the Christians of Gaza in these days was Silvanus, an army-veteran, and a presbyter and confessor of the neighbourhood of the city. In the fifth year of the persecution he was sent to the mines at Phaeno, to the south of the Dead Sea; for such transportation had by this time begun to replace more violent measures of repression. At Phaeno he seems to have been ordained bishop. Duchesne suggests that this may have been one of the irregular ordinations due to Meletius. It must, however, be noted that Eusebius in one place calls him ‘bishop of the churches round Gaza’. When the colony at Phaeno was broken up in 310, the military commandant got rid of Silvanus by beheading him. The Christians doubtless regarded him as a martyr, but Duchesne notes that his execution differs in kind from the ordinary martyrdom.
Throughout the Great Persecution the Christians in Gaza itself doubtless continued to meet secretly for worship, and we hear of a meeting being raided by the police, and the prisoners subjected to torture and mutilation.
Of all the places in the neighbourhood of Gaza, its port, Maiumas, was the most fruitful field for the work of the Christians. Gaza, it must be remembered, lay some two and a half miles inland. The population of ports, the ‘nautical rabble’, is notoriously susceptible to innovating influences. The old-fashioned upper class of Gaza, people like that family which Saint Porphyry converted en bloc, as Mark tells us in one of his most graphic episodes, must have looked down with contempt on the people of Maiumas, most of whom were probably concerned in the Egyptian trade. Mark, indeed, lets fall a significant observation when he says (c. 58) that the Christians from the seaport were more numerous than those in the city because there were many Egyptian wine-merchants there. The Christianizing influence doubtless came rather from Alexandria than from Caesarea or any other place in Palestine, Maiumas was so far out of sympathy with Gaza in matters of religion, that—doubtless in response to an appeal on the part of the inhabitants, and at any rate on the ground that it was predominantly Christian—Constantine made it an independent city with its own bishop, and named it after his sister Constantia (according to Eusebius) or his son Constantius (according to Sozomen). But if he called it Constantia, Mark and other writers such as Sozomen (himself very familiar with the neighbourhood) continue to use the old name. That is not entirely due to the fact that, as we shall see, Julian the Philosopher revoked Constantine’s grant. In such matters most Syrian cities were extraordinarily conservative, and with rare exceptions the original Semitic name has survived the Greek or Roman into modern times; and the name of the port is still preserved in the form Maimas.
Besides ordinary communities in the towns and villages, we hear also of settlements of hermits and monasteries all round Gaza, especially at Bethelia. These seem to have first sprung up in Palestine under the influence of Saint Hilarion, a native of Thabatha, a few miles south of Gaza, and the chief figure in the history of Christianity in this region during the middle of the fourth century. Born about 290 or 300, the son of heathen parents, he was educated in Egypt. There he became a Christian. But, finding the hermit life, as represented in Egypt by Saint Antony and his disciples, to be far from solitary, he returned at a comparatively early age to Palestine. He set up as a hermit in a less populous ‘desert’, about seven miles from Maiumas. But even here solitude was not to be found. His hermitage was greatly frequented; his disciples, hermits like himself, are said to have been many thousands in number. … drawn by horses trained by a Christian of Maiumas, from the influence of spells cast upon it by his heathen rivals with the aid of their god Marnas. Hilarion long remained a centre of popular attraction; but before the disturbances in Julian’s reign began he had left Palestine to wander about the world, and to die in Cyprus. His remains were translated to Maiumas. Saint Jerome wrote his life, on the strength of information supplied by Epiphanius of Salamis, who had known him both in Palestine and in Cyprus.
Of the official history, so to speak, of the Church during this period, we can only glean a little information from a few incidental references. At the Council of Nicaea in 325, Gaza—or at any rate the district round it— was represented by Bishop Asclepas, who was on the side of Athanasius. He had been bishop in the time of the great persecution; whether he was actually able to live as such in Gaza itself is uncertain, although it seems clear that even then there must have been a small community of Christians in the city. But now, probably soon after 325, arose the first church, which Mark in c. 20 calls the ‘old church’. As regards Asclepas, his orthodoxy exposed him to the attacks of the Arianizing Eastern bishops, who actually deposed him (on the ground of having overthrown an altar), perhaps as early as 326, appointing in his place one Quintianus. Nevertheless, he appeared at the Council of Tyre in 335; and, from the encyclical letters afterwards written by the Eastern bishops when they retired from the Council of Sardica, it would appear that he had returned to his see, and violent scenes had ensued. Like Athanasius and many other objects of Arian persecution, he betook himself to Pope Julius at Rome. The Roman Council of 340 quashed the judgement against him, and again in 342—if that is the date of the Council of Sardica—he was once more declared innocent, and returned to Gaza.
