HE was the son of Eutropius, a rich nobleman in Constantinople. He
secretly left home to become a monk among the Acaemetes.[1] After six
{156} years he returned disguised in the rags of a beggar, and subsisted
by the charity of his parents, as a stranger, in a little hut near their
house; hence he was called the Calybite.[2] He sanctified his soul by
wonderful patience, meekness, humility, mortification, and prayer. He
discovered himself to his mother, in his agony, in the year 450, and,
according to his request, was buried under his hut; but his parents
built over his tomb a stately church, as the author of his life
mentions. Cedrenus, who says it stood in the western quarter of the
city, calls it _the church of poor John_;[3] Zonaras, the church of St.
John Calybite.[4] An old church standing near the bridge of the isle of
the Tiber in Rome, which bore his name, according to an inscription
there, was built by pope Formosus, (who died in 896,) together with an
hospital. From which circumstance Du Cange[5] infers that the body of
our saint, which is preserved in this church, was conveyed from
Constantinople to Rome, before the broaching of the Iconoclast heresy
under Leo the Isarian, in 706: but his head remained at Constantinople
till after that city fell into the hands of the Latins, in 1204; soon
after which it was brought to Besanzon in Burgundy, where it is kept in
St. Stephen's church, with a Greek inscription round the case. The
church which bears the name of Saint John Calybite, at Rome, with the
hospital, is now in the hands of religious men of the order of St. John
of God. According to a MS. life, commended by Baronius, St. John
Calybite flourished under Theodosius the Younger, who died in 450:
Nicephorus says, under Leo, who was proclaimed emperor in 457; so that
both accounts may be true. On his genuine Greek acts, see Lambecius,
Bibl. Vind. t. 8, pp. 228, 395; Bollandus, p. 1035, gives his Latin acts
the same which we find in Greek at St. Germain-des-Prez. See Montfaucon,
Bibl. Coislianae, p. 196. Bollandus adds other Latin acts, to which he
gives the preference. See also Papebroch, Comm. ad Januarium Graecum
metricum, t. 1. Maij. Jos. Assemani, in Calendaria Univ. ad 15 Jan. t.
6, p. 76. Chatelain, p. 283, &c.
Footnotes:
1. Papebroch supposes St. John Calybite to have made a long voyage at
sea; but this circumstance seems to have no other foundation than
the mistake of those who place his birth at Rome, forgetting that
Constantinople was then called New Rome. No mention is made of any
long voyage in his genuine Greek acts, nor in the interpolated
Latin. He sailed only threescore furlongs from Constantinople to the
place called [Greek: Gomon], and from the peaceful abode of the
Acaemetes' monk, ([Greek: Eirenaion], or dwelling of peace,) opposite
to Sosthenium on the Thrancian shore, where the monastery of the
Acaemetes stood.
2. From [Greek: kalube], a cottage, a hut.
3. Cedr. ad an. 461.
4. Zonaras, p. 41.
5. Du Cange, Constantinop. Christiana, l. 4, c. 6, n. 51.