The Barbarian Raid on Scetis

The tradition of Moses’s martyrdom holds that, foreseeing a barbarian raid on Scetis around the turn of the fifth century, he refused to flee or take up arms, telling his brothers, “All who take the sword shall perish by the sword,” and was killed with seven of his disciples who chose to remain with him. This file sets out that tradition and weighs its attestation carefully: the historical raids on Scetis, the saying preserved in the Apophthegmata, the later synaxaria that carry the full martyrology, and the honest limits of what can be known.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Desert Father; martyr)

The Raids on Scetis

The setting of the martyrdom-tradition is historical. Scetis, the great monastic settlement in the desert west of the Nile delta, was repeatedly devastated by raids of desert barbarians — the Mazices (Mazici), a Libyan or Berber people of the western desert — in the early fifth century and again later (Chitty 1966; Harmless 2004). These raids are well attested: they scattered the monks, destroyed cells, and were remembered as catastrophes that marked the end of the first great age of Scetis. The first major devastation is usually placed around 407–408, with the monastic sources and later chronicles recording the dispersal of the community (Chitty 1966). That Scetis was raided, that monks were killed, and that the settlement was broken up is not in doubt; it is the firm historical frame within which the tradition places Moses’s death.

[Disputed: the dating of the raid in which Moses is said to have died is not fixed; the first major Mazices raid on Scetis is commonly dated c. 407–408, while Moses's death is conventionally given c. 405, and some accounts place his martyrdom in an earlier or distinct incursion. Derwas Chitty (1966) discusses the sequence of raids on Scetis without resolving the precise year of Moses's death; the tradition is firm that he died in a barbarian raid, but the exact date and which raid are not securable.]

The Saying of Non-Resistance

At the center of the martyrdom-tradition stands a saying preserved in the Apophthegmata Patrum. The alphabetical collection records: “It was said of Abba Moses that when he was about to die, he said to the brothers who were with him, ‘Behold, the barbarians are coming to Scetis today; get up and flee.’ They said to him, ‘Will you not flee too, Abba?’ He said to them, ‘For so many years I have been waiting for this day, that the word of the Lord Christ might be fulfilled which says, “All who take the sword will perish by the sword”’” — and the saying continues that seven of the brothers chose to remain with him, and that when the barbarians came they were killed, while one who had hidden saw seven crowns descend upon them (Apophthegmata Patrum, Moses 10; trans. Ward 1984, paraphrased). [Disputed: the *Sayings* preserve the non-resistance saying and the death of Moses with companions (Moses 10 in Ward's alphabetical collection); the number of companions is given as seven in this and the later martyrological tradition, and the vision of the seven crowns belongs to the same saying or its close variants. The wording varies among the collections, but the core — Moses's refusal to flee, his citation of "all who take the sword shall perish by the sword," and his death with his brothers — is constant.]

This saying is the earliest and firmest attestation of the martyrdom, and it is decisive for how the tradition understood it. Moses does not merely fail to escape; he chooses to stay, and he frames the choice as the deliberate fulfilment of the Lord’s word against the sword. He even urges the other brothers to flee — the non-resistance is his own free act, not a counsel of recklessness imposed on others — and only those who freely remain die with him. The martyrdom, as the Sayings present it, is an embraced death, the final and greatest act of a life given over to the gospel (on its theology, see Non-Resistance and the Sword).

The Seven Companions and the Crowns

The tradition is consistent that Moses did not die alone but with seven companions, his disciples, who chose to share his death — and that the martyrdom was marked by a vision of seven crowns descending upon them, the heavenly recognition of their witness (Ward 1984, Moses 10; the later synaxaria). The number seven and the crowns belong to the same saying and to the liturgical tradition that grew from it. The detail that one brother survived — hidden, or having fled at Moses’s urging — and witnessed the crowns serves the narrative function of preserving the account: it is the surviving witness who reports what happened, as the genre of the martyr-account requires (Harmless 2004; cf. the structure of martyr-narratives generally).

The later synaxaria and menologia of the Byzantine and Coptic Churches carry the full martyrology forward, commemorating Moses and his companions and fixing his feast (see Feast and Cult). These are later than the Apophthegmata and dependent on the same tradition; they develop and liturgically frame the account but do not add independent historical attestation.

The Source-Critical Status

The martyrdom must be reported for what it is: a tradition firmly attested in the desert literature but not independently verifiable as a historical event (METHODOLOGY §3.5). The frame is solid — Scetis was genuinely raided by the Mazices, monks were genuinely killed, the catastrophe genuinely marked the era’s end. The saying of non-resistance is genuinely preserved in the Apophthegmata, among the earliest layers of the Moses tradition. But whether Moses died precisely as the saying describes, in which raid, in which year, and with exactly seven companions, rests on the tradition rather than on document, and the dates do not all agree (see the disputed notes above and The Historical Moses).

The honest disposition is therefore to affirm the secure frame, to report the saying as the earliest attestation of the martyrdom, to carry the seven companions and the crowns as what the tradition claims, and to flag the date and the historical particulars as uncertain. What is not in doubt — because it is the whole point the tradition wished to make — is the meaning of the death: that the robber who had lived by the sword chose, at the end, to die by the gospel’s word against the sword, refusing both flight and violence. That meaning, and the gospel theme it embodies, is the subject of the companion file (see Non-Resistance and the Sword).

The Symmetry of the Life

The desert read Moses’s death as the perfect completion of his life, and the symmetry is striking. The man who had been the chief of a violent band, who had once swum a flooded Nile with a sword in his teeth to take revenge, died refusing to lift a sword in his own defense; the terror of the countryside became the martyr who would not resist his killers; the robber of the sword became the martyr of the cross (see The Robber and the Slave). The barbarians who fell on Scetis were, in a sense, what Moses himself had once been — men of violence preying on the helpless — and his refusal to meet them with their own weapons was the final reversal of his beginning. The tradition preserved the martyrdom not least because it sealed the meaning of the whole life: grace had so completely converted the man of violence that he died as the antithesis of what he had been.

References

Ward, Benedicta, trans. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection. Rev. ed. Cistercian Studies 59. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1984. (Abba Moses 10: the foreknowledge of the raid, “all who take the sword will perish by the sword” [Matthew 26:52], the seven companions, and the seven crowns.)
Chitty, Derwas J. The Desert a City. Oxford: Blackwell, 1966. (The Mazices raids on Scetis and the dispersal of the community in the early fifth century.)
Harmless, William. Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. (The raids on Scetis; the structure of the martyr-tradition.)
The Holy Bible (Matthew 26:52, “all who take the sword will perish by the sword”). (The dominical word Moses cites and fulfils.)