Julian the Philosopher (360-3) thought Constantine’s action in regard to Maiumas of sufficient importance to require that he should reverse it; and the port was once more made subject to Gaza. Sozomen tells us that the Gazaeans brought a suit against the people of Maiumas, and that Julian decided against the latter, which was deprived of its former name (by which is doubtless meant Constantia, not Maiumas) and received the appellation of ‘seaside quarter of Gaza’. That description is used by Mark, sometimes alone, once with the explanation that it is the same as Maiumas. Both places were under the same civil governors and officials. But ecclesiastically they remained distinct; for of course Julian simply ignored the Christian Church in any reconstitution of affairs. An attempt by a later Bishop of Gaza (some time in the last quarter of the fourth century) to absorb Maiumas into his diocese was met by the declaration of the provincial synod that Maiumas, as the elder of the two places in the Christian faith, should not be deprived of its independence. So Maiumas continued to be governed by its own bishops until the fifth century, and perhaps later. The only occupant of the see known to fame in the fourth century is Saint Zeno, who died about 400.
Julian’s reactionary measures were accompanied by an anti-Christian outbreak. The basilica of Gaza, like those of Ascalon, Berytus, and other cities, was burned, and some blood was shed. From Theodoret and the Paschal Chronicle we learn that in 362 presbyters and virgins were murdered and their corpses given to be devoured by swine. Sozomen tells vividly the story of the rioting, and of the martyrdom of Saints Eusebius, Nestabus, and Zeno. When the riot broke out, these men were dragged from the house in which they had taken refuge, and cast into prison. The citizens then held an uproarious meeting in the theatre, after which they ran to the prison, took the unfortunate Christians out, and murdered them with every circumstance of brutality. Another Christian, Nestor, was maltreated at the same time, but his personal beauty excited the compassion of the mob, who cast him out of the city before he was quite dead. He was carried to the house of Zeno, the cousin of the three other murdered men, and afterwards Bishop of Maiumas; but he died while his wounds were being dressed. This Zeno, himself in danger of the same fate, had fled to the neighbouring Anthedon. There the heathen, more merciful than the Gazaeans, only scourged him; he was able to escape to Maiumas, where he lay hid until the danger had passed.
The bodies of Eusebius, Nestabus, and Zeno were burned by the heathen, who, knowing the Christian affection for relics, and doubtless fearing their efficacy, mingled such bones as escaped the flames with the bones of camels and asses. But their precaution, the legend says, was vain; for the identity of the bones was divinely revealed to a Christian woman who was living at Gaza (though she was not a native of the city). She gathered them reverently together in a pot and conveyed them to the future Bishop of Maiumas—still divinely directed, for she knew him not before. Zeno kept the bones until, in the reign of Theodosius, he was ordained bishop; then he built a house of prayer outside the walls of the city, and placed under the altar the bones of the three martyrs and of Nestor the Confessor.
The governor of the province very properly arrested the ringleaders of the riot and held them to trial for sedition and murder. But he was reckoning without his Emperor. Julian, we are told, remarking that the Gazaeans had only retaliated on the Galilaeans for past offences, relieved the too zealous governor of his office.
If Sozomen is to be believed, Saint Hilarion also narrowly escaped death on the same occasion; but his enemies found him fled. There is, however, some reason to think that he may have left Palestine some time before.
Saint Ambrose (writing in 388) attributes the burning of the churches at this time to the Jews, but the ordinary Gazaean population scarcely needed their assistance in such an affair.
It would seem that the basilica was not utterly destroyed, unless that which Mark calls the ‘old church ‘was a second building, which is hardly probable. Bishop Irenion, who was present at the Synod of Antioch in 363, and died about 393, built the bishop’s house, and also a church which was called ‘Peace’ (c. 18). It was during his occupation of the see that Saint Paula, Jerome’s friend, visited Gaza (in 386). His successor Aeneias filled the see for a very short time, being followed by Porphyry in 395.
Thus, when Porphyry came upon the scene, there were already two churches and a bishop’s house in existence. Yet the Christians were very few in numbers. And the pagans had no less than eight temples for public worship, not to mention the idols in private houses and in the villages.
Most of the heathen deities with whom the Christians had to contend in Gaza are familiar to all students of antiquity—the Sun, Aphrodite, Apollo, the Maiden (i.e. Persephone, rather than the consort of Marnas), Hecate, the Fortune of the City, and some hero who was worshipped at a shrine called the Heroön. These are all mentioned by Mark (c. 64). The Fortune of the City was represented, as Stephanus of Byzantium and Eustathius tell us, with a heifer beside her, for Io; and so indeed she appears on local coins.
But the chief god of Gaza, as is abundantly evident, was Marnas, the ‘Cretan Zeus’. Though he is forgotten now, his worship was of the greatest importance in Palestine. A dedication to him has been found at Canatha in the Hauran. It is significant that, as Lampridius incidentally records, the Syrian Emperor Severus Alexander invoked Marnas and Jupiter in the same breath.
