medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (17. August) is the feast day of:
1) Eusebius (d. ca. 309), pope. E. succeeded pope St. Marcellus I,
whose period in office is imperfectly known. According to his epitaph
by pope St. Damasus (ed. Ferrua, no. 18), our chief source of
information for E., he was willing to readmit penitent Christians who
had lapsed during the Great Persecution. An opponent, Heraclius, was
not willing to do this. When factional strife, some of it violent,
broke out between adherents of the two camps, the de facto emperor
Maxentius had both leaders exiled. E. died in Sicily and was brought
back and buried in Rome's cemetery of St. Callistus; in Damasus' view,
he was a martyr. But he's not a martyr in the calendar of 354, which
lists him for today, or in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology, which
lists for 26. September (prior to 2001, his location in the RM) his
deposition in the aforementioned catacomb. The _Liber Pontificalis_
adds a few details, of which one (the finding of the True Cross during
his pontificate) is clearly false and others (that he was of Greek
extraction and the son of a physician) are unverifiable.
An English-language translation of Damasus' epigram, bizarrely
called "the text of the poem" (as though D. had written in modern
English!), is here:
http://www.catacombe.roma.it/en/sangaio.html
A better one, together with Ferrua's Latin text, is at John R. Curran,
_Pagan City and Christian Capital: Rome in the Fourth Century_ (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 2000), p. 151.
2) Elias of Enna (d. 903 or 904). Today's less well known saint of the
Regno was born at today's Enna (EN) in Sicily shortly after the Islamic
conquest of the island had begun. His baptismal name was Joseph and he
was Greek-speaking. According to his tenth-century Bios (BHG 580),
when J. was twelve he was captured by Muslims who were besieging Enna
and was transported to Africa, where he was sold as a slave. By divine
providence, he was bought by a local Christian and soon was returned to
Sicily and to his parents by an East Roman raiding party that had come
from Syracuse. A few years later Muslims captured him again, sold him
again into slavery in Africa, and again he was bought by a Christian.
This time, though, J. was sold on to another Christian, very rich, who
brought him up with respect and affection. But the rich man's wife
lusted after J. and when he refused her she accused him to her husband
of attempting to seduce her (in the text, the parallel with Potiphar's
wife is explicit). J. then left this happy household, begain to preach
the Gospel, was imprisoned and escaped, and finally undertook a
pilgrimage to Palestine and Egypt. In Jerusalem he entered religion,
taking the name of E.
After further travels in the East, E. returned to Sicily where he
visited his mother, who now lived in Muslim-ruled Palermo. Moving on
to Taormina, he met the monk Daniel who became his faithful companion
and later the chief informant of the writer of this Bios. Foreseeing
the Islamic capture of what was now the last city in Sicily still in
East Roman hands, he warned both the citizens and the governor but was
not taken seriously. So he and Daniel left on their own for Calabria,
where he founded a monastic settlement at or near today's Saline
Ioniche (RC). Islamic raids caused him to move on again and he spent
some years in various parts of southern Italy and in Greece, preaching
the Gospel and operating miracles. He founded another monastery near
today's Palmi (RC) and was living here when the emperor (who will have
been Leo VI) invited him to Constantinople. The aged E. died en route
at Thessalonica; David brought his body back to the monastery,
interring it there on the height that is now known as Monte Sant'Elia.
Both of E.'s monastic foundations were subsequently named for him; both
became important places in the history of Greek monasticism in southern
Italy. Whereas neither remains today, the monastery subsequently
dedicated to him at Galatro (RC) did survive into the late eighteenth
century. Some views of what's left of it are here:
http://tinyurl.com/mxwyc
E.'s Bios is a monument of Italo-Greek literature. Though not as
impressive as that of Nilus of Rossano a century later, it too presents
a varied and engaging portrait of a holy man operating in a secular and
often hostile world. One of its less effective moments that
nonetheless is historically interesting is the brief sermon comparing
Christianity with Islam that is put into E.'s mouth in paragraphs 23-
24. The now standard edition of the Bios is that of Giovanni Rossi
Taibbi, _Vita di Sant'Elia il Giovane. Testo inedito con traduzione
italiana_ (Palermo: Istituto siciliano di studi bizantini e
neoellenici, 1962).
Best,
John Dillon
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