Saint Meletios the Confessor (commemorated January 19, together with St Mark of Ephesos) is best remembered for his resistance to the Latins in the thirteenth century, a period marked by preparations for and the aftermath of the Reunion Council of Lyons in 1274, as well as the reign of the unionist patriarch John Bekkos (1275-1282). For his opposition to any compromise in such matters as the use of unleavened bread in the Eucharist and the doctrine of the Filioque, Meletios was imprisoned, exiled, and tortured, eventually having his tongue cut out like that other Confessor, St Maximos.
Yet long before his principled stand against the patriarch and the emperor’s policy of precipitous union with Rome, Meletios was famed for his asceticism and extreme renunciation. The recipient of divine visions, Meletios left his familial home at any early age to undertake a pilgrimage on foot, without sufficient clothing or sustenance, to the Holy Land. Entering monastic life in the wilderness of Mt Sinai, he distinguished himself for his lack of sleep and self-abnegation, virtues which forced him to move, first to Jerusalem and then to Mounts Galesios and Auxentios, in order to avoid excessive praise and fame. When he died, his body, which had been so afflicted from within and from without, remained incorrupt, and the saint was canonized in 1325, drawing the esteem of such contemporary and later figures as George Pachymeres, Theodore Agallianos, Makarios Chrysokephalos, Nikodimos the Hagiorite, and Paisii Velichkovsky.
As an ascetic and monastic leader, Meletios left behind a substantial collection of writings known as the Anthology, or Ἀπανθισμός. In addition to exegetical and theological texts, all of which display his patristic pedigree and wide reading (not least in his treatment of the polemical issues dividing East and West), this collection is also marked by a poem of nearly 14,000 verses known as the Alphabetical Alphabet (Ἀλφαβηταλφάβητον), an acrostic made up of twenty-four sections (corresponding to the twenty-four letters of the Greek alphabet), each of which is in turn composed of additional subdivisions beginning with the same letter.
The Pappas Patristic Institute is pleased to offer a small sampling of this poem below, specifically chapter 120, the first of six entries under the Greek letter Pi (because it begins with the Greek word Παρακαλῶ). It is a meditation on insensibility, or insensitivity, the theme of Step 18 of the Ladder of St John Klimakos, which it follows closely. Insensibility is a subtle vice or passion that leads the Christian, and more specifically the monastic, to behave with great hypocrisy. To be insensible is to be literally anesthetized not only to spiritual things but to the very contradictions of one’s own life. It leads one to behave in the most absurd ways, entirely unaware of one’s motivations and behavior and caught in a cycle of sin and half-hearted repentance. Meletios presents insensibility (anaisthesia) as the opposite of aisthesis, perception or awareness. The latter is equated with spiritual insight and contemplation of supernatural realities. Its opposite, which gives us the word anaesthesia in English, is not simply the inability to see invisible realities, but a complete lack of conscience and awareness that literally makes us numb to repentance.
The present translation is the work of the Fall 2024 Patristic Greek course at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology. To our knowledge, it is the first translation of any portion of the Alphabetical Alphabet (Alphabetalphábeton) into English.
Saint Meletios the Confessor of Mt Galesios
The Spiritual Alphabet
τὸ Ἀλφαβηταλφάβητον[1]
120. What is Insensibility?
I advise you to be attentive, and mind how you listen:
with abundant understanding and godly sensitivity.
Perception (aisthesis) is the most profound, pure knowledge,
a spiritual, wondrous, and strange contemplation,[2]
wholly unified in unbroken links
and mingled with godly fear, affection, and desire.
A mountain of the ineffable mysteries, as they say, to come,
reaching up in the most acute manner into the fulfillment that will soon be,
containing within itself things that are as yet far off,
and seeing things to come as if they were already at the door.
Insensibility, as the great one says,[3]
is the lifeless and dead sensation of bodies and souls.
From the worst kind of negligence and the most wicked forgetfulness
it is born, increased, and sets in,
a product of the mind’s numbed disposition,
a harness of courage and a snare of all eagerness.
It is a door of despair that deadens compunction,
a daughter of forgetfulness and a mother of its own mother.
For the two things proceed one from another and give birth to each other.
The insensible man is an unfeeling philosopher whose mind and thought are far gone:
a self-condemned exegete of the divine Scriptures,
opposing them through his love for material things,
since his words are in opposition to his deeds.