This deity is of sufficient historical interest to justify some discussion of his nature in this place. His name is generally explained as of Syrian origin, and equivalent to ‘Our Lord’. Of the truth of this etymology there is grave doubt; the Syrian appearance of the word is probably fortuitous. Nor need we look to any connexion with a word for rain; Mark’s statement (c. 19) that Marnas was regarded as the lord of rain means no more than that he was a sky-god or a god of fertility, as every local ‘Zeus’ or ‘Baal’ was. The true connexion is more likely to be with a Cretan word, which is preserved in the forms marna (recorded as the word for ‘maiden’), and ‘Britomartis’ (which is glossed as ‘sweet maiden’). But how, it will be asked, can a word meaning ‘maiden ‘have anything to do with Zeus? The answer is that the name ‘Marnas’ must stand to ‘marna’ as ‘Kouros’, the young man (under which name we know that the Cretans worshipped the young Zeus), to ‘Kora’, the maiden goddess. Marnas and Marna, then, would be the young Zeus and his young consort. Now the worship of a young Zeus, coupled in legend with a goddess or nymph, sometimes called Europa, sometimes Dictynna, sometimes Britomartis, is especially characteristic of Crete. Dictynna or Britomartis is a sort of maiden goddess of the woods and wilds; the Greeks identified her naturally with Artemis the huntress. As the lover of Britomartis we find Minos; but Minos is merely a hypostasis of the Cretan Zeus.
Were it not supported by other evidence, one might hesitate to press the philological connexion of Marnas with Crete (for philological speculations are notoriously precarious, and the weight of the opinion of Semitic scholars is probably against us). But first comes the definite statement, found in more than one ancient writer, that Marnas was the Cretan Zeus. Next, there is the tradition that Gaza itself was a Cretan foundation. It was actually called Minoa, as having been founded by Minos. True, our authority for this statement, Stephanus of Byzantium, is late; but when his statements are not in themselves absurd or contradictory of known facts, they are to be treated with respect. That the people of Gaza, in Roman times at least, believed in the tradition, is certain; they actually represented Minos on their coins. This tradition has been treated with contempt by scholars of the class, now happily decreasing in numbers, who believe that Greek tradition is never based on fact of any kind, and is not worth considering in the light of archaeological evidence. We have been told that the tradition is an invention of antiquaries of the Graeco-Roman age. If so, then those antiquaries must have possessed a curious faculty of divination. They can hardly have been acquainted with the old identification of the Cherethites with the Cretans, or with Jeremiah’s significant description of the Philistines, as ‘the remnant of the country of Caphtor’, any more than they can have guessed at what the spade has lately revealed to us.
Recent archaeological research in Crete and Philistia proves, beyond any possible doubt, a connexion between the two countries in Minoan times. Whether the Philistines went to Crete from Palestine or came to Palestine from Crete (which is the more likely), the connexion between the two countries is now definitely established by the pottery which has been found in excavations such as those at Gezer, Bethshemesh and Tell-es-Safi (Gath).
So much for the general connexion between Crete and Philistia. Now for Marnas. Although the coins on which he is represented are miserable works of art, and it is difficult to be certain of details, yet this much seems to be established. First, he seems to be a youthful god. The attributes which he holds are so obscure that it is perhaps preferable not to conjecture what they are; but one of them looks like a bow, and his general aspect, like that of the young Zeus Kasios at Pelusium, is Apolline. Secondly, as the figure on the title-page of this book shows, he is accompanied in his temple by a goddess in the attitude and with the attributes of the Greek huntress-goddess, Artemis. After what we have read of the Cretan Britomartis, will it be doubted that we have here, in Marnas and the Artemis-like goddess, any other than the Cretan Zeus and his consort Britomartis, or Dictynna: Kouros and Kora?
The Zeus Kasios of Pelusium, just mentioned, is connected by more than coincidence with Zeus-Marnas of Gaza. They are both young, Apolline gods. Further, when Epiphanius is describing the worship of human beings as gods by the heathen, two of the instances he chooses are ‘Marnas the slave of Asterios’ at Gaza (be it noted that Asterios is one of the names of the Cretan Zeus) and ‘Kasios the ship-owner at Pelusium’. What euhemeristic interpretation of these two cults he had in his mind is unfortunately unknown to us; but the juxtaposition of the two is suggestive. Rather more vague in its suggestion, but not negligible, is the statement of Stephanus and Eustathius that the stretch of sea from Gaza to Pelusium was known as the Ionian Sea. It is true that they derive the name from Io, who was worshipped at Gaza. But in all probability it really means the Greek sea, the sea of Javan, the coast of which received colonists (and their cults) from the western isles, such as Crete.
