Forget Me Not
Towards the end of his life, around the year 415, one of the most amiable of the personalities of that tumultuous time wrote a hymn begging Christ to keep him, a sinner, in mind, to cleanse him of sin and bring him to everlasting bliss.
His name was Synesius, bishop of Ptolemais, one of the five cities of the Cyrenaica in what is now Libya. Were it not for ceaseless incursions of German barbarians threatening the empire, and barbarian Vandals invading from the west, and barbarian Libyan tribes invading from the south, and the usual rapacity and insolence of imperial tax collectors and governors, and controversies stirred up by heretical sects as various as are the fantastical musings of the human mind, Cyrene and the smaller Ptolemais would have been lovely places to live. Synesius found them so. The tableland between the sea and the rain-banking mountains to the south was green and fertile, good for two of his favorite pastimes, farming and raising horses for the chase.
And the cities were not too far from the intellectual center of the empire, Alexandria. In that city, Christians and pagan Neoplatonists and Jews got along well enough, assisted in their good feeling by the allegorizing habits they shared. If you are minded to put the best construction on things, you might, for instance, see in the myth of the healer Aesculapius a revelation of Christ the true physician; or you might find, in the three-fold Neoplatonic division of divine beings and their action, an adumbration of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Such an atmosphere was congenial to young Synesius. He studied there under the famous Hypatia, whom he praised for her intellect and her piety, and with whom he corresponded continually. But he was no Christian then.
Nor was he a Christian when his townsmen sent him to Constantinople to plead with the young emperor, Arcadius, in 397. The last shred of self-government the people had was the right of appeal, so Synesius went to beg the emperor to relieve them of taxes they had not the means to pay. It took him three years to obtain an audience, and then he delivered an old-fashioned, learned oration on the difference between true kingship and tyranny. Apparently, it was well received; he returned home with a few modest concessions. The austere and fiery John Chrysostom was in Constantinople at the same time, though it seems unlikely that Synesius met him, and in any case they were far apart in temperament, and Synesius was still a pagan. On his way back to Cyrene he stopped at Athens, the birthplace of Greek philosophy, mainly, he said, so he would no longer have to hear about it from snobs. By then it was a backwater.
At one of his stays in Alexandria, Synesius married a Christian woman, with whom he had three sons, whom he loved dearly. He was wealthy enough to afford the leisure for philosophical reading and writing, when he was not leading Cyrene's military defenses against Libyan attacks. Had there been a YMCA in Cyrene, Synesius would have been made its president, and he had enough of the nobleman's vanity to accept it.
Christian & Bishop
At some time between 400 and 409, Synesius became a Christian. He did not repudiate his old philosophy. He understood it in a brighter light. He was probably still on his way toward full belief in the central teachings of the Church, when he was chosen to be the bishop of Ptolemais. He tried hard to refuse, but not because he thought himself unworthy of so high a post. He pretended to be unsure about the bodily resurrection of Christ. He more than pretended—he said outright that he didn't want to give up what most delighted him, namely, his married life. He enjoyed his time; this was a man who had the leisure to write a humorous treatise on the advantages of being bald! Yet the authorities and the people persisted, and Synesius did what for him meant giving up most of his earthly happiness: he conceded.
He became a bishop, and like a good Greek nobleman, he performed his duties assiduously. Those brought him in conflict with vicious men, some of whom wore episcopal robes. The year 412 found him, the most peaceful of men, inveighing against the "godless heresy" of the Arians, and against the bishops who promoted it, "modern apostles of the devil." One year later, Synesius looked helplessly on as his wife and his three beloved sons fell to an outbreak of plague. He regarded his later years with despondency; in his mind, he had failed.
Unadorned Appeal
All of that makes more impressive the last hymn Synesius wrote, a short and unadorned appeal directly to Christ. Short and unadorned are not words you would generally use to describe his hymns; they are lavish, filled with metaphysical flights of devotion. But not this one. Let me give it as it may appear in your hymnal:
Lord Jesus, think on me,
And purge away my sin;
From earthborn passions set me free,
And make me pure within.Anthony Esolen is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Thales College and the author of over 30 books, including Real Music: A Guide to the Timeless Hymns of the Church (Tan, with a CD), Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture (Regnery), and The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord (Ignatius). He has also translated Dante’s Divine Comedy (Random House) and, with his wife Debra, publishes the web magazine Word and Song (anthonyesolen.substack.com). He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
Subscribe (Print + Online) 
Six print issues (one year) of Touchstone, plus full online access and PDF downloads for only $39.95.
Subscribe (Online Only) 
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
31.4—July/August 2018
Labels & the Ecumenism of Discipleship by James M. Kushiner
28.5—Sept/Oct 2015
on Our Sacred Duty to Teach the Devil to Death by Marcus Johnson
11.5—September/October 1998
Speaking the Truths Only the Imagination May Grasp
An Essay on Myth & 'Real Life' by Stratford Caldecott
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
Support Touchstone
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
