The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics 0199675562, 9780199675562

Citation preview

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

T H E BE G I N N I N G S O F T H E C U L T O F R E L I C S

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics R O B E R T W IŚ N IE WS K I

1

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

3

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Robert Wiśniewski 2019 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2019 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2018949487 ISBN 978–0–19–967556–2 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

To my wife Marta

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Acknowledgements The research for this book was possible thanks to the grant that I received from the National Science Centre (Poland: Grant 2011/01/B/HS3/00736) and also thanks to the Cult of Saints Project funded by grant from the European Research Council and run by Bryan Ward-Perkins (ERC Advanced Grant 340540) but I am also grateful to other institutions which helped me to work on several chapters of this book in a scholarly and comfortable atmosphere. All Souls and Trinity colleges (Oxford), the Institute for Advanced Study at the Central European University, the Kosciuszko Foundation, and the Lanckoroński Foundation granted me scholarships for research stays in Oxford, Budapest, and Princeton.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Contents List of Figures Abbreviations

Introduction 1. Prehistory and Early Chronology of the Cult of Relics

xi xiii 1 8

2. The First Miracles

27

3. Defenders of Cities

48

4. Relics and Divination

70

5. Burials ad Sanctos

83

6. Finding Relics

101

7. Touching Relics

122

8. Displaying and Seeing Relics

144

9. Dividing Relics

159

10. Discussions and Theology

180

11. Eastern, Western, and Local Habits in the Cult of Relics

203

Conclusions Bibliography Index

214 219 243

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

List of Figures 5.1 A tomb of unnamed saints in the church of the rue Malaval (Marseilles), encircled by individual graves. Photo courtesy of Manuel Moliner.

91

7.1 Tomb slab with libation holes (Rome). Marble, second century (CIL 06.07010/1). Drawing by Magda Różycka.

128

7.2 Reliquary casket with the traces of a lock. Eastern Mediterranean, sixth century. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, public domain.

135

7.3 Stone reliquary found in the apse of the southern nave of the church in Hippos, Palestine (inv. St 00.14). The interior is divided into three compartments, one of which contained a glass phial with tiny particles of bones (inv. G 1008.01). Photo courtesy of Jolanta Młynarczyk.

135

7.4 Marble slab over the tomb of St Paul in San Paulo fuori le Mura (Rome), with openings leading to the sarcophagus. Drawing by Magda Różycka.

136

7.5 Stone reliquary with an opening in the lid, discovered in the southern pastophorium of the church in Hippos, Palestine (inv. St 03.08). When found, the stick was still stuck in the opening. Photo courtesy of Jolanta Młynarczyk.

138

8.1 Box with stones from the Holy Land (Vatican, Museo Sacro 61883 ab). Photo © Governatorato SCV—Direzione dei Musei.

148

8.2 Silver casket, known as the Capsella of Brivio, with the representation of the raising of Lazarus from the Musée du Louvre. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée du Louvre)/Gérard Blot.

151

8.3 Capsella Africana. Vatican, Museo Sacro della Biblioteca Apostolica (inv. no. 60859). Photo © Governatorato SCV—Direzione dei Musei.

152

8.4 Silver casket with the Cross flanked by Peter and Paul. Photo © Toronto, Royal Ontario Museum.

153

11.1 Inside of the tomb of the saints from the church of rue Malaval (Marseilles), with a bronze pipe through which oil was poured into the tomb. Photo courtesy of Manuel Moliner.

208

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Abbreviations AASS

Acta Sanctorum (Brussels)

BHG

Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca (Brussels 1895, 1909², 1957³; Bibliothecae Hagiographicae Graecae Actuarium, ed. F. Halkin (Brussels, 1961)

BHL

Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina, Brussels 1949 (2nd edition); Bibliothecae Hagiographicae Latinae Novum Supplementum, ed. H. Fros (Brussels, 1986)

CCG

Corpus Christianorum. Series Graeca (Turnhout)

CCL

Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina (Turnhout)

CIL

Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (Berlin)

CSCO

Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium (Leuven)

CSEL

Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (Vienna)

CSLA

The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity Database:

GCS

Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten (drei) Jahrhunderte (Berlin)

ILChV

Inscriptiones Latinae Christianae Veteres, ed. E. Diehl, vols 13 (Berlin, 1961, 2nd edn)

LCL

Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA, and London)

MGH AA

Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Auctores Antiquissimi (Hanover)

MGH SRM

Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum (Hanover)

OECT

Oxford Early Christian Texts (Oxford)

PG

Patrologiae Cursus Completus, series Graeca (Paris, 1844–55)

PL

Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Latina (Paris, 1841–9)

PLRE

Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, ed. A. H. M Jones, J. R. Martindale, and J. Morris (Cambridge, 1971–92)

SC

Sources chrétiennes (Paris)

SEG

Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum (Amsterdam and Leiden)

SH

Subsidia Hagiographica (Brussels)

Teubner

Bibliotheca Teubneriana (Leipzig)

TU

Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur (Berlin)

Other abbreviations follow the sigla of L’Année philologique.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Introduction This book is about the veneration of the bones of saints, about the belief in their power, and about the ways of contact with them. The phenomenon known as the cult of relics appeared in Christianity in the fourth century, spread quickly, and became a common and almost obvious trait of Christian piety. It was present in all currents of Christianity until the early modern period, when the rejection of the cult of relics became a distinguishing feature of the Reformed Churches. It is still one of the issues on which Catholics, Orthodox, and ancient Eastern Christians differ from Protestants.¹ In the modern world, however, this phenomenon hardly raises discussions similar to those which are provoked by such questions as the priesthood of women or papal primacy. Among those who do not venerate relics their cult may arouse puzzlement, but rarely outrage. Some relics attract amused interest. The Holy Prepuce, or the foreskin of Jesus, the milk of Mary, the two skulls of John the Baptist (one of them when he was 8), or animal bones found in a reliquary, mentioned at a lecture on late antique or medieval piety, invariably enliven the audience, which usually expects more of the same (and often more does follow). Beyond this amusement, however, there are usually questions: did people really believe that these relics were true and held power able to heal the sick, check the enemy, or appease the sea? Did they think that touching, kissing, and, sometimes, eating relics was an act of piety? And if so, how did this belief and these practices begin? All these are important issues. The rise of the cult of relics was really an astonishing phenomenon and the purpose of this book is to explain its beginnings. It deals with such questions as: When exactly did the cult of relics begin? How did it spread? How strong and common was it? What were the relics expected to do? And what did people do with them? With the exception of Chapter 1, which traces the prehistory of the cult of relics, the chapters that ¹ It was long believed that a similar attitude gained momentum during the Iconoclastic crisis, but John Wortley convincingly argues that there is no reliable evidence of the hostility of iconoclastic emperors toward relics: see Wortley, ‘Iconoclasm and Leipsanoclasm: Leo III, Constantine V and the Relics’, in Wortley 2009, 253–79.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

2

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

follow deal with specific aspects of this phenomenon, and not with the subsequent stages of its development. Chapters 2–5 are focused on beliefs, Chapters 6–10 on practices. Chapter 11 addresses the question of how uniform the cult of relics was. Thus the construction of the book is thematic, but the study has been founded upon a strong conviction that the cult of relics had its history² and that in order to be understood, it must be studied with a constant awareness of its chronology. This aspect of the research, seemingly obvious to a historian, is often absent from studies dealing with the cult of relics. This phenomenon is usually presented either as having existed in Christianity from the beginning, at least in embryo, or as having appeared suddenly in Late Antiquity in its fully mature form, like Athena who sprang fully grown and armed from the head of Zeus. In consequence, snippets of evidence from the entire period c.300–600 (and even later) are often used to reconstruct the picture of this phenomenon, on the assumption that they are pieces of the same puzzle. This assumption, if not absurd, is hazardous. This book will show more than once that the cult of relics exploded rather than developed, but also that not all of its elements appeared at the same time, and we can trace the origins and evolution of at least some of them. In order to trace this development, this book takes a broad, but limited, chronological perspective, examining the growth of the cult of relics until it had gained a mature and stable form, which in most aspects took place before the end of the fifth century, in others at the end of the sixth century. Only occasionally will I refer to later evidence. This evidence comes from diverse parts and languages of ancient Christianity, because this is the only way to observe interactions within a still unified world, and to avoid easy judgements about differences of custom between Eastern and Western Christendom. The book is about the relics, that is, corporeal remains or other objects connected with people considered to be saints. Their cult, however, can be seen as a part of two wider phenomena, namely the cult of saints (which did not always require relics) and the veneration of holy objects (which did not have to be linked with saints). Consequently, the cult of saints will be constantly present in the background, and frequently I will be asking questions about the relations between the saints and their relics. Also, I will refer to other sacred objects and places which people venerated and in whose power they believed, both pagan, such as tombs of heroes, protecting statues, talismans, and magical artefacts, and Christian, such as souvenirs from the Holy Land, fragments of the True Cross, holy books, and sacred springs. The term ‘relics’, which we come across in most modern European languages, comes from the Latin reliquiae. In Late Antiquity this word was

² Brown 1981.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Introduction

3

widely used in reference to the remains of saints. It is important, however, to say that this term, as well as its equivalents in other languages of ancient Christendom, was not entirely technical. On the one hand, it could signify remains of any man or woman; just as the term corpus, which was used without distinction for the bodies of the dead, holy or not. On the other hand, in the context of the cult of saints the word reliquiae covered an entire spectrum of objects, from entire bodies to ashes, to strips of cloth which touched the tombs of saints and which we usually qualify as contact relics. Even more generic was the term memoriae, or souvenirs, which could be used in reference to the shrines of martyrs, reliquaries, as well as corporeal and contact relics of any sort, not to mention the feasts of saints. As we will see, this usage reflects a widespread conviction that all these material remains can have similar functions and power. Greek terminology was slightly more precise, as it distinguished between bodily and contact relics. The former were called leipsana (remains) or sōma (body); the latter were usually referred to as eulogiai (blessings).³ In Syriac the standard terms for relics are pagrā (body) and garmē (bones), minor relics were also referred to as margānītā (pearls), and dust from the dwelling place or tomb of a saint, mixed with oil and water, was called hnana (grace). In Coptic, whose religious vocabulary was based on Greek, we usually come across the term psoma (Greek sōma, body). In Georgian a standard word was nacili, in Armenian nšxar, both meaning ‘fragments’. The semantic fields of these terms did not overlap exactly, but in all the regions of Christendom both corporeal remains of saints and contact relics were objects of veneration. The objects which remained in physical contact with saints in their lifetime or after death included pieces of cloth, instruments of torture, or oil from lamps burning over their tombs. All were considered to transfer the power which dwelt in the bodies of the saints.⁴ In this book all these categories will be discussed, but special attention will be paid to corporeal relics, because contact relics were considered their substitutes, and because the new attitude to dead bodies was the most significant and interesting change in late antique mentality. Once it emerged, the cult of relics aroused some criticism, but much more enthusiasm. Both attitudes were expressed in writings, although, as ultimately

³ The term eulogia covered not only various objects connected with saints, but also their hair and nails: Antonius, Symeonis Stylitae Vita Graeca 29; Vita Symeonis Stylitae Iunioris 130.9, 232.24. The only passage known to me in which leípsana might signify contact relics is Callinicus’ Vita Hypatii 8.4, which says that Flavius Rufinus deposited in Rouphinianai leípsana of Peter and Paul. From what we know of the custom of the Church of Rome these leípsana must have been non-corporeal remains (see pp. 134–5). This, however, is an isolated testimony; moreover, it seems that Callinicus, who wrote a century after the dedication of this shrine, simply did not know what sort of relics it possessed. ⁴ See e.g. Vita Danielis Stylitae 82; Gerontius, Vita Melaniae 69; Gregory of Tours, Historiarum libri 4.36.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

4

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

all the doubts were rejected, the enthusiasts had much more chance to leave a trace in the evidence. Relics appear quite often in late antique literature. We can obviously find them in hagiography, but they are also mentioned in other narrative sources and other literary genres. Preachers refer to their power, pilgrims note the places in which they were deposited, and authors of letters write about sending them to their correspondents. Occasional mentions can be found also in other writings in any language of ancient Christianity. This evidence makes it possible to construct a literary history of relics. It is necessary, however, to emphasize that in this book, in the reconstruction of beliefs and practices concerning relics, the chronology of the sources will be followed much more closely than that of the events they describe: a sixthcentury author describing a supposedly fourth-century custom will be considered a witness of his own times rather than of the fourth century. The bulk of the textual evidence studied in this book, drawn from every genre and language of late antique literature, is quite well known to scholars, and only rarely will I have occasion to analyse texts not quoted in earlier studies, but my essential aim is not to bring out new sources, but rather to ask new questions or propose new answers. Being a historian by training I am more at ease when working with textual evidence. But the cult of relics left many material traces which must be studied carefully; otherwise the picture of the phenomenon will be not just incomplete, but simply false. It is only the papyrological evidence, for instance, that shows a form of divination which consisted in drawing lots close to the graves of saints; it is only epigraphy that attests the presence of relics of Peter and Paul in Africa; it is the material evidence that permits us to trace the evolution of the physical access to relics. Last but not least, while the corpus of the textual evidence is more or less closed, the amount of accessible material evidence is still growing. Of course, material evidence cannot be considered to be a window through which we can easily see the world as it really was. First, the dating of this evidence is often uncertain and so it is difficult to use it in reconstructing the dynamics of the development of the phenomenon. Secondly, the interpretation of the archaeological finds is very often difficult. A flacon of perfume, for instance, and an ampoule with the blood of a martyr look very much the same. Thirdly, while archaeological evidence is essential for understanding practices, one has to be cautious in using it to reconstruct beliefs. Graves found around a tomb of a martyr show that people wanted to be buried close to the saints, but they do not say why. Having all this in mind, I have tried to follow the fairly obvious methodological postulate of using all kinds of accessible evidence, keeping in mind limits and traps proper to each of them. The cult of relics started to attract scholarly interest already in the early modern period, when the cult of saints became an object of lively discussion between the Catholics and Protestants. The latter considered it an apparent result of a swift ‘paganization’ of post-Constantinian Christianity; the former,

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Introduction

5

its nearly original feature. This discussion was usually led cum ira et studio, but it did inspire serious research. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Bollandist Society, a group of Jesuit scholars, laid the foundations for the critical study of hagiography, providing us with critical editions and tools to study the textual evidence of the cult of saints.⁵ At the beginning of the twentieth century, Hippolyte Delehaye, a member of this learned society, began to study the cult itself.⁶ The interest in this phenomenon grew even stronger in the last quarter of the twentieth century, not only among the Bollandists. André Grabar, Gilbert Dagron, Alba Maria Orselli, to name just a few, studied particular cults, types of cults and cult-sites, and specific aspects of cult. A strong boost for those studies came from the book of Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints, published in 1981, which argued that this phenomenon was not just a new manifestation of a perennial popular religion, but developed in specific historical conditions and as such could be an object of historical research. Brown analysed the situation in the Latin West. Since then several authors have focused their interest on particular regions of the late antique world. Yvette Duval and Victor Saxer studied the cult of saints in Latin Africa, Arietta Papaconstantinou in Egypt, Brigitte Beaujard in Gaul, John Wortley in Constantinople, and Elisabeth Key Fowden the sanctuary of St Sergius in Resapha. Pierre Maraval presented an extensive survey on pilgrimage sites in the East, most of which were related to the cult of saints. All these studies paid considerable attention to relics. However, since the relics were not the main object of their analysis, certain questions, for example concerning physical contact with relics, dividing bodies of saints, development of faith in the protective power of relics, differences between West and East, either have not been asked or did not produce satisfactory answers. The studies dealing specifically with relics are few. In one of them Arnold Angenendt examined the development of the cult of relics from the beginning until the early modern era. However, Late Antiquity was for him just a prehistory for the period he was most interested in.⁷ Andreas Hartmann studied the attitude toward physical, although not necessarily corporeal, remains of heroes and other important people in the whole of classical Antiquity, but stopped in the fourth century, and did not deal with the Christian cult of relics.⁸ Both works can be useful in providing parallels and later developments, but their centres of gravity lie firmly outside the period I am studying. Interestingly, more research has been done on reliquaries than on relics. Helmut Buschhausen, Alexander Mintschev, Galit Noga-Banai, Anja Kalinowski, Ayse Aydin, and Cynthia Hahn studied diverse types of ‘relic-containers’, but the evidence which they have collected has made it possible to study the cult ⁵ For the history of the Bollandists, see Godding et al. 2007. ⁶ Delehaye 1933 (the first edition was published in 1912). ⁸ Hartmann 2010.

⁷ Angenendt 1994.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

6

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

of relics much more systematically than before. This interest in the material aspect of the cult of relics is growing stronger in recent scholarship. Alan Thacker and Anne-Marie Yasin showed how relics organized space of late antique churches. Julia Smith focused on the access to and physical contact with relics, asking several question to which I am trying to find answers, focusing on a slightly earlier period than the one which is the primary object of her research. The studies of the authors named above provide the evidence without which the present book could have hardly been written. Even more importantly, while now and again the following pages will engage in a polemic with specific theses presented in these studies, the ideas that I found in them made me think about issues that otherwise I would not have been aware of. This book was written in many places and it would not have been written at all without the friendly encouragement, help, and criticism of many people to whom I want to express my gratitude. My interest in the religious phenomena of late antique Christianity has been developing for years at the late antique seminar convened at the University of Warsaw by Ewa Wipszycka, the first person who taught me how to study the saints. At her seminar a group of friends and colleagues, historians, archaeologists, papyrologists, epigraphists, and Roman jurists have always been eager to discuss any issue concerning martyrs and holy monks, their tombs, cults, and corporeal remains. To this group belong Stanisław Adamiak, Tomasz Derda, Paweł Janiszewski, Elżbieta Jastrzębowska, Adam Łajtar, Krystyna Stebnicka, Jakub Urbanik, Adam Ziółkowski, and many others whose questions and remarks have often had a profound impact on my research. The idea of writing this book emerged when I was giving a series of lectures on the early cult of relics in Paris at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, at the invitation of Bernard Flusin. I had many occasions to talk either after the lectures or at the Centre d’Histoire et Civilisation de Byzance with Bernard and also Monique Alexandre, Béatrice Caseau, Estelle Cronnier, Vincent Déroche, and Catherine Jolivet-Levy. Most chapters of this book have been either written or presented during my stays in Oxford, first in Trinity College and then in All Souls. Enjoying all the privileges, but unencumbered by any usual obligations, of the fellows of these colleges, I had a lot of time to read, think, talk, and write. Oxford, with its several late antique seminars gathering every week, has a number of scholars most happy to talk about relics, and attracts many more from all over the world. Let me name just a few of them. My special thanks go to Bryan Ward-Perkins, whose friendship and support helped me to complete this book and whose quickly developing enthusiasm for the study of the cult of saints resulted in establishing a research group working on this phenomenon. The members of this group, Nikoloz Aleksidze, Julia Doroszewska, David Lambert, Sergey Minov, Paweł Nowakowski, Arietta Papaconstantinou, Fran Murray, Matthieu Pignot, Geza Shenke, Marta Szada, Efthymios Rizos, David Taylor,

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Introduction

7

Marta Tycner, Theo van Lint, Marijana Vuković, and Katarzyna Wojtalik, will easily find in the following pages a number of references and suggestions which I owe them. There are also other people at Oxford who hosted me at seminars, or lunches, eagerly talking about relics: Phil Booth, Kate Cooper, Jaś Elsner, Ine Jacobs, James Howard-Johnston, George Kazan, Conrad Leyser, Neil McLynn, and especially Julia Smith are among them. In other places of the world parts of this book have been discussed with Philippe Blaudeau, Peter Brown, Bożena Iwaszkiewicz-Wronikowska, Gábor Klaniczay, William Klingshirn, Johan Leemans, AnneMarie Luijendijk, Peter Van Nuffelen, and Marianne Sághy. Needless to say, this list is far from being complete. It does not contain those with whom I rarely talked about relics, but whose sympathy and support I have felt in my academic life, who copied for me articles, replaced me at classes, and discussed topics which, seemingly not connected directly with my research, turned out to be to be essential for informing my thinking about Late Antiquity. Two persons have to be named for providing material support: Manuel Moliner and Jolanta Młynarczyk very generously shared with me images of most interesting reliquaries found during the excavations at Hippos and Marseilles. My very special thanks go to my former students in Warsaw, to whom I am deeply indebted for their curiosity, questions, ideas, and sympathy. Out of them I have to name Katarzyna Parys, Maria Więckowska, and Bogna Włodarczyk, who, over a dozen years ago, enthusiastically started to translate with me Jerome’s Against Vigilantius, a most malicious treatise attacking an adversary of the cult of relics, thus giving a strong boost to my interest in this phenomenon and showing me that it can be interesting for others. Last but not least, I am deeply grateful to Damian Jasiński and, once again, Bryan Ward-Perkins, who, with patience and good humour, made my English readable, and to Jackie Pritchard, the copy-editor of this book, who kept me from messing it up again and saved me from several errors.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

1 Prehistory and Early Chronology of the Cult of Relics This book will argue that in the mid-fourth century Christianity witnessed an entirely new phenomenon: in the space of no more than one generation, people born into a society which accorded due respect to the physical remains of the dead, but nonetheless commonly shuddered at the very thought of touching them, came to seek physical closeness to the bodies of martyrs in the newly formed belief that these were endowed with a supernatural power. This new phenomenon, however, had not come out of nothing. Certain features of Christianity preconditioned the emergence of the cult of relics, even if they did not lead on their own to its rise. Some of them, such as admiration for the martyrs and the belief in the resurrection of the body, can be traced back to the very early period of Christian history. Others, such as the beliefs in the sanctity and power of certain material objects and places as well as in the intercession of the saints, developed at later dates but still before the midfourth century. There is one other reason which makes me focus in this chapter on a more distant past. The bulk of the evidence for the cult of relics dates back to the period starting in the 350s, but there are sources which seem to suggest that at least some elements of this phenomenon may have appeared earlier. The sources in question might even indicate that we are dealing with beliefs and practices for which our surviving evidence is relatively late, but which were actually present in Christian religiosity from a very early date. In this chapter I will analyse these pieces of evidence in order to see which features of the cult of relics can be traced to the pre-Constantinian period. Then, I will discuss the fourth-century evidence of the emerging phenomenon up to the 360s. This evidence, presented in chronological order, will demonstrate when the new beliefs and practices started to appear. The trigger mechanism of the shift in mentality—the shift that marks the beginning of the cult of relics—will be discussed in Chapter 2.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Prehistory and Early Chronology

9

THE BIBLICAL BACKGROUND Before we turn to the evidence concerning the second and third centuries, it is important to refer to the scriptural background of the cult of relics. It will serve not so much to study an early phase of its development, for there is hardly any continuity in this respect between biblical times and Late Antiquity, but to see what the late antique reader could have found in the texts normative for Christian beliefs and customs. The cult of relics, as a regular practice, is absent from the Bible, but a few intriguing passages could have provided a scriptural justification for this phenomenon. First of all, two short Old Testament episodes seem to show that the bones of prophets could have been endowed with special power. According to the First Book of Kings, a man instructed his sons to bury him in the tomb of the prophet who had foretold the fall of the sanctuary in Bethel. He gave the following reason for this: lay me by his bones, that my bones may be preserved with his bones. For the word will surely come to pass which he spoke by the word of the Lord against the altar in Bethel, and against the high houses in Samaria.¹

The words in italics can be found only in the Septuagint and in its Latin translation known as the Vetus Latina. They are absent from Jerome’s Vulgate (and likewise from the modern translations based on the Masoretic Hebrew text). Still, late antique Christians knew this passage in the version quoted above. However, the sequel of the story, which can be found in the Second Book of Kings,² shows that if the bones of the prophet actually survived the destruction of Bethel, it did not happen because they had any sort of intrinsic power. The reason was that King Josiah, who demolished the schismatic sanctuary and the surrounding graves, decided not to destroy the tomb of the prophet who had foretold his deed. Thus, the phrase read in context does not really testify to a belief in the supernatural power of the prophet’s body and nothing suggests that late antique Christians should have thought otherwise.³ A more relevant passage can be found in the Second Book of Kings: And Elisha died, and they buried him. And the bands of the Moabites came into the land, at the beginning of the year. And it came to pass as they were burying a man, that behold, they saw a band [of men], and they cast the man into the grave of Elisha: and as soon as he touched the bones of Elisha, he revived and stood up on his feet.⁴

¹ 1 Kings 13:31–2. ² 2 Kings 23:15–18. ³ This can be seen in the results of the search in the Biblia Patristica, the index of scriptural quotations in late antique literature, now accessible online: . ⁴ 2 Kings 13:20–1 (Septuagint).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

10

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

This episode strongly suggests that the healing power remained in the bones of the famous prophet who had performed diverse miracles in his lifetime. Even if there is no other passage like this in the Old Testament, these words were read as a testimony to the power of the relics of saints. Such a reading of this passage, however, appears only at the end of the fourth century; earlier authors consider this story to be true and interesting, but isolated, and do not expect a similar thing to happen again.⁵ In the New Testament we can hardly find a suggestion that the physical remains of any person could hold any sort of supernatural power, of course with the important exception of the resurrected body of Christ, which, however, can hardly be qualified as a relic. Yet two episodes mention a kind of contact relic. A woman having an issue of blood is healed having touched Jesus’ garment, and ‘handkerchiefs and aprons’ of Paul the Apostle cure illnesses and chase away evil spirits.⁶ Of course, neither of these passages tells about the power of a dead body and, as we will see later on, for over two centuries following the composition of the New Testament, we cannot see any continuity in the practice of touching the clothes of holy people in the hope of regaining health which would date back to apostolic times. Still, this is an important piece of evidence, as it testifies to the existence of a belief that miraculous power can be transmitted in a physical way—such a belief was indeed essential for the development of the cult of relics. In this short section, however, I have covered all instances of biblical references to relics—or rather the list of biblical passages which came to be used with reference to the cult of relics only after the phenomenon in question was already well in place.

P R E- C O N S T A N T I N I A N CHRI S TIANITY: FOU R C AS E S For post-New Testament Christianity of the second and third centuries we have no record of an established custom of unearthing the bodies of martyrs or looking for healing at their graves. Yet, as has been said above, there are a few pieces of evidence which date back or at least refer to this period and tell about episodes which strangely resemble the practices of the later centuries. Their credibility, interpretation, and significance have to be examined. The first passage calling for a reflection in this context comes from the Martyrdom of Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, who was burnt at the stake around

⁵ For the late fourth century, see e.g. Ambrose, De excessu fratris Satyri 2.83; earlier authors: Origen, In Leviticum homiliae 3.3; Athanasius, De patientia 6; for other quotations, see Biblia Patristica. ⁶ Mark 5:25–34, Acts 19:12.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Prehistory and Early Chronology

11

the middle of the second century. In the closing paragraphs of the Martyrdom we read the following: Thus we later picked up his bones, which are dearer than precious stones and finer than gold, and laid them to rest where it was appropriate. The Lord will grant that we, as far as we can, shall gather there in joy and gladness, and celebrate the birthday of his martyrdom, both in remembrance of those who have already fought the contest, and for the training and preparation of those who will do so in the future.⁷

The author of the Martyrdom of Polycarp presents himself as an eyewitness. Yet the dating of this text, and particularly of the quoted passage, has given rise to some vigorously discussed controversies. Some scholars considered the entire account to be a third-century composition, while others thought that the passage in question was interpolated in the third century, still others believed that it was a genuine account, written shortly after Polycarp’s death.⁸ For our purpose, it is important to say that whenever the Martyrdom of Polycarp was written, at the beginning of the fourth century Eusebius of Caesarea quoted it in the form cited above, so we are dealing with a testimony which certainly pre-dates the development of the phenomenon in the midfourth century, although it is not entirely clear by how much. The discussion on the dating of the passage dealing with Polycarp’s burial has been closely connected with the debate on the beginning of the cult of relics. Those who propounded the theory of its early start take it as a strong argument in favour of their view, while their adversaries consider it to be an interpolation. However, the question which needs to be asked in this context is whether the attitude of the author to the body of the martyr was really different from the traditional Greek attitude toward the bodies of heroes who died in combat. Christians did not invent respect for and care of the bodies of the dead, especially of those who died a heroic death. Such an attitude was entirely normal not just among the Jews, Greeks, and Romans, but also in most civilizations that we know of. It suffices to mention all the pains that were taken to recover the precious bodies of those who fell in battle described in the Iliad. One has to be cautious and refrain from interpreting every single manifestation of respect paid to the deceased as a sign of the cult of relics. True, the author in question not only tells about the care for the body of the bishop, but also announces that the anniversary of his martyrdom will be celebrated at his tomb. Still, nothing suggests that he believed that Polycarp’s remains would be at any point taken out of the grave or, even more ⁷ Martyrium Polycarpi 18 (trans. E. Rizos). See also the record in the Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity database: E. Rizos, CSLA E00087. ⁸ See the discussion and bibliography in the record quoted above and especially Campenhausen 1957, who considers the passage to be interpolated, and Dehandschutter 1993, who argues it is original.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

12

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

importantly, become a source of miraculous power. And this, as we will see in Chapter 2, was the essential trait of the new attitude toward the remains of the martyrs: in the fourth century martyrs ceased to be seen as mere examples to be imitated, and became depositaries of miraculous powers able to chase away demons, heal the sick, reveal hidden things, protect communities, punish the impious, and remit sins.⁹ The second piece of evidence which might suggest that Christians sought physical contact with the bodily remains of martyrs before the fourth century comes from the apocryphal Acts of Thomas, which date back to the early third century.¹⁰ This is what their anonymous author says in the epilogue: And it happened after a long time [after the death of Judas Thomas] that one of the sons of king Mazdai had a devil, and no man was able to bind him, because he was very violent. And king Mazdai thought in his mind and said: ‘I will go [and] open the grave of Judas, and take one of the bones of the Apostle of God, and will hang it upon my son, and he will be healed’ . . . And he did not find the bones, for one of the brethren had taken them secretly and conveyed them to the West. And king Mazdai took [some] of the dust of the spot where the bones of the Apostle had lain and hung it upon his son, and said: ‘I believe in Thee, my Lord Jesus, now that he hath left me, who always troubleth men that they may not see the light’. And when he had hung [it] upon his son and believed, he was healed.¹¹

There are several intriguing elements in this story: the transfer of the body from India, where the Apostle died, to the West; the miraculous power of the bones and dust from the grave, and the practice of touching relics. Of course, one has to remember that the apocryphal acts of Apostles are a very peculiar literary genre that depicted a world destined to excite wonder, a world in which the Apostles baptize lions, dogs speak in human voices, and St Peter brings back to life a dried herring. The religious behaviour described in such texts does not necessarily reflect actual practice. Still, the evidence is puzzling. This passage, however, although present both in the Greek and Syriac versions of the text, can hardly be part of its third-century layer. Apocrypha were extremely susceptible to diverse redactional interventions and neither version of the Acts of Thomas in their present form can be deemed original.¹² The passage quoted above is placed at the end of the text, the part most easily affected by interpolations. Indeed, the preceding chapter of the Acts ends with the Apostle’s martyrial death, which, however, does not put an end to, but gives momentum to the development of his Church: ‘And the Lord wrought with them, and many were added unto the faith,’ says the author. This sounds very much like the last sentence of the story. The last chapter seems to have been added later, and it is quite easy to show why and when this happened. ⁹ Pietri 1991. ¹⁰ Klijn 2003, 15. ¹¹ Acts of Thomas 170, trans. Klijn 2003.

¹² Tissot 1981.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Prehistory and Early Chronology

13

The essential information which this chapter brings is that of the transfer of the powerful body of the Apostle to the West. The text is not specific about the place of its deposition, but we know that the body of Thomas was venerated in Edessa, where the Acts were most probably written. Interestingly, the evidence of the tomb of Thomas in Edessa is quite late. Eusebius, who wrote in his Church History in the 320s about the mission of Thomas in Parthia, does not seem to know about the transfer of his body to Edessa, a city which he otherwise mentioned on several occasions.¹³ The story of the transfer is attested for the first time only in the 360s or 370s by the Syriac writer Ephrem of Nisibis. In his Hymn 42 he puts the following lamentation in the mouth of the devil: The merchant brought the bones: nay, rather! they brought him. Lo, the mutual gain! What profit were they to me, while theirs was the mutual gain? Both brought me loss. Who will show me the casket of Iscariot, whence courage I derived? But the casket of Thomas is slaying me, for a hidden power there residing, tortures me.¹⁴

The crucial element of the story told by the Acts, that of the transfer and power of Thomas’ bones, is evidently here. Only slightly later, in 384, the Apostle’s tomb in Edessa was visited by the pilgrim Egeria.¹⁵ The story from the last chapter of the Acts of Thomas thus appeared most probably between the times of Eusebius and those of Ephrem and Egeria. It was an important period, in which Edessa contrived its early Christian history. Later on, we will see another element of this plan, namely a new version of the letter sent by Christ to King Abgar. This new version, which also appeared in Edessa between the times of Eusebius and Egeria, was to guard the city and keep its enemies at bay.¹⁶ It is difficult to overlook a similar function for Thomas’ tomb and Christ’s letter: both elevated Edessa to the status of a truly Apostolic Church, protected by divine power against the Persian armies and the hosts of demons. The aforementioned epilogue of the Acts of Thomas was probably part of this new historical policy. It was added because some explanation was needed of why the tomb of the Apostle who, as the Acts clearly stated, had been active and died in India was venerated in Edessa. We cannot say when exactly it happened, but the 350s–360s seems to be a reasonable guess, considering that the earliest safely dated testimonies to belief in the power of relics date back to those two decades. It is quite certain that we are not dealing with a third-century story. ¹³ Thomas and Parthia: Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 3.1.1. ¹⁴ Ephrem, Hymnus 42.2 (trans. J. T. S. Stopford). ¹⁵ Egeria, Itinerarium 17.1 and 19.2. ¹⁶ See pp. 64–5.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

14

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

The two episodes that follow which might be used to illustrate a preConstantinian interest in relics come from the West. The first of these is set in Rome and concerns the bodies of the Apostles Peter and Paul. In late antique evidence we come across stories about the attempted and aborted transfer of their relics which supposedly took place in the middle of the third century. This extremely interesting, although confusing dossier consists of a few elements. The oldest of them is a wall in the so-called triclia, or banquet hall, at the Catacombs of St Sebastian, on the Via Appia, south-east of Rome. The wall is covered with graffiti invoking both Apostles. One of them can be dated to the year 260, and since it was written over an older graffito of the same kind, the practice of making them must have started earlier, although probably not earlier than the middle of the third century.¹⁷ The inscriptions bear testimony to a cult of the Apostles which consisted in asking them for prayer and having a meal (refrigerium) in their honour. The epigraphic evidence does not explain why this practice developed in this specific place, at a distance from the tomb of Peter on the Vatican Hill and that of Paul on the Via Ostiense. The second piece of evidence is an entry in the Depositio Martyrum, or the earliest extant Christian calendar. It is preserved in the so-called Chronography of 354, but was most probably composed earlier in the fourth century.¹⁸ Under the third day before the Kalends of July, that is on 29 June, it mentions a commemoration of ‘Peter in the Catacombs and Paul, on the Via Ostiense’. The feast of Paul on the Via Ostiense is obvious,¹⁹ but that of Peter at the Catacombs is puzzling. The Catacombs mentioned in this entry are certainly those of St Sebastian, for that was the place called Ad Catacumbas, which only subsequently gave its name to other underground cemeteries. Interestingly, unlike other entries in the calendar, this one gives not only the day of the celebration, but also the year, ‘during the consulate of Tuscus and Bassus’, that, is AD 258. Most disappointingly, it does not say anything about what happened on that day. The third piece of evidence is a monumental inscription from the same Catacombs of St Sebastian. Its author was Pope Damasus (366–84), who placed several epigrams commemorating the saints in suburban martyria and cemeteries. The one at St Sebastian’s begins thus: ‘Here the saints abided previously. You ought to know this, whoever you are, you who seek equally the names of Peter and Paul’ (Hic habitasse prius sanctos cognoscere debes, nomina quisque Petri pariter Paulique requiris).²⁰ It has been widely discussed whether the word habitare referred to an otherwise unattested stay of the Apostles in this place or to the deposition of their relics. Recently, David Eastman has ¹⁷ Marichal 1962. For the role of this place, see Jastrzębowska 1981. ¹⁸ Burgess 2012, 381–2. ¹⁹ See Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 2.25.7. ²⁰ Damasus, Epigrammata 20.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Prehistory and Early Chronology

15

proposed a new solution of the problem, drawing attention to the word hic (‘here’), which in his opinion refers to Rome in general and not to the specific place in which the inscription was written, thus dissociating the Catacombs and the physical presence of Peter and Paul, dead or alive.²¹ This hypothesis is difficult to prove, but even if it is so, the Damasan inscription shows at best what some people in the fourth century thought about the history of this place. The fourth piece of evidence is the Martyrdom of St Sebastian, dating probably from the mid-fifth century, in which the martyr, who died in 258, expresses his wish to be buried ‘at the Catacombs, next to the vestiges of the Apostles’ (ad catacumbas . . . iuxta vestigia apostolorum), which may suggest that in the mid-third century the bodies of Peter and Paul rested by the Via Appia.²² The fifth piece of evidence is the ending of the fifth-century Syriac Acts of Sharbel, a martyr at Edessa. Its author sets Sharbel’s martyrdom in the times of Fabian, bishop of Rome (AD 250), and describes an episode from his episcopate strangely unrelated to the main storyline. He claims that when Rome was affected by famine, its inhabitants decided to expel all the foreigners from the city, but allowed them to take their dead away with them. The foreigners declared that they would depart, but with the bodies of Peter and Paul, for the Apostles had also been foreigners in Rome. And when the people of Rome knew that this matter was so, then they left them [to do it]. And when they had taken them [i.e. the Apostles’ relics] up and were removing them from their places, immediately there was a great earthquake, and the buildings of the city were on the point of falling down, and the city was near being overthrown. And when the people of Rome saw it, they turned and besought the strangers to remain in their city, and that the bones might be laid in their places. And when the bones of the Apostles were returned to their places, there was quiet, and the earthquakes ceased, and the winds became still, and the air became bright, and that whole city became cheerful.²³

This is the earliest source which mentions an aborted transfer of the relics of the Apostles in Rome, placing it around the middle of the third century. It does not say from where exactly the bodies were removed. The sixth piece of evidence is a letter of Pope Gregory the Great to the Empress Constantina. It refuses to comply with her request to send to Constantinople the ‘head of saint Paul or some other part of his body’.²⁴ When explaining his position, Gregory says that some Greeks already tried to transfer the bodies of the Apostles directly after their death, and went with them as far as to the Catacombs. There they were stopped by a thunderstorm, and the ²¹ ²² ²³ ²⁴

Eastman 2011, 94–109, with references to the earlier discussion. Passio S. Sebastiani 88; see Cooper 1999, 310–13. Martyrdom of Sharbel (trans. B. P. Pratten, pp. 61–2; modified by S. Minov: CSLA E01943). Gregory the Great, Epistula IV 30 (trans. J. Barmby).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

16

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

bodies were carried back to Rome. This supposedly took place in a period much earlier than the mid-third century, but Gregory mentions the very place named in the Depositio Martyrum and where the inscriptions invoking the Apostles were found, namely the Catacombs of St Sebastian. On the basis of this evidence, at the end of the nineteenth century, Louis Duchesne hypothesized that around the middle of the third century the bodies of the Apostles were taken out of their tombs and transferred to the Catacombs. Duchesne thought that this was done in order to protect them in the midst of the persecutions of Valerian, which started in 257.²⁵ This claim is not substantiated in an explicit manner by any single source on its own, but it is indeed striking that our evidence attests to some movement of the relics of the Apostles, signals an event connected with their cult in the 250s, and points to the Catacombs of St Sebastian. The supposition that the transfer indeed took place and was prompted by the edict of Valerian, who forbade Christians from ‘assembling or entering what are called koimētēria’, cannot be dismissed as absurd. Éric Rebillard convincingly argues that the word koimētēria referred not to the Christian cemeteries in general, but specifically to the tombs of the martyrs.²⁶ Still, no source mentions any acts of destruction or desecration of Christian burial places during that persecution, and so the decision to transfer the bones of the Apostles looks somewhat overdramatic, all the more so as it is not clear why the Catacombs would have been safer than the Vatican and the cemetery on the Via Ostiense. In all, it is not possible to determine whether any transfer of the relics took place in the 250s. Indeed, another solution to this problem has been proposed. Henry Chadwick turned attention to yet another piece of literary evidence, namely a passage from the Liber Pontificalis according to which ‘at the request of a certain lady Lucina, he [Bishop Cornelius] took up the bodies of the Apostles saints Peter and Paul from the Catacombs at night’ and deposited them respectively on the Vatican and the Via Ostiense.²⁷ This may be a late testimony to a tradition of the Catacombs as the original place of the burial of the Apostles. This tradition, which is also attested in later itineraria, did not have to date back to the first century. Chadwick argues that the competing localization of Peter’s and Paul’s burials on the Via Appia might have emerged as late as the third century in a dissenting group in the Church of Rome. In all, the transfer of the bodies of the Apostles is only one of the possible explanations of the puzzling dossier of the shrine Ad Catacumbas. Even more importantly, if the transfer indeed took place, it probably did not aim to bring the sacred objects to a specific place. The relics were to be given

²⁵ Duchesne in the Liber Pontificalis, vol. 1, pp. civ–cvii. ²⁶ Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 7.13.3; Rebillard 2009, 3–6. ²⁷ Liber Pontificalis 22.4 (trans. R. Davis); Chadwick 1957.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Prehistory and Early Chronology

17

protection; they were not supposed to be a means of protection. Interestingly, in Rome, a vague memory of this transfer, true or false, was used to promote the idea of the non-transferability of relics: both texts which mention the transfer claim that it was an intervention of God that put an end to it. Thus, the dossier quoted above cannot attest to a cult of relics at such an early date. However, its epigraphical part, datable to the 250s and 260s, is the earliest attestation of the phenomenon which was essential for its development, namely the belief in the intercession of the Apostles. We are not dealing here with a cult of relics, but we are probably witnessing the early beginnings of the cult of saints. The last episode appearing in scholarly debates about the beginnings of the cult of relics is the story of Lucilla of Carthage, a devout and wealthy lady who played a significant role in the emergence of the Donatist schism after the end of the Diocletianic persecution.²⁸ Using her money and influence, she supposedly induced a group of African bishops to reject the election of the archdeacon Caecilian as bishop of Carthage, and to entrust this office to a certain Maiorinus, a member of her own household. Optatus of Milevis, when describing these events in his anti-Donatist treatise, explained Lucilla’s aversion to Caecilian thus: No-one is unaware that this took place in Carthage after the ordination of Caecilian, and indeed through some factious woman or other called Lucilla, who, while the Church was still tranquil and the peace had not yet been shattered by the whirlwinds of persecution, was unable to bear the rebuke of the archdeacon Caecilian. She was said to kiss (libare) the bone of some martyr or other—if, that is, he was a martyr—before the spiritual food and drink, and, since she preferred to the saving cup the bone of some dead man, who if he was a martyr had not yet been confirmed as one, she was rebuked, and went away in angry humiliation.²⁹

Scholars dealing with the history of the cult of relics usually considered this passage to be a testimony of a real, if uncommon practice.³⁰ This testimony is, however, misleading, and its sense can be grasped only if we study the context in which it was written. We know that Optatus composed his treatise after the death of the Emperor Julian (363), which is referred to in the text, and the analysis of its content suggests that it must have been re-edited in the 380s.³¹ Therefore, the passage quoted above was written over sixty years after the ²⁸ What follows is based on Wiśniewski 2011. ²⁹ Optatus, Contra Parmenianum 1.16.1 (trans. M. Edwards). ³⁰ See Dölger 1932; Delehaye 1933, 60; and among more recent scholars, Saxer 1980, 233–5; Brown 1981, 34; Shaw 1992, 25–6 (although the last remarks that the account may have a rhetorical character); Miller 1998, 121–3. ³¹ Julian: Optatus, Contra Parmenianum 2.16; according to Jerome Optatus flourished during the reign of Valens and Valentinian (Gratian is not mentioned: Jerome, De viris inlustribus 110). Thus, the treatise should have been written in the years 364–7, but these dates do not refer to Book 7, which was composed later: M. Labrousse, in her introduction (SC 412, 12–14).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

18

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

event it tells us about and, as we will see, at least a few years after the first safely attested movements of the saints’ relics through the Mediterranean. When Optatus described the case of Lucilla, the opening of saints’ graves and transferring of their bodies had already become a familiar phenomenon, even if it still had an aura of novelty. The aim of Optatus’ work is no less important than the date of its composition. The treatise is a polemic against the Donatists and an essential element of its argument is an account of the early history of the schism. It is evident that this story cannot be taken as a faithful and unbiased record of what had happened.³² According to Optatus, the rupture resulted from the resentments and desires of various individuals. The first group were the greedy senior laymen of the Church of Carthage from whom Caecilian demanded that they return the treasure of the Church which they had appropriated. The second group consisted of the clerics Botrus and Caelestius: they each hoped to become bishop of Carthage, but their hopes had been dashed (Optatus does not explain how they both could aspire to be elected for the same office and still remain allies). The third contentious individual was Lucilla, who declared against Caecilian for of the reasons presented in the passage quoted above.³³ Briefly put, Optatus portrays the schism as a result of actions taken by a group of dishonest nobles, two ambitious and deceitful clerics, and a woman who, as the sequel to the story demonstrates, played the crucial role: it was a member of her household who would become the first ‘Donatist’ bishop of Carthage, elected to that office owing to her active support. The mere fact that it was a woman who was the actual founder of Donatism was supposed to discredit this movement in the eyes of Optatus’ audience.³⁴ However, the author was not satisfied with this and went out of his way to paint an unfavourable picture of her. He mentions Lucilla twice in the narrative, qualifying her first as seditious (factiosa), and then as ‘powerful and seditious’ (potens et factiosa). In Latin literature, factiosus is a rare but well-known word, used several times by Sallust. Lucilla, potens et factiosa, was certainly to be associated by Optatus’ readers with the repulsive nobiles factiosi described in De bello Iugurthino.³⁵ What is more, Lucilla is a vengeful woman and does not submit to the rules of the Church. It seems that the short description of her religious practices aims to discredit her even further. First

³² Barnes 1975, 15, justly says that modern scholars tend to believe the Catholic version of the beginnings of the controversy. A good example is Saxer 1980, 233–5, who takes for granted not only the practice mentioned above, but also the description of the state of Lucilla’s emotions when rebuked by Caecilian (correpta cum confusione irata discessit). ³³ The entire story is told in Optatus, Contra Parmenianum 1.16–18. ³⁴ In the sixth century Primasius of Hadrumetum equates Donatism with Montanism—both movements were supported by women: Primasius, In Apocalypsin 3.9. ³⁵ Sallust, Bellum Iugurthinum 8.1; 15.3; 27.2; 28.4; 77.1; 85.3; De coniuratione Catilinae 18.4; 51.32; 54.5.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Prehistory and Early Chronology

19

of all, the verb depicting Lucilla’s behaviour is very telling. Whatever Optatus meant exactly by libare (to ‘kiss’ or ‘touch’), the word was strongly associated with pagan cult, and Christian authors used it in reference to heathen or, rarely, biblical sacrifices—it was never used to describe contemporary manifestations of piety.³⁶ Secondly, the very object of veneration is shocking: it is a bone (!), of a presumed martyr (!!), taken out of the grave (!!!). Thirdly, Lucilla would kiss this bone just before approaching the Eucharist, which suggests that she preferred it to the ‘saving cup’. All of this would have filled readers with disgust for that rebellious, resentful, and extremely superstitious ‘foundress’ of Donatism. If the text was to meet its goal, the custom presented in it had to present her as an off-putting person for all potential readers of his treatise. Therefore, the story of Lucilla cannot be considered a truthful description of an actual practice, but a rhetorical picture intended to make the reader boil with pious indignation. Of course, one may ask whether Lucilla, who was undoubtedly a real person, could not have been in fact addicted to practices fitting quite well with Optatus’ picture.³⁷ This, however, is highly improbable for two reasons. First, as has been already pointed out, the earliest authors mentioning the cult of relics wrote in the time of Optatus, not of Lucilla. It is thus difficult to imagine that the latter ostentatiously venerated a part of a dead body at the time when the tombs of the martyrs were inviolable and the very idea of reverence towards bodily remains did not yet exist. Secondly, the episode of Lucilla is not the only passage in which Optatus describes the partisans of Donatus as people who break the most fundamental rules and violate sacred customs: not only did they massacre Catholics, rape women, and kill children, but they also tore out foetuses from the wombs of their mothers. The Donatist bishop Felix fornicates with a virgin to whom he himself had given the veil. Other Donatists cast the Eucharist to the dogs.³⁸ If some elements of this picture may be true, the whole presentation is a rhetorical device which cannot be taken at face value. The image of an influential widow kissing a bone of an alleged martyr before receiving Communion belongs to the same category. Optatus is not the only author to mention Lucilla and her role in the rise of the Donatist schism. Her name appears for the first time in the record of the inquiry conducted by the consularis Zenophilus in 320, whose goal was to find out which bishops of the two feuding camps in the African Church were guilty of traditio, or handing over sacred books during the persecution. In this text, Lucilla is accused of bribing the bishops who deposed Caecilian and elected ³⁶ The only exception in the cult of relics is Victricius, De laude sanctorum 5, but he uses the verb in a figurative sense. ³⁷ So e.g. De Veer 1968. ³⁸ Foetuses torn out: Optatus, Contra Parmenianum 2.18.3; Felix: 2.19.4; Eucharist cast to the dogs: 2.19.1 and 2.21.6; the phial with the oil for Chrismation thrown by Donatists through the window: 2.19.2.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

20

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

Maiorinus in his place, but the episode with the bone is not mentioned.³⁹ Augustine also makes Lucilla guilty of bribing the bishops gathered in Carthage, and even of organizing their synod. In Contra Cresconium he calls her a most rich, very powerful, and extremely seditious woman; he asserts that she supported Donatus with her money, and says that her hatred of Caecilian began when the archdeacon rebuked her ‘for ecclesiastical discipline’.⁴⁰ It is interesting to note that Augustine does not specify what exactly led Caecilian to reprimand the rich lady. He emphasizes in stronger terms than Optatus the serious defect of Lucilla’s character (factiosissima!), but clearly thinks that the most discrediting aspect of the whole affair is the fact that this most wealthy woman bribed the bishops. Augustine was familiar with Optatus’ work, so he knew about Lucilla’s veneration of the relic. And yet he did not mention it. I suppose that the reason for this could have been the change of customs which had occurred between the 360s and the 410s, when Augustine wrote Contra Cresconium. As we will see in Chapter 7, during these fifty years, physical contact with relics became more common. This is not to say that kissing or touching a martyr’s bone was an entirely normal practice at the beginning of the fifth century, but a description of such an act would not have filled the reader with the kind of disgust Optatus hoped to evoke. The custom of kissing relics is attested in the West already at the turn of the fourth and the fifth centuries.⁴¹ At that time it still could give rise to controversy, but it would no longer seem to be totally outrageous and as a result it was not so obviously useful as a way to attack the Donatists as it had been fifty years earlier. In all, the episode of Lucilla is of little use for studying customs related to the corporeal remains of the saints at the turn of the third and fourth centuries, but it shows quite well how, more than half a century later, Christians imagined a caricature of the cult of relics, and therefore it allows us to find out what the acceptable practices looked like in this period. It may also suggest that, another half-century later, the picture painted by Optatus had lost its grotesque features because by that time other people started to venerate relics in a similar fashion. In all, there is no evidence of the veneration of relics of saints which can be safely dated to the second or third centuries. Before the Diocletianic ³⁹ Gesta Apud Zenophilum, pp. 195–6. The passage is referred to also by Augustine, Contra Cresconium 3.29.33. ⁴⁰ Bribery: Augustine, Epistula 43.6 and 9; Enarrationes in Psalmum 36.2.19; Contra Cresconium 3.28.32 (praepotens et pecuniosissima femina); Contra Epistulam Parmeniani 1.3.5 (pecuniosissima et factiosissima femina); supporting Donatus and his party: Epistula 133.4; Sermo 46.39; reprimand: Epistula 43.6. ⁴¹ Victricius, De laude sanctorum 6 (written c.396). In the East it was probably known already in the 370s: Gregory of Nyssa, De sancto Theodoro, p. 62. See also Jerome, Adversus Vigilantium 4 and Epistula 108.9; Theodoret, Historia religiosa 21.20; Egeria, Itinerarium 37.1–2; Prudentius, Peristephanon 2.517–20; 5.337–40; 9.99–100; 11.193–4; Augustine, Sermo 277A.1; more on this subject: Penn 2005, 78–9 and nn. 54–5.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Prehistory and Early Chronology

21

persecution the dead remained in their graves and the graves do not seem to have been considered places in which any power dwelt. At the same time, however, some of those graves, and possibly also other artefacts connected with their death,⁴² probably came to be important for Christian communities, important enough to attract the attention of the Roman administration— otherwise, it would be difficult to explain why as early as in 257 the decree of Valerian forbade access to koimētēria. Also, in the second half of the third century, after the persecutions of Decius and Valerian, we can see the first signs of the emerging belief in the intercession of saints. The graffiti from the Catacombs of St Sebastian show that people expected their prayers to be heard by the Apostles. This belief, however, was probably not yet connected with their physical remains.

T H E FO U R T H CE N T U R Y : THE VE RY BE G I NNI NGS At the beginning of the fourth century still nothing suggests that the tombs of the martyrs and Apostles were sought after, visited by people from outside the local community, or considered to hold a special power. Eusebius of Caesarea, who wrote the final version of his Church History just before 325, mentions only a few burial places of the New Testament saints, namely James, the Lord’s brother, Peter, Paul, Philip, and John the Evangelist, and does not attribute to them any special significance.⁴³ The situation begins to change in the decades that followed, as can be seen in the descriptions of early pilgrimages which started when Helena, Constantine’s mother, visited Palestine in 327.⁴⁴ But the change in question did not take place immediately. The earliest list of places visited by a pilgrim to the Holy Land comes from the Itinerary of the anonymous Pilgrim of Bordeaux and is dated to AD 333. This list is already quite extensive. The Pilgrim visited a number of places connected with both major and very secondary biblical personages, and saw, among other things, the ‘cornerstone rejected by the builders’, the plane trees planted in Sychar by the patriarch Jacob, the sycamore tree which Zacchaeus climbed to see Jesus, and two healing springs.⁴⁵ In all, the Itinerary shows an already flourishing interest in places and material objects which either ⁴² These objects are always covered with martyrs’ blood; see Passio Perpetuae 21.5 (a ring stained with blood of the martyr is offered to a Christian soldier assisting in the execution); Pontius, Vita Cypriani 16.6 (Cyprian’s cloths covered with bloody sweat are collected by the faithful). ⁴³ Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 2.23.18 (James, brother of the Lord, in Jerusalem), 2.25.5–8 (Peter and Paul in Rome), 3.31.3 (Philip in Hierapolis and John in Ephesus). ⁴⁴ Drijvers 1992, 55–72. ⁴⁵ Itinerarium Burdigalense 588 (plane trees), 590 (cornerstone), 596 (sycamore).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

22

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

commemorated the sacred history or, in some cases, were vehicles for divine power.⁴⁶ But it does not say anything about relics of saints. True, the Pilgrim of Bordeaux visited several tombs of Old Testament figures—Joseph, Isaiah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel—but they are referred to in the same way as the tombs of two personages from classical history, Euripides and Hannibal. Importantly, no tomb of a martyr or a New Testament saint is mentioned, if we put aside the very specific cases of the empty tombs of Christ and Lazarus.⁴⁷ Fifty years later, however, in 384, another Western pilgrim to the Holy Land, Egeria, paid visits to several tombs and sanctuaries of saints in Palestine and other regions. She lists the martyr-shrine (martyrium) of St Thecla in Seleucia in Isauria, St Euphemia’s in Chalcedon (famosissimum martyrium), St John’s in Ephesus, St Thomas’ in Edessa, monk and martyr St Helpidius in Haran, various martyria in Heroonpolis, and the church of the Holy Apostles and a number of other martyria in Constantinople.⁴⁸ Thus, interest in the tombs of the martyrs appeared between 333 and 384. When exactly did it occur? The new attitude toward the bodies of the saints is attested for the first time shortly after the middle of the fourth century. In the 350s, we can see the first translations, or transfers of relics, to new resting places. First, between 351 and 354, Caesar Gallus brought the coffin of St Babylas, bishop and martyr at Antioch, from a cemetery to a new-built martyrium in the suburban resort of Daphne. John Chrysostom and the church historian Sozomen, writing respectively a generation and two generations later, explain that Gallus wished to chase away superstition and licentiousness from Daphne, but it is difficult to say whether this was his actual intention.⁴⁹ A few years later, the remains of Timothy, a disciple of Paul the Apostle, and later those of Luke the Evangelist and Andrew the Apostle arrived in Constantinople. These transfers are attested by several sources, the earliest of which is Jerome’s Chronicle, published in the early 390s. It says that in 356 ‘the relics of the Apostle Timothy were transferred to Constantinople’, and, in the following year, ‘the bones of Andrew the Apostle and Luke the Evangelist were welcomed by the

⁴⁶ Healing springs: Itinerarium Burdigalense 585, 586, and 596. For the power of earth from the Holy Land, see also Augustine, De civitate Dei 22.8.192–214. Stones from the Holy Land can be found in early collections of relics (Smith 2015). ⁴⁷ Itinerarium Burdigalense 587 (Joseph), 595 (Isaiah), 598 (Rachel), 599 (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca), 604 (Euripides), 572 (Hannibal, confused with the still living nephew of Constantine, Hannibalianus), 596 (Lazarus). The absence of the tombs of martyrs from the Itinerarium Burdigalense is in my opinion a serious argument against the thesis of Markus 1994 claiming that it is their veneration which gave a start to the very idea of holy places. ⁴⁸ Egeria, Itinerarium 7.7 (Heroonpolis), 20.5 (Helpidius), 22.2–23.5 (Thecla), 23.7 (Euphemia), 23.9 (Constantinople), 23.10 (John). ⁴⁹ John Chrysostom, In Babylam 67–9; Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 5.19.12.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Prehistory and Early Chronology

23

inhabitants of Constantinople with much enthusiasm’.⁵⁰ This last date has been put in doubt by Richard Burgess, who suggested that the transfer of Andrew and Luke must have taken place twenty years earlier, as dated by chronicles based on a now lost set of Latin consular fasti.⁵¹ Yet even if this was so, this particular event did not have any immediate impact on the movement of relics before the 350s. In the same decade, in 356, in Egypt, St Antony, the man who gave rise to the monastic movement in Egypt, died.⁵² In his Vita, written shortly after, most probably in the 360s, Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, presents a curious custom of privatizing the bodies of martyrs: The Egyptians are wont to honour with funeral rites, and to wrap in linen cloths at death the bodies of zealous men, and especially of the holy martyrs; and not to bury them underground, but to place them on couches, and to keep them in their houses (παρ’ ἑαυτοῖς), thinking in this to honour the departed.⁵³

Athanasius puts in Antony’s mouth a strong disapproval of this custom and claims that the latter ordered that his body should be buried in secret for fear that it could become an object of veneration. This interesting passage, however, presents some difficulties in interpretation. The fact that Athanasius refers to those who honour the dead in this particular way as ‘Egyptians’ suggests that he is thinking of an old indigenous custom.⁵⁴ But the fact that he singles out the burials of the martyrs indicates that the practice was already Christianized. It is possible that some Egyptians actually kept the sarcophagi of their dead in their houses.⁵⁵ But it is highly unlikely that in this particular instance Athanasius had in mind the custom of keeping the relics of the martyrs in houses directly after their death, for the last persecutions ended long before the Life of Antony was written. Rather, he refers to the practice of transferring martyrs’ bodies from cemeteries. Such transfers are also attested and vigorously condemned in his festal letters 40 and 41, written in the early 370s. By that time the bodies of martyrs were evidently looked for. The reason why they were looked for can be first seen in two pieces of evidence contemporary with the Life of Antony. At the very end of the 350s, Hilary of Poitiers, who was exiled from Gaul in 356 and stayed in Constantinople and Asia Minor, refers, in two different treatises, to the tortures which are inflicted upon demons by a power dwelling in the tombs of the Apostles and martyrs. These testimonies will be discussed in detail in Chapter 2, but it is

⁵⁰ Jerome, Chronicon XXXV 19 (AD 356/357: Timothy) and XXXV 20 (357/8: Andrew and Luke). ⁵¹ Burgess 2003. ⁵² Jerome, Chronicon XXXV 19 (AD 356/7). ⁵³ Athanasius, Vita Antonii 90.2; trans. Robertson; see also 91.6; for the dating of this text, see Brennan 1976. ⁵⁴ This is the sense of Egyptian practices in the Vita Antonii 79. ⁵⁵ See p. 126.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

24

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

worth emphasizing at this point that this is the very first safely dated evidence for the belief in the power of relics. From this moment on the evidence becomes abundant. According to Ammianus Marcellinus, in 359, Sabinianus, the Christian commander of the Roman army in the East, instead of making preparations for the war against Persia, was wasting time ‘amid the tombs of Edessa as if he had nothing to fear when he had made his peace with the dead’.⁵⁶ Ammianus is not specific what kind of tombs he has in mind, but suggests that Sabinianus believed in the help of those who were buried in them. Also in the 350s, or at the very beginning of the 360s, young Jerome of Stridon and his friends from school used to visit on Sundays the tombs of the Apostles and martyrs in Rome.⁵⁷ The tombs of the Apostles are obviously those of Peter and Paul. It is not clear when exactly the basilica of St Peter was completed, but it certainly happened after 354; the first basilica of St Paul was constructed at about the same time.⁵⁸ Also in 354 Constantine’s daughter was buried in a mausoleum close to the tomb of St Agnes, although this was probably an impulse rather than a result of the development of this saint’s cult.⁵⁹ In all, from the 350s we can see a growing interest in the tombs of the Apostles and martyrs, a belief in the power of their bones, the custom of visiting them, and the practice of transferring them from cemeteries to new resting places. The strength of this emerging phenomenon is even better attested during the short reign of the Emperor Julian, called the Apostate, when it evidently provoked the extreme hostility of the ‘pagan’ population. In 362 Bishop George of Alexandria and one of his companions were killed by a street mob in the city. According to Ammianus, this is what happened then: the inhuman mob loaded the mutilated bodies of the slain men upon camels and carried them to the shore; there they burned them on a fire and threw the ashes into the sea, fearing, as they shouted, that their remains (reliquiae) might be collected and a shrine (aedes) built for them, as for others who, when urged to abandon their religion, endured terrible tortures, even going so far as to meet a glorious death with unsullied faith; whence they are now called martyrs.⁶⁰

Admittedly, for Ammianus the word reliquiae did not have a technical sense: it meant simply ‘remains’. Still, if he did not confuse the image of Christian practices in the 360s with that of the 390s (i.e. of the time when he was writing his book), this passage, like the episode of Sabinianus quoted above, suggests that already at the beginning of the second half of the fourth century those

⁵⁶ Ammianus, Res gestae 18.7.7. For Sabinianus, see Sabinianus (3) in PLRE 1, 789. ⁵⁷ Jerome, In Ezechielem 12.40.243–9. ⁵⁸ Gem 2013; Trout 2003 and Sághy 2000. ⁵⁹ Thacker 2014, 138. ⁶⁰ Ammianus, Res gestae 22.11.10; trans. Rolfe.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Prehistory and Early Chronology

25

who adhered to the old ‘pagan’ cults strongly associated Christianity with the cult of the martyrs and found this phenomenon irritating. I suppose that Ammianus was right in dating this sentiment to the 360s, for there is more evidence of pagan hostility toward the tombs of the saints in this period. In 362, Julian, anxious about the silence of the oracle of Apollo at Daphne, ordered the removal the body of St Babylas from there lest it continue to sully the sacred area.⁶¹ This was obviously a special case, as Babylas’ remains were installed in Daphne only a few years earlier, but it was not unique. Julian ordered the same to be done with the tombs of the martyrs in Didyma in Asia Minor.⁶² Local attacks on Christian tombs also took place in Palestine and Syria. In Sebaste, the tomb of John the Baptist was destroyed, his bones burnt and dispersed over the fields.⁶³ Julian himself claims that the inhabitants of Emesa set fire to the tombs of the ‘Galileans’, that is, Christians, and similar events also took place around Antioch.⁶⁴ Certainly, one should not overestimate the significance of those events. The attacks on the tombs could have resulted partly from the fact that, unlike churches, they were easily accessible and unprotected. Even in modern Europe tombs have fallen victim to aggression more frequently than buildings or monuments which were more important, but more guarded. Moreover, the burning of the martyrs’ corpses is attested already in the second century, when it was simply an additional punishment and not a reaction to the cult of relics.⁶⁵ Also, as we have already seen, during the persecutions of Valerian in the 250s Christians were forbidden not only to assemble, but also to approach tombs, presumably those of the martyrs.⁶⁶ But it seems that in 362 those tombs were more important than in the third century, for that was the first time that they were directly attacked and destroyed, not only on the initiative of Julian. Even though these three pieces of evidence coincide in time—the transfer of relics by Gallus and Constantius, the remarks of Hilary of Poitiers about the power of the tombs of the saints, and the acts of hostility against Christian martyria—one still has to ask the question whether they are not symptoms of an older phenomenon which simply did not have an occasion to appear in the evidence earlier, for the literary evidence of Christian practices becomes in general more abundant in the second half of the fourth century. This, however, does not seem to be the case. It is symptomatic that the writings of Eusebius and those early martyrial stories which can be safely dated to the period preceding the fourth century show little interest in the physical remains of the saints. There is no archaeological, papyrological, or epigraphical evidence ⁶¹ ⁶² ⁶³ ⁶⁴ ⁶⁵ ⁶⁶

John Chrysostom, In Babylam 80–91 and Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 5.19.16–19. Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 5.20.7. Rufinus, Historia ecclesiastica 11.28 and Philostorgius, Historia ecclesiastica 7.4a. Julian, Misopogon 357C and 361A–B; also Epistula 41.438C; see Torres 2009. Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 4.15.40–3 (Polycarp) and 5.1.62 (the martyrs of Lyons). Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 7.11.10 and 7.13.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

26

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

which would attest to such interest before the later fourth century.⁶⁷ We are most probably dealing then with a truly new phenomenon. All this suggests that the transfers of the bodies of Babylas, Andrew, Luke, and Timothy did not result from a pre-existing veneration of relics. It is more probable that those transfers and the construction of their monumental martyria gave a momentum to the emerging cult of relics rather than expressed it. But the rise of the new phenomenon certainly did not owe its success uniquely to the solemn imperial ‘translations’. In Chapter 2 I will argue that the surge of popular enthusiasm for the cult of relics resulted above all from a growing belief in the miraculous power of relics which is attested for the first time in the two treatises of Hilary of Poitiers referred to above. ⁶⁷ Papaconstantinou 2001, 370.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

2 The First Miracles In Late Antiquity many relics, though by no means all, were famous for the miracles they performed. These miracles were not just proofs of the authenticity of the bodily remains of saints. They were paving the way for the success of the cult of relics and constituted the distinctive feature which set this cult apart from the earlier forms of veneration of the martyrs’ graves. The thaumaturgical (miracle-working) power of relics manifested itself in a number of ways: they were believed capable of expelling demons, curing diseases, revealing hidden things, and defending cities from enemies. They also brought help in the other world to the dead buried ad sanctos. All these aspects of the belief in the power of relics will be addressed in the chapters that follow. I will focus first on how people came to expect relics to exorcize evil spirits and heal the sick. Historians usually find it awkward to talk about ‘real’ miracles. Admittedly, the only miracles that are wholly accessible to our inquiry are literary miracles, episodes which served authors to express their vision of the world, history, man, and God,¹ and we certainly should not yield too easily to the temptation to explain what really happened during exorcisms and healings described in hagiography. Yet this question cannot be entirely evaded in any study on the origins of the cult of relics, because the miracles featuring in late antique sources cannot be dismissed as mere literary phenomena. Of course, the explosion of the miraculous in the second half of the fourth and in the fifth century results, up to a point, from the emergence of the new literary genre, namely the lives of saints. Still, the evidence of the belief in miracles found in non-hagiographical sources is ample enough to prove that people actually came to believe in the healings obtained through the agency of saints, dead or alive. Nor can the surge in miracles, noticeable in our sources from the second half of the fourth century, be explained as merely one aspect of the wider phenomenon, namely an evolution of the religious vision of the world which took place in the post-Constantinian period. It is not only a change in the

¹ See e.g. Flusin 1983.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

28

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

vision of reality that we see in that period; it is reality itself that changed: I think that the abundance of miracles in late antique Christian literature results, at least in part, from the fact that something actually began to happen at the tombs of the saints. This change is well illustrated by the case of Augustine. In the 380s, he wrote that the era of miracles had ended and that at present one could admire only the marvels of nature.² But thirty years later, in Book 22 of The City of God, as well as in a number of sermons from the same period, he argues that healings happen hic et nunc, in the shrines of martyrs, and suggests that the testimonies of the healed should be collected so that they can be made widely known.³ The reason for the evolution of Augustine’s opinion was not his readings, reflections, or pastoral considerations; it was rather the observation of what was happening in Africa in the early fifth century, especially in Hippo and Uzalis, after the arrival of the relics of Gervasius and Protasius and those of St Stephen.⁴

CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT MIRACLES (OR ALMOST) It may seem understandable that the miracles enumerated by Augustine or the anonymous contemporary author of the Book of the Miracles of St Stephen somehow reflect what really happened in the cities of Hippo and Uzalis. Where hundreds of people, many of whom are sick, are expecting a miracle to happen, a miracle probably will happen sooner or later. Of course, the nature of this phenomenon is not easy to grasp and, as I have already pointed out, historians feel somewhat uneasy about approaching it. Miraculous healings used to be explained in one of two ways: either quite simply as the healing of a psychosomatic disease or, when considered in a more sophisticated manner, as a ritual of reintegration of people excluded from the community due to their illness (or rather because of their sins which were believed to have led to that illness).⁵ In both cases, however, the healing implies the belief that there is a power residing in the sanctuary, capable of bringing help to the sick. Therefore, the belief in the power of relics must precede the healing. Interestingly, in the middle of the fourth century such a belief was not evident. There is no doubt that the belief in miracles was strong and important in primitive Christianity. Suffice it to mention the New Testament narratives ² Augustine, De vera religione 25/47 (written in 387–91); De utilitate credendi 34–5 (391–2); Sermo 126.3–4. See Van Uytfanghe 1981, esp. 211. ³ For the written testimonies (libelli), see Augustine, Sermones 94; 286.5–7; 319.6; De civitate Dei 22.8–10. ⁴ See above and the Liber de miraculis s. Stephani 1.1. ⁵ For the former approach, see Stancliffe 1983, 250–4; for the latter, Van Dam 1993, 84–6, and his discussion of specific miracles described by Gregory of Tours on the pages that follow.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

The First Miracles

29

describing the healings performed by Christ and the Apostles, and, even more importantly, the Pauline letters and various second-century writings suggesting that miracle-workers were normally expected to be found in Christian communities.⁶ Yet it seems that this belief had dramatically weakened over the course of the third century.⁷ The reasons for this are not entirely clear, although it is possible that the essential role was played by the process of the ‘rationalization’ and professionalization of the Christian leadership. In the Church, bishops and exegetes displaced miracle-workers and prophets. This process was probably reinforced by the anti-Montanist reaction, which made all charismatic activity look suspicious, and, even more importantly, by the accusation of sorcery made against Christians from the second half of the second century on.⁸ Be that as it may, the Christian authors of the third and early fourth centuries seem to regard miracles as belonging rather to the distant past of biblical Israel and the history of the early Church. They do not doubt the signs and the wonders performed by Moses, Christ, the Apostles, and their immediate followers. Indeed, the apocryphal acts of the Apostles abound in wonders far more spectacular than those that can be found in the New Testament. But several authors of this period maintain that the era of spectacular miracles has ended, and that no extraordinary manifestations of God’s power can be expected any longer. Such things will no longer happen, because they are not necessary. This conviction was to change once again over the course of the fourth century, but still in the 380s Augustine wrote that, as far as miracles were concerned, his contemporaries had to content themselves with the wonderful rising and setting of the sun.⁹ Ambrose, according to whom the miracles of Gervasius and Protasius re-enacted those of ancient times, seems to think that before the discovery of the Milanese relics there was a time when such marvels did not happen.¹⁰ That is what other writers too, such as Victorinus of Poetovio or Eusebius of Caesarea, had asserted before. Certainly, it would be rash to attach too much weight to the opinions of those intellectuals. The simple people, not necessarily all that simple, could still have believed in God’s direct interventions in the course of human lives. Christians, after all, did not live in a bubble and we know that the belief that miracles were happening ‘here and now’ is well attested in the Roman world in the second and third centuries. Suffice it to mention Lucian of Samosata’s mockery of people’s credulousness, the testimonies of healings happening in Asklepieia, or ⁶ Kee 1983. ⁷ Van Uytfanghe 1981, 210. See also the evidence collected by Daunton-Fear 2009, 68–131. The material presented in his book supports the thesis of the direct continuation of exorcistic practices and beliefs from apostolic times to Late Antiquity, but at the same time shows that the belief in bodily healings at least radically diminished in the third and early fourth centuries. ⁸ Carleton Paget 2011, 138–42. ⁹ Augustine, De utilitate credendi 34. ¹⁰ Ambrose, Epistula 77.9.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

30

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

the miraculous stories told in the earliest Neoplatonic biographies.¹¹ We should also remember that results very similar to those which people associated with the agency of saints were associated with the power of magic—and it does not seem that the belief in magic weakened in any way in the third or early fourth century. Moreover, given that health is one of the most basic human needs and that it can deteriorate so rapidly, one can suppose that even people who did not expect to see anything like the parting of the Rea Sea in their lifetimes did not altogether give up hope for a God-sent restoration to health. The tradition of miraculous healing certainly did not disappear altogether from the Church directly after apostolic times; it was still quite vigorous in the second century. Later on, however, testimonies to the belief in healing miracles become very scattered. To be exact, the available sources— narrative, theological, and polemical writings—still give evidence of the belief that the possessed could be exorcized; they even describe, although rarely, specific exorcisms and give the names of those who were healed. But healings of bodily diseases, if mentioned at all, are presented in very vague terms and it is difficult to say whether those who refer to them are thinking about contemporary or biblical miracles. No doubt, it is possible that, contrary to what Eusebius and other learned authors say or fail to mention, there were, in the very same period, Christians who believed that miracles still happened in their days. But even if this was the case, they certainly did not believe in the thaumaturgical power of the bodies or graves of the saints until as late as the second half of the fourth century.¹² It is symptomatic that Eusebius of Caesarea does not attribute any special power to the remains of the martyrs that he admired, and that in AD 333 the only healing places found in Palestine by the anonymous pilgrim from Bordeaux were miraculous springs.¹³ When did this attitude change? What gave rise to the new belief, which, once it became firmly established, fuelled a massive increase in the phenomenon? Certainly, we are facing here a wider problem, because in Late Antiquity miracles were believed to occur not only at the tombs of the martyrs, but also in the cells of monks and in other special places, and relics were not the only objects whose power could be transmitted in a physical way. The aim of this chapter, however, is not to explain the general phenomenon of the emergence of Christian thaumaturgy in Late Antiquity, but to answer the more specific questions of why, when, and how relics began to perform miracles, or rather came to be expected to do so.

