medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On Sunday, December 26, 2004, at 8:04 pm, Phyllis wrote:
> Today (27. December) is the feast day of:
> Theodore and Theophanes (d. c. 841/845) ... The patriarch sent
> them to the Byzantine emperor to protest iconoclasm, with predictable
> results: they were flogged and sent to an island in the black sea.
> They went back to Constantinople when Emperor Leo died, but were soon
> banished again. T and T were brought back in 831 but, when they
> proved to be still recalcitrant, they were tortured and had twelve
> lines of verses cut into their skins (unfortunately my source doesn't
> say what the verses were), before being banished to Bithynia.
Symeon Metaphrastes' Life of Theodore Graptos (BHG 1746) quotes from a
letter from Theodore to John, bp. of Cyzicus, in which the lines, said
to have been cut into the brothers' _faces_, are given thus (w = omega;
H = eta):
Pantwn pothountwn prostrechein pros tHn polin,
Hopou panagnoi tou Theou Logou podes
EstHsan eis systasin tHs oikoumenHs,
OphthHsan houtoi tw sebasmiw topw,
SkeuH ponera dyseidaimonos planHs,
Ekeise polla loipon ex agnWsias
Praxantes aisxra, deina, dyssebophronWs,
Ekeithen HlathHsan hws apostatai.
Pros tHn polin de tou kratous pepheugotes,
Ouk exaphHkan tas alesmous mwrias.
Hothen graphentes hws kakourgoi tHn thean,
Katakrinontai kai diwkontai palin.
(Text from PG 116, col. 673D, correcting a misprint in line 2, omitting
iotas subscript, and normalizing breathings. There's basic bibliography
s.v. "Theodore Graptos" in _The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium_, vol. 3,
p. 2042.)
Eutychismenos o kainourgios chronos!
John Dillon
PS: At the risk of unduly lengthening this post, here are the
corresponding Latin verses from the sixteenth-century translation of
this Life as reprinted in the PG (ibid., col. 674D):
Cunctis ad urbem adire eam volentibus,
Stetere ubi Dei Verba casti pedes,
Terrarum ut orbis per id queat consistere;
Apparuerunt isti honorando in loco,
Erroris impii mala vasa et reproba,
Cum multa fecissent ibi perturpia,
Graviaque quod deesset eis recta fides,
Illinc abacti sunt sicut apostatae.
Confugientes autem ad urbem imperii,
Stultitiam haud reliquerunt nefariam.
Quare notati et inscripti ut malefici,
Damnantur exigunturque improbi iterum.
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