JOHN OF MAYUMA, sixth-century bishop who wrote an anthology of
miraculous tales. John of Mayuma was a monk from the Monastery
of Bayt Rufina, whence the name John Rufus, by which he is also
known. He succeeded Peter the Iberian as bishop of Mayuma near
Gaza in Palestine. Around the year 515, John composed a
collection of plerophoriae (anecdotes and brief episodes) of a
miraculous nature that were meant to testify to the orthodoxy of
the Chalcedonians. The majority of these stories were already in
existence and, indeed, had been incorporated in various other
compilations and/or texts. However, the anthology of John of
Mayuma was the most widespread, and so by substitution of the
name of the contents for the whole work, it gained the title
Plerophoriae, by which it is known today. The original version
was certainly written in Greek, but only a few fragments of it
have survived. Two complete manuscripts, however, exist in a
Syriac translation (Nau, 1912). In Coptic there are only
fragments coming from three codi