¹¹ Lucian, Philopseudes 16; Philostratus, Vita Apollonii 3.39, 4.45, 6.43; healing in Asklepieia: Edelstein 1945, testimonia 382–442. ¹² For the puzzling, but isolated testimony of the Acts of Thomas 170, see pp. 12–13. ¹³ Itinerarium Burdigalense 585, 589, 596; see also 592. Incidentally, it has to be noted that the belief in the power of these springs most probably was not of Christian origin.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

The First Miracles

31

THE VERY BEGIN NING: TIME AND PLACE Let us begin with the question of chronology. As has been demonstrated in Chapter 1, the interest in and transfers of relics did not begin before the translations of the Apostles Andrew, Luke, and Timothy to Constantinople, and the martyr Babylas to (and then from) Daphne.¹⁴ Nothing suggests that any of these translations was organized with the express purpose of harnessing the power which might have resided in the saints’ bodies. If the expectation of miracles had already existed at that time, it would have become manifest during the very transfer of the relics: in the evidence from the end of the fourth century onward we can observe that relics do perform miracles during their translations,¹⁵ and this should not be seen as a mere literary convention. Yet we find nothing like that in the contemporary evidence of the transfers mentioned above. It is true that, according to the church historian Philostorgius, Babylas’ coffin had miraculously outrun the procession in 362, but Philostorgius wrote about it only in the 420s.¹⁶ John Chrysostom, who delivered his sermon on Babylas about 378, was convinced that the power (energeia) of the saint had not left his tomb after the removal of the body, but did not mention any extraordinary events accompanying the transfer. Rufinus, referring to this translation in his Ecclesiastical History at the very beginning of the fifth century, did not do so either. As for the Apostles’ relics carried to Constantinople, no contemporary sources mention anything miraculous about this episode. To sum up, just before or during the first transfers of saints’ bodies we do not see any expectation of miracles produced by relics.¹⁷ However, shortly after the remains of the Apostles had been carried to Constantinople, in the late 350s, Hilary of Poitiers wrote On the Trinity and Against Constantius, two treatises providing the earliest testimony to the belief in the power of relics, if we disregard the highly suspect passage at the end of the Acts of Thomas discussed in the first chapter. Hilary was expelled from his episcopal see by the Emperor Constantius in 356. The details of his itinerary are difficult to determine, but we know that he stayed in Phrygia, visited Constantinople, and took part in the synod of Seleucia in Isauria before coming back to Gaul in 360.¹⁸ The two works named above were written ¹⁴ See p. 22. ¹⁵ Gervasius and Protasius: Ambrose, Epistula 77.2; Hymnus 11.17–20; Augustine, Confessiones 9.7; Paulinus of Milan, Vita Ambrosii 14.2; Nazarius: Vita Ambrosii 33.3–4; Stephen: Augustine, De civitate Dei 22.8.265–78; Liber de miraculis s. Stephani 1.1–3. ¹⁶ Philostorgius, Historia ecclesiastica 7.8a (Passio Artemii 55). ¹⁷ People certainly believed that it was Babylas’ presence that had silenced Apollo’s oracle in Daphne, but this idea was invented not by Christians advertising the power of Babylas’ body, but by pagans maintaining that the neighbourhood of the sanctuary was polluted by the cadaver; see p. 186. ¹⁸ For the dating of Hilary’s works and itinerary, see Simonetti 1965 and Brennecke 1984, 265–71 and 335–60.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

32

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

towards the end of his exile. The first passage of interest for the cult of relics runs as follows: Yet it cannot be denied that Christ was Christ. It cannot be that He was unknown to mankind. The books of the prophets have set their seal upon Him: the fullness of the times which waxes daily witnesses of Him: by the working of wonders the tombs of Apostles and martyrs proclaim Him (hunc apostolorum et martyrum per uirtutum operationes loquuntur sepulchra), the power of His name reveals Him, the unclean spirits confess Him, and the demons howling in their torment call aloud His name. In all we see the dispensation of His power.¹⁹

The second passage comes from the invective against the Emperor Constantius. According to Jerome this pamphlet was published only after the death of the Arian emperor, in 361 (Hilary was brave, but not reckless), but it must have been written before. The author compares Constantius to the emperors who persecuted Christians, and in doing so (quite contrary to their intentions) rendered a service to the Church—by producing martyrs. He says: We owe even more to your cruelty, Nero, Decius, Maximianus. The blood of the holy martyrs was shed everywhere, and every day their reverend bones bear testimony (Sanctus ubique beatorum martyrum sanguis exceptus est et ueneranda ossa cottidie testimonio sunt), for in their presence the demons groan, the diseases are chased away and marvellous things are admired: bodies are hauled up without ropes, women are suspended by their feet, but their clothes do not fall over their faces, spirits burn without flames, the tormented confess their crimes without interrogation, and all of this provides no less benefit to the investigator than to the increase of the faith.²⁰

This captivating image of demoniacs suspended in the air, which will become remarkably popular in later Christian literature, is certainly far from being a photographic record of reality.²¹ However, it brings to mind modern descriptions of fits of hysteria; and since there is no obvious literary source for this scene, we may suppose that Hilary described, certainly in a highly rhetorical manner, what he had actually seen.²² The first questions are these: where did he see it and what sort of tombs is he talking about? The martyrs mentioned in the two passages quoted above are not easy to identify, as the tombs of martyrs in the East were plentiful. A tentative identification is nonetheless possible considering that Hilary seems to be referring to a large-sized martyrium rather than an ordinary burial place: given our knowledge that he visited Seleucia, we may assume that he had in mind the nearby sanctuary of St Thecla, located close to that city. ¹⁹ Hilary, De Trinitate 11.3. ²⁰ Hilary, Contra Constantium 8. ²¹ On its symbolic sense, see Wiśniewski 2002. ²² For a modern literary description of a possibly similar state, see Haan and Koehler 2014.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

The First Miracles

33

Luckily, only a few graves of the Apostles were known at that time. His itinerary suggests that he may have visited the tomb of John the Evangelist in Ephesus, that of Philip in Phrygian Hierapolis, and, finally, the newly built church of the Apostles in Constantinople. There is no other possibility, except for the resting places of Peter and Paul in Rome.²³ Owing to recent excavations we know that the tomb of Philip, mentioned by Eusebius, gave rise to a monumental complex, the first elements of which appeared already in the fourth century.²⁴ The shrine of St John in Ephesus, which was probably even more famous, was built during the reign of Constantine, as we may learn from a recently reconstructed inscription.²⁵ It attracted visitors (Egeria visited it in 384), and came to be known as a place of miracles by the end of the fourth century. In 396, Victricius of Rouen expressed his belief in the power of St John’s relics, which had just been brought to his city, but were known to have healed the sick in Ephesus.²⁶ The church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople, in which the bodies of Luke, Andrew, and Timothy had been deposited no earlier than a year or two before Hilary visited the city, was also greatly esteemed, perhaps even more so than St John’s shrine. I am not sure if the plural in Hilary’s remark is to be taken literally: ‘by the working of wonders the tombs of Apostles and martyrs proclaim Him’ (hunc apostolorum et martyrum per uirtutum operationes loquuntur sepulchra), but it suggests either at least two distinct martyria of the Apostles or the Apostoleion in Constantinople. Be that as it may, the relics kept in Constantinople were very well known in the late fourth century, especially among Westerners: Jerome mentioned their transfers in his Chronicle and their miracles in Adversus Vigilantium, Egeria visited them, Ambrose brought their alleged fragments to Milan and had them distributed among some Western bishops, John Chrysostom spoke about the pain inflicted by them on demoniacs, while Paulinus of Nola believed that they were as powerful as those of Peter and Paul.²⁷ At some point, people began to believe that those places possessed a miraculous power. When did it happen? Hilary wrote his treatises around 360, but we should note that the passages quoted above were not written in order to give information about miracles happening at the tombs of the saints. On the contrary, it seems that Hilary, who used them to prove the divinity of Christ in De Trinitate and demonstrate the futility of Arian persecutions in Contra Constantium, assumed that his readers must have known about them already. If this was the case, the phenomenon must have already been in place ²³ For all these graves, see Maraval 1985, 380–1 (Ephesus), 385 (Hierapolis), and Mango 1990. ²⁴ Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 3.31.3; see D’Andria 2017, 7–14. ²⁵ Feissel 2014. ²⁶ Egeria, Itinerarium 23.10; Gregory of Nazianzus, Contra Iulianum I 69; Victricius, De laude sanctorum 11 and possibly Jerome, Epistula 109.1. ²⁷ Egeria, Itinerarium 23.9; Jerome, Chronicon XXXV 19 and 20 (AD 356/7 and 358/8) and Adversus Vigilantium 5; John Chrysostom, In II Epistulam ad Corinthios 26.5. For Ambrose’s transfers and distribution, see p. 162

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

34

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

for some time, but certainly not a long time. Since there is no trace of such belief in the accounts of the translations organized by Constantius, it appeared probably after rather than before them, and so not long before Hilary’s stay in Constantinople. Whichever supposition is correct, the following question remains: what gave the impulse for this belief to emerge? Before addressing this question, we should return to pre-Constantinian Christianity, a Christianity (almost) without miracles. It has to be said that the third century knew a literary genre from which contemporary miracles were not entirely absent. The genre I am referring to is passiones, or martyr stories, which depict Christian heroes who having given testimony during interrogation do not suffer when they are flung into the arena: fire will not touch their bodies, swords will fail to cut their necks, and wild beasts will stay aloof from them.²⁸ Eventually, the heroes die (otherwise they would not have been recognized as martyrs), but before their deaths the onlookers witness the miraculous power of God revealed in his servants. Even if these descriptions never suggest that it manifested itself also after the executions, it remains possible that martyr stories contributed to the emergence of the belief in the power residing in the relics of Christian martyrs. More importantly, the underlying conviction that martyrs were ‘chosen vessels’ of the Holy Spirit could have provided a sound theological justification for the belief in the power of their bodies.²⁹ Still, it seems that theological reflection, although undoubtedly essential for intellectual acknowledgement of the phenomenon and important for its further development, was an outcome, not a cause, of the experiences of contact with the miraculous power of relics.³⁰ Besides, the miracles observed at the death of a martyr described in third-century texts differ from the miracles happening at the tombs of the martyrs in the fourth century: in the early passiones, martyrs are only the objects of miracles; their role is always passive. In addition to that, even if we assume that people actually believed in the reality of the extraordinary events which were said to accompany the dying hours of some martyrs, they certainly did not expect that such things would happen in their own lives. Also, there is one other reason why the appearance of miracles in martyr stories fails to provide a full explanation of the belief in the power of martyrs’ bodies: it does not explain why this belief did not appear two centuries before Hilary wrote his works, in the time of such martyrs as Polycarp or Perpetua. ²⁸ Later on, the miraculous resistance to tortures will become a leading trait of the so-called passions épiques, but the motif is well established already in second- and third-century literature: Martyrium Polycarpi 15–16; Acta Pauli et Theclae 22 (fire); Passio Perpetuae 21.7–10 (sword); Acta Pauli et Theclae 28 and 34–7; Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 5.1.42 (wild beasts). ²⁹ See e.g. Constitutiones Apostolicae 5.1.2. ³⁰ In 422 Augustine, writing to Paulinus, wonders whose power makes demons suffer in the bodies of the possessed. The torments inflicted on evil spirits are for him an observable fact which he cannot yet explain theologically in a satisfactory manner. See p. 199.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

The First Miracles

35

DEMONIACS AT THE MARTYRIA For the above reasons, we should probably look elsewhere for the ultimate causes of the emergence of miracle-working relics. A good starting point is to analyse what exactly, according to Hilary, happened at the graves. In De Trinitate, he first refers to some miracles occurring there, but leaves them unspecified; when he begins enumerating them, he explicitly mentions only confessions, the howling and suffering of evil spirits who cry from the mouths of demoniacs. In Contra Constantium he says that martyrs’ bones ‘expel diseases’, but he describes merely various torments inflicted by unclean spirits. These are not even proper exorcisms, for no demons are expelled; they reveal their identity and evildoing, but persist in the bodies of the possessed. It seems that Hilary describes the following situation: people who are considered and who consider themselves demoniacs stay in a sanctuary. They can be seen screaming that they are demons, they cry out their names, and confess their sins.³¹ They are not actually healed by the relics, they are still possessed and do not stop yelling, but the witnesses interpret all of this as a sign of a power which tortures unclean spirits, because according to the then common conviction demoniacs did not feel the pain inflicted on demons which remain in their bodies.³² These scenes do not represent fully fledged miracles, but they do testify to the conviction that some sort of miraculous power resided in relics. I think that this conviction was derived in part from the observation of what was happening in some martyria in the years of Hilary’s exile. It was probably this conviction that subsequently gave rise to the belief in and expectation of miraculous cures; but in the beginning these were probably not so much healings of physical diseases as of demoniac possession. The miracles produced by relics which we can see in the sources up to the beginning of the fifth century are mostly various sorts of manifestations of their power over demons. In 370, Athanasius, in his Festal Letter 42, which is extant in a Coptic translation, condemns Melitians, a rival Christian group in Egypt, who reputedly steal the bodies of martyrs from cemeteries: If they object, saying that many possessed by unclean spirits have been cured in the martyria, that is only a pretext. Let them listen and I will answer them by saying that they are not healed by the martyrs coming upon the demons, but they are healed by the Saviour, the one Whom the martyrs confessed. And the demons

³¹ Sulpicius Severus, Dialogi 3.6.4; Jerome, Vita Hilarionis 13.7; Victricius, De laude sanctorum 11; Constantius, Vita Germani 7 and 13; Vita patrum Jurensium 42; Theodoret, Historia religiosa 9.9–10; 13.10–11; Vita Danielis Stylitae 59; Vita Theodori Syceotae 18, 35, 38, 84, 92; Cyril of Scythopolis, Vita Euthymii 24 (27.2) and 56 (77.1); Vita Abramii 8 (235.1); see Wiśniewski 2005, 129–30. ³² See e.g. Paulinus of Nola, Carmen 23.61–81.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

36

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

cry out because they are being tortured by Him, just as those in the Gospel cried saying: ‘I beg you, do not torture us!’ But they seek to see the demons that are destroying them.³³

It is far from certain that all those who sought after martyrs’ bodies were actually Melitians, but whoever they were, they did it because of the power of relics over evil spirits—the letter does not suggest that martyrs’ bodies were efficient in healing other maladies. In 384, the presbyters Marcellinus and Faustus, authors of the Libellus precum, a plea addressed to the Emperor Valentinian II, while describing the horrors of Arian persecution in Italy, say that: Rufininus, however, a man of marvellous simplicity, and still more admirable because of the constancy of his faith, forestalled exile by spilling his blood . . . All that is known to the people of Naples in Campania, where the relics of his blood (reliquiae cruoris eius) bind demons in the possessed bodies: certainly by the grace of the very faith for which he shed his blood.³⁴

The saint’s blood expels demons; as in Athanasius, there is not a word about healing physical illnesses. Similarly, Jerome of Stridon, writing in 404 about his friend Paula’s visit to the martyrium of John the Baptist in Sebaste in Palestine, which took place in 385, recalls only tormented demoniacs and does not mention any healings: for she saw demons screaming under different tortures before the tombs of the saints, and men howling like wolves, baying like dogs, roaring like lions, hissing like serpents and bellowing like bulls. They twisted their heads and bent them backwards until they touched the ground; women too were suspended head downward and their clothes did not slide down to cover their faces.³⁵

This description is certainly inspired by the passages from the treatises of Hilary quoted above, but it had to be in line with what, according to Jerome, used to happen at the tombs of the saints. Similar scenes can be found in other authors. At about the same time, John Chrysostom, with a view to convincing his audience of the power of the saints, depicts howling demoniacs in the Apostoleion in Constantinople; so does, without mentioning any particular place, Maximus of Turin.³⁶ According to Sozomen, who writes in the 440s, the power of John the Baptist manifested itself in 393 in the ordeal which the saint inflicted on a demoniac in the sanctuary in Hebdomon, where the head of the saint had been deposited shortly before that by the Emperor Theodosius.³⁷ The torments inflicted by martyrs on demons were seen as retribution for the ³³ ³⁴ ³⁵ ³⁶ ³⁷

Athanasius, Epistula festalis 42. The translation follows that of Camplani. Faustinus and Marcellinus, Libellus precum 26. Jerome, Epistula 108.13. Translation Wallace (slightly changed). John Chrysostom, In II Epistulam ad Corinthios 26.5; Maximus of Turin, Sermo 12.2. Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 7.24.8.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

The First Miracles

37

persecutions inspired by the latter.³⁸ That is why the sufferings of evil spirits described in the fourth- and fifth-century literature resemble those of the martyrs in the passiones and, consequently, their literary picture cannot be treated as an accurate description of the behaviour of the possessed. But this is not to say that we must doubt that the tormented ‘demoniacs’ were really there. The descriptions of physical healings appeared slightly later and initially were rare and more discreet. Gregory of Nazianzus mentions healings at the tombs of martyrs, but in doing so he is as vague as Hilary: all he says is that the bodies of the saints cast out demons and diseases alike.³⁹ The earliest securely dated specific scenes of miraculous healings effected by relics can be found about twenty years after Hilary’s De Trinitate and Contra Constantium. In 379, Gregory of Nyssa mentions a soldier whose leg was healed by the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste in the martyrium built by his family on their estate of Ibora in Cappadocia; Ambrose, writing to his sister in 386 about the discovery of the bodies of Gervasius and Protasius, mentions the healing of a blind man which accompanied this event.⁴⁰ Yet most Milanese miracles described by Ambrose and his hagiographer are still tortures inflicted on demons. When Augustine recalls this episode in his Confessions, written c.397, he emphasizes that in Milan not only evil spirits were expelled (which seems to be for him quite a normal phenomenon), but, for good measure, a man regained his vision, and it is this unusual fact that he describes in greater detail.⁴¹ And even if from this moment on healings at martyrs’ graves become more numerous, they are still not as numerous as exorcisms. It is only in the fifth century that the former become more abundant, and in some texts outnumber the latter.⁴² That is why I am inclined to think that at least in the first decades of the development of the cult of relics the most common and visible signs of their power were the cries of demoniacs, which impressed visitors to martyria and were interpreted as echoing the sufferings of evil spirits. This interpretation was quite natural on two counts: first, because of the long-standing literary tradition of describing the fight against the devil led by the Apostles and martyrs; secondly, as has been said already, the decline in the belief in contemporary miracles in the

³⁸ e.g. Prudentius, Peristephanon 1.103–8 with the comments of Fontaine 1964, esp. 200–1, and Wiśniewski 2002. ³⁹ Gregory of Nazianzus, Contra Iulianum I 69. ⁴⁰ Gregory of Nyssa, Homilia in sanctos XL martyres II, pp. 166–7; see also De sancto Theodoro, p. 69 (a general remark about diseases healed and demons expelled by Theodore’s relics); Ambrose, Epistula 77.2 and 17. ⁴¹ Tormented demons: Ambrose, Epistula 77.2, 16 and 20–2; Paulinus of Milan, Vita Ambrosii 16.1–2; 21.3; 29.2; 33.3–4; 48.2; demons expelled: Ambrose, Epistula 77.9; Vita Ambrosii 14.3; 28.1; 43.1–3; Augustine, Confessiones 9.7. Later on, presenting examples of contemporary miracles in Africa in De civitate Dei 22.8, Augustine emphasizes physical healings and seems to find them more spectacular than exorcisms. ⁴² See e.g. Liber de miraculis s. Stephani. It is difficult to say whether exorcisms of demons did not happen in Uzalis or the author considered them less spectacular and so not worth describing.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

38

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

third and early fourth centuries did not include exorcisms—even at that time nobody doubted the possibility of punishing and expelling demons, a possibility which, incidentally, was considered accessible, at least in theory, to any Christian and was known to pagans as well.⁴³ Subsequently, the conviction developed that relics were also capable of healing physical illnesses. This conviction was entirely comprehensible, since if Jesus had expelled demons and healed maladies,⁴⁴ relics which became known for their ability to make demons suffer could have been expected to have power over diseases too, especially considering that the distinction between physical illnesses and diseases resulting from demonic possession was far from clear. I suppose that Hilary must have already reasoned in this way, for he maintains that relics can drive away both demons and diseases, even if he is not specific about what he means by the latter. Elsewhere, namely in his Commentary on the Psalms, when discussing the gifts of the Holy Spirit which every Christian receives with baptism, he enumerates in one breath ‘the charisma of healing and the power to tame demons’, directly after mentioning the gift of prophecy.⁴⁵ Thus, all these three gifts belonged to the same pattern which had been well known before the belief in the power of relics came into existence. However, if we are to trust the evidence, people first became convinced of the power of relics over demons, and it was only later that they started to expect and look for healing from the bodies of the saints. This came about swiftly. To the evidence quoted above we can add a testimony of Victricius of Rouen, who in his sermon, preached in 396, on the arrival of relics of various Apostles and martyrs in his town, tells that: John the Evangelist cures at Ephesus, and many other places besides; we are told that he did not leave Christ’s breast even before his sanctification, and that the same healing power is here with us. Proculus and Agricola cure at Bononia, and here too we observe their majesty. Antonius cures at Placentia. Saturninus and Troianus cure in Macedonia. Nazarius cures at Milan. Mucius, Alexander, Datysus, Chindeus pour out the favour of health with generous virtue. Ragota, Leonida, Anastasia, Anatoclia cure, as the Apostle Paul says.⁴⁶

Certainly, this does not mean that people in Rouen would actually come to the relics collected by Victricius when they were ill, but it proves that their bishop expected his congregation to do so. The same is true of Sozomen, who wrote at

⁴³ See Tertullian, Apologeticum 23; Cyprian, Epistula 75.15. For non-Christian evidence, see Cotter 1999, 75–105. ⁴⁴ It is interesting to note that in late antique iconography, which played an important role in directing the reading of the Gospels, the earthly Jesus is represented above all as a healer. ⁴⁵ Hilary of Poitiers, Tractatus super psalmos 64.15. See also Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 2.32.4; Gregory of Nyssa, Vita Macrinae 39. The same pattern is explicitly referred to relics by Gregory of Nazianzus, In sanctum Cyprianum 18 and Contra Iulianum I 69. ⁴⁶ Victricius, De laude sanctorum 11.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

The First Miracles

39

the end of the first half of the fifth century. Almost all the miraculous shrines presented in his Church History are famous because they are places in which both demons are cast out and the sick are healed.⁴⁷ In the same generation, Theodoret of Cyrrhus testifies to the custom of offering ex-votos in the shape of healed body parts to the saints.⁴⁸ At that time, asking for a miraculous cure in a martyr’s sanctuary was already a well-established practice. Other hopes appeared probably at the same time: relics came to be seen as means of divination and a guarantee of success in war, but these two spheres of their activity will be described in separate chapters.

WHAT WERE THE DEMONIACS LOOKING FOR AT THE TOMBS OF THE MARTYRS? I think that the growing expectations with regard to the power of relics began with the demoniacs. It was probably their cries and their overall behaviour in the martyria of Apostles and martyrs that came to be regarded as the effect and the proof of the power of relics. At this point, however, the question arises: if at the beginning people did not expect miracles to happen at the tombs of the saints, why were all those unfortunates coming there? We do not know whether in Hilary’s days demoniacs were subjected to any rituals taking place at the martyria. Some time later, in the fifth-century churches of the West, we find personnel devoted to their care. They were overseen by exorcists, a minor order of the clergy, attested already in the middle of the third century.⁴⁹ The exorcists laid their hands on them, provided them with food and drink, and even organized their work (demoniacs were to sweep the church). All of this is well documented in a Gallic collection of ecclesiastical canons, datable to the second half of the fifth century (although the canons themselves may be older) known as Statuta ecclesiae antiqua.⁵⁰ In his Dialogues, written about 404, Sulpicius Severus claims that clerics usually would touch the energumens and ‘speak many words’, this expression most probably referring to long formulas of exorcism.⁵¹ Such rituals were possibly known already in the middle of the fourth century. It is difficult to say

⁴⁷ Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 7.27.1 (tomb of Epiphanius of Salamis), 3.14.26 (tomb of Hilarion), 4.3.2 (tomb of the ‘notaries’), 7.5.2 (the church of Anastasia), 2.3.8–13 (Michaelion in Anaplous), 5.21.5–7 (a spring in Emmaus). ⁴⁸ Theodoret, Graecorum affectionum curatio 8.63–4. ⁴⁹ See the evidence collected in Thraede 1969. ⁵⁰ Statuta ecclesiae antiqua 62–4; see also Concilium Arelatense secundum 38/9 and 39/40; Concilium Arausicanum a. 441 13/14 and 14/15. ⁵¹ Sulpicius Severus, Dialogi 3.6.3.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

40

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

whether they were carried out not only in episcopal churches, but in martyria as well. But even if this was, the case the exorcisms were certainly not the only and, most probably, not the main reason for the presence of the demoniacs at the tombs of the saints. What the demoniacs were looking for in the martyria was, most probably and above all, alms and shelter. We know little about how the poor and the sick, deprived of the support of the family, gained their bread and where they lived in the ancient city. The evidence, scanty and dispersed, shows us that beggars could be found in the agora, near the city gates, or at the entrance to the baths.⁵² None of these places seems to have provided a safe refuge from the rain, wind, and cold. Moreover, the usual visitor to the baths was not necessarily inclined to support the needy. It would be unfair to say that almsgiving did not exist in Roman society, but it certainly played a special role among Jews and Christians. In Christian communities, charitable work was one of the primary responsibilities of bishops. It might seem then the poor and sick were attracted by ecclesiae, ‘episcopal’ churches, or xenodochia, hospices run by the bishops, rather than by basilicae constructed over the tombs of the martyrs.⁵³ In reality, they could be found fairly often in martyria, perhaps for a simple reason: the bishop was not the only person to support the poor. Large private donations were dispensed daily by rich Christians;⁵⁴ and it was done mostly in the martyria. There is good evidence for this from the middle of the fourth century on. We see it in Antioch, Edessa, Tipasa, Nola, and in Rome, where it was at St Peter’s that rich Christians distributed alms—not on the Lateran Hill, the seat of the bishop.⁵⁵ For the above reasons, the famous martyria which attracted pilgrims (and those referred to by Hilary mentioning the graves of Apostles and martyrs certainly belonged to that category) also attracted the poor and the sick. Among the latter were the energumens, who at first came not necessarily in order to be healed or freed of evil spirits,⁵⁶ but just to find alms, food, and shelter. These people did not come to the martyria only for a short while, just to receive alms or to pray: they would spend there entire days, and sometimes

⁵² Finn 2006, 111–15. ⁵³ For xenonochia in Constantinople, see Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 4.20.2 (Marathonius) and Palladius, Dialogus de vita Iohannis Chrysostomi 5.133–4 (John Chrysostom); Sebaste in Pontus: Epiphanius, Panarion 75.1; Caesarea: Basil, Epistula 176 and 142 (other towns); see: Finn 2006, 82–8. For the sudden emergence of the ‘hospital’ in the East, see Horden 2005, 367–8. ⁵⁴ On this privatization of almsgiving, see Brown 1992, 95. ⁵⁵ Tipasa: CIL VIII 20906. Rome: Jerome, Epistula 22.32; Ammianus, Res gestae 27.3.6; Antioch: Constantine, Oratio ad sanctos 12; John Chrysostom, Homiliae de statuis 1.9; Edessa: Vita Rabbulae 6; the less clear evidence from Nola: Nola: Uranius, De obitu Paulini 3; see Finn 2006, 102–3. ⁵⁶ Neither in order to be possessed, as Brown 1981, 111, argues.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

The First Miracles

41

perhaps nights as well.⁵⁷ The demoniacs were in fact inhabitants of, not mere visitors to, the shrines.⁵⁸ It is worth noting that the Gallic church canons draw a distinction between the demoniacs and the other poor and sick who used to fill the churches. The former certainly constituted a distinct group, very conspicuous because of how they behaved. After all, some of them came to the martyria in order to be seen—it is easily observable that certain mental diseases are characterized by the need for spectators. In Warsaw, where I live, one can sometimes find mentally disturbed people in certain churches, but these are always churches in the historical part of the city, visited by large numbers of the faithful and tourists. And the fourth-century martyria did attract people. First, because they were new and beautiful. The Cappadocian Fathers, Paulinus of Nola, and Asterius of Amasea describe them with admiration and pride. Secondly, because they housed the graves of those who did not agree to recant their faith in the hour of trial and made the persecutions fail.⁵⁹ Places which provided shelter, food, and audience were not easy to find in the Mediterranean before the tombs of saints began to grow monumental. The process of constructing large martyrial shrines began in the East only after Constantine’s victory in 323 and took some time. The Martyrium in Jerusalem commemorating the passion of Christ was dedicated in 335, but that was still the very beginning of the process. No sizeable martyr’s shrine in the East can be securely dated to the years preceding the construction of St Babylas’ in Daphne and the church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople, both in the 350s. In Rome too, the Basilica of St Peter was completed only after 354, for the calendar composed in that year mentions only the celebration Petri in Catacumbas et Pauli Ostense, and is silent about the Vatican basilica.⁶⁰ It seems then that the belief in the power of martyrs’ graves, as we remember attested for the first time c.360, appeared just a few years after the first monumental martyria in Constantinople, Antioch, and Rome were completed.

NO N-CHRISTIAN THAUMATURG Y AND M IRACLE-WORKING M ONKS The explanation presented above emphasizes the link between the re-emergence of the belief in miracles in Late Antiquity and the construction programme of Constantine and his heirs. At first sight, this sort of explanation ⁵⁷ Even if normally martyria and churches were closed for the night, beggars could sleep in porticoes, as in the story concerning Ancyra, told by Palladius, Historia Lausiaca 68.2–3. ⁵⁸ See n. 50 and Gregory of Tours, Historiarum libri 7.29 and Liber vitae patrum 17.4. ⁵⁹ Bastiaensen 1995. ⁶⁰ Pietri 1976, 366–80.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

42

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

might seem similar to the attempts to look for a ‘rational’ explanation of such biblical miracles as the drowning of the Egyptian army in the Red Sea or the tumbling down of the walls of Jericho. Consequently, it may rightly seem a superfluous task to look for natural causes of episodes which in fact are merely literary fiction. The difference between the belief in biblical, as opposed to contemporary, miracles is nevertheless important. The former resulted directly from the place of the miracles in the Holy Scripture, while the sudden emergence of the latter is easier to explain if we admit that people actually saw or experienced something that they found new and puzzling. Another issue is that the explanation proposed above seems to omit two important chronological elements of the miraculous in Late Antiquity, namely the existence of non-Christian and the rise of monastic thaumaturgy. Christians were not the first to have healing sanctuaries. Temples of Asklepios still functioned for most of the fourth century and one might ask whether the miracles happening at the tombs of the martyrs were not inspired to some extent by the healings which occurred in pagan shrines. The antiquated argument that the cult of Asklepios was the most important rival of Christianity is certainly oversimplified, but there is no doubt that this particular cult aroused anxiety and irritation among Christian writers.⁶¹ And that for good reason, for we know that the sick were often tempted to look for a miraculous cure in shrines of other religions.⁶² Thus one could suppose that bishops simply decided to take over their rivals’ practice in order to beat them at their own game. The second chronological issue consists in the fact that, at about the same time as Hilary of Poitiers was writing his On the Trinity and Against Constantius, Athanasius of Alexandria published his Life of Antony, the earliest testimony to monastic miracles. In consequence, when the new era of Christian miracles began, was it with the belief in the power of relics or with the appearance of charismatic ascetics? The pagan background of Christian miracles was certainly important. It is worth emphasizing yet again that before the first sanctuaries were built in the fourth century there were no Christian holy places which could have played a role comparable to that of the pagan healing shrines. The churches of the earlier period were no more than gathering places for the community. But this does not mean that the miracle-working in the Christian martyria was merely copied from pagan thaumaturgy, which came to be replaced with Christian miracles when pagan temples were closed down during the reign of Theodosius I, or perhaps even earlier than that (if we take into account the attempts of Constantius). Moreover, even if this was indeed the case, one can hardly imagine that one day people found the gate of an Asklepieion closed and decided to look for a healing dream in a martyrium if nobody had believed

⁶¹ Edelstein 1945, 132–8.

⁶² Csepregi 2011, esp. 18–19.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

The First Miracles

43

beforehand that any special power dwelt in that place. Yet one can imagine very well that incubation, or the practice of sleeping in shrines, was indeed taken over once the belief in the healing power of relics appeared. As a result, I am inclined to think that the influence of non-Christian methods can perhaps explain certain traits of Christian healing practices, but not the rise of the belief in miracles itself. The question of the beginning of monastic thaumaturgy is a complex matter. The protagonists of the five fourth-century lives of saints, namely Antony, Macrina, Gregory Thaumaturgus, Hilarion, and Martin, are presented in their literary portraits as miracle-workers. Yet this element of the literary image of the saint is evidently constructed upon the model of Christ and other biblical figures, and so the miraculous episodes in the lives of famous ascetics do not prove that those ascetics were actually considered to be miracleworkers in their lifetime. In the middle of the fourth century, several monks were certainly treated as clairvoyants and exorcists; we know this, because the lives of Antony, Pachomius, and Martin of Tours demonstrate that the belief in their visions, prophecies, and fights against demons sometimes met with scorn, doubts, concern, and criticism, which implies that this belief really existed.⁶³ However, it is much more difficult to find convincing evidence that the holy monks also had the reputation of healers and were actually treated as such by their contemporaries, at least before the fifth century, when the relics were already widely reputed for their miracles. Even in the case of Martin, whose vita pre-dates his death, we cannot be sure that his image as a healer was not a literary creation of Sulpicius Severus. The hostile reaction to his thaumaturgy was provoked by his Life rather than by his activity.⁶⁴ All that may suggest that the monastic thaumaturgy followed rather than preceded the belief in the miraculous power of relics. The question of whether it was relics or monks that first gained a reputation for performing miracles is of secondary importance in relation to the fact that the belief in thaumaturgy re-emerged suddenly, in more or less the same period, in two distinct spheres of religiosity. This fact shows that the ground for Christian thaumaturgy was already there, and that the expectation of miracles was in the air. Therefore, the reconstruction of the reasons and chronology of the belief in the power of relics which I have proposed above cannot be treated as a complete explanation of the general revival of the belief in miracles in Late Antiquity. Still, it answers two questions: first, why the remains and the tombs of the martyrs became so swiftly and broadly recognized as efficient thaumaturgical objects, and secondly, why it happened in the mid-fourth century.

⁶³ Athanasius, Vita Antonii 33; Sulpicius Severus, Dialogi 3.15.4; Vita Pachomii G¹ 112. ⁶⁴ Wiśniewski 2018.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

44

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

Can we then fix the chronology of the Christian miraculous in Late Antiquity? That would be risky, because the earliest testimonies appear so close in time to one another that their order of appearance in our sources may be accidental. Still, we can say that in the middle of the fourth century people who observed what was going on in the martyria began to believe in the power of relics over demons. At that time, the great ascetics were already consulted as clairvoyants, but possibly not yet as miracle-workers. Once the demonexpelling power of relics and the prophetic power of monks had been recognized, it was quite easy to widen its limits, after the image of Christ and the Apostles who were able to predict future events, drive away demons, and heal diseases. This example helped to shape first the literary representation of miracle-working monks and healing relics and then, just a few decades later, the actual practice of looking for a cure at the tombs of martyrs and in the cells of monks. The conviction of the powerful presence of the saints in their relics did not go unchallenged. It raised certain theological problems: can the saints, who are in heaven, remain at the same time in their bodies buried in earth? If so, where do their souls abide? If not, whose power performs miracles at their graves? The controversy raised by these and other questions will be discussed in Chapter 10.

SPREADING THE BELIEF IN MIRACLES There is not much doubt as to where in Christendom the belief in the power of relics emerged. The authors named above, who are the first witnesses of this phenomenon, came from various parts of the empire, but for some time, up to the 380s, the miracles about which they wrote always took place in the East. In Rome, Pope Damasus (366–84), who did much to promote the cult of local martyrs, was silent about their miracles. At about the same time in Africa, Augustine repeated the old conviction that the era of miracles was over, and only then did he begin to gradually change his opinion.⁶⁵ The change in Augustine’s views was perhaps later than that of most of his contemporaries. As we have seen above, the first miracles were reported in the West in the 380s, in Naples and Milan.⁶⁶ Then, in the 390s, Victricius of Rouen mentioned the miracles at the tombs of saints which occurred regularly in Milan, Bologna, and Piacenza, and expressed his hope that the same power ⁶⁵ Augustine, De utilitate credendi 34 (no miracles today); Epistula 78.3 (no miracles in Africa). ⁶⁶ Ambrose, Epistula 77.2, and Hymnus 11; Faustinus and Marcellinus, Libellus precum 26. See pp. 36–7.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

The First Miracles

45

would manifest itself in his own city. Shortly after that Paulinus started writing his annual hymns in praise of St Felix, whose tomb in Nola was said to perform miracles. And finally, after 420, Augustine and the anonymous author of the Book of Miracles of St Stephen enumerated the healings obtained through the power of that saint in Africa.⁶⁷ The fact that the belief in contemporary miracles re-emerged in several places distinctly later than in others leads us to ask another question: how did the new belief spread around the Mediterranean? How did people in Italy, Gaul, or Africa learn that miracles started to occur again? What made them think that the stories of miracles were true, and what made them think that miracles could also change their own lives? Of course, it is not so very difficult to persuade the sick that they should try some new methods of treatment if the old ones did not work. But this does not mean that people will always happily embrace all new practices for their sheer novelty. There is a strong possibility that the start of the belief in miracles in some regions was influenced by the news about exorcisms and healings coming from other parts of the Mediterranean. The earliest surviving collections of Eastern miracles, performed in the most famous sanctuaries of saints, appeared only in the late fifth century, and most of them probably remained unknown to the Latin-speaking audience,⁶⁸ but miracles which occurred in specific Western sanctuaries started to be collected quite quickly. According to Augustine, such collections were made in Calama, Hippo, and Uzalis shortly after the arrival of the relics of St Stephen in those cities, that is, in the 420s.⁶⁹ In addition, Augustine publicized miracles occurring in Hippo in his sermons and so, most probably, did other bishops. Finally, the news about miracles was transmitted in pilgrims’ tales, letters, and other writings which mentioned them incidentally.⁷⁰ We do not know how efficient those texts were in the propagation of the belief in miracles, but Augustine was convinced that they might have helped this cause.⁷¹ Interestingly, the expectation of miracles was not associated with all relics. Many old graves, even those of famous saints, did not attract people looking for miraculous healings. In Africa, for instance, the sources are silent about miracles at the tombs of local martyrs, even of those of such renown as St Cyprian or St Perpetua. The relics had to be newly discovered or acquired, or rather something new had to happen in order to make people believe in their power. In northern Italy it was the discovery of the bodies of Gervasius, Protasius, and Nazarius in Milan, and those of Vitalis and Agricola ⁶⁷ Victricius, De laude sanctorum 11; Paulinus of Nola, Carmina, especially 14, 18–21, 23 passim; Liber de miraculis s. Stephani, passim; Augustine, De civitate Dei 22.8. ⁶⁸ The only exception is the Latin collection of the miracles of Sts Cosmas and Damian, the critical edition of which is being prepared by Anna Rack-Teuteberg. ⁶⁹ Augustine, De civitate Dei 22.8.339–454. ⁷⁰ Egeria, Itinerarium 20.13. ⁷¹ Augustine, De civitate Dei 22.8.160–71.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

46

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

in Bologna;⁷² in Africa, the arrival of the relics of St Stephen. Only rarely did an old relic manage to gain a reputation for being miraculously powerful. According to Augustine, a stone from the stoning of St Stephen started to be considered to have a miraculous power by the 420s in Ancona, even though it had been enshrined in that Italian city for a long time. Yet this happened only after the body of St Stephen had been discovered in Palestine in 415 and the story of this finding, translated into Latin, started to circulate throughout the Mediterranean.⁷³ In several places a new start was marked by a ceremony of translation, or transfer of relics. In Africa, the relics of St Stephen, the first miracle-working relics, were introduced to several towns on the initiative, or at least with the support, of local bishops: Evodius of Uzalis, Praeiectus of Aquae Tibilitanae, Lucillus of Sinitis, Possidius of Calama, and Augustine of Hippo.⁷⁴ Even if the bishops were not the only people who moved relics from one place to another, their role as the organizers of ceremonial translations was matched only by that of the emperors. These translations, resembling the imperial adventus, engaged the entire population: everybody was expected to be there and await the arrival of the saints. We can see this in 396 in Rouen, where Bishop Victricius preached a sermon about the miracles performed by the relics of the saints in other places and encouraged people to believe in their power.⁷⁵ It certainly mattered how the relics arrived and who carried them. It seems that on Minorca, where the relics of St Stephen were brought by Orosius in 418 without much ado, nobody expected them to heal the sick or expel demons.⁷⁶ The ceremony of the transfer and deposition of relics helped a lot in making the belief in their power emerge, but it was not indispensable. The tombs of John the Evangelist in Ephesus and the place in which St Thecla was swallowed by the earth in Seleucia in Isauria gained celebrity status owing to their miracles, although the bodies of both saints were not transferred anywhere. In some places, like Rouen, there was also another factor which could have played a role in making people believe in the power of relics—a newly built and large church in which they were deposited.⁷⁷ We do not know whether that shrine eventually came to be known as a sanctuary renowned for its miracles, but this was obviously Victricius’ intention, and we have seen the importance of the new martyria for the emergence of the phenomenon in the East. The construction of a new church could perhaps kindle the belief ⁷² Paulinus, Vita Ambrosii 15–16 (Gervasius and Protasius), 29 (Vitalis and Agricola) and 32–3 (Nazarius). ⁷³ Augustine, Sermo 323.2. ⁷⁴ Uzalis: Augustine, De civitate Dei 22.8.360–2 and Liber de miraculis s. Stephani prol.; Aquae Tibilitanae, Sinitis, Calama, Audurus, Hippo: Augustine, De civitate Dei 22.8.265–323; for Hippo, see also Augustine, Sermo 318.1. ⁷⁵ Victricius, De laude sanctorum 11. ⁷⁶ Severus of Minorca, Epistula 4 and 20. ⁷⁷ Victricius, De laude sanctorum 12.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

The First Miracles

47

in the power of saints even in places where neither new relics nor new stories arrived. This could have been the case with the sanctuary of St John in Ephesus and that of St Thecla in Seleucia. To conclude, there were several factors which played a role in bringing the belief in miracles to new places. The first of these was the stories told by pilgrims and visitors to famous shrines renowned for their miracles. These stories, however, would not have been enough to trigger a new belief if they had not been accompanied by certain vehicles for the miraculous power. It was thus the new relics, either transferred from afar or discovered locally, which were the second factor contributing to the emergence of the new belief. The third factor was the solemn ceremonies which advertised the power of the newly acquired relics. Finally, the fourth factor was the construction of new buildings, large sanctuaries, which attracted pilgrims, almsgivers, beggars, and above all the sick and demoniacs, and provided the necessary conditions for the relics to display their power—a stage, actors, and audience.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

3 Defenders of Cities In January 402, Paulinus, then presbyter at Nola, wrote one of the poems with which he celebrated the annual commemoration of St Felix. The body of the saint lay in the new basilica built by Paulinus not far from the city. That year the poem directly referred to a new grave threat menacing Italy: the Goths led by Alaric had just crossed the Alps and were about to invade the peninsula. Paulinus, confident of receiving help from St Felix, prayed to him in the following words: I beg you, ask Christ to lend our cause His benevolent support . . . Once the Lord has allowed you fair fortune for the Roman domain, bid the elements that serve you, Felix, to minister to our good . . . Let sun and moon in harmony under your control remain poised, and keep the stars stationary in suspended course till the victory of Rome is finally accomplished. In Assyrian Babylon, Daniel victoriously tamed the lions by welling prayer; so now Felix, you must tame the uncivilised barbarians, and Christ must shatter them so that they recline as captives at your feet.¹

Paulinus is one of the first Christian writers we know of who clearly expressed their firm belief in the extension of the protection of the saints to the cities which possessed their relics. In his Natalicia, we find three instances in which he refers to their power, with the mention of their capability to halt the invading enemies or ward them off from the city walls. The earliest reference dates back to the beginning of 402, as we have seen in the passage quoted above. In 405, he assured his readers of the protection of the Apostles Peter and Paul over Rome and that of Andrew and Timothy over Constantinople. In 407, he again praised Peter and Paul, Felix, and other martyrs who had saved Italy from a renewed threat of advancing Goths.²

¹ Paulinus of Nola, Carmen 26 (Nat. 8). 246–58 (trans. P. G. Walsh). ² Paulinus of Nola, Carmen 19 (Nat. 11, AD 405). 329–41; Carmen 21 (Nat. 13, AD 407). 1–12.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Defenders of Cities

49

HOW COMMO N WAS THE BELIEF IN THE SAINTS ’ PROTECTION OVER CITIES? It is not entirely clear whether Paulinus expressed a belief which was already widely shared in his day or rather promoted a new idea. A definitive answer to this question is not that easy to find, but it seems that his confidence was not universally shared among his audience.³ In his Poem 26 he went out of his way to convince his audience that Felix could help the empire in distress: he referred to the Bible (quoting diverse examples of Old Testament intercessors), appealed to logic (explaining that Felix was close to God, who did marvellous things to help His people) and to popular knowledge (insisting that Nola was familiar with Felix’s miracles for the benefit of various individuals).⁴ Also, he declared that he placed his trust in the power of Felix, but nowhere did he mention people actually praying to the saint, gathering at his grave, or displaying the relics in the face of the approaching enemy. We should also note that Paulinus’ contemporaries rarely express belief in the protective power of saints. Such advocates of the cult of relics as Ambrose, Victricius of Rouen, and Jerome do not suggest that the saints can defend communities against invaders.⁵ Although an argument ex silentio should never be fully trusted, this reticence seems to be significant in the case of authors who lived during the period of barbarian invasions and often described them.⁶ In February 402, when Paulinus was writing his Poem 26 and Alaric’s troops were ravaging northern Italy, Gaudentius of Brescia delivered a sermon at the dedication of the basilica known as the Concilium sanctorum, ‘the Gathering of the Saints’. The entire sermon is devoted to the saints whose relics were deposited in the new church.⁷ The author mentions the barbarian threat which prevented some bishops from attending the ceremony,⁸ but does not suggest in any way that relics have the power to keep the enemy at bay. Presumably in the same year, Maximus of Turin preached a series of sermons concerning the danger caused by the barbarians. He summoned his audience to look for God’s help by living virtuous lives, prayer, fasting, integrity, orthodox faith, and acts of charity,⁹ but did not mention the saints whose relics were kept in Turin, although he referred to them in other

³ Heim 1992, 306. ⁴ In the case of Felix this belief is attested by the epigraphic evidence from Cimitile: CIL X 1338 and 1370; see Orselli 1965, 75–7. ⁵ According to Paulinus of Milan, Vita Ambrosii 51, Ambrose, after his death, helped the Moorish commander Mascezel to win a battle, but this text was written only c.422. ⁶ I have not omitted any examples quoted by Courcelle 1964; Orselli 1965, and Beaujard 2000. ⁷ Gaudentius, Tractatus 17; see Courcelle 1953, 23–4. These saints are John the Baptist, Thomas and Andrew the Apostles, Luke the Evangelist, the martyrs Gervasius, Protasius, Nazarius, Sisinnius, Martyrius, Alexander, and the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste. ⁸ Gaudentius, Tractatus 17.2. ⁹ Maximus, Sermo 81.3; 82.3; 83.1; 85.2; 86.1–3.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

50

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

sermons, and believed that they were defensores capable of helping people in the world to come (in futuro).¹⁰ Another case in point is that of Toulouse, a city which was attacked in 407, but managed to withstand barbarian raids, and possessed the body of its bishop and martyr, St Saturninus. His relics were certainly much venerated in the locality; only a few years earlier, in 402 or 403, they were transferred to the new basilica built by Bishop Exuperius. And yet Jerome, who in 406 had written his fiery defence of the cult of relics specifically at the request of his friends from Toulouse and who was well informed about the siege in 407 by the very same people, assumed the city ‘had been kept from falling hitherto by the merits of its reverend bishop Exuperius’, still alive at that time, and did not mention Saturninus at all.¹¹ All this demonstrates that in Milan, Rouen, Brescia, Turin, and Toulouse the belief in protection by the martyrs and their relics was not entirely obvious. Yet this is not to say that Paulinus’ views were an isolated phenomenon. Indeed, in the writings of his contemporaries we do find some traces of looking for martyrs’ support in war. In the 380s Gregory of Nyssa, preaching a sermon on the feast of St Theodore of Euchaita, much venerated in Pontus, invoked the martyr thus: ‘The infamous Scythians [i.e. Goths] gestating war against us are not far. As a soldier, defend us!’—and expressed his conviction that the Apostles would take care of the churches that they had founded or in which they had suffered.¹² In the 390s, Ammianus Marcellinus sneered at the general Sabinianus, the commander of the Roman army in the East, who in 359 had visited some tombs in Edessa before departing for the war with Persia, with the obvious intention of looking for help from the martyrs.¹³ Around 406, Sulpicius Severus scoffed at the Emperor Constantius’ behaviour during the battle of Mursa, in 351, in the following words: For at that time, when a battle was fought at Mursa against Magnentius, Constantius had not the courage to go down to witness for himself the conflict, but took up his abode in a basilica of the martyrs which stood outside the town, Valens who was then the bishop of the place being with him to keep up his courage.¹⁴

About the same time as Paulinus wrote his Poem 26, Rufinus of Aquileia, an acquaintance of his, recounted very earnestly how the Emperor Theodosius I, before the war against Eugenius (393), ‘visited with priests all the places of prayer, and clad in hair-cloth lay prostrated before the tombs of the martyrs and Apostles, begging for trustworthy help of the saints’.¹⁵ One of those places can be identified as the sanctuary at Hebdomon, close to Constantinople, ¹⁰ ¹² ¹³ ¹⁴ ¹⁵

Maximus, Sermo 12.1–2; see also Sermones 105–6. ¹¹ Jerome, Epistula 123.16. Gregory of Nyssa, De sancto Theodoro, pp. 70–1; see E. Rizos, CSLA E01749. Ammianus, Res gestae 18.7.7. Sulpicius Severus, Chronica 2.38.3 (trans. A. Roberts, slightly adapted). Rufinus, Historia ecclesiastica 11.33 (trans. Ph. Amidon).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Defenders of Cities

51

where the head of John the Baptist was deposited. According to Sozomen, Theodosius’ victory in the battle of the Frigidus was announced there by a demon, lamenting his defeat at the hands of St John through the mouth of an energumen.¹⁶ Another early trace of the belief in saints’ help can be found in the poet Claudian, who ridiculed a certain dux by the name of Jacobus: By the ashes of St Paul and the shrine of revered St Peter, do not pull my verses to pieces, General James. So may St Thomas prove a buckler to protect thy breast and St Bartholomew bear thee company to the wars; so may the blessed saints prevent the barbarians from crossing the Alps and Suzanna endow thee with her strength; so, should any savage foe seek to swim across the Danube, let him be drowned therein like the swift chariots of Pharaoh; so may an avenging javelin strike the Getic hordes and the favour of Thecla guide the armies of Rome; so may thy guests dying in their efforts to out-drink thee assure thy board its triumph of hospitality and the broached casks overcome thy thirst; so may thy hand ne’er be red with an enemy’s blood—do not, I say, pull my verses to pieces.¹⁷

The epigram was written about 403, and its addressee was probably in command of some forces in one of the Alpine provinces during the first onslaught of Alaric’s troops on Italy.¹⁸ It may be that already in that war Jacobus manifested his belief in the power of saints and their relics, for the only piece of information that we have about him apart from the quoted passage is a letter of Bishop Vigilius, which says that Jacobus was responsible for the transfer of the relics of the martyrs of Anaunia to Constantinople.¹⁹ Prudentius, also Paulinus’ contemporary, rejoiced that the ‘holy maid Eulalia honours with her bones and tends with her love her Emerita (Mérida)’, and the martyrs Emeritus and Chelidonius ‘protect the folk who dwell by Ebro’s waters’ (i.e. in Calahorra). He also believed that the martyrs would represent and protect their cities on the Day of Judgement.²⁰ Slightly later, Augustine mentioned in his De cura pro mortuis that St Felix appeared on the city walls during the siege of Nola, about which he learned from some eyewitnesses.²¹ He also suggested that some people were disappointed because the saints apparently failed to save the city of Rome from

¹⁶ Theodosius’ prayer: Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 7.24.2. See also Theodoret, Historia ecclesiastica 5.24.3–12. Demoniac’s prophecy: Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 7.24.8. ¹⁷ Claudian, Carmina Minora 50 (trans. M. Platnauer). ¹⁸ See Woods 1991b and Al. Cameron 1970, 224–5. ¹⁹ See Jacobus (1) in PLRE 1, 450, and Woods 1991b for a closer identification of his office, and Vanderspoel 1986 for the date and identification with the personage mentioned by Vigilius. ²⁰ Prudentius, Peristephanon 3.3–5 (Eulalia); 1.115–17 (Emeritus and Chelidonius), 4.1–60 (local martyrs and the Last Judgement). ²¹ Augustine, De cura pro mortuis 19 (written in 420–2); in spite of the fact that Nola finally was captured: De civitate Dei 1.10.57–63 (written in 413).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

52

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

being sacked in 410. They would sneer at those who relied on the martyrs for help: ‘Peter’s body lies in Rome’, people are saying, ‘Paul’s body lies in Rome, Laurence’s body lies in Rome, the bodies of other holy martyrs lie in Rome; and Rome is grief-stricken, and Rome is being devastated, afflicted, crushed, burnt; death stalking the streets in so many ways, by hunger, by pestilence, by the sword. Where are the memorial shrines (memoriae) of the Apostles?’²²

Those who became disillusioned about the power of martyrs had evidently placed their trust in them before. At the same time in the East, the author of the anonymous Sermon on St Thomas the Apostle²³ expressed his hope that the saint, who had already banished Arians from Thrace, would also liberate the West—he was presumably referring to Alaric’s invasion.²⁴ All this evidence comes from the end of the fourth and beginning of the fifth century and should be considered along with the reticence on the part of the authors named above. Interestingly, if Sulpicius Severus and Ammianus did not project into the past a belief which only appeared in their days, we do see Roman commanders looking for martyrs’ help in virtually all major conflicts of the second half of the fourth century, namely the war with Persia during the reign of Constantius (356: Ammianus), the civil wars against Magnentius (353: Sulpicius Severus) and Eugenius (394: Rufinus, Sozomen), and Alaric’s invasion at the turn of the fifth century (Ps.-Chrysostom, Claudian, Paulinus, and Augustine). Moreover, the silence of the authors who were interested in the cult of relics but did not write about their protective power can be partly explained if we examine their writings against the historical background of the second half of the fourth century. In that period the West simply was not faced with any serious threats which would have called for help from above. There were no major natural disasters, the great tsunami of 365 affected only the eastern part of the Mediterranean,²⁵ and, after the subjugation of the Alamanni by Julian, the West did not expect any imminent danger of a barbarian invasion. The situation in Italy changed only in 402, with Alaric’s first raid into the peninsula, in Gaul on the last day of 406, with the fall of the Rhine frontier, and in Spain in 409, with the coming of the Visigoths. Now, almost all the works which praised relics but failed to express a belief in their protection against the enemy had been written before the provinces of their authors were attacked. Victricius’ De laude sanctorum was written in Gaul in 395, Ambrose died in ²² Augustine, Sermo 296.6 (trans. E. Hill). ²³ Attributed to John Chrysostom, but spurius according to Clavis Patrum Graecorum 4574. ²⁴ Sermo in s. Thomam Apostolum, p. 500. It is that possible some relics of Thomas were to be found close to Constantinople (in Drypia) and some in the West. It is by no means evident that the sermon was delivered at the tomb of Thomas in Edessa, as Courcelle 1964, 35, thinks. ²⁵ G. Kelly 2004, 141–9.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Defenders of Cities

53

Italy in 397, the last writings of Sulpicius Severus in Gaul date back to c.405, Jerome published his Adversus Vigilantium, a defence of the cult of relics, directed to his Gallic friends, in 406, and Prudentius’ Peristephanon was composed in Spain before 405.²⁶ Thus, Paulinus was simply the first ardent supporter of the cult of saints in the West, who wrote in a region directly threatened by Germanic invasions. The silence of contemporary Greek advocates of the cult of saints can be explained in a similar way. Their homelands were not seriously threatened in their lifetimes, and so it is no surprise that of the Cappadocian Fathers only Gregory of Nyssa referred, in the passage quoted above, to the power of the martyr Theodore, who could protect Pontus against the threat of an invasion.²⁷ The only major city which was then clearly in peril was Constantinople and John Chrysostom, its bishop, assured its inhabitants that it was protected by some unspecified Egyptian martyrs whose relics had been brought from Alexandria.²⁸ Unlike the accounts of healing miracles, traces of the belief in the protective power of the saints occur rather rarely in the later literature of the fifth century. Hagiographers, church historians, chroniclers, and preachers hardly ever mention any role for relics in the defence of the cities. In the West, only the Chronicle of Hydatius, composed around 486, contains a brief remark saying that in 456 ‘Theoderic was preparing to pillage Emerita (Mérida) but was deterred by warnings from the blessed martyr Eulalia’ (beatae Eulaliae martyris terretur ostentis). Mérida was the place of Eulalia’s burial.²⁹ We may add to that the tale of St Stephen’s attempt to save Metz, where his relics were kept, from an attack of the Huns in the middle of the fifth century. According to this story, St Stephen was interceding for Metz with Peter and Paul. It proved to be of no avail, because God had already decided the fate of the city. Still, he managed to save at least his own chapel from destruction.³⁰ The problem is that this particular story was recorded only by Gregory of Tours

²⁶ Hunter 1999, 406–7; Prudentius: Roberts 1993, 2–3; Sulpicius Severus: Stancliffe 1983, 80–1. ²⁷ Gregory of Nyssa, De sancto Theodoro, pp. 70–1 (see n. 12). It is not certain what threat he had in mind—perhaps the Gothic danger caused by Fritigern. ²⁸ John Chrysostom, Laudatio martyrum Aegyptiorum 1. The venue of this sermon is uncertain, but E. Rizos, CSLA E02383, convincingly argues that Constantinople is more probable than Antioch. ²⁹ Hydatius, Chronica s.a. 456; see also the death of Heremigarius who had scorned Mérida, ‘thereby causing an affront to the holy martyr Eulalia . . . was cast headlong into the river Ana by the hand of God and died’ (s.a. 429, trans. Burgess). ³⁰ Gregory of Tours, Historiarum libri 2.6. See also the story of King Agila, who profaned the shrine of the martyr Aquisclus in Cordoba, and subsequently ‘was smitten by vengeance for the present war, and lost there his son, who was killed together with a large part of the army, and also lost the whole treasure with its renowned riches. All that through the agency of Aquisclus and other saints’: this would have happened in 549, but the story is attested only in the second quarter of the seventh century: Isidore of Seville, Historia Gothorum 45 (trans. G. Donini).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

54

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

at the end of the sixth century and there is no guarantee that it really dates back to the times of the Hunnic invasion.³¹ In Greek fifth-century literature an important witness of the protection secured by the saints is Theodoret of Cyrrhus, who claimed that the cities which possessed corporeal remains of martyrs venerated them as ‘guardians and defenders’ (ὡς πολιούχους τιμῶσι καὶ φύλακας).³² We may suppose that this general remark also referred to protection against enemies and natural disasters, but this is not explicitly stated. The fifth-century author of the Miracles of St Thecla laid out his views more clearly, presenting the role of the saints in the world in the following way: Thus because God is the lover of mankind, the most compassionate and generous, he sowed the saints over the earth, as if he divided the earth among excellent physicians. Thus, on the one hand, the saints can easily perform miracles, for they are in a way closer to those in need and able to act immediately, bringing healing. On the other hand, through the agency of God’s grace and power, they can perform great deeds which demand His help in the highest degree, acting as ambassadors, intercessors, and persuaders for the sake of nations, cities, races and peoples, against pestilences, wars, hungers, droughts, earthquakes, and against all things that only the hand of God can control and master.³³

The protection of the community against wars and cataclysms is presented here as a category apart, distinct from the day-to-day miraculous activity of the saints. This general reflection is followed by an account of Thecla’s interventions in the rescue of a few Cilician towns attacked by Isaurians. The saint appeared on the walls of Seleucia repulsing the enemy with battle cries and thunderclaps, attacked in person the besiegers of Iconium, ordered the construction of a shrine (naos) dedicated to her which was to protect the road to Selinus, and finally delivered a band of brigands who had robbed her sanctuary into the hands of Roman soldiers. Gilbert Dagron dates the Isaurian raids from which Thecla supposedly rescued those three Cilician cities to the 360s and 370s, but her interventions were described only a hundred years later³⁴ and so one should regard these passages rather as a testimony to late fifth-century belief. The fifth-century evidence might seem rather scanty, but it does not mean that belief in the protective power of relics dwindled in that period. General remarks of Theodoret and the author of the Miracles of St Thecla can even

³¹ Other stories in Gregory of Tours about cities and armies protected by relics: Historiarum libri 3.29, 7.31 and Liber in gloria confessorum 78. ³² Theodoret, Graecorum affectionum curatio 8.10. According to Canivet SC 57, 28–31 it was written probably between AD 427 and 431. ³³ Miracula Theclae 4.32–43 (trans. S. F. Johnson). ³⁴ Miracula Theclae 5, 6, 27, and 28 (the two former in AD 354, the two latter in the 370s, according to Dagron in Miracula Theclae, introduction, pp. 115–18).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Defenders of Cities

55

suggest the contrary. On closer examination, the shortage of episodes illustrating this belief is not surprising. If a city or province was not in danger, there was no reason to write about protection guaranteed by relics. And this was the case with the Asiatic part of the empire, which, having seen the wars of Constantius II, the fiasco of Julian’s expedition,³⁵ and the peace with Persia concluded by Jovian in 363, was not threatened with any major invasion, except for the Hunnic raid in 395. The only city besieged by the Persians before the Anastasian War of 502 was Theodosiopolis in Osrhoene, attacked in 421–2. No source mentions a role played by relics in its successful defence, but Theodoret tells an interesting story about a lithobolos, or stone thrower, with which the local bishop Eunomius killed a blasphemous Sassanian lesser king. What is interesting is the name of the machine, ‘Thomas the Apostle’, presumably given in order to secure the support of the saint.³⁶ Other towns could have feared only more or less organized bandits, like the Isaurian raiders. When the situation deteriorated again in the sixth century, with the renewed conflict with Persia and the subsequent Avar and Slavic attacks, the mentions of saints bringing help to cities reappear in the evidence. Resapha, the place of the cult of St Sergius, was besieged by Chosraw II, but the Persians did not take it. According to Evagrius it was saved by the saint, for the besiegers were frightened by a vision of an immense army which appeared miraculously on the city walls.³⁷ As for the threat posed by the Slavs, the collection of the Miracles of St Demetrios consists mostly of miracles by which Thessalonica was saved from their incursions.³⁸ If the silence of the sources about saints protecting cities is understandable in time of peace, there was even less reason to write about the support provided by relics if a war broke out and a besieged city fell or surrendered— which happened many a time in the West. At the very beginning of the fifth century, Paulinus could have been thinking that his hopes for the help of the saints were not in vain. In February 402, he wrote (Carmen 26) that the power of Christ, acting through St Felix, can crush the barbarians, and the barbarians were indeed crushed in the battle of Pollentia in the spring of the same year.³⁹ But later on the situation changed. The series of Natalicia for the festivals of St Felix came to an end in 407. Since this happened three years before the ³⁵ No relics are mentioned in accounts of these wars, although we find a heavenly intervention in Theodoret’s description of the siege of Amida, Historia ecclesiastica 2.31.8–9 (Shapur terrified by a vision) and 2.31.11–14 (a monk, Jacob, inflicts a plague of flies and mosquitoes on the Persian besiegers). ³⁶ Theodoret, Historia ecclesiastica 5.39.12–14. ³⁷ Evagrius, Historia ecclesiastica 4.28; see E. K. Fowden 1999, 134–5. ³⁸ See Lemerle 1979–81. See also Evagrius, Historia ecclesiastica 1.13 (the head of Simeon Stylites protects the army of the East); Historia ecclesiastica 4.28 (St Sergius protects his city against Persians); Theophylact Simocatta, Historia ecclesiastica 7.15.2 (Alexander of Dryzipara punishes Avars with plague). ³⁹ See Guttilla 1989, 19.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

56

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

second invasion of Alaric there is no ground then to attribute it to Paulinus’ disappointment with his patron saint who failed to defend Nola, just as Peter, Paul, and other martyrs failed to defend Rome in 410. Still, it is doubtful whether Paulinus would have still been willing to sing St Felix’s praises after the sack of Rome and Nola in summer that year. A good example of a city which probably put its trust in saintly defenders, without however leaving clear traces of this in literary evidence, is Maipherqat in Sophene, on the frontier between the Roman Empire and Persia. At the end of the fourth century Maipherqat was not much more than a village, but it was developed and fortified by Bishop Marutha, who deposited in it relics of a number of saints, mostly from Persia, and changed its name to Martyropolis. Marutha’s project was endorsed by the Emperor Theodosius II, who probably hoped that this frontier post would be strengthened by the saints. Yet we can hardly see this in the evidence. The foundation of the city took place in a period of détente between the Romans and the Persians which lasted until 502. In 502, when war broke out, Martyropolis was captured, and the same happened again in 589. None of these events was a good occasion to write about protection provided by the saints.⁴⁰ Only inhabitants of cities which were endangered and then rescued, or at least not taken, could bear witness to a belief in the saints’ protection. And this group was simply not very large. All this shows that the limited amount of literary evidence for the belief in question can be misleading. Fortunately, this belief had a good chance of leaving traces in epigraphical evidence. People who hoped to be healed or delivered from a demon did not express it in monumental inscriptions. Those who sought perpetual protection from a saint for their city sometimes did. An early sixth-century inscription from Euchaita, for instance, calls St Theodore ‘the guardian of this town’.⁴¹ In Jerash (in Jordan), a late fifth-century inscription calls the same saint ‘an unageing defence and barrier against ill for the town and the dwellers therein and its citizens yet to be’.⁴² Peasants from Crete ask St Nicolas: ‘Help this village!’⁴³ The inhabitants of Tyre address their plea to God, but call Tyre ‘the city of the God-Bearer’.⁴⁴ Inscriptions like these do not tell us anything about specific events, but they are a manifest sign of trust in the protection of saints. It is difficult to assess how strongly this trust was associated with relics; but we can say that it appeared early, lasted long, and was probably much more common than the sources suggest.

⁴⁰ ⁴¹ ⁴² ⁴³

For the evidence and discussion, see E. K. Fowden 1999, 45–59. P. Nowakowski, CSLA E00969. Trans. A. H. M. Jones; see P. Nowakowski, CSLA E02342. See P. Nowakowski, CSLA E01368. ⁴⁴ See P. Nowakowski, CSLA E01765.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Defenders of Cities

57

NON-CHRISTIAN PARA LLELS What was the origin of the belief in the protective power of relics? Certainly, it emerged from the belief in the power of saints over demons, discussed in Chapter 2. Yet such a development was not inevitable, because defending cities, unlike expelling demons, healing, and prophesying, did not conform to the pattern of biblical miracles. Neither Jesus nor the Apostles protected towns or promised to do so in the future. All predictions concerning cities which can be found in the New Testament foretold their more or less immediate destruction, in accordance with God’s will.⁴⁵ In the Old Testament, examples of a God-sent rescue for Jerusalem are few and far between and unconnected with the presence of any special object.⁴⁶ Even the Ark of the Covenant, sometimes considered a source of power, never played any role in the defence of the city.⁴⁷ The protective function of sacred objects connected with gods and heroes was unquestionably more important in classical antiquity, even if in literary sources objects of this sort do not appear as frequently as one might expect, and the archaeological evidence is usually difficult to interpret.⁴⁸ The most obvious parallels to the relics of the martyrs are certainly the bones of the heroes whose burials in agorae, city gates, or city walls are attested by both textual and material evidence.⁴⁹ It is interesting to note that this evidence does not suggest that heroes’ bones had an intrinsic power or created an invisible bulwark surrounding the city. Instead, they guaranteed that the hero actually resided in the city and, if properly venerated and summoned, would act personally as its defender.⁵⁰ And this belief, as we shall see, closely resembles the role played by the relics of the saints. This parallel, however, is distant in time from the emergence of the Christian phenomenon. Even if the cult of heroes was not entirely dead in Late Antiquity (as illustrated in the evidence presented below),⁵¹ the protective role of their tombs was by then marginal. As early as the second century AD, Pausanias, who mentioned over fifty places of ⁴⁵ Matthew 24:1–3, 15–22; Mark 13:1–2, 14–20; Luke 21:5–6, 20–4; Rev. 17:1–18:24. ⁴⁶ 2 Kings 19:35 (the angel of the Lord slays the Assyrian army); 2 Macc. 3:24–7 (the Temple treasury is defended by a radiant rider). ⁴⁷ The two texts which suggest that the Ark could be useful in the battle are Josh. 6:6–21 (the capture of Jericho) and 1 Sam. 4:2–4 (the war with the Philistines, in which the Ark fails to bring victory to Israel). ⁴⁸ The belief in the protective role of certain statues in Greek and Roman religion is usually taken for granted: see e.g. Y.-M. Duval 1996, 102. He finds it superfluous to expatiate upon the belief in the protective power of pagan statues of gods, which has existed without interruption for hundreds of years, but does not refer to the evidence. ⁴⁹ Archaeological evidence: Kron 1999, 73 and n. 41 (tombs of heroes, with references to detailed studies). ⁵⁰ Rohde 1925, 120–1; see the analysis of the most famous examples of transfers of the bodies of heroes (especially that of Orestes in Herodotus, Historiae 1.66–8) in McCauley 1999, 94–5. ⁵¹ Lavan 2011, 453–5.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

58

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

the cult of heroes in his Description of Greece, some of them including burial sites, did not present any of these as a source of protective power. Furthermore, even tombs placed in the very entrance to a city, that is, in the location which modern scholars regard as an obvious indication of the originally protective character of the burial, were no longer seen in this way in Pausanias’ time. He explains, for instance, that the hero Aetolus was buried in the very gate of Olympia simply due to an oracle which forbade his dead body to be laid either outside the city or within its precincts.⁵² All this suggests that the tombs of the heroes could hardly have played a major role in the emergence of the Christian belief, although some influence is not impossible. Yet the tombs of the heroes were not the only powerful objects which protected cities in the Greek and Roman world. The most famous object of this type was probably the Palladium, or a wooden statue of Pallas Athena, believed to have been brought from Troy by Aeneas and thereafter kept in the temple of Vesta in the Roman Forum. In modern scholarship, the term ‘palladium’ is used to denote an object belonging to the broad category of city-protecting talismans.⁵³ However, in fact the Palladium was a class by itself. Certainly, the Romans believed in the divine protection of cities; this belief is clearly visible in the rite of evocatio, used in the Republican period to win over the favour of the gods of a besieged enemy. This belief, however, was not accompanied by any known attempts at stealing or neutralizing divine effigies. It is true that according to the Aeneid, Ulysses and Diomedes had stolen the Palladium from Troy, thus depriving the city of its surest defence. But in this they had no followers.⁵⁴ Protective statues are absent from the literary history of Roman wars. In Roman archaeology we do find many examples of niches left in city gates, which today are usually thought to have been designed to enshrine statuettes of protective deities,⁵⁵ but it is not clear whether these statuettes were indeed considered to be objects endowed with power or mere representations of divine patrons. Nevertheless, the silence of the sources is a weak argument for the non-existence of the phenomenon, and Christopher Faraone is probably right in supposing that the scarcity of evidence of protective statues and other powerful objects in classical antiquity may result from a disdain Greek philosophy had long cultivated toward such devices. This disdain, widespread in the rationalizing historiography of Thucydidean tradition, does not necessarily reflect, however, what most people of the Mediterranean thought about talismans protecting communities.⁵⁶ More importantly, whatever the situation was in the classical era, late antique authors had no qualms of this sort and protective statues appear in ⁵² Pausanias, Graeciae descriptio 5.4.4. ⁵³ Kitzinger 1954, 110 (about pagan practices). ⁵⁴ Virgil, Aeneid 2.160–84. Evocatio could be accompanied by the transfer of the cult statue only after the capture of the city; see Basanoff 1947, 42–5 and 204. ⁵⁵ Faraone 1992, 8. ⁵⁶ Faraone 1992, 114.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Defenders of Cities

59

numerous instances in the literary evidence from this period. Admittedly, in some cases their crucial role could have been invented or overemphasized by religiously engaged writers. Still, the very fact that these authors found it important to mention such objects is symptomatic of the belief in their power. Late antique statues had diverse and specialized functions. Some of them protected the cities against natural disasters. In the fifth-century Quaestiones et responsiones of Pseudo-Justinus, we find the earliest explicit mention of talismans against the winds, storms, mice, and wild beasts, designed supposedly by the first-century Neopythagorean philosopher Apollonius of Tyana. It is interesting to note that talismans such as these are not mentioned by Philostratus, the early third-century author of the Life of Apollonius, and this suggests that they were invented at a later date.⁵⁷ According to Malalas, in the time of Constantine, Ploutarchos, the governor of Syria and a Christian, discovered in Antioch a bronze statue of Poseidon, which was a talisman (telesma) against earthquakes.⁵⁸ Malalas wrote at the beginning of the sixth century, but being an Antiochene he could draw his information from some reliable local tradition.⁵⁹ Writing in the same period, the historian Zosimus reported that in 375 the city of Athens was saved from an earthquake by the erection of a statue of Achilles dedicated by the theurgist Nestorius.⁶⁰ Other statues were destined to impede enemies invading the frontiers. According to Augustine, in 394 pagans hoped that Theodosius’ army, marching towards Italy from the East, would be stopped by some golden effigies of Jupiter which guarded the Alpine passes.⁶¹ Unfortunately, we do not know who erected them and whether they were set up immediately before the approach of the Theodosian army or much earlier. The early fifth-century pagan historian Olympiodorus says that Sicily avoided the invasion of Alaric’s Goths in 410 thanks to a sacred statue which protected it against fire from Etna and enemies from overseas, and that the island was ultimately captured only after the statue had been removed.⁶² The same author mentions effigies representing barbarian peoples buried on the border of Thrace which guarded the province from the attacks of barbarians. When these statues were dug up during the reign of Constantius III,⁶³ the Huns, Sarmatians, and Goths invaded the country.⁶⁴ Interestingly, there is also one other source mentioning the protection of this particular province by a statue buried within its limits, ⁵⁷ Quaestiones et responsiones ad orthodoxos 24. The anonymous author is identified either ash Diodorus of Tarsus or Theodoret of Cyrrhus. See Dulière 1970 and Dzielska 1986, 76 and 106–11. It is possible that Eusebius alluded to the talismans of Apollonius in Contra Hieroclem 40 when he mentioned ‘superstitious devices’ (periergous mechanas) known to his contemporaries and dedicated in the name of Apollonius. ⁵⁸ Malalas, Chronographia 13.3. ⁵⁹ See Downey 1935. ⁶⁰ Zosimus, Historia nova 4.18.1–4. ⁶¹ Augustine, De civitate Dei 5.26.31–6; see Y.-M. Duval 1996. ⁶² Olympiodorus, fr. 16. ⁶³ Gillet 1993, 10. ⁶⁴ Olympiodorus, fr. 27.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

60

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

namely an epigram known from the Greek Anthology: ‘inscribed on the base of [a statute of] Ares that lies buried in Thrace. It says that “as long as the fierce Ares here has been laid low upon the ground, the Gothic people shall never set foot upon Thrace”.’⁶⁵ The two episodes mentioned by Olympiodorus date from the first half of the fifth century, which means that they occurred in his day. Nevertheless, it is impossible to say when the statues began to be treated as apotropaic objects. The epigram mentioning Ares is certainly datable to Late Antiquity, because the Goths referred to in the inscription approached the Roman borders only in the third century.⁶⁶ The reappearance of sacred statues in literary sources is partly due to the interest in divine powerful objects, growing most notably among Neoplatonic philosophers since the times of Iamblichus.⁶⁷ This interest can be well illustrated by a short remark of the Emperor Julian. Writing in 355, he emphasizes that when the Gauls captured Rome, at the beginning of the fourth century BC, the citizens ‘occupied the hill on which stands the famous statue of Jupiter’ and the enemy did not dare to attack. The emphasis put on the role of the statue, which is absent from other ancient sources, suggests that Julian revised the well-known story of the Gallic siege in keeping with his Neoplatonic views.⁶⁸ Nevertheless, it is probable that we are dealing with something more than a mere intellectual novelty which caused the powerful statues of old to reappear in the evidence. In some cases the Neoplatonic belief did result in the erection of new statues, such as that mentioned by Zosimus. After all, people living in that period in various parts of the empire were probably ready both to seek new methods of protecting their cities and to return to the old ones. The lack of a biblical pattern for talismans protecting cities and the growing interest in such objects among ‘pagans’ at the end of the fourth century leads us to the question of whether and, if so, to what degree Christian beliefs and practices in this sphere were influenced by pagan customs.

H O W DI D I T W O R K ? In order to understand the relation between Christian and pagan beliefs in this sphere it is worth taking a closer look at the ways in which protective relics were supposed to work. Let us return to Paulinus. It is interesting to note that, ⁶⁵ Anthologia Graeca 9.805; see Faraone 1991, 169–70. ⁶⁶ It does not seem that the statue of Victory in the Roman curia was considered to be an apotropaic object, in spite of the fact that pagan senators strongly opposed its removal. It is rather the ritual that was considered to be essential for the safety of Rome, not the statue itself; see Lavan 2011, 445–7. ⁶⁷ Dodds 1947, 62–6. ⁶⁸ Julian, Laudatio Constantii 1.29.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Defenders of Cities

61

when writing about the protection guaranteed to Rome and Constantinople by the Apostles and to Nola by Felix, he never refers directly to their relics. Admittedly, in his opinion the saints succoured the cities where their bodies lay, but the connection between their graves and heavenly protection is not stressed and is rather indirect.⁶⁹ And this, for a few reasons, seems to have been a common view. First, there is no strict topographical correlation between the place where relics were kept and the territory protected by saints. The tomb of Felix was not in Nola itself, but in the place which later came to be known as Cimitile, a cemetery, about 2 kilometres away from the city which the saint was supposed to defend. Moreover, as we have seen, Paulinus believed that Felix, and other saints too, fought against the barbarians not only at the local level—they were also able to come to help in places far away from where their relics lay.⁷⁰ The same can be said about the protective miracles of St Thecla. Her sanctuary was located near Seleucia, not in Seleucia itself, which did not prevent her from defending this and other cities against pirates and brigands. It should also be noted that the general Sabinianus and the Emperor Theodosius I, who sought the assistance of saints before setting out for war, did not take any relics with them. Secondly, the authors who evoked the protective power of saints did not pay any special attention to their relics on such occasions. Nor did they present saints’ graves as sources of miraculous power capable of surrounding the city with invisible walls. In Paulinus’ poems the protective role of saints consisted in their interceding with God on behalf of cities. In the Miracles of St Thecla, the saint is usually presented as protecting the city directly, fighting in person against the enemy, but in both cases, directly or not, it was the saints who defended the cities—not their physical remains. It is worth noting that in Seleucia, and later in Thessalonica, the most famous example of a saintprotected city (during the Slavic invasions), the very presence of relics was disputable at best. Neither did Seleucia have the body of St Thecla nor Thessalonica that of St Demetrius.⁷¹ Admittedly, we do observe certain efforts to discover or produce their relics, or prove that they had always been in place, but it does not imply that people actually thought that the protective power derived from their presence. The relics do not play any role at all in the accounts of St Thecla’s and St Demetrius’ interventions in defence of the cities.⁷² Arguably, it was rather the belief in the presence of relics that resulted from the experience of being protected by saints than vice versa. Moreover, ⁶⁹ Paulinus of Nola, Carmen 26 (Nat. 8; AD 402); 19 (Nat. 11; AD 405). 329–41; 21 (Nat. 13; 407). 25–36. ⁷⁰ Paulinus of Nola, Carmen 21 (Nat. 13; AD 407).1–36. ⁷¹ For the relics of Demetrius, see Skedros 1999, 57–9, Woods 2000, and Bakirtzis 2002; for Thecla, see Davis 2001. ⁷² See Lemerle 1979–81.

