Source: (2007) In Emmanuel Clapsis, ed., Violence and Christian Spirituality An Ecumenical Conversation. Geneva, Switzerland: World Council of Churches. Pp. 299-302.
“The plethora of texts and images illuminating the saints in the Orthodox Christian tradition offer mixed messages of peace and violence. To be sure there are plenty of examples of saints who represent the virtue of peace and harmony among nature and within human relations. Yet the peaceful saint is not always the pacifist saint. The literary genre known as Early Christian and Byzantine hagiography, and here I include pre-Constantinian martyrdom account, is anything but peaceful. Violence abounds in these texts. Given the literary genre of the martyrdom account, one would expect to find violence in such stories. Often, however, the violence is minimized and is not the main attraction of the text.” (abstract)
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