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From Villain to Saint and Martyr The Life and After-life of Flavius Artemius, Dux Aegypti

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Samuel N.C. Lieu
Samuel N.C. Lieu*
Affiliation:
Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
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Extract

The church of St. John the Forerunner in the district known as Oxeia in Constantinople was the centre of a major healing-cult in the sixth and seventh centuries. Beneath the high altar (MA 24, p. 33, 27), protected from the aisles by railings (27, p. 39, 14) and enclosed in a sarcophagus made of lead placed within a crypt, were laid the relics of St. Artemius (33, p. 50, 20, 36, 30-37, 1). On the right of the altar was the chapel of St. Febronia (22, p. 29, 11, 24, p. 33, 26-7 etc.). This martyr also featured prominently in the cult as she appears to have been a kind of assistant or stand-in for Artemius 24, p. 34, 27). Her assisting role was a very necessary one as it was to her that the saint entrusted the women who came begging to be cured. This is because Artemius was only invoked in Byzantium by those who were suffering from a particular category of afflictions, viz. hernias, varioceles and especially tumours affecting the genitalia. Our knowledge of this extraordinary healing-cult is based mainly on a collection of forty-five short accounts of miraculous cures Apart from about two exceptions, all the accounts of the miraculous cures of Artemius relate to this type of illness which the author describes very simply and unblushingly in a matter-of-fact manner which makes the Miracula an interesting and valuable source to historians of Byzantine medicine.

Type
Research Article
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 20 , 1996 , pp. 56 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 1996

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References

1. On the cult of Artemius in general see Baynes, N.H., ‘Topographica Constantinopolitana’, GHS31 (1911)266–267 Google Scholar, Maas, M.P., ‘Artemioskult in Constantinopel’, BNJ 1 (1920) 377–80 Google Scholar; Delehaye, , ‘Les recueils antiques de miracles des saints’, AB 63 (1925) 32–38 Google Scholar; Janin, R., La géographie ecclésiastique de l’empire Byzantin, première partie: Le Siège de Constantinople et le Patriarcat œcuménique, III: Les églises et les monastères (Paris 1953) 58 and 433–434 Google Scholar; Magoulias, H.J., ‘The lives of the saints as sources of data for the history of Byzantine medicine in the sixth and seventh centuries’, BZ 57 (1964) 130–143 Google Scholar; and Maraval, P., Lieux saints et pèlerinages d’Orient (Paris, 1985) 351 Google Scholar.

2. A suppliant whom the guards of the week had refused to allow to enter the crypt put down his bed 17, p. 18, 6-8). The phrase indicates that one went down into the underground church by stairs to the left and right of the altar. The ‘going down’ to sleep in the tomb () of the martyr, permitted only on Sundays, is also mentioned in the same miracle account (p. 17, 24). Cf. Delehaye, op. cit. 35.

3. According to legend he was a martyr of Nisibis in the time of Diocletian. Her feast day is celebrated on 25th June. Cf.Simon, J., ‘Note sur l’original de la Passion de Sainte Fébronie’, AB 42 (1924) 69–76 Google Scholar. The Latin version of the acta of her martyrdom enjoyed considerable circulation in the West. Cf.Halkin, F., ‘La Passion grecque des Saintes Libye, Eutropie et Léonis, martyres à Nisibe’, AB 76 (1958) 295 Google Scholar. On Nisibis as an early centre of Christianity see Lieu, S.N.C., (ed.) The Emperor Julian, Panegyric and Polemic (Liverpool 2, 1989) 114, n. 46 Google Scholar.

4. The collection was published by Papadopoulos-Kerameus, A. (see under MA in List of Abbreviations) according to three manuscripts, no. 1168 Google Scholar in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, no. 27 in the archives of the Mar Sabas monastery near Bethlehem and no. 42 in Messina, to which may be added the former Slavonic version of the critical edition of the Menees published by the archeographic Commission of St. Petersburg. The forty-five Miracles which make up the main collection are not represented in all the manuscripts and it is not impossible that there were more of them. Cf.Delehaye, , op. cit. 33 Google Scholar. There is a Slavonic version of the MA but containing only 34 miracula. Cf.Tolstoi, J., ‘Un poncif arétologique dans les miracles d’Asklepios et d’Artemios’, Vi (1926) 53 Google Scholar.

