Gregentios was the archbishop of Ẓafār, the capital of the kingdom of Ḥimyar, in the mid-6th century, according to a hagiographical dossier compiled in the 10th century. This compilation is essentially legendary and fictitious, although parts of it are of historical value. Written in Greek, it survives also in a Slavonic translation. The three works in the dossier are conventionally known as the Bios, Nomoi and Dialexis. The whole dossier is sometimes known as the Acts of Gregentios.
Name
The name Gregentios is unknown apart from the Bios and related texts. According to the Bios, he received his name from a local holy man. Several later scribes, encountering an unheard of name, changed it to Gregorios. This is the name that appears in all the Slavonic versions, as well as an Arabic translation of the Dialexis. It also appears in the fresco depicting Gregentios in the monastery of Koutsovendis on Cyprus, painted between 1110 and 1118. Other scribal emendations are Gregentinos and Rhegentios. The name has a Latin ending, which may indicate a western origin for the name, but such suffixes had entered vernacular Greek by the time the Bios was written. The name may be derived from Agrigentius, "man from Agrigento", or from a combination of the name Gregory with either Agrigentius or the name of Saint Vincentius. The biography of Gregory of Agrigento was a major source used by the author of the Bios, and an itinerary of Vincentius may also have been used. The only known persons named after Gregentios are two 19th-century monks of Mount Athos. The first was the archimandrite of Vatopedi in April 1842 and the second a monk of the Skete of Saint Anne who died in 1879 aged 69. Both monastic communities had copies of the Bios and Dialexis of Gregentios.
''Bios''
According to his Bios, Gregentios was born in the late 5th century in the town of Lyplianes. He traveled extensively in northern and central Italy and Sicily before sailing to Alexandria in Egypt. Following the massacre of the Christians of Najrān and the Aksumite conquest of Ḥimyar, he was sent by the patriarch of Alexandria, Proterios, as a bishop to evangelize the Ḥimyarites. This took place while Justin I was emperor. He remained in Ḥimyar for thirty years, assisting the Aksumite kingCaleb and then the viceroy Abraha in building churches. He died on 19 December, on which day he is remembered in the Synaxarion of Constantinople. The Bios, which Jean-Marie Sansterre called a "hagiographical romance", is divided into nine chapters. While the first eight are vague in their chronology and geography, the ninth draws on superior historical sources and contains more precise details. The Bios was completed either at Constantinople in the 10th century or in Rome in the 9th century. The Nomoi and Dialexis are later additions. The whole collection, which presents as a unity, was not brought together before the 10th century. The Nomoi may contain some authentic information, since it shares characteristics with legal inscriptions from pre-Islamic South Arabia. The Dialexis, which is a debate between Gregentios and a Jew named Herban, was the most popular part of the work and circulated independently into modern times. There is a treatise against the Azymites in the form of a letter that is ascribed to Gregentios in one manuscript. Given the issue it discusses, it can have no connection to the time in which Gregentios supposedly lived. In 1660, some "letters of Gregentios"—possibly the same treatise—were catalogued as part of the library of Denis Pétau that had been purchased after his death by Queen Christina of Sweden. There is no further record of these letters and they appear to be lost.