AD

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

62

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

there were other methods of bringing saints’ attention to a besieged city: let us recall the stone thrower in Theodosiopolis named after Thomas the Apostle. The actual possession of relics was not necessary. Thirdly, unlike the aforementioned sacred statues located on the borders of Sicily, Thrace, or Italy in order to guard straits, passes, and frontiers, the saints protected peoples and communities rather than thoroughfares and territories. They did not play the role of talismans but that of patrons. Certainly, the notion that the saints do not need their bodily remains in order to act wherever they wish is perfectly correct from the theological point of view; the same refers to healing miracles as well. But in the latter case, such an opinion was rather a result of developments which took place at a later date, following doctrinal reflection on the cult of saints. It is unquestionable that the earliest healing miracles occurred at the tombs of martyrs. And even if at the end of the sixth century Gregory the Great was at pains to convince his readers that martyrs performed more miracles in places which did not possess their relics,⁷³ the common opinion must have been exactly the opposite. It seems that while the belief in the power of exorcisms and healing miracles traces its origin mostly from an experience of direct contact with relics, the belief in their protective power derives from reflection on the role of the saints as intercessors and helpers in all spheres of human life, or (to use a technical term) as patrons. The idea of the patronus in the late antique cult of saints has been widely discussed in scholarship.⁷⁴ It seems to be of particular importance for the belief in the saints’ protection over cities. In Latin literature, the term ‘patronus’ appears in reference to the saints only at the end of the fourth century, and only in a few authors. Maximus of Turin, Gaudentius of Brescia, and Jerome,⁷⁵ all of whom are important witnesses of the development of the cult of relics, did not use that term, and, interestingly, as we have seen, none of them mentions protection provided by saints to cities. It was only Paulinus of Nola who began to use the term patronus regularly with reference to St Felix. It occurs about forty times in his poems and letters, which is a substantial number even considering the fact that he wrote a lot about saints. It is tempting, therefore, to presume that the use of the term ‘patronus’ and the belief in the protective power of saints were connected. That connection, however, should not be overstressed. What is essential is not the word itself, but the way of thinking about the saints as protectors and intercessors. Victricius, for instance, never calls the saints patroni, but refers to them as judges, advocates, brothers in arms, and powers (iudices, advocati, commilitones, and potestates).⁷⁶ His view of the connection between the city and the ⁷³ See Gregory the Great, Dialogi 2.38. ⁷⁴ Above all by Brown 1981 and Orselli 1965. ⁷⁵ Also Augustine used it in this sense extremely rarely: De cura pro mortuis 6. ⁷⁶ Victricius, De laude sanctorum 12.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Defenders of Cities

63

saints whose relics it possessed seems to have been very similar to that of Paulinus. In Greek, there is no equivalent term which could convey exactly the same meaning as patronus. John Chrysostom and Asterius of Amasea, both contemporary with Paulinus and Victricius, refer to martyrs as prostatai (leaders, the closest equivalent of patroni); Theodoret, as poliouchoi (protecting the city) and phylakes (guards); the author of the Miracles of Saint Thecla considers the saints presbeuontes (envoys) and addresses Thecla as the promachos, poliouchos (the fighter for and protector), and mētēr (mother) of Seleucia.⁷⁷ It is true that only some of these authors evoke the power of saints in cases of a military threat, but, as we have already seen, it seems to be a result of the relatively safe political and military situation in which most of them wrote. It is also the political and military context that is the main reason why Ambrose, who did refer to the saints as the patroni of the Church in Milan, did not mention their protective role, for when he was writing about martyrs, the cities of Italy were safe and secure.⁷⁸ The idea of patron saints and the perception of the link between relics and the protection of the city as indirect may make one think of the relationship between Greek heroes and their bones. As we have seen, they were considered not so much a source of protective power by themselves as a guarantee of the hero’s presence. This leads us back to the relations between Christian beliefs and centuries-old Greek practices. The cult of heroes was not entirely dead in Late Antiquity. Sarpedonios, a local hero whose tomb was venerated in Seleucia in Isauria, is mentioned several times in the Miracles of St Thecla, and the narrative suggests that the new saint took over the healing functions performed previously by the hero of old.⁷⁹ I have already mentioned the remark of Zosimus about a statue of Achilles that saved Athens from an earthquake in 375. As we learn from the same author, the appearance of Achilles and Athena was believed to have stopped the Gothic troops led by Alaric from taking that city in 395.⁸⁰ Finally, at the end of the fourth century, Servius claims that the Roman pignora, or sacred and powerful objects which protected the city, included the ashes of Orestes.⁸¹ Still, we need to be cautious about making far-reaching extrapolations based on this evidence. First, the survival of the cult of heroes in Late Antiquity is poorly documented; in fact, all sources on this topic put together do not stand comparison with those available for the study of the cult of saints. Secondly, the cult of heroes was, at best, a marginal phenomenon in the West, where the idea of saint protectors appeared at an early date. Thus, if a direct borrowing is not impossible, in most

⁷⁷ Miracula Theclae 4.39–40 and 6.2–3. ⁷⁸ Ambrose, Epistula 77.11 and Expositio evangelii secundum Lucam 10.12; also Prudentius, Peristephanon 1.10–12; 2.577–80; 6.142–5; 10.831–5; 13.105–6; see Palmer 1989, 222–3. ⁷⁹ Miracula Theclae 1, 11.10–23, 18.28–32, 40. ⁸⁰ Zosimus, Historia nova 5.6.1–3. ⁸¹ Servius, In Aeneidos 7.188; see Ando 2008, 182–3.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

64

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

cases we are probably dealing with a parallel and largely independent development. In all, the belief in the help of saint protectors should be distinguished from the belief in the effectiveness of talisman-like objects. However, it would be simplistic to make a clear-cut distinction between the late antique pagan statues or talismans on the one hand, supposed to create impassable barriers against enemies, wild beasts, natural disasters, and plagues, and the Christian saints on the other, who cared for their cities, regardless of whether their relics were kept there or not. In fact, pagans and Christians alike believed in both the help of supernatural defenders, only tangentially related to material objects, and the power of talismans. Interestingly, Christians also had their cityprotecting talismans, and, even more interestingly, these talismans seem to have appeared earlier than city-protecting relics. Although these objects are not directly related to the cult of saints, they must be discussed in this chapter.

CHRISTIAN TALISMANS AND TALISMAN-LIKE OBJECTS The earliest Christian object known to us which was believed to be a powerful protection against the onslaught of enemies was the famous letter of Christ to King Abgar, enshrined in Edessa. The letter was mentioned already at the beginning of the fourth century by Eusebius of Caesarea, who devoted a substantial passage to the correspondence of Jesus with Abgar, but did not suggest in any way that the letter defended the city.⁸² About 384, however, the pilgrim Egeria heard from the local bishop the story of a Persian siege of Edessa which had taken place in the days of King Abgar. The enemy failed to capture the city thanks to the presence of Christ’s letter. When the Persian troops approached, the king, holding the letter in his hand, prayed with his army at the city gate and called on Christ’s promise that no enemy would ever enter Edessa. Suddenly, darkness fell and made the Persians stop at the third milestone from the city walls. As we can see, at the time when Egeria visited Edessa, the letter did contain the promise that the city would never be taken. This promise is absent from the earlier version of the letter quoted by Eusebius. Also, Egeria remarked that she had read a version of this letter in her native land and it differed from the one shown to her in Edessa. It is probable that the difference consisted in the promise of security, which must have been added to the text only after the time of Eusebius.⁸³ If that was the case, we are dealing here with a reinterpretation of history resulting from the ⁸² Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 1.13.

⁸³ Egeria, Itinerarium 19.8–13.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Defenders of Cities

65

emergence, or growth, of the belief in the protective power of certain sacred objects—a phenomenon resembling the episode of the statue of Jupiter and the defence of the Capitol. The letter of Jesus played the same role as the statues described by Olympiodorus—its very presence created an impenetrable barrier around the city. The letter of Jesus to Abgar is the only Christian palladium-like object mentioned by a fourth-century source. Later authors, however, bear testimony to a group of such talismans supposedly enshrined by Constantine in his new capital. The provenance of some of them was undeniably Christian, while others were evidently of pagan origin, but since their literary histories are closely intertwined, they should be discussed together. The objects in question are the Palladium of Troy, the fragments of the True Cross, and the relics of the Apostles Andrew, Luke, and Timothy. A distinct group is formed by Marian relics whose transfer to Constantinople is attributed not to Constantine, but to several fifth-century emperors.⁸⁴ The first authors to mention the Palladium, the protective sacred object par excellence, are Procopius and John Malalas, both writing around the middle of the sixth century, followed by the seventh-century anonymous author of the Chronicon Paschale.⁸⁵ All three claim that Constantine transferred the Palladium from Rome and placed it in Constantinople, beneath the porphyry column on which his own statue was set up. Only Procopius specifies the source of his information and contends that he learned about this from Byzantinoi, that is the inhabitants of the new capital. This piece of information is not trustworthy. It is true that Constantine brought to his city a number of statues from all over the empire.⁸⁶ It is also true that he had a porphyry column erected in his forum which was one of the most important landmarks in the topography of the city from its dedication in 330.⁸⁷ Nevertheless, before the sixth century no source mentions the presence of the Palladium in Constantinople or its removal from Rome. Moreover, Procopius did not know of such a source either, for the only evidence he was able to offer was based on hearsay. The remark about the transfer of the precious statuette should therefore be rejected as spurious: the idea that it was placed inside the column appeared most probably only in the sixth century, although its origin is difficult to determine. All we can say is that in Procopius’ time the story of the transfer of the Palladium circulated by word of mouth in Constantinople, and while it suggests that people were convinced at the time of its protective power, it does not tell us much about fourth- or fifth-century beliefs.⁸⁸ ⁸⁴ Wortley 2005. ⁸⁵ Procopius, Bellum Gothicum 1.15; Malalas, Chronographia 13.7; Chronicon Paschale s.a. 328. ⁸⁶ Eusebius, Vita Constantini 3.54.3–7; Mango 1963; Dagron 1974, 139–40. ⁸⁷ Dagron 1974, 37–40. ⁸⁸ Dagron 1974, 373–4 draws attention to a passage in Zosimus, Historia nova 2.31.2–3, mentioning the temple and statue of Tyche of Rome erected by Constantine in the new capital.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

66

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

Another sacred and protective object is mentioned in the 440s by the church historian Socrates, who claims that in the very statue of Constantine placed on the top of the porphyry column discussed above a fragment of the True Cross was enshrined.⁸⁹ The first author to mention that Constantine received a piece of this relic is Rufinus, who writes that Helena ‘brought a part of the salutary wood to her son’, but does not specify where the relic was deposited.⁹⁰ Also two other church historians, Sozomen and Theodoret of Cyrrhus, both writing not much later than Socrates, mention a fragment of the Cross brought to Constantinople, but the former does not specify the precise place of its deposition, while the latter claims that it was kept in the imperial palace.⁹¹ None of the four historians directly attributes the power of protecting the city to the Cross, but Rufinus and Socrates evoke in the adjacent passages the nails of Christ which were fastened in the helmet of Constantine, apparently in order to protect him. It seems then that both authors credited the fragments of the Cross with similar power. Moreover, Socrates, in his version of the story of the sudden God-sent death of Arius, says that the heretic felt suddenly ill when ‘he came near to the Forum of Constantine, in which the porphyry column stands’,⁹² which suggests that the historian considered the column to be an object endowed with power. Interestingly, another church historian, Philostorgius, who wrote about a decade earlier than Socrates and slightly later than Rufinus, ascribed protective power not to the fragment of the Cross, but to the very statue of the emperor. This part of Philostorgius’ history is known from the summary made by the eighth-century patriarch Photius, who presents it in the following way: Our impious enemy of God [Philostorgius was an Arian] also accuses the Christians of propitiating with sacrifice the image of Constantine standing on the porphyry column, of honouring it with lights and incense, of offering vows to it as though it were a god, and of offering prayers and intercession to avert impending disasters.⁹³

According to Philostorgius, the statue was thus evidently a talisman, but nothing indicates that any special object was placed inside. Considering that the discovery of the Cross by Helena is almost certainly fabricated,⁹⁴ it seems sensible to conclude that Philostorgius was right and that initially the power

I cannot assess whether this fact gave rise to the story of the transfer of the Palladium. See also Ando 2008, 187–9. ⁸⁹ Socrates, Historia ecclesiastica 1.17.8. For discussion and review of the entire evidence, see Klein 2004a, 33–9. ⁹⁰ Rufinus, Historia ecclesiastica 10.8. ⁹¹ Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 2.1.9; Theodoret, Historia ecclesiastica 1.18.6. ⁹² Socrates, Historia ecclesiastica 1.38.7. ⁹³ Philostorgius, Historia ecclesiastica 2.17 (trans. Ph. Amidon). ⁹⁴ See pp. 114–16.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Defenders of Cities

67

was attributed to the effigy of the city’s founder, not anything within it.⁹⁵ The talisman was Christianized later, when it was connected with a piece of the ‘salutary wood’. The story about placing a fragment of the Cross in the statue is probably of local origin. It circulated in Constantinople around 440, when Socrates heard it. It was obviously unknown to Rufinus and Philostorgius, and had not yet reached Theodoret, who, though a contemporary of Sozomen, lived in Syria. It is more than probable that actually neither Constantine nor his successors ever placed any fragments of the True Cross in the statue, for such an important event would have left a trace in the sources. But in the middle of the fifth century people already believed that the relic was there and guarded the city.⁹⁶ The fact that the authors named above located the protective objects either in the column or in the statue suggests that there was no firmly established opinion concerning the place of their deposition. Medieval authors usually claim that several relics were stored in the column. But the column, including its base, has survived to the present day and it does not have any room or niche in which the relics could have been kept. Thus a chapel in which relics were deposited was not a integral part of the column’s design; possibly it was built close to it only in a later period.⁹⁷ Another place, whose role as a centre of special power in fourth-century Constantinople should be discussed, is the imperial complex of Constantine’s Mausoleum and the Church of the Holy Apostles. There is nothing to suggest that they were considered powerful objects before the end of the fourth century. The question is whether they were believed to have a protective function at a slightly later date. Such a belief is expressed by a single author, Paulinus of Nola, who claims that: Indeed, when Constantine was founding the city named after himself and was the first of the Roman kings to bear the Christian name, the god-sent idea came to him that since he was embarking on the splendid enterprise of building a city that would rival Rome, he should also emulate Romulus’ city with further endowment, by gladly defending his walls with the bodies of the Apostles. He then removed Andrew from the Achaeans and Timothy from Asia. And so Constantinople now stands with twin towers, vying with the eminence of great Rome, or rather resembling the defences of Rome; in that God has counterbalanced Peter and Paul with a protection as great, since Constantinople has gained the disciple of Paul, and brother of Peter.⁹⁸

These verses hardly tell us anything about the actual intention of the emperor, or emperors, who ordered these two translations. It is also highly doubtful that ⁹⁵ Later on a similar part was played by the giant equestrian statue of Justinian: Raby 1987. ⁹⁶ Although the first specific mention of its role in the defence concerns only the Arab siege in 711: Klein 2004a. ⁹⁷ Majeska 1984, 260–3. ⁹⁸ Paulinus of Nola, Carmen 19.329–42 (written in 405; trans. P. G. Walsh).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

68

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

they reflect beliefs of people living in Constantinople at the beginning of the fifth century. Paulinus never visited that city, but, as we have seen, believed that Nola was protected by Felix, and Rome by Peter, Paul, and a host of other martyrs. Thus, it was probably his own idea that the relics of other Apostles, believed to be present in several places in the West, and particularly in the Italian city of Fundi, where Paulinus himself had deposited Andrew’s ‘ashes’ (cineres),⁹⁹ should have played the same role in Constantinople. No other late antique author bears witness to this conviction. It is difficult to estimate how important the Apostles’ relics were for the inhabitants of Constantinople in this period. It is intriguing that, while evoked by numerous Western authors, their relics are not mentioned in the Greek sources, with the sole exception of Gregory of Nazianzus.¹⁰⁰ None of the ancient church historians tells us anything about their transfers, and by the middle of the sixth century the relics of the Apostles seem to have been forgotten. Procopius suggests that in the time of Justinian the specific place of their deposition was unknown; they were rediscovered by surprised workers only during the reconstruction of the Holy Apostles’ church.¹⁰¹ Both the silence of the Greek writers and the amazement of the builders would be difficult to explain if the Apostles’ bodies had been treated beforehand as a guarantee of the city’s security. Of course, the relics could not have been discovered if actually no one knew about their existence, but they could hardly have been considered to be essential, or even important, for the security of Constantinople. In a later period the best-known holy objects which protected Constantinople were the Marian relics, but they started to play this role well beyond the chronological limits of this book. True, the garments of the Holy Virgin Mary were brought to the city already in the fifth century, during the reign of Arcadius or Leo I, but the dependable evidence that they were indeed considered to protect the capital comes only from the tenth century. The earliest sources which refer to Mary as bringing help to Constantinople against enemies are the seventh-century epigram of George Pisides and the Chronicon Paschale. They both claim that, during the siege of 626, the Avars were frightened by the apparition of the Virgin on the walls. Neither of these sources, however, mentions any specific object protecting the city.¹⁰² In all, the only sacred objects which guaranteed the security of the city in the chronological scope of this book were, first, the statue and column of Constantine, the fragment of the Cross, and finally the Palladium, supposedly ⁹⁹ Paulinus of Nola, Epistula 32.17. ¹⁰⁰ Gregory of Nazianzus, Contra Iulianum I 69 mentions relics but not the place where they are deposited. ¹⁰¹ Procopius, De aedificiis 1.4.18–21. ¹⁰² George Pisides: Anthologia Graeca 1.120–1; Chronicon Paschale s.a. 626; see Pentcheva 2006, 37–59. According to late ninth-century authors, the icon of Hodogetria was carried along the rampart during the siege of 717, but this is very uncertain: see Wortley 2005, 173 and 183.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Defenders of Cities

69

enshrined beneath the column. It is difficult to determine when exactly the conviction of the protective power of the statue appeared for the first time, but it happened probably not long before Philostorgius, as there is no evidence that such a belief manifested itself during two dramatic events in which Constantinople was believed to be saved only thanks to an intervention from above, namely the catastrophe of Adrianople in 378 and the revolt of the Gothic troops of Gainas in 399. None of the authors who describe the approach of the Goths to the city in 378 suggests that it was protected by the statue, the Cross, or the Palladium, although Ammianus, a pagan, suggests an supernatural help when he evokes some caeleste numen which repulsed the invaders.¹⁰³ Nor is the salvation of the city and the imperial palace from being burnt by the Goths in 399 associated with the power of the statue. Fifthcentury church historians attributed it to the apparition of an angelic host.¹⁰⁴ To sum up, while Constantinople was considered a city defended by a heavenly power already at the end of the fourth century, during the Gothic invasion and the revolt of Gainas, the material guarantee of this protection appears in the evidence only slightly later, at the beginning of the fifth century, first as Constantine’s statue, then as the fragment of the True Cross deposited in it, and, much later, in the sixth century, as the Palladium, enshrined in the very same column. There is no proof that the relics of the Apostles ever played such a role.

¹⁰³ Ammianus, Res gestae 31.16.4. ¹⁰⁴ Philostorgius, Historia ecclesiastica 11.8; Socrates, Historia ecclesiastica 6.6.18; Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 8.4.10–18. None of the authors suggests that the city was protected by any divine power against Alaric in 395; see Claudian, In Rufinum 2.54–8, although Zosimus, Historia nova 5.6.1–3, ascribes the salvation of Athens attacked by the Goths to the apparition of Athena Promachos in a ‘statue-like’ shape.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

4 Relics and Divination The late antique authors who tell us about the power of relics refer mostly to their efficient use in healing, chasing away demons, and protecting communities or individuals. Yet there was also one other intriguing aspect of this power, which consisted in revealing hidden knowledge about the past, present, and future. This particular aspect appears in the evidence only rarely, which does not necessarily mean that it was marginal or unimportant. In 364, in his invective against Julian, Gregory of Nazianzus addressed the deceased emperor in the following words: Did you have no respect for the victims slain for Christ’s sake? Did you not fear those mighty champions, that John, Peter, Paul, James, Stephen, Luke, Andrew, and Thecla? And those who after them and before them faced danger in the cause of Truth, and who joyfully faced fire, sword, wild beasts, tyrants, and evils both real and threatening to come, as though they were in the bodies of others, or rather bodiless! And what for? In order that they might not betray the true faith, even by word. Theirs are the great honours and festivals. By them demons are cast out and diseases healed. Theirs are manifestations (epiphaneiai), and theirs are prophecies (prorēseis). Their mere bodies can do the same things as their holy souls, when touched or venerated. Even drops of their blood and little signs of their passion, produce equal effect with their bodies!¹

This passage is probably the earliest testimony to the belief in some sort of prophetic or divinatory power of relics, and one has to ask whether Gregory had in mind just a theoretical possibility or an actual custom already practised in specific places.² At first sight, the list of the saints quoted in this passage suggests the latter. By the year 364, the graves of John the Baptist, John the Evangelist, Peter, Paul, James, Luke, Andrew, and, up to a point, Thecla had been identified and were widely known; some of them had already become

¹ Gregory of Nazianzus, Contra Iulianum I 69 (trans. E. Rizos, CSLA E01904). ² See also Gregory of Nazianzus, In sanctum Cyprianum 18 (on the divinatory power of St Cyprian’s relics).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Relics and Divination

71

famous for their miracles.³ Thus, one could think that Gregory simply named the most famous centres of martyrial cult of his time. Yet on the list there is also a name which should not be there: the grave of Stephen the First Martyr was discovered only fifty years later, in 415.⁴ It is possible, therefore, that just as Gregory added to the list of martyrs’ tombs one which had not been found yet, but was potentially very important, so he placed among the manifestations of the power of these graves one which in fact did not exist yet, but perfectly fitted into the New Testament pattern of a miracle-worker able to expel demons, heal the sick, and foretell the future. Thus, this passage does not prove that relics were actually used in divination, but it can be understood as an intellectual acknowledgement that they have power to predict the future. When did Christians begin practising this sort of divination? What forms did it take and what were their origins? How strongly were Christian oracular practices linked to the cult of relics? These are the questions which will be addressed in this chapter. Before getting down to specific divinatory practices connected with relics, it should be noted that such methods are difficult to observe in the evidence. This does not mean that the phenomenon in question was negligible, but results from the general attitude of ancient Christianity towards divination. In the literary sources, religious practices normally appear either when they are praised or when they are condemned. Now, ecclesiastical authors, who always fervently denounced pagan divination, were usually much more moderate as far as its Christian forms were concerned. They were reluctant to approve or institutionalize them, but they rarely censured them either. In consequence, they seldom wrote about them at all.

ENFORCED CONFESSIONS Ancient divination was not limited to prognosticating on the future. It also served to uncover the present and the past which for some reason was unknown to other people. Of course, it was often difficult to differentiate between these three types of hidden knowledge. For instance, one could ask a question such as this: ‘Will I get back the money which has been stolen from me?’, which clearly refers to the future. But the same person could put this question in a different way: ‘Where is my money now?’ (present) or ‘Who stole my money?’ (past). I propose to focus first on this last aspect of Christian

³ For these tombs and the evidence which mentions them, see Maraval 1985, passim; see also Chapter 2. ⁴ For the Revelatio s. Stephani and the dating of this discovery, see pp. 104–7.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

72

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

divination, namely revealing the truth about things that have already happened. In 404 Augustine had to settle a case of two clerics who accused each other of sexual misconduct. He did it in the following way: Hence, I chose a middle path, namely, that both of them should bind themselves by a firm agreement to go to a holy place where the awesome acts of God might more readily disclose the bad conscience of anyone and might compel him to confession because of fear of punishment . . . For the holiness of the place where Blessed Felix of Nola’s body is buried, where I wanted them to go, is very well known to many. For whatever God made manifest there about one of them could more easily and more faithfully be recorded for us.⁵

Augustine does not explain with any precision what made the guilty confess the truth in this specific place or how the power of the saint manifested itself. We may only suppose that the suspects were brought to the tomb and their behaviour was attentively observed. Such a method could have been efficient only in a milieu in which the conviction of the power of relics was already strong enough to make the suspects fear what would befall them if they lied. That was most probably the case of St Felix’s tomb. We know also of other people who came to his sanctuary in order to avow their crimes, not necessarily because they had been forced to do so by others, but because they had already felt the punishing power of the saint. Paulinus of Nola tells us about a greedy man, who, fulfilling his vow, brought a pig to the shrine, but kept most of the meat for himself. Thus, when later on he fell from his horse, he immediately realized why it had happened, turned back, and hurried to the shrine to confess his sin. Even more interestingly, Paulinus mentions people who expected that crimes committed by other people, not by themselves, would be revealed by St Felix. A guard of the sanctuary once implored the saint to point out who had stolen a precious cross from the shrine in Cimitile and a peasant asked him to find his ox.⁶ Epigraphical evidence shows that praying for the discovery and punishment of the guilty was also practised in certain non-Christian shrines. This phenomenon is attested by lead tablets asking a god to reveal the wrongdoer which can be found in sanctuaries in Britain, the so-called ‘confessional inscriptions’ from temples in Lydia and Phrygia, and prayers asking gods to reveal the identity of various culprits known from several region of the Roman world.⁷ Christians apparently did not imitate specific techniques used in pagan sanctuaries and so the practice attested in martyrs’ shrines probably developed independently. But it was based on the same conviction, namely that the ⁵ Augustine, Epistula 78.3 (trans. R. Teske, slightly adapted). ⁶ Paulinus of Nola, Carmen 18.219–468 (ox), 20.62–300 (pig), and 19.468–603 (cross). ⁷ See Versnel 1991; Schnabel 2003; Gordon 2004; Adams 2006; and Chaniotis 2007.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Relics and Divination

73

power dwelling in the sanctuary will punish the guilty and the perjurer if he does not avow his sin. Among Christians this conviction was founded upon the belief in the power of relics, which started to develop in the newly built martyria in the middle of the fourth century. As the rise of this phenomenon was described in Chapter 2, here I shall only emphasize that initially the power of relics did not manifest itself in exorcisms, to say nothing of physical healings. It was seen in the ‘confessions’ made by evil spirits by the mouths of demoniacs. And we are dealing here with a belief which was most probably founded upon observation of the actual behaviour of people considered to be possessed by evil spirits. Hilary of Poitiers, Athanasius, and shortly after other authors as well bear witness to the conviction that the relics of saints are able to force demons to tell the truth. It was not a stretch to assume that they could do the same with people.⁸ That might well have been the beginning of the belief in the divinatory power of the tombs of saints.

DEMO NS UNDER I NTERROGATIO N It was difficult to expect from people anything other than a confession of their wrongdoings, but one could reasonably hope to learn more from demons, who, as was commonly believed, knew a lot about the past, the present, and, even more interestingly, the future. In Late Antiquity some Christians tried to make use of this knowledge, even if they themselves knew that this was difficult for at least two reasons. First, it was morally questionable, secondly it was hazardous, because demons were notorious liars, and, as a result, eliciting any sort of information from them was viewed as both sinful and silly. However, it was possible to compel demons to reveal what they knew. The scenes in which demons, tortured by the saints, disclose their identity, avow their crimes, but also inform about diverse events are quite common in hagiographical literature.⁹ These avowals were obtained through the mouths of energumens (people possessed by demons), owing to the power of the holy monks and bishops who exorcized evil spirits. But also ordinary people resorted at times to the knowledge of demons by using a practice which consisted in interrogating energumens at a source of miraculous power. The role of the source of power was obviously played by relics. We do not know with any precision what such consultations looked like, but it was probably

⁸ See Chapter 2. ⁹ See Sulpicius Severus, Vita Martini 18.1–2; Constantius, Vita Germani 7; Vita patrum Jurensium 42; Theodoret, Historia religiosa 9.9–10; 13.10–12; Vita Danielis Stylitae 59.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

74

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

not difficult to organize them, for, as has already been said, in the late antique martyrial shrines energumens were easy to find and often willing to talk.¹⁰ The earliest testimony of such consultations can be found in Athanasius’ Festal Letter 42, written in 370. It stigmatizes this practice in the following words: When they say that many people who had unclean spirits have been healed in the martyr shrines, these are their excuses. Let them listen, and I will answer them by saying that they are not healed by the martyrs coming upon the demons, but they are healed by the Saviour, the one whom the martyrs confessed. And the demons cry out because they are being tortured by him, just as those in the gospel cried saying: ‘I beg you, do not torture us!’ But they seek to see the demons that are destroying them. These people give glory to them and ask them about what will happen. After these words will they dare to question the unclean spirits? Yes, they will dare, for they are shameless lovers of pleasure.¹¹

The text is not entirely clear, and at first sight it is difficult to say whether questions were asked of saints or demons. Some light on this can be shed, however, by a story from the sixth-century collection of the Miracles of St Demetrius. The story in question is about a man who, eager to learn who St Demetrius was, ‘went to the martyrium of St Isidore to ask this saint that he would reveal him the truth’.¹² The saint satisfied his curiosity, for ‘the energumens who abided in the sanctuary and through whom the demons who were in them spoke—against their will and under the strain of the power from above—revealed him the truth’. As we can see, the method required the presence of both demons (in the energumens) and martyrs (in their relics). The former had the knowledge; the latter, the power necessary to extract it. The testimonies of this practice are scattered through time and space. The possessed who answer divinatory questions are referred to as pythōnes, engastrimythoi, or ventriloqui (belly-talkers), and simply arrepticii (possessed). They appear in fifth-century Africa and Gaul.¹³ In the seventh-century collection of the Miracles of St Artemios we find a story, set in Constantinople, about a man whose house was robbed when he was away keeping the vigil of St John the Baptist. His neighbours claimed that they had not heard anything suspicious, but advised him to go to the shrine of St Pantaleon in Rouphinianai, ‘saying that someone there was dispensing information who would tell him the burglar. For it happened at that time that there were a very large number of possessed in many churches.’¹⁴ All this suggests that the phenomenon, if noted seldom in the evidence for the reasons given above, was not uncommon. The passage in Athanasius’ festal letter implies that it appeared early and was

¹⁰ On this method, see Wiśniewski 2005. ¹¹ Athanasius, Epistula festalis 42. ¹² Miracula S. Demetrii 9/76. ¹³ See Wiśniewski 2005, 135–44. ¹⁴ Miracula S. Artemii 18 (trans. V. S. Crisafulli).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Relics and Divination

75

important enough to be mentioned in one of the annual missives for Easter from the bishop of Alexandria addressed to all the Christians in Egypt.

THROWING LOTS AT THE TOMBS OF SAINTS The evidence from Egypt bears witness also to another divinatory practice, namely a type of divination by lot. It usually consisted in writing down the same question on two tickets, or scraps of papyrus, one with ‘yes’ and the other with ‘no’. The questions concerned diverse spheres of life: travel, marriage, monastic life, business, health. They followed a more or less fixed pattern, which can be illustrated by an oracular ticket from Antinoe: ‘God of my Lord, saint Kollouthos, the true physician, if you command that your servant Rouphinos go today to the bath, bring this ticket.’¹⁵ Both scraps were rolled up into a ball. As no literary sources from Egypt describe this practice, we do not know how and where the lots were drawn and may only conjecture that it was done at the altar or at the tomb of a saint. The archaeological context in which the lots were discovered is not particularly helpful, since all the tickets come from waste dumps adjacent to sanctuaries. We have several hundred of them (of which only a few dozen have been published), coming mostly from the churches of St Kollouthos in Antinoe and St Philoxenos in Oxyrhynchus.¹⁶ The purpose of this practice was of course not to find out the answer at random, but to receive it from God. As was the case with consulting energumens, the problem was how to be sure that His power was really involved. One way of securing this was to start the question with an invocation. Those who used this method usually invoked ‘God of St Kollouthos’ or ‘God of St Philoxenos’. A mediation of the saint was evidently needed, but this was probably not enough. The fact that the lots have been found in sanctuaries proves that the consultation had to be carried out in a place where the presence of the saint was at its most intense, which probably usually meant close to his bones: St Kollouthos’ grave was certainly in Antinoe. It is less certain whether the sanctuary in Oxyrhynchus contained the tomb of St Philoxenos,¹⁷ but evidence from outside Egypt suggests that the procedure actually took place in close proximity to relics. Gregory of Tours, the only literary witness of a similar practice, tells us about a monk who wanted to know whether it would be better for him to live in a community or in a hermitage, and after a long prayer drew one of two lots that he had placed on ¹⁵ This papyrus was edited by Delattre 2008, who is preparing a substantial study on the divinatory tickets from Egyptian martyrs’ shrines. ¹⁶ Papini 1992. ¹⁷ Papaconstantinou 2001, 286 and 295–6.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

76

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

the altar.¹⁸ At the end of the sixth century, the altar almost certainly contained relics. Also, the eighth-century Law Code of the Frisians ordered that the guilt or innocence of a man suspected of murder was to be established by drawing lots at an altar or relics.¹⁹ It does not seem probable that there was a genetic link between these practices and those attested in Egypt. We are dealing here with a parallel conviction that lots could be trusted only if a divine hand was involved in the process: in order to make sure that it was involved, one had to carry out the consultation in a place which guaranteed its presence.²⁰ When and how did oracular tickets begin to be used by Christians? When trying to answer this question, one has to bear in mind that in Egypt this method had well-known parallels in pharaonic, Hellenistic, and Roman times.²¹ It is not evident, however, that its Christian form was borrowed directly from pagan shrines. First, the fact that divinatory tickets were used in distant places and periods demonstrates that the idea of divination by lot could have emerged independently. Secondly, there is a disturbing gap between the latest pre-Christian lots (dated to the third century) and the earliest tickets found in martyrs’ shrines (sixth century). Of course, this gap does not necessarily mean that the practice was abandoned at some point only to be resurrected later on; it may simply reflect the fragmentary character of our evidence. Nevertheless, the gap is intriguing. Be that as it may, it is hardly possible that Christians started to use oracular lots before the second half of the fourth century. The main reason for this is that the evidence quoted above shows that ticket divination required holy places or objects, and before the fourth-century emergence of the idea of the Holy Land and the belief in the power of relics, Christians had neither.

INCUBATION The best-attested late antique Christian divinatory practice was certainly that of incubation, or waiting for a healing or divinatory dream in a holy place. Recently Gil H. Renberg argued that the word ‘incubation’, absent from the late antique evidence, is somehow misleadingly used in scholarship in reference to a set of diverse Christian practices (or isolated episodes) which are not connected genetically with traditional Greek habit and often significantly ¹⁸ Gregory of Tours, Liber vitae patrum 9.2; see also Historiarum libri 4.16. ¹⁹ Lex Frisonum 14.1; see Papaconstantinou 1994. ²⁰ I am not as convinced as Modzelewski 2015, 325, that the Lex Frisonum reflects the same old German custom which was mentioned by Tacitus, Germania 10, and not a new Christian practice, but this could be the case: see the evidence collected by Wood 1995, 60. ²¹ D. Valbelle & G. Husson 1998; Champeaux 1990.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Relics and Divination

77

differ from it.²² I will use the term, because it conveniently covers these diverse practices, but I fully agree that it should be neither understood in a strictly technical sense nor taken as a sign of a direct continuation of the practice known from old Greek temples. Admittedly, dealing with incubation in this chapter requires some explanation, as our evidence for sleeping in shrines puts emphasis on its healing aspect. Still, in Antiquity incubation was also qualified as a divinatory method. Servius, in his fourth-century Commentary on the Aeneid, claims that ‘strictly speaking, “to incubate” means “to sleep in order to obtain answers”’.²³ Most often, people looked for answers concerning health issues, but this method was used also to ask questions about other matters. Nevertheless, it is probably owing to the fact that the main purpose of incubation was healing and not divination that this practice is frequently mentioned in a specific kind of hagiographical literature, the collections of miracles. Divination, even if not directly at odds with the rules of Christian piety, was a thorny issue for most ecclesiastical writers, for they thought that a Christian should never inquire into hidden things.²⁴ Looking for a healing, however, was not viewed as problematic at all, and this particular sort of divination is a matter discussed with undisguised delight by several authors. That is why we can study today several collections of miracles from incubatory shrines, of which the best known are those in Seleucia in Isauria, Menouthis, Constantinople, and Thessalonica.²⁵ The oldest of these collections was written in the 470s, but incubation was possibly practised in Seleucia as early as the second quarter of the fifth century, because the earliest episodes in the collection are dated to this period. Yet it probably did not begin much before then, as Egeria, who visited that town in 384, did not mention this custom in her account of her pilgrimage.²⁶ In the middle of the fifth century, incubation is attested also in Egypt: the famous monastic leader Shenoute condemned in one of his sermons those ‘who sleep in tombs expecting dreams and who interrogate the dead about the living’.²⁷ Can we move back even further? Some modern scholars believe that there are places where Christian incubation was practised as early as the fourth century; among these, they mention Anaplous near Constantinople, Mamre and Dor, both in Palestine, and Ibora in Cappadocia. It is doubtful, however,

²² See now Renberg 2016, 745–807. ²³ Servius, In Aeneidos 7.88. ²⁴ See Wiśniewski 2016, 556–7. Healing: Daunton-Fear 2009. ²⁵ For an overview of the entire literary genre, see Efthymiadis 1999; for the study of the practice, see Renberg 2016. ²⁶ For the dating of the collection, see Dagron, in his introduction to Miracula Theclae, 13–19; Egeria, Itinerarium 23.1–6. ²⁷ Shenoute, Œuvres de Schenoudi, p. 220. The dating of this sermon is not certain. Shenoute died in 466. See also another sermon extant in the Codex Vindobonensis K 9040: Young 1993, 23–5; see also Lefort 1954, 230.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

78

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

whether people were really looking for healing or divinatory dreams in these places at that time. In fact, evidence is tenuous at best. The reason to suppose that they did so in Mamre is Sozomen’s remark that men and women who visited that place for a feast avoided sexual intercourse, though they set up their tents and slept close to each other.²⁸ Yet sleeping in a tent close to a sanctuary can be hardly classified as incubation. Renberg is certainly right that the definition of this practice is often much too extended. In this particular case our evidence mentions neither dreams nor healings. More important is Sozomen’s testimony on the shrine of St Michael the Archangel in Anaplous. This is how he describes the miraculous healing of a certain Aquilinos: Finding that he was already half dead, he commanded his servant to carry him to the house of prayer [i.e. Michaelion]; for he affirmed earnestly that there he would either die or be freed from his disease. While he was lying there, a Divine Power appeared to him by night, and commanded him to dip his foot in a confection made of honey, wine, and pepper. The man did so, and was freed from his complaint, although the prescription was contrary to the professional rules of the physicians.²⁹

The nocturnal epiphany of the lord of the shrine revealing a cure for the disease is indeed typical of both Asklepieia and Christian incubatory sanctuaries. It is, however, unclear when the practice began to be used in Anaplous. Sozomen claims that the shrine was built by Constantine, while John Malalas says that it was constructed on the site of a pagan place of worship.³⁰ Should we assume then that an old divinatory or healing practice survived the change of the religious denomination of the sanctuary in the first half of the fourth century? That is by no means certain. The account of Malalas is barely credible, and even if we accept it, it is still doubtful whether incubation was actually practised in that hypothetical pagan temple of old. We do not know either when it started in Michaelion. The only thing which is certain is that it was already known when Sozomen was writing his Church History in the 440s, that is, at about the same time when incubation was attested in Egypt by Shenoute and in Seleucia by the Miracles of St Thecla. The third incubatory place possibly dating back to the fourth century is the martyrium of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, located on the family estate of Gregory of Nyssa, near Ibora in Cappadocia. Gregory mentions it in one of his sermons:

²⁸ Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 2.4.4. This interpretation was proposed by Lipiński 2006, 60. ²⁹ Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 2.3.11. ³⁰ John Malalas, Chronographia 4.13. See also comments of Renberg 2016, 800–1, although I think that he is too reluctant to accept that Sozomen’s evidence proves the practice of intentional incubation in Anaplous.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Relics and Divination

79

Being in the martyrs’ resting place, he [a sick soldier] earnestly beseeched God and prayed for the intercession of the saints. One night there appeared a man of venerable appearance in the company of others who said, ‘Soldier, do you want to be healed of your infirmity? Give me your foot so that I may touch it.’ And although he did it in a nocturnal vision, a sound was heard which usually accompanies pulling a bone out of joint and restoring it. At this moment those who were sleeping with him woke up and the soldier walked healed in body.³¹

It does not look as if the sick soldier and his companions simply fell asleep while praying. Gregory’s account seems to imply an intentional incubation. This is an important piece of evidence, even if we are dealing here with a private martyrium, and Gregory is referring to this event as something out of the ordinary, certainly not a common practice. The last of the alleged fourth-century incubatory places to be discussed here is the basilica in Dor, near Haifa. Claudine Dauphin, who conducted excavations on the site, argues that the sick incubated in the peristyle of the church, and then gathered around the grave of two anonymous saints in the southern nave.³² If that is a priori possible, everything is possible, as there is no trace of such practice in the archaeological evidence. The mere existence of a peristyle and the saints’ grave does not suffice to state that incubation was practised in that particular church. Both elements are commonly found in late antique basilicas. Another argument supporting this claim would be that the church was built over a pagan temple, which in its turn was constructed around an adytum cut in the rock, and that there was a spring close to it. The two elements are suggestive of natural settings of such ancient sanctuaries as those in Claros and Didyma, which leads Dauphin to conclude that the deity worshipped in Dor must have been related to Apollo, to whom those two temples in Asia Minor were dedicated. And since Apollo was Asklepios’ father, the temple in Dor should be identified as an Asklepieion; and since it was an Asklepieion, incubation must have been practised there; quod erat demonstrandum. Needless to say, this multilayered reasoning is hardly convincing.³³ Eventually, Christian incubation in Dor is considered proven by the presumption that pagan incubation was practised there before, but the problem is that there is no evidence whatsoever to substantiate this claim. In fact, there is not a single place about which we can be certain that pagan practices of incubation were continued by Christians. Recently, Jean Gascou has demonstrated that the idea of continuity does not really work even in the case of the famous sanctuary in Menouthis close to Alexandria, which is often referred to

³¹ Gregory of Nyssa, In XL martyres II, pp. 166–7. ³² Dauphin 1999. ³³ See also the critical assessment of the evidence from Dor in Graf 2013, 130–1. For the criteria for identifying incubatory shrines on archaeological grounds, see Grossmann 2007 and Ehrenheim 2009.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

80

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

as a classic example of the taking over of this practice by Christians.³⁴ An even more flagrant example of the erroneous belief in the continuity of the incubatory practice was exposed by Hugo Brandenburg’s article about the Asklepieion on the Isola Tiberina in Rome. The incubatory tradition of that place was supposedly continued in the church of St Bartholomew erected on the site of the pagan shrine.³⁵ Now, this church, originally dedicated to St Wojciech, or Adalbert, was actually only built by the Emperor Otto III c.1000, and the earliest trace of healing or medical activity in it dates back to the late sixteenth century, when the Brothers Hospitallers of Saint John of God settled there.³⁶ The fact that we cannot easily locate a regular Christian incubatory practice in the fourth century and that there are no places where continuity of the practice is firmly attested casts doubt on the view that Christian incubation was based on pagan models. This doubt can be further justified by a number of elements of the Christian religion, some of which may have provided fertile ground for the practice to develop independently.³⁷ First, like Jews and pagans, Christians considered dreams a possible, if suspicious method of receiving messages from God, and indeed used to look for such dreams. We can see that in the second- and third-century martyr stories, and again from the fourth century among the Messalians, Donatists, and, probably, Egyptian monks. These testimonies pre-date the earliest evidence of Christian incubation.³⁸ Secondly, Christians believed that the dead could communicate with the living. In 414, Bishop Evodius of Uzalis in North Africa consulted his friend Augustine about this issue in the following words: I have heard this more than once . . . that at a certain moment of the night disturbances and prayers are made in places where bodies are buried, especially in basilicas . . . In that way, then, our friends whom we have sent on ahead sometimes come; they appear in dreams and speak. For I remember that I saw Profuturus and Privatus and Servilius, holy men from the monastery, whom I remember went on ahead, and they spoke to me, and things happened as they said.³⁹

There are two particularly interesting elements in this text: first, the dead predict the future; and second, they appear in funeral basilicas. The

³⁴ Gascou 2007. ³⁵ Brandenburg 2007. ³⁶ Renberg 2016, 762–82 comments upon other supposedly incubatory shrines (most of them attested only later), showing that the intentional, regular, and technical character of sleeping and dreaming in them is hardly evident. ³⁷ The paragraphs that follow mostly repeat my argument presented in Wiśniewski 2013, strongly convergent with that of Graf 2013. ³⁸ See e.g. Passio Perpetuae 4.1–2, 7.3–8.3; Epiphanius, Panarion 49.1–2; Hermas, Pastor 9.2 and 25.1; Gregory of Nyssa, De virginitate 23.3; Athanasius, Vita Antonii 34.1–2; Passio Marculi 8 (a vision after a fast and prayer) and Passio Isaac et Maximiani 8, and also Augustine’s polemic in Ad catholicos de secta Donatistarum 19.49. ³⁹ Epistula inter Aug. 158.8–9 (trans. R. Teske).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Relics and Divination

81

phenomenon mentioned by Evodius is not yet incubation, but something quite close to it. Thirdly, and this is certainly the key issue, the emergence of Christian incubation is preceded by the emerging belief in the power of the saints’ relics over demons and diseases. This might have been a natural expansion of this belief, for—one could have reasoned—if Christ expelled demons, healed the sick, and foretold future events, the martyrs, who evidently had power over evil spirits and illnesses, should be able to reveal hidden things as well, all the more as martyrs were considered to have a gift of prophecy before their death, which we can see in the second- and third-century literature.⁴⁰ Fourthly, there was in the fourth century another religious practice which must have provided a fitting setting for pious dreaming in martyrs’ shrines, namely vigils dedicated to martyrs. Gregory of Nyssa recalls that once, in his youth, he fell asleep during a vigil of the Forty Martyrs, who subsequently appeared to him in his dream and whipped him for his slothfulness. He was certainly not the only one who dozed off during such nocturnal celebrations.⁴¹ Fifthly, the conviction that martyrs could appear to people could have been strengthened by literary accounts of revelations, many of which describe revelations in which saints indicated the location of their graves, as we shall see in Chapter 6. I am not claiming that there was no link between pagan and Christian incubation, but it seems to me that the elements presented above must have played a role in the development of the Christian practice. And even if they do not prove that Christian incubation emerged entirely independently of pagan models, they explain at least why Christians were not reluctant to accept this custom. What was the role of relics in incubation? Most incubatory sanctuaries possessed the body of a saint. So it was in Menouthis, where the martyrs Cyrus and John were deposited, in Antinoe (St Kollouthos), and in Constantinople (St Artemios and, at a later date, Cosmas and Damian). However, the sanctuary in Seleucia did not have St Thecla’s body, to say nothing of that in Anaplous dedicated to the Archangel Michael—and these are the earliest incubatory sanctuaries that we know of. It seems, therefore, that the bones of a saint were not really indispensable. What was necessary was a place which would guarantee that a dream vision would not be a mere figment of the imagination or a product of demonic phantasmata. It does not mean that every church was suitable for incubation; incidentally, not every church was suitable for drawing lots or consulting energumens either. Actually, we can hardly find an example of the use of any of these practices in a church not associated with saints. For it was always the presence of a saint that assured the ⁴⁰ See p. 38. For the prophetic gift of the martyrs, see Waldner 2007. ⁴¹ Gregory of Nyssa, In XL Martyres II, pp. 167–8; see Miracula Theclae 33.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

82

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

truthfulness of the message. This presence was best warranted by the relics of a saint, but there were other possibilities too. The martyrium of St Thecla was built over the site where the earth had supposedly swallowed her body and the sanctuary in Anaplous, where St Michael used to appear.

HOLY BODIES AND DIVINATION What conclusions can be drawn from this survey? First, the divinatory practices presented here appear in the evidence after the rise of the cult of relics. Does this mean that before the middle of the fourth century Christians did not use any oracular methods? It is difficult to answer this question categorically. Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine that they were able to use the methods named above, because—and this is the second point—these techniques required a material guarantee of the presence of saints, the best of which was their bodies. Thus the coincidence between the emergence of the cult of relics and Christian divination is not accidental. Third, parallels between Christian and pagan divinatory practices are evident, but the genetic link between them usually is not, and, even if we accept its existence, we have to remember that the taking over of the practice was always of secondary importance in relation to the belief that the saints, present in their remains, were able to expel demons, heal diseases, and reveal hidden things. To be exact, we should add that Christians could avail themselves of other forms of divinatory consultations in addition to those carried out with relics. A well-known alternative was to use the Bible, opened at a random page, or special divinatory books with collections of oracular answers.⁴² This particular practice is first attested at about the same time as the earliest instances of the methods described above, namely in the late fourth century. But interestingly, even book divination, which in principle could take place anywhere, was normally carried out in the sanctuaries of saints.⁴³ This shows that relics also attracted methods which were developed without any relation to them.

⁴² See Van der Horst 2002, 187–9, and polemically Wiśniewski 2016. ⁴³ Papini 1998; Frankfurter 2005.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

5 Burials ad Sanctos In the three previous chapters we have seen the ways in which people had recourse to relics when their health was faltering, security was lacking, or knowledge was failing—all of this matters when one is alive. This chapter aims to discuss how relics were believed to be of help when life was over. It will be dealing with the practice, known as tumulatio ad sanctos, which—at least in part—had to do with the life to come. It consisted in burying the dead close to the tombs of saints or their relics. Unlike most beliefs and practices described in this book, this custom is attested in both textual and archaeological evidence. The latter type of evidence is obvious. In the archaeological context burying the dead has left probably more traces than any other human activity; first, because it is so common a practice; secondly, because the graves, usually dug in the ground, stood a much greater chance of surviving to this day than whatever was constructed above ground level. The textual evidence consists of mostly short remarks found in diverse narrative texts, pieces of funerary poetry, and other epitaphs, some of them preserved in inscriptions, others thanks to the manuscript tradition. This kind of fragmentary evidence is what we usually use for the study of the cult of relics. But with regard to the question of burials we may avail ourselves of a unique literary source, a treatise devoted almost entirely to the practice of tumulatio ad sanctos. The treatise in question, entitled De cura gerenda pro mortuis, or On the care for the dead, deserves a short introduction. It was written by Augustine, bishop of Hippo, about 421, at the request of Paulinus, then bishop of Nola, who was approached by a woman named Flora with a request to bury her son at the tomb of Felix, the famous saint of Nola.¹ The request was granted, but Paulinus, although convinced that he did this in accordance with the custom of the Church, was looking for a theological justification for this practice and for this reason wanted to know Augustine’s opinion on the matter. Augustine acknowledged, albeit without much enthusiasm, that this practice could be justified for two reasons. First, it comforted the survivors, because it secured their conviction that they had

¹ Augustine, De cura pro mortuis 1. For the dating, see Combès 1948.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

84

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

properly fulfilled the duty of burying their dead. Secondly, it could be beneficial to the dead, but only due to the living, who, calling to mind the resting places of their loved ones, would offer prayers for the repose of their souls.² Yet Augustine firmly rejected the idea that physical proximity to the tombs of the saints in itself should have any impact on what would happen to either the body or the soul, for the simple reason, he argued, that the bodies of the dead could not feel or hear anything and there was no link whatsoever between them and the souls, wherever those souls dwelt. In consequence, neither do the bodies of the saints have any inherent power after death nor can the souls of other people be affected by whatever happens to their earthly remains. The practice of burial ad sanctos was studied by Yvette Duval, whose book Auprès des saints: corps et âme, published in 1988, collected the literary, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence for this phenomenon. This book provides a thorough study of Augustine’s views, shows the diverse forms of interments at the tombs of saints, and studies the reasons why people desired to be buried in this way. Nevertheless, some shortcomings of this study should be recognized. First, it draws a strong and not entirely justified distinction between the views of the hierarchy, identified with Augustine, and those of the ‘people’.³ Strangely enough, Duval does not consider the writings of such eminent bishops as Damasus of Rome, Ambrose of Milan, and Gregory of Nazianzus, whose views were different from those of Augustine, as illustrating the stance of the hierarchy. Secondly, the study is focused on Latin evidence, literary and epigraphic, which at least in one important case is not securely dated, whereas the Eastern evidence is represented mostly by hagiography and the writings of the Cappadocian Fathers. Thirdly, it does not always take into account the full context against which the practice can be set, especially with regard to other funerary customs, and other practices related to the cult of relics. In consequence, Duval’s study, although important, is not fully convincing as far as the early chronology of tumulatio ad sanctos is concerned and the question of its popularity is examined only cursorily. The book also leaves some space to reflect upon the ways in which the need for physical closeness with the tombs of saints was satisfied, and upon the intentions of those who buried their dead close to the saints.

EARLY CHRONOLOGY I will start with chronology. The literary, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence for burials ad sanctos becomes abundant only in the second half of ² Augustine, De cura pro mortuis 6–7.

³ See e.g. Y. Duval 1988, 204–23.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Burials ad Sanctos

85

the fourth century. However, for a long time it was widely accepted that the practice started as early as the end of the third century.⁴ This conviction was based upon a single piece of evidence, namely the final passage of the Acts of Maximilian. The text presents itself as the minutes of a court session at which Maximilian, a young man from Theveste in Roman Africa who refused military service, was sentenced to death. It ends with the following passage: Soon afterwards he [Maximilian] died. A woman named Pompeiana obtained his body from the magistrate and, after placing it in her own chamber, later brought it to Carthage. There she buried it at the foot of a hill near the governor’s palace next to the body of the martyr Cyprian. Thirteen days later the woman herself passed away and was buried in the same spot. But Victor, the boy’s father, returned to his home in great joy. Giving thanks to God that he sent ahead such a gift to the Lord, since he himself was to follow.⁵

The Acts of Maximilian used to be classed as so-called acta sincera, or the authentic record of the trial, and his death was believed to be securely dated. The account places it on 12 March 295, in Theveste, during the reign of Diocletian and Maximianus, and the governorship of the proconsul Dio. A proconsul by that name is indeed attested in Africa in 291, the consular date given at the beginning of the Acts is correct, and the historical circumstances fit, at least up to a point, the period preceding the Great Persecution: Maximilian is sentenced to death not because he is a Christian, but because he refuses to be conscripted into the army. Yet some elements in the story should advise against accepting it at face value. In recent years, first Constantin Zuckerman and then David Woods and Timothy Barnes raised serious doubts about the authenticity of this text, pointing to a detail of conscription or tax procedure named in the Acts, but otherwise known only from a much later period.⁶ Moreover, even if we assume that the main body of the text follows the official stenographic pattern of trial records, its final part, which deals with the execution and burial, is obviously a Christian addition, which did not have to be written immediately after Maximilian’s death. And some elements suggest that it was not. What is strange in the first place is the role of the two dramatis personae, Pompeiana and Maximilian’s father. During the trial the father is at risk of being accused of inspiring his son’s refusal and seems eager to show that he did not sympathize with Maximilian’s decision. In this context, his ‘returning to his home in great joy, giving thanks to God’ does not look plausible. Also the fact that he handed over the body of his son to a lady from Carthage, whether he supported his choice or not, is astonishing, all the more so as according to the text the body was taken far away: Carthage is over ⁴ See e.g. Saxer 1980, 108; Tilley 1996, 59 n. 13; Y. Duval 1988, 52–4; Bartlett 2013, 14–15. ⁵ Acta Maximiliani 3.4 (trans. H. Musurillo). ⁶ Zuckerman 1998, 136–9; Woods 2003; Barnes 2010, 380–5.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

86

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

300 km from Theveste. It is also hardly understandable why Pompeiana would have transferred the body that far, for at the end of the third century martyrs are normally still buried where they died. Finally, a pious matron who takes care of the body of a martyr is a literary topos quite frequently found in late antique hagiography.⁷ All of the above is not entirely impossible, but definitely very unusual. In consequence, we can hardly accept the reliability of the Acts of Maximilian as the earliest testimony of burial ad sanctos. As David Woods pointed out, the Acts are known only from fairly late manuscripts,⁸ Maximilian does not appear in the early sixth-century calendar of Carthage, which contained the names of a number of local martyrs, and is unattested by any source before the ninth century, including the very comprehensive Martyrologium Hieronymianum.⁹ And yet I think that this text should not be dismissed as completely worthless for the study of this phenomenon. There are reasonable grounds to believe that the addition may have been written in Africa. Maximilian’s exact age, 21 years, 3 months, and 18 days, given at the end of the story, could have been invented by the author, but the fact that he provided this piece of data is interesting, for it was by no means a standard element of martyr narratives. But it was a standard element of funerary inscriptions, and so I am inclined to think that the author of the ending of the Acta Maximiliani actually saw the tombs of the bishop, the matrona, and the young martyr, who by that time might have been buried close to the grave of St Cyprian. The question of when and why this happened remains unanswered, which is all the more regrettable given that we should very much like to know whether Pompeiana was interred there before or after Maximilian. Be that as it may, the case of Maximilian does not prove that burials ad sanctos were practised already at the end of the third century. In consequence, if we omit the uncertain testimony of an early fourth-century inscription from Altava (Mauretania) in which the link between the burial to which it attests and the tomb of the saint is highly hypothetical, the earliest dated evidence of this custom can be found only in the writings of three bishops who started their episcopate in the years 360–70, namely Damasus of Rome, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa.¹⁰ The burials they mention were possibly organized a few years earlier, at about the same time as the relics of the ⁷ See Cooper 1999, 314, who also warns against taking Pompeiana’s episode at face value. ⁸ The earliest dates from the eleventh/twelfth century; see A. A. R. Bastiaensen, in Acta Maximiliani, p. 236. ⁹ Woods 2003, 266–7. ¹⁰ Inscription from Altava (Africa): Y. Duval 1982, vol. 1, No. 195, pp. 412–17; Damasus (perhaps critically on this phenomenon): Ferrua, Epigrammata Damasiana 16 = ILChV 1986: ‘Here, I confess, I Damasus wished to set my limbs | but I feared to disturb the holy ashes of the pious’ (trans. D. Trout); Gregory of Nazianzus, Epigrammata 33, 76, 99, 118, 165 (all in Anthologia Graeca 8). Gregory of Nyssa, In sanctos XL martyres II, p. 166.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Burials ad Sanctos

87

Apostles were deposited in the church of the Holy Apostles adjacent to Constantine’s Mausoleum (356/7),¹¹ which leads to the question of the role this momentous event played in the development of the practice. Interestingly, the rescript of Theodosius I addressed to the prefect of Constantinople, Pancratius, in 381 forbids burials in urbe, including interments close to the martyrs and Apostles.¹² The law does not specify to which urbs it referred, but at that time Constantinople was the only city which had relics of the Apostles within the walls, and that means that some people buried their dead at the Holy Apostles between c.357 and 381 or at least wanted to do so. We cannot be sure if the practice we are interested in actually started in that particular church in Constantinople, but we can say at least that this is its earliest certain and safely dated testimony. The fact that we do not have evidence of burials ad sanctos before the midfourth century is important, because it suggests that this practice has to be understood in the context of the rise of the cult of relics, and strengthens the impression that this wider phenomenon was developing very swiftly in the second half of the fourth century—none of its elements is attested before the 350s.

POPULARITY The fact that the practice is attested in several sources dating from the late fourth and early fifth century and in different parts of the Mediterranean suggests that it was developing at a fast pace, but it also raises the question of how common that practice was. When studying the cult of relics, and many other religious customs too, we are often at risk of misjudging their popularity. It is very difficult to say how many of those who were ill were looking for healing at relics, how many besieged cities put their trust in the power of a local saint, or how often people who had a difficult decision to make threw lots at the tomb of a saint. These questions are problematic because we know little about the ways in which those who were ill, besieged, or anxious about the future behaved normally, and so we usually cannot say if the phenomenon under study, even if well attested in the evidence, was rare, specific to a single region, or entirely common. In the case of interment ad sanctos we have a chance of estimating its spread with more accuracy, because obviously in Late Antiquity most people were buried, and their burials, unlike miraculous healings, exorcisms, kisses given to relics, etc., usually left material traces. Even if only a small fraction of late antique graves is extant and excavated, ¹¹ See p. 23.

¹² Codex Theodosianus 9.17.6; 30 July 381.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

88

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

we are dealing with tens of thousands, and even if the archaeological documentation of most of them is imperfect, this evidence can give us an idea of how common and how evenly distributed interments ad sanctos were.¹³ Now, while in this chapter I refer mostly to graves which bear testimony to this custom, it has to be emphasized that the number of Christians who were not buried close to saints was many, many times higher. As the paragraphs that follow will show, the extant evidence suggests that the phenomenon, though widespread, was not very common, certainly less common than it seems to have been at first sight, because in modern scholarship burials ad sanctos make a capacious category and diverse interments are too readily classified as examples of the same practice. The risk of making the category of burials ad sanctos too wide concerns both literary and archaeological evidence. As for the former, the problem is that there was a custom, frequently mentioned by late antique authors, which was a sort of burial ad sanctos, but should be analysed separately. The custom consisted in burying saints ad sanctos, or just burying saints together. As we have seen, the martyr Maximilian was supposedly buried close to St Cyprian. Theodoret of Cyrrhus names monks whose bodies were deposited in shrines which also contained the relics of martyrs and Apostles. The fifth-century Life of Daniel the Stylite claims that he was interred in Constantinople under the relics of the Three Youths.¹⁴ According to the History of the Albanians, dating probably from the sixth or seventh century, Grigoris, katholikos and martyr in Caucasian Albania, was buried together with flasks containing the blood of the martyr Pantaleon and Zechariah, John the Baptist’s father, supposedly at the beginning of the fourth century.¹⁵ The fifth-century Armenian Epic Histories names bishops and martyrs who were deposited together and close to relics of the Apostles and John the Baptist.¹⁶ According to the Liber Pontificalis, several martyred bishops of Rome were buried close to the body of St Peter on the Vatican Hill.¹⁷ Even if some of these passages describe purely imaginary burials, their authors apparently thought that interring the saints close to their likes was a proper thing to do. One can hardly interpret this custom as aimed at providing freshly buried martyrs with the support of those who had suffered before them, for they did not need it. The intention was rather to bury them in a place which they merited, that is, among their equals. The idea that the saints should rest together was expressed especially strongly with respect to groups of martyrs who died together, like the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste or the

¹³ See e.g. Demolon, 1986, 57. ¹⁴ Theodoret, Historia religiosa 10.8, 21.30, 24.2; Vita Danielis Stylitae 92. ¹⁵ History of the Albanians 1.14; see N. Aleksidze, CSLA E00132. ¹⁶ Gregory the Illuminator and the martyrs: The Epic Histories 3.14; see N. Aleksidze CSLA E00148. ¹⁷ Liber Pontificalis 2.2, 3.2, 5.2, 6.3, 8.3, 9.2, 10.2, 11.5, 14.3, 15.4b.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Burials ad Sanctos

89

clergy of Bishop Fructuosus of Tarragona.¹⁸ Yet we can see it also on other occasions. In 397, Victricius of Rouen, when welcoming in his city the relics of various saints sent to him from Milan, insisted that the saints, who are perfectly united in God, find delight in serving together at the same altar.¹⁹ Of course, a collection of relics brought glory to the new church which held them, and Victricius states this explicitly, but the motif of the perfect ‘concord of saints’ who act together and should rest together is by no means accidental in his sermon, or rather a treatise based upon it. It also appears, about the same time, in Gaudentius of Brescia’s sermon, preached at the dedication of the church known as the Council of Saints, Concilium sanctorum.²⁰ It is difficult to say if the idea of the unity of saints only justified the existing habit or actually resulted in making collections of relics, but the link between this idea and the practice seems obvious. This practice, however, differed from the burials aimed at securing saints’ help for people anxious about their fate after death. Admittedly, the two types of burials should not be separated too strictly. For instance, the burial of Satyrus, Ambrose of Milan’s brother, in a sarcophagus adjacent to that of the martyr Victor was certainly viewed as advantageous. His epitaph says: To Uranius Satyrus, his brother Ambrose Accorded the distinction of burial at the martyr’s side. This the reward for his goodness, that the holy blood Should seep through and wash his remains, which lie beside.²¹

This obviously granted Satyrus Victor’s intercession, but the advantage of such burial might also have been to present Ambrose’s brother as a saint, worthy of being laid next to his equal. That is even clearer in the case of the burial place which Ambrose prepared for himself between the martyrs Gervasius and Protasius, looking not so much for their protection, but rather adding a new element to his self-portrait as bishop and martyr.²² In our evidence we can find many other clerics who were buried close to saints not necessarily because they sought such burials more eagerly, but because they were considered to be more appropriate neighbours for the saints than laypeople. We can see this in an interesting episode from the collection of miracles of St Thecla. It tells of a rhetor Eusebios who wanted to inter a talented and virtuous man named Hyperechios in the sanctuary of the saint. He asked Bishop Maximos for permission and received it. But when the diggers started their job, Thecla appeared to them in a visible form, frightening them almost to death and

¹⁸ ¹⁹ ²¹ ²²

Acta Fructuosi 6; Testamentum XL Martyrum 1. Victricius, De laude sanctorum 6. ²⁰ Gaudentius, Tractatus 17.37. ILChV 2165, trans. McLynn 1994, 79. Ambrose, Epistula 77.13; the link is also emphasized in Hymnus 11.9–13.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

90

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

forbidding them to continue their work. Shortly after she appeared also to Maximos: She exhorted him that he should not have been so disdainful of her church as to introduce into it the foul smell of burials and tombs. There was nothing in common, she said, between tombs and houses of prayer, unless someone who has died is not really dead but is alive to God, and is worthy to dwell together under the same roof as the martyrs, such as the divine Symposios or Samos, the famous holy man, or someone else of the same quality as they.²³

Needless to say, both Symposios and Samos were bishops. The same idea, namely that access to the saints should be reserved for saints or at least saintly people, which usually meant clerics of proven orthodoxy, is expressed in other texts, such as the Encomium of Macarius of Tkow. Its author claims that [Timothy] Salophakiolos, Chalcedonian patriarch of Alexandria, protested against burying Macarius, the ‘unclean Egyptian’ (Macarius was antiChalcedonian) at the tombs of John the Baptist and the prophet Elijah.²⁴ As for the material evidence, to identify a burial ad sanctum on purely archaeological ground, without inscription, is sometimes perfectly possible. In the apse of the church in rue Malaval (Marseilles), for instance, twin decorated sarcophagi were recently discovered (Fig. 5.1). They were equipped with pipes which served to pour in and then collect the oil, once it was sanctified by the contact with the bones. This system, known from a number of reliquaries in Syria, does not leave any doubt that the sarcophagus contained the bones of saints. Around this sarcophagus there is a cluster of graves, which must have been located ad sanctum.²⁵ But in many cases such identification is risky. First, because it is often difficult to say if a tomb or bones beside which someone was buried actually belonged to a person considered a saint. In most regions there was no single pattern of depositing saints in churches or cemeteries. They could be laid in the nave, chancel, or apse. Yet in the very same places we find tombs of other people, and so indeed very often we have trouble distinguishing the former from the latter. A skeleton buried in the middle of the chancel could have been that of a martyr, or of the founder of the church, or of a local cleric, or of another prominent person. Also, bones deposited in a small receptacle in one of those places did not have to be relics. In Late Antiquity few reliquaries had a specific form; they were often made of stone or clay and did not necessarily differ from caskets or vessels which were used for secondary burials of ordinary people organized after total decomposition of the body.²⁶ Thus the bones which are found in a stone box could, but did not have to, belong to a saint. In the ²³ Miracula Theclae 30. ²⁴ Encomium of Macarius of Tkow 16; see F. Schenke, CSLA E05275. The presence of relics of Elijah in Alexandria is puzzling, since, according to 2 Kings 2:11, he was taken to heaven on a chariot of fire. ²⁵ Moliner 2006, 132–4. ²⁶ Février 1986, 16–17.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Burials ad Sanctos

91

Fig. 5.1. A tomb of unnamed saints in the church of the rue Malaval (Marseilles), encircled by individual graves. Photo courtesy of Manuel Moliner.

church in Kherbet Salah (modern Algeria), for instance, five ‘cavities’ of diverse size were found in front of the apse. The largest of them was a sarcophagus which contained a complete skeleton, the four others had just mingled bones. This was interpreted as a place of deposition of five saints, or as the burial of one man with the relics of four saints, but actually it could also have been the place of five burials, four of them secondary, and none of a saint.²⁷ All this does not make the identification of the tomb of a saint impossible, but shows that those who were buried in a church, even close to an apparently important tomb, were not necessarily buried ad sanctum. Even if a saint can be identified, we have to ask what conclusions can be drawn from the fact that several burials took place next to his or her tomb. One cannot forget that early suburban basilicas, martyrial or not, were usually built in cemeteries, which kept their original function.²⁸ The very fact that other people were interred in these places does not prove then that their families wanted to bury them by the tombs of martyrs. In Tipasa (Algeria) a number of burials were discovered around the basilica which contained a monumental tomb of St Salsa, an important local martyr. Yet, as Paul-Albert ²⁷ Five reliquaries: Berthier 1943, 151–2; burial ad sanctos: Février 1986, 19. ²⁸ See for instance Trier: Gauthier 1986, 28, and above all Yasin 2009, 69–91.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

92

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

Février soberly remarked, since some of these graves had been there before Salsa’s interment, they were not really intended as ad sanctam.²⁹ One may add that we can go further with this argument and state that it is also risky to say that even later burials were drawn to this place by the presence of the saint: people could simply continue to bury their dead in the same place in which they had formerly done so. In all, one has to check conscientiously what is the basis of qualifying a grave as a burial ad sanctos, understood as an interment aimed to secure for the dead the help of the holy neighbour. We certainly should resist the temptation of recognizing it in every burial found in a church. The safest criterion for burials ad sanctos is of course an inscription which explicitly says who was interred close to whom, and why. Such inscriptions, however, are rare and very unevenly distributed. We can see a great number of them in Rome. In Ernest Diehl’s Inscriptiones Christianae Latinae Veteres, out of sixtyone inscriptions of this kind almost two-thirds come from Rome, and the rest mostly from Italy.³⁰ There are over a dozen of them from Africa, collected by Duval,³¹ but very few from Spain and Gaul. In the Balkans only a few inscriptions of this kind have been found in Sirmium.³² In the East they are exceptional. In the Aegean Islands there are only hypothetical burials ad sanctos.³³ In Syria some graves are identified as such, but no inscription reveals the intentions of those who made them.³⁴ In Egypt the situation is similar.³⁵ It is interesting to take a closer look at Anatolia, part of the late antique world which is important for both the epigraphist and the student of the cult of saints.³⁶ In the evidence from this vast region we can find just a handful of epitaphs suggesting that those at whose tombs they were engraved were buried ad sanctos, and in most cases their interpretation is far from certain. A man whose fifth-century epitaph from Tavium (Galatia) says that he ‘found a place of relief, having run to the Apostles’, was interred in a church dedicated to them rather than near their relics, and certainly not at their tomb, for none of the Apostles was buried in Galatia. Moreover, the ‘place of relief ’ mentioned in this inscription can also be interpreted as referring simply to heaven.³⁷ There is also a group of inscriptions from around Tyana which mention specific saints. A certain Theodosius prays,saying ‘Saint Konon, you are my refuge’ (fifth–sixth century). This certainly expresses the belief in the saint’s help, but this help did not have to result from the proximity of the saint’s body.³⁸ A few ²⁹ Février 1986, 15. ³⁰ Chapter Tituli depositionem ad martyres et in locis sanctis inlustrantes, nos 2126–87. ³¹ Y. Duval 1982, vol. 2, 501–16. ³² CIL III 10232 and 10233, possibly also Popović 2013. ³³ See Inscriptiones Graecae XII 2, no 525; see also P. Nowakowski CSLA E01230 and CSLA E01246.; Dunant & Pouilloux 1958, vol. 2, 193–8. ³⁴ Sodini 1986. ³⁵ Dunand 2007, 177–8. ³⁶ See Nowakowski 2018. ³⁷ P. Nowakowski, CSLA E01009. ³⁸ P. Nowakowski, CSLA E01017: σὲ κατέφυγα.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Burials ad Sanctos

93

other inscriptions are more specific about the place of burial. The virgin Kelsina, interred in the same region, says: ‘My sweetest mother Theoprepis built this tomb of mine inside the holy place of John.’³⁹ Here, there is no doubt about the physical closeness to the saint’s topos, but still not necessarily to his relics. A bilingual inscription from Nicomedia, however, mentions a boy who was deposited ‘at the martyrs’, which strongly suggests their relics.⁴⁰ Also, a certain Karteria, known from a fifth- or sixth-century epitaph, claims that she and her husband lie ‘close to the Baptist’. Thus, we can name two or three inscriptions which safely attest a burial which was physically connected with a saint, possibly with his relics, but, strikingly, this is almost all that we can find in the whole of Asia Minor. Of course, epigraphic material is not the only type of evidence preserved from that region. Besides the archaeological evidence, which can be difficult to interpret, there are the writings of Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa, which do not leave any doubts that burials ad sanctos were practised in Cappadocia. The former wrote several epigrams for the tombs of his friends and family members, some of them mentioning explicitly this type of interment. A good example is the epitaph for his mother: The soul of Nonna left on its wings for heaven, and from the temple we took her body and laid it beside the martyrs. Martyrs, accept this great offering, her long toiling flesh which followed [the example of] your blood. Your blood indeed, for she extinguished the great might of the destroyer of souls, by her immense labours.⁴¹

Gregory of Nyssa, whose family lived in the same region, writes that his parents were laid in a place in which relics of the Forty Martyrs had been deposited.⁴² But all this literary and epigraphical evidence put together certainly does not suggest a widespread phenomenon. In all, we are dealing with a custom which can, admittedly, be found in several parts of Christendom, but certainly not everywhere and not very frequently. In this respect, Rome was definitely unlike any other place.

H O W CL O S E T O T H E S A I N T S ? It is interesting to ask the question of how the burials ad sanctos looked in practice, how close to the saints were those who were looking for their ³⁹ P. Nowakowski, CSLA E01022. ⁴⁰ P. Nowakowski, CSLA E00940. ⁴¹ Gregory of Nazianzus, Epigramma 33; see E. Rizos; see also CSLA E00340. For other epitaphs attesting burials ad sanctos, see n. 10. ⁴² Gregory of Nyssa, In XL martyres II, p. 167.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

94

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

proximity buried. The most straightforward way to secure such proximity was to bury the dead close to the tomb of a saint. The inscription on the tomb of Satyrus quoted above suggests that the proximity was even closer: he was laid in a tomb which was connected with the grave of Victor, permitting the holy blood of the martyr to ‘seep through and wash his [Satyrus’] remains’. In Rome traces of the practice of interring the dead close to the tomb of a saint are certainly visible at St Peter’s on the Vatican and at several catacombs along the Via Appia.⁴³ This custom is well attested, although, as has been said, such burials are not always easy to identify, and what seems to be a funerary complex centred around the tomb of a saint may well turn out to be an ordinary burial cluster. Less evident are traces of the practice of burying the dead with relics deposited in the tomb. Archaeological evidence of such burials is ambiguous. Little boxes and flasks containing only dust or traces of some substance, which can be found in some late antique graves, certainly cannot be taken as reliquaries if there is no other proof of such identification. Literary evidence, however, suggests that such a practice did exist. Sozomen tells us the story of Eusebia, a woman belonging to the sect of the Macedonians,⁴⁴ who lived in Constantinople and had herself interred in a sarcophagus which also contained some relics of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, placed in a separate compartment. Duval argues that this episode does not reflect a real practice.⁴⁵ She thinks that we are dealing here with an isolated episode which occurred in a marginal community rather than with a mainstream custom: Sozomen emphasizes that the woman buried cum sanctis belonged to the sect of the Macedonians and claims that later on the relics were deposited in another place by Nicene Christians. This argument, however, is not entirely convincing. Of course, it is true that Sozomen does not seem to be enthusiastic about this way of dealing with relics. Yet he does not condemn it either; he does not stigmatize Eusebia in any way, and there is no reason to think that she was the only person to have had the idea of taking relics into her tomb, or that it was a specifically Macedonian practice. In fact, there is other evidence of such a custom in mainstream Christianity. The body of Melania the Younger, according to her Life, was buried dressed in garments belonging to various saints.⁴⁶ Grigoris, bishop of Caucasian Albania, was interred with flasks containing the blood of the saints Pantaleon and Zechariah.⁴⁷ Thus, the practice of burying people with relics did exist, though, admittedly, it was probably rare and in most cases the physical contact between the dead and the relics was probably indirect. This, after all, reflects the practices of the living. We will see in Chapter 7, for example in the case of a woman who inserted her head into a niche containing St Stephen’s relics, that as early as the beginning of the fifth century, many ⁴³ McEvoy 2013, 100–31; Ghilardi 2002, 205–7. ⁴⁴ Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 9.2. ⁴⁵ Y. Duval 1988, 112–18. ⁴⁶ Gerontius, Vita Melaniae 69. ⁴⁷ History of the Albanians 1.14.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Burials ad Sanctos

95

people desired to come as close to the relics as possible, but this desire was rarely satisfied by direct access to the bones.⁴⁸ Interestingly, the contact with a saint did not have to consist in proximity with his or her relics at all. Several Christian writers tried to convince their audience that the saints did not need relics to manifest their power. It is possible that many people remained unpersuaded, but there were burials which can be classified as ad sanctos, but not ad reliquias. Of course, it is usually difficult to prove that a church in which a grave was found did not contain any relics, but sometimes we can be almost certain. For instance, in a late inscription, dating probably from the seventh century, found in Ankara, a certain Andragathios who founded the church of ‘the Lady’, certainly the Mother of God, claimed that he enjoyed her protection thanks to her closeness (paroikia).⁴⁹ It is unlikely that any Marian relics were kept in that church. Similarly, people buried at the sanctuary of St Michael the Archangel in the Galatian city of Germia were seeking the power of the saint in his sanctuary, although for obvious reasons it did not have any relics of its patron.⁵⁰ Some people thought that too close a proximity to the tomb of a saint might be harmful rather than beneficial. The epitaph of an archdeacon Sabinus, buried on the Via Tiburtina, close to Rome, in the entrance to the church warns the reader in the following words: Keeping close to the tombs of the holy ones does not help, but only increases the burden; good life is closer to the merits of the saints; not through the body but by the soul we reach for them, which (i.e. the soul) saved firmly can be the sanity of the body.⁵¹

The archdeacon of the Church of Rome was an extremely important figure in the clerical hierarchy of the city and Sabinus certainly could have been buried closer to the bones of the saint if he chose to. Thus, there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of his declaration. In all, the need for proximity to the saints, if felt, was satisfied in several ways. Some people were evidently looking for a very close physical contact, and probably even took relics to their graves, but others believed that being buried in a church dedicated to a saint would do as well.