The fall of the Marneion removed the last stronghold of Paganism in this part of the world. The Serapeion at Alexandria had fallen in 391; the destruction of the temples of Heliopolis and Apameia had followed soon after. ‘Now’, wrote Jerome to Laeta from his cell at Bethlehem, ‘the Egyptian Serapis also has become Christian; Marnas at Gaza mourns in prison, and expects in dread the instant destruction of his temple.’ And later, in his commentary on Isaiah, in 411, he triumphantly proclaims: ‘the Serapeum at Alexandria and the temple of Marnas at Gaza have risen up again into churches of the Lord.’ With that, although it would be idle to pretend that Paganism was rooted out, we may say that it ceased to be an established faith. And by about a century later it seems to have completely disappeared from Gaza, for the biography of Peter the Iberian, Bishop of Maiumas in the fifth century, written about 500, shows no sign of it.
Of Mark’s book, as literature, it is not necessary to say much. Draeseke has suggested that the writer may have been acquainted with the works of Dionysius the Areopagite; but the resemblances (as of the vision of Porphyry in the Place of the Skull to the vision of Carpus related by Dionysius in his eighth Letter) on which he bases his theory seem quite insufficient to support it. We must take the book as it is. Its transparent sincerity has won for it admiration, even in the bald Latin translation by which alone it was known until the first publication of the Greek text by Haupt in 1874. Graces of style it has none; the vocabulary is limited and monotonous. Nevertheless, after the somewhat clumsy introduction, there is not a dull line in it, and it is unsurpassed in directness and vividness of narration by any biography of a similar subject. The author’s point of view is, of course, narrow; the great events of his time do not interest him, except in so far as they touch the interests of his little corner of Palestine. But the statements that Praÿlius was Bishop of Jerusalem when Porphyry was ordained presbyter, and that Theodosius II was proclaimed Emperor from his birth, seem to be the only positive historical errors in the text. On the date of the birth of Theodosius II it would appear that he is right, and the great majority of other writers wrong. His omissions are, however, somewhat extraordinary. Draeseke has pointed out, for instance, how astonishing it is that he makes no mention of the death of Eudoxia, to whom the Christians of Gaza were so deeply indebted, and who did not live to hear of the completion of the church which was named after her. Yet she had said in his hearing, ‘Remember always me and my child.’
It is hardly necessary to say that the genuineness of the book has been impugned; but the names of the sceptics, whose arguments were sufficiently refuted long ago, need not be disinterred from the obscurity in which they lie.
Mark tells us little about himself, save that he was by profession a calligrapher, and came from Asia to Jerusalem, where he became the disciple of Porphyry. The saint sent him to Thessalonica to settle his affairs. About 397 he was ordained deacon, and in the next year sent on a mission to Constantinople, to obtain a decree against the pagan temples of Gaza. He accompanied Porphyry again to Constantinople on the more successful mission of 401-2. His book, in which he reported at length the dispute between Porphyry and the unfortunate Manichaean Julia, is lost to us. It must have been interesting, but one doubts whether it would have been impartial. For Mark has the faults of his qualities, and one can hardly expect him to show mercy to Arian or Manichaean, any more than to ‘them of the idol-madness’. He has a boundless admiration for the irrepressible Barochas. Barochas, indeed, is the second hero of the book. Whenever he appears he seems to be either smiting the heathen hip and thigh or, more often, being beaten by them to within an inch of his life. ‘Quel homme, ce Baruch!’ we exclaim with Lafontaine. … We catch a glimpse of him when we read (c. 42) of the beauty of the blushing Eudoxia or (c. 88) of the handsome young men and women who support the Manichaean Julia; and it is clear to any one who reads with intelligence the story of Salamtha that Mark was, innocently enough, affected by the charm of the maid. It is this sympathy in the writer which is his most attractive quality to the modern reader.
The picture of Porphyry which Mark draws is singularly human. It would be absurd to judge the bishop by modern standards, as does the German historian who complains of his brutality in the persecution of the heathen. It is true that he paved the street with sacred stones from the Marneion, and that he cursed the Manichaean Julia, so that she fell down in a fit and died. … … …
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From the data given by his biographer, it is calculated that Porphyry must have been born at Thessalonica about A.D. 347; for he was about forty-five years old when he was made presbyter; he was ordained bishop after being a presbyter for three years, and died in 420 after having filled the see for very nearly twenty-five years. For all the events of his life Mark is almost the only authority. He fails, however, to mention that the bishop was present in 415 at the Council of Diospolis, at which the Pelagian heresy was condemned. He appears to have been succeeded (though perhaps not directly) by Natiras or Netoras, who is known to have been bishop in 431.
Saint Porphyry is commemorated on February 26.