Baring-Gould’s sources: Greek Meiisea and Menology of Basil Porphyrogenitus. Modern Roman Martyrology. Authority The Lives of the Fathers of the Desert, and a life by Laurence, monk of Ruti, in Greek.] HERE seem to have been three celebrated anchorites of the Egyptian deserts of the name of Moyses or Moses— Moyses the Egyptian, Moyses the Libyan, and another of the same name. It is not always possible to distinguish to which of these three the anecdotes and sayings reported by Palladius and Cassian relate.

Moyses the Ethiopian was a gigantic negro slave who had escaped from his master, and at the head of a party of ruffians lived on pillage.

One instance may be related of his natural strength and ferocity. A shepherd had interfered somehow with the execution of one of his schemes of rapine and murder. Moyses, bent on revenge, seeing the shepherd on the opposite side of the Nile, swam across, his sword between his teeth, to kill him. The shepherd saw him coming, and.S'. Moyses the Ethiopian.

concealed himself. Moyses then killed four of his best rams, tied them together by the horns, and swam back, drawing them after him. He ate one of them, sold the rest, and drank the proceeds.

Accounts differ as to the ‘occasion of his conversion, That which is most probably the right one is that he was obliged to take refuge among the solitaries to escape pursuit for his crimes, and that he was won by the example of the eremites. He went to a lonely cave and lived there. One night four robbers broke into his cell. The huge negro wrestled with them, threw them down, bound them together, and dragged them to the door of the monastery, and delivered them up to the monks to punish as they thought fit. For many years he had the greatest difficulty in conquering his furious passions. Almost driven to despair, he went to consult the Abbot Isidore. The Abbot led him to the top of the house; it was dawn: dark vapours were rolling away to the West, whilst flakes of sunlit clouds strewed the eastern sky. “ See,” said Isidore, “ as the light comes on the darkness flies away, not all at once, but little by little. So is it with your soul.”

Moyses was satisfied, and returned to his cell to see the dawn break brighter on his dark spirit, and the gloomy and distorted visions of night disappear one by one. After some years he was ordained priest. When vested in white the patriarch [the title of the bishops of the great ancient sees: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem] of Alexandria, Theophilus, said to him, “ Now, Moyses, the black man is made white.” “ Only the outer man,” said Moyses; “the inner one is dark enough still, God knows ! ”

His method of opposing his evil imaginations was by giving himself up to active exercise. He was wont to visit the cells of all the solitaries of advanced age and delicate health in his neighbourhood during the night, and take their pitchers, fill them at the well, and bring them back. As the solitaries lived scattered over the rocks, this was hard work; he had to carry water five miles for one or two of them.

One night as he was stooping over the pool filling his pitcher, he was doubled up with a sudden attack of lumbago. He thought the devil had given him a sudden stroke across his loins with a club.1 He lay groaning with pain till next morning, when he was found and carried to the church. The attack was on him for many months, so as totally to incapacitate him for work.

The governor of the province had heard of the virtues of Moyses, and came to Scete to see him. Moyses was on his way to the well to fetch water, and met the governor, who asked him where the renowned anchorite [a hermit, sometimes walled into a cell beside a church] lived. “ Bah ! ” said Moyses. “ It is not worth your while going in quest of him, he is a fool.”

The governor turned back, and at the monastery related what he had heard. “ What was the man like who said that?” asked the monks.

“ He was a huge old black fellow covered with rags.” “ The man himself,” answered the monks. It is probable that Moyses was killed by the Bedouins. In the lives, of the Fathers of the Desert, we are told that Moyses, abbot in Scete, hearing that these nomads were in the neighbourhood, ordered his disciples to fly. “ But you, father, what will you do ?” “ Our Lord said, They who take the sword shall perish by the sword. His word will come true.” Seven of the disciples refused to leave the old man, and were killed along with him by the Bedouins. It is most probable that this Moyses was the Ethiopian abbot. 1 The ancient Norsemen and Icelanders, unable to comprehend the sudden shooting pains of rheumatism, attributed them to elf-bolts, invisible arrows shot by mountain spirits. The mediaeval anchorites, racked by rheumatism in their damp caves, attributed them to the cudgels of demons, or to the scourging administered to them by saints.