THE P URPOSE The last and probably the most important point which should be addressed in this chapter is the purpose of burial ad sanctos. To a modern student of this ⁴⁸ See Chapter 7. ⁴⁹ P. Nowakowski, CSLA E01002. ⁵⁰ Mango 1986, esp. 126–8 (no. 1): see also P. Nowakowski, CSLA E01005. ⁵¹ ICUR VII 1807; see P. Nowakowski, CSLA E05296.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

96

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

phenomenon it may seem obvious that those who interred their beloved ones close to holy bones expected that the saints would help their new neighbours in the afterlife, and, indeed, in the treatise On the care for the dead we find that some people did cherish such hopes. However, the specific nature of such expectations could have been fairly complex. Augustine, persuaded that the place of burial does not have any direct impact on the soul, does not discuss this issue at length, but acknowledges briefly that people believe that the saints will help them on the Day of Judgement.⁵² We can find traces of this belief in the epigraphic evidence. The saints are referred to as advocati or patroni, and are asked to accept the dead person as their foster child (alumnus) or fellow (socius).⁵³ We do not know much about the people who expressed such hopes, but one should not think that they were necessarily simple folk. We should bear in mind that Augustine’s treatise is not a response to the query raised by the laywoman Flora, but to that of his fellow bishop Paulinus, and there is no indication in the text that the views in question were characteristic of the laity or uneducated people. In his Second Homily on the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, Gregory of Nyssa, one of the most sophisticated theologians of that period, explains: I myself possess a piece of the gift, and have put the bodies of my parents to rest by the relics (leipsana) of the soldiers, so that they may rise in the company of highly influential helpers, at the time of the resurrection. Because I know how powerful they are, and have seen clear proofs of their freedom of speech before God.⁵⁴

Also in Gregory of Nazianzus’ epigrams the martyrs are asked to accept to their bosom those whose bodies rested close to their relics,⁵⁵ which also quite evidently testifies to the belief in their support in the afterlife. These two Greek bishops, not unlike Ambrose of Milan and Paulinus of Nola in the West, evidently propagated the belief that Augustine strove to correct. Another reason why people wanted to be buried ad sanctos was that such neighbourhood guaranteed the protection of the body. The issue was important, since whatever Augustine might have thought about it, the integrity of one’s earthly remains was often considered essential for their future resurrection. A number of Christian authors writing before and after Augustine felt compelled to argue that God was capable of resurrecting the bodies of people who had been eaten by wild animals or burnt to ashes and dispersed in water. ⁵² Augustine, De cura pro mortuis 1–2. ⁵³ Y. Duval 1988, 145–8; 187–9. ⁵⁴ Gregory of Nyssa, In XL martyres II, p. 167; trans. E. Rizos, CSLA E01299. ⁵⁵ Gregory of Nazianzus, Epigramma 99; see also 118 (‘Martyrs of Truth, welcome the rest of them’); 33 (‘Martyrs, accept this great offering, her long toiling flesh which followed [the example of ] your blood’); 165 (‘entrusting him to the pure martyrs’; trans. E. Rizos).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Burials ad Sanctos

97

The fact that this issue had to be discussed over and over again strongly suggests that many people thought otherwise. It seems, therefore, that in having their bodies buried ad sanctos they wished to secure the integrity of their bodily remains from various sorts of threats. And indeed, threatened they were. According to Duval the major threats against which the saints could defend the bodies of the dead were represented by demons and tomb raiders.⁵⁶ The omnipresence of the fear of demons in Late Antiquity is sometimes exaggerated, but at least in some regions and milieux they were perceived as a real danger. The dread of their attacks, specifically those directed against the dying, is manifest in the Apocalypse of Paul, a widely read late antique apocryphal text, and can also be seen in other writings.⁵⁷ It is also true that some authors suggest that demons would prey not only on those who were dying but also on graves and cemeteries.⁵⁸ However, I have not found any evidence of the conviction that people believed that this interest in demons affected the bodies or souls of the dead. Inscriptions and literary texts do not suggest that the saints would defend cadavers against evil spirits. Even more importantly, burials ad sanctos are best attested in Italy, where the fear of demons is only scantily attested, and seem almost absent from Egypt and Syria, where it was much stronger.⁵⁹ I suppose then that usually those who cared for their dead were much more afraid of people than of demons. Tombs could be violated by tomb raiders, by magicians seeking to stick curse tablets into them or steal some body parts for their practices, but also by people who were looking for a place to bury their dead without paying for a new tomb.⁶⁰ Several funerary inscriptions bear witness to efforts aiming to prevent the violation of tombs: they adjure, they beg, they even threaten with a fine or eternal punishment. An inscription from Rome warns: ‘if someone violates this tomb, let him perish badly, lie unburied, not rise from the dead, share a fate with Judas’.⁶¹ Other inscriptions express the belief in divine power able to protect the tomb: To the spirits of the dead. Aurelius Niceta made [this grave] for his well-deserving daughter, Aurelia Aeliana. Gravedigger, beware, do not dig [here]. God has big eyes. Bear in mind that you also have children.⁶²

⁵⁶ Y. Duval 1988, 173–82. ⁵⁷ Y. Duval 1988, 173–6. ⁵⁸ John Chrysostom, De sancta Droside 2 and In Matthaeum homiliae 28.3. ⁵⁹ Wiśniewski 2015. ⁶⁰ Lafferty 2014. ⁶¹ Male pereat, insepultus iaceat, non resurgat, cum Iuda partem habeat, si quis sepulcrum hunc violaverit (ILChV 3845). ⁶² D.M. Aurelius Niceta Aureliae Aelianeti, filiae bene merenti, fecit. Fossor, vide ne fodias! Deus magnu oclu abet, vide, et ut filios abes (ILChV 3877).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

98

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

In very rare cases the epitaph expresses the belief that the saint will protect the tomb. A late inscription from Como in northern Italy found in the church of St Julian addresses readers as follows: I adjure you all, Christians, and you, the blessed defender Julian, by God and by the dreadful day of judgment: Let this tomb never be violated, but let it be preserved until the end of the world, so that I can return to life without any obstacle when He, who will judge the living and the dead, will come.⁶³

There were certainly others who believed that the power of saints would protect their graves, but we do not see them in the evidence. Thus, people hoped for the protection of the grave and believed in the intercession of saints for the sake of the salvation of their souls. All this implied a belief in the power of the place in which the dead were buried. Interestingly, the tombs of saints were not the only sacred places which played such a role. Some people were buried in apses, close to the altar, which could, but did not have to contain relics,⁶⁴ and so we cannot suppose that the altar as such could be considered the source of power. The situation is even clearer in the case of interments in baptisteries, attested in Africa, Italy, and Gaul,⁶⁵ for baptisteries did not have any relics. Apparently, the places where the Eucharist and Baptism were celebrated were powerful and suitable for burials irrespective of whether relics were deposited in them or not. Not all the hopes of those interred ad sanctos had to do with the resurrection of the dead. Those who prepared graves for themselves or who cared for the burial of their kin often had more secular intentions. First of all, they did not want the graves to be violated, whether it affected the soul or not. The authors of pagan funeral inscriptions, who did not expect the resurrection of the body, were no less preoccupied by the security of their tombs than Christians. Also, the concentration of graves around the tomb of a saintly figure does not necessarily prove that people believed in a direct impact of the place on the posthumous fate of the body or soul. In Antiquity, the tomb, both of a saint and of an ordinary person, was often referred to as a memoria (in Latin) or mnēmē (in Greek), a place of memory. And the tombs did serve to keep this memory alive. The tomb of a saint was obviously a very important point in a basilica and so burials adjacent to it were more conspicuous and prestigious, and probably also more expensive than those in other places. The ostentatiousness of burials is a well-attested phenomenon in Antiquity.⁶⁶ And if we do not limit the examination of burial places to the closest vicinity of the ⁶³ Adiuro vus omnes, Xpiani, et te, custude beati Iuliani, per deo et per tremenda die iudicii, ut hunc sepulcrum nunquam ullo tempore violetur, sed coservetur ad finem mundi, ut posim sine impedimento in vita redire, cum venerit qui iudicaturus est vivos et mortuos (ILChV 3863). ⁶⁴ Wieland 1912. ⁶⁵ Potthoff 2016, 179–82; Jensen 2011, 242; Synodus Autissiodorensis a. 561–605, c. 14. ⁶⁶ See Wood 1996, 21–3 and Effros 2002, 130–1.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Burials ad Sanctos

99

tomb of a saint, the need for ostentation is easily noticeable. People could be interred in several different places inside a church. The gate and atrium, for instance, were most probably chosen as the place of burial because everyone going inside would have to have passed through them and seen the graves situated there.⁶⁷ This conspicuousness was important and often alluded to. A funerary inscription from Tyana, dated to the fifth or sixth century, addresses the passer-by: ‘O stranger, you behold the tomb of Karteria. In front of it her deceased husband lies concealed, near the Baptist, by the door-way of [his] house [i.e. church], bringing tears to all inhabitants looking at it.’⁶⁸ The sixth-century Nestorian historian Barḥadbešabbā ‘Arbāyā claimed that the famous theologian Theodore of Mopsuestia ‘was laid next to the bones of the blessed Thecla, the one who went round with the Apostles, as if by the operation of God, so that even when the evil ones [i.e. his theological opponents] did not want to, they would honour his bones together with those of Thecla’.⁶⁹ Even if the place for this burial was most probably not selected so as to make those who opposed Theodore’s doctrine see and venerate his tomb, the author evidently liked this idea. Of course, it can be supposed that some people who were buried close to saints hoped that upon seeing their tombs passers-by would also pray for their souls; Augustine would have certainly approved of that. But there must have been others who most probably wanted to be remembered for more worldly reasons. It is also worth noting that the saints were not the only special dead whose burials attracted further interments. Emperors or members of their family could do so as well. The suburban basilica of St Sebastian in Rome is tightly encircled by funeral chapels, and this is certainly a place devoted to the cult of this famous saint. But the mausoleum of Helena, Constantine’s mother, and the adjacent funeral basilica in the place known as ‘At the Two Laurels’ were equally popular as places of interment, and the belt of chapels around this basilica is very similar to that at St Sebastian’s.⁷⁰ That basilica was dedicated to the martyrs Peter and Marcellinus, but they were not buried in it, or directly underneath, but at some distance from it and their cult developed only gradually. Thus, those who were interred around the basilica were probably not looking for the saints’ help, and certainly did not expect to find it at their bodies. Instead, they were looking for a pious, but above all prestigious location, close to a deceased member of the imperial family. And Helena’s mausoleum was not the only tomb of a prominent layperson which attracted other burials.⁷¹

⁶⁷ ⁶⁸ ⁶⁹ ⁷⁰ ⁷¹

See N. Duval 1986, 31 and generally about the visibility of burials Yasin 2009, 69–97. See P. Nowakowski, CSLA E01023. Barḥadbešabbā ‘Arbāyā, Ecclesiastical History 19, trans. S. Minov, CSLA 01288. Guyon 1987, 273–87 and 361–7. Ament 1986 (a number of graves clustered around an obviously secular tomb).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

100

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

What does all of this tell us about burials ad sanctos? First, it demonstrates that we are dealing with a complex phenomenon. Bringing saints together certainly did not serve the same purpose as burying ordinary people close to martyrs, and even the latter type of interment had diverse functions: it could secure the body for the resurrection of the dead and help directly on the Day of Judgement, but also make a display of the importance, wealth, and piety of the dead and their families. Secondly, it shows that those who were looking for burials ad sanctos were not necessarily uneducated or misguided. Bishops and other clerics were overrepresented among them. If indeed the church hierarchy was reluctant to accept this belief, they did everything to hide this feeling. Thirdly, burials ad sanctos are attested in several places, but in none of them can they be seen as entirely common. In most regions this practice is poorly attested; it does not seem to be really widespread outside Italy, and even there the number of those who were buried ad sanctos was small, which, at a more general level, probably should advise us against overestimating the popularity of the cult of relics.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

6 Finding Relics In the mid-fourth century, when the cult of relics started to develop, most saints whose bodies were to be venerated over the centuries lay deeply hidden under the earth. By that time Christian communities were probably able to locate many graves of the victims of the Great Persecution of the early fourth century and possibly, but only possibly, also some of those who had been killed in the mid-third century, in the time of the emperors Decius and Valerian. Marianne Sághy argues that by the time Damasus, bishop of Rome in 366–84, started writing his epigrammatic poems on Roman martyrs, they had been almost forgotten by their community.¹ The extent of this oblivion is not easy to assess, but in several regions the situation was even worse. In Gaul or northern Italy, for instance, there was not much to forget, since local martyrs were few. The churches of such regions had either to import relics of foreign saints from other places or somehow to discover their own martyrs, whose very existence usually had to be invented. With the biblical saints, the situation was equally complicated. Some tombs of Old Testament figures, it is difficult to say how many, were already identified by Jewish tradition.² As for the New Testament heroes, however, the location of the graves of most of them was lost.³ At the beginning of the Constantinian era, Christians were able to name only a few burial places of the Apostles. Peter and Paul were known to rest in Rome, John the Evangelist in Ephesus, Philip in Hierapolis, and James in Jerusalem.⁴ As I have already said, it is doubtful whether the body of Thomas was in Edessa before the second half of the fourth century. The three ‘Apostles’, Andrew, Luke, and Timothy, were brought to Constantinople in the 350s from the cities or regions associated with their death, but there is no evidence whatsoever that their tombs had been venerated or even identified before.⁵ Those of

¹ Sághy 2012. ² Wilkinson 1995, 452–5. ³ Taylor 1993. ⁴ See Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 2.25.5–8 (Peter and Paul); 3.31.3–4 (Philip and John); 2.23.18 (James). ⁵ Mango 1990, 59.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

102

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

other New Testament personages, including other Apostles and St Stephen the First Martyr, were still to be discovered. More accessible were the bones of the new saints, namely monks, but the cult of their relics was slow to appear. Athanasius’ testimony concerning the secret burial of St Antony’s body⁶ might suggest that the bodies of the holy eremites came to be viewed as relics from the very moment of death, and so there was no need to look for them. This, however, in the early history of the cult of relics happened at best very rarely.⁷ In most regions, very few monks of the fourth and fifth centuries were venerated after their deaths, which obviously was not because their tombs had been well hidden. The only part of Christendom where the graves of monks attracted interest was Syria and Palestine; there the posthumous cult of holy monks, such as Hilarion of Gaza and Euthymios, is attested since the end of the fourth century.⁸ In Egypt, the cradle of monasticism, however, the bodies of monks were not venerated before the sixth century. Thus, it is no wonder that it was only at that time, in AD 561, that the body of St Antony was finally discovered and translated to Alexandria.⁹ In all, in the fourth century, the graves of the new saints (monks) attracted only limited attention, and the graves of most old saints (martyrs and biblical heroes) had to be discovered. As for Old and New Testament figures, their list was preserved in Scripture. Christians had to identify some of their graves, but they knew whose graves they were looking for. As for the martyrs, the problem they faced was not so much of finding the grave, but constructing the story behind it. The process of identification of the graves of both biblical saints and martyrs was probably under way as early as the first half of the fourth century. We have no idea what it looked like, even in the case of such important saints as Andrew and Luke, brought to Constantinople from Achaea in the 350s. We cannot say who found their graves and how the identification was proved. In the last quarter of the fourth century, however, a new and well-attested phenomenon appears in our evidence, that of miraculous discoveries, preceded by visions and followed by signs demonstrating the power of the relics.

EARLY DISCOVERIES The earliest allusion to relics revealed probably owing to a vision can be found in Pope Damasus’ (366–84) epigram on the martyr Eutychius: ⁶ Athanasius, Vita Antonii 90–2; see p. 23. ⁷ For the later evolution, see Kaplan 1999. ⁸ See Jerome, Vita Hilarionis 33; Cyril of Scythopolis, Vita Euthymii—from chapter 47 (68) on. On the slow development of the cult of the holy monks, see Wiśniewski 2018. ⁹ Victor of Tunnuna, Chronica s.a. 561.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Finding Relics

103

In sleep-bringing night a dream stirs the mind. It reveals the hiding place that contains the guiltless man’s limbs. He is sought; discovered he is venerated; he offers support; he furnishes all things.¹⁰

The Latin text is not entirely clear about who had the vision and when, but it certainly mentions a dream, a search, and a discovery. In 379, Damasus’ contemporary Gregory of Nazianzus mentioned the discovery of the body of St Cyprian, again by a revelation (di’ apokalypseōs) received by a certain woman.¹¹ Neither of these authors provides any details about the discovery. Only slightly later, in 384, the pilgrim Egeria heard a story about the finding of the grave of Job in the city of Carneas, in the province of Palaestina Secunda.¹² As this chapter of Egeria’s diary is partly lost, the very beginning of the story is missing, but the rest relates that a monk living in the desert saw the grave in a vision and was told to communicate its location to the local bishop and clergy. He did so and shortly after a cave was found, at the end of which, a hundred steps in, the excavators saw a stone on which the name ‘Job’ was carved. Egeria emphasizes that the body and the stone were not moved, but an altar and a church were built over it. We do not know when exactly all this happened. In his Onomasticon Eusebius claimed that the city of Job was called Dannaba, but did not write anything about the tomb of Job in this place, while the Pilgrim of Bordeaux located it, c.333, at a different place, close to Bethlehem.¹³ Thus, the events described by Egeria must have occurred only later. Also, the fact that the vision was sent to a monk points rather to times closer to her pilgrimage than to the beginning of the fourth century, when monasticism was unknown in Palestine. In 386, Ambrose of Milan found the grave of the two then unknown martyrs Gervasius and Protasius. This event, mentioned already several times in this book, was described for the first time by Ambrose himself, in a letter written shortly after.¹⁴ The finding of Gervasius and Protasius was followed by two others, apparently also organized by Ambrose: that of the martyrs Agricola and Vitalis in Bologna and that of Nazarius in Milan, both in the first half of the 390s.¹⁵ It is possible that in the same years, on the other side of the Alps, Bishop Theodore of Octodurum (modern Martigny in Switzerland) discovered the relics of the soldier martyrs belonging to the Theban Legion, supposedly killed at the end of the third century. We know about this discovery only from the ¹⁰ Nocte soporifera turbant insomnia mentem, / Ostendit latebra insontis quae membra teneret / quaeritur, inuentus colitur, fouet, omnia prestat (Epigrammata Damasiana 21.10–11). For the translation and discussion, see Trout 2015, 123–4. ¹¹ Gregory of Nazianzus, In sanctum Cyprianum 18. For localizing and dating this sermon, see Mossay in SC 284, 27. I am grateful to Estelle Cronnier for this reference. ¹² Egeria, Itinerarium 16.5–6. ¹³ Eusebius, Onomasticon 370; Itinerarium Burdigalense 598; see Cronnier 2016, 28–31. ¹⁴ Ambrose, Epistula 77. ¹⁵ Paulinus of Milan, Vita Ambrosii 29.1 and 32–3.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

104

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

Passion of the Agaunian Martyrs, written in the 430s by Eucherius, bishop of Lyons, according to whom the bodies of the martyrs were ‘revealed’ to Theodore.¹⁶ The story of the Theban Legion is certainly fictitious, but from our point of view this is not important. What is important is the reality of the discovery. This cannot be proven, but the finding seems to fit well with the political situation and religious atmosphere of the 390s.¹⁷ Then, we move back to the East. According to Sozomen, relics of three Old Testament prophets, Habakkuk, Micah, and Zechariah, were revealed, as we will see later, in the vicinity of Eleutheropolis during the reign of Theodosius I and Theodosius II, possibly in the early 390s and c.415.¹⁸ Probably in the same period, the grave of the prophet Samuel was found close to Jerusalem. No source mentions the finding itself, but Jerome notes the transfer of Samuel’s body to Constantinople during the reign of the Emperor Arcadius (395–408), and since no earlier author refers to this tomb, we can suppose that it was found shortly before the translation.¹⁹ The next safely dated discovery is that of St Stephen the First Martyr. It took place in the village of Caphargamala in Palestine in December 415, and because of the subsequent spread of his relics and the popularity of its literary account, which gave rise to the new literary genre of inventio, it was probably the most important discovery of this kind in Late Antiquity. This account was written in the year following the event by the priest Lucian of Caphargamala, to whom the location of the tomb of Stephen was revealed in a series of visions.²⁰ These are the first stories about inventiones, or the miraculous discoveries of relics. They appear in the evidence in the 370s and describe almost contemporary events; they also come from different regions, namely Italy, Asia Minor, and above all Palestine.²¹ If we make a list of biblical saints whose relics were identified in this early period, we can instantly notice that the list is incomplete. Of the Twelve Apostles, relics of Matthew, Matthias, and Simon do not appear in the evidence. Only a few of the prophets of the Old Testament had identified tombs, and the same can be said of other biblical figures. In the fifth century this situation remained largely unchanged; only St Barnabas, Paul the Apostle’s companion, was found in Cyprus in 488.²² There was apparently no plan and no need to find all the major biblical heroes. Moreover, while the graves of some of them were discovered at a relatively early date, others had to wait ¹⁶ Passio Acaunensium martyrum 16. ¹⁷ See Woods 1996 and Wermelinger 2005. ¹⁸ Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 7.29.1–2 and 9.17.1–6. ¹⁹ Jerome, Adversus Vigilantium 5; see Cronnier 2016, 53. ²⁰ For the composition of this text, see Vanderlinden 1946. ²¹ Other discoveries from this period appear in later evidence; their reliability is, however, at best difficult to establish. ²² See p. 108.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Finding Relics

105

surprisingly long. A good example of a late discovery is that of St Stephen. If the discovery of Job took place already in the 380s or earlier, why did the First Martyr need to wait until 415? Interestingly, his cult did develop earlier. His feast on 26 December was celebrated in Cappadocia already in the 380s.²³ The same date is attested in the Syriac Calendar of Edessa, preserved in a manuscript dated to 411, and so preceding by four years the discovery in Caphargamala.²⁴ Even more intriguingly, already in the 360s, Gregory of Nazianzus names Stephen in his sermon Against Julian, when enumerating powerful Apostles and martyrs. The tombs of all of them, except Stephen, were already identified and renowned as healing places.²⁵ All this suggests that this discovery was much expected, and yet it happened only half a century after Gregory of Nazianzus had referred to the power of St Stephen’s grave. On the other hand, there were a number of minor or at least not obvious biblical heroes whose graves were found quite early in this period. Job, though an important biblical personage, does not seem to be an evident candidate for the first saint to be looked for. It is understandable that on Egeria’s list we can see the graves of Moses or Thomas the Apostle, but those of Abraham’s nephew Nahor and his son Bethuel (in Haran) or that of Laban, Jacob’s father-in-law (in Fadana), can hardly be classified as tombs of saints at all.²⁶

W H Y L O O K F O R RE L I C S ? The somewhat puzzling list of the saints whose graves were discovered or identified in the fourth and early fifth century leads to the question of the motives behind this phenomenon. I argued in Chapter 2 that what gave momentum to the cult of relics was the belief in their power. There is no doubt that this belief resulted in a high demand for relics, and this in some cases was sufficient reason to search for and find them. In his acerbic remark about the Melitians stealing the bodies of martyrs from cemeteries, Athanasius of Alexandria clearly states that they were looking for the power of the saints’ bodies over demons.²⁷ We also know that some relics discovered in the fourth and fifth centuries, such as those of Gervasius, Protasius, and Stephen, instantly gained a reputation for their miracles. But, as we will see, in none of these cases was the desire to get hold of miraculous power really a driving force behind the discovery. ²³ Gregory of Nyssa, In sanctum Stephanum I, p. 75; see also, slightly later, Asterius of Amasea, Homilia 12.1; see Rizos, CSLA E02145. ²⁴ Martyrologium Syriacum, p. 11. ²⁵ Gregory of Nazianzus, Contra Iulianum 1.69; see p. 70. ²⁶ Egeria, Itinerarium 12.1–2 (Moses), 20.8–10 (Nahor and Bethuel) and 21.4 (Laban). ²⁷ Athanasius, Epistula 42; see pp. 35–6.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

106

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

Also, very few graves of Old Testament personages became miraculous places, and it seems unlikely that they were looked for because of the expected power of their relics. We may understand better the motivation behind their discoveries if we take a look at other sites and objects which Egeria saw in the Holy Land. She did not really set out to find miracle-working places, but rather material testimonies of biblical history which would demonstrate that this history was true. Even in Carneas she visited not just Job’s grave, but also the place where he had sat on a dunghill, and she was interested in both the former and the latter, the two being essential places in the story of this biblical figure. Several discoveries which took place in Palestine can thus be seen as part of the process of identifying biblical places rather than hunting for relics of saints. Even more importantly, relics were needed to enhance the status of the churches which possessed them and rekindle the religious zeal of Christians, and in some cases they were evidently sought with this purpose in mind. This can be seen in a few discoveries which took place in Milan in 386, in Jerusalem and Eleutheropolis at the turn of the fourth century, and in Cyprus in 488. The cases of Eleutheropolis and Jerusalem should be analysed together, because the series of discoveries on their territory was linked with the rivalry of these two Palestinian episcopal sees. The role of these discoveries was analysed by Estelle Cronnier and in the paragraph that follows I am essentially following her argument and conclusions.²⁸ As has already been said, according to Sozomen, the graves of the prophets Habakkuk and Micah were found in the territory of Eleutheropolis, an important city and bishopric about 50 km south-west of Jerusalem, during the reign of Theodosius I (378–95).²⁹ If this information is true, the period in which the discovery took place can probably be narrowed down to the years 384–95, for Egeria, who visited this region c.384, did not yet know about the vision and the discovery. Sozomen claims that the location of both tombs was revealed in a dream vision to Bishop Zebennos of Eleutheropolis. At that time the dominant role of Jerusalem on the ecclesiastical map of Palestine was still far from being firmly established. At the beginning of the fourth century, Aelia, as Jerusalem was then officially called, was a minor episcopal see. It became important thanks to the imperial foundations at Golgotha, the Holy Sepulchre, and the Mount of Olives, and thanks to the discovery of the Holy Cross. The city also had tombs of some Old Testament saints and that of St James, Brother of the Lord, but its location was disputed.³⁰ As regards ecclesiastical administration, Jerusalem was subject to Caesarea, the metropolitan see of Palestine, and the bishop of Eleutheropolis could consider ²⁸ Cronnier 2016, 291–8. ²⁹ Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 7.29.1–2. ³⁰ Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 2.23.18; Jerome, De viris inlustribus 2 (rejecting the tradition of the burial at the Mount of Olives, which is also reflected in Apparitio sancti Jacobi apostoli; see Cronnier 2016, 55–68).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Finding Relics

107

himself as being on a par with his colleague from Aelia. Eleutheropolis’ weakness consisted in the fact that this large and old city did not have a biblical history or holy places. Since 387 the bishop of Jerusalem was John, whose relations with Eleutheropolis in the 390s were quite tense, partly because he had to defend his sympathy for Origen, who had been fiercely attacked by Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis in Cyprus. That sharp-tongued ecclesiastic, a Palestinian by birth who originated from Eleutheropolis, founded a monastery close to this city, often resided there, and evidently received at least the tacit approval of Bishop Zebennos.³¹ It is during this conflict that Zebennos discovered the graves of Habakkuk and Micah. It is tempting to link this discovery with Epiphanius, for Jerome calls Epiphanius’ monastery, if the conjecture of the corrupted text in one of his letters is correct, Becos Abacus, the place of Habakkuk.³² The discovery was arguably aimed at strengthening the position of Zebennos, and probably also that of Epiphanius, against John. By acquiring holy relics, Eleutheropolis could, at least to some extent, aspire to a status equal to that of Jerusalem. The second act of the conflict between these two Palestinian bishoprics took place two decades later. In December 415, Eulogios, bishop of Caesarea, the metropolitan see whose status Jerusalem contested, convoked a council in Diospolis (Lydda).³³ At this council, John of Jerusalem had to defend his lenient position toward Pelagius, an ascetic from Britain stigmatized as a heretic by several Western and some Eastern bishops. It was during this council that the relics of St Stephen were found in Caphargamala.³⁴ This discovery, made in the territory of John’s diocese and under his auspices, the subsequent solemn transfer of the relics to Jerusalem, as well as the ensuing miracles, evidently enhanced the position of John in relation to both Caesarea and other Palestinian sees, including Eleutheropolis, whose bishop, still the same Zebennos, participated in the council.³⁵ Interestingly, in Sozomen’s account, the finding of the tomb of St Stephen is mentioned in the same chapter in which he describes another discovery, that of the prophet Zechariah, in a place called Caphar-Zechariah, again very close to Eleutheropolis.³⁶ It is not certain whether the two events actually took place in the same year and which happened earlier, but it is very probable that they were not distant in time. If so, either John organized the discovery of Stephen

³¹ See Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 6.32.1–3 and Epiphanius’ letter to John of Jerusalem, preserved in the collection of Jerome’s letters as Epistula 51, about his activity in Palestine. ³² Jerome, Epistula 82.8. The manuscripts have Besos adhuc or vetus adduci. The conjecture was proposed by Hilberg in the CSEL edition of Jerome’s letters. ³³ Drijvers 2004, 178–9. ³⁴ Revelatio s. Stephani A 44 and B 42. ³⁵ The acts of these council are not extant, but the list of the participants is given by Augustine, Contra Iulianum 1.19 and 32, who spells his name as Zoboennus. ³⁶ Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 9.17.1–6.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

108

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

in order to respond to that of Zechariah or Zebennos organized the discovery of Zechariah in order to respond to that of Stephen. The rivalry between Jerusalem and Eleutheropolis can be detected only if we carefully examine a variety of sources. No late antique author presents the finding of any of the relics mentioned above as an element in the game of power between the two sees. Sometimes, however, the role of such discoveries in church politics is more evident. The best example of it, openly presented as such by the author who described this event, is the discovery of the grave of St Barnabas in Cyprus. His relics are mentioned by a few sixth-century writers. One of them, Victor of Tunnuna, dates their finding, quite reliably, to AD 488, and his contemporary, the Cypriot monk Alexander, presents in detail the circumstances of this event.³⁷ According to Alexander, Bishop Anthemios of Salamis was much troubled by the actions of Peter the Fuller, patriarch of Antioch, who tried to submit the Church of Cyprus to his power. One night, Anthemios saw in a dream St Barnabas, who revealed to him the place of his burial and, importantly, said explicitly that its discovery would help to reject the claims of Antioch, since Cyprus, having been converted by him and in possession of his body, was fully entitled to the title of an apostolic see (Barnabas is consistently presented as an Apostle). The tomb containing Barnabas’ body with the Gospel of Matthew on his breast was indeed found in the place indicated in the vision. The news was reported to Constantinople, to which the book was also transferred, and in consequence Cyprus retained its independent position. Alexander does not cover up the underlying motive for the discovery of the relics; on the contrary, he expressly states that they were found in order to protect the status of the island as an autonomous ecclesiastical province. In 386, Bishop Ambrose discovered the bodies of the martyrs Gervasius and Protasius in a suburban cemetery in Milan, close to the tomb of the saints Nabor and Felix. Earlier that year, he was in a serious conflict with the imperial court, then residing in Milan, and especially with the Empress Justina, Valentinian II’s mother, who tried to force the bishop to give over one of the city basilicas, then held by the Nicene Christians, to the Homoian community. The conflict started in January 386, but its further chronology is not entirely clear. It is certain that at the very beginning of April, during Easter, some basilicas, or a basilica, were besieged by troops sent by the emperor. Almost certainly there was also another siege, but it is debatable whether it took place before or after Easter. The exact sequence of these events is important for the understanding of the link between the strife with the

³⁷ The earliest evidence: Severus of Antioch, Epistula 108 and Theodore Lector, Historia ecclesiastica, epitome 436; Victor of Tunnuna, Chronica, s.a. 488; Alexander of Cyprus, Laudatio Barnabae.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Finding Relics

109

Arianizing court and the discovery of the grave of Gervasius and Protasius, which took place on 19 June 386.³⁸ If the second siege was lifted in April, in June the tensions in the city may have abated over the course of several weeks. But if the second siege came later, in May or early June, then the finding of Gervasius and Protasius took place in the acute phase of the conflict and was meant to improve the position of Ambrose.³⁹ In his own account, the discovery is presented as a response to a request of the people of the city, who asked him to dedicate a newly built basilica by depositing in it some relics.⁴⁰ He does not connect it directly with the affair of the basilicas, but shows that the event took place in the context of the conflict between the Nicenes and their enemies, who rejected both the doctrine that Ambrose preached and the authenticity of the relics that he found.⁴¹ For Augustine, who about ten years later refers to these events in which he participated, the link between the discovery and the strife is even closer, for he claims that God revealed the bodies of Gervasius and Protasius for no other reason than ‘to repress the feminine but royal fury’.⁴² Also Paulinus of Milan, in his Life of Ambrose, mentions soldiers, who, driven by the ‘woman’s fury and the insane Arians’ madness’, endeavoured to break into one of the Milanese churches, an incident which in his account is immediately followed by the story of the discovery of the relics: ‘Around the same time the holy martyrs Protasius and Gervasius revealed themselves to the bishop.’⁴³ All this suggests that even if the discovery was not Ambrose’s direct answer to the demands to hand over a basilica, it played an important role in the Nicene–Homoian conflict from the very beginning, and soon Ambrosian propaganda made the link between the dramatic defence of the churches and the discovery of the martyrs even closer. We should not place discoveries resulting from the desires of people who craved the miraculous power of relics in opposition to those organized by bishops who used them in church politics. In fact, a successful discovery usually required some sort of cooperation between the bishop and his community, and the intentions of clerics and laypeople were in most cases complex and varied. However, necessities of ecclesiastical politics better explain the very fact of discovery, and also the particular moment at which it took place. In several cases this politics may also have caused the specific way in which relics were found or rather in which discoveries were described.

³⁸ The date is provided by the Calendarium Carthaginense (XIII Kal. Iul). It simply mentions the feast of Gervasius and Protasius, but Augustine, in Sermo 286.4, says that the feast specifically celebrated the discovery of their relics. ³⁹ McLynn 1994, 177–82. ⁴⁰ Ambrose, Epistula 77.1. ⁴¹ Ambrose, Epistula 77.16–20 (see also 77.1–2). ⁴² Augustine, Confessiones 9.7. ⁴³ Paulinus of Milan, Vita Ambrosii 13.1 and 14.1.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

110

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

THE P ATTERN AND ACCOUNTS OF DISCOVERY The finding of relics is usually presented as resulting from the desire of the saint himself, who decided to reveal the presence of his grave (to the best of my knowledge, there is no early evidence of such discoveries in the case of female saints). This desire is fulfilled by an unsolicited vision, typically seen by a reliable witness, a monk or a cleric, preferably a bishop.⁴⁴ It can be a day or night vision; if the latter, it is often repeated, in most cases as many as three times.⁴⁵ The saint usually reveals not only the position of his tomb, but also his identity.⁴⁶ If it is not the local bishop who has the vision, its content is duly reported to him.⁴⁷ It is also the bishop who, after proper examination, orders digging to start and attends it with his clergy.⁴⁸ When the tomb is found, additional elements confirm the authenticity of the relics. In some cases an inscription with the name of the saint is discovered, even with an account of his martyrdom.⁴⁹ When the grave is opened, the peculiar character of the body becomes evident. The heads of martyrs are found separated from their corpses, showing that the people buried in the tomb were executed.⁵⁰ Various elements signal the sanctity of the body: the blood, still visible in the graves of those who died a long time ago, integrity or incorruptibility of the flesh, freshness of the skin, lack of any signs of decay, wonderful fragrance, etc.⁵¹ After the discovery, the relics are solemnly transferred to a new place of deposition, within the same city or beyond.⁵² The ceremony is attended by clergy, monks, nobles,

⁴⁴ Monks: Egeria, Itinerarium 16.5; Lucian, Revelatio s. Stephani AB 36–41; Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon s.a. 453; Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum 72; History of the Albanians 1.19; Movsēs Xorenac’i, History of Armenia 2.91; Vita Cornelii 5; see Cronnier 2016, 198–209. Bishop: see e.g. Passio Acaunensium martyrum 16; Paulinus of Milan, Vita Ambrosii 14.1, 29.1, and 33.1; Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 7.29. ⁴⁵ Triple vision: Lucian, Revelatio s. Stephani AB 3–35; Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 9.2.7 (St Thyrsus and the Forty Martyrs in Constantinople); Apparitio s. Iacobi Apostoli, pp. 123–4; see Cronnier 2016, 196. ⁴⁶ Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 9.2.7; Inventio Gervasii et Protasii 4; Alexander of Cyprus, Laudatio Barnabae, p. 114; Cronnier 2016, 198–201. ⁴⁷ Message for the bishop: Egeria, Itinerarium 16.5; Revelatio s. Stephani A 6 and 18, B 6; John Rufus, Vita Petri Iberi 142. ⁴⁸ Egeria, Itinerarium 16.5–6; Alexander of Cyprus, Laudatio Barnabae, p. 116; Historia Gesii et Isidori, p. 67; see Cronnier 2016, 215–16. ⁴⁹ Egeria, Itinerarium 16.6; Revelatio s. Stephani AB 43; Historia Gesii et Isidori, p. 68; History of the Albanians 1.19; see Cronnier 2016, 218–20. For a similar situation with the relics of Montanus, see Michael the Syrian, Chronica 9.33. ⁵⁰ Ambrose, Epistula 77.12; Paulinus of Milan, Vita Ambrosii 32.3 (Nazarius); see also Gregory of Tours: Liber de passione et virtutibus sancti Iuliani martyris 2. ⁵¹ Revelatio s. Stephani AB 45; Alexander of Cyprus, Laudatio Barnabae, p. 116; Passio et inventio Gervasii et Protasii (BHL 3514) 18; Gregory of Tours, Liber de passione et virtutibus sancti Iuliani martyris 2. ⁵² Revelatio s. Stephani AB 48; Procopius, De aedificiis 1.4.22 (Apostles in Constantinople); John Rufus, Vita Petri Iberi 145.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Finding Relics

111

and a number of laypeople, in some cases even the emperor or his family.⁵³ There follows a series of miracles. Demons are chased away and the sick are healed.⁵⁴ In some cases, the cart which carries the relics moves miraculously or stops at a certain place and cannot be moved any further, thus either suggesting that the transfer is accepted by the saint or indicating in this way the place where the relics should be deposited.⁵⁵ Finally, the deposition is preceded with prolonged vigils or other ceremonies in a church.⁵⁶ This catalogue contains elements found in different stories and one can hardly name a text containing them all.⁵⁷ Three elements, however—the vision, the bishop, and the miracles—are very common. In most cases it is very difficult to find out what those who witnessed the discovery really saw or believed they had seen after the opening of a tomb, but the texts referred to in the notes show what people could read about the relics deposited in the churches they visited. Whatever the actual discovery looked like, these stories were an essential element of the cult of the respective relics.

WHY MIRACULOUS I N V E N T I O? Why did the pattern of the miraculous discovery of relics become so popular? Of course, the graves which were forgotten had to be somehow identified, but graves were not the only sacred places which needed identification. It was also the case of most biblical sites in Palestine, which started to be visited in the fourth century. It is possible that the location of the grave of Christ was known in Jerusalem before the Constantinian era. The same, although with even less certainty, can be said about the cave of the Nativity in Bethlehem. But it is highly unlikely that the column of flagellation, the house of Caiaphas, or the palm tree with the branches of which the people of Jerusalem hailed Jesus, and several other minor biblical places were identified before the fourth century. They had to be somehow discovered and recognized. And yet it seems that the process of their identification went without visions and miracles, or at least the

⁵³ Ambrose, Epistula 77.2; Victricius, De laude sanctorum 2–3; Jerome, Adversus Vigilantium 5; John Chrysostom, In s. Phocam 1; John Chrysostom, Homilia dicta postquam 1. ⁵⁴ Ambrose, Epistula 77 passim; Paulinus of Milan, Vita Ambrosii 14–16, 29, and 33; Revelatio s. Stephani A 46; this motif also appears in the accounts of martyrdom, e.g. Passio Nazarii et Celsi (BHL 6043) 12 (see M. Pignot, CSLA E02034). ⁵⁵ Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 7.21.2–3; Agathangelos, The History of Armenia 811; Ps.-Sebeos, Armenian History 14/85–6. ⁵⁶ John Chrysostom, Homilia dicta postquam 1–3; Revelatio s. Stephani B 48; Passio s. Dometii 22; John Rufus, Vita Petri Iberi 145; see Cronnier 2016, 239–51. ⁵⁷ For the evidence, see Cronnier 2016, 189–237.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

112

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

sources are silent about this. Why was this not the case with the graves of biblical saints and martyrs? Certainly, several stories say that their bones were simply hidden underground and so a sign was needed for the narrative purpose of explaining why the excavation started in one place and not another. The graves found in the early period, those of Job, Gervasius and Protasius, and Stephen, the discovery of which created the pattern of inventio, were apparently unmarked at the surface. Ambrose, writing about his own discovery, suggests that the sign he obtained was very vague,⁵⁸ but a sign was indeed necessary to make the story convincing. A revelatory dream in which saints appeared to the faithful seems to have been a natural solution. First, because the saints were considered to be present in their tombs, at least from the moment when the belief in miracles occurring at them developed. Secondly, because unlike most holy places, corporeal relics were personified: they were not just linked with saints, but were saints. Thirdly, because the conviction that the dead communicated with the living by means of dreams was widespread in the Mediterranean. In Greek and Latin literature we find many examples of that belief, and the message which those dreams conveyed often concerned burial.⁵⁹ Most Christians took such apparitions for granted.⁶⁰ Perpetua saw in a dream her dead brother, the soldier Basilides saw in a night vision the martyr Potamiena at whose execution he had assisted; and the ghosts of brigands executed in a house kept haunting passers-by and were appeased only when St Germanus of Auxerre properly buried their bodies.⁶¹ All that justifies up to a point dream revelations, but not other elements of the story, particularly the miracles following the discovery. In order to explain why they came to be an indispensable element of the pattern, it is important to note that the uncertainty or open contestation of the finding is the point in common for almost all early tales in which the motif of miraculous discovery appears. I am not thinking only about the level of narrative; we have already seen that in many cases the newly discovered relics were powerful instruments in the fight against ecclesiastical rivals. There is no doubt that these rivals, though probably not only them, often challenged the authenticity of the find. Sometimes we can see this in the text, as in the case of Milan. Ambrose, and then his hagiographer, repeatedly point to the disbelief of the ‘Arians’, who questioned the bishop’s honesty and the identity of the corpses. Other authors ⁵⁸ Ambrose, Epistula 77.2, where he simply says: Dominus gratiam dedit . . . inveni signa convenientia. The story in which Gervasius and Protasius themselves appeared to Ambrose is attested only later: Paulinus of Milan, Vita Ambrosii 14.1. ⁵⁹ Iliad 23.62–76; Odyssey 11.51–4; Cicero, De divinatione 1.57; Tertullian, De anima 46–7; Lucian, Philopseudes 30–1; see Ogden 2001. ⁶⁰ Wiśniewski 2013. ⁶¹ Perpetua and Dinocrates: Passio Perpetuae 7.3; Basilides and Potamiena: Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 6.5.6; Germanus and the ghosts: Constantius, Vita Germani 10.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Finding Relics

113

also refer to the doubts and hesitation of the local community, and there is no reason to think that these doubts were not sincere.⁶² Hesitation may have appeared among clerics as well.⁶³ Consequently, an essential literary function of the miracles accompanying the discovery was to demonstrate that the relics were true.⁶⁴ The doubts and contestation did not have to be motivated doctrinally or politically. As we will see in Chapter 10, some people were simply afraid of mistaken attributions, all the more so as they knew that errors happened. The story about miraculous discoveries might have been very helpful to allay such fears. Consequently, sometimes the fact that the location of relics was already known did not preclude their subsequent miraculous discovery. That was the case of the tomb of Moses on Mount Nebo. It was shown to Egeria in the 380s. Surprisingly, the grave of this most important Old Testament saint was very modest and located in a small church. Egeria does not mention its discovery; the monks who lived there told her that they knew about this place from their predecessors.⁶⁵ Yet about a hundred years later, these relics had already a story of their discovery. John Rufus, in his Life of Peter the Iberian, written c.500, included an episode about a shepherd who discovered, owing to a vision, a cave in which he saw ‘a venerable old man whose face was shining and full of all grace, reclining as it were on a bed, bright and flashing with glory and grace’, in whom he recognized Moses. The vision swiftly faded away and the cave became invisible again, but local villagers built a church on this site. Interestingly, in John Rufus’ time the site, renowned for its miracles, seems much more important than at the end of the fourth century when it was visited by Egeria.⁶⁶ In this case, then, the story of the vision and miraculous discovery was almost certainly invented in order to affirm the veracity of the tomb, and apparently achieved this aim. In some instances, the reasons to disbelieve appeared to be all the more justified; I refer here to the cases where another grave of the same saint was discovered in a different location from the one previously known and venerated. This was the case of Job, whose grave was located by the Pilgrim of Bordeaux close to Bethlehem, far away from Carneas.⁶⁷ The same phenomenon can be observed in the case of Habakkuk, who was to be discovered

⁶² Ambrose, Epistula 77.16 and 22; Paulinus of Milan, Vita Ambrosii 15–16; Liber de miraculis s. Stephani 1.1; Basil of Caesarea, Epistula 197; John Chrysostom, In ascensionem 1; Vita Marcelli Acoemeti 29 (St Ursicinus) and Theodoret, Historia religiosa 21.20 (John the Baptist). ⁶³ See an interesting account in Gregory of Tours, Historiarum libri 9.6, in which, unlike in the cases named above, the relics finally are described as false; see K. Wojtalik, CSLA E02332. ⁶⁴ Maraval 1989, 589–90. ⁶⁵ Egeria, Itinerarium 12.2. ⁶⁶ John Rufus, Vita Petri Iberi 120–1. See Cronnier 2016, 31–5. ⁶⁷ It is difficult to say whether this discovery had an impact on the development of the cult of Job, but he did have a cult. Two churches were dedicated to him in Bostra, one of them by Justinian; see P. Nowakowski CSLA E02237 and CSLA E02238.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

114

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

thanks to a dream revelation of Bishop Zebennos in the 380s or early 390s. Yet the grave of this prophet is attested already at the beginning of the fourth century by Eusebius, interestingly in two distinct places, both of them in the territory of Eleutheropolis, in Gabaas and Kela.⁶⁸ The miraculous discovery was probably partly aimed at strengthening the claims of the former. There is no direct evidence that the grave of Zechariah, also discovered by Zebennos, was also known earlier, but this is quite probable.⁶⁹ It is not unlikely that such competing claims to some extent overlapped with religious division, for old graves of Old Testament prophets were most probably identified by the Jews and might have been still in their hands. Nevertheless, local identities or the rivalries between towns or villages might have been more important than religious allegiance.

DISCOVERIES O F REL ICS AND THE FINDING OF THE TRUE CROSS The emergence of the inventio story can be explained by its persuasive aims. However, relics of martyrs and biblical heroes were neither the earliest nor the most famous sacred finding which came to light in the Holy Land in the fourth century. Probably all the discoveries of saints’ graves were preceded by the finding of the Holy Cross, and since the accounts of that event contain elements parallel to those which we come across in the stories about saintly relics, we should investigate the relationship between them. Since the end of the fourth century, the Invention of the Cross was attributed to Helena, Constantine’s mother, who indeed visited Palestine in 327/8. Yet it is very unlikely that the Cross was actually found at that time. The main argument against it is that this discovery is not referred to by two early, important, and well-informed authors. The first of them is Eusebius of Caesarea, who in 338 or 339 wrote the Life of Constantine, describing with a fair amount of detail his pious deeds, including the discovery of the Holy Sepulchre.⁷⁰ The second author is the anonymous Pilgrim of Bordeaux, who visited the Holy Land in 333 and listed many places and objects that he saw there, some of them of evidently secondary importance.⁷¹ Neither of these authors mentions the Cross; this fact would be hard to explain had they heard of this relic. The finding of this precious relic is mentioned for the first time in 351 by Bishop Cyril of Jerusalem. He dates it back to the reign of Constantine, but ⁶⁸ Eusebius, Onomasticon 339 and 594. ⁷⁰ Eusebius, Vita Constantini 3.25–46.

⁶⁹ Cronnier 2016, 37. ⁷¹ See p. 21.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Finding Relics

115

does not say how it happened, does not name Helena, and does not suggest that the discovery was preceded by or led to any miracles.⁷² The story of Helena appeared only later.⁷³ It was certainly told in the Church History of Gelasios, bishop of Caesarea and Cyril’s nephew. This text, composed c.390, is not extant, but its content can be partly reconstructed on the basis of Book 11 of Rufinus’ Church History, written c.403, which used Gelasios’ account.⁷⁴ According to Rufinus, Helena found three crosses at Golgotha. The one of Christ was identified thanks to Bishop Macarius of Jerusalem, who brought all three pieces of wood to a certain sick woman, touched her with each of them, and recognized Christ’s gibbet when the woman was healed. Another author who attributes the discovery of the Cross to Helena is Ambrose of Milan. He refers to this event in his sermon on the funeral of the Emperor Theodosius, delivered in 395, that is between Gelasios’ and Rufinus’ accounts. Ambrose presents a significantly different version of this event, in which Helena was inspired by the Holy Spirit, but recognized the True Cross because it was found at Golgotha between two other crosses, and had the titulus, or inscribed board placed on it at the order of Pilate.⁷⁵ No bishop is mentioned as attending the event, nor is there a hint of any miracles. The chronological sequence of these accounts proves important when we compare it with the literary history of the discoveries of relics. The Cross probably was identified earlier than all the relics mentioned above, but the common narrative elements appear first in the relics stories. In 379, Gregory of Nazianzus is the first to name a vision; in 384, Egeria does the same and also emphasizes the role of the bishop; in 386, Ambrose writes about a bishop and a healing. Only a few years later, around 390 at the earliest, the vision, the bishop, and the healing can be found in the story of the Cross. Strangely enough, still in 395, they are absent from Ambrose’s account of its finding, in spite of the fact that he used these very elements ten years earlier when describing the discovery of Gervasius and Protasius. Of course, we cannot exclude the possibility that an earlier, oral version of the story of the Cross actually preceded and influenced the accounts of the discoveries of the relics. Still, nothing proves that this was the case, and it is quite possible that the influence worked the other way round, though the resemblance can be explained rather by a similar persuasive function of the stories. At least in the case of Ambrose, it is almost certain that his account of the discovery of the Milanese relics was independent of the story of Helena.

⁷² Cyril of Jerusalem, Ad Constantium 3 and Catecheses 13.4. ⁷³ See Drijvers 2011, 151–2. ⁷⁴ Rufinus, Historia ecclesiastica 10.7–8. For the Church History of Gelasius, see Winkelmann 1966. ⁷⁵ Ambrose, De obitu Theodosii 40–50.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

116

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

BEHIND THE L ITERARY IMAGE We have already seen that in the accounts of discoveries an essential role is played by bishops. The bishops have the visions (or assess their credibility), order the digging, and preside over transfers and depositions. That was certainly a desirable procedure, and there is no doubt that in many cases the bishops organized and carried out the discoveries. But, thanks to other types of evidence, it is sometimes possible to see that it was not always the case. No bishop is mentioned in Sozomen’s account of the discovery of the prophet Zechariah. It is, still according to Sozomen, the Emperor Theodosius who organizes the transfer of the head of St John the Baptist to Constantinople and it is the Empress Pulcheria who receives a vision which leads to the discovery of the relics of the Forty Martyrs in Constantinople and who orders the unearthing of the crypt in which they were deposited.⁷⁶ Bishops are entirely absent from these episodes. Also in Procopius’ De aedificiis the discoveries of the relics of the Apostles and, again, those of the Forty Martyrs, both taking place in Constantinople, are reported to the Emperor Justinian, not to the local bishop.⁷⁷ Of course, both Sozomen and Procopius focus on the imperial city and the latter writes specifically about the buildings constructed by the Emperor Justinian. Still, the absence of bishops is puzzling. In the discovery of Zechariah, the vision is revealed to a simple, unjust, and harsh man called Celemerus, who also uncovers the tomb. A private or nonclerical initiative, which subsequently either gained the approval of the bishop or not, was probably at the origin of several other discoveries, though the evidence usually does not mention it explicitly. Athanasius, for instance, suggests it in his festal letter, quoted above, in which he mentions Melitians carrying bodies of martyrs away from cemeteries.⁷⁸ Had these people been Melitian clerics, Athanasius would have certainly pointed this out, in order to stigmatize the rival clergy. Several decades later, but still in Egypt, Shenoute condemns those who claim that martyrs came to them in a dream and ordered the unearthing of their bodies. He does not claim that these people were clerics.⁷⁹ A canon of the Council of Carthage held in 401 preserved in the so-called Carthage Register deals directly with the people’s initiative. It encourages local bishops to destroy altars, which were erected following ‘dreams or inane and alleged revelations’, but at which no bodies or relics of martyrs were actually deposited. The canon acknowledges that destroying them may be impossible because of the ‘commotion of the people’, but the bishops are ⁷⁶ Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 7.21.4 (Theodosius and the head of John the Baptist); 9.2.12 (Pulcheria and the Forty Martyrs); 9.16.3–9.17.6 (Honorius and the prophet Zechariah). Bishop Zebennos was, however, the discoverer of the relics of Habakkuk and Micah (7.29.2). ⁷⁷ Procopius, De aedificiis 1.4.18–24; 1.7.1–16. ⁷⁸ Athanasius, Epistula festalis 41. ⁷⁹ See Shenoute, Those Who Work Evil, pp. 212 and 219.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Finding Relics

117

required at least to admonish against frequenting such places.⁸⁰ We should not imagine the non-clerical finders of relics as simple people. Aristocrats, whose desires were essential for the development of the cult of saints,⁸¹ also played a role in the search for relics. According to a fifth-century story of the garments of Mary, these relics were found and brought to Constantinople by two aristocrats close to the imperial court, Galbios and Candidos.⁸² Another group which took part in discoveries of relics were monks. The tombs of Job, the head of John the Baptist in Jerusalem, and yet another head of the same saint in Emesa were discovered by monks.⁸³ According to the late account of Movsēs Xorenac’i, the relics of Gregory the Illuminator, Apostle of Armenia, also were found thanks to a revelation to a monk.⁸⁴ Monks were in a way destined to have dreams revealing the location of relics, because they were generally expected to have visions and their visions were considered to be trustworthy. Martin of Tours, for instance, whose prophetic and miraculous power is presented in his Life as due to his monastic vocation, was visited by Mary, Agnes, and Thecla.⁸⁵ Also monks were keen to find relics, because they were interested in possessing them, for reasons of piety or the prestige of their communities. In the account of Egeria we can see that monasteries in the Holy Land were often founded close to biblical places (or perhaps various biblical places were identified nearby in order to enhance their status) and it was their location that helped them to attract pilgrims. Outside Palestine relics could have played a very similar role.⁸⁶ A strong interest of monks in relics can be observed in many places, and especially in Constantinople.⁸⁷ In all, there were many actors involved in the discoveries and transfers of relics. Bishops, lower clergy, monks, aristocrats, and other laypeople could not only participate in these events, but also spark them off. The objectives of these groups were different, but not necessarily contradictory. And in order to make a discovery successful, that is, to gain recognition of the authenticity of the relics, they usually had to collaborate. There is one more thing that we can see if, when studying the discoveries and transfers of relics, we look beyond the translation accounts. We can see how popular and frequent these transfers were, which in turn helps us to ⁸⁰ Registri ecclesiae Carthaginsensi excerpta 83 (Can. 15 of the Council of Carthage in 401). ⁸¹ Brown 1981, passim. ⁸² All the versions of this late fifth-century story are collected by Wenger 1955. See also the transfer of the relics of the Anaunian martyrs by the dux Jacobus: Vigilius of Trent, Epistula 2.1. ⁸³ Egeria, Itinerarium 16.5; Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 7.21.1; De inventione capitis Ioannis Baptistae. ⁸⁴ Movsēs Xorenac’i, History of Armenia 2.91. ⁸⁵ Sulpicius Severus, Dialogi 2.13.4. ⁸⁶ Egeria, Itinerarium 3–99 passim; see also Pilgrim of Piacenza, Itinerarium 12, 23, 46. For the cult of relics and monasticism as two elements of the same religiosity, see Hunter 1999. ⁸⁷ See e.g. the Macedonian monks in Constantinople: Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 9.2.1–2 and the activity of Marcellus Akoimetes: Vita Marcelli 29; see Dagron 1970, 243 and 272–3, and Cronnier 2016, 329–32.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

118

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

assess the strength of the cult of relics as a historical phenomenon. This is an important issue. In Chapter 5 we have seen that such assessment can be done only in part on the basis of material evidence: very few practices could leave material traces. Similarly, literary evidence rarely permits us to assess how strong or widespread the cult of relics was. On the one hand, it consists mostly of hagiographical writings, which were written in order to promote a cult; as such they can hardly be used to measure the real importance of that cult. In collections of miracles, for instance, even modest shrines visited by some locals may have been presented as famous sanctuaries gathering people from all over the Mediterranean, because the authors wanted to promote the cult centres in which they served. On the other hand, we can hardly build anything upon the fact that late antique historiographers rarely mention relics or the sanctuaries which held them. Pilgrimages, cures, vigils, and prayers did not have to be noted by the chroniclers and ecclesiastical historians, since the day-to-day routine of a sanctuary did not make an event worth noting. But the discoveries and transfers of relics, which happened at specific, datable moments, and engaged entire communities with their bishops, public officials, even emperors, could hardly go unnoticed. And so they can be used as a litmus paper, showing the degree of attachment to relics in late antique society. Now, the discoveries of relics are unevenly attested in major historiographical accounts. Of all the church historians of the fifth century, only Sozomen mentions several such events.⁸⁸ Socrates, who wrote in the same period and whose account Sozomen used, mentions none. Certainly, Sozomen tells us mostly about relics found in Palestine, his native land, and one can argue that his interest lies in this region rather than in saints’ graves. Still, Socrates’ silence is puzzling. Another non-hagiographical author who mentions discoveries of relics is Procopius, in his Buildings, but since he writes about several saints’ sanctuaries, it would have been extremely strange had he omitted relics. In all, we have an impression that the phenomenon was important, but certainly not as much as the account of doscoveries would have us believe.

A CASE S TUDY At the end of this chapter I will discuss in detail one of the best-documented discoveries of relics, which belongs to the very early phase of the development ⁸⁸ They appear also only very occasionally in the chronicles. Jerome mentions two transfers of the relics of the Apostles to Constantinople (s.a. 356/7 and 357/8), but does not name any discovery; only Victor of Tunnuna later in the sixth century notes the finding of the body of St Antony (s.a. 561).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Finding Relics

119

of this phenomenon, namely the dossier of the martyrs Gervasius and Protasius, whose bodies were found in Milan in 386. The story of this event is told for the first time by the finder himself, Ambrose, in a letter which he wrote to his sister shortly after the discovery, though it was perhaps edited later,⁸⁹ and in Hymn 11, which he possibly composed in the same year.⁹⁰ The discovery is also briefly recounted by Augustine, who was in Milan when the grave was found, in his Confessions (written in 397), and finally in the Life of Ambrose, written at the request of Augustine by Paulinus of Milan in 422. The accounts of Augustine and Paulinus do not bring much factual evidence to the study of the situation in 386, but show how the perception of the discovery evolved. In his letter, Ambrose wants to demonstrate that the discovery resulted from a general demand of the people, who asked him to dedicate a new basilica, later known as the Basilica Ambrosiana or Sant’Ambrogio, in the same way in which he had dedicated the Basilica at the Porta Romana, that is, with the use of relics. Ambrose promised to do so if any relics were found. ‘And’, he says, ‘at once it seemed to me that I had a kind of ardour of foreknowledge (ardor praesagii). Why should I say more? God gave his grace (Dominus gratiam dedit).’⁹¹ Interestingly, this vague God-sent hint becomes more specific in Augustine, according to whom God revealed to Ambrose the place of the burial of Gervasius and Protasius in a vision (per visum aperuisti).⁹² But only over a generation later does Paulinus of Milan claim that the martyrs appeared in person to the bishop.⁹³ It is important to emphasize that Paulinus almost certainly wrote his story in Africa, early in the 420s,⁹⁴ just after the relics of St Stephen had arrived in this region. These relics were accompanied by a written account of their finding in 415, according to which Rabbi Gamaliel revealed the position of his own and Stephen’s tomb in repeated visions experienced by the local priest Lucian who found the relics.⁹⁵ It seems then that the description of the discovery at Caphargamala, written in Greek but instantly also translated into Latin and then other languages,⁹⁶ created or at least strengthened the pattern of the nocturnal apparitions of saints which was to be followed by later authors, even if, like Paulinus, they described events which had taken place before 415.⁹⁷

⁸⁹ See Nauroy 2017. ⁹⁰ Ambrose, Hymnus 11. ⁹¹ Ambrose, Epistula 77.2. ⁹² Augustine, Confessiones 9.7. ⁹³ Paulinus of Milan, Vita Ambrosii 14.1. ⁹⁴ Paredi 1963, 213. ⁹⁵ Revelatio s. Stephani AB 3–35 (three visions of Lucian) and 36–9 (a vision of the monk Migetius). ⁹⁶ Vanderlinden 1946, 180–7. ⁹⁷ This is probably the case of the discovery of the relics of St James, Brother of the Lord, in Jerusalem: Apparitio Iacobi; see Cronnier 2016, 58.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

120

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

Having obtained the premonition, Ambrose, accompanied by his clergy, ordered excavation in a spot before the chancel screen of the tomb of the martyrs Nabor and Felix, and found there ‘fitting signs’ (signa convenientia). He brought to the place some demoniacs, one of whom instantly fell to the ground. When the grave was opened, the witnesses saw ‘two men of stupendous stature, such as those of ancient days. All the bones were intact, and there was much blood.’ Later on, Ambrose adds that the heads of the martyrs were cut off.⁹⁸ The meaning of the integrity of the bones and of the blood is clear. Both elements suggested an unusually good state of preservation of the bodies, which had somehow avoided the normal process of decay.⁹⁹ The heads separated from the bodies were decisive proof of martyrdom. The ‘stupendous stature’ (mira magnitudo) is more puzzling. Ambrose says that it resembled people of old. This can refer either to the biblical account of antediluvian giants or to stories about Greek heroes.¹⁰⁰ The closest parallel from the latter context would be the episode of the discovery of the grave of Orestes, whose enormous skeleton was found, according to Herodotus, following a counsel of the Delphic oracle.¹⁰¹ Both types of parallels, however, would have suggested an extreme antiquity of the bones, which, even if Ambrose did not know the exact date when Gervasius and Protasius had been killed, is odd. Perhaps the only thing that Ambrose wanted to say was that the bones were really old and so the blood which had been found in the tomb was miraculous. Interestingly, this motif of the size of the bones does not appear in the account of Augustine nor in that of Paulinus of Milan; perhaps for them it was no longer understandable. The bodies, once taken out of the grave, were anointed and transferred, first to the neighbouring Basilica of Fausta, in which they were displayed for two days, and then to the Basilica Ambrosiana where Ambrose deposited them under the altar in the place which he had prepared for his own resting place. He says that the following night was spent in vigil accompanied by the ‘laying on of hands’ on demoniacs. During the transfer of the bodies to the Basilica Ambrosiana a blind man was healed. This healing is singled out also by Augustine and Paulinus of Milan.¹⁰² The latter also claims that some other people were healed on this occasion.¹⁰³ This part of the dossier is extremely interesting, because it shows that the healings obtained through the power of relics were contested. As early as 386, Ambrose says that according to the Arians in Milan both the blind and demoniacs only pretended to be ill or ⁹⁸ Ambrose, Epistula 77.2 and 12. ⁹⁹ See Angenendt 1994. ¹⁰⁰ Genesis 6:4. ¹⁰¹ Herodotus, Historiae 1.68. It is difficult to say whether Ambrose knew the history of Orestes’ bones, but he certainly knew about this hero (De officiis 1.41); also, the bones of Orestes were to be deposited in Rome, which was certainly remembered in Ambrose’s time: Servius, In Aeneidos 7.188; see Green 2007, 41–8. ¹⁰² Augustine, Confessiones 9.7; Sermo 286.4; Paulinus of Milan, Vita Ambrosii 14.2. ¹⁰³ Paulinus of Milan, Vita Ambrosii 14.2.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Finding Relics

121

possessed, and so the healings were fake.¹⁰⁴ This suggests that opinions on these ‘healings’ and ‘exorcisms’ diverged, but it also shows that some events which were subject to these interpretations really happened. Everybody knew that some people were, or pretended to be, healed by the power of the saints. This is the earliest attestation of the belief that the power of saints should become manifest during the discovery and transfer.

¹⁰⁴ Ambrose, Epistula 77.16–17. See also Paulinus of Milan, Vita Ambrosii 15–16.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

7 Touching Relics At the very beginning of the fifth century the Gallic priest Vigilantius wrote a treatise against new customs spreading in the Church of his day, which he presented thus: Under the cloak of religion we see a heathen ceremony introduced into the churches: while the sun is still shining, heaps of tapers are lighted, and everywhere a paltry bit of powder, wrapped up in a costly cloth, is kissed and worshipped. Great honour do men of this sort pay to the blessed martyrs! Who, they think, are to be made glorious by trumpery tapers, when the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne, with all the brightness of His majesty, gives them light.¹

Vigilantius lived in southern Gaul, near Toulouse, but he was familiar with practices of piety in other parts of Christendom, at least in Italy and Palestine, which he had visited a few years earlier.² Kissing and venerating ashes, encased in gold or shrouded in silk cloth, transferring them with utmost care from one place to another, all these practices he considered unacceptable and, more importantly, new. In this chapter I will focus on the material aspect of the cult of relics and address the questions of when, why, and how Christians, who lived in a society which feared and avoided any contact with dead bodies, came to touch, rub, and kiss the bones of those whom they considered saints. I will also seek to find out how, and how often, the various forms of contact were possible.

A UNIVERSAL CUSTOM? When answering these questions, one is tempted to refer to the profound need of direct physical contact with the holy, supposedly deeply rooted in human nature and visible in religions developing without a direct link with

¹ Jerome, Adversus Vigilantium 4.

² See Hunter 1999, 403–9.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Touching Relics

123

Christianity, particularly in Buddhism.³ But looking at parallels, which do exist, can be misleading if one forgets the differences. The custom of touching corporeal remains of the ‘special dead’ is not a universal phenomenon. Nowadays, forms of physical contact with relics are quite diverse even in Catholic countries. In Europe, the South touches them more often than the North, which of course reflects more general habits. In the South, people embrace, kiss, or pat each other on the back more frequently and affectionately than in the North. In some countries, like Japan, they hardly touch each other at all. In the modern Low Countries, reconciled enemies usually do not kiss each other on the mouth as they used to do in the Middle Ages.⁴ I do not want to build too much on this, but it is important to say that the need for touching what one loves, venerates, and respects is not the same everywhere and can be expressed in diverse ways. And it evolves. This evolution calls for an explanation. In Graeco-Roman civilization physical contact between people was quite close, although it changed over time. At the beginning of the second century, Plutarch tells a story about Cato the Elder who, in the second century BC, supposedly expelled from the senate a man who had embraced his wife in the presence of his daughter.⁵ This anecdote probably should not be taken at face value, but it does demonstrate that Plutarch thought that in the distant Republican past the norms of physical contact had been different from those of his own day. In imperial Rome, touch, at least between people of equal status, expressed respect and love and could take place publicly. On late antique sarcophagi and funerary stelae we can often see married couples who embrace or hold each other by the hand or hold their children lovingly.⁶ Among Christians this physical closeness was possibly even stronger. The kiss of peace was considered to be a specifically Christian gesture. The Martyrdom of Polycarp shows that people sought physical contact with the saintly bishop on a daily basis.⁷ Later on, John Chrysostom, in his sermon on Bishop Meletius of Antioch, says that on the latter’s return from exile people touched his feet and kissed his hands. The sermon, preached several years after that event, does not have to be a faithful record, but it shows how the author imagined the welcome for a man of God.⁸ Yet touching dead bodies and human remains was quite unlike touching living people, and the testimony of Vigilantius suggests that he considered the former practice to be a recent phenomenon. Thus, its origins demand an explanation; all the more so as we are dealing here with a custom unattested in

³ See Crook 2000, 36; for parallels in Buddhism, see Strong 2004. ⁴ Petkov 2003, 122. ⁵ Plutarch, Cato Maior 17.7. ⁶ Huskinson 2011, 534–6; Schade 2009, 222–5. For the social context of the touch, see Tonner 2009, 134–6. ⁷ Passio Polycarpi 13. ⁸ John Chrysostom, De sancto Meletio 2.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

124

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

any other major religious group in the late antique Mediterranean. If the chronology presented in Chapter 1 is correct, the phenomenon is attested from the 360s. In the ending of the apocryphal Acts of Thomas we can see people touching bones, collecting the healing dust from the empty grave of the Apostle, and transferring his relics. In a more safely dated passage, Optatus of Milevis (after 363) portrays Lucilla of Carthage, who embraces or kisses (libare) the bone of a martyr.⁹ Around the third quarter of the fourth century, physical contact with relics was already looked for. We have thus returned to the years which saw the first recorded transfers of relics and the emergence of the belief in their miraculous power.

THE NEED It is no coincidence that belief in the power of relics and the practice of touching them appeared almost at the same time. An early piece of evidence which shows people actually seeking physical contact with specific relics, those of Gervasius and Protasius in Milan, illustrates a close link between healing and touching: You know—nay, you have yourselves seen [says Ambrose in his sermon]—that many are cleansed from evil spirits, that very many also, having touched with their hands the robe of the saints, are freed from those ailments which oppressed them; you see that the miracles of old time are renewed, when through the coming of the Lord Jesus grace was more largely shed forth upon the earth, and that many bodies are healed as it were by the shadow of the holy bodies. How many napkins are passed about! How many garments, laid upon the holy relics and endowed with healing power, are claimed! All are glad to touch even the outside thread, and whosoever touches will be made whole.¹⁰

In the decades that followed we can see many other descriptions of the sick swarming around relics and trying to touch them, sometimes very vigorously. The anonymous author of the Miracles of St Stephen, written in North Africa in the 420s, tells the story of a woman suffering from facial paralysis who looked for a cure from St Stephen’s relics in Uzalis: Twelve days after she [Megetia] and her mother had come to the friend of God [i.e. Stephen], Megetia was praying at the place of the holy memoria, and driven by the power of her faith she was knocking, not only by affection of her heart, but also by the movements of her body, and she finally threw open the little door of

⁹ See pp. 12–13 and 17–20.

¹⁰ Ambrose, Epistula 77.9.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Touching Relics

125

the memoria against which she had pushed. And doing violence to the Kingdom of God, she inserted her head inside and put it on the place of rest of the holy relics, and she rinsed and damped all with her tears.¹¹

This passage illustrates that the point was not just to touch relics, but also to touch them with the ailing part of the body. In the seventh-century Miracles of St Artemios there is a scene in which a deacon with an inguinal hernia rubs his private parts against the angle of the sarcophagus containing the remains of the saint.¹² The contact had to be as close as possible. The little door in Uzalis was probably not installed in order to facilitate such contact, but for the author of the text quoted above, Megetia’s behaviour was perfectly understandable. The need for physical contact with powerful objects or people seems natural, but interestingly, there is not much evidence for it outside the Christian milieu. A rare testimony comes from Cicero’s fourth oration against Verres, which mentions a bronze statue of Hercules in Agrigentum whose lips and chin were a little worn away, because those who addressed their prayers to the god used to kiss them.¹³ Yet it is not obvious that the statue itself was considered to be a source of power. Cicero claims that the slaves sent by Verres to take it away from the temple were unable to move it, but this was due to its weight, and not any miraculous resistance. A closer parallel to healing practices comes from the story of two men in Alexandria who were brought to health by Vespasian, then pretender to the principate. One was cured by his touch, the other by his spit.¹⁴ Nevertheless, nothing suggests that his or any other emperor’s body was expected to have any power constantly accessible through direct contact. An interesting passage can be found in the Life of Apollonius of Tyana in which Philostratus claims that his hero brought back to life a girl by touching her and whispering something in her ear.¹⁵ This episode might have been inspired by biblical stories. Elijah, Elisha, Christ, and the Apostles usually healed by touching, or being touched.¹⁶ Late antique hagiography, in which holy monks perform miracles in the same way, shows that this pattern was imitated from the second half of the fourth century. But even before that, in the third and early fourth centuries, when Christians generally did not expect miracles to occur, touch was an essential element of baptism, exorcism, and priestly ordination, and as such was considered to transfer a certain power.¹⁷ It can also be said that physical contact, by swallowing or anointing, was a usual element of both medical and magical treatment. Medical, magical, and

¹¹ Liber de miraculis s. Stephani 2.4.6. ¹² Miracula s. Artemii 21. ¹³ Cicero, In Verrem 4.94. ¹⁴ Suetonius, De vita Caesarum. Vespasianus 7.2–3. ¹⁵ Philostratus, Vita Apollonii 4.45. ¹⁶ 1 Kings 17:17–22; 2 Kings 4:29–35; Matthew 8:1–3 and 14–15; 9:23–5 and 27–9, and parallel passages in Mark and Luke. ¹⁷ See Coopens 1925.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

126

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

miraculous healings certainly belong to distinct spheres of ritual activity, but they are not unrelated to each other. This can be seen, for instance, in the Itinerary of the Pilgrim of Bordeaux. As we have seen, in his generation people were not yet interested in relics and tombs of saints, but he did mention two healing springs: one in Jericho and another in the vicinity of Caesarea, the water of which ‘makes women pregnant’.¹⁸ It is difficult to say whether the belief in the healing power of these springs emerged in a Christian, Jewish, or pagan milieu. It is also difficult to determine whether the author attributed this virtue to divine power or natural causes, but in any case physical contact was necessary.

TH E TABOO A need to be as close as possible to the source of healing power answers the question of why people began to touch the bodies of saints. But, as has already been said, touching dead bodies was not like touching anything else. With the Jews, Greeks, and Romans the very thought of touching a corpse engendered fear, for different reasons.¹⁹ Many people avoided contact with dead bodies simply out of anxiety, horror, and disgust, which resulted from the very sight of a dead body and its decomposition. But the fear of approaching the dead was also linked to the belief that the bodies maintained some connection with the spirits of the dead, or daimones, who rambled around their corporeal remains and could be dangerous to the living. This belief, which lay at the root of various magical practices, concerned above all those who died an untimely, violent, or sudden death, or whose bodies remained unburied, but was not limited to this category.²⁰ According to John Chrysostom, in late fourthcentury Antioch not only pagans, but also Christians thought that the souls of the dead became demons and dwelt at tombs. The proscription of touching dead bodies was known in several societies of the Mediterranean and, except for undertakers, the only people who disturbed the rest of the dead were tomb raiders, magicians, and demoniacs.²¹ Thus, the question arises of how the new Christian practice managed to break through this barrier of fear and custom which in Late Antiquity prevented decent people from touching human remains. It is possible that overcoming the taboo was not as difficult as we often assume, and it happened for a few reasons. First of all, the taboo was not ¹⁸ Itinerarium Burdigalense 586 and 596; see p. 21. ¹⁹ See Garland 1985, 45–7. ²⁰ See for instance Constantius, Vita Germani 10; see p. 187. ²¹ Magic: Apuleius, Metamorphoses 2.21 and 3.17; see Jordan (1983/1984), 273. Demoniacs: John Chrysostom, In Matthaeum homiliae 28.2 (quoted below on p. 200); see Lafferty 2014.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Touching Relics

127

absolute. It is true that the Greeks, Romans, and Jews generally considered the corpse to be a source of pollution.²² Yet the strength and character of the prohibition of touching dead bodies was very diverse and we should not imagine the customs and sensibilities of the late antique Mediterranean as perfectly uniform. The Romans themselves were aware of the variety of burial habits.²³ In Egypt, which had specific funerary customs, the body, submitted to mummification and placed in a sarcophagus, could probably be kept at home.²⁴ In Sparta, according to Plutarch, Lycurgus had lifted the ban of intra-urban burials, and ordered that young people be taught that contact with dead bodies did not entail impurity.²⁵ In Jewish evidence we find strict prohibitions on contact with the cadaver, but also an interesting story of a man who was brought to life because his body was accidentally thrown into the grave of Elisha and touched his bones.²⁶ It is also interesting to note that, according to the Talmud, if the bones were devoid of flesh, only direct contact with them caused impurity.²⁷ A deposit of bones placed under the threshold of the synagogue in Dura Europos built in the first half of the third century shows that at least for some Jews indirect contact with bones could be beneficial, and not polluting.²⁸ It can be argued that all these testimonies show specific situations. The Romans considered Egyptian customs to be exceptional, Plutarch’s anecdote could be just another story about the strange customs of the Lacedaemonians, and Dura Europos was a cultural melting pot, the customs of which do not necessarily represent those of other Jewish communities. Yet these testimonies show that closer contact with corporeal remains, if unusual, was not unthinkable. Some forms of physical contact with the dead were always possible even in Roman society. The body used to be displayed and touched before burial when it was being washed and dressed.²⁹ Even more importantly, the body was not entirely out of reach after burial. Several tomb slabs found in different parts of the Mediterranean have shallow circular recesses with small holes which served to give food and drink to the dead (Fig. 7.1).³⁰ This form of contact was of course indirect and one-way only (it was impossible to take anything out of the grave), but the physical separation between the living and the dead was not complete. ²² Athenians: Winter 1982; Romans: Toynbee 1971, 48–9; De Visscher 1963, 34–5; Jews: Kraemer, 2000, 25–9. ²³ Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes 1.45.108 (Egyptian customs); Petronius, Satyricon 111.2 (Greek customs). ²⁴ Borg 1997. ²⁵ Plutarch, Lycurgus 27.1. ²⁶ Numbers 19:11–13; Leviticus 21:1; Mishnah: Oholot 1.1; Elisha: 2 Kings 13:20–1. ²⁷ Mishnah: Oholot 1.8; similarly in the Babylonian Talmud: Herubin 4a and in Tosefta: Oholot 2.7. ²⁸ Magness 2012, 235–6. ²⁹ Garland 1985, 23–31. ³⁰ Toynbee 1971, 51–2. For a possible link between these libation holes and later relic shafts, see Crook 2000, 63–4.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

128

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

Fig. 7.1. Tomb slab with libation holes (Rome). Marble, second century (CIL 06.07010/1). Drawing by Magda Różycka.

Moreover, it seems that Greeks and Romans alike considered the bodies of some special dead to be less repulsive than those of other people. Greek heroes could be buried inside the city. Trajan’s body, after his deification, was cremated and buried within the walls. Intramural burial was also a privilege given to Vestal Virgins.³¹ According to Suetonius, Augustus opened the grave of Alexander, and Cassius Dio claims that he also touched his body and broke off his nose.³² The attitude toward corporeal remains of heroes, kings, and emperors does not tell us much about customs concerning ordinary people, but it certainly can help us to understand the attitude toward the special dead. Also, some traits of Christianity itself helped to mitigate the horror of touching human remains. The most important of them was obviously the belief in the resurrection of the body.³³ Although its character was hotly debated, according to the prevailing conviction it was the very same body which was decomposing in the grave that would be raised from the dead. In the second century, the apologist Athenagoras, in his treatise On the

³¹ Trajan: Davies 1999, 33; Vestals: Schultz 2012, 133. Other exceptions: Toynbee 1971, 48. ³² Suetonius, De vitae Caesarum. Augustus 18.1; Dio, Historia Romana 51.16.5. ³³ See Bynum 1995, 19–114.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Touching Relics

129

Resurrection of the Dead, earnestly endeavoured to solve a technical conundrum: what will happen at the final resurrection with the body of a man who had been devoured by an animal which in its turn was eaten by another man?³⁴ Such speculations, which can also be found in late antique literature,³⁵ show how seriously and literally the idea of the resurrection was taken. And this belief had an obvious consequence for the attitude toward bodies: their decay was considered to be merely temporary, preceding, especially in the case of the bodies of saints, their glorious revival. On the aesthetic level, corporeal remains might have still engendered disgust, but on the theological level, their status was greatly enhanced. Moreover, also on theological grounds, Christians should not share the widespread belief that some souls of the dead turned into dangerous demons, or at least they were not supposed to.³⁶ Another factor which helped to lift, at least in part, the taboo surrounding dead bodies was the opposition to the idea of ritual impurity openly expressed by early Christians. This opposition was stated very explicitly already in the New Testament writings. It was also shown, if implicitly, in the scene of the raising the son of the widow of Nain, which Jesus performed by touching his dead body. And even if later on Christians developed the idea of pollution caused by sexual intercourse or menstruation, contact with the dead was never considered religiously hazardous.³⁷ Another specifically Christian feature was the fact that the martyrs (and there is little evidence of touching relics of other saints in this early period) were venerated because they had suffered a violent and cruel death. Their dead bodies were their trophies (trophaea), the signs of their victory.³⁸ Interestingly, in Christian literature the fascination with martyrs’ tortured and dismembered bodies appears at the same time as the custom of touching them.³⁹ Still another factor which certainly helped to break the taboo was the lapse of time. Relics of martyrs started to be taken out of graves, transferred, and touched only in the second half of the fourth century, about two generations after the persecutions ended. By that time, those remains had lost much of their fleshiness. Touching ashes and dry bones, especially when they were wrapped in silk or encased in gold, must have been less revolting than touching bodies still decomposing in graves. Finally, some forms of contact with corporeal remains might have developed in imitation of those which initially were reserved for non-bodily relics, such as pieces of cloth sanctified by the touch of the bodies of saints, or the relics of the Passion, which could be freely touched, kissed, and divided from the very

³⁴ Athenagoras, De resurrectione 4–8. ³⁵ Augustine, De civitate Dei 22.29; Gregory of Tours, Historiarum libri 10.13. ³⁶ The sermon of John Chrysostom mentioned above suggests that it was not always the case. See p. 200. ³⁷ See Brakke 1995. ³⁸ Victricius, De laude sanctorum 1. ³⁹ Grig 2002.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

130

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

beginning. Fragments of the True Cross were spread through the Mediterranean already by c.350 and in 384 the pilgrim Egeria claimed that during the Good Friday adoration in Jerusalem deacons had to keep a close eye on the major part of the True Cross, because some time earlier a fragment of the holy wood had been bitten away and in this way stolen by one of the faithful.⁴⁰ All these elements helped to overcome the taboo of touching dead bodies, but we should not think that the taboo disappeared altogether. Gregory of Nyssa, who venerated relics on several occasions, claims that he was terrified at the very sight of the bones of his parents when their tomb was opened in order to bury his sister Macrina.⁴¹ Considering this, we may conclude that it was not so much the disappearance of the barrier which made people touch the remains of saints. It was the emergence of a need.

