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Life of St Porphyry, Bishop of Gaza
Mark the Deacon, tr. Hill, 1913
Chapter 5
And on a day meeting him on the steps of the Testimony,1 that was founded by the blessed Emperor Constantine, seeing that he could not go forward on his feet, I ran and stretched forth my hand to him and besought him to lean upon it and go up the steps. But he would not, saying: ‘It is not just that I who go my way to ask pardon for my sins should lean upon the hands of another; but let God see my labour, brother, that in his unspeakable compassion he may have pity on me also.’ Therefore he went his way and hearkened to the divine sayings, lending ear unto the doctors, and partaking always of the mystic table he would return again to his lodging. What manner of life he lived, indeed, was manifest, for he despised his sickness in such wise that one accounted him to have the disease not in his own but in another man’s body; for the hope of God made it light for him to bear.
Notes
- Testimony. The Martyrion, the basilica of Constantine, is said to have been so called as being built over the place that bore witness to the Resurrection. See Eusebius, Vita Const. iii, c. 28; and Saint Cyril’s Catechetical Lectures, xiv. 6. It stood actually over the spot where the Cross was found; while the reputed site of the Crucifixion was supposed to lie between it and the Anastasis.