medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
We know about the Egyptian desert father Daniel of Skete (or of Sketis; d. ca. 576) from a brief account in chapter 42 of the _Lives of the Eastern Saints_ by his younger contemporary the Syriac-writing monophysite John of Ephesus and by smallish narrative anecdotes in Greek (BHG 2101 a-c, 2102a, 2102 c-f, 2128), Coptic, Ethiopic, and other languages in which Daniel illustrates one or another aspect of holiness and piety and which in some cases have been collected and edited to create texts that because of their length are conventionally called Lives. Hegumen of the famous monastery of Skete (Sketis) in today's Wadi Natrun, he is said by John to have been harrassed by officialdom attempting to impose Chalcedonian orthodoxy on his community, which latter, like others in the area, still adhered to the views of the deposed fifth-century patriarch Dioscorus of Alexandria.
Daniel had a reputation for being able to perceive hidden sanctity in others; several of the anecdotes attached to his name have to do with holy fools. Recorded in medieval Byzantine and Coptic synaxaries and celebrated today both in Orthodox churches of the Chalcedonian persuasion and in the Coptic Orthodox Church, he has yet to grace the pages of the Roman Martyrology.
Some period-pertinent images of St. Daniel of Skete:
a) as depicted in the earlier eleventh-century mosaics (restored between 1953 and 1962) in the transept of the katholikon of the monastery of Hosios Loukas near Distomo in Phokis:
http://tinyurl.com/26e76qr
b) as depicted (at center) in a late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century fresco in the naos of the Palaia Enkleistra ("Old Hermitage") of the St. Neophytos monastery near Tala (Paphos prefecture) in the Republic of Cyprus:
http://tinyurl.com/jtxm57h
Detail view (Daniel):
http://www.europeana.eu/portal/record/2058601/object_CUT_18991383.html
Best,
John Dillon
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