THE P RACTICE So far I have been dealing with the growing need for physical contact with relics and the weakening of the barrier that prevented it. We shall now turn to the question of how the real practice looked. What exactly did people do in order to come closer to relics? Were they touched frequently or, to put this question the other way round, how often did the average Christian have an opportunity to touch them? These questions are not easy to answer. We have some literary descriptions of people approaching relics, but they are few and usually refer to special cases. The most obvious exceptions are the bodies of saints who had just died and whom people apparently tried to touch more eagerly than in their lifetimes. Hilary, bishop of Arles, in his sermon preached at the anniversary of his predecessor’s death, claims that: There was no one who did not see himself as afflicted with great loss if he had no sight of the body [of Honoratus], if he did not, as either reverence or love had urged, place a kiss either on the mouth or on one of the other limbs, or on the bier (osculum aut ori aut quibuscumque membris ipsius impressit aut feretro). The holy body, clothed with the magnificence of great faith, through greater faith is afterwards taken to the tomb stripped almost naked. Faith did not even spare his clothing in the vestments of sanctity; it held any thread pulled from his coverings to be as valuable as the most precious gift.⁴² ⁴⁰ Egeria, Itinerarium 37.2; the practice of kissing the Holy Cross, displayed once a week, is attested by John Rufus, Vita Petri Iberi 57–8. See the evidence collected by Frolow 1961. ⁴¹ Gregory of Nyssa, Vita Macrinae 35. ⁴² Hilary of Arles, Vita Honorati 34 (trans. D. Lambert, CSLA 00727). For other episodes of this kind, see p. 164 n. 30.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Touching Relics

131

The attitude toward the uninterred body was, however, always different from that toward the unearthed bones, and so burials of famous saints do not necessarily reflect the approach to those of long-dead saints. More interestingly, Ambrose of Milan relates that during the transfer of the relics of Gervasius and Protasius the sick pushed their way to touch the cloths covering the bodies of the martyrs.⁴³ The finding of the body of a saint, taking it out of the grave, and transferring to another place usually made direct contact possible. But even then not everyone was authorized to come close. Other fourth- and fifth-century translation accounts do not mention ordinary people touching relics. Antonius, the author of the Greek Life of Simeon Stylites, written sometime after his death in 459, claims that when the saint’s body was taken off the column, it was kissed, but only by bishops, and it was only the patriarch of Antioch who dared to pluck a hair from Simeon’s beard as a relic (and this was a mistake, because his hand withered in the attempt).⁴⁴ Faithful or not, this account shows the author’s opinion that access to the body should be limited and its integrity protected. The situation in Milan mentioned above was undoubtedly out of the ordinary. Ambrose organized the solemn transfer because, as we remember, he greatly needed popular support at that time and because the authenticity of the relics he had discovered was contested. Thus, it was in his interest to make people come, see (this issue will be discussed in Chapter 8) and touch the bodies covered with blood, their heads cut off. He wanted to make his congregation believe in the veracity of the martyrs and trust the bishop who found them.⁴⁵ This, of course, was not the only case when relics were found precisely at the moment when they were badly needed, so a similar scheme could have occurred in other places as well, but we are dealing here with special occasions, and not a daily practice.⁴⁶ Once the relics were deposited in their place, what was the routine of veneration? Were the bones periodically taken out of reliquaries? Were the reliquaries reopened in order to facilitate contact? The literary evidence suggests this did happen, although rather exceptionally. Interestingly, most of this evidence comes from the same early period (late fourth century), the same region (Cappadocia), and from the writings of the three closely related authors, namely Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil the Great, and Gregory of Nyssa. The first two mention the practice of touching relics in a vague and casual way. Basil, in one of his Homilies on the Psalms, claims that a man who touches the bones of a martyr partakes in the grace and sanctity which dwell in the body.⁴⁷ Gregory of Nazianzus, in his first sermon Against Julian, says that the bodies of martyrs, whether touched or venerated, have ⁴³ ⁴⁴ ⁴⁵ ⁴⁶

Ambrose, Epistula 77.9 and Hymnus 11.21–2. Antonius, Symeonis Stylitae Vita Graeca 29. N. McLynn 1994, 186–207. See pp. 112–23. See Cronnier 2016, 291–332. ⁴⁷ Basil, In Psalmum 115 4.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

132

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

equal power to their souls.⁴⁸ Both remarks suggest physical contact with corporeal relics, but the character of this contact is not obvious. Basil rhetorically juxtaposes the attitude of Jews, according to whom contact with any dead body caused impurity, with that of Christians, for whom the contact with the bodies of martyrs was a source of blessing. Had he suggested that this contact had been indirect, the rhetorical device would not work. Neither from Basil nor from Gregory can we infer how close this contact really was. Gregory of Nyssa, however, is more specific. In his Homily on Theodore the Recruit, preached around 380 in the saint’s sanctuary in Euchaïta, he claims that people who venerate the martyr are usually allowed to take no more than some dust from the outside of his grave, and that this is already a powerful relic. But then he makes the following remark: Should a person have both the good fortune and permission to touch the relics, this experience is a highly valued prize and seems like a dream both to those who were cured and whose wish was fulfilled. The body appears as if it were alive and healthy: the eyes, mouth, ears as well as the other senses are a cause for pouring out tears of reverence and emotion.⁴⁹

This text clearly states the bodily remains were touched and refers to specific relics in a specific place. We do not know what exactly this ceremony looked like. Where was the reliquary placed? Were the bones touched directly or were there objects introduced into the reliquary? And finally, who could touch them and how often? These questions remain unanswered. Gregory suggests that the opportunity for direct contact was rare, but we cannot say what this exactly means. It is probable that the reliquary was opened on Theodore’s feast day. There is some evidence suggesting that relics were more accessible during festival celebrations and those who were assembled in the church on that particular day were allowed to approach them more closely than normally.⁵⁰ It is also possible that the reliquaries were opened at the request of important guests who visited the sanctuary: aristocrats, magistrates, or bishops. Megetia, who was healed in Uzalis, was a noblewoman, and perhaps that was why she was allowed to put her head into the shrine of St Stephen. Also, in incubatory sanctuaries the rich slept closer to the tomb of the saint.⁵¹ They were not able to touch the relics themselves, but the rule was similar: those who had higher social status had closer access to relics. We have much less evidence for the practice of touching relics from other regions. It does not necessarily mean that Cappadocia had specific customs, because for most parts of the late antique world we simply do not have a ⁴⁸ Gregory of Nazianzus, Contra Iulianum I 69. ⁴⁹ Gregory of Nyssa, De sancto Theodoro, p. 63 (trans. C. McCambly). ⁵⁰ See e.g. Theophylact Simocatta, Historia 8.14 (St Euphemia’s relics in Chalcedon). ⁵¹ Miracula Artemii 17; Sophronius, Miracula Cyri et Iohannis 24.3–4; Miracula Cosmae et Damiani III 24.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Touching Relics

133

dossier comparable to that provided by the three authors named above. Still, this lack of evidence is worth noting. In Syria and later in Constantinople John Chrysostom referred to the practice of touching relics on several occasions, but he always referred to indirect contact. In his sermon On Saints Berenike, Prosdoke, and Domnina, for instance, he encourages people in Antioch to venerate the three martyrs in the following words: So then, with this ardour let us throw ourselves on their relics (προσπέσωμεν αὐτῶν τοῖς λειψάνοις). Let us embrace their chests (συμπλακῶμεν αὐτῶν ταῖς θήκαις). For the martyrs’ chests too contain much power, just as the martyrs’ bones, then, too hold great strength.⁵²

In the Homily on Saints Juventinus and Maximus he addresses his audience in the same vein: ‘And so, let’s constantly spend time visiting them, and touch their coffin (λάρνακος ἁπτώμεθα) and embrace their relics (λειψάνοις αὐτῶν περιπλεκώμεθα) with faith, so that we might gain some blessing from them.’⁵³ On both occasions the preacher evidently tries to convince his audience that the reliquaries transfer rather than constrain the power of relics, but it does not necessarily mean that people in Antioch normally thought otherwise and sought to touch the bones themselves. There is also other evidence of people touching tombs, although in other regions this form of contact is not as well attested as in Syria. Gregory of Tours remarks that the grave of Vitalis and Agricola in Bononia was placed above the ground and so was touched by many people.⁵⁴ This emphasis strongly suggests that in his times most graves of saints in Gaul, where Gregory lived, still remained hidden and were not freely accessible. This is confirmed by archaeological evidence showing that access to several tombs of saints or reliquaries containing their remains was limited. Many tombs were placed in crypts and could be seen only through little openings (fenestellae), which did not permit them to be touched directly. In several places tombs were fenced off by chancel screens (cancelli), mentioned also in textual evidence datable to the fourth century.⁵⁵ These devices served most probably both to mark and protect the holy space, which was, or was supposed to be, inaccessible to ordinary people. These balustrades were low and certainly could not to keep away those who were determined to come closer to the place where the relics were deposited (as we have seen in the case of Megetia). Their message, however, was clear: you must not go any farther! And there is no reason to think that they failed altogether to keep people at bay. According to Augustine, ⁵² John Chrystostom, De sanctis Berenice et Prosdoce 7/24. ⁵³ John Chrystostom, De sanctis Iuventino et Maximino 3/10; trans. Mayer). See also Theodoret, Historia ecclesiastica 5.39.1 (the emperor touches the coffin of John Chrysostom). ⁵⁴ Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum 43. ⁵⁵ See Iwaszkiewicz-Wronikowska 2013 (cancelli); and more generally on the organization of space, see Crook 2000, 40–79 and Yasin 2009, 151–89.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

134

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

a certain Paul from Cappadocia who was looking for healing at the relics of St Stephen in Hippo prayed when holding the cancelli, which suggests that he did not try to come closer.⁵⁶ It has already been remarked that when studying the issue of physical contact with relics in Late Antiquity, we do not have to rely exclusively on textual evidence. There are several hundred reliquaries dating from this period made of various materials and produced in many parts of the Mediterranean. Many of them were found in the places where they were deposited in the fourth, fifth, or sixth centuries.⁵⁷ Yet the problem is that the significance of such findings is often difficult to interpret. First, if some reliquaries were publicly displayed and easily accessible, they were also at risk of being stolen or destroyed and so had little chance to survive until our day. It is mostly the reliquaries which had been deeply buried, and for some reason forgotten, that are found during excavations. Thus, the extant material evidence does not necessarily reflect real customs. Secondly, it is usually difficult to determine whether a reliquary was designed to be reopened. In a later period some reliquaries were sealed, while others obviously gave access to their contents.⁵⁸ In Late Antiquity the situation was less clear: the most common type of reliquary had the form of a rectangular box. Such reliquaries differed greatly in size, ranging from miniature boxes measuring less than 20 cm in length to full-size coffins. These box reliquaries consisted of a cavity and a lid. They certainly could be opened, but were they made for this, and, if so, how often would it happen? Unfortunately, we cannot answer these questions. More interestingly, some reliquaries, usually small ones, were fitted with a lock (Fig. 7.2). This suggests that they were destined to be reopened, and there is textual evidence which supports this impression. Gregory of Tours recounts that one day when he visited an oratory dedicated to St Stephen near Tours, he discovered that the place in which the relics should have been deposited was empty. Thus, he sent a deacon back to town and asked him to fetch relics of St Stephen, but he forgot to give him the key to the chest (capsa) which contained them.⁵⁹ Admittedly, this was not an entirely usual situation, but Gregory says that the key was hanging all the time on his belt. This strongly suggests that the reliquary was opened from time to time, although of course it is impossible to say how often. More importantly, it is probable that the large chest of which the bishop held the key contained smaller reliquaries, and not bare bones (Fig. 7.3). ⁵⁶ Augustine, De civitate Dei 22.8.426–30 and 22.8.466–9 and Sermo 322; see also Paulinus of Nola, Carmina 21.586–9 and 620–3; 23.82–7; 28.10–19; Ambrose, Epistula 77.2. ⁵⁷ See Buschhausen 1971; Mintschev 2003; Noga-Banai 2008; Kalinowski 2011; and particularly Comte 2012. The last catalogue contains a number of reliquaries discovered in their original locations. For Gaul and the depositions under the altar, see Narasawa 2015, 499–505; more generally, see N. Duval 2005, 15–16. ⁵⁸ Hahn 1997b, 244. ⁵⁹ Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum 33.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Fig. 7.2. Reliquary casket with the traces of a lock. Eastern Mediterranean, sixth century. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, public domain.

Fig. 7.3. Stone reliquary found in the apse of the southern nave of the church in Hippos, Palestine (inv. St 00.14). The interior is divided into three compartments, one of which contained a glass phial with tiny particles of bones (inv. G 1008.01). Photo courtesy of Jolanta Młynarczyk.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

136

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

In all, direct contact with relics, if not impossible, was at best occasional. Both textual and archaeological evidence illustrate better diverse forms of indirect contact. A form of such contact is mentioned late in the sixth century by Gregory the Great. While responding to the Empress Constantina who desired to receive corporeal relics of St Paul, he said that he would not dare to open the Apostle’s tomb, but reminded her of the custom of the Roman Church which used to distribute the brandea, or strips of cloth, sanctified by contact with his grave.⁶⁰ The procedure of producing this type of contact relic, which consisted in placing them on the tomb and weighing them before and after that to prove they became heavier, ‘soaked with divine power’, is described by Gregory of Tours, writing in the same period as his namesake.⁶¹ The slab covering the tomb of St Paul has indeed an opening through which the brandea may have been lowered to touch the coffin of the Apostle (Fig. 7.4). Even if the term brandea is attested in Gregory the Great, some forms of indirect access to the Apostles’ relics were practised much earlier. We know from the Greek Life of Hypatios that around the year 390 the praetorian prefect Flavius Rufinus deposited some relics of Peter and Paul in the

Fig. 7.4. Marble slab over the tomb of St Paul in San Paulo fuori le Mura (Rome), with openings leading to the sarcophagus. Drawing by Magda Różycka.

⁶⁰ Gregory the Great, Epistulae IV 30.

⁶¹ Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum 27.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Touching Relics

137

Apostoleion that he had founded in the place later known as Rouphinianai.⁶² In a church in Carthage a plate has been found with the inscription: Reliquias Petri et Pauli Amen; it is dated to the fourth or fifth century.⁶³ Hence one has to assume either that at the end of the fourth century Rome was more generous than in the time of Gregory and did distribute corporeal relics of the Apostles, which seems unlikely, or that the relics deposited in the churches in Rouphinianai and Carthage were produced by contact. Other ways of establishing indirect contact with bodies included collecting dust from the outside of the tomb, oil from the lamps which were lit over it, bark or leaves of the trees which grew close to them, and a variety of other objects. By the end of the sixth century all these methods are attested in the writings of Gregory of Tours.⁶⁴ In some cases indirect contact with the body was very distant, with a number of material intermediaries between the relics and the person entering into that contact. Gregory of Tours tells us about a fragment of the True Cross, thus already a non-corporeal relic, wrapped in a cloth. This cloth was dipped in water and the water was given to the sick to drink.⁶⁵ From Gregory the Great we know of golden keys (fourth degree) which opened the railing (third degree) which opened access to the ciborium (second degree) over the tomb itself (first degree) in which St Peter lay.⁶⁶ It seems that the more important the relic was, the less direct the contact had to be. Indirect contact, however, could be closer. This can be illustrated by reliquaries equipped with a system of pipes which permitted circulation of the oil which was poured inside through a hole in the lid, flowed over the bones, and was collected at an outlet below. Such reliquaries were most popular in the Limestone Massif in northern Syria, renowned for oil production, but can be also found elsewhere.⁶⁷ Another method of indirect but quite close contact with the contents of a reliquary consisted in touching it with a stick inserted by an aperture in the lid. One such stick was discovered in Hippos in Palestine, still stuck in the opening (Fig. 7.5).⁶⁸ We know also that in Chalcedon, on certain days, the local bishop approached the sarcophagus of St Euphemia, inserted a sponge through an aperture, collected the blood which was still miraculously oozing from her body, and distributed its dried clots to

⁶² Callinicus, Vita Hypatii 8.4. ⁶³ Y. Duval 1982, vol. 1, 5 (No. 1). ⁶⁴ Gregory of Tours, Liber vitae patrum 8.6 (tomb of Nicetius). ⁶⁵ Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum 5. ⁶⁶ Gregory the Great, Epistulae I 25, 29, 30, III 47, VI 6, VII 23, 25, VIII 33, IX 229, XI 43, XII 2; see also the evidence collected by Richards 1980, 23 n. 73. ⁶⁷ Canivet 1978. ⁶⁸ Młynarczyk & Burdajewicz 2013, 212. See also a literary description of this practice: Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 9.2.14, and, possibly, Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria confessorum 103.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

138

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

Fig. 7.5. Stone reliquary with an opening in the lid, discovered in the southern pastophorium of the church in Hippos, Palestine (inv. St 03.08). When found, the stick was still stuck in the opening. Photo courtesy of Jolanta Młynarczyk.

the faithful.⁶⁹ In this case, though the body of the saint was not touched directly, people received something more than a contact relic, but it is worth noting that close access to the tomb still remained the prerogative of the clergy. This custom is attested by the church historian Evagrius only at the end of the sixth century, but it possibly started much earlier, for, as we will see, some relics of St Euphemia arrived in the West already in the fourth century.⁷⁰ Of course, it is possible that this and some other forms of indirect contact mentioned above developed only in the time of Gregory of Tours and Evagrius, when they appear in our evidence, but the very idea of such contact was certainly known already in the fourth century.

TOUCHING PRIVATE RELIC S Not all relics were deposited in churches. Some remained in private hands, possibly many more than our sources permit us to see. Most of our authors preferred relics to remain firmly under ecclesiastical control. In some cases we ⁶⁹ Evagrius, Historia ecclesiastica 2.3; see also Theophylact Simocatta, Historia 8.14. ⁷⁰ See p. 162.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Touching Relics

139

hear about private relics only because they finally found their way to a church or martyrium. Such is, for instance, the case of some of the ashes of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, which at the end the fourth century Gaudentius of Brescia received from the nieces of Basil of Caesarea, or some Eastern relics which were about to be brought to Paulinus of Nola by a pious woman named Silvia.⁷¹ Bishops usually thought that those relics which for some reason were deposited in lay houses should be transferred to churches. Already in the late fourth century, Gregory of Nazianzus argued that relics should not be kept by individuals, but should serve the entire community.⁷² In Syriac evidence we can see a formal ban on the private possession of relics. The canons attributed to the early fifth-century bishop Marutha of Maipherqat explicitly state that they must not be placed in the houses of the laity, only in churches and monasteries. The same prohibition is repeated in the canons of the synod of Ctesiphon in 585.⁷³ Nevertheless, many laypeople preferred not to give over their relics to churches controlled by bishops. Some kept them in private martyria.⁷⁴ A memoria on the estate of Victoriana, over 40 km from Hippo, for instance, had some relics of Gervasius and Protasius which otherwise we can see distributed by Ambrose only to his fellow bishops. Another estate in Africa Proconsularis, that of Audurus, received some relics of St Stephen, which were brought there in the early 420s, when they arrived in Africa. A martyrium located on the family estate of Gregory of Nyssa, close to Ibora, possessed another portion of the ashes of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste.⁷⁵ Of course, the private character of these places should not be exaggerated. They were also visited by people who did not belong to the family of the owner. More importantly, access to the relics which were deposited there was not necessarily much easier than to those directly controlled by bishops. But there were also other relics which were kept at home or even worn on the person. This is probably the kind of private relic that the Syriac canons mentioned above refer to, but we find them in several regions, not just in Syria. This kind of private possession of relics is criticized, for instance, in Optatus of Milevis’ story of Lucilla, who used to kiss a bone of a martyr before partaking of the Eucharist.⁷⁶ Yet the context in which such personal relics appear in the evidence is not always negative. According to Augustine, a military tribune named Hesperius hung some dust from the Holy Land in his bedroom—to ⁷¹ Paulinus of Nola, Epistula 31.1. ⁷² Gregory of Nazianzus, In sanctum Cyprianum 17. ⁷³ Canons of Marutha 63; Acts of the Synod of 585, can. 14; see also the Gallic Concilium Epaonense a. 517, can. 25. ⁷⁴ See Bowes 2008, 84–96 and 130–5. ⁷⁵ Augustine, De civitate Dei 22.8.215–17 (Victoriana) and 310–11 (Audurus); Gregory of Nyssa, Vita Macrinae 35 (Ibora). ⁷⁶ Optatus, Contra Parmenianum 1.16.1; see pp. 17–20.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

140

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

protect himself against attacks by demons.⁷⁷ Admittedly, this was not a corporeal relic, but Augustine places this episode among others in which he speaks of bodily relics. He does not criticize Hesperius’ action. Still, at the end of the story Augustine and another bishop transfer the relic from the bedroom and deposit it in a place of prayer (locus orationis) which is accessible for other people and, perhaps, controlled by the clergy. In the fifth century we find, in both Eastern and Western sources, evidence of small portable reliquaries which served to keep relics constantly on the person, and this practice is presented as a sign of piety. In the Life of Germanus of Auxerre, Constantius of Lyons claims that his hero used to wear a belt with a casket containing relics of saints.⁷⁸ Peter the Iberian, active in Palestine in the same period, and his companions: carried their [martyrs’] precious bones in a little gold reliquary [just] as the great Moses [carried] the ark of God with the cherubim. Besides this, they carried only the little book of John the Evangelist, in which was fastened a part of the wood of the holy, precious, and saving cross, by which they were guarded.⁷⁹

The behaviour of both Germanus and Peter is praised and not condemned. Of course, this may partly result from the fact that they were bishops, and not laypeople. But this difference is not evident, and the distinction between privately owned and church-owned relics was often blurred. Gregory of Tours, for instance, had a golden medallion with ashes of some saints whose names he did not know. He wore it on his neck when he was a bishop, but had obtained it earlier. The medallion belonged to his mother, and before that to his father, who had received the precious ashes from a cleric.⁸⁰ This episode shows that in some cases relics could pass not only from lay to clerical hands, but also the other way round. According to the canons of Marutha mentioned above, relics could be placed in a monastery, which was a partly, but not entirely ecclesiastical building, but the Syriac evidence from the sixth century onwards shows that relics were often in the hands of individual monks, not a community.⁸¹ Personal relics could be more accessible to their owners than those which remained in churches and martyria. People possibly touched, kissed, or rubbed relics that they wore on themselves; this is at least what the story of Lucilla suggests. Gregory tells of a finger-bone of St Sergius, the famous martyr

⁷⁷ Augustine, De civitate Dei 22.8.199–205. ⁷⁸ Constantius, Vita Germani 4 and 15. ⁷⁹ John Rufus, Vita Petri Iberi 34; see also 144 (trans. C. B. Horn & R. R. Phenix). ⁸⁰ Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum 83; see also Historiarum libri 8.15 ⁸¹ See e.g. relics of Persian martyrs held by Peter the Iberian and given by him to Melania the Younger, and then deposited in her monastery on the Mount of Olives: John Rufus, Vita Petri Iberi 49. For more early medieval evidence and further development of this phenomenon, see Smith 2014.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Touching Relics

141

venerated in Resapha, which was in the possession of a Syrian merchant who placed it in a niche in his house in Bordeaux. In Gregory’s story the owner took the precious relic out of the cache, although unwillingly, at the request of his guests.⁸² These episodes may suggest that privately owned relics could be touched more freely, but because of the scarcity of evidence concerning such relics, it is difficult to say how often it actually happened. An important part of the evidence presented above shows us relics being touched, kissed, and transferred by women. And if we focus only on lay Christians, we have an impression that women had equal access to relics to that of men, but were more active in this field. Interestingly, their position as holders or carriers of relics was fully accepted by clerics. We have seen that Paulinus, then presbyter in Nola, received relics of the True Cross from Melania the Elder, and expected to receive ashes of some Eastern martyrs from saintly Silvia. Augustine, writing to his fellow bishop Quintilianus, commended to him a widow Galla, who, together with her daughter, carried relics of St Stephen which Augustine duly honoured.⁸³ Also relics deposited in churches were probably accessible to men and women alike. Megetia, who inserted her head into a shrine of St Stephen in Hippo, was by no means an exception. It is only in the later period, around the seventh century, when relics started to be deposited within closed monasteries, that they ceased to be equally accessible to people of both genders.⁸⁴

D R A WI N G CL O S E R ? The evidence presented above shows that while the desire for touching relics was strong, it was usually satisfied by various forms of indirect contact. We suspect that people were able to touch privately owned relics more freely, but we do not know this for sure. In some places, close physical contact with relics deposited in churches was possible, but such situations were rare. It is possible, however, that in time touching might have developed into a habit. That can be seen in the following remark of the anonymous author of the early seventh-century Notitia ecclesiarum Urbis Romae: There, on the via Tiburtina, rests St Habundius and the martyr Herenius. And in this place there is also this stone which many people touch with their fingers without knowing what they do.⁸⁵

In this case the object of veneration was not a corporeal relic, but the passage suggests that touching was then an obvious act of devotion. Does it mean that ⁸² Gregory of Tours, Historiarum libri 7.31. ⁸³ Augustine, Epistula 212. ⁸⁴ Smith 2002, 163–72. ⁸⁵ Notitia ecclesiarum Urbis Romae 14.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

142

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

the distance to bodily relics shrank as well? There is evidence which may suggest that this was so. Around the 570s the anonymous pilgrim from Piacenza mentions a practice that he came across in the basilica of Zion in Jerusalem in the following way: There I saw a human skull enclosed in a golden case, adorned with precious stones, which they say is that of the martyr Theodota, from which many drink for a blessing, and I drank.⁸⁶

This is indeed intriguing. The Pilgrim of Piacenza is an important witness whose testimony is sometimes puzzling (We will have at least one other occasion to see this!), but cannot be easily dismissed. If the story is true, the contact was very close, for people not only touched the corporeal relic, but also drank the sanctified liquid (part of the manuscript tradition identifies it as water). Even more importantly, we are dealing here with an established and daily custom, not an act of fervent or excessive piety, and the custom is practised in an important sanctuary, controlled by the bishop of Jerusalem. Access to the relic does not seem to be restricted to any special group, and not limited to any special moment. It is interesting to ask whether the custom presented above was a local or wider habit. The question of regional and universal customs in the cult of relics will be discussed in Chapter 11, but it is worth noting now that, in the same period in which the Piacenza Pilgrim visited Jerusalem, Pope Gregory the Great wrote to the Empress Constantina that: ‘in the Roman and all the western parts it is unendurable and sacrilegious for anyone by any chance to desire to touch the bodies’.⁸⁷ This may suggest that the customs of the East and the West differed in this respect. The view of Gregory the Great seems to be confirmed by the writings of Gregory of Tours, another contemporary of the Piacenza Pilgrim. In the episode dealing with a robbery in the basilica of St Martin, he claims that he himself hesitates to touch the tomb of St Martin even with his lips. This is certainly a rhetorical exaggeration. Gregory aimed to emphasize how horrendous an act had been committed by the thieves who trampled on the tomb of the saint when stealing precious objects from the shrine. Still, it shows that the physical contact remained indirect.⁸⁸ Admittedly, in Gaul in the sixth century, relics seem to be more accessible than they used to be. Both clerics and laypeople travel with them, deposit them overnight in a local church, display and sell them, keep them at home, and sometimes even divide them, but these are very rarely bodily relics. Physical

⁸⁶ Pilgrim of Piacenza, Itinerarium 22 (trans. A. Stewart). ⁸⁷ Gregory the Great, Epistulae IV 30 (trans. J. Barmby). ⁸⁸ Gregory of Tours, Historiarum libri 6.10.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Touching Relics

143

contact with corporeal remains, if it happened, was often unintentional; and, if too direct, it was frowned upon or condemned outright.⁸⁹ And yet it is far from evident whether Gregory the Great was right in emphasizing the difference between the East and West. This specific issue will be discussed at length in Chapter 9, but it is important to say that Pope Gregory’s aim was to justify in a convincing and polite way why he did not comply with the empress’s request, and so an argument founded upon a profound difference in the customs was useful to him. Actually, as for Eastern practice, between Gregory of Nazianzus’ remark quoted above and the testimony of the Piacenza Pilgrim, there are very few examples of close and regular contact with corporeal relics. Even the latter author does not give any other example of it. Nor does his almost contemporary Procopius, who mentions in his De aedificiis several relics deposited in various churches in Constantinople, suggest that direct contact with them was possible. Thus the testimony quoted above, though important, does not necessarily mirror a common Eastern practice. It is also important to note that Western travellers to the East were by no means shocked, or even surprised, by the supposedly Eastern customs. If we are to believe the Piacenza Pilgrim that people drank from the skull of St Theodota, we must also believe that he did it as well. And even if the physical distance to relics shortened faster in some parts of the world, we have to remember that the need to be close to them was still everywhere satisfied mostly by indirect contact. This contact could have diverse forms and local peculiarities like the reliquaries with the oil-flowing system in the Limestone Massif or the brandea (strips of cloth) in Rome. Yet the principle, in Rome and in Syria, was the same: people can and should be close to relics, but some distance is to be maintained.

⁸⁹ Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum 13 (thumb), 47, 100 (possibly bodily relics), 54, 89 (ashes).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

8 Displaying and Seeing Relics In recent years, scholarship has seen a growing interest in the significance of the sense of sight in early Christianity. Seeing would have allowed people to come into contact with the divine presence; the character of this presence was often difficult to grasp intellectually, but it was believed to dwell in some special places, objects, and people.¹ The role of seeing is indeed emphasized already in the New Testament, although its importance there does not consist in creating a contact between the viewer and the object. At the beginning of the First Letter of St John we read what follows: That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life—the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us—that which we have seen and heard we declare to you.²

The fact of having seen, touched, and heard is essential for the credibility of the Christian message. However, Christian culture of the second and third centuries was more a culture of reading, or listening, than seeing or touching.³ Only in Late Antiquity, with the emergence of holy places and holy people, living and dead, can we notice a growing desire to see the holy city of Jerusalem, the saintly monks of Egypt, and the shrines of martyrs. There is no doubt that visual contact played a role in the development of the cult of saints on several levels. Seeing holy ascetics served to confirm stories about them, satisfy pious curiosity, enter into contact with a holy man, learn about his life, and turn a spectator into a witness.⁴ Also, people wanted to see beautiful and richly decorated shrines of martyrs, the visual message of which helped to shape and spread their cults. Gregory of Nyssa, Basil of Caesarea, Asterius of Amasea, Paulinus of Nola, and Prudentius took care to describe martyria and paintings or mosaics representing saints. These

¹ Peers 2012 and Jensen 2013. ² 1 John 1:1. ³ See Stroumsa 2016. ⁴ Frank 2000.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

Displaying and Seeing Relics

145

lengthy descriptions, or ekphraseis, prove that for Christians of Late Antiquity seeing mattered.⁵ In this chapter on with visual contact with relics, I am not going to discuss at length the role of the sense of vision in the cult of saints. I will focus rather on the very basic issue of what specifically people were able, or unable, to see, although I will also ask the question whether seeing relics was important, and if so, why. When starting this research, I expected to find the practice of showing and seeing relics to be very important and widespread; partly because of later developments of the cult of relics, in which their public display often took spectacular forms;⁶ partly because physical contact being so limited, as we have seen in Chapter 7, seeing could have been a substitute for touching. Georgia Frank, in her book The Memory of the Eyes,⁷ claims that for pilgrims who visited the holy monks of Egypt, vision was considered just a kind of touch, and so the function of the two senses was similar. I will try to examine whether this thesis is valid in the case of the cult of relics.

HIDDEN RELICS Let us start with the essential question: what kinds of relics were displayed in late antique churches? It has already been said in Chapter 7 that although the bodies of several saints were unearthed and moved to new places, this was by no means the fate of all of them.⁸ This concerns not only those martyrs who were just forgotten or unpopular, but also many of those who were remembered and venerated. Many of them remained in their graves, over which subsequently more or less sumptuous martyria were built. Quite often these graves remained hidden and hardly visible for visitors. In Gaul for instance, the process of transferring the sarcophagi of saintly bishops from subterranean and hardly accessible crypts to the floor level of the church started only in the sixth century.⁹ Yet customs in this matter were diverse. In Syria, access to tomb reliquaries, often placed in pastophoria, little rooms adjacent to the chancel, was not very restricted. In many places, including Rome, tombs could be seen, but only through little windows called fenestellae.¹⁰ The very bodies, however, which remained in their graves, remained invisible. It is more important, therefore, to focus on those remains which were taken out of their original places of burial and started to circulate, either locally or throughout the Mediterranean. Several transfers of important relics are described or referred to in late antique literature. These accounts, which are usually classified as a specific hagiographical subgenre, translationes, may ⁵ Miller 2009; Limberis 2011, 53–96. ⁸ See p. 132. ⁹ Crook 2000, 71–3.

⁶ See A. Brown 2007. ⁷ Frank 2000, 123–33. ¹⁰ Jeličić-Radonić 1999, 136–7.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

146

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

suggest that the bodies of saints were routinely transferred to other places, which is misleading. Actually, if we take into account the number of saints venerated in Christendom, those who were transferred to other places do not seem that numerous,¹¹ and only relics of these saints could have been put on display. The unearthed remains of saints could be of two kinds. First, there were entire bodies, like those of Babylas in Antioch, Gervasius, Protasius and other martyrs discovered in northern Italy by Ambrose, Stephen, Samuel, Habakkuk, and Zecharias found in Palestine early in the fifth century, or Barnabas discovered in Cyprus in 488.¹² As I will show later on, in some cases these unearthed bodies could have been seen when they were being taken out of their graves, but that was not self-evident. Usually, our evidence is not specific about it, but in some cases we do know whether the body was shown to anybody at all. John Chrysostom, for instance, says explicitly that the remains of St Babylas were transferred from Daphne in a sealed coffin.¹³ Even more importantly, after the translation the bodies of saints were never put on permanent display. It is obvious that there were no glass coffins in this period, because there was no technique for producing large glass panes, but there is no evidence either of coffins or sarcophagi containing relics that were furnished with little windows or peepholes, even if such objects, produced for ‘secular’ use, did exist in the Roman world.¹⁴ True, Athanasius of Alexandria claims that the bodies of martyrs which the Melitians carried out of cemeteries were not properly buried, but put ‘on stretchers and pieces of wood, so that those who want to can view them’. This, however, is a polemical description of the customs of opponents, and it would be rash to take it as proof of the actual display of the bodies.¹⁵ The second type of transferred relics was composed of a wide range of objects, from entire body parts, which were very rare, to less solid, but still corporeal relics, like blood or ashes, to contact relics. Of course, displaying pieces of cloth or similar material objects is hardly comparable to displaying corpses or their fragments, but one has to remember that the frontier between corporeal, quasi-corporeal, and contact relics was very blurred. In people’s perception dust was easily transformable into ashes, and, as we will see later on, a stone supposedly used during St Stephen’s execution, kept in Ancona, at some point started to be venerated as his elbow.¹⁶ ¹¹ This is based on preliminary estimations of the Oxford and Warsaw-based Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity Project, the aim of which is to complete an extensive database including the entire literary and epigraphic evidence of the cult of saints up to 700 (, to be completed by 2019). We assume that the number of saints or groups of saints venerated in late antique Christendom, most of whom are known from a single inscription, calendar entry, or mention in a literary texts, may reach or even exceed 3,000. ¹² See p. 108. ¹³ John Chrysostom, In Babylam 87–90. ¹⁴ The only extant sarcophagus of this kind dates to the first century and was discovered in Ostia; three others have been found, but are lost: see Borg 2013, 239. ¹⁵ Athanasius, Epistula 41. See Brakke 1998, 465–6. ¹⁶ Augustine, Sermo 323.2.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

Displaying and Seeing Relics

147

It seems that most of these small relics, once deposited in a church, remained hidden from touch and sight as well. In the case of foundation relics deposited in a newly built church, nobody could even see the reliquary, which remained buried under the pavement. The fact that in several churches in Africa we find inscriptions saying Hic sunt reliquiae, or ‘Here are the relics’, strongly suggests that people could not see them and needed to be informed of their presence.¹⁷ We have seen, however, in Chapter 7 that there is textual and archaeological evidence for other reliquaries which were not meant to be concealed and were quite easily accessible. It is interesting to ask whether people were ever able to see their contents.

RELIQUARIES AND THEIR CONTENTS Some late antique authors seem to suggest so, although what they say usually sounds quite vague.¹⁸ Victricius of Rouen, for instance, in his sermon preached around 396 on the arrival of relics of a number of saints in his city, says the following: Why, then, do we call them ‘relics’? Because words are images and signs of things. Before our eyes are blood and clay . . . We see small relics and a little blood. But truth perceives that these tiny things are brighter than the sun.¹⁹

Does this passage prove that people in Rouen in 396 could see the relics themselves? It is doubtful. In the passage above Victricius is juxtaposing what is visible to the bodily eyes and what can be seen only by the sight of faith, and does not necessarily refer to what people actually saw. Be that as it may, it was a special occasion, for the new relics had just been brought to the city, and it does not tell us anything about how they were displayed later on. More interestingly, Gregory of Nyssa’s Homily on Theodore the Recruit, quoted in Chapter 7, tells us of an occasion of seeing the body of the saint and embracing it with the eyes, mouth, and ears,²⁰ and seems to be more explicit than the testimony of Victricius. The occasion which Gregory is talking about was apparently rare, but these relics could be seen, although seeing seems to have been a supplementary activity, for the emphasis is evidently put on touching, which served to establish contact with a source of power. In the Middle Ages relics could be seen owing to the use of reliquaries which were either openable or constructed in such a way as to make it possible to take a look inside without opening. Given that there are several hundred extant late antique reliquaries, in principle it should not be difficult to find out whether ¹⁷ See e.g. the inscriptions with the following IF in the Trismegistos Database: 199094; 356310; 200247; 361976; 364973 (Africa Proconsularis); 205333 (Numidia); 431776 (Gallia Narbonensis); 258869 (Liguria); 197630 (Thracia). ¹⁸ See Miller 2005. ¹⁹ Victricius, De laude sanctorum 10. ²⁰ Gregory of Nyssa, De sancto Theodoro, p. 62.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

148

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

they displayed their contents in the fourth, fifth, or sixth centuries. The problem is that this evidence is not easy to interpret. It is difficult to decide whether a reliquary was designed to be systematically or periodically reopened. We have already seen that the most common type of reliquary, that resembling a sarcophagus, consisted of a cavity and a lid, sometimes, though rarely, equipped with a lock (Fig. 7.2).²¹ Such reliquaries could certainly be opened, but were they made for this? And, if so, how often did it happen? Usually we cannot say and have at best only hints which suggest that a given reliquary was meant to show its contents, and even such hints appear only very occasionally. We know, for instance, of a sixth-century wooden box containing a collection of stones from the Holy Land and long kept in the Sancta Sanctorum, the papal relic treasury (Fig. 8.1).²² Its particular character consists in the fact that each stone has an inscription naming its origin. But to see these inscriptions one had to open the lid. We do not know, however, of any other objects of this kind; moreover, this particular box contained stones, and not corporeal relics. Another hint of occasional visibility is relic labels, or strips of fabric or papyrus with names of saints attached to their relics. The oldest extant relic labels come from the Cathedral of Sens and from the Abbey of Saint-Maurice d’Agaune and are dated palaeographically to the sixth

Fig. 8.1. Box with stones from the Holy Land (Vatican, Museo Sacro 61883 ab). Photo © Governatorato SCV—Direzione dei Musei. ²¹ A hundred and seventy-seven out of 267 reliquaries from Syria, Palestine, and Cyprus collected by Comte belong to this category: Comte 2012, 64. See also p. 133 n. 57. There are no comparable catalogues of Western reliquaries. ²² See Bagnoli 2010, 36–7, no. 13.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

Displaying and Seeing Relics

149

century. However, they were also attached either to stones brought from the Holy Land or to relics the nature of which is unclear; corporeal remains are explicitly mentioned only as late as in ninth-century labels.²³ But the practice of attaching labels to relics certainly appeared earlier. It must have been the case especially in churches which had relics of a number of saints which it would otherwise be impossible to distinguish between, as we can see in a letter from Bishop Braulio of Saragossa to a priest Iactatus: As for the relics of the most revered apostles, which you have asked me to send, I truthfully reply that I have not a single martyr’s relic so preserved that I can know whose they are. My lords and predecessors were of the opinion that the labels should be removed from all of them to make them indistinguishable, and that they should all be put in a single room, since, in many ways, either by theft or against their wills or by the coercion of the piety of many, they were being forced either to give away or to lose what they had. Some seventy were set apart, however, and are in common use, but among them are to be found none of those which you requested.²⁴

The labels implied a degree of visibility. Still, they did not imply permanent display, and more importantly, they were probably attached to bags containing relics and not to bones themselves. As for reliquaries designed in such a way as to display their contents without opening, neither monstrances for relics resembling those which are still in use for the Eucharist nor reliquaries with a peephole existed at this time. However, there was a type of receptacle which possibly permitted one to look inside. In a few churches, in various parts of the Mediterranean, archaeologists have found little glass flasks. They look no different from those which were used as flacons for perfumes, but they were used to store relics. It is neither their shape nor their contents which suggests this. The shape is banal and the contents are usually described in archaeological reports as traces of a brownish substance.²⁵ It is the context in which they were found, buried under the church’s pavement or inside a larger reliquary, that reveals their function (Fig. 7.3). Those still extant date only from the sixth and seventh centuries, but they have been discovered in Greece, Syria, and Tunisia, which suggests that they were used quite widely.²⁶ Glass flasks showed what they had inside, but at least those which were found during archaeological excavations stuck under the floor were not destined to be displayed. This suggests that some relics were put into glass receptacles simply because the latter were relatively

²³ Smith 2012, 150; for the oldest relics from Saint-Maurice d’Agaune, see Smith 2015, 232–57, esp. etiquettes 1–9, 11–14. ²⁴ Braulio, Epistula 9 (trans. C. W. Barlowe); see M. Szada, CSLA E00579. ²⁵ See Comte 2012, catalogue: Bassit 4 (p. 352). ²⁶ Khirbet es-Samra: Comte 2012, catalogue: Samra St-Jean 1a (p. 237), Hippos NO 1a (containing bones, p. 169) and Basit 4 (p. 352). For Sbeïtla and Cincari, see N. Duval 2002, 55.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

150

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

good-looking and, more importantly, well adapted for holding very small objects and liquids. Their transparency was not essential. Thus, objects of this kind do not imply the visibility of relics, even if occasionally they could have been used for their display, as I will show below. In all, there is no certain archaeological evidence for reliquaries destined to show their contents. Reliquaries with a peephole appeared on a large scale only in the High Middle Ages.²⁷

VISIBILITY OF RELIQUARIES It is interesting to ask whether those who were not allowed to see the relics themselves could at least look at their reliquaries. Sometimes it was possible. Large reliquaries found in several churches in Syria were placed either in pastophoria or between the chancel and the nave, where everybody could see them. John Chrysostom in his sermon on St Drosis, preached at the end of the fourth century in Antioch, encouraged his audience to look at such reliquaries, because the sight of them made people ‘think philosophically’.²⁸ Yet many reliquaries were hidden, and some of them were concealed so well that they were eventually forgotten. This had perhaps been the case even with such important relics as those of the Apostles in Constantinople.²⁹ Certainly, sumptuous silver or ivory reliquaries were presumably made to be seen. But the archaeological context in which they are found shows that they also could be permanently inaccessible. The famous ivory reliquary which was found immured in a church near Pola in Istria, for instance, is beautifully decorated and has a sophisticated theological programme, which, however, could not be studied for centuries until its discovery in 1906.³⁰ This does not mean that precious reliquaries were commissioned only to be interred forever. The fact that these reliquaries mostly come from well-hidden places is understandable, for golden or ivory boxes which were not hidden had little chance of survival. But this evidence does show that a rich and beautiful reliquary was not always displayed.³¹ It is also interesting to note that late antique reliquaries, unlike those which we know from the High Middle Ages³² usually kept their contents secret. This secrecy manifests itself not only in the impossibility of seeing the contents, but also in the absence of inscriptions which are very rare on reliquaries.³³ ²⁷ Diedrichs 2001, 59–140. ²⁸ John Chrysostom, De sancta Droside 4. ²⁹ Procopius, De aedificiis 1.4.18–20; see p. 68. ³⁰ For this programme, see Elsner 2013. ³¹ This is a wider issue. Also the visibility of several richly decorated sarcophagi cannot be taken for granted: Borg 2013, 237. ³² Hahn 1997a and 1997b. ³³ Inscriptions are very rare on stone reliquaries, but slightly more frequent on metal reliquaries: see Comte 2012, 99–108 (mostly for the former) and Noga-Banai (passim, for the latter); more generally: Jastrzębowska & Heydasch-Lehmann 2018, 1164–5.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

Displaying and Seeing Relics

151

Their figurative iconography is usually also poor, and their shape is not very revealing. The form of sarcophagus reliquaries, for instance, suggests that they contained corporeal remains, but nothing more. It gives no hint as to what kinds of relics and, more importantly, whose relics were deposited inside.³⁴ Other forms, such as stelae or cuboid, oval, or round boxes, were not specific at all, and it is not always easy to distinguish a small ivory reliquary from a jewellery box.³⁵ Reliquaries shaped as body parts, heads, arms, or hands appeared only in the ninth century.³⁶ Most stone reliquaries, which are far more numerous than those made of other materials, are devoid of any iconographic programme; the only motif that we can often find on them is the sign of the Cross. Admittedly, since most reliquaries remained hidden, their look was not particularly important. Yet, interestingly, even if the iconography was more developed, it was normally focused on biblical scenes. On the fifth-century silver reliquary of Brivio, for instance, we can see the raising of Lazarus, the adoration of the Magi, and the three youths in the furnace (Fig. 8.2).³⁷ Saints appear only rarely.

Fig. 8.2. Silver casket, known as the Capsella of Brivio, with the representation of the raising of Lazarus from the Musée du Louvre. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée du Louvre)/Gérard Blot.

³⁴ Interestingly, the shape and iconography of and the inscriptions on sarcophagi are usually more revealing: Elsner 2012. ³⁵ See Duffy & Vikan 1983. ³⁶ Bynum & Gerson 1997, 4. ³⁷ Noga-Banai 2008, 38–61.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

152

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

There are some exceptions, like the so-called capsella Africana dating from the fourth or fifth century discovered in Ain Zirara in modern Algeria.³⁸ On its lid a young man holding a wreath is being crowned by the hand of God (Fig. 8.3). He is certainly a martyr, but his identity (Stephen or Januarius?) is not clear. Actually, we do not know if he was meant to represent any specific martyr at all and I doubt that in Late Antiquity people were able to recognize him just by looking at this image. Another exception is perhaps a sixthcentury pyxis with St Menas, on which the saint, standing between two camels, is easy to recognize, but we are not entirely sure if this object was a reliquary.³⁹ On other reliquaries, saints—if they appear at all—do not occupy a central position. Moreover, again unlike in many medieval reliquaries, their likenesses do not seem to be related to their contents, for most frequently they represent just two personages, Peter and Paul (Fig. 8.4), who can also be found on

Fig. 8.3. Capsella Africana. Vatican, Museo Sacro della Biblioteca Apostolica (inv. no. 60859). Photo © Governatorato SCV—Direzione dei Musei.

³⁸ Noga-Banai 2008, 64–95.

³⁹ See Weitzmann 1979, 575–6 (no. 514).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

Displaying and Seeing Relics

153

Fig. 8.4. Silver casket with the Cross flanked by Peter and Paul. Photo © Toronto, Royal Ontario Museum.

frescos, mosaics, sarcophagi, and vessels. Needless to say, not every box with St Peter on its lid contained his relics.⁴⁰ Generally speaking, the iconographic programme and shape of reliquaries reflected the wider patterns of late antique Christian art and are similar to what we can find on other objects, for instance on Roman sarcophagi.⁴¹ Reliquaries certainly carried a message of death and resurrection, could engage the viewer in a play of concealment and revelation,⁴² but rarely said anything specific about the saint, his or her martyrdom, or relics. Still, their beauty, craftsmanship, and the use of precious materials carried a message about the value of their contents, and so guaranteed that the ashes or other objects which the reliquary held were truly the remains of martyrs, and that was an important function.⁴³ Of course, all this does not mean that someone entering a church was unable to learn whose relics it contained. Thanks to inscriptions, frescos, and mosaics representing martyrs, their relics were not really anonymous.⁴⁴ Moreover, the place of their deposition was often marked by architectural devices. Inscriptions saying Hic reliquiae or Hic sunt reliquiae served the same purpose.⁴⁵ It was important to show that relics were placed there, since it was, at least in part, their presence that drew people to specific sanctuaries. It was also important to be close to relics and, sometimes, to touch them, even indirectly, because this was how their power was transmitted. But touching ⁴⁰ For reliquaries with Peter, Paul, and other saints (including the capsella Africana), see Noga-Banai & Safran 2011, and especially Noga-Banai 2008, 63–120. For the link between contents and representation in later reliquaries, see Hahn 2010. ⁴¹ For the catalogue of iconographic motifs on early Christian sarcophagi, see Lange 1996 (the only volume published). ⁴² Elsner 2015, 14–21. ⁴³ Hahn 2010, 291. ⁴⁴ Yasin 2009, 151–209; see also Thacker 2002. ⁴⁵ See n. 17.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

154

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

could often be done without seeing. People introduced strips of cloth, sticks, sponges, or oil into the reliquary without actually looking inside.⁴⁶ It is somehow puzzling that people did not want to see them, because relics were actually considered to be trophies, or signs of the triumph, of martyrs. The martyrs were venerated because they had suffered violent deaths and they bodies were injured and distorted, and late antique Christians were accustomed to pictorial descriptions of flesh being ripped apart by tortures.⁴⁷ The fourth- or fifth-century Syriac Martyrdom of Candida, for instance, tells of her being forced to walk around the city holding her cut-off breasts in her hands.⁴⁸ Several other martyrs display their wounds and mutilated limbs in their passiones. And yet their actual earthly remains with traces of the torment and execution were not really shown or admired. It is interesting to ask why this was the case. The simplest answer seems to be that the taboo of displaying dead bodies did not disappear altogether.⁴⁹ One could also suppose that keeping relics hidden from sight served well to protect their air of mystery, which could have been lost had they been put on regular public display. This, however, is difficult to prove, all the more so as such a result did not have to be intentional. Also, this does not explain why the iconography of martyrdom, with saints displaying their wounds, developed only much later than literary descriptions of the same kind. The story of Candida brings to mind the images of St Agatha of Sicily, holding her cut-off breasts on a platter, but such scenes are absent from late antique iconography, which evidently did not reflect the images created by hagiographical literature. Thinking about the wounds of martyrs as their trophies could, however, be at the origin of the idea that the very sight of relics could chase away evil spirits. In his sermon on St Julian of Antioch, John Chrysostom claims that ‘the sight of his wounds is unbearable to the demons. Even now, possessed people cannot stand being near the saint’s tomb. The saint’s wounds are brighter than the stars of heaven.’⁵⁰ In the sixth century, a further step was made and the images of saints became powerful objects, like relics. In the collection of the Miracles of Cosmas and Damian we find an episode in which a woman scrapes off some plaster on which an image of the two saints was painted, drinks it diluted in water, and is healed.⁵¹ The historian Theophanes claims that in the year 610 the ships of Heraclius sailing to Constantinople had on their masts reliquaries and icons of the Mother of God.⁵² Evidently, both ⁴⁶ See pp. 134–6. ⁴⁷ Grig 2004, 111–17. ⁴⁸ See S. Minov, CSLA E03175. ⁴⁹ Gregory of Nyssa, Vita Macrinae 35; see p. 129. It is not impossible, though, that some bodies in the fourth century were deposited outside sarcophagi and remained visible in burial crypts: see Borg 2013, 238. ⁵⁰ John Chrysostom, In sanctum Iulianum 2, CSLA E02544. ⁵¹ Miracula Cosmae et Damiani II 15. ⁵² Theophanes, Chronographia 6102 (AD 609/10). Theophanes’ information comes from the early seventh-century poet George of Pisidia.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

Displaying and Seeing Relics

155

types of objects had a similar function and became equivalent.⁵³ This, however, cannot be seen in the earlier period. In all, the evidence does not suggest that the custom of displaying and looking at relics developed in any part of the late antique world on a wide scale. Some reliquaries could have been opened, but nothing proves that they really were; some reliquaries made it possible to look at their contents, but remained hidden. Those which could be seen rarely suggested what they had inside. That was a general rule. Below, I will present a study of four exceptional cases of relics which were displayed and I will seek to explain them.

FOUR EXCEPTIONS In the first of these cases the relics were displayed after their discovery, in the second, during the translation, in the third, they seem to have been exhibited permanently, while in the fourth the situation is not clear. Since in this chapter we are interested in real practices, it has to be noted that in all these cases we will be focusing on what ancient authors wanted us to see. None of them simply happened to mention the display of relics accidentally. They all wanted readers to know that the relics were shown publicly. That is why we learn from these three episodes, not so much why some relics were put on display, but why those who wrote about them thought that they should be. The first episode tells of the discovery of the bodies of Gervasius and Protasius. This event has already been referred to in this book several times. It took place in Milan in 386 and its earliest description comes from the letter which Bishop Ambrose wrote to his sister, and which he himself subsequently published. It runs as follows: I ordered the ground to be opened before the railings of the church of Saints Felix and Nabor. I found the appropriate signs . . . We found two men of stupendous size, such as belonged to ancient days. All their bones were intact, and there was much blood. The people thronged the place in crowds throughout the whole of those two days.

Further on, Ambrose quotes a sermon that he preached standing in front of the two bodies, which were temporarily deposited in the basilica, before their final burial under its altar: Look at the holy relics at my right hand and at my left, see men of heavenly conversation, behold the trophies of a heavenly mind . . . These noble relics are dug out of an ignoble sepulchre; these trophies are displayed in the face of day.

⁵³ See Peers 2012, 971.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

156

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

The tomb is moist with blood, the tokens of a triumphant death are displayed, the uninjured relics are found in their proper place and order, the head separated from the body.’⁵⁴

The visual contact with the relics is clear. The bodies, heads, skeletons, and all, were displayed publicly, and Ambrose encouraged his flock to look at them. Of course, it has to be repeated: we can see here what Ambrose wanted us to see. It cannot be said with any certainty what those who gathered in the Basilica Ambrosiana were actually able to observe, but Ambrose’s message is unequivocal: people were shown the martyrs’ bodies. Still, it was only for a short period of two days, and then the corpses were hidden under the altar. The modern arrangement of Sant’Ambrogio, in which the bodies of Gervasius and Protasius, flanking that of Ambrose himself, can be seen in a glass coffin, dates back to the nineteenth century and has nothing to do with what the grave looked like in Late Antiquity.⁵⁵ The second case comes from the first chapter of the Book of Miracles of St Stephen, which tells of the arrival of his relics in Uzalis in North Africa, c.418: Even before any rumour could start that the relics of St Stephen, the first witness of Christ in martyrdom, were about to arrive to us the unworthy (for we could neither think about or suspect that they may come), lo, the glorious [Stephen] had started to reveal himself to certain saintly souls among us. One day, in a certain place, the servants of God who had with them these relics sent from the East (which we were not aware of ) were talking about them. And a woman, holy servant of God, came in the middle of their talk. When she heard it, she was not ready to believe (as it usually happens), but started to talk silently to herself: ‘And who knows whether those are really the relics of martyrs?’ And without any delay, the following night, an ampoule was shown to her in a dream, and its inside looked as if it had been sprinkled with blood and had something like traces of tiny straws which seemed to be particles of bones. A presbyter who kept it in hand was talking to a monk, his brother, and said in her presence: ‘Do you want to know how the relics of martyrs are verified?’ This said, he put the ampoule into his mouth, and immediately a flame of fire started to go out through his mouth and ears. Now, listen trustfully how the truth became manifest. For later on, [the truth] was revealed by the fact that the ampoule which the bishop of God took in his hands was just like the one which the servant of God had seen in her dream revelation.⁵⁶

This interesting passage is difficult to interpret. The contents of the flask, the blood and splinters of bones, are perfectly visible, but only in a dream vision. Still, the argument about the veracity of relics is constructed upon the identity of the ampoule seen in a dream and the ampoule actually brought to Uzalis. We have to remember again that showing these relics in a glass flask is a ⁵⁴ Ambrose, Epistula 77.4 and 12; (trans. H. de Romestin et al., slightly changed). ⁵⁵ Selvafolta 1999. ⁵⁶ Liber de miraculis s. Stephani 1.1.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

Displaying and Seeing Relics

157

rhetorical device—we cannot be sure what the actual ampoule looked like. Yet the author wanted his readers to think about it as a transparent flask, showing its contents. This was not a permanent arrangement either. The relics were placed in the church and hidden from sight behind a little door, which could be opened, as we have seen in Chapter 7 in the story of Megetia, but in the entire collection of the Miracles of St Stephen there is no suggestion of their further public display. The third case study is much later than the first two. In the Itinerary of the anonymous Pilgrim of Piacenza, who visited the Holy Land in the second half of the sixth century, another glass reliquary is mentioned: Thence we came to Heliopolis, and thence to Emesa, where there is the head of John the Baptist in a glass jar. And we saw it with our own eyes in the jar and adored it.⁵⁷

Here we can see an important relic held in a glass receptacle which seems to have been permanently on display. The presence of the head of John the Baptist in Emesa is also attested by other sources. We also know that there were glass recipients large enough to hold a skull. Interestingly, they were used in a funerary context, but in an earlier period: in the first and second centuries they served as urns for ashes. In Late Antiquity, however, when inhumation replaced incineration, they disappeared.⁵⁸ Thus it would be risky to look for any direct link between them and the vessel described by the Pilgrim of Piacenza. The last case study comes from the Church History of Evagrius, who claims that he had an opportunity to see the head of Simeon Stylites when it was sent from Antioch to the general Philippicus, then commander-in-chief of the army of the East. Evagrius describes in detail the Stylite’s skull, still covered by the dried skin, with hair intact and most teeth still in place. The author saw the skull with many clerics, but it is difficult to say whether it was put on display or simply repacked in order to be sent from the city.⁵⁹ The last two cases in which the skull of the saint is displayed seem to be more spectacular than the first two and may suggest that in the sixth century visual contact with relics was closer than in the earlier period. But our evidence suggests that even then it was quite rare and so the exceptions quoted above demand an explanation. Why were the bodies of Gervasius and Protasius in Milan, and some blood and bones of St Stephen in Uzalis, the head of John the Baptist in Emesa, and the skull of Simeon Stylites in Antioch put on display? It seems that what was really exposed in these cases was the proof of the authenticity of the relics and martyrdom. This is most evident in Milan, where the veracity of the relics was cast into doubt. The cut-off heads proved ⁵⁷ Pilgrim of Piacenza, Itinerarium 46 (trans. A. Stewart). ⁵⁸ See Toynbee 1971, 39–42; Philpott 1991, 27. ⁵⁹ Evagrius, Historia ecclesiastica 1.13.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

158

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

that the men whose tomb had just been opened had actually been executed, the size of their bodies showed that they were not people like others, and the miraculously preserved blood demonstrated that their remains still held power. The situation in Uzalis was similar. Some new relics had just been brought to the city by some clerics or monks. Most probably they were not the first relics whose origin raised doubts; a few years earlier Augustine, writing in nearby Hippo, denounced wandering monks who used to sell spurious relics of alleged martyrs.⁶⁰ It is no wonder that people were not sure what to think about Stephen’s relics, and this is clearly stated in the passage quoted. In the case of Emesa, the text itself does not offer an explanation. But we know that the head displayed in this city was the second head of John the Baptist. His first head was brought to Constantinople in the 380s and deposited in the important sanctuary of Hebdomon.⁶¹ Thus, visitors could be sceptical as to whether Emesa really possessed the relic it claimed to have. In Antioch the situation was not dissimilar—Evagrius writes about the dispute over the body of the Stylite, which the emperor wanted to take to Constantinople. He strives to convince his readers that ‘most of the body’ remained in Antioch. While it is not certain whether the bishop of the city displayed the skull to prove it, it is very probable that Evagrius described the relic with this purpose in mind. The cases studied above suggest, then, that the temporary or, very rarely, permanent display of relics served in the first place as proof. To a modern student of the cult of relics such proofs may seem unconvincing. One can certainly ask why a bone in a glass should imply martyrdom. Yet in Late Antiquity this sort of proof was appreciated, as can be clearly seen in contemporary pilgrim stories. The very same Pilgrim of Piacenza, for instance, admired the saw with which the prophet Isaiah had been killed and which was shown pro testimonio, as a proof, that this story was true.⁶² Thus, one can conclude that if relics were publicly displayed, it was to show not so much the corpses holding divine power, as the testimonia of their passion: the heads cut off, the blood spilled, the saw which killed the prophet. But it was done only when the passion or the relics were contested. This, in turn, leads to the conclusion that showing relics usually had a different function from that of touching them. The latter aimed at establishing a contact with thaumaturgical power, the former at proving the veracity of martyrdom and the authenticity of relics.

⁶⁰ Augustine, De opere monachorum 28.36; see also Geary 1978, 42. ⁶¹ See pp. 36–7. ⁶² Pilgrim of Piacenza, Itinerarium 32.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

9 Dividing Relics At the beginning of the twentieth century Hippolyte Delehaye published an important study on the beginnings of the cult of martyrs which is still quoted, and justly so, in most books and articles concerning this phenomenon. While Delehaye studied the cult of the saints with a most scholarly eye, he also looked at them with deep respect and affection, and he considered certain developments of their cult as highly unsuitable. In his view, two closely connected practices were particularly embarrassing: first of all, the custom of taking the bodies of saints from their graves and placing them elsewhere, and secondly, that of dividing them. Delehaye had no doubt that the responsibility for these developments lay with the Greeks.¹ In his opinion, the process of disinterring and dividing martyrs’ bodies began in the East in the second half of the fourth century, while Rome, identified with the West, was immune from such practices at least until the end of the sixth century. The fact that in the last decade of the fourth century Bishop Ambrose sent out the relics of Milanese saints to some of his colleagues did not change Delehaye’s opinion about the profound difference in the Western customs: his conclusion was that Ambrose simply followed Eastern practice. The conviction that the process of dismembering saints’ bodies began in the East in the fourth century is generally accepted in scholarship.² Any doubts concern rather the ‘purity’ of Western customs, i.e. the non-existence of the practice in Italy, Gaul, Spain, and Africa.³ Admittedly, in 1990 Cyril Mango asked in this context the question ‘Are the Greeks to blame?’, but it has not been satisfactorily answered.⁴ John Wortley, in his interesting article about the origins of the veneration of body parts, suggested what mechanisms could have given rise to this phenomenon, but did not question the traditional conviction of where and when it started.⁵ My purpose in this chapter is to find out what the late ancient practice of dividing relics ¹ Delehaye 1933, 53–61. ² See McCulloh 1976, 145; Heinzelmann 1979, 20–2; Hunt 1981, 174–5; Legner 1995, 11–15; Beaujard 2000, 283; Clark 2001, 167. ³ Grabar 1946, vol. 1, 40–1. ⁴ Mango 1990, 61. ⁵ Wortley 2006b.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

160

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

consisted in, when it appeared, and whether Western and Eastern customs in this matter were really different. The strongest evidence to support the thesis that the East and West differed in this respect comes from two well-known documents from sixth-century papal correspondence. The first of these is a letter sent to Pope Hormisdas by his legates in 519.⁶ It concerns the request of the future Emperor Justinian, who wanted to bring from Rome to Constantinople relics of the Apostles and of St Laurence. Before writing to the Pope, the legates explained to Justinian that his demand had been made ‘according to the custom of the Greeks’ (secundum morem Graecorum) and was contrary to the ‘practice of the Holy See’ (consuetudo Sedis Apostolicae). As Justinian accepted this argument, the legates, seeing his religious zeal, asked Hormisdas to send to Constantinople what they called sanctuaria apostolorum (the context makes it clear that these were contact relics sanctified by being laid on the graves of the Apostles) as well as fragments of the chains of Sts Peter and Paul, and of the gridiron of St Laurence. The second classic testimony to the difference between Western and Eastern practices is the letter of Gregory the Great, written in 594 to Constantina, wife of the Emperor Maurice. The Pope, from whom she had sought ‘the head of St Paul or some other part of his body’ (caput eiusdem sancti Pauli, aut aliud quid de corpore ipsius), answers that he neither could nor dared to disclose the Apostle’s sepulchre.⁷ And to strengthen his argument he related how, by divine intervention, an attempt made centuries earlier to carry away from Rome the bodies of the Apostles had ended in failure, and how in recent times all the witnesses of the opening of the tomb of St Laurence had lost their lives shortly after the event, even though the tomb was opened in order to repair the grave not to take the body out of it. Gregory reminded the empress that according to the custom of the Roman Church, suppliants received strips of cloth (brandea) sanctified by contact with the grave which were as sufficient both to heal and to consecrate a church as the bodies themselves. He promised too to send to Constantina some filings of the chains of St Paul, if he could only manage to file them off, which was not necessarily achievable, because for one supplicant the filings were obtained swiftly and easily, whereas for others even prolonged efforts did not produce any success. In both letters, the mos Graecorum, the custom of opening graves, is contrasted with the mos Romanorum, which leaves them intact. Both letters are usually considered to prove that the West for a long time opposed the Eastern practice. However, two questions arise. First, what did the difference between Western and Eastern attitudes towards the relics precisely consist in? Secondly, can we refer the state of affairs described in the sixth-century

⁶ Collectio Avellana 218.

⁷ Gregory the Great, Epistulae IV 30; see p. 141.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Dividing Relics

161

correspondence to the earlier period? Briefly, do these two testimonies suffice to assert that the customs of the two parts of the Mediterranean world in the fourth and fifth centuries really differed? As to the first question, one should note that what is discussed in both letters is rather the problem of transferring than that of dividing relics. Only Constantina expressly asked the Pope for the head of St Paul (which, it is worth noting, had already been separated from the torso at the moment of martyrdom) or ‘for some other part of his body’. If the empress had actually expressed her request in such a way, the difference between Western and Eastern practices would have been significant: the Romans did not allow dismembering bodies; the Greeks accepted it. But it is interesting to note that in his answer Gregory suggests that the difference was of another kind. According to the Pope, the divergence lay in the fact that the Greeks permitted the opening of tombs, not dividing bodies. When he quotes a negative example of some Eastern monks plundering one of the Roman cemeteries, he refers to people who wanted to take away entire bodies, not their fragments. I do not want to deny firmly that in the sixth century attitudes towards dividing relics in different parts of Christendom were really different, but I propose not to take it for granted, and to examine instead the earlier customs more carefully. All the testimonies which I will adduce are fairly well known, but I think that the common interpretation of this material, that it demonstrates the practice of dismembering bodies, is too hasty. A good starting point for studying this issue will be an imperial edict directly forbidding the practice we are dealing with. This law, issued on 26 May 386 in the name of Valentinian II and Theodosius I, stated that: No person shall transfer a buried body to another place. No person shall sell [or divide?] a martyr. No person shall traffic in them (nemo martyrem distrahat, nemo mercetur). But if anyone of the saints has been buried in any place whatever, persons shall have in their power to add whatever building they may wish in veneration of such place, and such a building must be called a martyrium.⁸

If the prohibition on moving bodies from their tombs is simply a reiteration of established Roman law,⁹ the rest of the edict regards a new practice which did not exist before the fourth century. What kind of practice was it? The verb distrahere is ambiguous. It can mean ‘to sell’, just like mercari in the following sentence, but also ‘to tear into pieces’.¹⁰ Both meanings make sense in this context. However, even if we choose the latter translation, we should remember that in late antique penal legislation, especially in the religious domain, the

⁸ Codex Theodosianus 9.17.7 (27 February 386). The edict is erroneously attributed to Gratian as well. ⁹ Herrmann-Mascard 1979, 31–2. ¹⁰ Seneca, Epistulae morales ad Lucillum 30.14 (magna vi distraheretur a corpore).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

162

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

choice of a specific term served rather to express the outrage of the emperor and his strong disapproval of the stigmatized custom than to describe it precisely.¹¹ The legislator who condemned those who opened the graves could easily have qualified every act of taking bones out of the tomb as ripping the body to pieces, even if this did not reflect exact reality. That is why, in order to learn what actual practice was, it is necessary to go further, and study the fate of specific saints’ bodies which were displaced in the course of the fourth and the fifth centuries.

ONE SAINT IN MANY P LACES The three earliest known translations of relics which took place in the 350s were certainly not accompanied by dividing them. The contemporary evidence does not say how the transfers of Timothy, Luke, and Andrew to Constantinople occurred precisely,¹² but we know that Babylas was transported to Daphne in a well-closed metal coffin.¹³ More interesting is the story of the relics of John the Baptist. According to Rufinus, in 362 pagans destroyed his tomb in Sebaste in Palestine, burnt his bones, and dispersed the ashes over fields. Some pious monks, however, quickly collected those remains, and took them to Jerusalem, whence, during the episcopate of Athanasius (i.e. before 373), they arrived in Alexandria. Later on, Bishop Theophilus deposited them in the church built at the site of the ancient temple of Serapis, which had just been closed on the emperor’s orders.¹⁴ In the same period the Emperor Theodosius brought to Constantinople the head of the saint, which had before been kept in Cilicia, and before that in Jerusalem. We have already seen that another head was discovered in the mid-fifth century in Emesa.¹⁵ Another case of dispersed relics is that of the ashes of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste in Cappadocia. In the 370s, Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa spoke about their relics, venerated in various places in their country.¹⁶ In the Testament of the Forty Martyrs, whose date of origin is not easy to determine, ¹¹ Harries 1999. ¹² The transfer of Luke and Andrew is described in the Passio Artemii, but the text is not trustworthy: see Burgess 2003. ¹³ Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 5.19.13. It was transported in the same way in 362, when it was carried out of Daphne on the orders of Julian: see John Chrysostom, In Babylam 87–90. ¹⁴ Rufinus, Historia ecclesiastica 11.28. Similar attacks on Christian martyria in other towns are mentioned by Julian, Misopogon 357C and 361A–B. ¹⁵ The first head: Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 7.21.4–5; Chronicon Paschale s.a. 391; the second head: Chronicon Paschale s.a. 453; Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon s.a. 453. ¹⁶ Basil of Caesarea, In sanctos XL martyres 8; Gregory of Nyssa, In XL martyres I, p. 137 and In XL martyres II, p. 166. For the dating of Basil’s sermon, see Bernardi 1968, 83–4 (370s); for

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Dividing Relics

163

but which possibly dates from the fourth century, the martyrs forbid the distribution of their ashes;¹⁷ so the text testifies that some discussion about the practice of dividing relics was taking place. In the early fifth century we find relics of the Forty Martyrs also in Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Brescia.¹⁸ The Forty Martyrs were not the first Eastern saints whose relics arrived in the West. Before 386, a group of relics was brought to Milan, most probably from Constantinople. The dating of this event is founded on Ambrose’s Letter 77, written in the same year, in which he describes the discovery of the grave of Gervasius and Protasius. Ambrose claims that in that year the people of Milan asked him to dedicate a new church in the same way as he had dedicated the basilica at Porta Romana, that is, with the use of relics.¹⁹ He does not state, though, when exactly, and with what relics, he consecrated the latter church. As for the relics, the answer can probably be found in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum. Under the date of 9 May (without mentioning a year, as would be useless in a liturgical calendar) the Martyrologium notes the ingressus of the relics of the Apostles John, Andrew, and Thomas into the basilica at Porta Romana. On 27 November the Church of Milan celebrated the ingressus of the relics of the Apostles Luke, Andrew, John, the martyr Euphemia, and a less well-known St Severus (the specific church is not mentioned).²⁰ It is difficult to determine which of these sets came to the city before 386, but it is quite certain that both had arrived before 396, when relics of all these saints (except Severus) were sent by Ambrose to Victricius of Rouen.²¹ Some relics of the same saints are attested soon after in other cities in Italy: in Brescia, in Fundi close to Nola, and probably also in Lodi.²² At about the same time, Paulinus of Nola hoped to receive some relics of Eastern martyrs from a ‘saintly Silvia’ who was coming back home from the East.²³ Finally, shortly after 415, St Stephen’s relics were brought to several places in the West, particularly in Africa.

Gregory’s sermon, Leemans 2001, argues for c.375 (against traditional dating to the 380s). For the testimonies to this cult, see Limberis 2011, 137–40. ¹⁷ Testamentum XL Martyrum 1. ¹⁸ Brescia: Gaudentius, Tractatus 17.11–37; Jerusalem: Gerontius, Vita Melaniae 48; Constantinople: Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 9.2. ¹⁹ Ambrose, Epistula 77.1. ²⁰ Martyrologium Hieronymianum, VII Id. Mai, V Kal. Dec. ²¹ Victricius, De laude sanctorum 6. ²² Brescia: John the Baptist, Andrew, Thomas, Luke (Gaudentius, Tractatus 17.3–11: after 397); Concordia: John the Baptist, John the Evangelist, Andrew, Thomas (Chromatius of Aquileia, Sermo 26: after 388); Fundi: Andrew, Luke (Paulinus of Nola, Epistula 32.17: 402); a basilica apostolorum was dedicated, during Ambrose’s episcopate, in Lodi as well, but we do not know whose relics were deposited in it (Ambrose, Epistula 4.1). For chronological problems with identifying these relics and dating their transfers, see Y.-M. Duval 1977, 303–18. ²³ Paulinus of Nola, Epistula 31.1.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

164

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

All this shows that the relics of certain saints could be found in several places and in the second quarter of the fifth century Theodoret of Cyrrhus in his Cure for the maladies of the Greeks seems to consider the division of saints’ bodies a normal practice: The bodies of individual saints are not interred in the same tomb. Towns and villages divide them amongst themselves, because they worship them as saviours and physicians of souls and bodies, and venerate them as patrons and protectors of the town; they use them as envoys to the Lord of all things, and they receive through them divine gifts. And in spite of the fact that the body is divided, the grace remains undivided and the smallest particle of relics has the power equal to that of an undivided martyr.²⁴

Theodoret repeats the same in two of his letters in which he claims that many people say that a saint is buried in their church, whereas in fact they have only small particles (smikrotata leipsana) of his body.²⁵ The Martyrdom of Nikethas the Goth, possibly dating from the same period, tells us about a failed attempt to divide this saint’s body, which might suggest that the author knew about other attempts of this kind.²⁶ With these seemingly obvious proofs that the bodies of saints used to be divided in the early fifth century we can conclude the survey of literary testimonies and move on to the archaeological evidence. Among the late antique reliquaries discovered in several churches of the Mediterranean, some were found unopened since their deposition, thus giving us a chance to see what their contents looked like. Unfortunately, many of these finds have not been carefully examined. In earlier times, archaeologists were often more interested in the containers than in the relics themselves, and so their reports often just say that a given reliquary contained ashes, which, however, were not analysed by laboratory methods. It is therefore difficult to say whether the dust found inside was placed there as relics in the form of ashes or was the residue of the disintegration of body fragments or some other objects. There are, however, a few reliquaries, both from the East and from the West, which contain small bone fragments deposited in them probably before the sixth century.²⁷ Briefly, there are three arguments for the early dating of the practice of dividing saints’ bodies. First, as early as the end of the fourth century, there is literary evidence of relics of the same saints deposited in various places of the

²⁴ Theodoret, Graecorum affectionum curatio 8.10–11. ²⁵ Theodoret, Epistula 131 (CXXX), p. 121, and 145 (CXLIV), p. 169. ²⁶ Passio Nicetae Gothi 8. ²⁷ See Buschhausen 1971. In this catalogue of ancient reliquaries few were found with bone fragments inside: B 20 (Pula), C 1 (neighbourhood of Varna); C 6 (Lopud near Dubrovnik, but Buschhausen’s dating is probably too early); C 10 (Chur, Switzerland); C 23 (Çoban Dere, Bulgaria); C 60 (Synnada).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Dividing Relics

165

Christian world. Secondly, Theodoret explicitly says that the distribution of one martyr’s relics among many churches is common. Thirdly, some late antique reliquaries contain little bone fragments, material proof of the dismembering of a human body. These arguments leave no doubt that relics of many saints were dispersed already in the fourth and earlier fifth centuries and that this caused no amazement. The question is whether this fact allows the conclusion that the actual practice of dismembering bodies existed at that time. I think there are reasons to give a negative answer to this question. First, literary sources never talk about specific body parts which would have been separated from the other parts. In fourth- and fifth-century texts we find no mention of the veneration of a hand, a digit, or a foot of a martyr. The only credible exceptions are the two heads of St John the Baptist and the head of St Phocas (dispatched to Rome, according to Asterius of Amasea, while the rest of his body remained in the East).²⁸ But these are specific cases, because both martyrs had been beheaded, and so the separation resulted from the action of persecutors, not worshippers.²⁹ Secondly, the early accounts of discoveries and translations of relics never describe the act of dismembering a body. Admittedly, there are passages in hagiographical writings which show the burial of a saint thronged by a crowd of people wanting to touch the body during the ceremony; they collect pieces of his garments, and press so much on the bier that it looks as if they want to tear the body itself into pieces. But all these scenes are highly rhetorical and one can doubt if in any of these cases the integrity of the corpse was really in danger.³⁰ One may suggest of course that the practice of dismembering bodies existed, but was embarrassing to such a degree that no one was eager to describe it. The practice would thus be placed in the grey zone of late antique religiosity which has left no traces in the sources. Such a zone certainly did exist, but it is quite unlikely that practices associated with the cult of relics were lost in it. The reason for arguing this— and this is my third argument—is that at the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth century the cult of relics as such was not unanimously accepted by all Christians. More about this will be said in Chapter 10; here it is sufficient to point out that although the writings of the adversaries of this cult

²⁸ For the heads of John the Baptist, see n. 15; for the head of Phocas, see Asterius of Amasea, Homilia 9.10; in the later fifth century that was also the case for the head of St Julian in Gaul: see Sidonius Apollinaris, Epistulae VII 1. ²⁹ A case apart is two testimonies to specific fragments of St Stephen’s body. Augustine claims that in Ancona people believed that they had an arm of the Protomartyr, but this, he says, is untrue (Sermo 323.2); see n. 36. According to Theophanes, Chronographia 5920 (AD 427/8), the arm of St Stephen was transferred in 427 from Jerusalem to Constantinople. This testimony, however, is not trustworthy: Mango 2004. ³⁰ See Antonius, Symeonis Stylitae vita Graeca 29; Callinicus, Vita Hypatii 51.10; Hilary, Vita Honorati 35.2; Honoratus, Vita Hilarii 29; Vita Danielis Stylitae 100.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

166

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

have perished, the arguments of at least one of them are well preserved in Jerome’s Against Vigilantius. Jerome refutes his adversary’s accusations one by one, and there is no mention of the dismembering of bodies. As has already been said, Vigilantius knew a variety of regional customs. If he had come across the practice of dismembering, he would certainly have referred to it, with a view to discrediting the worshippers of relics. Fourthly, numerous literary testimonies to the Eastern cult of relics in the fourth and fifth centuries come from Western authors who should have been sensitive to differences between the practices of the Romans and the Greeks. Surprisingly, none of them notices any peculiarity about Eastern customs in this field.