5. See esp. Magoulias, , op. cit. 130-34, 136, 138-39 and 142–43 Google Scholar.

6. Many healings of people who were still alive took place in the reign of Heraclius. Miracle 23 ends with this phrase (p. 33, 14-16): The Emperor Constantine, whom it concerns, is usually called Constans (II) (641-668). The fourteenth indiction falls in the year 656. Miracle no. XLI took place (p. 70, 2-5): that is to say in 659.

7. Miracle XVII ends with a doxology in the Jerusalem manuscript. Further on, after the XXth, there is yet another. As Delehaye (op. cit. 33) has rightly remarked, this is a piece of information which must not be overlooked, but which is fairly deceptive. The scribe ends the last Miracle that he transcribed quite naturally with the consecrated phrase, and the doxology might simply indicate an incomplete copy. It is preferable to insist on a more concise edition of the first seventeen Miracles, which contrasts with the verbosity of those that follow.

8. On the MA as a source of topographical information, see esp. Baynes, op. cit. passim, Maas, op. cit. 378-79 and Delehaye, op. cit. 34-5. For a plan of the church reconstructed from the information provided by the MA, see Mango, C., ‘On the history of the Templon and the Martyrion of St. Artemios at Constantinople’, Zögraf 10 (1979) 42 Google Scholar.

10. i.e. not far from the Grand Bazaar of modern Istanbul. Cf.Mango, , op. cit. 40 Google Scholar.

Cf.Baynes, , op. cit. 266–68 Google Scholar and Delehaye, , op. cit. 34 Google Scholar.

11. On the practice of incubation in the Miracula Artemii and those of Asclepius, see esp. Tolstoi, op. cit. passim.

12. Cf.Magoulias, , art. cit. 136 Google Scholar.

13. Ibid. 143.

14. Ibid. 139 and Delehaye, op. cit. 36.

15. Cf.Magoulias, , art. cit. 133–34 Google Scholar.

16. Cf.Lampe, G.W.H. (ed.), A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford 1961) 261 Google Scholar.

17. Op. cit., 75-79.

18. 1, p. 76, 1-13.

19. Cf. BHG 170-171. The edition cited throughout is that of Kotter, B., Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos, V (Berlin 1988) 185–245 Google Scholar.

20. Cf.Bidez, , in GCS Philost., p. LXVIII and Dummer, J., ‘Fl. Artemius dux Aegypti’, Archiv fur Papyrusforschung 21 (1971) 121-22, n. 2 Google Scholar.

21. Battifol, P., ‘Fragmente der Kirchengeschichte des Philostorgius’, RQA (1889) 3, 252–89 Google Scholar and idem, Quaestiones Philostorgianae (Paris 1891).

22. Lang, D.M., ‘St Euthymius the Georgian and the Barlaam and Josaphat Romance’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies M12 (1965) 306–25 Google Scholar.

23. Cf.Dvornik, F., The Idea of Apostolicity in Byzantium and the Legend of the Apostle Andrew (Cambridge, Mass. 1958) 229 Google Scholar.

24. Ed. Delehaye, pp. 148 and 150.

25. Cf.Dvornik, , op. cit. 244–45 Google Scholar.

26. Chron. Pasch. p. 542, 14-18. The cult of St. Andrew did not become important in Byzantium until the second half of the seventh century when the legend that the apostle consecrated Stachys, the first bishop of Constantinople, first came to be circulated. Cf. Dvornik, op. cit. 57ff. Dvornik, who accepts the historicity of the Constantius date for the transfer of the relics as given in Philostorgius, the AP and in other late Byzantine sources, is at a loss to explain why the apostle Andrew was so unimportant in the apostolic ‘pecking-order’ in the intervening centuries. Cf. ibid., pp. 140-46.

