medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
The principal source for the life of the monastic founder Patapius (d. late 6th or early 7th cent.?; also Patapius of Thebes, Patapius the Desert-dweller, and Patapius the Miraculous) is a series of idealizing encomia on his life and miracles by the late seventh- and early eighth-century homilist and hymnographer St. Andrew of Crete (BHG 1425-1428). BHG 1428 is said by Andrew to have been written for nuns of Constantinople's monastery of the Egyptians, where Patapius' relics were preserved. How much of Andrew's portrait of Patapius is invention prompted by Patapius' association with that particular house remains an open question.
Andrew seems to have written these texts in Constantinople after 685 and before his translation to Gortys/Gortyn (between 692 and 713). In Andrew's telling Patapius was born to devout parents in Egypt; his literate and very devout mother saw to his early education. Choosing to live ascetically, Patapius spent some time in his native country before migrating to Constantinople, where he settled in the Blachernae quarter, lived humbly, performed healing miracles, had good relations with the nuns of its monastery of the Egyptians, and ultimately attracted disciples who formed a small community with its own house in the same quarter. In Andrew's formulation, Patapius lived in the city without ever having left the desert. He was buried at the monastery of the Egyptians.
Later texts, notably a metaphrastic Bios of Patapius (BHG 1424) and the Bioi of the seemingly fifth-century Sts. Raboula and Baras (BHG 2378m; BHG 212), provide details that became part of the standard store of information about him, e.g. his localization in Egyptian Thebes. Though Andrew gives the impression that Patapius was only a few generations older than himself, acceptance of the view expressed in their Bioi that Raboula and Baras had been associates of Patapius has led some to posit a fifth-century date for Patapius as well.
In the early eleventh-century John Xenos, the founder of the of the monastery of the Theotokos "Antiphonetria" at Myriokephala on Crete, established in its vicinity a dependency named in honor of Patapius. In the fourteenth and earlier fifteenth centuries Patapius' relics, still in Blachernae, were variously reported as reposing at the church of the Theotokos there or at the monastery church of St. John the Baptist. Also from the fifteenth century is the post-Byzantine church dedicated to Patapius in Beroea / Veroia in northern Greece. In the early twentieth century relics believed to be Patapius' were the subject of an Inventio in a cave church on Mt. Geraneia at Loutraki just outside of Corinth. Now said to have been brought there around the time of Constantinople's capture by the Turks in 1453, since the early 1950s they have been venerated in a women's monastery built around this cave. Though dedicated to the Theotokos, the monastery is generally known as that of St. Patapius.
Patapius' putative relics on display in the cave at Loutraki:
http://www.rel.gr/photo/displayimage.php?album=9&pos=42
http://pemptousia.com/files/2013/12/Lout-7767.jpg
Some period-pertinent images of St. Patapius:
a) as depicted in the late tenth- or very early eleventh-century so-called Menologion of Basil II (Città del Vaticano, BAV, cod. Vat. gr. 1613, p. 232):
http://tinyurl.com/cvkeoj5
b) as depicted (as a bishop) in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1312 and 1321/22) in the nave of the monastery church of the Theotokos at Gračanica in, depending on one's view of the matter, either Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo:
http://tinyurl.com/nvs5jed
Detail view:
http://tinyurl.com/zknh986
c) as depicted (upper register at right, panel at lower left) in an earlier fourteenth-century pictorial menologion from Thessaloniki (betw. 1322 and 1340; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Gr. th. f. 1, fol. 18v):
http://image.ox.ac.uk/images/bodleian/msgrthf1/20r.jpg
d) as depicted (at right, as a bishop; at left, yesterday's St. Ambrose of Milan) as depicted in a December calendar composition in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) in the narthex of the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Dečani monastery near Peć in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://tinyurl.com/yaswkw7
Best,
John Dillon
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