medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
We know about Astius (in Greek, Asteios and Astios; in Albanian, Asti) chiefly from notices in early medieval Greek synaxaries drawing upon a now lost legendary Passio. These make him a bishop of Dyrrachium (now Durrës in Albania; in Italian, Durazzo) who, in a persecution under the emperor Trajan and after refusing in the presence of the city's leading citizens to sacrifice before the idols, was sentenced by the governor of Illyricum to severe flagellation. Having refused a renewed opportunity to abandon his faith, Astius was smeared with honey and was left bound to a cross in blazing sunlight where the bites of flies and wasps finished him off. Thus far the legend. Fragments of a liturgy in his honor by St. Joseph the Hymnographer (d. late 9th cent.) also survive. Relics believed to be his were venerated along with those of St. Isaurus of Apollonia in the cathedral of Dyrrachium from at least 1210 until the city's conquest by Turks in 1501.
The originally tenth-century Synaxary of Constantinople and other notices from the ninth century onward enter Astius variously under 5. 6., or 7. July. 6. July is his usual feast day in modern churches using the Byzantine Rite. Some Orthodox churches celebrate him on 4. July. Others celebrate him on 7. July along with seven secondary martyrs (sometimes six) who are said to have witnessed his execution, confessed Christianity, and been put to death by drowning at sea. Astius has yet to have an entry of his own in the Roman Martyrology, though prior to the latter's revision of 2001, when these saints were dropped from it, he received a mention there in an entry for the secondary martyrs Peregrinus, Lucian, Pompey, Hesychius, Papius, Saturninus, and Germanus.
Some period-pertinent images of St. Astius:
a) as depicted (upper register; lower register, St. Isaurus of Apollonia) as depicted in a later thirteenth-century fresco (ca. 1260-1263) in the altar area of the church of the Holy Apostles in the Patriarchate of Peć in, depending upon one's view of the matter, either Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo:
http://tinyurl.com/6jc5eda
Detail view (Astius):
http://tinyurl.com/jrt78dc
b) as depicted by Eutychios and Michael Astrapas in the late thirteenth-century frescoes (ca. 1295) in the church of the Peribleptos (now Sv. Kliment Ohridski) in Ohrid:
http://tinyurl.com/6drlwft
c) as depicted by Michael Astrapas and Eutychios in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (ca. 1308-1320) in the church of St. Nicetas the Goth (Sv. Nikita) at Čučer in today's Čučer-Sandevo in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia:
http://tinyurl.com/j2xmyw7
d) as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1312 and ca. 1321/22) in one of the little domes of the monastery church of the Theotokos at Gračanica in, depending upon one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://tinyurl.com/3jbqgv5
Best,
John Dillon
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