Porphyry

PORPHYRY: Bishop of Gaza; b. at Thessalonica c. 347; d. at Gaza Feb. 26, 420. After spending five years in the Scetic desert in Egypt, he passed an equal period in Palestine under privations which impaired his health, visiting the sacred sites and living in Jerusalem, where Bishop Praylius ordained him presbyter and made him custodian of the wood of the cross. Early in 395 he was consecrated bishop of Gaza, where he increased the scanty number of Christians, but at the same time met with bitter pagan opposition, so that he twice appealed to the court to close and destroy the heathen temples first (398) through his deacon Marcus, and second (401–402) in person together with the archbishop of Cæsarea. The temple of the god Marnas was especially offensive to the Christians, and on his second appeal the intervention of the Empress Eudoxia secured the destruction of the shrine. On the site was erected a magnificent church, the Eudoxiana.

(E. Hennecke.)

Bibliography: The Vita, by the deacon Marcus was edited with commentary by M. Haupt for the Berlin Academy, in the Abhandlungen, 1874, pp. 171–215, and published separately, 1875; it is also in ASB, Feb., iii. 643–661; MPG, xxxv. 649–694; and ed. by the Bonn society for philology, Leipsic, 1895; the dissertation of A. Nuth, De Marci diaconi vita Porphyrii, Bonn, 1897, is important; cf. Dräseke, in ZWT, xxxi (1888), 352–374. Consult further: Tillemont, Mémoires, x. 703–716; Ceillier, Auteurs sacrés, vi. 329–330; DNB, iv. 444–445.