CALLED the Sindonite, from a single garment of coarse linen which he
always wore. He was a native of Egypt. Exceeding great was the austerity
of his penitential life. Though he travelled into several countries, he
always lived in the same poverty, mortification, and recollection. In a
certain town, commiserating the spiritual blindness of an idolater, who
was also a comedian, he sold himself to him for twenty pieces of money.
His only sustenance in this servitude was bread and water. He acquitted
himself at the same time of every duty belonging to his condition with
the utmost diligence and fidelity, joining with his labor assiduous
prayer and meditation. Having converted his master and the whole family
to the faith, and induced him to quit the stage, he was made free by
him, but could not be {639} prevailed upon to keep for his own use, or
even to distribute to the poor, the twenty pieces of coin he had
received as the price of his liberty. Soon after this he sold himself a
second time, to relieve a distressed widow. Having spent some time with
his new master, in recompense of signal spiritual services, besides his
liberty, he also received a cloak, a tunic, or undergarment, and a book
of the gospels. He was scarce gone out of doors, when, meeting a poor
man, he bestowed on him his cloak; and shortly after, to another
starving with cold, he gave his tunic; and was thus reduced again to his
single linen garment. Being asked by a stranger who it was that had
stripped him and left him in that naked condition, showing his book of
the gospels, he said: "This it is that hath stripped me." Not long
after, he sold the book itself for the relief of a person in extreme
distress. Being met by an old acquaintance, and asked what was become of
it, he said "Could you believe it? this gospel seemed continually to cry
to me: Go, sell all thou hast, and give it to the poor. Wherefore I have
also sold it, and given the price to the indigent members of Christ."
Having nothing now left but his own person, he disposed of that again on
several other occasions, where the corporal or spiritual necessities of
his neighbor called for relief: once to a certain Manichee at Lacedaemon,
whom he served for two years, and before they were expired, brought both
him and his whole family over to the true faith. St. John the Almoner
having read the particulars of this history, called for his steward, and
said to him, weeping: "Can we flatter ourselves that we do any great
matters because we give our estates to the poor? Here is a man who could
find means to give himself to them, and so many times over." St.
Serapion went from Lacedaemon to Rome, there to study the most perfect,
models of virtue, and, returning afterwards into Egypt, died in the
desert, being sixty years old, some time before Palladius visited Egypt
in 388. Henschenius, in his Notes on the Life of St. Auxentius,[1] and
Bollandus[2] take notice that in certain Menaea he is honored on the 21st
of March; yet they have not given his acts on that day. Baronius
confounds him with St. Serapion, the Sidonian martyr. See Pallad.
Lausiac. ch. 83, and Leontius in the Life of St. John the Almoner.
Footnotes:
1. Henschen. Not. in Vit. S. Auxentii, ad 24 Feb {} 3 Febr.
2. Bolland ad 23 Jan. p. 508, t. 2, Jan.