DIVISION WITHOUT P ARTITION The four reasons named above make me seriously doubt that the process of dividing bodies began before the sixth century or, to be more cautious, that it was a regular practice. Of course, the question arises how, after having argued that the phenomenon did not exist, one can explain its alleged consequence, namely the fact that the relics of the same saints were enshrined in various places, a fact seemingly attested by both literary and archaeological evidence. Let us examine first the group of Eastern relics which appeared in Milan, and then in other cities in the West, in the last two decades of the fourth century, namely those of saints Andrew, Luke, Timothy, Thomas, and Euphemia. We know that since 358 at the latest, the bodies of the first three of them rested in the church of the Holy Apostles adjacent to Constantine’s mausoleum in Constantinople. According to Procopius, during Justinian’s restoration of this church they were discovered under the pavement.³¹ Thus, once laid in the earth, they evidently remained hidden and it seems improbable that they were accessible to anybody. When in 359 Bishop Macedonius ordered the removal of Constantine’s body from his mausoleum, which had been damaged by an earthquake, riots broke out in the city.³² One can hardly believe that afterwards anyone would have dared to take from the imperial sanctuary any fragments of the Apostles’ bodies.³³ It seems equally unlikely that the body of Thomas the Apostle was dismembered and some part of it brought to Italy. ³¹ Procopius, De aedificiis 1.4.17–21. The problem of the original place of the deposition of these relics (Constantine’s mausoleum or the church of the Holy Apostles) was discussed by Mango 1990, 58, who convincingly argues for the latter solution. ³² Socrates, Historia ecclesiastica 2.38.35–42; Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 4.21.3–5; see Wortley 2006a. ³³ McLynn 1994, 192–3, aware of the importance of these relics and of the riots in Constantinople in 359, concluded that the fragments of the Apostles’ bodies could have been transferred to Milan only by the emperor, namely Theodosius I. Subsequently, McLynn’s views have

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Dividing Relics

167

Anyway, in 384 the pilgrim Egeria says that his corpus integrum (complete body) was enshrined in Edessa. As for the martyr Euphemia, her body lay in a sarcophagus in Chalcedon up to the seventh century.³⁴ Thus, the relics which Ambrose imported to Milan were certainly not body parts. What kind of relics were they? The answer is not easy, but it is interesting to note that in the basilica at Porta Romana Ambrose deposited relics from places which were then highly popular with Western pilgrims travelling through the eastern Mediterranean. While those pilgrims could hardly obtain body parts, they certainly could bring home some non-corporeal relics. Such relics were indeed known in that period: an inscription found in Spoleto, for example, testifies to the presence of fragments of St Peter’s chains in that town,³⁵ and Augustine asserts that the relic venerated in Ancona was in fact, whatever some inhabitants of the town maintained, a stone from St Stephen’s stoning.³⁶ Certainly, one can wonder if contact relics could have been used at the dedication of a church, as the Milanese relics were. Ambrose claimed that in order to dedicate the new basilica he had to ‘discover martyrs’, which would suggest that contact relics were unsuitable for this purpose. Furthermore, we know that, when asked by bishops desiring to dedicate new churches, he offered them blood of the freshly discovered martyrs, Gervasius and Protasius, that is a kind of corporeal relic,³⁷ and he did not send to anybody relics of Nabor and Felix, the two well-known Milanese martyrs, whose tombs remained unopened. The same desire for corporeal relics for dedications is attested by a letter of Paulinus of Nola, who informs Sulpicius Severus that he is awaiting the arrival of ashes (cineres) of some Eastern martyrs, but for the moment has nothing to offer his friend, who is going to dedicate a new basilica.³⁸ Had contact relics been good enough for this purpose, he would not have hesitated to send to Sulpicius relics obtained by touching the grave of Felix of Nola, whose cult he zealously promoted. Both these cases are, however, quite easy to explain. Ambrose wanted to share with other bishops the famous relics which he personally had discovered; that is why he offered them Gervasius and Protasius and not Nabor and Felix. Paulinus in turn planned to give Sulpicius something better than he had been asked for: eventually, he sent him a fragment of the True Cross. Moreover, we have some clear evidence of contact relics being deposited in churches, probably for their dedication. Some of this has already been adduced in Chapter 7. Here, it is worth mentioning an interesting piece of evidence from Milan. In 1578, Carlo Borromeo discovered changed and now he thinks that these were simply contact relics, which I find a much better solution, more economic and acceptable from the chronological point of view. ³⁴ Thomas’s body: Egeria, Itinerarium 17.1; its transfer: Chronicle of Edessa s.a. 394; Euphemia’s sarcophagus: Asterius of Amasea, Homilia 11; further history of these relics: Berger 1988. ³⁵ Thacker 2012, 398–403; see John Chrysostom, In Babylam 63 (fetters of Babylas). ³⁶ Augustine, Sermo 323.2. ³⁷ See n. 55. ³⁸ Paulinus of Nola, Epistula 31.1.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

168

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

in the church of San Nazaro (identified with the Ambrosian Basilica Apostolorum or the basilica at Porta Romana) an ancient reliquary offered by Manlia Daedalia, sister of Manlius Daedalius, consul of 399. The reliquary represented Christ with two figures, evidently Peter and Paul. It contained only pieces of fabric.³⁹ To sum up, corporeal relics were probably preferable for dedications, but certainly not strictly necessary. I think that Ambrose’s envoys or just some Westerners visiting the East received in famous shrines in Constantinople, Chalcedon, or Edessa no more than other pilgrims did, namely some dust, which perhaps in Milan was recognized as the ashes of the Apostles.⁴⁰ Dust can quite easily be interpreted as ashes and in the case of any powdered remains the distinction between contact and corporeal relics surely was very fine, all the more so as the Latin word (cineres) was used more frequently in a poetical than a technical sense. The only relic of a different kind which arrived in Milan was perhaps the blood of St Euphemia, miraculously produced and distributed in her sanctuary in Chalcedon.⁴¹ If so, it was a corporeal relic, yet obtained without violating the body’s integrity. Be that as it may, the presence of these Eastern relics in the West is not proof of the practice of dividing corpses. In the East, however, the presence of one saint’s remains in different churches certainly cannot be explained by classifying them as contact relics. The Greeks also believed in the power of objects physically linked to saints in one way or another,⁴² but they called them eulogia, whereas the term leipsana was reserved for the corporeal fragments or entire bodies.⁴³ We know then that the same martyrs’ leipsana were deposited in various places.⁴⁴ But does it prove that these saints’ bodies were intentionally divided at some point? I think that it does not, because relics could multiply in other ways as well. The first of these has been studied by John Wortley,⁴⁵ who draws our attention to the fact that some bodies of martyrs had already disintegrated

³⁹ Palestra 1969; Zovatto 1956. ⁴⁰ This custom is attested by Gregory of Nyssa, De sancto Theodoro, p. 64. ⁴¹ Evagrius, Historia ecclesiastica 2.3; see p. 137. ⁴² Their thaumaturgical power is described by Gregory of Nyssa, De sancto Theodoro, p. 63 (dust collected from outside the grave); Theodoret, Historia religiosa 21.16 (oil of martyrs and garments); Gerontius, Vita Melaniae 60 (oil); Vita Symeonis Stylitae Iunioris 50, 80, 81, 101, 111, 136, 220, 227, 252 (sticks); 115, 152, 163, 194, 235 (dust), 43, 49 (fragments of garments). There are numerous archaeological testimonies of such objects: olive oil ampoules, clay tokens containing dust from a holy place: see e.g. Bagatti 1949; Mabert & Demeglio 1994. On their religious function, see Elsner 1997. They were also considered to be efficient protection in the afterlife: Gerontius, Vita Melaniae 69. ⁴³ See p. 3. ⁴⁴ I will not deal here with the interesting, but difficult problem of whether in the East leipsana were necessary for the dedication of a church. Regardless of the answer to this question, it is certain that in Syria, Cappadocia, and other regions leipsana of one saint could be enshrined in a number of churches. ⁴⁵ Wortley 2006b, 12–14; see also Heinzelmann 1979, 21–2.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Dividing Relics

169

when the cult of relics began to grow. This applies particularly to the victims of persecutions whose corpses were burnt to ashes. A good example is the case of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste. According to their Martyrdom, the bodies of these soldiers were burnt to ashes after their death, but some Christians collected them and took them to different places. It is possible that the story of the Forty Martyrs and their relics is legendary, all the more so since turning human bones into fine ash requires very much higher temperatures than an ordinary pyre ever reaches. But we know that the relics which were venerated as those of the Forty Martyrs in the second half of the fourth century were ashes.⁴⁶ Thus, in this case, Christians certainly did not carry out the dismemberment. Divided relics of this category can also be found in the West. In addition to the Acts of Fructuosus of Tarragona (which is difficult to date),⁴⁷ we can read about the bishop and his two deacons who were martyred and their bodies burnt. A group of Christians came and collected their ashes and distributed them among themselves. Soon, however, they were admonished in a vision in which the saint ordered them to bring all the relics back and bury them all together. The relics of three Anaunian martyrs killed in 397 in one of the Alpine valleys were, in their turn, distributed without protests; their ashes found their way to Brescia, Turin, Milan, and Constantinople (possibly to the sanctuary in Drypia).⁴⁸ In all three cases, the division of ashes was probably easier because they belonged to a group of martyrs and not to a single person. Interestingly, it seems that once deposited in one or many receptacles, these ashes were not divided any more. Gaudentius of Brescia says directly in one of his sermons that when he was in Cappadocia, the nieces of Basil of Caesarea offered him relics of the Forty Martyrs and that they gave him all that they had.⁴⁹ So the ashes were not divided, but were passed on ‘in the whole’. Sozomen’s Church History and Gerontius’ Life of Melania, two other sources which mention transfers of these relics, do not suggest their further division either.⁵⁰ It is important to observe a note of criticism with regard to the dividing of relics, in the case of both the Forty Martyrs and the group of Fructuosus. There is no doubt that such criticism proves the existence of the censured phenomenon. But, if dividing the ashes of a number of saints was frowned upon, then

⁴⁶ Testamentum XL martyrum 1; Gregory of Nyssa, In XL martyres II, p. 166. See Van Dam 2003, 136–7. ⁴⁷ Acta Fructuosi 6; Passio XL martyrum 12. ⁴⁸ Burning of the bodies: Vigilius of Trent, Epistula 2.7 and 11; Brescia: Gaudentius, Tractatus 17.13; Turin: Maximus of Turin, Sermones 105–6; Milan: Paulinus of Milan, Vita Ambrosii 52.1; cf. Vigilius of Trent, Epistula 1 (the letter addressed to Bishop Simplicianus, Ambrose’s successor); Constantinople: Vigilius of Trent, Epistula 2 (to John Chrysostom); Drypia: see Vanderspoel 1986, 248–9. ⁴⁹ Gaudentius, Tractatus 17.16–17. ⁵⁰ Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 9.2; Gerontius, Vita Melaniae 48.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

170

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

it must have been all the more unthinkable to dismember the complete body of a single saint.⁵¹ The second type of ‘non-invasive division’ consisted in finding and opening the grave of a saint and taking his body to another place. The evidence for this can be found in the accounts of the discoveries of the relics of Gervasius and Protasius and those of St Stephen.⁵² In both cases the bodies had been laid in a church, but shortly after some relics of those saints spread throughout the empire. And they were certainly considered to be bodily relics. As for the martyrs of Milan, Victricius of Rouen received some tiny particles (minutiae) and their blood, which were offered also to Gaudentius of Brescia and probably to Paulinus of Nola as well.⁵³ It seems that blood relics were quite popular in the West in these years. In Italian sources they appear for the first time in Naples, just a few years before the discovery of Gervasius and Protasius.⁵⁴ We know from the account of Ambrose that when he opened the grave of the saints, everybody saw a large amount of blood. It is impossible to say what, if anything, was behind this literary image. But in this image the blood is described as being separate from the bodies.⁵⁵ In the case of the relics of St Stephen, the author of the story of their discovery, Lucian of Caphargamala, claims that: Then, with psalms and hymns, they brought the body of the most blessed Stephen to the holy church of Zion, where he had been ordained archdeacon. Out of his limbs they left us small particles, but great relics: soil with dust, where his entire body had been decomposed; the rest they took away.⁵⁶

As in Milan, all the bones are deposited in one place, but some tiny objects, which the author wanted to believe were (almost) corporeal, became independent relics. In both situations, the physical remains of the saints, or what ⁵¹ The same could be seen in Liber de miraculis s. Stephani 1.7. ⁵² Ambrose, Epistula 77 and Hymnus 11. See also Augustine, Confessiones 9.7; Paulinus of Milan, Vita Ambrosii 13–16. The latter also describes the discoveries of the relics of Vitalis and Agricola in Bologna (29.1) and that of Nazarius in Milan (32–3); Revelatio s. Stephani B 48. ⁵³ Victricius, De laude sanctorum 10 (minutiae), 9–10 (sanguis), 10 (cruor); Gaudentius, Tractatus 17.12 (sanguinem tenemus gypso collectum); Paulinus of Nola, Epistula 32.17 (Hic . . . inlustris sanguine Nazarius). ⁵⁴ Libellus precum 26, written in 383/4, mentions the blood of St Rufininus, which performed miracles in Naples; for the epigraphical evidence, see Y. Duval 1982, vol. 2, 549. Forearlier traces of a special attitude toward the blood of martyrs, see Passio Perpetuae 21.5; Pontius, Vita Cypriani 16.6; see also Prudentius, Peristephanon 5.341–4. The East seems to have been less concerned about collecting martyrs’ blood in this period, but see Gregory of Nazianzus, Contra Iulianum I 69; Hilary of Poitiers, Contra Constantium 8. For a later period, see n. 41. ⁵⁵ Gervasius and Protasius: Ambrose, Epistula 77.2 (sanguinis plurimum) and 12 (sanguine tumulus madet); similarly Nazarius: Paulinus, Vita Ambrosii 32.3. ⁵⁶ Et tunc cum psalmis et hymnis portaverunt reliquias beatissimi Stephani in sanctam ecclesiam Sion, ubi et archidiaconus fuerat ordinatus: derelinquentes nobis de membris Sancti parvos articulos, imo maximas reliquias, terram cum pulvere, ubi omnis eius caro absumpta est, caetera asportaverunt (Revelatio s. Stephani B 48).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Dividing Relics

171

was considered to be their physical remains, were indeed distributed, but these were only small particles already separated from the body. Apart from this, we can observe two other ways of ‘dividing’ relics, which consisted in distributing body parts which in fact had never belonged to the same corpse. First, it did happen that an alleged grave of the same saint was found independently in two different places. The best example is the two heads of John the Baptist, the first one probably discovered in Jerusalem before the 370s, and the second in 453 in Emesa.⁵⁷ It is not certain whether either of them had ever belonged to the body deposited in Sebaste. Also, a few biblical saints had more than one grave.⁵⁸ This is hardly surprising: as we have seen in Chapter 6, the resting places of most biblical saints had to be discovered in the fourth and fifth centuries and an old grave of any John could easily have been identified as the tomb of one of his great New Testament namesakes. Sometimes such identification posed a problem, as we can see in an episode in the Religious History of Theodoret. When relics of St John arrived in Cyrrhus, a monk Jacob prayed to God to reveal to him which John exactly it was.⁵⁹ Many a time, relics taken from their original resting place multiplied in the successive stages of their journey. Let us return to John the Baptist. As has been said, according to Rufinus, his bones, burnt in 362 in Sebaste, were collected by monks and brought to Jerusalem and from there to Alexandria. However, at the end of the fourth century, each of these three cities boasted having the saint’s body. Jerome, who mentions the tomb of John in Sebaste several times in his writings, never suggested that it was empty or that it contained only a part of the remains of the saint: ‘There lie the prophets Elisha and Obadiah and John the Baptist,’ Jerome says in one of his letters.⁶⁰ This example shows that relics which spent some time in one place and then were taken away tended to reappear in the same location.⁶¹ Another example of this phenomenon is provided by the dossier of the relics of St Stephen. It contains several texts written in the space of about ten years after the discovery of the tomb of the Protomartyr. The first of these is the Revelatio sancti Stephani composed by Lucian shortly after the event, ⁵⁷ See n. 16. ⁵⁸ Peter and Paul (pp. 14–17), Habakkuk (p. 113), Job (p. 103), James (p. 106). ⁵⁹ Theodoret, Historia religiosa 21.20. According to Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 7.10.4, when the body of Paul the bishop of Constantinople was brought back to the city, many people thought that it was the corpse of Paul the Apostle. ⁶⁰ Jerome, Epistula 108.13; see also Epistula 46.13; Commentarii in prophetas minores: In Osee 1.1; In Abdiam 1; In Micheam 1.1. ⁶¹ A good analogy is provided by the pillar of salt identified with the wife of Lot, which was not strictly a relic, but one of the wonders of the Holy Land. In 384 Egeria did not see it, because of recent flooding by the sea (Itinerarium 12.6–7), but about 570 an anonymous pilgrim of Piacenza saw the pillar intact again and wondered why some people talked about its disappearance (Pilgrim of Piacenza, Itinerarium 15). See also the story of the transfer of St Hilarion’s body described by Jerome, Vita Hilarionis 32–3.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

172

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

immediately translated into Latin by Avitus of Braga, and sent, together with some of Stephen’s relics, to Spain, via Orosius, who was just coming back home from the Holy Land. Orosius also took a letter from Avitus to Bishop Palchonius of Braga, but he did not reach Spain, which was being ravaged by the Visigoths. He stopped at Minorca,⁶² whence the relics arrived in Africa.⁶³ Shortly after, Augustine mentions their presence in Hippo and other African cities (and Ancona), as does Quodvultdeus in relation to Carthage.⁶⁴ In the East, according to the lives of Melania the Younger and Peter the Iberian, some relics of Stephen were deposited on the Mount of Olives, and Marcellinus Comes mentions their transfer to Constantinople.⁶⁵ The Greek sources speak vaguely of leipsana, without defining their character with any precision.⁶⁶ The Latin texts, however, are more specific. Lucian, in the passage already quoted, claims that he was left only with small particles of the body: ‘little body parts . . . earth and dust’ (parvos articulos . . . terram cum pulvere),⁶⁷ but Avitus, the translator of the Revelatio, writes in his letter to the bishop of Braga that he is sending him something more: Wherefore I have sent to you, by my saintly son and co-presbyter Orosius, relics from the body of the blessed Stephen the first martyr, that is some dust of the flesh and sinews (pulverem carnis atque nervorum), and—in order to make it even more trustworthy—some solid bones (ossa solida) which, by their manifest sanctity, are more precious than a new pigment or perfume.⁶⁸

One has the impression that the earth and dust mentioned by Lucian began to solidify. We do not know anything about the kinds of relics brought to Minorca (Severus of Minorca, who tells the story of the relics’ arrival on the island, just mentions reliquiae),⁶⁹ but we do know that in Uzalis there arrived an ampoule the inside of which looked as if it was ‘sprinkled with blood and had something like traces of tiny straws which seemed to be particles of bones’⁷⁰ Finally, Augustine talks about ashes which arrived in Hippo.⁷¹ Even more interestingly, he also knows a story about the arm of St Stephen deposited in Ancona, which, however, he considers to be untrue, claiming ⁶² Severus, Epistula 4. ⁶³ See Gauge 1998. ⁶⁴ Augustine, De civitate Dei 22.8 (several places in Africa); Sermones 317.1 (several places); 318.1 (Hippo) and 323.2 (Ancona); Quodvultdeus, Liber promissionum et praedictorum Dei. Dimidium temporis 9 (Carthage). ⁶⁵ Vita Melaniae 48 (Mount of Olives); John Rufus, Vita Petri Iberi 49; Marcellinus Comes, Chronica s.a. 439 (transferred to Constantinople); Cyril of Scythopolis, Vita s. Euthymii 35 (54.1) (dedication of the basilica in Jerusalem in 460). ⁶⁶ The only exception is the untrustworthy testimony of Theophanes: see n. 29. ⁶⁷ Revelatio s. Stephani B 48. ⁶⁸ Avitus, Epistola ad Palchonium 8. ⁶⁹ Severus of Minorca, Epistula 4. ⁷⁰ Liber de miraculis s. Stephani 1.1: see pp. 155–6. In the following century ampoules of St Stephen’s blood were to be found in several other places, like Naples, Tours, and Biturges; see Bovon 2003, 304–5. ⁷¹ Augustine, Sermo 317.1 and 318.1.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Dividing Relics

173

that the relic of Ancona is actually a stone used at the stoning of St Stephen. As we can see, the dust which had been left to Lucian changed into bones, blood, and, eventually, an arm. Certainly, Augustine knew that the latter was actually simply a stone, which only after the discovery in 415 had started to be venerated as a corporeal relic, but we may doubt whether the inhabitants of Ancona shared this opinion.⁷² Thus, our sources demonstrate that relics do multiply and change their form when travelling. Even if a part of them is left at every stage of the journey, the rest does not seem diminished, quite the contrary. This could have occurred through three different means. Sometimes it was an entirely literary phenomenon, just an author’s amplification—it seems, for example, that Avitus’ ‘solid bones’ were the ‘very little body parts’ that had been left to Lucian. Sometimes people reinterpreted the nature of the relics they possessed—that is what probably happened in Ancona. Finally, the multiplication could have resulted from a forgery, pious or not. The news about the discovery of an illustrious saint both created demand for his relics and helped to convince potential ‘customers’ about the authenticity of offered objects—because people knew that the grave of the saint in question really had been opened. Incidentally, Augustine knew of monks who sold suspect martyrs’ relics at the very beginning of the fifth century.⁷³ The evidence presented above does not prove beyond all doubt that in the fourth and fifth centuries the actual practice of dismembering bodies did not exist at all. It does, however, permit an explanation of the well-documented dispersion of relics without appeal to the practice of dismembering bodies, a practice which, we have to remember, has left no direct traces in the sources. The lack of evidence does not necessarily exclude the very existence of the practice, and acts of division may have happened. But if it was the case, in Late Antiquity it was at most a marginal phenomenon, as it has left no record of praise, criticism, or commentary on the part of either group, the advocates and the adversaries of the cult of relics alike. Thus the Greeks are not to blame, not because the Romans are guilty, but because the offence was not committed.

F U R T H E R D E VE LOP M EN T What changed this attitude? What made Gregory the Great defend, without much success, the remains of the saints against the new practice?⁷⁴ An essential role was probably played by the growing demand for relics. Certainly, the fundamental reason for this craving appeared already in the second half of the fourth century, when the belief in their power emerged. The demand, ⁷² Augustine, Sermo 323.2. ⁷⁴ McCulloh 1980.

⁷³ Augustine, De opere monachorum 28.36.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

174

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

however, grew stronger in the centuries that followed. Suffice it to mention the practice of depositing relics under altars, which appeared already in the fourth century, became common in the sixth century, and was decreed obligatory at the second Council of Nicaea (787).⁷⁵ Moreover, the number of communities which needed relics steadily increased. Even if the frontiers of the Christian world did not shift dramatically between the fourth and sixth centuries, the degree of Christianization of several regions, especially in the West, considerably changed, and new churches were built almost everywhere, and especially in rural areas. This process would gain even greater momentum in the Carolingian and Ottonian periods, with the Christianization of the countries west of the Rhine and north of the Danube, which imported relics on a large scale.⁷⁶ In most cases, this growing need could have been satisfied either by relics of new saints or in the ways discussed above: by contact relics which were often recognized to be corporeal, by the miraculously found bodies of saints known or unknown before, by dust collected inside or outside renowned graves. It seems, however, that these very methods played a role in the development of the practice of dividing bodies. There are two reasons behind this development. First, these methods promoted a view that corporeal relics were better than others, which is clearly visible in the case of the stone from Ancona which at some point came to be recognized as a bone of St Stephen. Secondly, they made people think that the partition of saints’ corpses was a norm, as Theodoret already wrote in the second quarter of the fifth century. It seems that this conviction did not meet with any theological opposition, although it could have had at least some potentially difficult doctrinal implications. In the first place, there was the question of what would happen to divided bodies at the resurrection of the dead. This problem was already discussed in the treatise On the Resurrection of the Dead, traditionally attributed to the second-century apologist Athenagoras. Even if this attribution is inaccurate and the text was actually written later, its conclusions do not differ from those of such second-century authors as Justin the Martyr and Theophilus of Antioch.⁷⁷ And the answer which the text gives is clear enough: all bodies, even those eaten by cannibals, will easily be resurrected, for God is able to recognize and reunite all the particles belonging to every single body.⁷⁸ Certainly, in spite of this answer common people could have been anxious about the fate of disintegrated corpses. At the beginning of the fifth century, Augustine still felt obliged to emphasize in his sermons that the martyrs do not ⁷⁵ For the early evidence, see Ambrose, Epistula 77.13; Victricius, De laude sanctorum 6; Sulpicius Severus, Vita Martini 11; Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 5.9.9; and Ephrem, Testament 117–24 (see S. Minov, CSLA E03510), who condemns this custom. For the eighth century, see Council of Nicaea II (787), can. 7; see also Jensen 2014. ⁷⁶ Röckelein 2002. ⁷⁷ See Barnard 1984 and Bynum 1995, 28–34. ⁷⁸ Athenagoras, De resurrectione 8; for the authorship of this text, see Barnard 1984.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Dividing Relics

175

care about any misfortunes that may befall their bodies. For him, however, it was merely an issue that he had to explain to his congregation, not a real theological conundrum.⁷⁹ The second theological problem lay in the belief in the power which lingered in relics. People often doubted whether a saint could have many abodes on earth and be active in all of them simultaneously. For the healing sanctuaries it was not a purely academic problem. Those which possessed the entire bodies of saints tended to emphasize that their power was concentrated at their graves, but minor shrines claimed that a saint could be permanently present also in other places or at least visit them occasionally.⁸⁰ The multilocation of saints was not taken for granted. The author of the Miracles of St Thecla, written c.480, mentions a garden which the saint used to visit more often than other places and says that every year she would leave her sanctuary in Seleucia to participate in her feast in Dalisandos.⁸¹ It seems that even if Thecla was able to move without her relics, she was supposed to be only in one place at any one time. Later on, Gregory of Tours tells a story about a meeting of saints convened in a church for which St Stephen arrived late because he was busy saving a ship in a storm.⁸² And we can also detect some traces of anxiety concerning the possibility that the distribution of a saint’s remains might diminish their power. This could happen even when a given church did not possess the entire body. When the rumour spread in Uzalis that the local bishop was going to take a part of St Stephen’s relics enshrined in the local church and deposit it elsewhere, a crowd of inhabitants assembled to prevent the division.⁸³ Such sentiments were probably not uncommon. But they were not founded on theological considerations. Actually, from the doctrinal point of view, the question did not raise serious doubts. On the one hand, already Gregory of Nazianzus emphasized that the tiniest particle of a saint’s remains had power equal to that of the entire body; this particular view was developed shortly after by Victricius of Rouen in his treatise De laude sanctorum.⁸⁴ On the other hand, several writers emphasized that if the saints wanted to heal, expel demons, or protect towns, they could do so without their relics.⁸⁵ In either case, division did not change anything. Thus, it does not seem that any of these issues got in the way of translating and dividing relics. We will see in Chapter 10 that the arguments put forward ⁷⁹ Augustine, Sermo 335F; Sermo 334.1; De civitate Dei 22.19; De cura pro mortuis 4–5. ⁸⁰ e.g. Passio Sergii et Bacchi Graeca 30 (see E. Rizos, CSLA E02791); see Ward-Perkins 2018. ⁸¹ Miracula Theclae 23 (garden) and 26 (Dalisandos). ⁸² Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum 33. ⁸³ Liber de miraculis s. Stephani 1.7. ⁸⁴ Gregory of Nazianzus, Contra Iulianum I 69; for Victricius, see pp. 191–3. ⁸⁵ This was expressed in the strongest way by Gregory the Great, Dialogi 2.38, who claimed that actually the saints performed more miracles in places which did not have their bodies. Even if this remark did not necessarily express a commonly shared opinion, it was perfectly acceptable from the theological point of view.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

176

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

against these practices were rather of a biblical and historical character. Such things had not happened in ancient times; the saints of the Old and New Testaments were not taken out of their graves, claims Athanasius.⁸⁶ The growing need for relics, the growing and widely shared conviction that saints’ bodies could (and almost ought to) be divided, and the at least silent theological consent to this fact finally led to the practice of dividing bodies. Its start, however, was by no means sudden; all the more so as there were factors which retarded this process. One of them was certainly the fact that the division of bodies, including those of the saints, was prohibited by law.⁸⁷ There was moral or aesthetic resistance as well. At the end of the fourth century and the beginning of the fifth, touching and even seeing a decomposed body aroused horror, among Christians and pagans alike.⁸⁸ It seems that this aesthetic sensibility changed very slowly. It is true that the newly discovered saints’ bodies happened to be displayed uncovered in public already at the end of the fourth century. It was almost certainly the case in Milan in 386, when people were allowed to admire the bodies of Gervasius and Protasius for two days.⁸⁹ We have seen, however, in Chapter 8 that such moments were exceptional. Once deposited under altars, relics were rarely shown again, and if so, they were closed in reliquaries which did not permit their contents to be seen. Reliquaries with a peephole appeared on a large scale only in the thirteenth century, when the practice of dividing bodies was already a well-established custom.⁹⁰ The mental shift which slowly led to the acceptance of the new custom was not a dramatic change, but a long and gradual process of getting used to the practice, probably stimulated by a few events and factors which gave it momentum. The first step was taken by those who organized the fourthcentury translations, which—and here Delehaye is surely right—were essentially an Eastern phenomenon. The key role might have been played by the first initiatives of the emperors and by the translocations of relics during the reign of Julian which resulted from the attacks on Christian martyria (the case of John the Baptist in Sebaste was not isolated). The next step was distributing already disintegrated bodily or quasi-bodily remains, such as ashes, dust, and ‘blood’ which were found in the graves. An important factor was that noncorporeal relics had been divided since the fourth century without any restraint, as was the wood of the Cross.⁹¹ All these practices can be observed in both parts of the empire. If they are actually more noticeable in the East, this results not necessarily from the hypothetical otherness of the Greeks, but from ⁸⁶ Athanasius, Epistula festalis 41. ⁸⁷ See Herrmann-Mascard 1979, 26–41. ⁸⁸ Gregory of Nyssa, Vita Macrinae 35; Eunapius, Vitae philosophorum 472. ⁸⁹ Ambrose, Epistula 77.4 and 11. ⁹⁰ A useful catalogue of late antique reliquaries (with photos) can be found in Buschhausen 1971. For reliquaries with a peephole, see Diedrichs 2001, 59–140. ⁹¹ It began already in the middle of the fourth century, as is attested by both literary and epigraphical evidence: Frolow 1961, 158–9.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Dividing Relics

177

historical conditions: the main category of graves miraculously found in the fourth and fifth centuries was the tombs of great biblical figures and it was selfexplanatory that in order to find them one should look in the East. After all, who would expect to find graves of Samuel, Abdias, or Andrew in Gaul, Spain, or Italy? The earliest testimonies of specific separate body parts, apart from the heads of decapitated martyrs, appeared, slowly, only in the sixth century. There is a very fine line between taking out of the tomb some particles which are already detached from the corpse and those which are barely attached to it. The transition from plucking a dead monk’s hair to snapping off his arm was gradual. It is symptomatic that in both the East and the West the earliest body parts detached from corpses seem to have been fingers. According to Theodore Lector, Emperor Anastasius received a finger of St Sergius of Resapha, and Gregory of Tours mentions another finger of the same saint kept hidden in the house of a Syrian merchant in Bordeaux. He claims that a Merovingian aristocrat cut this relic into pieces with his knife, but the saint disapproved of this act and punished the perpetrator.⁹² An instructive description of how a relic could be detached in an acceptable way can be found in the almost contemporary Life of St Radegond by Baudonivia.⁹³ The episode tells of a finger of St Mammas: Queen Radegond requested a relic of this saint from the patriarch of Jerusalem. The patriarch, with his clergy, prayed to the saint and only then did he open the tomb and proceed to examine the saint’s body parts. He touched them one by one, and finally one of the fingers came off and stayed in his hand. It is difficult to say if the description is truthful, but it certainly showed readers how the act of division, an exceptional thing, should look. Gregory of Tours is even more cautious in this respect. The only act of dividing a body that he finds acceptable is the case of a finger of St John the Baptist which miraculously appeared on the altar in order to comply with the request of a woman who had spent two years at the saint’s tomb praying for this favour. Probably this sixth-century change really was slightly faster in the East, as the letters of Hormisdas’ legates and Constantina quoted at the beginning of this chapter seem to suggest. The East, however, should not be considered uniform in respect of customs relating to the cult of relics. Attitudes towards the dead body and burial practices differed among the peoples of this vast and diverse region. It seems, for instance, that in Egypt the opening of saints’ graves was favoured by the old indigenous practice of keeping the sarcophagi of the ‘important dead’ in a special room at home. As already noted, as early as 369 Athanasius condemned those who laid the corpses of martyrs on wooden tables instead of burying them. He also said that Antony had instructed his ⁹² Theodore Lector, Historia ecclesiastica, epitome 554; Gregory of Tours, Historiarum libri 7.31. ⁹³ Baudonivia, Vita Radegundis 2.14.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

178

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

disciples to hide his body lest it be taken ‘to Egypt’. A century later the practice of transferring bodies was vigorously disapproved of by Shenoute.⁹⁴ John Wortley sees in this local custom one of the factors which gave rise to the practice of dividing bodies. This could have been the case, but its influence was quite indirect and delayed, for, as far as we can see, the earliest officially approved translations of relics, as well as the instances of dividing the saints’ bodies, had nothing to do with Egypt. I wonder whether it could have been northern Mesopotamia and the neighbouring parts of Syria and Armenia that played a major role in the development of both practices. I have already discussed the Edessene tradition of transferring the body of St Thomas the Apostle from India to that city. Even if the story is almost certainly untrue, it shows that in the Syrian milieu already in the fourth century the act of removing a body from the grave and taking it to another place did not raise anxiety. At the beginning of the fifth century, bones of a number of Persian martyrs were brought by Bishop Marutha to Maipherqat, later known as Martyropolis (modern Silvan), in the region of Sophene situated between Armenia and Osrhoene.⁹⁵ About the same time in the northern Syrian town of Resapha the body of St Sergius was stolen from his original tomb, and then transferred three times to different churches inside the walls, while some relics of this martyr found their way to other places.⁹⁶ It is worth remembering that it was in the Syriac context as well that Theodoret wrote about saints’ remains laid in diverse churches. Certainly, all this does not diverge much from the fifth-century testimonies which can be found in other parts of the Christian world. But Syrian testimonies are quite numerous. More importantly, the sixth-century evidence points to this region as being deeply involved in the very start of the actual practice of dividing of body parts. The fingers of St Sergius attested in Constantinople and Bordeaux came from Resapha, the latter finger being brought to Gaul by a Syrian merchant. The strongest witness to the new customs comes from two late sixth-century church historians. In his Lives of the Eastern Saints, John of Ephesus, another contemporary of Gregory of Tours, born in Amida in Sophene, says, without any embarrassment or a justificatory tone, that in his days the holy bones of St Paul the Anchorite were taken round the region and wherever his skull or right hand appeared, it saved the surrounding territory from hail, storm, and plague.⁹⁷ In the same period Evagrius claims that in the skull of Simeon Stylites the ⁹⁴ Athanasius, Epistula festalis 41; Vita Antonii 92.2; Shenoute, Those Who Work Evil, pp. 212–20; see also Lefort 1954. ⁹⁵ See the Greek Vita Maruthae 8 and its Armenian version (30). ⁹⁶ See Passio S. Sergii et Bacchi Syriaca, p. 320 and Passio S. Sergii et Bacchi Graeca 30. Some relics of St Sergius were probably deposited in his martyrium in Yukarı Söğütlü, c.50 km east of Theodosiopolis in Armenia (modern Erzurum), dedicated in 431. A dedicatory inscription was published in Candemir & Wagner 1978, 231. ⁹⁷ John of Ephesus, Vitae sanctorum orientalium 6.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Dividing Relics

179

Elder, which was kept in Antioch, only some of the teeth were still in place, because others were brutally pulled out by the faithful.⁹⁸ But let us repeat once again—the West was not that slow to follow. In the mid-seventh century, Clovis II opened the tomb of St Denis and tore off the saint’s arm.⁹⁹ Admittedly, this act was considered outrageous, but not necessarily because of its violent character, but because snatching off the arm of a saint worshipped in a famous abbey without the consent of the monks was still a step too far. ⁹⁸ Evagrius, Historia ecclesiastica 1.13. ⁹⁹ Gesta Dagoberti 52; Fredegar, Liber historiae Francorum 44.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

10 Discussions and Theology It has been emphasized several times in this book that the cult of relics was developing at an astonishing speed. Before the mid-fourth century we cannot see it anywhere, and at the beginning of the fifth century it is documented in almost all parts of Christendom. The pace of this development seems even faster if we abandon the Mediterranean-wide perspective and focus on a specific region like Latin Africa, where the new cultic practices appeared and developed within a single generation. If we zoom in even further and focus upon a specific town where the bones of a saint were brought one day, the change will appear even swifter. There is no doubt that this novelty produced not only enthusiastic, but also hostile attitudes, not only among non-Christians, who still constituted an important part, and in some regions a majority, of the population, but also among Christians. Sometimes the reluctance or outright hostility toward the new phenomenon forced adherents of the cult of relics to justify and defend it, thus partly giving rise to a theology of relics. This theology was then evidently secondary to the phenomenon itself. This chapter will deal with intellectual reflection on relics and their veneration, with the ways in which this reflection developed, and with the ensuing controversies it had to face.

THE JEWISH ATTITUDE TOWARD THE CULT OF RELICS Let us start with non-Christian attitudes. We may suspect that they were considerably different, depending especially on local funerary traditions and beliefs concerning the afterlife. Yet since the voices of those who expressed their aversion to the cult of relics had little chance to survive, our knowledge of this issue is limited. In the first place, we know very little about Jewish reactions to the veneration of human bones. The cult of relics, like most Christian pious practices, is not referred to directly in the Talmud. Also,

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Discussions and Theology

181

Christian evidence very rarely makes it possible to learn about Jewish views on this phenomenon. The late antique Christian stories relating the discoveries of relics in several places in Palestine, which still had a substantial Jewish population at that time, usually do not say anything about the attitude of Jews to the opening of the graves and transfer of the bodies. There is of course an early Western account in which both Jews and relics play an essential role, namely the long encyclical letter of Severus, bishop of Minorca, written in or shortly after the year 416. It tells the story of the relations between the Jewish and Christian communities on the island, and especially of the forced conversion of the former. The story begins with the arrival of the relics of St Stephen, brought by a priest returning from the East, whom we can identify as Orosius.¹ However, in Severus’ account the relics and the Jews never appear in the same episode, and so we cannot see the Jewish reaction to the arrival of the relics even through the eyes of a Christian bishop. We may only suppose that the author did not find it important enough to be included in the letter. The Jewish attitude toward this form of piety is discussed only in some polemical writings in the seventh and eighth centuries, such as Leontius of Neapolis’ Apology against the Jews and the anonymous Disputation of Sergios the Stylite against a Jew. These texts defend the cult of relics against the charges of idolatry and impurity and they show at least how Christians thought the Jews perceived this phenomenon.² Interestingly, we know more about general Jewish attitudes toward human bones. They certainly should not be viewed merely as subject to a set of strict rules which debarred Jews from any form of contact with dead bodies and evoked a horror of the ritual impurity associated with it. I have already mentioned the strange deposit of bones in the synagogue in Dura Europos which suggests that the proximity of bones could have had a ritual function.³ In Palestine we can see the well-evidenced Jewish custom of burying the dead, often transferred from very distant places, close to the tomb of Rabbi Judah ha Nasi in Beth She’arim. It is not evident what the function of these burials was, but they were evidently considered to be in some way beneficial for the dead.⁴ It is also possible that in rabbinic Judaism the tombs of biblical prophets were seen as important and powerful places, although, unfortunately, our evidence is not conclusive as to when this belief developed. Pieter Van der Horst suggests that the phenomenon can be traced to the beginning of the post-biblical period, but admits that the evidence comes only from the Byzantine era.⁵ Ra’anan Boustan argues that a truly new attitude toward ‘special dead’ developed in Judaism only in the sixth and seventh centuries, when their bodies were considered powerful objects and contact with them did not inflict impurity.⁶ ¹ Severus of Minorca, Epistula 4. ² Déroche 1991, 291–2, and Déroche 1993. ³ See p. 126. More generally: Hachlili 2005, 22–3. ⁴ See Rajak 2001. ⁵ See Van der Horst 2002, 119–37. ⁶ Boustan 2015.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

182

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

This new attitude clearly resembled the Christian cult of relics, but almost certainly developed under its influence. Christian sources do not allow us to determine when this change took place. In some narratives we do find stories which talk not simply about tombs, but also relics which were kept by Jews at home for generations, but they are utterly unreliable. For instance, such is the case of the relics of the biblical Three Young Men, whose bones were allegedly kept in a Jewish house in Mesopotamia still in the 420s. In this story, extant in Georgian and Armenian versions, the ‘Jewish house’ was simply a literary device which served to authenticate the newly found bones.⁷ In all, in the Jewish milieu we can see some practices and beliefs which are fairly similar to those which developed in Christianity. We cannot say, however, whether these parallels, most of which are attested only in a later period, had any impact on the way in which Jews perceived the Christian cult of relics.

PAGAN I NTELLECTUALS We know much more about what ‘pagans’ thought about the cult of relics. Of course, it cannot be emphasized enough that the notion of ‘pagans’ is an artificial construct. Owing to differences with regard to funeral customs and attitudes toward dead bodies in the various regions of the late antique world (for instance between Italy, Egypt, and Persia), reactions to the new Christian practice could, and most probably did, vary. However, we know very little about most of these regional attitudes, if anything at all. What our evidence shows best is the opinions of a few Greek intellectuals, of which the most virulent was expressed at the very end of the fourth century by Eunapius of Sardis in his life of the Neoplatonic philosopher Antoninus: Next, into the sacred places, they [Christians] imported monks, as they called them, who were men in appearance but led the lives of swine, and openly did and allowed countless unspeakable crimes . . . They settled these monks at Canopus also, and thus they fettered the human race to the worship of slaves, and those not even honest slaves, instead of true gods. For they collected the bones and skulls of criminals who had been put to death for numerous crimes, men whom the law courts of the city had condemned to punishment, made them out to be gods, haunted their sepulchres, and thought that they became better by defiling themselves at their graves. ‘Martyrs’ the dead men were called and ‘ministers’ of a sort, and ‘ambassadors’ from the gods to carry men’s prayers; these slaves in vilest servitude, who had been consumed by stripes and carried on their phantom forms the scars of their villainy. However these are the gods that earth produces! ⁷ Cronnier 2016, 47–52; for the text of the Invention of the The Three Young Men, see Garitte 1959 and Garitte 1961.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Discussions and Theology

183

This, then, greatly increased the reputation of Antoninus also for foresight, in that he had foretold to all that the temples would become tombs.⁸

These words were written in the late 390s, shortly after the destruction of the Serapeum in Alexandria, one of the best-known and most admired temples of the empire which came to be replaced by a church dedicated to John the Baptist built on its site by Bishop Theophilus, a church containing some relics of the saint. This partly explains Eunapius’ vehement reaction. But his disgust at the transferring and venerating of the bones of ‘criminals’ was actually very close to that of the Emperor Julian, whose reign pre-dated the work of Eunapius by over a generation. Julian knew Christianity very well, having been brought up as a Christian. Importantly, we know his views on Christian customs better than those of any other of his contemporaries, since he wrote a lengthy treatise entitled Against the Galileans dealing with many aspects of Christian theology and practice. This treatise survives in large part thanks to a detailed refutation written by Cyril, bishop of Alexandria, who quoted extensive passages from Julian’s work. Here is the passage devoted to the cult of relics: However this evil doctrine [of the divinity of Christ] did originate with John; but who could detest as they deserve all those doctrines that you have invented as a sequel, while you keep adding many corpses newly dead to the corpse of long ago? You have filled the whole world with tombs and sepulchres, and yet nowhere in your scriptures is it said that you must grovel among tombs and pay them honour. But you have gone so far in iniquity that you think you need not listen even to the words of Jesus of Nazareth on this matter. Listen then to what he says about sepulchres: ‘Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye are like unto whited sepulchres; outward the tomb appears beautiful, but within it is full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.’ If, then, Jesus said that sepulchres are full of uncleanness, how can you invoke God at them? . . . Therefore, since this is so, why do you grovel among tombs? Do you wish to hear the reason? It is not I who will tell you, but the prophet Isaiah: ‘They lodge among tombs and in caves for the sake of dream visions.’ You observe, then, how ancient among the Jews was this work of witchcraft, namely, sleeping among tombs for the sake of dream visions. And indeed it is likely that your Apostles, after their teacher’s death, practised this and handed it down to you from the beginning, I mean to those who first adopted your faith, and that they themselves performed their spells more skilfully than you do, and displayed openly to those who came after them the places in which they performed this witchcraft and abomination.⁹

To these two tirades one can add a remark of Ammianus Marcellinus, who, writing at the end of the fourth century, derided the count Sabinianus, loitering among the tombs at Edessa in 359 instead of preparing for the war ⁸ Eunapius, Vitae philosophorum 472 (trans. W. C. Wright). ⁹ Julian, Contra Galileos 335B–C (trans. W. C. Wright).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

184

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

against Persia, and Claudian’s sarcastic remarks about dux Jacobus, addicted to the cult of relics.¹⁰ How strong and widespread was that sentiment of repulsion, apparent in the writings of Julian and Eunapius, toward this new phenomenon? Both authors certainly found this aspect of Christianity particularly disgusting and, perhaps more importantly, easy to attack, but they did not necessarily consider it equally important. In Julian’s lengthy treatise, devoted entirely to polemic against Christianity, the cult of relics is ridiculed in just one passage. In Eunapius’ Lives of the Sophists, the diatribe quoted above is the longest passage concerning Christianity, and so for this author the cult of relics, along with monasticism, seems to be the most hideous feature of this religion. The stronger feelings of Eunapius can certainly be explained by the lapse of time and the growing prominence of the phenomenon which both authors disliked, but Julian saw only the early phase of its development. Still, already in Julian’s day hostility to the new phenomenon gave rise to attacks on several places of the cult of saints in Syria, attacks which were only partly inspired by the emperor.¹¹ Of course, we have to remember that it was not the relics kept in churches which fell victim to anti-Christian reaction in the early 360s, but rather the entire bodies of martyrs which lay buried in tombs. It is not impossible that pagan zealots were ready to attack Christian churches as well; they chose tombs simply because they were unprotected and so easier to destroy. But the fact that all these attacks occurred at the same time, when Julian not only ridiculed the Christians who venerated the dead, but also ordered the exhumation of some bodies that they venerated, suggests that the tombs of saints were particularly irritating for many people. And this leads us to the question of why this was the case.

R E A S O N S : VI O LATI ON OF TOM B S That irritation was probably for several reasons. First of all, the Christian practice could be qualified as the violation of tombs, which was severely punished by law and condemned by custom. Serious offence as it was, the prospect of punishment was no obstacle, and crimes of this sort were fairly often perpetrated. Graves were opened not only by tomb raiders, but also by people seeking a place to bury their dead free of charge. All this is well attested by literary evidence and especially by the formulae of malediction found on a number of graves in several regions of the Mediterranean.¹² The issue was taken seriously by law, which forbade opening tombs for any reason, even if ¹⁰ Ammianus, Res gestae 18.7.7; Claudian, Carmina Minora 50 (see Chapter 3 n. 16). ¹¹ See p. 25. ¹² Strubbe 1991.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Discussions and Theology

185

the intentions of those who did it were benign. In Rome, the body, once deposited in the grave, was supposed to remain in it for ever.¹³ Certainly, this rule was not without exceptions. In some circumstances, such as the poor condition of the tomb, transfer was considered necessary. But in Italy permission to move the bones from one place to another had to be given by the college of the pontiffs, and in the provinces by the governor, who might feel obliged to consult the emperor.¹⁴ Under the Christian emperors, the legal situation did not change. In a constitution of Constantine, the crime of violation of tombs, along with murder and sorcery, was one of only three reasons which permitted a wife to divorce her husband.¹⁵ The law issued by Theodosius I, already quoted in this book,¹⁶ forbade any transfer of the buried, including martyrs. But the fact that the bodies of martyrs were explicitly mentioned suggests that the phenomenon of unearthing and transferring the remains of these particular dead was already widespread enough to attract the attention of the emperor; and if so it could have hardly escaped the notice of non-Christians. Admittedly, we should not think that in the time of Julian and Eunapius the bodies of the saints travelled freely through the Mediterranean. It has to be repeated that most of them remained in their tombs and, as I have shown when discussing the issue of the touching of relics,¹⁷ the taboo of opening graves did not disappear altogether. Still, the remarks of Athanasius of Alexandria about Melitians rummaging for the bodies of martyrs, written just a few years after the reign of Julian,¹⁸ suggests that digging through cemeteries in the search for relics and transferring them to other places was not that rare either. Of course, Athanasius, and later Shenoute,¹⁹ did not try to offer a faithful description of the practices of their contemporaries, but rather sought to ridicule them. But Eunapius apparently knew about such transfers, which made him cringe with disgust and horror. And certainly this sentiment was shared by many.

REASONS: P OLLUTION The aversion toward the cult of relics could have been reinforced by the fact that this new phenomenon brought the dead to holy places, temples, and cities, and, as a result, defiled them. The extant evidence suggests that the ¹³ ¹⁵ ¹⁶ ¹⁸ ¹⁹

Rebillard 2009, 58–68. ¹⁴ Pliny, Epistulae X 68 and 69; see Thomas 2004, 59–66. Codex Theodosianus 3.16.1 (AD 331). Codex Theodosianus 9.17.7 (AD 386); see p. 160. ¹⁷ See Chapter 7. Athanasius, Epistula festalis 41. Shenoute, Those Who Work Evil, pp. 212–21; on this sermon, see Lefort 1954.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

186

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

sacredness of the city was still important in Late Antiquity. The Life of Porphyrios of Gaza tells us about the indignation of pagans who thought that Christians had brought the cadaver of a deacon named Barochas within the walls, for ‘they [pagans] considered sacrilegious bringing the dead to the city’.²⁰ A passage from the Historia Augusta, written at the very end of the fourth century and so contemporary to Eunapius, firmly objects to the custom of burying the dead in cities. In the Life of Marcus Aurelius, its anonymous author says the following: And there was a pestilence so grave that dead bodies were removed in carts and waggons. About this time the two emperors [Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus] ratified some very stringent laws on burial and tombs, in which they also forbade people to build a tomb where they wanted, a law still in force.²¹

It already has been said that the Historia Augusta is a specific source. Its author hides his identity behind the names of six fictitious writers and pretends to write at the beginning of the fourth century, while actually is active almost a century later. He also criticizes Christianity, but usually indirectly, through allusions.²² Thus the above passage can probably be read as a memento: good emperors, and Marcus Aurelius was a good emperor par excellence, forbade intramural burials, and this ban is still valid! Incidentally, this was true, since Theodosius repeated the same ban in 381,²³ but the author evidently felt it was worth reminding his audience about it. The fact that Theodosius’ law refers specifically to the graves of the Apostles and martyrs may suggest that Christians introduced entirely new customs, but in fact it was not that much of a novelty. On the one hand, the old ban on burying the dead within the city was not unqualified. Even if we forget about the archaic Greek city-founders, many of whom were buried in the agora, the intramural burials of benefactors of Greek cities are attested in epigraphic evidence from the imperial period.²⁴ In the very city of Rome at least one imperial burial, that of Trajan, was designed as intramural, and in Late Antiquity the mausoleum of Augustus was also included within the city precincts. When Constantine decided to build a tomb for himself within the boundaries of Constantinople, he followed imperial tradition, and not a Christian custom of burial, for at that time Christians simply did not have such a habit. Also, it is not evident if the relics deposited within the boundaries of cities by the time of Eunapius were numerous enough to elicit strong reactions. Most martyrial churches, usually referred to as basilicae, not ecclesiae, were built outside the city. The earliest intraurban transfer was that of the

²⁰ ²² ²³ ²⁴

Mark the Deacon, Vita Porphyrii 23. ²¹ Historia Augusta. Marcus Aurelius 13.3–4. See Cracco Ruggini 2016 and Nardelli & Ratti 2014. Codex Theodosianus 9.17.6 (30 July 381). See e.g. Schwertheim 1978; Sève 1979; SEG 28.953.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Discussions and Theology

187

relics of the Apostles, which probably arrived in Constantinople c.356/7; and these were the only saints whose bodies crossed the walls of this city for a long time.²⁵ In 394 the body of St Thomas the Apostle was transferred to a ‘great church’ in Edessa.²⁶ Also, at the very end of the fourth century, the ashes of John the Baptist were placed in the new church in Alexandria built in the complex of the just-destroyed Serapeum.²⁷ Later on, in 415, the body of St Stephen, discovered in Caphargamala, was brought to Jerusalem by Bishop John and deposited in the intramural church of Zion, while some relics of the same saint which travelled to the West were enshrined in memoriae within Hippo and other cities in Africa.²⁸ All this certainly shows the changing custom, but we should not forget that most relics, even if they were transferred from one place to another, remained outside the city walls. The relics of Gervasius, Protasius, and Nazarius brought by Ambrose to his basilica, the remains of St Saturninus transferred to a new church at Toulouse by Bishop Exuperius, the relics of martyrs deposited in Drypia, and the head of John the Baptist in Hebdomon, both close to Constantinople, were deposited in suburban shrines.²⁹ In the city of Rome, the process of transferring the martyrs into the city began only in the seventh century. Also the martyria which fell victim to the anti-Christian reaction in the early 360s were extramural. In sum, that some of the Christian ‘special dead’ crossed the frontiers of the cities was being noticed, but when taken on its own, it can hardly explain the hostility toward the cult of relics. It is worth noting that neither Julian nor Eunapius touches upon this issue. As for the bones of martyrs deposited close to temples, as in the case of Daphne, Didyma, and Canopus, pagan critics spoke directly of outrageous pollution. It is, likely, though that this issue was more important to intellectuals than to other people. In 362 Julian ordered the removal of St Babylas’ body from Daphne, having learnt that the oracle of Apollo in that place had fallen silent because of the cadavers buried close to it. It is quite probable that Julian, in his archaizing piety, wanted to play a role similar to that of the sixthcentury Athenian tyrant Peisistratus, who, also following the order of an oracle, purified the holy island of Delos by removing the graves from the neighbourhood of the temple of Apollo. Julian certainly knew this story from Herodotus.³⁰ But in Antioch his action was met with no enthusiasm.³¹ Also, there is no proof that people who attacked martyria in Syria or destroyed the tomb of John the Baptist at Sebaste cared about the pollution that they caused. ²⁵ See Wortley 2009, 207–25. ²⁶ Chronicle of Edessa s.a. 394. ²⁷ Rufinus, Historia ecclesiastica 11.28. ²⁸ Revelatio s. Stephani A 48 and B 48; Liber de Miraculis s. Stephani 1.1; Augustine, De civitate Dei 22.8 (several cities). ²⁹ Ambrose, Epistula 77.2; Paulinus, Vita Ambrosii 32.2; John Chrysostom, Homilia dicta postquam (lemma); Passio s. Saturnini 6; Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 7.21.5. ³⁰ Herodotus, Historiae 1.64.2. ³¹ Julian, Misopogon 361 B–C.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

188

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

As has already been said, they may have merely attacked easy targets. In all, the fear of contamination of the cities was probably not a major reason for pagan hostility toward the cult of relics.

REASONS: M AGIC A belief in the power of bones taken out of the grave was characteristic not only of the cult of relics. It was also very closely associated with magic. The resemblances between these two phenomena are striking. First, the Christian belief was founded upon the conviction that the souls of certain dead could operate in the world of the living. The same conviction was fundamental for the theory which formed the basis for all magical methods involving daimones, normally identified with the spirits of the dead.³² Secondly, almost all the special dead whom the Christians invoked were martyrs, that is, people who died a sudden and violent death, just like the biathanatoi or aōroi, the untimely dead, whose souls were summoned and conjured up in magical practices.³³ Thirdly, the Christians thought that the help of saints could be obtained more securely thanks to access to their relics, that is, usually, the fragments of their bodies. This, again, resembles practices in which a magician, in order to make a daimōn obedient, used corporeal remains of the person whose spirit was summoned (hair and fragments of garment, resembling contact relics, could do as well).³⁴ Fourthly, the power of relics was often expected to work in an automatic way, like that of spells; those who were healed by them did not necessarily have to pray for a cure or even be aware that they were close to a source of power.³⁵ Christians were often accused of sorcery. Such accusations were most common in the second and third centuries, but at that time they had nothing to do with the cult of relics, which simply did not exist yet, or with other burial-related practices for that matter.³⁶ In a later period Christians were charged with sorcery less frequently, but accusations of this sort did not disappear altogether and there is some evidence that they began to be associated with relics or relic-like objects. In the Life of Hilarion written by Jerome at the end of the fourth century we find an interesting episode depicting a chariot race in which a pagan from Gaza supported by a sorcerer ran his horses against a Christian called Italicus, who sought the help of the holy monk

³² See Flint 1999, 283. ³³ Tertullian, De anima 57. See Nock 1950. ³⁴ Németh 2013. ³⁵ See e.g. a woman who happened to spend a night in a cave in which St Benedict had lived, and woke up healed: Gregory the Great, Dialogi 2.38. ³⁶ See Donkow & Wypustek 2006.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Discussions and Theology

189

Hilarion. After some hesitation, the monk ‘ordered an earthenware cup out of which he was wont to drink to be filled with water and given to Italicus’. The latter sprinkled his horses with it and won the race. After the race, the defeated side ‘demanded that Hilarion as a Christian magician (maleficus) should be dragged to execution’.³⁷ The object used by the Christian in this story is not a corporeal relic, but the passage deserves attention, for even if most probably fictitious, it shows that according to Jerome Christian miracle-workers using objects which transferred some power could be accused of sorcery. Julian’s claim that Christians, following Jews, performed ‘witchcraft and abomination’ at the tombs of saints proves that such allegations were actually made.

CHRISTIAN CRITICISM: ATHANASIUS AND SHENOUTE Eunapius is the last pagan critic of the cult of relics that we know by name. This does not mean that the adherents of the old cults changed their attitude toward this aspect of Christianity in the fifth century. It is not impossible that the hostility became even stronger, but we cannot see it in the evidence, because in the fifth century pagan literature was disappearing at a rapid pace. However, in the same period we can observe traces of a discussion on the cult of relics among Christians. We can name very few of those who were hostile toward this phenomenon and no major text written by them is preserved in its original form. This, however, is not surprising given that their party lost. Moreover, the polemical treatises of the advocates of the cult of relics are not numerous either. Thus we should not build too much on this reticence of the sources, especially as several adherents of the cult of relics distant in space and time from each other were often dealing with strangely similar questions and doubts, and this suggests that they had to deal with the same hostility toward the custom they defended. It is difficult to estimate the force and range of this feeling, but it was evidently there. In his recent book, Matthew Dal Santo argued that still in the times of Gregory the Great opponents of the cult of relics were stronger and their partisans weaker than we usually think.³⁸ Indeed, even if the sixth-century evidence on the basis of which we can study the strength of the enthusiasts and critics is unbalanced, and the voices of the latter had much less chance to survive, there is no doubt that the phenomenon was subject to a vigorous intellectual debate. Perhaps Dal Santo builds too much on the opinions of intellectuals, which did not necessarily reflect widely shared convictions, but ³⁷ Jerome, Vita Hilarionis 11.3–13.

³⁸ Dal Santo 2012.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

190

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

seeing how similar the discussions of the sixth century were to those of the fourth century, we can assume that in late antique Christianity there was indeed a constant undercurrent reluctant to accept the cult of relics, only occasionally emerging to the surface of our evidence.³⁹ Those Christians who criticized the cult of relics were not unanimous in their judgement. Some authors decried only certain forms of this phenomenon without condemning it as a whole, but the critique formulated by others could also be general. Athanasius of Alexandria, for instance, stigmatized ‘Melitians’ who snatched the bodies of martyrs from cemeteries and deposited them in other places, in order to use them for the purposes of exorcisms and divination.⁴⁰ Interestingly, he did not deny that demons were tormented at their graves, but attributed these torments not to the power of the martyrs, but to that ‘of the Saviour whom the martyrs confessed’.⁴¹ Athanasius disapproved of the practice of unearthing and translating bodies in general, but what made him particularly indignant was any form of leaving dead bodies without customary burial. These views can be seen already in his Life of Antony, whose grave was to be hidden lest anybody take his corpse home. Athanasius did not hide the didactic purpose of this story which ends with the following words: ‘Many therefore having heard this, henceforth buried the dead underground, and gave thanks to the Lord that they had been taught rightly.’⁴² David Brakke attributed Athanasius’ position to his Christocentric theological views, which undermined the belief in the power of the martyrs, to criticism of pagan funerary customs of the Egyptians, who kept sarcophagi in their houses, and to Athanasius’ political position in Egypt in the 360s, when his control over the holy places of the saints was not evident.⁴³ The last issue certainly played a role, but it is worth emphasizing that Athanasius did not change his views even when he was much more in control of the situation in Egypt. We can see this if we take a closer look at an episode in Rufinus’ Church History, already quoted in this book. It says that when Athanasius obtained some ashes of John the Baptist, ‘he closed them up within a hollowed-out place in the sacristy wall in the presence of few witnesses, preserving them in prophetic spirit for the benefit of the next generation, so that now that the remnants of idolatry had been thrown down flat, golden roofs might rise from them on temples once unholy’.⁴⁴ This must have happened in the last decade of Athanasius’ life (c.363–73), when his position in Egypt was stronger and when he could use the important relic brought to him from Palestine. But as we can see, he simply hid it, without any ceremony, without crowds, just as he

³⁹ There is still some discussion about whether the iconoclastic emperors were hostile to the cult of relics: see Wortley 2009, 253–79. ⁴⁰ Athanasius, Epistulae festalis 41 and 42. ⁴¹ Athanasius, Epistula festalis 42. ⁴² Vita Antonii 90.6 (trans. A. Robertson). ⁴³ Brakke 1998, 465–71. ⁴⁴ Rufinus, Historia ecclesiastica 11.28 (trans. Ph. R. Amidon).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Discussions and Theology

191

caused Antony’s body to be hidden in his story. It was only his successor Theophilus who constructed a sanctuary for the ashes of John on the ruins of the Serapeum. All this is not an open frontal attack on the veneration of relics, but the criticism is serious, and does not concern only one specific aspect of this phenomenon. Over a generation later, some aspects of the cult of relics were also condemned by Shenoute of Atripe, a charismatic monastic leader, active in Upper Egypt from the late fourth century until his death early in the second half of the fifth century. Like Athanasius, he wrote about those who unearthed the bodies of alleged martyrs and transferred them to churches, and ridiculed the purported visions by which these actions were justified. His disapproval of these practices was for two reasons. The first of them was that, as he claimed, in this way people could bring into churches bones of false martyrs, and even of animals, and, what was still worse, they did it inspired by demons. In one of his sermons he explains it in the following way: Those who adore [martyrs] in some holy place built in their name worship demons, not God. Those who trust that healing comes to them, or goods, in a place that they built over some skeletons without knowing whose they are . . . are no different from those who adored the calves of Jeroboam set up in Samaria . . . Who among those who fear God will not say, “Woe to those who say, ‘I saw a light in the holy place that was built over some bones of a skeleton in the church, and I was eased of my illness after I slept there.’ ”⁴⁵

The second reason for Shenoute’s outrage was the festivals of martyrs, or more exactly the practices accompanying them: ‘it is a wickedness to sing, drink, eat, laugh, and above all to fornicate and commit a murder out of drunkenness, debauchery, and insane quarrels’.⁴⁶ There follows a more detailed description of misdemeanours which took place during the martyrs’ feast days. All this might look as if aimed only at reprehensible and uncontrolled forms of the cult of relics. The tirades against drunkenness, dances, and other forms of debauchery can also be found in sermons by other preachers who otherwise accepted the cult of relics as such.⁴⁷ But, interestingly, Shenoute, again like Athanasius, does not propose to venerate relics in a sanctioned way or seek healing in an approved holy place, and this suggests that his hostility toward the cult of relics is deeper. The remarks about misdemeanours and about unsaintly bones were probably intended to ridicule this phenomenon as such. It is probable that Athanasius’ and Shenoute’s writings bear witness to a wider and more profound discussion of the cult of relics, but if so, we cannot see it in extant evidence. ⁴⁵ Shenoute, Those Who Work Evil, pp. 216 and 219–20. ⁴⁶ Shenoute, Œuvres, pp. 199–200. ⁴⁷ See e.g. Augustine, Sermo 273.8; 311.5; Confessiones 6.2; Epistula 22.3; 29.5–6; Enarratio in Psalmum 120.15; Registri Ecclesiae Carthaginensis excerpta 60–1 (for Africa in general, see Saxer 1980, 133–49); Caesarius of Arles, Sermo 47.5.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

192

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

The remarks of other Eastern authors of this period with regard to the theory and practice of this cult do not give solid grounds for believing that the polemic was widespread. It is only in the late sixth century that Eustratios of Constantinople devoted an entire treatise to the defence of the cult of relics, apparently in response to mounting criticism. Still later on, in the seventh century this issue was addressed in the Questions and Answers of Anastasius of Sinai.⁴⁸

WESTERN DISCUSSIONS While the remarks of Athanasius and Shenoute are revealing, it is the evidence from the Latin West which best shows that in its early phase, in the late fourth century and at the beginning of the fifth century, the cult of relics was vehemently criticized and discussed. This evidence consists of the writings of a few authors belonging to the circle of promoters of those two phenomena about which Eunapius spoke with equal disgust, namely the cult of relics and monasticism: Victricius of Rouen, Jerome, and Augustine. The treatise De laude sanctorum, or Praising the saints, which is the earliest text in this dossier, was composed by Victricius, bishop of Rouen, on the basis of a sermon which he preached in 396, upon the arrival of a set of relics sent to him by Bishop Ambrose from Milan. This is the only extant work by Victricius, but he is also known to us as the addressee of two letters of Paulinus of Nola and as a partisan of Martin of Tours.⁴⁹ Paulinus presents him as a former military tribune who abandoned a career in the army.⁵⁰ We know that he travelled a lot beyond the confines of his bishopric; we can see him in Trier, Rome, and Britain. In Rouen he built a large basilica. These modest pieces of information may encourage us to imagine Victricius as a vigorous ex-soldier who forsook the uniform in order to assume the priestly robe. This vision of him seems to be corroborated by a number of military metaphors which can be found in his work.⁵¹ Such a portrait, however, devoid of any further commentary, would be oversimplified. Victricius was certainly a learned man. It is true that he can hardly be praised as a master of style and clarity of discourse. His argument is sometimes adventurous and difficult to follow, but it still proves Victricius’ rhetorical training. His work does not betray many traces of extraordinary learnedness, but surprises with a quotation from Pliny’s Natural History, a work which hardly belonged to canonical

⁴⁸ Dal Santo 2012, 343–56. ⁴⁹ Paulinus of Nola, Epistula 18 and 37; Sulpicius Severus, Dialogi 3.2.4. ⁵⁰ Paulinus of Nola, Epistula 18.7. ⁵¹ See Clark 1999, 372–5.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Discussions and Theology

193

school readings.⁵² And, as for military phraseology, this has been clearly present in Christian literature since the letters of St Paul. It is important to keep all this in mind so as not to think of Victricius as an energetic simpleton. In order to understand the circumstances of the discussion about relics at the turn of the fifth century, we have to see the links between Victricius and a few other ecclesiastical personages, most of them somehow connected with Gaul, and known to us better than him. Sulpicius Severus mentions Victricius as a companion of Martin of Tours, a charismatic bishop who nevertheless evoked a profound antipathy among his Gallic colleagues. This antipathy resulted from Martin’s adherence to a new model of religiosity which shocked his contemporaries by its radical ascetism and strong conviction that a servant of God can dispose of His power to perform miracles and communicate with saints and angels.⁵³ We do not know whether Martin was an active promoter of the cult of relics. An episode in his Life could suggest his reserve in this matter. After his episcopal ordination, Martin supposedly decided to verify whether a martyr who was venerated in his diocese actually deserved a cult, and thanks to a revelation, learned that the alleged saint at whose tomb an altar had been erected was actually a brigand rightly executed for his crimes.⁵⁴ This suggests that Martin cared about the control of cult places, but does not permit us to assess his general opinion on the cult of relics. In any case, it is certain that Sulpicius Severus did not want to present Martin’s attitude toward this phenomenon as altogether critical, for he himself was definitely an enthusiast of relics. We know that he wanted to dedicate the basilica in Primuliacum, where his monastic community lived, with some relics which he hoped to obtain from his friend Paulinus of Nola,⁵⁵ who was also, it is worth repeating, a friend of Martin and a correspondent of Victricius.⁵⁶ Paulinus, a grand aristocrat who converted to asceticism and settled in Nola, where he was first a presbyter and then a bishop, was above all devoted to the cult of St Felix, but he also sought to obtain ashes of Eastern and Milanese saints and was on the same list of recipients of relics sent by Ambrose as Victricius. In all, in Gaul Victricius was attached to the circle of Martin, in Italy to Ambrose and Paulinus.⁵⁷ This milieu shared an interest in the cult of relics, but also in a new model of ascetic life which at that time was by no means unanimously accepted in the West.⁵⁸ They wrote to defend their religiosity, but they wrote probably mostly for people who thought like themselves. ⁵² See Victricius, De laude sanctorum 8 and Naturalis historia 3.19.1. ⁵³ Stancliffe 1983, esp. 265–77. ⁵⁴ Sulpicius Severus, Vita Martini 11. ⁵⁵ Paulinus of Nola, Epistula 31.1. ⁵⁶ Martin is often mentioned in Paulinus’ letters: Epistula 11.11–13, 17.4, 18.9, 23.3–4, 27.2, 29.6, and 14, 32.1–7, Carmina 19.154. See also Sulpicius Severus, Vita Martini 19.3. ⁵⁷ See Hunter 1999, 418–28. ⁵⁸ For discussion about and opposition to the new model of ascetism, see Y.-M. Duval 2003 and Hunter 2007, 130–69. For the link between the two controversies, see Hunter 1999.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

194

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

The essential aim of Victricius, who received from Milan no more than ashes or other tiny relics, was to demonstrate that even the smallest particle of bone of any saint deserves veneration and is as powerful as the entire body. This conviction is not exceptional in this period. Gregory of Nazianzus, in his sermon against Julian, emphasizes that the bodies of the saints have power equal to their souls, and that little drops of their blood and the tiniest traces of their sufferings are not inferior to complete bodies.⁵⁹ A similar idea can be found at the very beginning of the fifth century in Paulinus of Nola,⁶⁰ and a generation later, in Theodoret of Cyrrhus, in a passage already quoted in this book: ‘And in spite of the fact that the body is divided, the grace remains undivided and the smallest particle of relics has the power equal to that of an undivided martyr.’⁶¹ What is particular for Victricius is a fully developed argument which serves to justify this opinion. His reasoning runs as follows: entire mankind, which consists of the descendants of Adam, constitutes one body. This concerns particularly Christians, who, through baptism and faith, became the one body of Christ, and especially the martyrs, for their faith is perfect and through their testimony they have gained a perfect unity with God. God is indivisible, he is all everywhere (integer et totus in toto), and consequently those who are perfectly united with Him must be indivisible. ‘[Their bodies] are the same as the highest power and the absolute and ineffable substance of godhead.’⁶² Human eyes can see only the physical remains of the saints, but in these fragments the full power of the martyrs dwells, and, in consequence, the full power of God himself, able to chase away demons, heal the sick, and forgive sins. To this reasoning, which is presented here in a simplified form, Victricius adds an appeal to a common experience of Christians, who should know that relics of the same saints manifest their power in diverse places, thus showing that their souls are present in all these places as well. Victricius’ argument may seem puzzling, for while he shared the belief in the indivisible power of martyrs’ relics with other promoters of their cult, his putting the corporeal remains of saints on the same level as God is by no means banal. It is interesting, though, that Victricius does not equate relics with the Eucharist or suggest any parallel between them. Did Victricius expect any hostile reactions to the transfer of the relics which arrived in Rouen and preach this sermon as an apology? The religious current which he represented had enemies. The Life of Martin, written probably in the same year as De laude sanctorum, shows that the new ascetic religiosity represented by Martin, Sulpicius Severus, Paulinus, and Victricius provoked

⁵⁹ ⁶⁰ ⁶¹ ⁶²

Gregory of Nazianzus, Contra Iulianum I 69. Paulinus, Carmen 27 (Nat. 9). 445–8. Theodoret, Graecorum affectionum curatio 8.11. Victricius, De laude sanctorum 8.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Discussions and Theology

195

strong opposition in Gaul.⁶³ An awareness of such opposition can probably be seen in Victricius’ sermon, which praises the virtues of monks and virgins.⁶⁴ But the sermon does not prove that criticism was also directed against the cult of relics. Even if the preacher mentions possible objections, he does this so vaguely that we cannot say if he had to face a real polemic. While we can doubt that Victricius’ treatise was a response to some adversaries of the cult of relics, it is quite certain that his firm opinions were controversial and possibly contributed to the emergence of a polemic. This polemic is associated with the name of Vigilantius of Calagurris, known as the addressee, or rather as the target, of a pamphlet written by Jerome of Stridon. Vigilantius appears in our evidence for the first time in 395. In this year, he visited Jerome’s monastery in Bethlehem, with a recommendation letter from Paulinus of Nola in hand. He spent there, however, evidently less time than his host expected.⁶⁵ This arguably resulted from Jerome’s engagement in the Origenist controversy which at that time stirred him against Bishop John of Jerusalem and two important Westerners living in the monastery at the Mount of Olives, Rufinus of Aquileia, and Melania the Elder, Paulinus’ relative.⁶⁶ In consequence of the quarrel, the monastery of Jerome was excommunicated, which could have aroused in Vigilantius at least some embarrassment. There was also an episode during this visit, the weight of which is difficult to assess, but which could have deepened the hostility between Jerome and Vigilantius. One night, an earthquake hit Bethlehem and, according to Jerome, Vigilantius ran out of the monastery and was praying naked before the eyes of the disconcerted monks. Jerome described this scene only ten years later, in his treatise Against Vigilantius, full of spiteful remarks, not necessarily subtle and true, and so the real behaviour of Vigilantius that night might have been much less spectacular.⁶⁷ If, however, Vigilantius was really ridiculed, this episode could have strengthened his antipathy to Jerome. Be this as it may, back in Italy Vigilantius began to present Jerome in a doubtful light, promulgating the idea that this zealous anti-Origenist had not long before been a great admirer of Origen.⁶⁸ Shortly after his return to Italy, Vigilantius departed for Gaul, carrying a letter from Paulinus to Sulpicius Severus.⁶⁹ He reached him in 396, the same year in which Sulpicius Severus published the Life of Martin and Victricius delivered his sermon to welcome the relics from Milan. It is possible that these two writings, two manifestations of the new religiosity, provoked Vigilantius’ response. He had bad memories from his visit to the monastery of Jerome, an ardent promoter of monasticism in conflict with Bishop John of Jerusalem. ⁶³ ⁶⁴ ⁶⁶ ⁶⁸

Sulpicius Severus, Vita Martini 9.3–4 and 27.3. Victricius, De laude sanctorum 2–3. ⁶⁵ Jerome, Epistula 58.11. J. N. D. Kelly 1975, 193. ⁶⁷ Jerome, Adversus Vigilantium 11. Jerome, Epistula 61. ⁶⁹ Paulinus of Nola, Epistula 5.11.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

196

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

Now, in Gaul, he met Sulpicius Severus, another advocate of ascetic life, full of contempt for ecclesiastical hierarchy. All this may have led Vigilantius to attack the views and practices of the milieu which up to then had been his own. This, however, is only a guess, because at this moment Vigilantius disappears for eight years from our evidence. When he reappears, he is living close to Toulouse, in the region where he was born. In 404, a presbyter Riparius from Toulouse informs Jerome about Vigilantius’ critique of the cult of relics, expressed in a short treatise. We do not know when Vigilantius started to propagate this opinion. It is tempting to link it either with the events mentioned above or with an episode which took place in 402 or 403, when the body of St Saturninus, martyr and bishop of Toulouse, was transferred to a new church built by Bishop Exuperius, another friend of Jerome. Some scholars have thought that Vigilantius merely reacted to the event he witnessed, but it is more probable that he had made his views public earlier. We know that Exuperius obtained an authorization from the emperor to make the transfer of Saturninus’ body.⁷⁰ In principle, this is not strange, since the constitution of AD 386 which forbade the transfer of any bodies was still in force. Yet we do not hear of other bishops bothering the emperor for such consent. Exuperius’ caution may suggest that he faced some criticism of the cult of relics, and Vigilantius could have been behind it. The idea that Vigilantius’ activity preceded the translation of Saturninus was presented by David Hunter.⁷¹ His thesis is strengthened by the fact that in his treatise Vigilantius always writes of veneration and transfer of dust, which fits better the Milanese relics which arrived in 396 in Rouen than the entire body of Saturninus, which was brought to Toulouse in 402 or 403. Be that as it may, the treatise in which Vigilantius developed his theses was written between 396 and 406, because in that year it was sent to Jerome. We know this text only through the quotations and commentaries which can be found in Jerome’s response entitled Against Vigilantius. According to Jerome, Vigilantius criticized the cult of relics, belief in their miraculous power, the vigils held in honour of the martyrs, and the custom of singing ‘Alleluia’ outside Easter, but also clerical chastity and material support for monastic communities in Palestine. At first sight these practices do not seem to be directly linked, but in fact all of them were popular within the same circle we are dealing with: people with some Eastern relations who tried to implement new monastic customs in the West, promoted the cult of relics, and knew each other, at least by correspondence. Vigilantius’ argument against the cult of relics was the following. What people call relics are in fact just dust (pulvis, pulvisculum), devoid of life. Those who kiss them, transfer them solemnly, and place them in costly vessels,

⁷⁰ Passio s. Saturnini 6.

⁷¹ Hunter 1999, 407–9.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Discussions and Theology

197

wrapped in precious cloth, introduce pagan customs into the Church and are guilty of idolatry. Vigilantius does not claim that the worshippers of relics borrowed from pagans a specific practice or attitude toward the dead. The idolatry consists in the fact that they venerate material objects, whereas the souls of the martyrs dwell in heaven, in the presence of God, and are not connected any more to their earthly remains. Jerome, in his Letter 109, written in 404, shortly after he was informed about the views of his former guest for the first time, also says that Vigilantius, like the Jews and Samaritans, considered the remains of saints to be impure (inmundae sunt reliquiae).⁷² Yet this issue is absent from Jerome’s longer polemical treatise written two years later. This is a curious omission. The most probable explanation is that in 404, Jerome, who simply had not read Vigilantius’ work yet and had only vague information about its contents, attributed to him the views of pagan critics of the cult of relics, who did consider them unclean. When Jerome finally received Vigilantius’ work, he did not find in it this reproof, and so he did not address it in the ampler refutation. Jerome claims that he wrote his polemic overnight. This is certainly an exaggeration, but the text is indeed quite short, just a dozen pages in the edition of the Corpus Christianorum, and a large part of it is devoted to the issues of chastity and financial support for the monks in the Holy Land, and not to the cult of relics. The polemic is in a way brilliantly written, but vehement, and very personal. Jerome mocks Vigilantius’ origins, family, name, education, and manners. Of course, this conforms up to a point to the rules of the literary genre of polemical pamphlets, but Jerome keeps using these motifs right up to the final lines of his treatise, while his substantive arguments are quite meagre. The tone of the entire treatise can be illustrated by the following passage: And you have the audacity to speak of ‘the something or other which you carry about in a little vessel and worship’. I want to know what it is that you call ‘something or other’. Tell us more clearly (that there may be no restraint on your blasphemy) what you mean by the phrase ‘a bit of dust, wrapped up in a costly cloth in a tiny vessel’. It is nothing less than the relics of the martyrs which he is vexed to see covered with a costly veil, and not bound up with rags or hair-cloth, or thrown on the midden, so that Vigilantius alone in his drunken slumber may be worshipped.⁷³

In all, Jerome tries to ridicule Vigilantius’ arguments rather than engage in a discussion on the subject. Luckily, though, he quotes extensively from his treatise, which gives us a pretty good idea of its content. We know that Vigilantius did not limit himself to censuring certain forms of relic-related piety, but also asked important theological questions. He claimed that the ⁷² Jerome, Epistula 109.1.

