E07363: Sophronius of Jerusalem, in his Miracles of the Saints Cyrus and John, recounts how *Kyros and Ioannes/Cyrus and John (physician and soldier, martyrs of Egypt, S00406) healed, at their shrine at Menouthis (near Alexandria, Lower Egypt), a boy, Kallinikos, from a terrible pain in the stomach caused by a serpent that he had swallowed. Written in Greek in Alexandria, 610/615.

Sophronius of Jerusalem, The Miracles of Saints Cyrus and John, 34

Summary:

There was a certain Dorothea who had two sons, Kallinikos and Epimachos; the former was around twelve, whereas the latter was nine years old. The three of them set off on the road to the sanctuary of Cyrus and John to pray and venerate their relics. They travelled on foot, and on their way to Menouthis they got tired, so sat down under a tree. The Origin of Evil (archekakos) saw them under the tree and immediately recalled his ancient plots against the human race, through which it is subject to death. Thus he showed the two boys the egg of a serpent – the serpent by which he always plots our destruction. This egg was neither good to eat, nor good to look at, even though it seemed so both to Eve and to the boys, especially as they were too young to be able to discern good from evil. So they fell upon the egg thinking it was that of a bird.

Kallinikos grabbed it first as he was the elder, which made the younger Epimachos burst into tears. The mother told Kallinikos to give the egg to his brother to stop his cries, but the boy quickly put it into his mouth and swallowed it. Inside the egg there was a little serpent, already formed and complete in the image of its mother. Kallinikos had thus harvested death as the fruit of his disobedience, had not the martyrs Cyrus and John ensured that he escape this death.

The family at last came to the sanctuary and offered prayers to God and venerated the tomb of the martyrs. Shortly after, Kallinikos began to suffer in his intestines, since the egg opened in his stomach and emitted its fatal content. The pains grew ever greater, resembling tortures caused by a demon rather than colic or any disease. The serpent began to move inside the boy and bite him, as he could not find his mother after leaving the egg. Kallinikos suffered so much that he fell down and was rolling on the ground. His mother addressed the martyrs, supplicating them, complaining about her misery as a mother who was about to lose her beloved child, and begged them for mercy.

Then she fell asleep, since she wanted the martyrs to visit her in a dream. They appeared to her and told her to take the boy from the sanctuary around the third hour and place him in the middle of the external atrium, so that nobody, including his own mother, approached him. She was, however, to stay away at a small distance and watch the prodigy to be accomplished by God.

Dorothea thus did what she was told, and took her son outside the sanctuary, while he incessantly cried and rolled from one side to the other. Everybody thought he was going to die; only his mother knew he would survive. A big crowd gathered, desiring to see what was going to happen.

After half an hour, the mother serpent arrived, crawling and hissing in her misery, as she was looking for her lost baby. She approached the boy and began to mumble in his ear and mouth, calling her baby son. Then the little serpent came out through the boy’s mouth, hearing its mother voice or rather the martyrs’ order. The two serpents were reunited and they left for their den.

When the serpent left her son’s intestines, Dorothea sang in honour of the martyrs and in joy returned with her children to the city, while the crowd which also witnessed the miracle, praised God and the martyrs.

Text: Fernández Marcos 1976, lightly modified in the light of Gascou 2007. Summary: J. Doroszewska.