medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
An initially shadowy figure who became the subject of edifying tales, Spyridon the Wonderworker (Spyridon of Cyprus; d. 4th cent.) was bishop of Tremithous on Cyprus. He is reliably reported as having subscribed the acts of the Council of Serdica (342/43) but whether he was actually present at its deliberations is unknown. At the beginning of the fifth century Rufinus of Aquileia, likening Spyridon to the prophets of old, portrayed him as one of the outstanding figures at the Council of Nicaea in 325 (_H.E._ 10. 5; a view seriously undercut by Spyridon's absence from the earliest lists of this council's participants). Averring that Spyridon had been a shepherd both before and during his episcopate, Rufinus further recounts two miracles attributed to him, one involving sheep of the actual rather than the metaphorical kind, and observes that many other marvelous doings are told about him. Reworked by the slightly later church historians Socrates of Constantinople and Sozomen (the latter adding further anecdotes emphasizing Spyridon's charity and drawn from a now lost poem on Spyridon ascribed to his disciple St. Triphyllius), Rufinus' sketch established for future generations this saint's prominence as a champion of the faith and worker of wonders.
Two early Bioi of Spyridon are extant, one by Theodore of Paphos (BHG 1647, 1647b; completed by 665) and the other anonymous (BHG 1648a). Drawing on Theodore and normative for readers of Greek in the central and later Middle Ages was his tenth-century expanded Bios by St. Symeon Metaphrastes (BHG 1648). This includes such dubiously authentic matter as Spyridon's converting a philosopher to Christianity at the Council of Nicaea and the collapse of an idol at Alexandria at the very moment of Spyridon's arrival in that city. In the Latin West, where Spyridon was known both through Rufinus' account and through that of Sozomen as translated by Cassiodorus in the _Historia tripartita_, his cult is first recorded from the ninth century, when he was entered under 14. December in the Marble Calendar of Naples and in the martyrologies of Florus of Lyon, St. Ado of Vienne, and Usuard of Saint-Germain. Usuard's placing him under that day was followed in editions of the Roman Martyrology prior to 2001, when Spyridon was moved to 12. December, his principal day of commemoration in the originally tenth-century Synaxary of Constantinople and the day on which he is ordinarily celebrated in modern Byzantine-Rite churches.
In Theodore of Paphos' time Spyridon's remains were still on Cyprus. An incorrupt body believed to be his was venerated in Constantinople from at least the twelfth century to at least the 1420s, when it was in the church of the Holy Apostles. This relic (or -- perish the thought! -- a substitute) seems to have been brought to Corfu in the later fifteenth century, after which time Spyridon quickly replaced Athanasius of Alexandria as that island's patron saint.
Herewith some period-pertinent images of St. Spyridon the Wonderworker. Note the brownish woven hat that along with the omophorion identifying him as a bishop is a standard constituent of his iconography (but it's not unique to him: the differently attired desert father Paul of Thebes sometimes sports similar headgear).
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. 239):
http://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.gr.1613/0261
http://tinyurl.com/zdov5eu
b) as depicted (at left; at right, pope St. Silvester) in the earlier eleventh-century mosaics (restored between 1953 and 1962) in the katholikon of the monastery of Hosios Loukas near Distomo in Phokis (grayscale image; this pair of images is in the building's seemingly less often photographed diakonikon):
https://phaidra.univie.ac.at/detail_object/o:191570
c) Spyridon as depicted in the late thirteenth-century frescoes (ca. 1295) by Eutychios and Michael Astrapas in the church of the Peribleptos (now Sv. Kliment Ohridski) in Ohrid:
http://tinyurl.com/zwfla7w
Detail view:
http://tinyurl.com/goxhwnn
d) as depicted in the late thirteenth- or very early fourteenth-century frescoes (ca. 1290-1305) attributed to Manuel Panselinos in the Protaton church on Mount Athos:
http://tinyurl.com/hhwqcwv
e) as depicted in the fourteenth-century frescoes of the monastery of St. John the Theologian (Sv. Ioan Bogoslov) at Zemen in western Bulgaria:
http://tinyurl.com/5kc2eq
f) as depicted (detail view) in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1313 and 1318; conservation work in 1968) by Michael Astrapas and Eutychios in the church of St. George at Staro Nagoričane in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia:
http://tinyurl.com/zp8nlau
g) as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1313 and 1320) by Michael Astrapas and Eutychios in the King's Church (dedicated to Sts. Joachim and Anne) in the Studenica monastery near Kraljevo (Raška dist.) in Serbia:
http://tinyurl.com/43bopoc
h) as depicted (at upper left in the 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. 20v):
http://tinyurl.com/j69hjmb
i) as depicted (detail view) in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (1330s) in the church of the Holy Savior (Sv. Spas; a.k.a. church of the Presentation of the Theotokos) at Kučevište in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia:
http://tinyurl.com/zrxktpg
j) as depicted (somewhat atypically) in an earlier fourteenth-century fresco (1330s) in the altar area of the church of the Hodegetria in the Patriarchate of Peć at Peć 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/ctqw3sr
k) as depicted (at left; at right, St. Polycarp) in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) in the altar area of the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Dečani monastery near Peć 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/b6kyvk4
Detail views (Spyridon):
http://pemptousia.com/files/2012/12/spyridon-in-1.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/oj4vsaz
l) as depicted (detail view) in the later fourteenth-century frescoes (1360s and 1370s; restored in 1968-1970) in the church of St. Demetrius in Marko's Monastery at Markova Sušica in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia:
http://tinyurl.com/j77yarw
m) as depicted (at right; at left, St. Blasius / Blaise of Sebaste) in an early fifteenth-century Novgorod School icon (ca. 1407) in the State Historical Museum in Moscow:
http://www.icon-art.info/hires.php?lng=en&type=1&id=562
n) as depicted by Dionisy and sons in the early sixteenth-century frescoes (1502) of the Virgin Nativity cathedral of the St. Ferapont Belozero (Ferapontov Belozersky) monastery at Ferapontovo in Russia's Vologda oblast:
http://www.dionisy.com/img/266/frag_lg.jpg
o) as depicted (upper register, just right of center) at the First Ecumenical Council as depicted by Simeon Axenti in the early sixteenth-century frescoes (1513) of the church of Ayios Sozomenos in Galata (Nicosia prefecture) in the Republic of Cyprus:
https://thepocketscroll.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/cropped-nicaea.jpg
Detail view (Spyridon above; below, the pope of Rome):
https://thepocketscroll.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/spyridon.jpg
p) as depicted by Theofanis Strelitzas-Bathas (a.k.a. Theophanes the Cretan) in the mid-sixteenth-century frescoes (1545 and 1546) of the katholikon of the Stavronikita monastery on Mt. Athos:
http://pemptousia.com/files/2012/12/spyridon-in-3.jpg
Best,
John Dillon
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