⁷³ Jerome, Adversus Vigilantium 5.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

198

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

souls of the Apostles and martyrs repose in heaven and so cannot wander about the earth. Although Jerome does not say it directly, this statement most probably spawned further questions: can dead saints intervene in the affairs of the living? Do they know at all what happens in this world? These questions were to be profoundly examined in the sixth century by Eustratios of Constantinople and in the seventh century by Anastasius of Sinai,⁷⁴ but we will see shortly that they were also asked and addressed by Vigilantius’ contemporaries in a more serious way than by Jerome. Jerome was not really a profound theological thinker, and even when he engaged in doctrinal discussions, he usually remained within the limits of scriptural argumentation. But in Against Vigilantius even biblical arguments, though present, are few. Jerome uses above all diverse arguments ad hominem, mentioned above, and arguments from authority. He claims that if Vigilantius considers partisans of the cult of relics to be idolaters, he must say the same about the emperors Constantius, who brought to Constantinople relics of the Apostles, and Arcadius, who transferred there the body of the prophet Samuel; he must think the same about a number of bishops who welcomed these translations, and even about the bishop of Rome, who celebrates the Eucharist at the tombs of Peter and Paul. Jerome’s argument does not go much beyond that. He devotes as much space to the problem of burning candles in churches as to the fundamental issue of the presence of the saints in their corporeal remains. The overall impression is that Jerome did not really give much thought to this and other theological implications of the cult of relics. Consequently, one can wonder how much he was concerned about this phenomenon before the conflict appeared. He certainly looked at it with some favour. In his Chronicle (written around 380), he records the first transfers of relics to Constantinople, and in the Life of Hilarion (early 390s) his belief in the miraculous power dwelling in the tomb of this saint is evident.⁷⁵ Yet nothing in the large corpus of Jerome’s letters and other writings suggests that he sent relics to anybody, obtained, or sought to obtain them, unlike other members of the network to which he belonged, that is, Sulpicius Severus, Paulinus of Nola, Victricius, Ambrose, Augustine, and his African colleagues. It was possibly only the controversy with Vigilantius which turned Jerome into a staunch defender of the cult of relics, and most probably it was not the question of relics which really provoked him. He must have been more alarmed by other statements of his adversary: first, that chastity does not have any special value; secondly, that people in need of material support are close at hand and it does not make any sense to send alms to monasteries in the Holy Land. This must have cut Jerome to the quick, because he was one of the most zealous

⁷⁴ See Dal Santo 2012. ⁷⁵ Jerome, Chronicon XXXV 19 and 20 (AD 356/7 and 357/8); Vita Hilarionis 33.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Discussions and Theology

199

champions of virginity and monasticism, and particularly of monasticism in Palestine.⁷⁶ Moreover, he had bad memories of Vigilantius’ visit to Bethlehem and knew that Vigilantius presented him as an old admirer of Origen. That is why Jerome, a virulent polemicist notorious for his fiery temper, was probably only too eager to comply with the request of his Gallic friends, anxious about Vigilantius’ teaching. We do not know how contemporaries reacted to Jerome’s treatise. After 406, Vigilantius disappears from our sources and public discussion of the cult of relics might have stopped at that moment. But we know from Jerome himself that Vigilantius’ partisans were numerous and that there were bishops among them. It is unlikely, therefore, that they all gladly accepted Jerome’s arguments.⁷⁷ But there are grounds for presuming that nobody wanted to become the next target of Jerome, who ended his pamphlet with the following words: But if Dormitantius [i.e. the ‘Sleepy one’, Jerome mocks the name of Vigiliantius] wakes up that he may again abuse me, and if he thinks fit to disparage me with that same blasphemous mouth with which he pulls to pieces Apostles, I will spend upon him something more than this short lucubration. I will keep vigil for a whole night on his behalf and on behalf of his companions, whether they be disciples or masters.⁷⁸

The treatises of Victricius and Jerome dealt with two issues at least potentially difficult for adherents of the cult of relics. Victricius tried to explain why in a tiny particle of a relic power equal to that of the saint’s entire body and effectively to that of God dwelt. Jerome defended the conviction that the saints could operate in this world after death, and even, having direct access to God, do it more effectively than in their lifetimes. Interestingly, none of them addressed the questions why and how the souls of the Apostles and martyrs were attached to their corpses at all. This problem did exist, and Vigilantius saw it.⁷⁹ Jerome, however, omitted it, explaining only very briefly why the saints were not detained in heaven. The real question, however, was how they could be on earth. Slightly later, Augustine addressed this question in his treatise On the care for the dead. As we have seen in Chapter 5, he rejected the view that a form of burial, and especially the lack thereof, could have an influence on the fate of the soul, because after death the soul was not linked any more to its physical remains.⁸⁰ Yet he was aware of the problem raised by a number of episodes, reported by many people, in which the dead appeared to the living, asking them for a proper interment. That is why he strove to prove that, whatever people can see in their dreams, they cannot see souls, for these ⁷⁶ Y.-M. Duval 2003 and Hunter 2007. ⁷⁷ Jerome, Adversus Vigilantium 2. ⁷⁸ Jerome, Adversus Vigilantium 17 (trans. W. H. Fremantle). ⁷⁹ Jerome, Adversus Vigilantium 6. ⁸⁰ See pp. 83–4.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

200

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

are no longer involved in or even aware of the affairs of this world. For Augustine the strongest proof of this was based on his personal experience, namely on the fact that his mother, who in her lifetime had done everything she could for the salvation of her son, did not help him any more after death (which obviously she would have done, had it been possible).⁸¹ Augustine thought, then, that visions of dead kin and friends were usually a psychological phenomenon, but he agreed that in some cases it was something more. These rare cases concerned the apparitions of saints, not necessarily dead ones. In order to provide an example, he quoted an episode from the Historia Monachorum, which he read in the translation of Rufinus.⁸² Its hero, John of Lycopolis, an Egyptian monk renowned for his prophetic gift, appeared in a dream to a certain pious woman. Augustine acknowledged that he was unable to explain how it happened and would be happy to ask John if it were possible.⁸³ But then he went on to discuss a more important problem, that of the influence of martyrs on what happens in this world, reflecting on it in the following way: Hence too is solved the question of how it is that the martyrs, by the very benefits which are given to those who pray, show their interest in human affairs, if the dead do not know what the living are doing . . . How this is the case is a question which surpasses the strength of my understanding. How do the martyrs help those whom they evidently do help? Do they do it themselves, being present at the same time in so different and distant places, either in their memorial shrines (memoriae) or beside their memorial shrines, wherever they are felt to be present? Or perhaps, while removed from proximity to the mortals, remaining in a place appropriate to their merits, the martyrs pray in a general way for the needs of their suppliants, as we pray for the dead, to whom, however, we do not appear, nor do we know where they are or what they are doing? Perhaps, then, it is God Almighty, present everywhere, neither bound to us nor remote from us, hearing the martyrs’ prayers, who grants those solaces to people for whom He finds them beneficial in the misery of this life. And so, by His marvellous and ineffable power and goodness God makes the merits of the martyrs honoured, where He will, when He will, how He will, but mostly at their memorial shrines, because He knows that it is expedient for us that the faith of Christ for whose confession they suffered be strengthened. This matter is too high for my understanding and too secret to search it out. Therefore, which of these two is the case, or whether both one and the other are the case, that sometimes these things happen by the very presence of the martyrs, sometimes by Angels taking upon themselves the shape of the martyrs, I dare not say.⁸⁴

⁸¹ Augustine, De cura pro mortuis 16. ⁸² Rufinus, Historia Monachorum 1.10–17. ⁸³ A few years later, preaching at the feast of St Stephen, Augustine said that his body ‘came to light, as the bodies of the martyrs usually do come to light, by a revelation of God’ (Sermo 318.1, c. AD 425); he preferred to attribute the revelation to God, not to the saint. ⁸⁴ Augustine, De cura pro mortuis 19–20.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Discussions and Theology

201

Apparently, Augustine does not have any obvious explanation of the link between the souls of martyrs and their bodies. He does not deny that miracles do occur at the martyrs’ tombs. But he does not know how it is possible. Augustine’s perplexity is not inexplicable. He read Tertullian’s treatise On the soul, which rejected the existence of any connection between souls and bodies after death, and he essentially agreed with this, probably for the reasons to which I will turn in a moment.⁸⁵ Augustine’s avowal of his ignorance was not the only answer to the question of what happens to the soul when the body dies. We can leave aside the thnētopsychitai (or Arabici) who believed that the soul died with the body. Even though this group was mentioned by writers as distant in time as Eusebius of Caesarea, Augustine, and John of Damascus, they represented at best a marginal current of Christian thought.⁸⁶ More interestingly, Gregory of Nyssa claimed that the soul remained attached to every single particle of the body, and he was not thinking specifically about martyrs, but about all people. For if it were not so, he asks, how would the soul recognize the decomposed and dispersed elements of the body at the resurrection?⁸⁷ I suppose that in the context of the cult of relics the issue of the posthumous link between the soul and the body was particularly delicate, since, as we have already seen, this link was implicit in late antique magic.⁸⁸ The problem of parallels between magic and the use of the power of the corporeal remains of saints does not appear in the internal Christian discussion of relics, but it may have been present in the background. There is no doubt that the conviction that the spirits of those who die prematurely turn into demons was shared by some Christians. We can see it in the following passage from John Chrysostom’s Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew dealing with an episode about a demoniac from Gerasa: But what can be the reason that they [demoniacs] love also to dwell in the tombs? They would fain suggest to the multitude a pernicious opinion, as though the souls of the dead become demons, which God forbid we should ever admit into our conception. But what then will you say, one may ask, when many of the sorcerers take children and slay them, in order to have the soul afterwards to assist them? Why, whence is this evident? For of their slaying them, indeed, many tell us, but as to the souls of the slain being with them, whence do you know it, I pray you? The possessed themselves, it is replied, cry out, I am the soul of such a one. But this too is a kind of stage-play, and devilish deceit. For it is not the spirit of the dead that cries out, but the evil spirit that feigns these things in order to deceive the hearers.⁸⁹ ⁸⁵ Tertullian, De anima 51. ⁸⁶ Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 6.37; John of Damascus, De haeresibus 90; Augustine, De haeresibus 83. ⁸⁷ Gregory of Nyssa, De anima et resurrectione, pp. 45–8. ⁸⁸ See pp. 187–8. ⁸⁹ John Chrysostom, In Matthaeum homiliae 28.2.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

202

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

This is not the only sermon in which John Chrysostom strove to persuade his audience that no soul after death becomes a demon.⁹⁰ People who believed in such transformation and thought that magicians could control such demons using the physical remains of their bodie, belonged to his congregation. It is the strength of this belief that may have impelled Augustine, and other writers, not to put too much stress on the link between the souls and bodies of saints. This issue will be discussed at length only in the sixth century, by Eustratios of Constantinople and Gregory the Great. The latter, in his Dialogues, made the deacon Peter, his interlocutor, ask the following question: PETER :

How is it that, as a rule, even the martyrs in their care for us do not grant the same great favours through their bodies (corpora) as they do through their relics (reliquiae)? We find them so often performing more outstanding miracles away from their burial places. GREGORY : There is no doubt, Peter, that the holy martyrs can perform countless miracles where they rest in their bodies. And they do so on behalf of all who pray there with a pure intention. In places where their bodies do not actually lie buried, however, there is a danger that those whose faith is weak may doubt their presence and their power to answer prayers. Consequently, it is in these places that they must perform still greater miracles.⁹¹ The aim of this passage was probably twofold. It was certainly an apology for the policy of the Church of Rome, which in Gregory’s day still did not want to share the corporeal relics it possessed, but was ready to distribute the contact ones.⁹² But it could also have had another goal, namely to draw a clear distinction between the miracles performed by the power of saints and magic, or to present a different vision of the link between the soul and the body—one that would be at a far remove from the fundamental principle of magical techniques, which needed bodily remains to bind the spirits of the dead.

⁹⁰ John Chrysostom, De Lazaro concio secunda 1–2. ⁹¹ Gregory the Great, Dialogi 2.38 (trans. O. J. Zimmerman, slightly changed). ⁹² See pp. 159–69.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

11 Eastern, Western, and Local Habits in the Cult of Relics Having emerged in the mid-fourth century, the cult of relics swiftly arrived in regions which differed in language, liturgical customs, and funeral practices.¹ This raises the question whether in this process of spreading through Christendom the new beliefs, and especially the new customs, remained uniform or rather evolved locally; whether a Christian from Carthage who entered a shrine of a martyr somewhere in Egypt felt at home or was shocked; and especially, whether a general distinction between Eastern and Western habits is useful in describing the cult of relics.

E A S T A N D WE S T This last question is a part of a larger issue of how real and important the distinction between East and West was in Late Antiquity. We are quite accustomed to perceiving late antique Christianity as consisting of two major zones, still united, but in many respects different in customs, literary tradition, liturgy, theological thinking, church structure, monasticism, etc. Of course, we know that these differences should not be overestimated, that there is a risk of projecting backwards a division which became real only in the second millennium.² We are aware that the very distinction between West and East is often problematic, because, as Edward Gibbon and after him Peter Brown remarked,³ unlike the natural difference between North and South, it is arbitrary and not based on natural factors. Perhaps even more importantly, the administrative, political, and linguistic frontiers overlapped only vaguely and the simple distinction between the two cultural zones ignores the fact that ¹ This chapter is based on Wiśniewski 2017. ² In the context of the Christian cult, see Av. Cameron 1997; also Bowersock 2005. ³ Brown 1976.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

204

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

ancient Christendom spoke and wrote in more than two languages. We know that, but most of us—with the important and understandable exception of those who work on the Syriac world or the Caucasus—do not react against this dichotomic vision of ancient Christianity. This distinction can be useful, but it is interesting to note that it was not as widely shared by late antique authors as one might expect. It is true that Latin Christian writers used it sometimes when identifying the West with the Latins and the East with the Greeks.⁴ Yet they did so rarely, for they were usually at least vaguely aware that the Christians of the East spoke diverse languages, and not only Greek.⁵ Latin authors mentioned sometimes in one phrase ecclesiae orientales and ecclesiae occidentales, but normally they did it rather to signal that they had in mind the whole of Christendom, and not so as to distinguish the two parts of it and their distinct customs.⁶ Certainly, it happened that the Latins referred to a practice as specifically Eastern or Greek. However, they usually did so for the sake of argument and so overemphasized real differences. They mentioned ‘Eastern customs’ both to justify a new practice previously unknown in Gaul or Africa or to stigmatize a habit supposedly inconsistent with the old Western tradition.⁷ Yet in both cases ‘the East’ was partly an artificial or imaginary creation, very much like ‘the West’ was for people in Communist countries in the 1980s. In those years in Warsaw, where I live, we used to say that in the West people behaved and institutions worked in such and such a way, and by ‘the West’ we meant variously Norway, the USA, or Greece, sincerely assuming that they did not differ that much.⁸ And so when Jerome says that ‘in all Eastern Churches, even when they have no relics of the martyrs, whenever the Gospel is to be read, the candles are lit, although the dawn may be reddening the sky’,⁹ we should not necessarily take ‘all Eastern churches’ at face value and assume that it was actually a custom which was specific to the entire Eastern part of Christendom. Not surprisingly, the bipolar vision of Christendom was even weaker in the East, which was linguistically diverse and multipolar from the perspective of ecclesiastical power. Those who lived there recognized that the West was Latin-speaking and dominated by Rome, but they rarely thought about their ⁴ See Augustine, Contra Iulianum 1.34. ⁵ Apponius, In canticum canticorum epil.; Augustine, Sermo 24D (=360A).2 (Aliter loquuntur Latini, aliter Graeci, aliter Punici, aliter Hebraei, aliter Syri, aliter Indi, aliter Cappadoces, aliter Aegyptii); Jerome, In Danielem prol.; Julian of Eclanum, Tractatus prophetarum Osee, Iohel et Amos praef. ⁶ See e.g. Ambrose, Epistulae extra traditionem traditae 8.1; Augustine, Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum 4.8.20; Contra Iulianum imperfectum opus 1.106; Gennadius, De viris illustribus 44. The distinction is visible in writings from the times of the Acacian schism and the Three Chapters controversy. ⁷ Justification of new customs: Augustine, Confessiones 9.7; Jerome, Adversus Vigilantium 2 and 7. Denial: Gregory the Great, Epistulae IV 30; Letter to Hormisdas: Collectio Avellana 218. ⁸ Personal experience. ⁹ Jerome, Adversus Vigilantium 7.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

Eastern, Western, and Local Habits

205

own part of the world as a single coherent region. In his Life of Constantine, Eusebius says that the Council of Nicaea gathered the bishops from ‘all the churches which filled all Europe, Libya, and Asia’.¹⁰ This does not fit the dichotomic distinction. Similarly, the church historian Socrates, in a long passage about the diversity of customs in the Church, mentions several lands and cities which differ from each other, but does not distinguish between the East and the West at all.¹¹ From the Syriac, especially Eastern Syriac, perspective, the Latin West was not very important. Syriac writers who talked about ‘Rome’ often had in mind Constantinople and already in the sixth century were scarcely interested in the Christians who lived further west.¹² All in all, the East/West distinction in late antique writers is not as frequent as one might suspect and, more importantly, it does not always reflect the reality. Moreover, this distinction is not the only one that we can see in late antique authors. The division between the South and the North, mentioned above and so important in ancient ethnographic and physiognomic literature,¹³ is much less articulated in ecclesiastical writings, but it does exist. For instance, in Sulpicius Severus’ Dialogues, Gallic monks are only half-facetiously portrayed as unable to hold strict fasts, which are easy for those living in the softer climate of the Mediterranean.¹⁴ From the perspective of Latin African writers the distinction between the African and overseas (which usually means Italian) Churches is at least as important as that between the Churches of the East and West.¹⁵ Augustine, for instance, claims that unlike in Rome ‘amongst a number of Christian peoples in the East and West’ nobody fasts on Saturdays, thus suggesting that this specific difference of customs does not overlap at all with that between Western and Eastern Christianity.¹⁶ Needless to say, I am not going to argue that the East/West distinction was entirely artificial. But it was less evident than we often think. And being oversensitive to it is dangerous, because if we divide the Mediterranean into two parts, every phenomenon that we find, say, in Syria becomes ‘Eastern’, even if we cannot find it in Egypt, Palestine, or Asia Minor. And every new ‘Eastern’ phenomenon identified in this way confirms the reality of the division. But this method can easily lead to making completely arbitrary, if not absurd distinctions. For instance, one could draw a line dividing Christendom from the north-west to the south-east, find a practice attested only on

¹⁰ Eusebius, Vita Constantini 3.7.1. ¹¹ Socrates, Historia ecclesiastica 5.22.30–80; see also Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 7.19. ¹² John of Ephesus, Vitae sanctorum orientalium 2, 7, and 10; see also Payne Smith 1901, 3831. ¹³ See Isaac 2006, passim. ¹⁴ Sulpicius Severus, Dialogi 1.4.5–6. ¹⁵ Optatus, Contra Parmenianum 2.15.3; Augustine, Epistula 128.2; 141.6; Contra Cresconium 3.13; Gesta cum Emerito 5; Possidius, Vita Augustini 8.4. ¹⁶ Augustine, Epistula 36.5.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

206

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

one side of this line, and take this fact as a proof that this division reflects the reality, which conclusion obviously would not be true.

REGIONA L AND UNIVERSAL CUSTOMS We have already seen in Chapter 9 that the conviction that the East and the West differed in their attitudes toward relics is especially strong when we think of the custom of dividing the corporeal remains of saints. The general distinction turned out to be much oversimplified and this issue should serve as another reminder warning us against a dichotomic vision of the world of Late Antiquity. But it is still worth asking the question whether diverse regions of Christendom differed in this respect. The general answer is yes, but the problem is that in many cases we cannot say if a specific practice was local, regional, or universal. Our sources rarely claim that a custom was endemic to a region and, as we have seen, even if they do, they are not always to be trusted. Moreover, our evidence is not abundant enough to make us sure that a practice attested only in one place was unknown in others. In Egypt, for instance, relics were used in a divinatory procedure which consisted in drawing oracular lots in shrines of martyrs, probably at their tombs. Several hundred such tickets were found in the sanctuaries of St Philoxenos in Oxyrhynchus and St Kollouthos in Antinoe.¹⁷ We do not hear of a similar practice from other parts of the Christian world (the only exception is a single mention in Gregory of Tours¹⁸). Yet this silence may be due to the general attitude of ecclesiastical writers toward Christian divination. We have already seen that, on the one hand, they considered it suspicious and so rarely advertised it. But on the other hand, they found it less harmful than pagan oracular methods, and so did not openly condemn it either.¹⁹ And Egypt is the only region in which scraps of papyri which were thrown on a heap of rubbish in the sixth century could survive until now. Had they not survived, we would not know about this practice, for the literary evidence from Egypt does not mention it. Thus in this case I suspect that the custom, which is attested only locally, could actually be widespread. However, it was certainly not always so. The testimony of the Pilgrim of Piacenza about the head of John the Baptist displayed in a glass jar in Emesa is a most interesting piece of evidence, because such a practice is not attested in other parts of the empire. In this case I tend to think that the custom which the ¹⁷ Delattre 2013. ¹⁸ Gregory of Tours, Liber vitae patrum 9.2. ¹⁹ This can be seen also in other Christian divinatory methods such as Bible divination (Augustine, Epistula 55.20) and the use of sets of divinatory answers: Klingshirn 2002 and Luijendijk 2014.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

Eastern, Western, and Local Habits

207

pilgrim saw in this specific place was unique. For if in the study of most practices concerning relics we have to rely on textual evidence, which is often vague, methods of storing relics are known to us thanks to good archaeological material. And this material does not show parallels to the skull kept in a glass receptacle.²⁰ I have tried to explain in Chapter 8 why this particular type of reliquary appeared in Emesa and not elsewhere. What was displayed in this city was the second head of John the Baptist, the first being held in Constantinople from the end of the fourth century.²¹ Thus one can suppose that this specific relic was put into a transparent reliquary because it was necessary to prove that Emesa really had it. Thus, a custom attested in just one place could be, but did not have to be, really local, and only the analysis of the context in which it is mentioned can suggest if it really was. While it is more interesting to concentrate on regional differences, what our evidence shows better is striking similarities, particularly of beliefs concerning relics. Their functions were essentially the same everywhere. The relics were expected above all to expel demons, heal diseases, and protect places, and the sources which tell us about this come from every part of the Christian world. Another belief which was widely shared in diverse parts of Christendom is the conviction that the power of relics can be transmitted in a physical way. Already in the fifth century in distant regions of the Mediterranean we can see the very same need to be as close to the remains of saints as possible in order to enter into contact with their power. Germanus of Auxerre, who always carried with him a small chest with relics, a woman who inserted her head into a niche containing relics of St Stephen in Uzalis, and a deacon with an inguinal hernia who rubbed his private parts against the angle of the sarcophagus of St Artemios shared this belief.²² Thus the need for physical proximity is attested in many places. However, before the sixth century the old taboo against touching the dead was not altogether gone, the tombs of saints were not opened at will, and direct access to relics was limited. In consequence, diverse methods of indirect contact appeared. For our purposes it is important to note that many of them developed independently and remained most popular locally, even if subsequently they were exported to other regions. And here there was a divergence. A good example of a region in which we can see and sometimes explain the emergence of local customs, some of which were subsequently adapted elsewhere, is Syria. In the Limestone Massif in north-western Syria, for instance, many stone reliquaries were equipped with a system of pipes which permitted the ²⁰ For the reliquaries, see Buschhausen 1971; Mintschev 2003; Comte 2012; Noga-Banai 2008; Aydin 2011; more generally: Yasin 2009. A good introduction is Jastrzębowska & HeydashLehmann 2018. ²¹ The first head: Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 7.21.5; Chronicon Paschale s.a. 391; the second head: Chronicon Paschale s.a. 453; Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon s.a. 453. ²² See pp. 123–5.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

208

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

circulation of oil, as was described in Chapter 7.²³ Such reliquaries were not unknown in other regions; one of them was discovered recently in Marseilles (Fig. 11.1).²⁴ But in the Limestone Massif, renowned for its oil production, they seem to be standard fittings; dozens of them were found in situ during the excavation of churches in this region. The case of the reliquary found in Marseilles may be quite special, because this city was a major centre of the oil trade, and also managed to keep commercial contacts with the East after the fall of the empire in the West.²⁵ Thus, this case shows both that local practices proliferated and that their success abroad was often limited. Another Syriac custom was that of producing the hnana.²⁶ The word means ‘a grace’ in Syriac, but like the Greek term eulogia, that is, ‘a blessing’, it could be used in reference to a material object.²⁷ Hnana was a mixture of oil, water,

Fig. 11.1. Inside of the tomb of the saints from the church of rue Malaval (Marseilles), with a bronze pipe through which oil was poured into the tomb. Photo courtesy of Manuel Moliner. ²³ See Canivet 1978; Comte 2012, 110–12.; see pp. 136–7. ²⁴ Moliner 2006. ²⁵ See Pieri & Bonifay 1995, 106–14 and Loseby 1992, 173–5. ²⁶ John of Ephesus, Vitae sanctorum orientalium 4; Vita Syriaca Symeonis Stylitae 39; Canons of Marutha 64. ²⁷ For the term eulogia used in a very similar way as hnana, that is, in reference to a contact relic made out of dust, cf. Vita Symeonis Stylitae Iunioris 163.2; 232.25; 235.16. See also Foskolou 2012.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

Eastern, Western, and Local Habits

209

and dust from the place where a saint lived or was buried which the faithful received as a healing relic. The habit of collecting dust from a holy place is attested also in Egypt, Cappadocia, and Gaul,²⁸ but the use of a specific mixture and the technical term suggests that in Syria, unlike in other regions, it was a standard way of making contact relics.

LOCAL BACKGROUND It is interesting to ask whether diverse ways of handling and venerating relics reflected pre-existing funeral or other local habits. In some cases they almost certainly did. For instance, in Egypt, where the transfer of bodies of martyrs from cemeteries to martyria had started already around 370, physical contact with relics was probably facilitated by the fact that the separation of the living and the dead was there traditionally less strict than in other regions.²⁹ Some specific customs concerning relics rooted in local tradition are attested in Persia and neighbouring regions. In his early sixth-century History of Armenia Łazar Parpetsi tells an interesting story about a curious way of turning the bodies of St Łewond and his fellow martyrs into relics. It runs as follows: Then they cleaned off from the saints’ bones their sweet-smelling flesh which they wrapped in linen-cloth in a worthy manner and carefully buried with honour in the desert. Taking the bones they brought them to the capital and kept them in secret for many days. Then quietly they began to give them to some of the virtuous Christians who were in the army. Those who received them counted it a token of salvation for their souls and bodies.³⁰

In this story, which is a very early witness to the practice of dividing and distributing corporeal relics, the bodies or rather flesh of the martyrs is properly buried, but only after being separated from the bones, and only the latter are destined for distribution and further protective use. In another passage the same author says that Christians venerated bones, teeth, and nails, that is, only the hard parts of the body.³¹ Was it a local custom? At first sight it does not seem so, for in Late Antiquity we can hardly find any mention of soft-tissue relics.³² But normally the bones were obtained after the natural and long decomposition of the body in the grave. In this case this ²⁸ Gregory of Tours, Liber vitae patrum 8.6; Paphnoutios, Stories of the Monks of the Desert, fol. 44b–45b (see G. Schenke, CSLA E00144); Gregory of Nazianzus, In sanctum Cyprianum 18. ²⁹ Borg 1997. ³⁰ Łazar Parpetsi, History of Armenia 103 (trans. R. W. Thomson). ³¹ Łazar Parpetsi, History of Armenia 88. ³² Only in the late Martyrdom of Lukianos can we find the relics of his intestines, which were distributed miraculously among several churches, but this text is known only thanks to a

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

210

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

process was somehow accelerated and since it took place in Armenia, which switched to Christianity from Zoroastrianism, this practice can be attributed to the influence of Persian funeral customs. The Zoroastrians exposed the bodies of the dead to wild animals, carrion birds, and the elements in order to clean pure bones of unclean flesh.³³ In the episode quoted by Łazar Parpetsi the custom was Christianized, for the flesh was buried, which was contrary to the Zoroastrian rules. Still, it was buried somewhere in the desert, was not taken into the city, and did not become a relic. The influence of Zoroastrian sensibility can also be found in the seventh-century Syriac story of the Martyrs of Beit Garmai, who died in the time of King Chosraw II, for according to this text their final burial took place only a year after death, ‘when the flesh fell off from the bones’.³⁴

SPREADING NEW CUSTOMS Local practices certainly could spread through the Christian world, though it is often difficult to say whether parallel customs found in different regions should be explained as an import or an independent development based on the commonly shared convictions. Gregory of Tours, for instance, mentions diverse contact relics used in sixth-century Lyons. In this city, he says, one could see: an immense crowd of people near the tomb [of St Nicetius], buzzing around like a swarm of happy bees around their familiar hive, some taking from the priest in attendance pieces of wax for a blessing (pro benedictione), others a little dust, and others plucked and went away with a few threads from the fringe of the tombcovering, all thus carrying off for different purposes the same grace (gratia) of health.³⁵

In principle, the practice of collecting wax, dust, and pieces of cloth which had had any contact with relics could have developed in Gaul independently, for the conviction that relics heal by touch and that whatever touched them was imbued with their power³⁶ was shared in diverse parts of Christendom. However, an almost technical use of the words benedictio and gratia in Georgian translation dating most probably from the eighth century: see N. Aleksidze, CSLA E01717. ³³ See Huff 2004. ³⁴ Martyrdom of the Ten Martyrs of Beth Garmai, p. 188; see Payne 2011. ³⁵ Gregory of Tours, Liber vitae patrum 8.6. ³⁶ This idea is expressed in Gregory of Tours’s famous description of the weighing of pieces of cloth before and after placing them on the tomb of St Peter. They got heavier, because they were soaked with divine power (Liber in gloria martyrum 27).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

Eastern, Western, and Local Habits

211

reference to contact relics, in the same sense as the Greeks used the term eulogia and the Syriacs hnana, may suggest that these customs were brought to Gaul directly from over the sea. New customs could arrive in a region in diverse ways. Sometimes they were brought together with new relics transferred from distant countries. It is not easy to assess how frequent these transfers were. On the one hand, the number of translationes which are known to us is limited. And yet the transfer of relics was most probably more extensive than it seems to have been, for besides major corporeal relics transferred solemnly, deposited in churches, and then immortalized in inscriptions or literary evidence, there was substantial private and lay importation of lesser—often contact—relics, which is only incidentally mentioned in the evidence.³⁷ Augustine talks about the dust from the Holy Land which an ex-military tribune received from his friend and hung on the wall in order to protect the bedroom in his manor near Hippo.³⁸ Gregory of Tours mentions a Syriac merchant in Marseilles who hid St Sergius’ fingerbone in the wall of his house.³⁹ Most small transfers of relics, however, had little chance of finding their way into late antique texts. Still, they were probably as important for the spread of new customs as the solemn, official transfers. We cannot be sure whether the habit of hanging or hiding relics in one’s house, which was alluded to by both Augustine and Gregory of Tours, came to Africa and Gaul together with relics brought respectively from Palestine and Syria, but it is very probable that it did so. The relics, and customs, obviously travelled mostly westward from the East, rich in its biblical saints and martyrs, but the opposite direction was not entirely uncommon.⁴⁰ Gregory of Tours, whose writings are an irreplaceable source for the study of customs in late antique Gaul, mentions the practice of making an infusion out of leaves or grass growing at tombs of saints, which could be a local or regional practice. But he also says that some merchants exported to the East leaves of the laurel tree growing at the tomb of St Baudilius in Nîmes.⁴¹ This could be simply an advertisement of the power of a Gallic saint, but there is no reason to think that Easterners were not interested in Western relics and practices if they came across them. New practices could have been brought home also without relics. In a letter discussing the diversity of liturgical customs in the Church, Augustine says that some people, when abroad, obstinately follow their own country’s habits, while others refuse to do so even in their local churches ‘from preference for that which they have seen abroad, supposing that wisdom is increased in

³⁷ ³⁸ ³⁹ ⁴¹

See pp. 138–40. Augustine, De civitate Dei 22.8.199–205. For parallels, see Leyerle 2008. Gregory of Tours, Historiarum libri 7.31. ⁴⁰ Klein 2004b. Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum 77; see also Liber vitae patrum 6.7.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

212

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

proportion to the distance to which men travel from home’.⁴² Indeed, in late antique evidence we can find accounts of travellers to distant countries who described, among other matters, practices relating to the cult of relics. Some of them seem to have been unknown in the regions from which the travellers came, and still did not cause outrage, disgust, or shock.⁴³ They incited, rather, curiosity, if not enthusiasm. The same pilgrim of Piacenza who venerated the head of John the Baptist placed in a glass jar also refers to the skull of St Theodota from which many people ‘drink for a blessing’, and adds ‘and I drank’.⁴⁴ Obviously, we cannot say if he tried to adapt this custom back at home, but he seems to have been eager to do so—his reaction does not show any trace of embarrassment or reserve. And that is certainly the spirit which made diverse practices proliferate in the Mediterranean. Interestingly, before the sixth century there is not much evidence of the massive transfer of new customs between diverse parts of the western Mediterranean. Rome, the only city which could have played a unifying role in this respect, did so to a limited degree because it became a pilgrimage centre much later than the Holy Land, and its relics policy was largely negative.⁴⁵ Rome kept the bones of its saints hidden and was reluctant to share them for longer than other cities, and so had less impact on customs concerning at least corporeal relics than the churches which were more ready to distribute their saints.⁴⁶ There is also no evidence that Rome tried to impose its habits in this domain on other Western churches. Neither did Western councils play such a role, for they rarely dealt with relics. The Council of Carthage (411) permitted the construction of memoriae sanctorum only in places where relics were deposited, and the Council of Epaone (517) forbade keeping relics on rural estates, but this is all that we can find of this kind of evidence before the seventh century.⁴⁷ If we add to this that the western Mediterranean of Late Antiquity was not a closed economic area tightly connected by commercial ties and at the same time separated from the East,⁴⁸ we cannot point out a mechanism which would have created distinct Western customs in the field of the cult of relics. To sum up, the very idea of the cult of relics and the basic beliefs and needs in this domain were widely shared in the Christian world of Late Antiquity. ⁴² Augustine, Epistula 54.3. ⁴³ Pilgrim of Piacenza, passim; Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum 27 (a pilgrim to Rome); Evagrius, Historia ecclesiastica 2.3 (St Euphemia at Chalcedon). ⁴⁴ Pilgrim of Piacenza, Itinerarium 22. ⁴⁵ Birch 1998, 24–37 suggests that the pilgrimages to Rome had started already in the fourth century, in parallel with those to the Holy Land, but does not quote any evidence for this earlier than the sixth century. ⁴⁶ McCulloh 1980. ⁴⁷ Registri ecclesiae Carthaginensis excerpta 83; Concilium Epaonense 25. ⁴⁸ On the complicated patterns of long-distance trade in Late Antiquity, see Ward-Perkins 2000, 369–77.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

Eastern, Western, and Local Habits

213

The ways in which these needs were satisfied were diverse and often developed locally, sometimes on the basis of earlier regional customs, sometimes in response to specific needs. Yet people who came across new practices, either in their own countries or during their travels, often accepted them enthusiastically. This helped to spread these practices throughout Christendom and there were no barriers in this field that were really impossible to cross. The persistence of local diversity should be attributed, then, to limited contacts and a lack of interest in making the cult of relics homogeneous rather than to any profoundly different views on how the remains of saints should be venerated.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Conclusions This book has tried to explain why the cult of relics appeared and how it developed. I have argued that this story began just after the end of the Great Persecution, when Christians suddenly had a sense of an enormous and unpredictable victory. Their longest and deadliest persecution came to an end, and the emperor became Christian. This victory was widely attributed to the martyrs whose faith and sufferings defeated the devil and his followers. Consequently, in the second quarter of the fourth century the tombs of the martyrs, heroes of the faith, started to be monumentalized, to a large extent thanks to imperial initiative and munificence. This happened in various places, but mostly in the East, where the victims of the Diocletianic persecutions were clearly much more numerous than in the West, where the process of Christianization was much less advanced, and the persecutions were neither as violent nor as long as in Anatolia, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. The new martyrial shrines attracted pious visitors and pilgrims, who admired their beauty and also considered them to be proper places to distribute alms. Subsequently, martyria started to attract the poor, the sick, and demoniacs, who sought there alms and shelter. Observers probably quickly recognized the peculiar behaviour of those who were considered to be possessed by evil spirits as caused by the power of the saints present in their tombs, who tormented the demons. This happened shortly after the mid-fourth century. Belief in the power of relics was the main factor thanks to which the cult of relics developed. The new phenomenon proved to be vigorous and dynamic. However, even if at first sight its rise indeed looks like an explosion rather than an evolution, on closer inspection we can see that its rapid spread can be traced in two aspects. First, the veneration of relics, and several customs related to this phenomenon, did not appear everywhere at the same moment. It is impossible to name a place or a precise region in which it emerged. It certainly can be seen earlier in the eastern Mediterranean than in the Latinspeaking provinces, but within each of these zones we can see regions in which it was more or less advanced. In the East, for instance, the cult of relics is more visible in Syria than in Egypt, and in the West it apparently arrived in Italy earlier than in Africa. Still, in about two generations it reached all parts of the

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Conclusions

215

Christian world. Secondly, the cult of relics did not emerge in all its elements simultaneously, but evolved. Even if this evolution is often difficult to trace, since our evidence throws flashes of light only on some regions and periods, like late fourth-century Cappadocia, early fifth-century Africa, or late sixth-century Gaul, we can see new forms of contact, new ways of displaying relics, and new beliefs associated with them appearing in successive generations. This development can be followed both in the case of belief in the miraculous power of relics and in specific practices to which this belief gave rise. At the beginning, Christians attributed to the bones of saints the power to torment demons, then to chase them away, and only then to heal physical diseases, protect cities, and reveal hidden knowledge. By the fifth century all these beliefs are attested in the evidence and can be found in every part of Christendom. Admittedly, we see relics which exorcize demons and heal the sick much more frequently than those which check enemies and reveal the future, but this may be simply due to the fact that the situation in which a city was besieged but not taken happened rarely, and that late antique Christian writers were reluctant to advertise any form of divination. As for practices, Christians very soon began to feel a need for physical contact with powerful relics, but different types of this contact appeared only successively. The most dynamic development of the various beliefs and customs relating to relics took place in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, but some features of this phenomenon, like the practice of dividing bodily relics, emerged only at the end of the period studied in this book, that is, in the sixth century. In that period, in some places physical contact with relics was closer than in the fourth century, but it seems to have resulted rather from the widening of the spectrum of methods in which relics were accessed than from a clear shift from indirect to direct contact. In the same period new forms of indirect contact and different types of contact relics appeared as well. This new phenomenon demanded theological reflection. This reflection followed and tried to justify the new custom rather than gave rise to it, and was not essential for the development of belief in the power of relics. Still, this does not mean that theological reflection was superfluous; it was definitely not superfluous for several bishops. Interestingly, the theology of relics, although discussed and sometimes rejected, remained quite consistent and widely shared—the same theological concepts concerning relations between saints, their relics, and miracles can be found in different moments and different parts of the Mediterranean, which suggests that in this case at least ideas spread more easily than practices. Almost four decades ago, Peter Brown showed how deeply the cult of relics was rooted in the structures of late antique society and how strongly it was shaped by late Roman elites. This book does not undermine Brown’s thesis, but shows, partly in accordance with what Brown himself later admitted, that the responsibility for the development of the cult of relics did not lie uniquely with the aristocracy and upper clergy. The role of bishops in the development

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

216

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

of the cult of relics was essential, but because of the clerical character of our evidence this role is amplified in the sources.¹ On closer examination, we can see that other clerics, monks, and laymen, not necessarily aristocrats, cared about relics and played an active role in the spread of their cult. The cult of relics has always been considered to be a Christendom-wide phenomenon, and this view is certainly correct. What is not correct is the conviction that it existed in two versions, that there was a general distinction between the East and the West. Even if not entirely artificial, this division has turned out to be of little use for the study of this phenomenon. Admittedly, there is no doubt that the veneration of relics did not look exactly the same everywhere. There were many regional differences, sometimes developed within a local background. Interestingly, they can be observed in practices rather than in beliefs; the latter remained very similar even in distant parts of the Mediterranean. Embarrassment about the flesh of martyrs in Persia, massive use of oil reliquaries and the early emergence of the cult of relics of holy monks in Syria, and the production of contact relics in Rome are all good examples of these local particularities. But it has to be emphasized that at the same time we usually cannot see any disgust or aversion to foreign customs. Quite the contrary, as the evidence shows that many people were eager to accept and follow them. Our evidence usually shows us relics receiving a warm welcome, and there is no doubt that the cult of relics in most parts of Christendom was met with wide and sincere enthusiasm. But it also met with opposition among not only pagans, but also Christians. Among the latter, opposition was possibly strongest in the first decades of the development of this phenomenon, but we come across it still at the end of the sixth century, and the arguments of its opponents remain very much the same. This implies that there was a constant critical undercurrent which only rarely made it to the surface and consequently left few traces in the extant evidence. Still, the power of this opposition should not be overestimated. The fact that the texts written by critics had little chance of surviving implies that the criticism could have been strong and more widespread than it seems to be, but does not prove that it really was. In all, it is very difficult to answer the question how popular the cult of relics was; it certainly had many devoted enthusiasts, some ardent opponents, and those who simply did not care. The strength of these groups is hard to assess.² The story summarized above would have looked different, or indeed would not have happened, in different historical conditions. Yet the rise of the cult of relics cannot be reduced to a secondary effect of the construction programme initiated by Constantine. It has to be studied against the background of a wider change which took place in Christianity after Constantine. The cult of relics

¹ This is very well shown by Bailey 2016.

² See Wood 1998.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

Conclusions

217

developed in the same period and in the same religious atmosphere as the idea of the Holy Land, the practice of pilgrimages, and the monastic movement, with its ascetic heroes who in their lifetime performed miracles very much like those which occurred at the tombs of martyrs. Also, relics of saints were the most important, but not the only holy and powerful objects of late antique Christianity. Sacred books, pious souvenirs from the Holy Land, and above all the True Cross often functioned in the very same way as the corporeal remains of saints: they were transferred reverently from one place to another, treasured and deposited in churches, divided (much earlier than corporeal relics), and, above all, considered to have healing, protective, or divinatory power. The frontier between diverse types of material vectors of sanctity, and particularly between corporeal and contact relics, was quite blurred. Fascination with miracle-working monks, pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and enthusiasm for the cult of relics are often attested in the same milieu of adherents to the new religiosity which was taking shape in Christendom in the fourth century. The monastic pilgrim Egeria visited not only the biblical places of the Holy Land, but also saintly monks in Mesopotamia and tombs of martyrs in Syria. Sulpicius Severus, the author of the Life of Martin, the first Western monastic miracle-worker, had endeavoured to obtain ashes of martyrs for his new-built church long before the deposition of relics under the altar became the norm. Jerome defended in the same treatise the importance of the Holy Land, the value of ascetic life and celibacy, and the cult of relics. Also, these practices provoked similar irritation; the Neoplatonic Eunapius in one paragraph gave vent to his contempt and distaste for Christian veneration of both dirty monks and the bones of the martyrs. Even more importantly, the phenomena listed above had more in common than merely the religious environment in which they developed. There was also a genetic link between them. Of course, we can identify specific reasons which lay behind the emergence of each of them, but they did emerge in the same period and shared some essential features: the belief that God’s power is active in this world here and now, the conviction that God often acts by the agency of intermediaries, and that His power, focused in certain material vehicles, can be accessed and transferred in a physical way. The celebration of the new feasts and the veneration of the holy places and objects can be perceived as aspects of the sacralization of the world in Late Antiquity. Of course, it would be false to say that Christians turned entirely toward this world, and ceased to long for the world to come. But a pious interest in this world strewn with holy people, places, objects, events, and particular days in which God’s power made itself manifest was on the rise.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/11/2018, SPi

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

Bibliography Primary Sources Acta Fructuosi (BHL 3196): ed. H. Musurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford, 1954). Acta Maximiliani, ed. H. Musurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford, 1954). Acta Pauli et Theclae, ed. J. W. Barrier, Acts of Paul and Thecla (Tübingen, 2009). Acts of the Synod of 585, ed. J. B. Chabot, Synodicon orientale ou Recueil de synodes nestoriens (Paris, 1902): 390–424. Acts of Thomas, ed. A. F. J. Klijn, The Acts of Thomas. Introduction, Text, and Commentary (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2003). Agathangelos, The History of Armenia, trans. R. W. Thomson, The Lives of Saint Gregory, the Armenian, Greek, Arabic, and Syriac Versions of the History Attributed to Agathangelos (Ann Arbor, MI, 2010): 417–42. Alexander the Monk, Laudatio Barnabae, ed. P. Van Deun, Hagiographia Cypria. Sancti Barnabae laudatio auctore Alexandro monacho, CCG 26 (1993). Ambrose, De excessu fratris Satyri, ed. O. Faller, CSEL 73 (1955): 209–325. Ambrose, De obitu Theodosii, ed. O. Faller, CSEL 73 (1955): 371–401. Ambrose, Expositio evangelii secundum Lucam, ed. M. Adrien, CCL 14 (1957). Ambrose, Epistulae, ed. O. Faller, CSEL 82.1–3 (1968–82); trans. H. de Romestin et al., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 10 (Buffalo, NY, 1896). Ambrose, Hymni, ed. J. Fontaine, Ambroise de Milan: Hymnes (Paris, 1992). Ambrose, De officiis, ed. M. Testard, CCL 15 (2000). Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, ed. J. C. Rolfe, Ammianus Marcellinus, LCL (1971–2). Anthologia Graeca, ed. W. R. Paton, LCL (1916–18). Antonius, Symeonis Stylitae vita Graeca, ed. H. Lietzmann, TU 32.4 (1908). Apparitio sanctorum Jacobi apostoli et primi apostolorum (BHL 4099), AB 8 (1889): 123–4. Apponius, In canticum canticorum, ed. B. de Vregille & L. Neyrand, CCL 19 (1986). Apuleius, Metamorphoses, ed. R. Helm, Teubner (1955). Asterius of Amasea, Homiliae I–XIV, ed. C. Datema (Leiden, 1970). Athanasius, Epistulae festales, ed. Th. Lefort, CSCO 150–1 (1956): 1–73; Italian translation with commentary: A. Camplani, Atanasio di Alessandria: Lettere Festali (Milan, 2003). Athanasius, Vita Antonii, ed. G. J. M. Bartelink, Athanase d’Alexandrie, Vie d’Antoine, SC 400 (2004); trans. A. Roberston, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. Second Series, vol. 4 (New York, 1892). Athanasius, De patientia, PG 26:1297–1309. Athenagoras, De resurrectione, ed. W. R. Schoedel, OECT (1972). Augustine, De utilitate credendi, ed. J. Zycha, CSEL 25 (1891): 3–48.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

220

Bibliography

Augustine, Epistulae, ed. A. Goldbacher, CSEL 34.1–2, 44, 57, 58 (1895–8) and J. Divjak, CSEL 88 (1981); trans. R. Teske, The Works of Saint Augustine. A Translation for the 21st Century. vol. II 1–4 (New York, 2001–5). Augustine, Confessiones, ed. L. Verheijen, CCL 27 (1981). Augustine, De cura pro mortuis gerenda, ed. J. Zycha, CSEL 41 (1900): 621–59; trans. H. Browne, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 3 (Buffalo, NY, 1887). Augustine, De opere monachorum, ed. J. Zycha, CSEL 41 (1900): 531–95. Augustine, Ad catholicos de secta Donatistarum, ed. M. Petschenig, CSEL 52 (1909): 231–322. Augustine, Contra Cresconium, ed. M. Petschenig, CSEL 52 (1909): 325–582. Augustine, Gesta cum Emerito, ed. M. Petschenig, CSEL 53 (1910): 181–96. Augustine, Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum, ed. C. F. Vrba & J. Zycha, CSEL 60 (1913): 423–570. Augustine, Sermones 277A and 296, ed. F. Morin, Miscellanea Agostiniana, vol. 1 (Rome, 1930); Sermones 311, 317, 318, 323, 334: PL 38; Sermo 335F, ed. A. Hamman, Patrologiae Latinae Supplementum, vol. 2 (Turnhout, 1960); Sermo 24D, ed. F. Dolbeau, Augustin d’Hippone: Vingt-six sermons au peuple d’Afrique (Paris, 1996); trans. E. Hill, The Works of Saint Augustine. A Translation for the 21st Century, vols 1–11 (New York, 1990–7). Augustine, De civitate Dei, ed. B. Dombart & A. Kalb, CCL 47–8 (1955). Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos, ed. E. Dekkers & J. Fraipont, CCL 38–40 (1956). Augustine, De vera religione, ed. K.-D. Daur, CCL 32 (1962): 187–260. Augustine, De haeresibus, ed. R. Vander Plaetse & C. Beukers, CCL 46 (1969): 286–345. Augustine, Contra Iulianum imperfectum opus, ed. M. Zelzer, CSEL 85,1–2 (1974–2004). Augustine, Contra epistulam Parmeniani, ed. M. Labrousse, SC 412–13 (1995–6). Augustine, Contra Iulianum,1.13; PL 44:641–874. Avitus, Epistola ad Palchonium, ed. S. Vanderlinden, REByz 4 (1946): 178–217. Barḥadbešabbā ‘Arbāyā, Ecclesiastical History, ed. F. Nau, Histoire ecclésiastique, PO 45 (1914). Basil of Caesarea, Epistulae, ed. J. R. Deferrari, vols 1–4, LCL (1926–34). Basil of Caesarea, In sanctos XL martyres, PG 31:508–26. Basil of Caesarea, In psalmum 115, PG 30:104–16. Baudonivia, Vita Radegundis, ed. B. Krusch, MGH SRM 2 (1888): 358–95. Braulio, Epistulae, ed. L. Riesco Terrero, Epistolario de san Braulio, Anales de la Universidad Hispalense. Serie Filosofía y Letras, vol. 31 (Seville, 1975); trans. C. W. Barlowe, Iberian Fathers, vol. 2 (Washington DC, 1969). Calendarium Carthaginense, ed. J. B. de Rossi & L. Duchesne: AASS Novembris II.1 (Brussels, 1894): LXIX–LXXII. Callinicus, Vita Hypatii, ed. G. J. M. Bartelink, SC 177 (1971). Canons of Marutha, ed. A. Vööbus, The Canons Ascribed to Mārūtā of Maipherqat and Related Sources, CSCO 440 (1982). Chromatius of Aquileia, Sermones, ed. J. Lemarié, SC 164 (1971). Chronicle of Edessa, ed. I. Guidi, Chronica Minora I, CSCO 1–2 (1903). Chronicon Paschale, ed. L. Dindorf (Bonn, 1832).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

Bibliography

221

Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes, ed. M. Pohlenz (Leipzig, 1918). Cicero, In Verrem, ed. A. Klotz (Leipzig, 1923). Cicero, De divinatione, ed. A. S. Pease (Darmstadt, 1973). Claudian, Carmina Minora, ed. M. Platnauer, Claudian, vol. 2, LCL (1922): 175–91. Claudian, In Rufinum, ed. M. Platnauer, Claudian, vol. 1, LCL (1922): 24–55. Codex Theodosianus, ed. Th. Mommsen (Berlin, 1905). Collectio Avellana. Epistulae imperatorum pontificum aliorum, ed. E. Günther, CSEL 35/1–2 (1895–8). Concilium Arausicanum a. 441, ed. C. Munier, CCL 148 (1963): 78–86. Concilium Arelatense secundum 442–505, ed. C. Munier, CCL 148 (1963): 114–25. Concilium Epaonense a. 517, ed. C. de Clerq, CCL 148A (1964): 22–37. Constantine, Oratio ad sanctos, ed. I. A. Heikel, GCS 7 (1902): 154–92. Constantius of Lyons, Vita Germani, ed. R. Borius, Vie de saint Germain d’Auxerre, SC 112 (1967). Constitutiones Apostolicae, ed. M. Metzger, SC 320, 329, 336 (1985–7). Cyprian, Epistulae, ed. G. F. Diercks, CCL 3B and 3C (1994–6). Cyril of Jerusalem, Ad Constantium, ed. E. Bihain, ‘L’Épître de Cyrille de Jérusalem à Constance sur la vision de la croix’, Byzantion 43 (1973): 266–7. Cyril of Jerusalem, Orationes catecheticae, PG 33:1109–25. Cyril of Scythopolis, Vita Abramii, E. Schwartz, Kyrillos von Skythopolis, TU 49.2 (1939). Cyril of Scythopolis, Vita Euthymii, E. Schwartz, Kyrillos von Skythopolis, TU 49.2 (1939). Damasus, Epigrammata, ed. A. Ferrua, Vatican (1942); trans. D. Trout, Damasus of Rome: The Epigraphic Poetry (Oxford, 2015). De inventione capitis Ioannis Baptistae, PL 67:419–30. Dio Cassius, Historia Romana, ed. E. Cary, vols 1–9, LCL (1912–27). Egeria, Itinerarium, ed. P. Maraval, SC 296 (1982). Ephrem, Carmina Nisibena, ed. E. Beck, Des heiligen Ephraem des Syrers Carmina Nisibena, vol. 1.1–2.2, CSCO 92–3 and 102–3 (1961–3); trans. J. T. S. Stopford, A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. Second Series 2, ed. J. Gwynn (Oxford, 1898): 167–219. Epic Histories, trans. N. G. Garsoïan, The Epic Histories Attributed to P’awstos Buzand (Buzandaran Patmut’iwnk’) (Cambridge, MA, 1989): 86–91. Epiphanius, Panarion, ed. K. Holl & G. Dummer, GCS 25, 31, 37 (1915–85). Eunapius, Vitae philosophorum, ed. W. C. Wright, LCL (1921). Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica, ed. G. Bardy, SC 31, 41, 55, 73 (1952–60). Eusebius, Contra Hieroclem, ed. E. des Places, SC 333 (1986). Eusebius, Vita Constantini, ed. M. F. Winkelmann, GCS 9 (1991, 2nd edn). Eusebius, Onomasticon, ed. S. Timm, GCS NF 24 (2017). Evagrius, Historia ecclesiastica, ed. J. Bidez & L. Parmentier (London, 1898). Faustinus and Marcellinus, Libellus precum, ed. A. Canellis, SC 504 (2002). Fredegar, Liber historiae Francorum, ed. B. Krusch, MGH SRM II (1888): 238–328. Gaudentius, Tractatus, ed. A. Glück, CSEL 68 (1936). Gennadius, De viris illustribus, ed. E. Richardson, TU 14.1a (1896): 57–97. Gerontius, Vita Melaniae, ed. D. Gorce, SC 90 (1962). Gesta apud Zenophilum, ed. K. Ziwsa, CSEL 26 (1893): 185–97.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

222

Bibliography

Gesta Dagoberti, ed. B. Krusch, MGH SRM II (1888): 399–425. Gregory of Nazianzus, In sanctum Cyprianum, ed. J. Mossay & G. Lafontaine: Grégoire de Nazianze, Discours 24–6, SC 284 (1981). Gregory of Nazianzus, Contra Iulianum, ed. J. Bernardi, Grégoire de Nazianze, Discours 4–5: Contre Julien, SC 309 (1983). Gregory of Nyssa, De virginitate, ed. M. Aubineau, SC 119 (1966). Gregory of Nyssa, Vita Macrinae, ed. P. Maraval, SC 178 (1971). Gregory of Nyssa, De sancto Theodoro, ed. J. P. Cavarnos, Gregorii Nysseni Opera X.1 (Leiden, 1990): 59–71, trans. C. McCambly: . Gregory of Nyssa, Homiliae in sanctos XL martyres I–II, ed. O. Lendle, Gregorii Nysseni Opera X.1 (Leiden, 1990): 137–56. Gregory of Nyssa, In sanctum Stephanum, ed. O. Lendle, Gregorii Nysseni Opera X.1 (Leiden, 1990): 107–34. Gregory of Nyssa, De anima et resurrectione, PG 46:12–160. Gregory of Tours, Liber de passione et virtutibus sancti Iuliani martyris, ed. B. Krusch, MGH SRM 1.2 (1885): 112–34. Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria confessorum, ed. B. Krusch, MGH SRM 1.2 (1885): 294–370. Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum, ed. B. Krusch, MGH SRM 1.2 (1885): 34–111. Gregory of Tours, Liber vitae patrum, ed. B. Krusch, MGH SRM 1.2 (1885): 211–94. Gregory of Tours, Historiarum libri X, ed. B. Krusch & W. Levison, MGH SRM 1.1 (1937–51): 1–537. Gregory the Great, Dialogi, ed. A. de Vogüé, SC 251, 260, 265 (1978–80); trans. O. J. Zimmerman, The Fathers of the Church 30 (Washington DC, 1959). Gregory the Great, Epistulae, ed. D. Norberg, CCL 140–140A (1982). Hermas, Pastor, ed. R. Joly, SC 53bis (1968). Herodian, Historia Romana, ed. C. R. Whittaker, LCL (1969–70). Herodotus, Historiae, ed. Ph.-E. Legrand, Belles Lettres (1932–55). Hilary of Arles, Vita Honorati, ed. M.-D. Valentin, SC 235 (1977). Hilary of Poitiers, De Trinitate, ed. P. Smulders, CCL 62–62A (1979–80). Hilary of Poitiers, Contra Constantium, ed. A. Rocher, SC 334 (1987). Hilary of Poitiers, Tractatus super psalmos, ed. J. Doignon & R. Demeulenaere, CCL 61–61B (1997–2009). Historia Augusta, ed. A. Chastagnol (Paris, 1994). Historia Gesii et Isidori, ed. U. Zanetti, ‘L’Homélie arabe sur Gésius et Isidore (cf. BHO 485), AB 109 (1991): 5–71. Historia Monachorum Graeca, ed. A.-J. Festugière, SH 34 (1961). History of the Albanians, trans. C. J. F. Dowsett, The History of the Caucasian Albanians by Movsēs Dasxuranc’i (Oxford, 1961). Homer, Iliad, ed. A. T. Murray & W. F. Wyatt, LCL (1999). Honoratus, Vita Hilarii, ed. S. Cavallin, SC 404 (1995). Hydatius, Chronica, ed. and trans. R. W. Burgess, The Chronicle of Hydatius and the Consularia Constantinopolitana: Two Contemporary Accounts of the Final Years of the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1993).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

Bibliography

223

Inventio Gervasii et Protasii (Pseudo-Ambrose, BHL 3514), ed. M. Abineau, ‘Jean Damascène et l’epistula de inventione Gervasii et Protasii attribuée à Ambroise’, AB 90 (1972): 1–14. Irenaeus, Adversus haereses, ed. A. Rousseau et al., SC 100, 152–3, 210–11, 263–4, 293–4 (1965–82). Isidore of Seville, Historia Gothorum, ed. Th. Mommsen, MGH AA 11 (1894): 268–95; trans. G. Donini & G. B. Ford (Leiden and New York, 1996). Itinerarium Burdigalense, ed. P. Geyer & O. Cuntz, CCL 175 (1965): 1–26. Jerome, De viris inlustribus, ed. E. Richardson, TU 14, 1a, (1896): 1–56. Jerome, Epistulae, ed. I. Hilberg, CSEL 54–6 (1910–18) and J. Divjak, CSEL 88 (1981); trans. H. Wallace, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. Second Series, vol. 6 (Buffalo, NY, 1896). Jerome, In Danielem, ed. F. Glorie, CCL 75A (1964). Jerome, In Ezechielem, ed. F. Glorie, CCL 75 (1964). Jerome, Commentarii in prophetas minores, ed. M. Adriaen, CCL 76–76A (1969–70). Jerome, Vita Hilarionis, ed. A. A. R. Bastiaensen, Vite dei santi, vol. 4 (Milan, 1975). Jerome, Chronicon, ed. R. Helm & U. Treu, GCS 47 (1982). Jerome, Adversus Vigilantium, ed. J.-L. Feiertag, CCL 79C (2005), trans. W. H. Fremantle et al., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 6 (Buffalo, NY, 1893). John Chrysostom, In Babylam, ed. B. Grillet & J.-N. Guinot, SC 362 (1990). John Chrysostom, De Lazaro concio secunda, PG 48:982–92. John Chrysostom, In ascensionem, PG 50:441–52. John Chrysostom, De sancta Droside, PG 50:683–94. John Chrysostom, De sancto Meletio, PG 50:515–20. John Chrysostom, Homilia dicta postquam, PG 63:467–72. John Chrysostom, Homiliae de statuis, PG 49:15–222. John Chrysostom, In II Epistulam ad Corinthios, PG 61:381–610. John Chrysostom, In Matthaeum homiliae, PG 57:13–472. John Chrysostom, In sanctum Iulianum, PG 50:665–76. John Chrysostom, In sanctum Phocam, PG 50:699–706. John Chrysostom, Laudatio martyrum Aegyptiorum, PG 50:693–8. John Chrystostom, De sanctis Berenice et Prosdoce, PG 50:629–40. John Chrystoston, De sanctis Iuventino et Maximino, PG 50:571–8; trans. W. Mayer, The Cult of the Saints: St. John Chrysostom (New York, 2006). John of Damascus, De haeresibus, ed. P. B. Kotter, Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos, vol. 4 (Berlin, 1981): 19–67. John of Ephesus, Vitae sanctorum orientalium, PO 17 (1923). John Rufus, Vita Petri Iberi, ed. R. Raabe (Leipzig, 1895), trans. C. B. Horn & R. R. Phenix, John Rufus: The Lives of Peter the Iberian, Theodosius of Jerusalem, and the Monk Romanus (Atlanta, GA, 2006). Julian, Emperor, Laudatio Constantii, ed. W. C. Wright, LCL 13 (1913): 1–128. Julian, Emperor, Misopogon, ed. W. C. Wright, LCL (1913): 417–512. Julian, Emperor, Contra Galileos, ed. W. C. Wright, LCL (1923): 313–428. Julian, Emperor, Epistulae, ed. W. C. Wright, LCL (1923): 313–428. Julian of Eclanum, Tractatus in prophetas Osee, Iohel et Amos, ed. L. De Coninck, CCL 88 (1977): 115–329.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

224

Bibliography

Łazar Parpetsi, History of Armenia, trans. R. W. Thomson, The History of Łazar P‘arpec‘i (Atlanta, GA, 1991). Lex Frisonum, ed. K. A. & A. Eckhardt, MGH Fontes Iuris 12 (1982): 30–103. Liber de miraculis s. Stephani, ed. J. Meyers et al., Les Miracles de Saint Étienne: recherches sur le recueil pseudo-augustinien (BHL 7860–1) (Turnhout, 2006). Liber Pontificalis: Texte, introduction et commentaire, ed. L. Duchesne (Paris, 1886–92). Lucian, Philopseudes, ed. A. M. Harmon, LCL (1921): 319–82. Malalas, John, Chronographia, ed. J. Thurn (Berlin and New York, 2000). Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, ed. Th. Mommsen, MGH AA 11 (1894): 60–108. Mark the Deacon, Vita Porphyrii, ed. A. Lampadaridi, La Conversion de Gaza au christianisme. La Vie de S. Porphyre par Marc le Diacre (BHG 1570), SH 95 (2016). Martyrdom of Sharbel, ed. P. Bedjan, Acta martyrum et sanctorum Syriace, vol. 5 (Paris and Leipzig, 1895): 573–615; trans. B. P. Pratten, Syriac Documents Attributed to the First Three Centuries (Edinburgh, 1871). Martyrdom of the Ten Martyrs of Beth Garmai, ed. P. Bedjan, Acta martyrum et sanctorum Syriace, vol. 4 (Paris and Leipzig, 1894): 184–8. Martyrologium Hieronymianum, ed. G. B. De Rossi & L. Duchesne, AASS Novembris II (Brussels, 1894). Martyrologium Syriacum, ed. F. Nau, Martyrologes et ménologes orientaux, I–XIII. Un Martyrologe et douze ménologes syriaques, PO 10.1 [46] (1912). Maximus of Turin, Sermones, ed. A. Mutzenbecher, CCL 23 (1962). Michael the Syrian, Chronica, ed. J.-B. Chabot, vol. 1–4 (Paris, 1899–1910). Miracula Cosmae et Damiani, ed. L. Deubner (Leipzig and Berlin, 1907): 97–206. Miracula s. Artemii, ed. Papadopoulos-Keramaeus, The Miracles of Saint Arthemios, ed. V. S. Crisafulli and J. Nesbitt (Leiden, 1997). Miracula S. Demetrii, ed. P. Lemerle, Les Plus Anciens Recueils des miracles de Saint Démétrius et la pénétration des Slaves dans les Balkans, vols 1–2 (Paris, 1979). Miracula Theclae, ed. G. Dagron, Vie et miracles de Sainte Thècle, SH 62 (1978); trans. S. F. Johnson, Miracle Tales from Byzantium (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2012): 1–201. Movsēs Xorenac’i, History of Armenia, trans. R. W. Thomson, Moses Khorenats’i, History of the Armenians (Ann Arbor, MI, 2006). Notitia ecclesiarum Urbis Romae, ed. F. Glorie, CCL 175 (1965): 305–11. Olympiodorus, ed. R. C. Blockley, The Fragmentary Classicising Historians of the Later Roman Empire, vols 1–2 (Liverpool, 1981–3). Optatus, Contra Parmenianum, ed. M. Labrousse SC 412–13 (1995–6); trans. M. J. Edwards: Optatus of Milevis: Against the Donatists, TTH (Liverpool, 1997). Origen, In Leviticum homiliae, ed. W. A. Baehrens, GCS 29 (1920): 280–507. Palladius, Dialogus de vita Iohannis Chrysostomi, ed. A.-M. Malingrey & Ph. Leclercq, Palladios: Dialogue sur la vie de Jean Chrysostome, SC 341–2 (1988). Paphnutios, Stories of the Monks of the Desert, ed. E. A. W. Budge, ‘The Histories of the Monks in the Egyptian Desert by Paphnutius’, Coptic Texts, V: Miscellaneous Coptic Texts (London, 1915): 432–95; trans. T. Vivian, Paphnutius: Histories of the Monks of Upper Egypt and the Life of Onnophrius (Kalamazoo, MI, 1993): 17–141. Passio Acaunensium martyrum, MGH SRM 3 (1896): 20–41.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

Bibliography

225

Passio Isaac et Maximiani, ed. P. Mastandrea, ‘Passioni di martiri donatisti (BHL 4473 e 5271)’, AB 113 (1995); 76–88. Passio Marculi, ed. P. Mastandrea, ‘Passioni di martiri donatisti (BHL 4473 e 5271)’, AB 113 (1995): 65–75. Passio Nicetae Gothi, ed. H. Delehaye, ‘Saints de Thrace et de Mésie’, AB 31 (1912): 209–15. Passio Perpetuae, ed. J. Amat, SC 417 (1996). Passio Polycarpi, ed. P. Hartog, Polycarp’s Epistle to the Philippians and the Martyrdom of Polycarp (Oxford, 2013): 240–71. Passio s. Dometii (BHG 560), ed. J. Van den Gheyn, AB 19 (1900): 285–320. Passio s. Saturnini (BHL 7491), ed. A. Piras (Rome, 2002). Passio s. Sebastiani (BHL 7543), AASS Ianuarii, vol. 2 (Antwerp, 1643), 265–78. Passio s. Sergii Graeca (BHG 1624), ed. Van den Gheyn, I., ‘Passio antiquior ss. Sergii et Bacchi graece nunc primum edita’, AB 14 (1895): 373–95. Passio s. Sergii Syriaca, ed. P. Bedjan, Acta martyrum et sanctorum Syriace, vol. 3 (Paris, 1892): 283–322. Passio XL martyrum, ed. O. von Gebhardt, Acta martyrum selecta (Berlin, 1903): 171–81. Paulinus of Milan, Vita Ambrosii, ed. A. A. R. Bastiaensen, Vite dei santi, vol. 3 (Milan, 1975). Paulinus of Nola, Carmina, ed. W. Hartel, CSEL 30 (1894): 1–3, 7–329, trans. P. G. Walsh (New York, 1975). Paulinus of Nola, Epistulae, ed. G. Hartel, CSEL 29 (1894) & A. Goldbacher, CSEL 34.1–2 (1895–8). Pausanias, Graeciae descriptio, ed. W. H. S. Jones & R. E. Wycherley, LCL (1918–35). Petronius, Satyricon, ed. W. H. D. Rouse & E. H. Warmington, LCL (1987). Philostorgius, Historia ecclesiastica, ed. J. Bidez & F. Winkelmann, GCS 21 (1981); trans. Ph. R. Amindon (Atlanta, GA, 2007). Philostratus, Vita Apollonii, ed. Ch. P. Jones, LCL (2005). Pilgrim of Piacenza, Itinerarium, ed. P. Geyer, CCL 175 (1965): 129–53; 157–74; trans. A. Stewart, The Epitome of S. Eucherius about Certain Holy Places (circ. A.D. 440) and the Breviary or Short Description of Jerusalem (circ. A.D. 530) (London, 1890). Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historia, ed. L. Ian & C. Mayhoff, Teubner (1892–1909). Pliny the Younger, Epistulae, ed. M. Schuster, Teubner (1958, 3rd edn). Plutarch, Cato Maior, ed. B. Perrin, LCL (1914): 301–84. Plutarch, Lycurgus, ed. B. Perrin, LCL (1914): 203–304. Pontius, Vita Cypriani, ed. A. A. R. Bastiaensen, Vite dei santi, vol. 3 (Milan, 1975). Possidius, Vita Augustini, ed. A. A. R. Bastiaensen, Vite dei santi, vol. 3 (Milan, 1975). Primasius, In Apocalypsin, ed. A. W. Adams CCL (1985). Procopius, Bellum Gothicum, ed. H. B. Dewing, LCL (1919). Procopius, De aedificiis, ed. H. B. Dewing & G. Downey, LCL (1954, rev. edn). Prudentius, Peristephanon, ed. M. P. Cunningham, CCL 126 (1966): 251–389. Ps.-Sabeos, Armenian History, trans. R. Thomson & J. Howard-Johnston, The Armenian History Attributed to Sebeos, TTH (Liverpool, 1999). Quaestiones et responsiones ad orthodoxos (Ps.-Justin), PG 6:1249–400. Registri ecclesiae Carthaginensis excerpta, ed. C. Munier, CCL 149 (1974): 182–232.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

226

Bibliography

Revelatio sancti Stephani, ed. S. Vanderlinden, REByz 4 (1946): 190–217. Rufinus, Historia ecclesiastica, ed. Th. Mommsen, GCS 9.2 (1908): 957–1040. Rufinus, Historia monachorum, ed. E. Schulz-Flügel (Berlin, 1990). Sallust, De coniuratione Catilinae, ed. A. Kurfess, Teubner (1957), 2–52. Sallust, De bello Iugurthino, ed. A. Kurfess, Teubner (1957), 53–147. Seneca, Epistulae morales ad Lucillum, ed. O. Hense, Teubner (1938), 1–613. Sermo in s. Thomam Apostolum (Pseudo-John Chrysostom), PG 59:497–500. Servius, In Aeneidos librorum I–XII Commentarii, ed. G. Thilo & H. Hagen, Teubner (1881–4). Severus of Antioch, Epistulae, ed. E. W. Brooks, PO 12, 14 (1919–20). Severus of Minorca, Epistula, ed. S. Bradbury, OECT (1996). Shenoute, Those Who Work Evil, ed. E. Amélineau, Œuvres de Schenoudi, texte copte et traduction française, vol. 1 (Paris, 1907): 212–21. Sidonius Apollinaris, Epistulae, ed. Chr. Lütjohann, MGH AA 8 (1887): 1–172. Socrates, Historia ecclesiastica, ed. G. C. Hansen & M. Sirinian, GCS NF 1 (1995). Sophronius, Miracula Cyri et Iohannis, ed. N. F. Marcos, Los Thaumata de Sofronio. Contribucion al estudio de la incubatio cristiana (Madrid, 1975). Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica, ed. J. Bidez & G. C. Hansen, GCS NF 4 (1995, 2nd edn). Statuta ecclesiae antiqua, C. Munier, CCL 148 (1963): 164–85. Suetonius, De vita Caesarum, ed. M. Ihm, Teubner (1908). Sulpicius Severus, Vita Martini, ed. J. Fontaine, SC 133–5 (1969). Sulpicius Severus, Chronica, ed. G. de Senneville-Grave, SC 441 (1999). Sulpicius Severus, Dialogi, ed. J. Fontaine, SC 510 (2006). Synodus Autissiodorensis a. 561–605, ed. C. de Clercq, CCL 148A (1963), 265–72. Tacitus, Germania, ed. A. Önnerfors, Teubner (1983). Tertullian, Apologeticum, ed. E. Dekkers, CCL 1 (1954): 85–171. Tertullian, De anima, ed. J. H. Waszink, CCL 2 (1954): 781–869. Testamentum XL Martyrum, ed. A. P. Orban, in Atti e passioni dei martiri, ed. A. A. R. Bastiaensen (Milan, 1987): 339–51. Theodore Lector, Historia ecclesiastica, ed. G. C. Hansen, GCS NF 3 (2nd, edn 1995). Theodoret, Epistulae, ed. Y. Azéma, SC 40, 98, 111 (1955–65). Theodoret, Graecorum affectionum curatio, ed. P. Canivet, SC 57 (1958). Theodoret, Historia religiosa, ed. P. Canivet & A. Leroy-Molinghen, SC 234, 257 (1977–9). Theodoret, Historia ecclesiastica, ed. L. Parmentier, F. Scheidweiler, & G. C. Hansen, GCS NF 5 (1998). Theophanes, Chronographia, ed. C. de Boor (Leipzig, 1883). Theophylact Simocatta, Historiae, ed. C. de Boor & P. Wirth, Teubner (1887). Uranius, De obitu Paulini, PL 53.859–66. Vergilius, Aeneid, ed. O. Ribbeck, Teubner (1895): 211–835. Victor of Tunnuna, Chronica, ed. Th. Mommsen, MGH AA 11 (1894): 184–206. Victricius, De laude sanctorum, ed. R. Demeulenaere, CCL 64 (1985): 69–93. Vigilius of Trent, Epistulae, ed. L. F. Pizzolato, Studi su Vigilio di Trento (Milan, 2002): 141–214. Vita Cornelii (BHG 370z), ed. F. Halkin, ‘Un Abrégé de la Vie disparue de Corneille le Centurion’, RSBN 11 (1964): 31–9.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

Bibliography

227

Vita Danielis, ed. H. Delehaye, Les Saints stylites, SH 14 (1923): 1–147. Vita Marcelli Acoemeti (BHG 1027z), ed. G. Dagron, ‘La Vie ancienne de Saint Marcel l’Acémète’, AB 86 (1968): 271–321. Vita Maruthae (Armenian), ed. and trans. R. Marcus, ‘The Armenian Life of Marutha of Maipherkat’, HThR 25 (1932): 47–71. Vita Maruthae (BHG 2265), ed. J. Noret, ‘La Vie grecque ancienne de S. Marutha de Mayferqat’, AB 91 (1973): 77–103. Vita Pachomii G1, ed. F. Halkin, Sancti Pachomii Vitae Graecae, SH 19 (1932). Vita patrum Jurensium, ed. F. Martine, SC 142 (1968). Vita Rabbulae, ed. J. J. Overbeck & H. Takahashi, S. Ephraemi Syri, Rabulae episcopi Edesseni, Balaei, aliorumque opera selecta (Piscataway, NJ, 2007): 157–248; trans. R. R. Phenix & C. B. Horn: The Rabbula Corpus, comprising the Life of Rabbula, his Correspondence, a Homily Delivered in Constantinople, Canons, and Hymns (Atlanta, GA, 2017). Vita Symeonis Stylitae Iunioris, ed. P. Van Den Ven, La Vie ancienne de S. Syméon Stylite le Jeune (521–592), SH 32, vols 1–2 (1962–70). Vita Syriaca Symeonis Stylitae, ed. P. Bedjan, Acta martyrum et sanctorum, vol. 4 (Paris and Leipzig, 1894): 507–644. Vita Theodori Syceotae (BHG 1748), ed. A. J. Festugière, SH 48 (1970). Zosimus, Historia nova, ed. F. Paschoud, Belles Lettres (Paris, 1971–89). Secondary sources Adams, G. W., ‘The Social and Cultural Implications of Curse Tablets (defixiones) in Britain and on the Continent’, Studia Humaniora Tartuensia 7 A 5 (2006): . Amélineau, E., Œuvres de Schenoudi, texte copte et traduction française (Paris, 1907). Ament, H., ‘Tombes privilégiées en Rhénanie mérovingienne’, in L’Inhumation privilégiée du IVe au VIIIe siècle en Occident (Paris, 1986): 43–5. Ando, C., The Matter of the Gods: Religion and the Roman Empire (Berkeley, CA, 2008). Angenendt, A., Heilige und Reliquien: die Geschichte ihres Kultes vom frühen Christentum bis zur Gegenwart (Munich, 1994). Aydin, A., Reliquaries of the Sarcophagus Type (Antalya, 2011). Bagatti, B., ‘Eulogie Palestini’, Orientalia Cristiana Periodica 15 (1949): 129–66. Bagnoli M. et al. (eds). Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe (London, 2010). Bailey, L. K., Religious Worlds of the Laity in Late Antique Gaul (London and New York, 2016). Bakirtzis, Ch., ‘Pilgrimage to Thessalonike: The Tomb of St Demetrios’, DOP 56 (2002): 175–92. Barnard, L.W., ‘The Authenticity of Athenagoras’ de Resurrectione’, Studia Patristica 15 (1984): 39–49. Barnes, T. D., ‘The Beginning of Donatism’, JThS 26 (1975): 13–20. Barnes, T. D., Early Christian Hagiography and Roman History (Tübingen, 2010). Bartlett, R., Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation (Princeton, NJ, 2013).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

