MENA, Saint, Martyr. — Very well known and venerated in antiquity, he is commemorated on 11 November in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum, in the Greek Synaxaria, in the Gelasian Sacramentary of St Gall, in the Gregorian Sacramentary and in the Marble Calendar of Naples. In these sources, however, except for the Hieronymian Martyrology, he is called a martyr of Cotyaeum in Phrygia; this is certainly a false indication since his shrine-sanctuary was located nine miles from Alexandria near Lake Mareotis, where a large complex of buildings soon arose to accommodate the numerous pilgrims who flocked there from all parts to venerate the Saint.
From the 4th century onwards, a memorial to the Martyr was built there in a crypt, beside which the Emperor Arcadius (395–408) constructed a great basilica, later enlarged by Marcian (450–457). Together with the adjoining buildings, it lasted until about the 11th century, when everything fell into ruin. From this sanctuary, pilgrims took away, as souvenirs, small terracotta ampullae depicting the Saint between two camels, an allusion to a miracle recorded in the Passio, and containing holy water taken from a nearby spring.
From Egypt, the cult of M. spread throughout Christendom, and shrines in his honour arose in Palestine, Phrygia, Constantinople, Dalmatia, Africa, Naples and Rome. Reliable information about the life and martyrdom of the Saint is, however, lacking. At the same sanctuary, nothing was known of M.; only a collection of miracles attributed to Timothy, Bishop of Alexandria, circulated widely and was translated into various languages. The Passio was written around the 7th century in Phrygia, where there existed a sanctuary of M. no less famous than the Egyptian one. Based on the homily of St Basil in honour of the martyr Gordius, it has come down in three independent recensions, widely diffused in antiquity. Around the 9th century, a forger writing under the name of St Athanasius, claiming to be an eyewitness, published another Passio to lend credence to the sanctuary that existed in Constantinople, writing that M. had had as companions in martyrdom Hermogenes and Eugraphius, and that his body had been transported by angels to Constantinople. Thus arose another M., venerated with his companions on 10 December.
According to the first recension of the Passio, M. was an Egyptian soldier: following the tribune Firmilianus, he went to Cotyaeum in Phrygia, where he openly declared himself a Christian. The proconsul Pyrrhus, after many torments, had him beheaded. The body was then burned, and the remains, carefully gathered by the faithful, were taken back to Egypt as M. himself had ordered before dying. — V. tav. XLI.