Anyone who exhibits deeds that are opposed to his own words
and verbiage that is antithetical to his actions
is unfeeling and full of impudence,
a blind guide and a teacher who cannot see.[4]
He speaks to others and encourages them to find healing for their wound,
yet he does not cease from tearing away at this wound continually and exacerbating it.
He speaks about a debility, yet he eats away at the place of the injury.
But he has no understanding whatsoever of what he is doing or what he teaches.
In contradiction of himself, he implores the person who committed the sin to pray,
and immediately he turns to the same action.
He is angry with himself, but from his own actions
he in no wise desists. Perish the insanity!
He cries, “I have done wickedly,” yet he submits to the deed.
The mouth of such a man prays intensely to be rid of the very thing
for which his body intensely struggles.
He waxes philosophical about death while hoping he does not die.
At every moment he acts the glutton, yet he teaches self-control.
He smiles when he reads, especially at things that inspire dread.
He praises prayer, but he keeps it far away from himself.
He is always reading about vain conceit, arrogance, and glory,
yet he himself is vainglorious.
He waxes eloquent about vigil, yet he longs for sleep.
He is in awe of obedience, yet he is the first to disobey.
He loves dispassion, yet even as he is dressed in rags, he bears a grudge.
He is bitter, and his bitterness turns to anger.
When he is bested, he is angry and incensed at his defeat.
Even as he does them, he does not blush at his insensible actions.
When he has had his fill, he repents and again desires to be sated.
He blesses silence, but he always has too much to say, at just the wrong time.
He teaches gentleness yet he he shows himself to be irascible.
He came to his senses and groaned with a shaking of his head,
yet again he succumbs to his passion, just like the first time!
He often censures laughter and derides those who smile,
yet he smiles as he begins to speak about pain of heart.
He condemns himself for vainglory,
and it this very act that actually leads him to vainglory.
He looks at things passionately, and concerning chastity
he undertakes intricate discourses without understanding.
He idolizes, in awe, those who live a monastic life in the world,
but he dishonors himself by having no understanding.
He honors those who give alms, but despises the poor.
Simply put, he condemns himself in everything.
He has no desire to attain sensitivity.
To be more precise, he is not able, since he is a slave to habit.
Do you see how significant is this dreadful passion of insensibility,
as the great one says? The all-revered Fathers say that it comes
[1] From the edition of Archimandrite Theophilos N. Simopoulos, Μελέτιος ὁ Γαλησιώτης (1230-1307), ὁ ἄγνωστος, Θεολόγος, Ὅσιος, Ὁμολογητής, Λόγιος, Συγγραφεύς (Βιογραφία, Ἀνέκδοτα αὐτοῦ συγγράμματα, ᾈσματικὴ Ἀκολουθία) (Athens, 1978), 375-377. This work of Simopoulos also contains the Vita of St Meletios by Makarios Chrysokephalos and the Akolouthia to the saint completed in the eighteenth century by St Nikodimos of Athos.
[2] Ξένη θεωρία. See Gregory the Theologian, Carmina de seipso 12 (PG 37:1195A). In hesychast theology, the ‘extraneous contemplation’ is the supernatural vision that transcends human potency and the realm of created realities.
[3] John Klimakos, Ladder of Divine Ascent 18 (PG 88:932B). As noted above, this entire meditation is a close paraphrase of Step 18 of the Ladder.
[4] Cf. Matthew 15:14.
[5] Cf. St Basil the Great, Shorter Responses 80 (PG 31:1137C), trans. Anna Silvas, The Asketikon of St Basil the Great (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 317. See, also, Nicholas Kataskepenos, Life of Cyril Phileotes 29.3, ed. Étienne Sargologos, La Vie de Saint Cyrille le Philéote moine byzantin († 1110), Subsidia hagiographica 39 (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1964), 129: Καὶ ἐκ τούτου εὐλυτώσεις τὴν σκότωσιν τῆς ἀναισθησίας σου, ἥτις τίκτεται ἐκ τῆς ἀφοβίας τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ τῆς ἄγαν ἀπροσεξίας καὶ τῆς ὑπερβολῆς τοῦ κακοῦ καὶ τῆς κατὰ μέρος τῆς ἀρετῆς ἀπορροῆς.
[6] Acedia (ἀκηδία) is a state of restlessness or boredom associated with the emotional temptations of protracted ascetical endeavor or religious life. In connecting insensibility so directly with acedia and the fear of God (the subject of sections 121 and 122 of the Alphabetalphabeton), Meletios departs somewhat from the conclusion of Step 18 of the Ladder, which declines to identify a single cause of insensibility.