228

Bibliography

Basanoff, V., Evocatio: étude d’un rituel militaire romain (Paris, 1947). Bastiaensen, A. A. R., ‘Ecclesia martyrum: quelques observations sur le témoignage des anciens textes liturgiques’, in Martyrium in Multidisciplinary Perspective, ed. L. Reekmans (Leuven, 1995): 333–49. Beaujard, B., Le Culte des saints en Gaule: les premiers temps, d’Hilaire de Poitiers à la fin du VIe siècle (Paris, 2000). Berger, A., ‘Die Reliquien der heiligen Euphemia und ihre erste Translation nach Konstantinopel’, Hellenica 39 (1988): 311–22. Bernardi, J., La Prédication des Pères Cappadociens: le prédicateur et son auditoire (Paris, 1968). Berthier, A., Les Vestiges du christianisme antique dans la Numidie centrale (Alger, 1943). Birch, D., Pilgrimage to Rome in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 1998). Bitton-Ashkelony, B., Encountering the Sacred: The Debate on Christian Pilgrimage in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, CA, 2005). Borg B. E., ‘The Dead as a Guest at Table? Continuity and Change in the Egyptian Cult of the Dead’, in Portraits and Masks, ed. M. L. Bierbrier (London, 1997). Borg, B. E., Crisis and Ambition: Tombs and Burial Customs in Third-Century CE Rome (Oxford, 2013). Boustan, R., ‘Jewish Veneration of the “Special Dead” in Late Antiquity and Beyond’, in Saints and Sacred Matter, ed. C. Hahn & H. Klein (Washington DC, 2015), 61–81. Bovon, F., ‘The Dossier on Stephen, the First Martyr’, HThR 96 (2003): 279–315. Bowersock, G. W., ‘The East–West Orientation of Mediterranean Studies and the Meaning of North and South in Antiquity’, in Rethinking the Mediterranean. Papers from a Conference Organized by the Columbia University Center for the Ancient Mediterranean, ed. W.V. Harris (Oxford and New York 2005): 167–78. Bowes, K., Private Worship, Public Values, and Religious Change in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2008). Brakke, D., ‘The Problematization of Nocturnal Emissions in Early Christian Syria, Egypt, and Gaul’, JECS 3 (1995): 419–60. Brakke, D., ‘Outside the Places, within the Truth: Athanasius of Alexandria and the Localization of the Holy’, in Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt, ed. D. Frankfurter (Leiden, 1998): 445–81. Brandenburg, H., ‘Esculapio e s. Bartolomeo sull’isola Tiberina’, in Salute e guarigione nella tarda antichità. Atti della giornata tematica dei seminari di Archeologia Cristiana, ed. H. Brandenburg, S. Heid, & Ch. Markschies (Vatican City, 2007): 13–51. Brennan, B. R., ‘Dating Athanasius’ Vita Antonii’, VCh 30 (1976): 52–4. Brennecke, H. Ch., Hilarius von Poitiers und die Bischofsopposition gegen Konstantius II (Berlin, 1984). Brown, A., ‘Perceptions of Relics: Civic Religion in Late Medieval Bruges’, in Images of Medieval Sanctity. Essays in Honour of Gary Dickson, ed. D. Strickland (Leiden, 2007): 185–205. Brown, P., ‘Eastern and Western Christendom in Late Antiquity: A Parting of the Ways’, in The Orthodox Churches and the West, Studies in Church History 13, ed. D. Baker (Oxford, 1976): 1–24.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

Bibliography

229

Brown, P., The Cult of the Saints. Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago, 1981). Brown, P., Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity. Towards a Christian Empire (Madison, WI, 1992). Burgess, R., ‘The Passio Artemii, Philostorgius, and the Dates of the Invention and Translations of the Relics of Sts Andrew and Luke’, AB 121 (2003): 5–36. Burgess, R., ‘The Chronograph of 354: Its Manuscripts, Contents, and History’, JLA 5 (2012): 345–96. Burkart, L., Das Blut der Märtyrer: Genese, Bedeutung und Funktion mittelalterlicher Schätze (Cologne, 2009). Buschhausen, H., Die spätrömischen Metallscrinia und frühchristlichen Reliquiare (Vienna, 1971). Bynum, C. W., The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 (New York, 1995). Bynum, C. W. & Gerson P., ‘Body-Part Reliquaries and Body Parts in the Middle Ages’, Gesta 36 (1997): 3–7. Cameron, Al., Claudian: Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius (Oxford, 1970). Cameron, Av., ‘Cult and Worship in the East and West’, in The Transformation of the Roman World AD 400–900 (Berkeley, CA, 1997): 96–110. Campenhausen, H. von, Bearbeitungen und Interpolationen des Polykarpmartyriums (Heidelberg, 1957). Candemir, H. & Wagner, J., ‘Christliche Mosaiken in der nördlichen Euphratesia’, in Studien zur Religion und Kultur Kleinasiens. Festschrift für Friedrich Karl Dörner zum 65. Geburtstag (Leiden, 1978): 193–231. Canivet, M. T., ‘Le Reliquaire de la grande église de Huarte (Syrie)’, Syria 55 (1978): 153–62. Carleton Paget, J., ‘Miracles in Early Christianity’, in The Cambridge Companion to Miracles, ed. G. H. Welftree (Cambridge, 2011): 131–48. Chadwick, H. ‘St. Peter and St. Paul in Rome: The Problem of the Memoria Apostolorum Ad Catacumbas’, JThS 8 (1957), 31–52. Champeaux, J., ‘Sors oraculi: les oracles en Italie sous la République et l’Empire’, MEFRA 102 (1990): 271–302. Chaniotis, A., ‘Under the Watchful Eyes of the Gods: Divine Justice in Hellenistic and Roman Asia Minor’, in The Greco-Roman East: Politics, Culture, Society, ed. S. Colvin (Cambridge, 2007) 1–43. Clark, G., ‘Praising the Saints’, Introduction, JECS 7 (1999): 365–76. Clark, G., ‘Translating Relics: Victricius of Rouen and the Fourth-Century Debate’, EME 10 (2001): 161–76. Combès, G., Introduction, in St Augustin: les soins dûs aux morts, Bibliothèque Augustinienne 2 (Paris, 1948): 457–60. Comte, M. C., Les Reliquaires du Proche-Orient et de Chypre à la période protobyzantine (IVe –VIIIe siècles): formes, emplacements, fonctions et cultes (Turnhout, 2012). Coopens, J., L’Imposition des mains et les rites connexes dans le Nouveau Testament et dans l’Église ancienne (Paris, 1925).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

230

Bibliography

Cooper, C., ‘The Martyr, the Matrona and the Bishop: The Matron Lucina and the Politics of Martyr Cult in Fifth- and Sixth-Century Rome’, EME 8 (1999): 297–317. Cotter, W., Miracles in Graeco-Roman Antiquity: A Sourcebook for the Study of New Testament Miracle Stories (London, 1999). Courcelle, P., ‘Sur quelques textes littéraires relatifs aux grandes invasions’, RBA 31 (1953): 23–47. Courcelle, P., Histoire littéraire des grandes invasions germaniques (Paris, 1964, 3rd edn). Cracco Ruggini, L., ‘Elagabalo, Costantino e i culti “syriaci” ’, Historiae Augustae Colloquium Parisinum, ed. G. Bonamente & N. Duval (Macerata, 1991): 123–46. Cronnier, E., Les Inventions de reliques dans l’Empire romain d’Orient (IVe–VIe s.) (Turnhout, 2016). Crook, J., The Architectural Setting of the Cult of Saints in the Early Christian West, c.300–1200 (Oxford, 2000). Csepregi, I., ‘Theological Self-Definition in Byzantine Miraculous Healing’, in Promoting the Saints. Cults and their Contexts from Late Antiquity until the Early Modern Period, ed. O. Gecser et al. (Budapest, 2011): 17–30. Dagron, G., ‘Les Moines et la ville: le monachisme à Constantinople jusqu’au concile de Chalcédoine (451)’, Travaux et mémoires du Centre de Recherche d’Histoire et Civilisation Byzantines 4 (1970): 229–76. Dagron, G., Naissance d’une capitale: Constantinople et ses institutions de 330 à 451 (Paris, 1974). Dal Santo, M., Debating the Saints’ Cults in the Age of Gregory the Great (Oxford, 2012). D’Andria, F., ‘The Sanctuary of St Philip in Hierapolis and the Tombs of Saints in Anatolian Cities’, in Life and Death in Asia Minor in Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine Times, ed. J. R. Brandt et al. (Oxford and Philadelphia, PA, 2017): 3–18. Daunton-Fear, A., Healing in the Early Church: The Church’s Ministry of Healing and Exorcism from the First to the Fifth Century (Milton Keynes, 2009). Dauphin, C., ‘From Apollo and Asclepius to Christ: Pilgrimage and Healing at the Temple and Episcopal Basilica of Dor’, Liber Annuus 49 (1999): 397–430. Davies, J., Death, Burial and Rebirth in the Religions of Antiquity (London and New York, 1999). Davies, P. J. E., Death and the Emperor: Roman Imperial Funerary Monuments from Augustus to Marcus Aurelius (Cambridge, 2000). Davis, S. J., The Cult of St Thecla: A Tradition of Women’s Piety in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2001). Dehandschutter, B., ‘The Martyrium Polycarpi: A Century of Research’, Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt 2.27.1 (1993): 485–522. Delattre, A., ‘Textes coptes et grecques d’Antinoé’, in Antinoopolis I, ed. R. Pintaudi (Florence, 2008): 131–62. Delattre, A., ‘L’Oracle de Kollouthos à Antinoé. Nouvelles perspectives’, in Oracoli, visioni, profezie. L’Egitto da Alessandro il Grande all’Alto Medioevo = Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni 79/1 (2013): 123–33. Delehaye, H., Les Origines du culte des martyrs (Brussels, 1933, 2nd edn).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

Bibliography

231

Demolon, P., ‘Les Sepultures privilégiées mérovingiennes dans la France septentrionale’, in L’Inhumation privilégiée (Paris, 1986): 57–61. Déroche, V., ‘La Polémique anti-judaïque au VIe et au VIIe siècle: un memento inédit, les Képhalaia’, Travaux et mémoires du Centre de Recherche d’Histoire et Civilisation Byzantines 11 (1991), 275–311. Déroche, V., ‘L’Apologie contre les Juifs de Léontios de Néapolis’, Travaux et mémoires du Centre de Recherche d’Histoire et Civilisation Byzantines 12 (1993), 45–104. de Veer, A. C., ‘Le Rôle de Lucilla dans l’origine du schisme africain’, in Bibliothèque augustinienne. Œuvres de saint Augustin 31 (Paris, 1968): 799–802. De Visscher, F., Les Droits des tombeaux romains (Milan, 1963). Diedrichs, Ch. L., Vom Glauben zum Sehen: die Sichtbarkeit der Reliquie im Reliquiare. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Sehens (Berlin, 2001). Dodds, E. R., ‘Theurgy and its Relation to Neoplatonism’, JRS 37 (1947): 59–65. Dölger, F.-J., ‘Das Kultvergehen der Donatistin Lucilla von Karthago. Reliquienkuss vor dem Kuss der Eucharistie’, in Dölger, Antike und Christentum, vol. 3 (Münster, 1932): 245–52. Donkow I. & Wypustek A., ‘Christians and the Plague in the 2nd Century Asia Minor’, Palamedes 1 (2006): 123–32. Downey, R. E. G., ‘References to Inscriptions in the Chronicle of Malalas’, TAPA 66 (1935): 55–72. Drijvers, J. W., Helena Augusta: The Mother of Constantine the Great and the Legend of her Finding of the True Cross (Leiden, 1992). Drijvers, J. W., Cyril of Jerusalem: Bishop and City (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2004). Drijvers, J. W., ‘Helena Augusta, the Cross and the Myth: Some New Reflections’, Millennium 8 (2011): 125–74. Duffy, J. & Vikan, G., ‘A Small Box in John Moschus’, GRBS 24 (1983): 93–9. Dulaey, M., Le Rêve dans la vie et la pensée de saint Augustin (Paris, 1973). Dulière, W. L., ‘Protection permanente contre des animaux nuisibles assurée par Apollonios de Tyane dans Byzance et Antioche: évolution de son mythe’, ByzZ 63 (1970): 247–77. Dunand, F., ‘Between Tradition and Innovation: Egyptian Funerary Practices in Late Antiquity’, in Egypt in the Byzantine World 300–700, ed. R. Bagnall (Cambridge, 2007): 163–84. Dunant, Ch. & Pouilloux, J., Recherches sur l’histoire et les cultes de Thasos, vol. 2: De 196 av. J.-C. jusqu’à la fin de l’antiquité (Paris, 1958). Duval, N’. ‘ “L’Inhumation privilégiée” en Tunisie et en Tripolitanie’, in L’Inhumation privilégiée (Paris, 1986), 25–56. Duval, N., ‘L’Afrique vandale et Byzantine: Actes du Colloque de Tunis tenu en octobre 2000 et de la Table Ronde sur l’Afrique byzantine’, AntTard 10 (2002): 23–60. Duval, N., ‘L’Autel paléochrétien: les progrès depuis le livre de Braun (1924) et les questions à resoudre’, Hortus Artium Medievalium 11 (2005): 7–18. Duval, Y., Loca sanctorum Africae: le culte des martyrs en Afrique du IVe au VIIe siècle, vols 1–2 (Paris, 1982). Duval, Y., Auprès des saints: corps et âme (Paris, 1988).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

232

Bibliography

Duval,Y.-M., ‘Aquilée et la Palestine entre 370 et 420’, Antiquità altoadriatiche 12 (1977): 263–322. Duval, Y.-M., ‘Les Aurea fulmina des Alpes Juliennes: le rôle des statues divines dans les lieux stratégiques, Aug. Civ. Dei 5.26’, in Westillyricum und Nordostitalien in der spätrömischen Zeit (Ljubljana, 1996): 95–108. Duval, Y.-M., L’Affaire Jovinien: d’une crise de la société romaine à une crise de la pensée chrétienne à la fin du IVe et au début du Ve siècle (Rome, 2003). Dzielska, M., Apollonius of Tyana in Legend and History (Rome, 1986). Eastman, D., Paul the Martyr: The Cult of the Apostle in the Latin West (Atlanta, GA, 2011). Edelstein, E.-J. & L., Asclepius: Collection and Interpretation of the Testimonies (Baltimore, MD, 1945). Effros, B., Caring for Body and Soul: Burial and the Afterlife in the Merovingian World (University Park, PA, 2002). Efthymiadis, S., ‘Greek Byzantine Collections of Miracles: A Chronological and Bibliographical Survey’, Symbolae Osloenses 74 (1999): 195–211. Egner, A., Reliquien in Kunst und Kult zwischen Antike und Aufklärung (Darmstadt, 1995): 11–15. Elsner, J., ‘Replicating Palestine and Reversing the Reformation. Pilgrimage and Collecting at Bobbio, Monza and Walsingham’, Journal of the History of the Collections 9 (1997): 117–30. Elsner, J., ‘Decorative Imperatives between Concealment and Display: The Form of Sarcophagi’, Res. Anthropology and Aesthetics 61/2 (2012): 178–95. Elsner, J., ‘Closure and Penetration: Reflections on the Pola Casket’, AAAH 26 (2013): 183–227. Elsner, J., ‘Relic, Icon and Architecture: The Material Articulation of the Holy in East Christian Art’, in Saints and Sacred Matter: The Cult of Relics in Byzantium and Beyond, ed. C. Hahn & H. Klein (Washington DC, 2015): 13–40. Faraone, Ch. A., ‘Binding and Burying the Forces of Evil: The Defensive Use of “Voodoo Dolls” in Ancient Greece’, ClAnt 10 (1991): 165–205 and 207–20. Faraone, Ch. A., Talismans and Trojan Horses: Guardian Statues in Ancient Greek Myth and Ritual (New York and Oxford, 1992). Feissel, D., ‘Fabius Titianus, proconsul d’Asie sous Constantin, et les origines du culte de l’Apôtre Jean à Éphèse’, in Epigrafia e ordine senatorio 30 anni dopo, ed. M. L. Caldelli & G. L. Gregori (Rome, 2014): 159–66. Février, P.-A., ‘Tombes privilégiées en Maurétanie et Numidie’, in L’Inhumation privilégiée (Paris, 1986): 13–23. Finn, R., Almsgiving in the Later Roman Empire: Christian Promotion in Practice 313–450 (Oxford, 2006). Flint, V., ‘The Demonisation of Magic and Sorcery in Late Antiquity: Christian Redefinitions of Pagan Religions’, in Witchcraft and Magic in Europe. Ancient Greece and Rome, ed. V. Flint et al. (London, 1999) 277–348. Flusin, B., Miracles et histoire dans l’œuvre de Cyrille de Scythopolis (Paris, 1983). Fontaine, J., ‘Démons et sibylles: la peinture des possédés dans la poésie de Prudence’, in Hommage à Jean Bayet (Brussels, 1964): 196–213.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

Bibliography

233

Foskolou, V., ‘Blessing for Sale? On the Production and Distribution of Pilgrim Mementoes in Byzantium’, ByzZ 105 (2012): 53–84. Fowden, E. K., The Barbarian Plain. Saint Sergius between Rome and Iran (Berkeley, CA, 1999). Frank, G., The Memory of the Eyes: Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian Late Antiquity (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2000). Frankfurter, D., ‘Voices, Books, and Dreams: The Diversification of Divination Media in Late Antique Egypt’, in Mantikê. Studies in Ancient Divination, ed. S. Iles Johnston & P. Struck (Leiden, 2005): 233–54. Frolow, A., La Relique de la Vraie Croix: recherches sur le développement d’un culte (Paris, 1961). Garitte, G., ‘L’Inventio géorgienne des trois enfants de Babylone’, Le Muséon 72 (1959): 69–100. Garitte, G., ‘Le Texte arménien de l’invention des trois enfants de Babylone’, Muséon 74 (1961): 91–108. Garland, R., The Greek Way of Death (London, 1985). Gascou, J., ‘Les Origines du culte de saints Cyr et Jean’, AB 125 (2007): 241–81. Gauge, V., ‘Les Routes d’Orose et les reliques d’Étienne’, AnTard 6 (1998): 265–86. Gauthier, N. (ed.), Topographie chrétienne des cités da la Gaule des origines au milieu du VIIIe siècle, vol. 1, Province ecclésiastique de Trêves (Paris, 1986). Geary, P. J., Furta Sacra: Theft of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ, 1978). Gem, R., ‘From Constantine to Constans: The Chronology of the Construction of St Peter’s Basilica’, in Old Saint Peter’s, Rome, ed. R. McKitterick, J. Osborne, C. M, Richardson, and J. Story (Cambridge, 2013). Ghilardi, M., ‘Le catacombe di Roma tra la tarda antichità e l’alto medioevo’, Augustinianum 42 (2002): 205–36. Gillet, A., ‘The Date and Circumstances of Olympiodorus of Thebes’, Traditio 48 (1993): 1–29. Godding, R., Joassart, B., Lequeux, X., De Vriendt, F., & Van der Straeten, J., Bollandistes, saints et légendes: quatre siècles de recherche hagiographique (Brussels, 2007). Gordon, R., ‘Raising a Sceptre: Confession-Narratives from Lydia and Phrygia’, JRA 17 (2004): 177–96. Grabar, A., Martyrium: recherches sur le culte des reliques dans l’art chrétien antique (Paris, 1943–6). Graf, F., ‘Dangerous Dreaming: The Christian Transformation of Dream Incubation’, ARG 15 (2013): 117–42. Green, C. M. C., Roman Religion and the Cult of Diana at Aricia (Cambridge, 2007). Grig, L., ‘Torture and Truth in Late Antique Martyrology’, EME 11 (2002): 321–36. Grig, L., Making Martyrs in Late Antiquity (London, 2004). Grossmann, P., ‘Late Antique Christian Incubation Centres in Egypt’, in Salute e guarigione nella Tarda Antiquità. Atti della giornata tematica dei seminari di Archeologia Cristiana (Roma–20 maggio 2004), ed. H. Brandenburg, S. Heid, & Ch. Markschies (Vatican City, 2007): 125–40. Guttilla, S., ‘Paolino e i barbari nei Natalicia’, Koinonia 13 (1989): 5–29.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

234

Bibliography

Guyon, J., Le Cimetière aux deux lauriers: recherches sur les catacombes romaines (Rome, 1987). Haan, J. & Koehler P. J., ‘Traces of Hysteria in Novels’, in Hysteria: The Rise of an Enigma, ed. J. Bogousslavsky (Basle, 2014): 99–108. Haensch, R., ‘Le Financement de la construction des églises pendant l’Antiquité Tardive’, AnTard 14 (2006): 47–58. Hachlili, R., Jewish Funerary Customs, Practices and Rites in the Second Temple Period (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2005). Hahn, C., ‘Metaphor and Meaning in Early Medieval Reliquaries’, in Seeing the Invisible in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. G. De Nie, K. F. Morrison, & M. Mostert (Turnhout, 1997a): 239–63. Hahn, C., ‘The Voices of the Saints: Speaking Reliquaries’, Gesta 36 (1997b): 20–31. Hahn, C., ‘What do Reliquaries do for Relics?’, Numen 57 (2010): 284–316. Harries, J., Law and Empire in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 1999). Hartmann, A., Zwischen Relikt und Reliquie. Objektbezogene Erinnerungspraktiken in antiken Gesellschaften (Berlin, 2010). Heim, F., La Théologie de la victoire de Constantin à Théodose (Paris, 1992). Heinzelmann, M., Translationsberichte und andere Quellen des Reliquienkultes (Turnhout, 1979). Herrmann-Mascard, N., Les Reliques des saints: formation coutumière d’un droit (Paris, 1979). Horden P., ‘The Earliest Hospitals in Byzantium, Western Europe, and Islam’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 35 (2005), 361–89. Huff, D., ‘Archaeological Evidence for Zoroastrian Funerary Practices’, in Zoroastrian Rituals in Context, ed. M. Stausberg (Leiden, 2004): 593–630. Hunt, E. D., ‘The Traffic in Relics: Some Late Roman Evidence’, in The Byzantine Saint: University of Birmingham Fourteenth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, ed. S. Hackel (London, 1981): 171–80. Hunter, D. G., ‘Vigilantius of Calagurris and Victricius of Rouen: Ascetics, Relics, and Clerics in Late Roman Gaul’, JECS 7 (1999): 401–30. Hunter, D. G., Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity: The Jovinianist Controversy (Oxford, 2007). Huskinson, J., ‘Picturing the Roman Family’, in A Companion to Families in the Greek and Roman Worlds, ed. B. Rawson (Chichester, 2011): 521–41. L’Inhumation privilégiée du IVe au VIIIe siècle en Occident. Actes du colloque tenu à Créteil (Université de Paris–Val-de-Marne) les 16–18 mars 1984, ed. Y. Duval & J.-Ch. Picard (Paris, 1986). Isaac, B., The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity (Princeton, NJ, 2006). Iwaszkiewicz-Wronikowska, B., ‘Cancelli, czyli najstarsze przykłady wyznaczania granic świętości w chrześcijańskich miejscach kultu’ [‘Cancelli: The Earliest Examples of Deliminating Sacred Space in Christian Cult Places’], in Granice świętości w świecie starożytnym i późnoantycznym, ed. B. Iwaszkiewicz-Wronikowska & A. Głowa (Lublin, 2013): 123–47. Jastrzębowska, E., Untersuchungen zum christlichen Totenmahl aufgrund der Monumente des 3. und 4. Jahrhunderts unter der Basilika des Hl. Sebastian in Rom (Frankfurt, 1981).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

Bibliography

235

Jastrzębowska, E. & Heydash-Lehmann, S., ‘Reliquiar’, in Realliexikon für Antike und Christentum (Stuttgart, 2018): 1140–72. Jeličić-Radonić, J., ‘Liturgical Installations in the Roman Province of Dalmatia’, Hortus Artium Medievalium 5 (1999): 133–45. Jensen, R. M., Living Water: Images, Symbols, and Settings of Early Christian Baptism (Leiden, 2011). Jensen, R. M., ‘Visuality’, in The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Mediterranean Religions, ed. B. S. Spaeth (Cambridge, 2013): 309–43. Jensen, R. M., ‘Saints’ Relics and the Consecration of Church Buildings in Rome’, Studia Patristica 71 (2014), 153–69. Jordan, D., ‘New Archaeological Evidence for the Practice of Magic in Classical Athens’, in Praktika tou xii diethnous synedriou klasikes archaiologias, vol. 4 (Athens, 1983–4): 273–7. Kalinowski, A., Frühchristliche Reliquiare im Kontext von Kultstrategien, Heilserwartung und sozialer Selbstdarstellung (Wiesbaden, 2011). Kaplan, M., ‘De la dépouille à la relique: formation du culte des saints à Byzance du Ve au XIIe siècle’, in Les Reliques: objets, cultes, symboles. Actes du Colloque international de l’Université du Littoral-Côte d’Opale (Boulogne-sur-mer), 4–6 Septembre 1997, ed. E. Bozóky and A.-M. Helvétius (Turnhout, 1999): 19–38. Kee, H. C., Miracle in the Early Christian World: A Study in Sociohistorical Method (New Haven, CT, and London, 1983). Kelly, G., ‘Ammianus and the Great Tsunami’, JRS 94 (2004): 141–67. Kelly, J. N. D., Jerome: His Life, Writings, and Controversies (London, 1975). Kitzinger, E., ‘The Cult of Images in the Age before Iconoclasm’, DOP 8 (1954): 83–150. Klein, H. A., ‘Constantine, Helena, and the Cult of the True Cross in Constantinople’, in: Byzance et les reliques du Christ, ed. J. Durand & B. Flusin (Paris, 2004a): 31–59. Klein, H. A., ‘Eastern Objects and Western Desires: Relics and Reliquaries between Byzantium and the West’, DOP 58 (2004b): 283–314. Klijn, A. F. J., The Acts of Thomas: Introduction, Text and Commentary, 2nd edn (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2003). Klingshirn, W., ‘Defining the Sortes Sanctorum: Gibbon, Du Cange and Early Christian Lot Divination’, JECS 10 (2002): 77–130. Kraemer, D., The Meaning of Death in Rabbinic Judaism (London, 2000). Kron, U., ‘Patriotic Heroes’, in Ancient Greek Hero Cult, ed. R. Häg (Stockholm, 1999): 61–83. Lafferty, S., ‘Ad sanctitatem mortuorum: Tomb Raiders, Body Snatchers and Relic Hunters in Late Antiquity’, EME 2014 (22): 249–79. Lange, U., Ikonographisches Register für das Repertorium der christlich-antiken Sarkophage, Bd. 1 (Rom und Ostia) (Dettelbach, 1996). Lavan, L., ‘Political Talismans? Residual “Pagan” Statues in Late Antique Public Space’, in The Archaeology of Late Antique ‘Paganism’, ed. L. Lavan & M. Mulryan (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2011), 439–77. Leemans, J., ‘On the Date of Gregory of Nyssa’s First Homilies on the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste (IA and IB)’, JThS 52 (2001): 93–7.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

236

Bibliography

Lefort, L. Th., ‘La Chasse aux reliques des martyrs en Égypte au IVe siècle’, La Nouvelle Clio 6 (1954): 225–30. Legner, A., Reliquien in Kunst und Kult: zwischen Antike und Aufklärung (Darmstadt, 1995). Lemerle, P., Les Plus Anciens Recueils des miracles de Saint Démétrius et la pénétration des slaves dans les Balkans, vols 1–2 (Paris, 1979–81). Leyerle, B., ‘Pilgrim Eulogiae and Domestic Rituals’, ARG 10 (2008): 223–38. Limberis, V. M., Architects of Piety: The Cappadocian Fathers and the Cult of Martyrs (Oxford, 2011). Lipiński, E., ‘Sozomène II, 4 et le site de Ramat al-Halil’, Palamedes 1 (2006): 55–66. Lizzi, R., ‘Ambrose’s Contemporaries and the Christianization of Northern Italy’, JRS 80 (1990): 156–73. Loseby, S. T., ‘Marseille: A Late Antique Success Story?’ JRS 82 (1992): 165–85. Luijendijk, A.-M., Forbidden Oracles? The Gospel of the Lots of Mary (Tübingen, 2014). Mabert, C. & Demeglio, P. P., ‘Ampolle devozionali ed itinerari di pellerinaggio tra IV e VII secolo’, AnTard 2 (1994): 205–31. McCauley, B., ‘Heroes and Power: The Politics of Bone Transferal’, in Ancient Greek Hero Cult, ed. R. Häg (Stockholm, 1999): 85–98. McCulloh, J., ‘The Cult of Relics in the Letters and “Dialogues’’ of Pope Gregory the Great: A Lexicographical Study’, Traditio 32 (1976): 145–84. McCulloh, J., ‘From Antiquity to the Middle Ages: Continuity and Change in Papal Relic Policy from the 6th to the 8th Century’, in Pietas. Festschrift für Bernhard Kötting, ed. E. Dassmann & K. Suso Frank (Münster, 1980): 313–24. McEvoy, M., ‘The Mausoleum of Honorius: Late Roman Imperial Christianity and the City of Rome in the Fifth Century’, in Old St Peter’s, Rome, ed. R. McKitterick, J. Osborne, C. M. Richardson, & J. Story (Cambridge, 2013: 119–36). McLynn, N., Ambrose of Milan: Church and State in a Christian Capital (Berkeley, CA, 1994). Magness, J., ‘The “Foundation Deposit” from the Dura Europos Synagogue Reconsidered’, in Architecture of the Sacred. Space, Ritual, and Experience from Classical Greece to Byzantium, ed. B. D. Westcoat & R. G. Ousterhout (Cambridge, 2012): 231–44. Majeska, G. P., Russian Travellers to Constantinople in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (Washington DC, 1984). Mango, C., ‘Antique Statuary and the Byzantine Beholder’, DOP 17 (1963): 53–75. Mango, C., ‘The Pilgrimage Centre of St. Michael at Germia’, JÖByz 36 (1986): 117–32. Mango, C., ‘Constantine’s Mausoleum and the Translation of Relics’, ByzZ 83 (1990): 51–62. Mango, C., ‘A Fake Inscription of the Empress Eudocia and Pulcheria’s Relic of Saint Stephen’, Nea Rome 1 (2004): 23–34. Maraval, P., Lieux saints et pèlerinages d’Orient, histoire et géographie: des origines à la conquête arabe (Paris, 1985). Maraval, P., ‘Songes et visions comme mode d’invention des reliques’, Augustinianum 29 (1989): 583–99. Marichal, R., ‘La Date des graffiti de la Triclia de Saint-Sébastien et leur place dans l’histoire de l’écriture latine’, RSR 36 (1962): 111–54.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

Bibliography

237

Markus, R., ‘How on Earth Could Places Become Holy? Origins of the Christian Idea of Holy Places’, JECS 2 (1994): 257–71. Miller, P. C., ‘Differential Networks: Relics and Other Fragments in Late Antiquity’, JECS 6 (1998): 113–38. Miller, P. C., ‘Relics, Rhetoric and Mental Spectacles in Late Ancient Christianity’, in Seeing the Invisible in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Papers from ‘Verbal and Pictorial Imaging: Representing and Accessing Experience of the Invisible, 400–1000’, ed. K. F. Morrison, M. Mostert, & G. de Nie (Turnhout, 2005): 25–52. Miller, P. C., The Corporeal Imagination: Signifying the Holy in Late Ancient Christianity (Philadelphia, PA, 2009). Mintschev, A., Early Christian Reliquaries from Bulgaria (Varna, 2003). Młynarczyk, J. & Burdajewicz, M., ‘The Northwest Church Complex’, in Hippos— Sussita of the Decapolis, ed. A. Segal et al. (Haifa, 2013): 194–217. Modzelewski, K., Barbarian Europe (Frankfurt, 2015). Moliner, M., ‘La Basilique funéraire de la rue Malaval à Marseille (Bouchesdu-Rhône)’, Gallia 63 (2006): 131–6. Narasawa, Y., Les Autels chrétiens du Sud de la Gaule (Ve–XIIe siècles) (Turnhout, 2015). Nardelli, J.-F. & Ratti S., ‘Historia Augusta contra christianos: An Overview of the Anti-Christian Atmosphere in the Historia Augusta’, AntTard 22 (2014): 143–55. Nauroy, G., ‘The Letter Collection of Ambrose of Milan’, in Late Antique Letter Collections: A Critical Introduction and Reference Guide, ed. C. Sogno, B. K. Storin, & E. J. Watts (Oakland, CA, 2017): 146–60. Németh, G., ‘The Corpse Demon Antinoos’, ARG 14 (2013): 145–54. Nock, A. D., ‘Tertullian and the Ahoroi’, VCh 4 (1950): 129–41. Noga-Banai, G., The Trophies of the Martyrs: An Art Historical Study of Early Christian Silver Reliquaries (Oxford, 2008). Noga-Banai G. & Safran L., ‘A Late Antique Silver Reliquary in Toronto’, JLA 4 (2011): 3–30. Nowakowski, P., Facets of the Cult of Saints in Asia Minor: A Corpus of Early Christian Inscriptions (Warsaw, 2018). Ogden, D., Greek and Roman Necromancy (Princeton, NJ, 2001). Orselli, A. M., L’idea e il culto del santo patrono cittadino nella letteratura latina cristiana (Bologna, 1965). Palestra, A., ‘La prima visita pastorale della basilica di s. Nazaro compiuta da S. Carlo Borromeo’, in Basilica degli Apostoli e Nazaro martire nel culto e nell’arte (Milan, 1969): 81–95. Palmer, A.-M., Prudentius on the Martyrs (Oxford, 1989). Papaconstantinou, A., ‘Oracles chrétiens dans l’Égypte byzantine: le témoignage des papyrus’, ZPE 104 (1994): 281–6. Papaconstantinou, A., Le Culte des saints en Egypte: des Byzantins aux Abbassides: l’apport des inscriptions et des papyrus grecs et coptes (Paris, 2001). Papini, L., ‘Domande oracolari: Elenco delle attestazioni in Greco ed in Copto’, APapyrol 4 (1992): 21–7.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

238

Bibliography

Papini, L., ‘Fragments of Sortes Sanctorum from the Shrine of St. Colluthus’, in Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt, ed. D. Frankfurter (Leiden, 1998): 395–401. Paredi, A., ‘Palinus of Milan’, SEJG 14 (1963): 206–30. Payne, R., ‘The Emergence of Martyrs’ Shrines in Late Antique Iran: Conflict, Consensus and Communal Institutions’, in An Age of Saints? Power, Conflict and Dissent in Early Medieval Christianity, ed. Ph. Booth, P. Sarris, & M. J. Dal Santo (Leiden, 2011). Payne Smith, R., Thesaurus Syriacus, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1901). Peers, G., ‘Object Relations: Theorizing the Late Antique Viewer’, in The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity, ed. S. F. Johnson (Oxford, 2012): 971–90. Penn, M. P., Kissing Christians: Ritual and Community in the Late Ancient Church (Philadelphia, PA, 2005). Pentcheva, B. V., Icons and Power: The Mother of God in Byzantium (Philadelphia, PA, 2006). Petkov, K., The Kiss of Peace: Ritual, Self, and Society in the High and Late Medieval West (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2003). Philpott, R. A., Burial Practices in Roman Britain: A Survey of Grave Treatment and Furnishing AD 43–410 (Oxford, 1991): 27–31. Pieri, D. & Bonifay, M., ‘Amphores du Ve au VIIe s. à Marseille: nouvelles données sur la typologie et le contenu’, JRA 8 (1995): 94–120. Pietri, Ch., Roma Christiana: recherches sur l’église de Rome, son organisation, sa politique et son idéologie de Miltiade à Sixte III (311–440) (Rome, 1976). Pietri, Ch., ‘L’Évolution du culte des saints aux premiers siècles chrétiens: du témoin à l’intercesseur’, in Les Fonctions des saints dans le monde occidental (IIIe–XIIIe siècle) (Rome, 1991): 15–36. Popović, I., ‘A New Inscription from Sirmium and the Basilica of St. Anastasia’, Starinar 63 (2013): 101–14. Potthoff, E., The Afterlife in Early Christian Carthage: Near-Death Experiences, Ancestor Cult, and the Archaeology of Paradise (London and New York, 2016). Raby, J., ‘Mehmed the Conqueror and the Equestrian Statue of the Augustaion’, Illinois Classical Studies 12 (1987), 305–13. Rajak, T., ‘The Rabbinic Dead and the Diaspora Dead at Beth She’arim’, in Rajak, The Jewish Dialogue with Greece and Rome: Studies in Cultural and Social Interaction (Boston, MA, and Leiden, 2001): 479–500. Rebillard, É., The Care of the Dead in Late Antiquity (Ithaca, NY, 2009). Renberg, G. H., Where Dreams May Come: Incubation Sanctuaries in the GrecoRoman World (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2016). Richards, J., The Consul of God: Life and Time of Gregory the Great (London, 1980). Roberts, M., Poetry and the Cult of the Martyrs: The Liber Peristephanon of Prudentius (Ann Arbor, MI, 1993). Röckelein, H., Reliquientranslationen nach Sachsen im 9. Jahrhundert. Über Kommunikation, Mobilität und Öffentlichkeit im Frühmittelalter (Stuttgart, 2002). Rohde, E., Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality among the Greeks (London, 1925).

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

Bibliography

239

Sághy, M., ‘Scinditur in partes populus: Pope Damasus and the Martyrs of Rome’, EME 9 (2000): 273–87. Sághy, M., ‘Renovatio Memoriae: Pope Damasus and the Martyrs of Rome’, in Rom in der Spätantike: Historische Erinnerung in städtischen Raum, ed. R. Behrwald and Ch. Witschel (Stuttgart, 2012): 251–67. Saxer, V., Morts, martyrs, reliques en Afrique chrétienne aux premiers siècles: les témoignages de Tertullien, Cyprien et Augustin à la lumière de l’archéologie africaine (Paris, 1980). Schade, K., ‘The Female Body in Late Antiquity: Between Virtue, Taboo and Eroticism’, in Bodies and Boundaries in Graeco-Roman Antiquity, ed. T. Fögen & M. M. Lee (Berlin and New York, 2009): 215–36. Schnabel, E. J., ‘Divine Tyranny and Public Humiliation: A Suggestion for the Interpretation of the Lydian and Phrygian Confession Inscriptions’, NT 45 (2003): 160–88. Schultz, C. E., ‘On the Burial of Unchaste Vestal Virgins’, in Rome, Pollution and Propriety: Dirt, Disease and Hygiene in the Eternal City from Antiquity to Modernity, ed. M. Bradley (Cambridge, 2012): 122–35. Schwertheim, M. E., ‘Eine posthumer Ehrenbeschluss für Apollonis in Kyzikos’, ZPE 29 (1978): 213–28. Selvafolta, O., ‘La figura e l’opera di un artefice nella Milano di fine secolo: Giovanni Lomazzi e l’Urna di S. Ambrogio’, in Studi di storia dell’arte in onore di Maria Luisa Gatti Perer, ed. M. Rossi and A. Rovetta (Milan, 1999), 453–68. Sève, M., ‘Un Décret de consolation à Cyzique’, BCH 103 (1979): 327–59. Shaw, B. D., ‘African Christianity: Disputes, Definitions and “Donatists” ’, in Orthodoxy and Heresy in Religious Movements: Discipline and Dissent, ed. N. R. Greenshields & T. A. Robinson (Lampeter, 1992): 5–34. Simonetti, M., ‘Nota sulla struttura et la cronologia del “De trinitate” di Ilario di Poitiers’, StudUrb 39 (1965): 274–300. Skedros, J. C., Saint Demetrios of Thessaloniki: Civic Patron and Divine Protector 4th–7th Centuries (Harrisburg, PA, 1999). Smith, J. M. H., ‘Women at the Tomb: Access to Relic Shrines in the Early Middle Ages’, in The World of Gregory of Tours, ed. K. Mitchell & I. Wood (Leiden, Boston, MA, and Cologne, 2002): 163–80. Smith, J. M. H., ‘Portable Christianity: Relics in the Medieval West (c.700–1200)’, PBA 181 (2012): 143–67. Smith, J. M. H., ‘Material Christianity in the Early Medieval Household’, in Religion and the Household, ed. J. Doran, Ch. Methuen, & A. Walsham (Woodbridge, 2014): 23–46. Smith, J. M. H., ‘Les Reliques et leurs étiquettes’ and ‘Catalogue des étiquettes’, in L’Abbaye de Saint-Maurice d’Agaune, 515–2015, vol. 2: Le Trésor, ed. P.-A. Mariaux (Saint-Maurice, 2015): 221–31 and 232–57. Sodini, J.-P., ‘Les Tombes privilégiées dans l’Orient chrétien (à l’exception du diocèse d’Égypte)’, in L’Inhumation privilégiée (Paris, 1986): 233–43. Sotinel, C., ‘Les Lieux de culte chrétiens et le sacré dans l’Antiquité tardive’, RHR 222 (2005): 411–34.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

240

Bibliography

Stancliffe, C., St Martin and his Hagiographer: History and Miracles in Sulpicius Severus (Oxford, 1983). Strong, J. S, The Relics of the Buddha (Delhi, 2004). Stroumsa, G., The Scriptural Universe of Ancient Christinianity (Cambridge, MA, 2016). Strubbe J. H. M., ‘Cursed Be He that Moves my Bones’, in, Magika Hiera: Ancient Greek Magic and Religion, ed. C. A. Faraone & D. Obbink (New York, 1991): 33–59. Taylor, J. E., Christians and the Holy Places: The Myth of Jewish-Christian Origins (Oxford, 1993). Thacker, A., ‘Loca Sanctorum: The Significance of Place in the Study of the Saints’, in Local Saints and Local Churches in the Early Medieval West, ed. A. Thacker & R. Sharp (Oxford, 2002): 1–43. Thacker, A., ‘Patrons of Rome: The Cult of Sts Peter and Paul at Court and in the City in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries,’ EME 20 (2012): 380–406. Thacker, A., ‘The Origin and Development of Rome’s Intramural Cults: A Context for the Cult of Sant’Agnese in Agone’, MEFRA 126 (2014): 137–46. Thomas, Y., ‘Res Religiosae: On the Categories of Religion and Commerce in Roman Law’, in Law, Anthropology, and the Constitution of the Social, ed. A. Pottage & M. Mundy (Cambridge, 2004), 40–72. Thraede, K., ‘Exorzismus’, in Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum 7 (1969): 44–117. Tilley, M. A., Donatist Martyr Stories: The Church in Conflict in Roman North Africa, TTH (Liverpool, 1996). Tissot, Y., ‘Les Actes de Thomas: exemple de recueil composite’, in Les Actes apocryphes des Apôtres: Christianisme et monde païen, ed. F. Bovon et al. (Geneva, 1981): 223–32. Tonner, J., Popular Culture in Ancient Rome (Cambridge, MA, 2009). Torres, J., ‘Emperor Julian and the Veneration of Relics’, AnTard 17 (2009): 205–14. Toynbee, J. M. C., Death and Burial in the Roman World (London, 1971). Trout, D. E., ‘Damasus and the Invention of Early Christian Rome’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 33 (2003): 517–36. Trout, D. E., Damasus of Rome: The Epigraphic Poetry (Oxford, 2015). Valbelle, D. & Husson G., ‘Les Questions oraculaires d’Égypte: histoire de la recherche. Nouveautés et perspectives’, in Egypian Religion: The Last Thousand Years, vol. 3 (Leiden, 1998): 1055–71. Van Dam, R., Saints and their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul (Princeton, NJ, 1993). Van Dam, R., Becoming Christian: The Conversion of Roman Cappadocia (Philadelphia, PA, 2003). Van der Horst, P., Japheth in the Tents of Shem: Studies on Jewish Hellenism in Antiquity (Leuven, 2002). Vanderlinden, S., ‘Revelatio Sancti Stephani (BHG 7850–6)’, REByz 4 (1946): 178–217. Vanderspoel, J., ‘Claudian, Christ, and the Cult of the Saints’, CQ 36 (1986): 244–55. Van Uytfanghe, M., ‘La Controverse biblique et patristique autour du miracle et ses répercussions sur l’hagiographie dans l’antiquité tardive et le haut moyen âge latin’, in Hagiographie, cultures, et sociétés. IVe–XIIe siècles (Paris, 1981): 205–33. Vernesi, V., et al., ‘Genetic Characterization of the Body Attributed to the Evangelist Luke’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98 (2001): 13460–3.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

Bibliography

241

Versnel, H. S., ‘Beyond Cursing: The Appeal to Justice in Judicial Prayers’, in Magika Hiera: Ancient Greek Magic and Religion, ed. Ch. A. Faraone & D. Obbink (Oxford, 1991). Von Ehrenheim, H., ‘Identifying Incubation Areas in Pagan and Early Christian Times’, in Proceedings of the Danish Institute at Athens, vol. 6 (Athens, 2009): 237–76. Waldner, K., ‘Les Martyrs comme prophètes: divination et martyre dans le discours chrétien des Ier et IIe siècles’, RHR 224 (2007): 193–209. Ward-Perkins, B., ‘Specialized Production and Exchange’, in The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 14 (Cambridge, 2000): 346–91. Ward-Perkins, B., ‘The Relationship between Hagiography and Cult: Some Thoughts from the “Cult of Saints’ Project”, in Culte des saints et littérature hagiographique: accords et désaccords (Paris, forthcoming). Weitzmann, K. (ed.), Age of Spirituality: Late Antique Christian Art, Third to Seven Century (New York, 1979). Wenger, A., L’Assomption de la T. S. Vierge dans la tradition byzantine du Ve au Xe siècle (Paris, 1955). Wermelinger, O., ‘Die inventio martyrum bei Theodorus und Ambrosius: Die Frage der Priorität’, in Mauritius und die Thebäische Legion. Akten des internationalen Kolloquiums. Freiburg, Saint-Maurice, Martigny 17.–20. September 2003, ed. O. Wermelinger et al. (Fribourg, 2005): 157–62. Wieland, F., Altar und Altargrab der christlichen Kirchen im 4. Jahrhundert (Leipzig, 1912). Wilkinson, J., ‘Visits to Jewish Tombs by Early Christians’, in Akten des XII. Internationalen Kongresses für Christliche Archäaologie, ed. E. Dassmann et al., vol. 1 (Münster, 1995) 452–65. Winkelmann, F., Untersuchungen zur Kirchengeschichte des Gelasios von Kaisareia (Berlin, 1966). Winter, F. E., ‘Sepulturae intra Urbem and the Pre-Persian Walls of Athens’, in Studies in Attic Epigraphy, History and Topography: Presented to Eugene Vanderpool (Princeton, NJ, 1982): 199–204. Wiśniewski, R., ‘Suspended in the Air: On a Peculiar Case of Exorcism in Late Ancient Christian Literature’, in Euergesias Charin: Studies Presented to Benedetto Bravo and Ewa Wipszycka by their Disciples, ed. T. Derda et al. (Warsaw, 2002): 363–80. Wiśniewski, R., ‘La Consultation des possédés dans l’antiquité tardive: pythones, engastrimythoi et arrepticii, REAug 51 (2005): 127–52. Wiśniewski, R., ‘Lucilla and the Bone: Remarks on an Early Testimony of the Cult of Relics’, JLA 4 (2011): 157–61. Wiśniewski, R., ‘Looking for Dreams and Talking with Martyrs: Internal Roots of the Christian Incubation’, Studia Patristica 63 (2013): 203–208. Wiśniewski, R., ‘Pagan Temples, Christians, and Demons in the Late Antique East and West’, SEJG 54 (2015): 111–28. Wiśniewski, R., ‘Pagans, Jews, Christians, and a Type of Book Divination in Late Antiquity’, JECS 24 (2016): 553–66. Wiśniewski, R., ‘Eastern, Western, and Local Habits in the Early Cult of Relics’, Studia Patristica 89 (2017): 283–8.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

242

Bibliography

Wiśniewski, R., ‘Entre la popularité et le culte: les histoires monastiques et la vénération des saints moines en Occident’, in Culte des saints et littérature hagiographique: accords et désaccords (Paris, forthcoming). Wood, I., ‘Pagan Religion and Superstition East of the Rhine’, in After Empire: Towards an Ethnology of Europe’s Barbarians, ed. G. Ausenda (Woodbridge, 1995), 253–79. Wood, I., ‘Sépultures ecclésiastiques et sénatoriales dans la vallée du Rhône (400–600)’, Médiévales 31 (1996), 13–27. Wood, I., ‘How Popular was Early Medieval Devotion?’, Essays in Medieval Studies 14 (1998), 1–14. Woods, D., ‘The Date of the Translation of the Relics of SS. Luke and Andrew to Constantinople’, VCh 45 (1991a): 286–92. Woods, D., ‘The Early Career of the Magister Equitum Jacobus’, CQ 41 (1991b): 571–4. Woods, D., ‘The Origin of the Legend of Maurice and the Theban Legion’, JEH 45 (1996), 385–95. Woods, D., ‘Thessalonica’s Patron: Saint Demetrius or Emeterius?’, HThR 93 (2000): 221–34. Woods, D., ‘St Maximilian of Tebessa and the Jizya’, in Hommage à Carl Deroux, ed. P. Defosse, vol. 5 (Brussels, 2003): 266–76. Wortley, J., ‘The Marian Relics at Constantinople’, GRBS 45 (2005): 171–87. Wortley, J., ‘The “Sacred Remains” of Constantine and Helena’, in Byzantine Narrative: Papers in Honour of Roger Scott, ed. J. Burke, U. Betka, P. Buckley, et al. (Melbourne, 2006a): 351–67. Wortley, J., ‘The Origins of the Christian Veneration of Body-Parts’, RHR 223 (2006b): 5–28. Wortley, J., Studies on the Cult of Relics in Byzantium up to 1204 (Farnham, 2009). Yasin, A. M., Saints and Church Spaces in the Late Antique Mediterranean: Architecture, Cult, and Community (Cambridge, 2009). Young, D., Coptic Manuscripts from the White Monastery: Works of Shenute (Vienna, 1993): 23–5. Zovatto, P. L, ‘L’urnetta argentea de S. Ambrogio nell’ambito della rinascenza teodosiana’, Critica d’arte 13–14 (1956): 2–14. Zuckerman, C., ‘Two Reforms of the 370s: Recruiting Soldiers and Senators in the Divided Empire’, REByz 56 (1998): 79–139.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

Index Abgar, king 13, 64–5 Abraham, biblical personage 21–2 Achaea 102 Acts of Thomas 12–13 Adrianople, battle of 48 Aegean Islands 92–3 Aelia, see Jerusalem Aetolus, Greek hero 57–8 Africa 17–20, 27–8, 44–6, 84–6, 92, 98, 124–5, 139, 147, 156–7 Agatha, martyr 154 Agaunian Martyrs, see Theban Legion Agnes, martyr 24, 117 Agricola, martyr 38, 45–6, 103, 133–4 Agrigentum 125 Alaric 48–53, 55–6, 59–60, 63–4 Albania (Caucasian) 88–9, 94–5 Alexander, martyr 38 Alexander the Great 128 Alexander the Monk 108 Alexandria 24, 52–3, 90, 102, 125, 162, 171, 183, 186–7 alms 40–1 Alps 51, 59–60, 168–9 altars 9, 75–6, 88–9, 98, 103, 116–17, 120–1, 155–6, 173–4, 177, 193 Altava 86–7 Ambrose of Milan 29–30, 33, 37–8, 49–50, 52–3, 62–3, 88–90, 103, 108–9, 112–13, 115, 118–21, 124, 131, 139, 155–6, 159, 163, 166–8, 170, 193 Amida 54–5, 177–9 Ammianus Marcellinus 24–5, 50, 68–9, 183–4 Anaplous 77–8, 81–2 Anastasia, martyr 38 Anastasius, emperor 177 Anastasius of Sinai 192, 197–8 Anatoclia, martyr 38 Anatolia, see Asia Minor Anaunian martyrs 51, 168–9 Ancona 45–6, 146, 167–8, 172–3 Andrew, Apostle 22–3, 26, 31, 33, 48, 67–8, 70, 102, 162–3, 166–7 Ankara 95 Antinoe 75–6, 206 Antioch 22–3, 25, 40, 58–9, 108, 123, 126, 131–3, 150, 157–8, 177–9, 187–8 Antoninus, Neoplatonic philosopher 182–3

Antonius, martyr 38 Antony, monk in Egypt 23–4, 43, 102, 177–9, 190–1 Apollo, deity 25, 79, 187–8 Apollonius of Tyana 58–9, 125 Apostles (general) 12, 21, 23–4, 28–30, 32–3, 38, 44, 57, 88–9, 92–3, 101–2, 104–5, 125, 183, 197–200 Aquae Tibilitanae 46 Arcadius, emperor 68, 104, 197–8 archaeological evidence 4, 25–6, 57–8, 75, 79, 83–4, 87–95, 133–4, 136–7, 149–50, 164, 206–7 Arians 33–4, 36, 51–2 Ark of the Covenant 57 Armenia 88–9, 109, 117, 177–9, 209–10 Artemios, martyr 74–5, 81–2 Asia Minor (general) 23–5, 92–3, 104, 205–6 Asklepieia 29–30, 42, 79–80 Asterius of Amasea 41, 62–3, 144–5, 165–6 Athanasius of Alexandria 23, 35–6, 42, 74, 105, 116–17, 146, 162, 175–6, 185, 189–91 Athenagoras 128–9, 174–5 Audurus 139 Augustine of Hippo 19–20, 27–30, 37–8, 44–6, 51–2, 59–60, 72, 80, 108–9, 118–21, 133–4, 139–41, 157–8, 167–8, 171–2, 174–5, 199–201, 205, 211–12 Confessiones 37–8, 118–19 Contra Cresconium 19–20 De Civitate Dei 27–8, 37–8, 45, 128–9, 133–4, 186–7 De cura gerenda pro mortuis 51–2, 83–4, 95–6, 195–6 Augustus, emperor 128, 186–7 Avars 54–5, 68 Avitus of Braga 171–2 Babylas, martyr 22–3, 25–6, 31, 41, 146, 187–8 barbarians (general) 48–53, 59–60; see also Alamans, Goths, Slavs Barnabas, biblical personage 104–5, 108, 146 Barnes, Timothy 85–6 Bartholomew, Apostle 51, 79–80 Basilides, martyr 112 Basil of Caesarea 131–2, 138–9, 144–5, 162–3, 168–9

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

244

Index

Baudonivia, nun 177 Beit Garmai 209–10 Berenike, Prosdoke, and Domnina, martyrs 132–3 Bethlehem 103, 111–14, 195 Bethuel, biblical personage 105 biathanatoi 188 Bible: New Testament 10, 28–30, 57, 70–1, 101–2, 129, 144, 175–6 Old Testament 9–10, 21–2, 101–2, 104–6, 114 bishops (general) 19–20, 28–9, 33, 40, 42, 46, 88–90, 100, 109–11, 116–17, 137–40, 195–6, 204–5 Bologna (Bononia) 38, 44–6, 103, 133–4 Bordeaux (Burdigala) 140–1, 177; see also Pilgrim of Bordeaux Borromeo, Carlo 167–8 Botrus and Caelestius, clerics in Carthage 18 Braulio of Saragossa 147–9 Brescia 50, 162–3, 168–9; see also Gaudentius of Brecia Britain 72–3, 107, 192–3 Brivio 151 Brown, Peter 4–5, 203–4 Buddhism 122–3 Burgess, Richard 22–3 Caecilian of Carthage 17–20 Caesarea (Palestine) 106–7, 125–6; see also Eusebius of Caesarea Calahorra (Calagurris) 51 Calama 45; see also Possidius of Calama cancelli 133–4 Candida, martyr 154 canons 39–41, 116–17, 138–40; see also Law Caphargamala 104–5, 107, 170 Cappadocia 37–8, 77–8, 93, 104–5, 131–4, 162–3, 168–9, 208–9 capsella Africana 152–3 Carneas 103, 106, 113–14 Carthage 17–20, 85–6, 116–17, 136–7, 171–2, 212 cemeteries 14–16, 22–4, 35–6, 61, 90–1, 97, 105, 108–9, 111–12, 116–17, 146, 161, 185, 209 Chadwick, Henry 16 Chalcedon 22, 137–8, 166–8 Chalcedonians 90 Chindeus, martyr 38 Chosraw II 54–5, 209–10 Christ 10, 12–13, 21–2, 28–30, 32–4, 38, 41, 43, 48, 55–7, 64–6, 81, 111–12, 114–15, 125, 129, 167–8, 183, 194 Chronicon Paschale 65, 68

Cicero, Marcus Tullius 125 Cilicia 54, 162 Cimitile, see Nola Claros 79 Claudian 51, 183–4 Clovis II, king 179 columns 65–9, 111–12, 131 Constantina, wife of the Emperor Maurice 15–16, 136–7, 142–3, 160 Constantine the Great, emperor: building 33, 41, 78 holy objects 65–7 laws 184–5 mausoleum 86–7, 166–7, 186–7 Constantinople 22–4, 40, 48, 52–3, 60–1, 65–9, 81–2, 86–9, 94–5, 104, 108, 116–17, 132–3, 143, 154–5, 157–8, 160, 163, 171–2, 177–9, 198–9, 204–5 Anaplous 77–8 Drypia 51, 168–9 Forum of Constantine 65–7 Hebdomon 50–1, 157–8, 162 Holy Apostles 22–3, 33, 67–8 Constantius II, emperor 25–6, 31–2, 42–3, 50, 52, 54–5, 197–8 Constantius III, emperor 59–60 Cosmas and Damian, martyrs 45, 81–2, 154–5 Crete 56 Cronnier, Estelle 106 Cross of Christ 66–7, 106–7, 114–15, 129–30, 137, 140–1, 166–7, 176–7, 216–17 Cyprian of Carthage 20–1, 45–6, 70–1, 85–6, 103 Cyprus 104–5, 108, 146 Cyril of Alexandria 183 Cyril of Jerusalem 114–15 Cyrrhus 171; see also Theodoret of Cyrrhus Dagron, Gilbert 4–5, 54 Dalisandos 175 Dal Santo, Matthew 189–90 Damasus of Rome 14–15, 27–8, 30, 44, 102 Daniel the Stylite 88–9 Dannaba 103 Daphne, see Antioch Datysus, martyr 38 Dauphin, Claudine 79 Decius, emperor 20–1, 32, 101 Delehaye, Hippolyte 4–5, 159, 176–7 Delphi 120–1 Demetrios 54–5, 61–2, 74 demons and demoniacs 32, 35–7, 39–41, 50–1, 70, 72–5, 81–2, 97, 120–1, 126, 139–40, 154–5, 191, 201–2, 214 Denis (Dionysius), martyr 179

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

Index Depositio Martyrum 14–16 Didyma 25, 79, 187–8 Diocletian, emperor 17, 20–1, 85–6 Diospolis (Lydda) 107 divinatory tickets, see oracular lots Donatists 17–20, 80 Dor 79–80 dreams 42–3, 76–82, 85–103, 106–8, 112–17, 156–7, 183, 199–200 Drosis, martyr 150 Duchesne, Louis 16 Dura Europos 126–7, 181–2 Duval, Yvette 4–5, 84, 92, 94–5, 97 Eastman, David 14–15 Edessa 13, 16, 22, 24, 40, 50, 64–5, 104–5, 166–7, 183–4, 186–7 Egeria, pilgrim 13, 22, 33, 64–5, 77, 103, 105–7, 113, 115, 117, 129–30, 166–7, 217 Egypt 23, 35–6, 74–7, 90, 92, 102, 116–17, 126–7, 145, 177–9, 190–2, 206, 209 Eleutheropolis 104, 106–8 Elijah, biblical personage 90, 125 Elisha, biblical personage 9–10, 125–7, 171 Emeritus and Chelidonius, martyrs 51 Emesa 25, 117, 157–8, 171, 206–7 emperors (general) 46, 65, 99, 110–11, 117–18, 128, 161–2, 176–7, 184–5 Epaone 212 Ephesus 22, 33, 38, 46–7, 101–2 Ephrem 13 epigraphic evidence 4, 14–17, 25–6, 33, 56, 59–60, 72–3, 83–4, 86–7, 92–9, 110–11, 136–7, 147–51, 153–4, 167–8, 176–7, 186–7, 211 Epiphanius of Salamis 106–7 Eucharist 18–19, 98, 149–50, 194, 197–8 Eucherius of Lyon 103–4 Eugenius, usurper 50–2 Eulalia, martyr 51, 53–4 Eulogios of Caesarea 107 Eunapius of Sardis 182–5, 217 Euphemia, martyr 22, 137–8, 163, 166–8 Euripides 21–2 Eusebia, Macedonian woman 94–5 Eusebius of Caesarea 11, 13, 21, 25–6, 29–30, 33, 64–5, 103, 113–14, 204–5 Eustratios of Constantinople 192, 197–8, 202 Euthymios, monk 102 Eutychius, martyr 102–3 Evagrius, church historian 54–5, 137–8, 157–8, 177–9 Evodius of Uzalis 46, 80–1 exorcisms, see demons Exuperius of Toulouse 49–50, 186–7, 195–6

245

Fadana 105 Faraone, Christopher 58 Felix, saint 44–5, 48–9, 51–2, 55–6, 60–3, 67–8, 72, 83–4, 167–8, 193 fenestellae 133–4, 145 Février, Paul-Albert 91–2 Forty Martyrs 37–8, 78–9, 81, 88–9, 93–6, 98, 138–9, 162–3, 168–70 Frigidus 50–1 Fructuosus, martyr 88–9, 168–70 Fundi 67–8, 163 Gainas, Gothic commander 68–9 Galatia 92–3, 95 Galbios and Candidos, aristocrats 116–17 Galla, owner of relics 141 Gallus, emperor 22–3, 25–6 Gamaliel, biblical personage 119 Gascou, Jean 79–80 Gaudentius of Brescia 49–50, 62–3, 88–9, 138–9, 168–70 Gaul (general) 31–2, 52–3, 74–5, 92, 98, 101, 122, 133–4, 142–3, 145, 177–9, 193–6, 208–11, 214–15 Gelasios of Kyzikos 114–15 George of Alexandria 24 Georgia 2–3, 181–2 Germanus of Auxerre 112, 139–40, 207 Germia 95 Gervasius and Protasius, martyrs 27–30, 37–8, 45–6, 89–90, 103, 108–9, 118–21, 124, 131, 139, 155–6, 167–8, 170, 176, 186–7 Gibbon, Edward 203–4 Goths 48, 50, 59–60, 68–9; see also Visigoths Great Persecution, see Diocletian Greece (Balkan Peninsula, general), 149–50, 204 Gregory of Nazianzus 37–8, 67–8, 70–1, 84, 86–7, 93, 96, 103–5, 115, 131–2, 138–9, 143, 175, 194 Gregory of Nyssa 37–8, 50, 52–3, 78–9, 81, 86–7, 93, 95–6, 130, 132, 139, 144–5, 147, 162–3, 201 Gregory of Tours 53–4, 75–6, 133–8, 140, 142–3, 175, 177, 210–11 Gregory Thaumaturgus 43 Gregory the Great 15–16, 62, 136–7, 142–3, 160, 189–90, 202 Gregory the Illuminator 117 Habakkuk, prophet 104, 106–7, 113–14, 146 Habundius, martyr 141 Hannibal 21–2 Haran 22, 105

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

246

Index

Helena, emperor Constantine’s mother 21, 66–7, 99, 114–15, 128 Helpidius, martyr 22 Heraclius, emperor 154–5 Hercules, see heroes Herenius, martyr 141 Herodotus 120, 187–8 heroes (Greek) 5, 11–12, 57–8, 63–4, 120 Heroonpolis 22 Hesperius, former military tribune 139–40 Hierapolis 33, 101–2 Hilarion, monk 43, 102, 188–9, 198–9 Hilary of Arles 130–1 Hilary of Poitiers 23–4, 31–5, 38, 40–2, 72–3 Hippo 27–8, 45, 133–4, 141, 157–8, 171–3, 186–7, 211; see also Augustine of Hippo Hippos 137–8, 149–50 Historia Augusta 185–6 Holy Land, see Palestine Homoians, see Arians Hormisdas, pope 160, 177–9 Huns 54–5, 59–60 Hunter, David 195–6 Hydatius 53–4 Ibora 37–8, 77–9, 139 incubation 42–3, 76–82 inscriptions, see epigraphic evidence Isaac, biblical personage 21–2 Isaiah, prophet 21–2 Italy (general) 36, 45–6, 48–53, 62–3, 92, 97–8, 100–1, 146, 159–60, 163, 166–7, 184–5, 193, 214–15 Jacob, biblical patriarch 21–2 Jacobus, dux 51, 183–4 James, the Lord’s Brother (or James the son of Zebedee, or James the Less) 21, 70–1, 101–2, 106–7 Jerash 56 Jericho 41–2, 125–6 Jerome of Stridon (general) 9, 24, 32, 36–7, 49–50, 62–3, 106–7, 171, 188–9, 204, 217 Against Vigilantius 52–3, 104, 165–6, 195–200 Chronicle 22–3, 32, 198–9 Jerusalem (general) 41, 57, 101–2, 104, 106–8, 111–12, 114–15, 117, 129–30, 141–3, 162–3, 171, 177, 186–7 Golgotha 106–7, 114–15 Holy Sepulchre 106–7, 114 Mount of Olives 106–7, 113, 195 Zion 141–2, 170 Jesus, see Christ Jews 11–12, 40, 80, 114, 126–7, 131–2, 180–2

Job, biblical personage 103, 105–6, 11–14, 117 John Chrysostom 22–3, 31–2, 36–7, 52–3, 62–3, 123, 126, 132–3, 146, 150, 154–5, 201–2 John of Jerusalem 106–7, 195–6 John Rufus 113 John the Baptist 1, 25, 36–7, 50–1, 70–1, 74–5, 88–90, 92–3, 98–9, 116–17, 157–8, 162, 165–6, 171, 176–7, 183, 186–8, 190–1, 206–7 John the Evangelist 21, 33, 38, 46, 70–1, 101–2 Joseph, biblical patriarch 21–2 Josiah, biblical king 9 Julian, emperor 24–5, 52–5, 60, 70, 176–7, 183–4, 186–9 Julian, saint 98, 154–5 Justina, Valentinian II’s mother 108–9 Justinian, emperor 67–8, 116, 160, 166–7 Kherbet Salah 90–1 koimētēria 16 Kollouthos, martyr 75–6, 81–2, 206 Konon, martyr 92–3 Laban, biblical personage 105 Laurence, martyr 52, 160 Law 75–6, 86–7, 161–2, 176, 184–7 Łazar Parpetsi 209 Lazarus, biblical personage 21–2, 151 Leo, emperor 68 Leonida, martyr 38 Leontius of Neapolis 180–1 Łewond, martyr 209 Libellus precum 36 Liber Pontificalis 16, 88–9 Limestone Massif 137–8, 143, 207–8 Lucian of Caphargamala 104, 119, 170–3 Lucian of Samosata 29–30 Lucilla of Carthage 17–20, 123–4, 139–40 Lucina of Rome 16 Luke, Evangelist 22–3, 26, 31, 33, 67–8, 70–1, 101–2, 162–3, 166–7 Lycurgus 126–7 Lydia 72–3 Lyons 103–4, 210 Macarius of Jerusalem 114–15 Macarius of Tkow 90 Macedonia 38 Macedonians 94–5 Macedonius of Constantinople 166–7 Macrina 43, 130 magic 29–30, 97–8, 125–6, 188–9 Magnentius, usurper 50, 52 Maiorinus of Carthage 17, 19–20

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

Index Maipherqat, see Martyropolis Malalas, John 58–9, 65, 78 Mamre 77–8 Manlia Daedalia 167–8 Marcellinus Comes 171–2 Marcus Aurelius, emperor 185–6 Marseilles 90–1, 207–8, 211 Martigny, see Octodurum Martin of Tours 43, 117, 142–3, 192–5, 217 martyria 2–3, 14–15, 22–3, 25–6, 32–3, 35–41, 52, 73–6, 78–9, 81–2, 98–9, 124–5, 139, 144–5, 161, 176–7, 186–8, 200, 209, 212, 214 Martyrologium Hieronymianum 85–6, 163 Martyropolis 56, 177–9 Marutha of Maipherqat 56, 138–40, 177–9 Mary, Mother of God 1, 65, 68, 95, 116–17 Matthew, Apostle 104–5, 108 Matthias, Apostle 104–5 mausoleum 24, 67, 86–7, 99, 166–7, 186–7 Maximianus, emperor 32, 85–6 Maximilian, martyr 84–6 Maximos of Seleucia 89–90 Maximus of Turin 36–7, 49–50, 62–3 Megetia of Carthage 124–5, 132, 141 Melania the Elder 141 Melania the Younger 94–5, 168–9 Meletius of Antioch 123 Melitians 35–6, 105, 116–17, 146, 185 memoriae, see martyria Menouthis 77, 79–82 Mesopotamia 177–9, 181–2, 217 Messalians 80 Metz 53–4 Micah, prophet 104, 106–7 Michael, archangel 77–8, 81–2, 95 Milan 29–30, 33, 37–8, 45–6, 50, 62–3, 88–90, 103, 108–9, 112–13, 118–21, 124, 131, 155–8, 163, 166–8, 176, 192–3, 195–6 Minorca 46, 171–3; see also Severus of Minorca monks, monasteries 22–3, 41–4, 73–7, 88–9, 102–3, 106–7, 110–11, 113, 117, 125, 138–41, 145, 156–8, 162, 171–3, 177, 182–4, 188–9, 192–7, 199–200, 205, 215–17 Moses, biblical personage 29–30, 105, 113, 140 Movsēs Xorenac’i 117 Mucius, martyr 38 Mursa 50 Nabor and Felix, martyrs 108–9, 120, 155, 167–8 Nahor, biblical personage 105 Naples 36, 44–5, 170

247

Nazarius, martyr 38, 45–6, 103–5 Neoplatonism 29–30, 60, 182–4 Nero, emperor 32 Nestorians 98–9 Nicenes 94–5, 108–9 Nicetius of Lyon 210 Nicolas, saint 56 Nicomedia 92–3 Nikethas, martyr 164 Nola 40, 44–5, 48–9, 51–2, 55–6, 61, 67–8, 72, 83–4, 141, 163, 167–8 Octodurum 103–4 Olympiodorus 59–60, 64–5 Optatus of Milevis 17–20, 123–4 oracular lots 75, 206 Orestes, see heroes Origen 106–7, 195 Orosius 45–6, 171–2, 180–1 Otto III, emperor 79–80 Oxyrhynchus 75–6, 206 Pachomius, monk 43 pagan customs and beliefs 2, 4–5, 42–3, 57–8, 60–1, 64, 71–3, 76, 78–82, 98–9, 125–6, 176, 182–8, 190–1, 196–7, 206, 209–10 Palestine 21–2, 25, 30, 45–6, 77–8, 102–8, 111–12, 114, 117–18, 122, 139–40, 146, 180–2, 196, 214 Palladium 58, 65 Pantaleon, martyr 74–5, 88–9, 94–5 passiones 34, 36–7, 154 pastophoria 145, 150 Paulinus of Milan 108–9, 118–21 Paulinus of Nola 33, 41, 44–5, 48–9, 52–3, 55–6, 60–3, 67–8, 72, 83–4, 95–6, 138–9, 141, 163, 167–8, 170, 192–6 Paul the Anchorite 177–9 Paul the Apostle 4, 10, 14–17, 21, 24, 33, 48, 51–4, 67–8, 70–1, 101–2, 136–7, 152–3, 160–1, 167–8, 197–8 Pausanias 57–8 Pelagius, ascetic 107 Perpetua, martyr 34, 45–6, 112 Persia, Persians 13, 24, 50, 52, 54–6, 64–5, 177–9, 209–10, 216 Peter and Marcellinus, martyrs 99 Peter the Apostle 4, 12, 14–17, 21, 24, 33, 40–1, 48, 51–4, 67–8, 70–1, 88–9, 94, 101–2, 136–7, 152–3, 160, 167–8, 197–8 Peter the Fuller 108 Peter the Iberian 113, 139–40, 171–2 Philip, Apostle 21, 33, 101–2 Philippicus, general 157 Philostorgius 48, 59, 60, 127, 128, 132, 133

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/11/2018, SPi

248

Index

Philostratus 58–9, 125 Philoxenos, martyr 75–6 Photius 66 Phrygia 31–3, 72–3 Piacenza 38, 44–5, see Pilgrim of Piacenza Pilgrim of Bordeaux 21–2, 103, 113–14, 125–6 Pilgrim of Piacenza 141–2, 157–8, 206–7, 211–12 pilgrims (general) 40–1, 45, 47, 117, 145, 167–8, 214 Placentia, see Piacenza Plutarch 123, 126–7 Polycarp, martyr 10–12, 123 Pompeiana 85–6 Pontus 50, 52–3 possessed, see demoniacs Potamiena, martyr 112 Procopius 65, 67–8, 116–18, 143, 166–7 Proculus, martyr 38 Prudentius 51–3, 144–5 Rachel, biblical personage 21–2 Radegond, queen 177 Ragota, martyr 38 Rebecca, biblical personage 21–2 Rebillard, Éric 16 relics: arm 150–1, 171–2, 179 ashes 2–3, 24, 51, 61–4, 67–8, 122, 129, 138–41, 146, 153, 157, 162–4, 167–70, 172–3, 176–7, 186–7, 190–1, 193–4, 217 blood 4, 32, 36, 51, 70, 88–9, 93–5, 110–11, 120, 131, 137–8, 146–7, 155–8, 167–8, 170, 172–3, 176–7, 194 bones 1, 9–13, 15–16, 22–3, 25, 32, 51, 57–8, 90–1, 98–9, 120, 123–4, 126–7, 129–34, 140, 149, 155–6, 162, 168–9, 171–3, 177–83, 191, 194, 209–10 brandea, cloth 240 contact relics (general) 2–3, 10, 136–7, 146, 160, 166–8, 174, 188, 208–11, 214–17 dust 2–3, 12, 94–5, 123–4, 132, 137, 139–40, 146, 164, 168, 170–4, 176–7, 195–7, 208–11 finger 140–1, 177–9, 211 fragrance of 110–11 head 15–16, 36–7, 50–1, 54–5, 110–11, 116–17, 120, 131, 150–1, 155–8, 160–2, 165–6, 195, 206–7, 211–12 hnana 2–3, 208–11 incorruptibility of 110–11, 120, 128–9 kissing 17–20, 122–5, 129–31, 139–40, 196–7 labels on 147–9

private possession of 138–41 stones 21–2, 45–6, 141–2, 146–9, 167–8, 174 terminology 2–3 touch 8–10, 12, 18–20, 70, 114–15, 122–45, 147, 153–4, 158, 165–6, 176–7, 207–8 theology of 34, 44, 62, 83–4, 128–9, 175, 190–202 translation/transfer of 12–17, 22–3, 26, 31, 46, 51, 65, 85–6, 104, 107, 110–11, 116–18, 120–2, 131, 139–41, 145–6, 161–2, 168–9, 171–2, 176–7, 181–3, 185–7, 191, 195–8, 209, 211 visibility of 98–9, 144–58 reliquaries (general) 2–3, 10, 94–5, 132–4, 140, 147–55, 164–5 glass reliquaries and reliquaries with a peephole 146, 149–50, 157, 176, 206–7 iconography of 151–3, 167–8 reliquaries with oil-flowing system 90–1, 137–8, 143, 153–4, 207–8, 216 Renberg, Gil 76–8 Resapha 4–5, 54–5, 140–1, 177–9 Riparius, priest 195–6 Rome (general) 14–15, 33, 40, 44, 48, 51–2, 60, 65, 67, 92–3, 97–9, 136–7, 143, 145, 159–60, 165–6, 186–7, 197–8, 204–5, 212, 216 ‘At the Two Laurels’ cemetery 99 Catacombs and Via Appia 14–16, 24, 41, 94 Isola Tiberina 79–80 Lateran 40 Vatican 14, 16, 40–1, 88–9, 94 Via Ostiense 14, 41 Via Tiburtina 95, 141 Rouen 38–9, 46, 50, 147, 170, 192–5; see also Victricius of Rouen Rufininus of Naples 36 Rufinus of Aquileia 31, 50–1, 66, 114–15, 162, 190–1, 195 Sabinianus 24, 50, 61, 188–9 Sabinus, deacon 95 Saint-Maurice d’Agaune 147–9 Salsa, martyr 91–2 Samuel, biblical personage 104, 146, 197–8 Sarah, biblical personage 21–2 sarcophagi 23, 88–91, 94–5, 123, 125–7, 137–8, 145–53, 207 Saturninus of Macedonia, martyr 38 Saturninus of Toulouse, martyr and bishop 49–50, 186–7 Satyrus, Ambrose of Milan’s brother 88–90 Sebaste (Palestine) 25, 36, 162, 171 Sebastian, martyr 14, 99

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/2018, SPi

Index Seleucia 22, 31–2, 46–7, 54, 61–4, 77–8, 81–2, 175 Sens 147–9 Sergius, martyr 4–5, 54–5, 140–1, 177, 211 Servius, grammarian 63–4, 77 Severus, martyr 163 Severus of Minorca 172–3, 180–1 Sharbel, martyr 15 Shenoute, monk 77, 116–17, 177–9, 191–2 Sicily 59–60, 62 Silvia, pilgrim 138–9, 141, 163 Simeon Stylites, monk 131, 157–8, 177–9 Simon, Apostle 104–5 Sinitis 46 Sirmium 92 Slavs 54–5, 61–2 Socrates of Constantinople 66–119, 204–5 Sophene 56, 177–9 Sozomen 22–3, 36–9, 50–1, 66–7, 77–8, 94–5, 104, 106–8, 117–18, 168–9 Spain 52–3, 92, 171–2 Spoleto 167–8 statues 2, 58–60, 63–9, 125 Statuta ecclesiae antiqua 39–40 Stephen the First Martyr 27–8, 45–6, 53–4, 70–1, 104–5, 107–8, 112, 119, 124–5, 133–4, 139, 141, 146, 152–3, 156–8, 167–8, 170–5, 180–1, 186–7, 195–6, 205 Suetonius 128 Sulpicius Severus 39–40, 43, 50, 52–3, 167–8, 193–5 Suzanna, biblical personage 51 Sychar 21–2 Syria 2–3, 25, 58–9, 66–7, 90–2, 97, 102, 132–3, 137–41, 145, 149–50 Talmud 126–7, 180–1 Tavium 92–3 Tertullian 201 Theban Legion 103–4 Thecla, martyr 22, 32, 46–7, 51, 54, 61–4, 70, 74, 80–2, 117, 175 Theoderic, king 53–4 Theodore, martyr 50, 52–3, 56, 132, 147 Theodore of Mopsuestia 98–9 Theodore of Octodurum 103–4 Theodoret of Cyrrhus 38–9, 54, 62–3, 66–7, 88–9, 164, 194 Theodosiopolis 54–5 Theodosius I, emperor 36–7, 42–3, 50–1, 59–61, 86–7, 104, 106–7, 115–16, 161–2, 184–7 Theodosius II, emperor 56, 104 Theodota, martyr 142–3, 211–12

249

Theophanes 154–5 Theophilus of Alexandria 162, 183, 190–1 Thomas, Apostle 12–13, 22, 51–2, 54–5, 105, 123–4, 166–7, 186–7 Thrace 52, 59–60 Three Young Men 88–9, 151, 166–7, 181–2 Timothy, ‘Apostle’ 22–3, 31, 33, 48, 65, 67, 101–2, 162, 166–7 Timothy Salophakiolos 90 Tipasa 40, 91–2 Toulouse 49–50, 122, 186–7, 195–6 Troianus, martyr 38 Turin 49–50, 168–9; see also Maximus of Turin Tyana 92–3, 98–9; see also Apollonius of Tyana Tyre 56 Uzalis 27–8, 45–6, 124–5, 139, 156–8, 172–3, 175 Valentinian I, emperor 36 Valentinian II, emperor 161 Valerian, emperor 16, 20–1, 101 Van der Horst, Pieter 181–2 Verres 125 Vespasian, emperor 125 Victoriana 139 Victorinus of Poetovio 29–30 Victor of Tunnuna 108, 117–18 Victricius of Rouen 33, 38–9, 44–7, 49–50, 52–3, 62–3, 88–9, 147, 163, 170, 175, 192–5, 199–200 Vigilantius of Calagurris 122–4, 165–6, 195–200 Vigilius 51 vigils 81, 110–11, 117–18, 196 Visigoths 52–3, 171–2 vision 54–5, 79, 81–2, 102–4, 106–8, 110–12, 115–17, 119, 156–7, 168–9, 183, 191, 199–200 Vitalis, martyr 45–6, 103, 133–4 Woods, David 85–6 Wortley, John 9, 4–5, 159–60, 168–9 Zacchaeus, biblical personage 21–2 Zebennos of Eleutheropolis 106–8, 113–14 Zechariah, father of John the Baptist 88–9 Zechariah, prophet 94–5, 104, 107–8, 113–14, 116–17, 146 Zoroastrianism 209–10 Zuckerman, Constantin 85–6