Secundus the Silent

So he returned home dressed like a Cynic philosopher with long hair and a beard, and, unrecognisable to his own mother, he persuaded her to agree to sleep with him for fifty gold pieces.

Shamed, his mother hanged herself, and Secundus, blaming his own tongue for the trouble he caused, committed himself to a lifelong vow of silence, similar to a Pythagorean philosopher.

Willelmus Medicus, later a monk at the Abbey of Saint-Denis, brought the complete manuscript from Constantinople to France in 1167.

[6] In the early 14th Century, the Liber de Vita et Moribus Philosophorum, which was a popular biographical presentation of ancient non-Christian spiritual life, dedicated a chapter to Secundus.

The popularity of the material in the Middle Ages was connected, among other things, with the fact that Secundus's readiness to die reminded readers at that time of the attitude of Christian martyrs.

Late medieval translations of the Latin text of the biography include: two German, two Spanish, six French, an Icelandic, and four Italian versions.

The popularity of the work in the Middle Ages, is also testified by translations in other languages: Syriac, Armenian, Arabic, and Ethiopic.

Secundus depicted in the Nuremberg Chronicle .
A garbled Judeo-Latin quotation of Secundus used as a magic incantation. From the Cairo Geniza . It is Secundus' definition of God: "An intelligible unknown, a unique being who has no equal, something sought but not comprehended". [ 4 ]