27. PG 115.1160-1212.

28. PG 126.151-221. For an overall view of this work see Obolensky, D., Six Byzantine Portraits (Oxford 1988) 71–77 Google Scholar.

29. Devos, P., ‘Une recension nouvelle de la passion grecque BHG 639 de Saint Eusignios’, AB 100 (1982) 209–10 Google Scholar (Appendix to Coquin, R.G. and Lucchesi, E., ‘Une version copte de la passion de Saint Eusignios’, ibid, 186–208)Google Scholar.

30. We know of the name of the sculptor from Cedrenus, Comp. hist., I, p. 536, 11 (CSHB).

31. Cf. Syriac text and French trans, in Histoire ‘Acéphale’ et Index syriaque des Lettres Festales d’Athanase d’Alexandrie, edd. Martin, A. and Albert, M. (SC 317. Paris 1985) 258–9 Google Scholar (§XXX).

32. The story is also found in the main Bohairic Life of Pachomius (‘The Bohairic Life of Pachomius’, §185, trans. Veilleux, A., Pachomian Koinonia, 1, The Life of Saint Pachomius and his disciples [Cistercian Studies XLV. Kalamazoo 1980] 220–24)Google Scholar which implies that it belongs to the earliest written sources on the life of the saint.

33. Vita Prima Graeca 137-38, ed. Halkin, F., in Sancii Pachomii Vitae Graecea (Brussels 1932)86, 10-87,15 Google Scholar, trans. Veilleux, A., ‘The First Greek Life’, in Veilleux, op. cit. 395–97 Google Scholar.

34. Cf. Julian, ep. 10, =Soc, HE 111, 3, 10, trans. Coleman-Norton, R.P., in Roman State and Christian Church, 3 vols. (London 1966) 1 270–1 Google Scholar.

35. Cf.Lieu, , op. cit., 25, n. 46 Google Scholar.

36. III, 18, 1 (GCS).

37. See the excellent discussion in Brennecke, C., Studien zur Geschichte der Homoër (Beitráge zur historischen Theologie. Tübingen 1988) 129 Google Scholar.

38. III, 51, pp. 235, 21-236, 2: ‘St. Artemios at Oxeia: The church of the Baptist was built by Anastasios Dikoros, the former silentiarios, the one from Dyrrhachium, for while he was protoasekretis he used to live there. After the relic of St. Artemios had been brought, the church took his name.’ (trans. Mango, op. cit. 41).

39. PG 115.1212A.

40. Mango, , op. cit. 42 Google Scholar.

41. Ibid., p. 41.

42. Cf.Bees, N.A., ‘Weiteres zum Kult des hl. Artemios’, BNJ 1 (1920) 384–85 Google Scholar.

43. Ciggar, K.N., ‘Une description de Constantinople traduite par un pèlerin anglais’, REB 34 (1976) 259 Google Scholar, §36: Et in ipsa parte est ecclesia sancti Iohannis Baptiste et in hac ecclesia est caput sancti Artemii martiris et reliquiae eius. Hie sanctus Artemius erat dux et nobilissimus homo et misit eum Constantius filius sancti Constantini et adduxit de Patris corpus sancti Andreae apostoli, de Thebis sanctum Lucam euangelistam et de Epheso sanctum Timotheum discipulum sancti Pauli apostoli. Hunc martirizavit Iulianus Apostata. Cf.Mango, , op. cit. 41, n. 15 Google Scholar.

44. Battifol, P., Fragmente der Kirchengeschichte des Philostorgius’, Rômische Quartal-schrift3 (1889) 253–55 Google Scholar. See however the cogent counter-arguments of Bidez, GCS Philost., pp. LVI-LVII.

45. Cf. PIRE, I, Artemius 1.

46. See Lehmann, K., ‘Ein Reliefbild des heiligen Artemios in Konstantinopel’, BNJ 1 (1920) 382–84 Google Scholar.

47. Cf.Khazdan, and Ševčenko, ‘Artemios’, ODB, 195 Google Scholar.

48. Cf.Baynes, N.H., ‘The death of Julian the Apostate in a Christian legend’, JRS 27 (1937) 27 Google Scholar.