Elias of Heliopolis

Elias of Heliopolis, also called Elias of Damascus, was a Syrian Christian carpenter and martyr of the eighth century, known from a life written in Greek. Our sources show no act of canonization and the menaion gives him no fixed feast: his veneration rests on this life and on early calendars, in the Eastern Orthodox Church and in the Syriac Orthodox Church. According to the life, he died by the sword on 1 February.

Dating

The Prosopography of the Middle Byzantine Period places his birth in 758 or earlier, but his dates are usually given as 759 to 779, and occasionally 775 to 795. His life says he died at twenty years of age, in the year 6287 from the creation of the world. In the Byzantine era this year falls in 779, in the Alexandrian era in 795. The scholar Robert Hoyland argues for the former, because it matches the reign of the caliph al-⁠Mahdi (died 785), named in the life as ruling at that time.

Family and Damascus

He was born into a Syrian Christian family of Baalbek (Heliopolis), in the ecclesiastical province of Second Phoenicia, in the Abbasid caliphate, and there he learned the trade of carpenter. When he was about ten, he went to Damascus with his mother and two brothers, hoping to escape poverty. He worked there for a Syrian Christian, who in turn served an Arab Muslim. Later the Arab persuaded the Syrian to convert to Islam. The Arab arranged the marriage of his son and died soon afterwards. When the son's wife gave birth, he gave a feast, at which Elias was called to serve. The guests tried to persuade him to convert to Islam, so as to be their equal in society, but he put them off, saying a feast was no place for such talk.

At length he allowed himself to be persuaded to eat with them and take part in the dancing. Some guests loosened or removed his belt, ostensibly to let him move more freely. The next morning, while the others were still sleeping, Elias rose, tied on his belt and went to pray. A guest who saw him accused him of having renounced his faith the night before, and Elias denied it. The accusation probably rested on the meaning of the belt, part of the ordinary dress of the dhimmi: to remove it in public was the sign of renouncing one's faith. In the workshop his Syrian employer told him that he had had to intervene to stop some of the guests from harming him, and said he would not pay him. His brother urged him to leave Damascus until the rumours died down. The whole family went back to Baalbek.

Confession and death

After eight years, with the approval of his brothers, Elias returned to Damascus and opened a shop making camel saddles. He was twenty years old. His former employer, now a competitor, invited him back to his workshop, but Elias refused, and the Syrian apostate urged his Arab master to report Elias's renunciation on the night of the feast. Elias was brought before the judge al-⁠Layth, who gave him a chance to return to Islam. Since he refused, he was tortured and put in chains. In prison he was comforted by visions. At last he was brought before the governor, Muhammad, nephew of the caliph al-⁠Mahdi, who tried to persuade him to return to Islam by punishments and by offers of reward. Since he stayed firm, he was beheaded on 1 February, and his body was hung outside the city gates for fourteen days and then thrown into the river Barada. The Christians of Baalbek recovered some of his relics, including limbs, and others reported seeing him in visions after his death.

The life and the calendars

The single manuscript copy of his life (BHG 578 and 579) is in the National Library of France, in the codex Coislin 303, folios 236v to 249v. It dates from the tenth or eleventh century and was probably made in a monastery of the Holy Land. The text, which is anonymous, seems to have been written not long after the events, judging by its attention to detail. The author says he wrote two other lives of martyrs under Islam, but that he did not know Elias personally.

Besides his life, Elias is known from the Palestinian Georgian Calendar and from the Martyrology of Rabban Salība. According to the first, his day was 4 February. According to the second, he was celebrated at Bā Qisyān (Beth Qūsyānā), near Ḥaḥ, in the region of Ṭur ʿAbdin, on 1 February. The scholar Christian Sahner, however, doubts that the martyr of the martyrology is Elias of Heliopolis, because Rabban Salība does not connect him with Damascus or Baalbek.