06 — The Martyrdom
The end that crowned the life. The tradition holds that Moses, foreseeing a barbarian raid on Scetis around the turn of the fifth century, refused to flee or take up arms — “all who take the sword shall perish by the sword” — and was killed with seven of his disciples. This section sets out the martyrdom-tradition with its attestation pinned to the sources, and then draws out the gospel theme of non-resistance that the desert read into the death of the robber who would not lift the sword.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Desert Father; martyr)
The death of Moses is the mirror of his beginning: the man who had once lived by the sword died refusing to take it up. The first file establishes what the sources actually attest of the raid on Scetis and Moses’s death in it, with the source-criticism the methodology requires; the second draws out the theology — the deliberate non-resistance, the choice to die as Christ commanded rather than to defend himself, the martyrdom embraced rather than merely suffered.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Barbarian Raid on Scetis | The tradition of the Mazices/barbarian raid (c. 405–408); Moses’s foreknowledge, his refusal to flee or fight, his death with seven companions; the attestation in the Apophthegmata and the later synaxaria, weighed source-critically. |
| Non-Resistance and the Sword | The gospel theme of non-resistance — “all who take the sword shall perish by the sword” — and the martyrdom embraced by choice; the robber of the sword become the martyr of the cross. |
See Also
- The Robber and the Slave — the life of violence the death reversed
- Humility and Self-Knowledge — the self-surrender that the martyrdom completed
- The Historical Moses — the source-critical status of the martyrdom
- Feast and Cult — his veneration as a martyr
References
- Ward, Benedicta, trans. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection. Rev. ed. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1984. (Abba Moses 10.)
- Chitty, Derwas J. The Desert a City. Oxford: Blackwell, 1966. (The raids on Scetis.)
- Harmless, William. Desert Christians. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.