Simeon Metaphrastes

Simeon Metaphrastes was a Byzantine writer and official who is regarded as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church. His feast day is celebrated on 9 or 28 November. He is best known for his 10-volume Greek menologion, a collection of saints' lives, which he compiled and reworked in the late 10th century. He was commissioned by Emperor Basil II to create a new, official menologion for the Byzantine Church. He did not merely collect and arrange pre-existing saint's lives, but also standardized their language and embellished their rhetorical style to bring them in line with the Atticism of the day. He did not alter the content of the lives, however, and historical errors were left intact. He arranged them according to their feast days in the Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar. There are about 150 distinct lives in his menologion, which was widely read in monasteries and praised by later writers. He also wrote hymns, stichera, a hymn to the Trinity, and excerpts of the church fathers, particularly Basil the Great. Very little is known about his personal life, except that he held an administrative post in the Byzantine civil service and that he became a monk later in his life. The cause and place of his death are unknown.