spot, many seeking to be healed. Numerous miracles started
to happen by evoking the saint's name, and drinking water
from a spring near his tomb.
Gradually, the need to have a church built in the area
honouring the saint's memory was felt by many. It was
erected by Abba Theophilus – 23rd Pope of the Coptic
Church, and enlarged and embellished by several of his
successors. Emperor Zeno, whose daughter had been
miraculously healed by visiting St. Mena's shrine, contributed
further to the Church and succeeded in transforming it into a
magnificent cathedral with roseate coloured marble pillar's
and a mosaic pavement of matchless designs.l4
The cathedral built by the Emperor continued to be
an outstanding edifice in Mareotis up to the ninth century
when the Abbasid Caliphs^15 ordered-that some of its pillars
be carried to Baghdad to beautify their palaces, and others to
Jerusalem to be placed in the Aqsa Mosque. The cathedral
fell into ruins and was not reconstructed except in our own
times by Pope Kyrillos VI as has already been mentioned.l6
However St. Mena continued to be venerated all
through the centuries, since his martyrdom in the 3rd century
A.D. To this day many churches bear his name all over
Egypt. One of them, built recently in a town called Manhari
in the province of Minia in Upper Egypt, has an interesting
story. An old man, returning from a pilgrimage to the Holy
Land, dreamt that Saint Mena appeared to him and showed
him a site wherein he desired to have a church built in his
name. The next morning the man and his friends went to
inspect the site and found to their surprise the ruins of an old
church that had born the saint's name. They glorified God
and built a new church in its place.l7
Also in 1948 – following the consecration of another
cathedral in this saint's name in a residential area of
Alexandria called ‘Ramleh’, a group of Coptic scholars held
elle
(Elle)
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