medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Theodulus, Saturninus, Euporus, Gelasius, Eunicianus, Zoticus, Pontius, Agathopus, Basilides, and Evaristus -- the Ten Martyrs of Crete -- proclaimed their Christianity during a public sacrifice in Gortyn (now Gortys or Gortyna) at the time of the Decian persecution (250-251), were tried and were executed by decapitation, and were buried together. The first five were from Gortyn itself; the remainder came from other towns in the central and western portions of the island. Bishop Paul of Gortyn is said to have obtained imperial permission in the reign of Constantine the Great to translate their remains to the city's cemetery. Thus far their perhaps eighth-century Passio (BHG 1196), conceivably a synthetic account bringing together in one story a number of originally quite separate martyrs of different Cretan locales.
These saints' cult is said to be attested from the fifth century at Gortyn. They have an Encomium by the earlier and more genuine of the two Sts. Andrew of Crete (BHG 1197d) and an expanded Passio by St. Symeon Metaphrastes (BHG 1197). They are entered under today in the earlier ninth-century Marble Calendar of Naples, in the initially tenth- and eleventh-century Synaxary of Constantinople, and in the later tenth-century Metaphrastic Menologion. Byzantine-rite churches celebrate them today and today is also their day of commemoration in the Roman Martyrology.
The village of Agioi Deka ("Ten Saints") near what once was Gortyn's municipal cemetery bears the name of its originally twelfth- or thirteenth-century church dedicated to these martyrs. The latter is situated within an area formerly occupied by Gortyn's amphitheatre (which is where the martyrs are said to have been killed). Some views of the church, whose marble columns, with bases re-used as capitals (once a plinth, now an abacus!), are evidently spolia:
http://tinyurl.com/y8t59uo
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1230/1343505462_c08dc78cfd_b.jpg
http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/photo512488.htm
http://tinyurl.com/yc3ycpk
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1073/1342617491_81f6e9e31c_b.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2031/1716133939_5b1e6d81e8_b.jpg
https://www.flickr.com/photos/andreasfucke/1408172142/
Students of imprint relics, take note: this church displays a largish lump of marble bearing what a placard says are marks of the martyrs' knees as they knelt to be executed:
http://www.angelfire.com/super2/greece/kreta2014/161.JPG
http://www.angelfire.com/super2/greece/kreta2014/162.JPG
On the outskirts of the village, at the former cemetery, a more recent church is built over what are revered as the martyrs' graves. Here's a view of those:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2207/1716222731_8d21ef7f60_b.jpg
Some period-pertinent images of the Ten Martyrs of Crete:
a) as depicted (martyrdom) in the late tenth- or very early eleventh-century so-called Menologion of Basil II (Cittą del Vaticano, BAV, cod. Vat. gr. 1613, p. 269):
http://tinyurl.com/h2burew
b) as depicted (panel at upper right; martyrdom) in an earlier fourteenth-century pictorial menologion from Thessaloniki (betw. 1322 and 1340; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Gr. th. f. 1, fol. 22r):
http://image.ox.ac.uk/images/bodleian/msgrthf1/22r.jpg
c) as depicted in an earlier fifteenth-century fresco (ca. 1426-1450) in the katholikon (dedicated to Sts. Anthony of Egypt and Thomas the Apostle) of the Vrontisi monastery near Zaros (Heraklion regional unit) on Crete:
http://tinyurl.com/jet5qbt
Best,
John Dillon
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