medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (22. September) is the feast day of:
Phocas the gardener (?). P. is a famous early martyr of whom, like so
many early martyrs, very little is actually known. Our first account
of him, the fourth-century Asterius of Amasea's _Homily 9_, tells us
that P. was born at Sinope in Pontus (today's Sinop, about halfway
along Turkey's Black Sea coast), that he lived as a rustic gardener
outside a gate of that city, and that, though poor, he was generous in
his hospitality. During an unspecified persecution, agents of the
Roman state arrived at P.'s house looking for P., whom they intended to
slay as he was a known Christian. But they didn't know what he looked
like. P. offered them hospitality and promised that on the following
day he would point out to them the man they sought. The agents
accepted this offer. While they slept P. dug his own grave. On the
next day P. revealed his identity to them and asked them to slay him
quickly. Overcoming their initial amazement, P.'s guests rapidly
complied by decapitating him. Asterius adds that other places venerate
P. and have sought some relics of him; further, that he is a patron of
sailors, often seen by them at night when a storm has been expected.
The poor gardener or other small-farmer outside the city is familiar
character in Hellenistic literature. And the association with sailors
is based on the similarity of P.'s name with the Greek word for
seal, 'phokos'. All one really say about P. from Asterius' homily is
that he was a martyr venerated at Sinope and elsewhere. According
to Asterius, one of the elsewheres was Rome; according to John
Chrysostom, another was Constantinople. Epigraphic and other evidence
shows P.'s cult to have been widespread in the East from at least the
fifth century onward. To judge from toponyms and other indicia from
the Salentine Peninsula and from Calabria, it was also firmly rooted in
Greek-speaking southern Italy. Symeon the Metaphrast adopted Asterius'
account wholesale, thus reinforcing the megalomartyr P.'s popularity in
the central and later medieval Greek and other Orthodox world.
An undated Greek Passio (BHG 1536, 1536c), later than Asterius, makes
P. a bishop of Sinope martyred under Trajan. This highly legendary
account spawned both a Latin Passio (BHL 6838) and brief accounts in
the historical martyrologies of Bede, Florus, and Ado, all entered
under 14. July, the date provided by one of the (pseudo-)Hieronymian
Martyrology's less informative entries, _alibi s. Focae episcopi_
('elsewhere, St. Phocas the bishop'). P. was commemorated on this date
in the RM until its revision of 2001, when he was moved to today
in accordance with the Synaxary of Constantinople (which follows the
Asterian account) and with Byzantine-rite practice generally.
In the 1990s the appearance of mosaic fragments near Sinop led to the
discovery of what are thought to be the remains of P.'s fourth-century
cult site there. An announcement, with a view showing mosaic floors,
is here:
http://tinyurl.com/eeclq
and a follow-up from January 2003 will be found on this page:
http://tinyurl.com/gfd92
Sinop is also the home of an originally sixth-century monastery. In
the nineteenth century a portion of a _de luxe_ sixth-century Gospel
manuscript was found here (Sinop, at least, if not the monastery;
there's a story that a local tobacconist used it to wrap a purchase
made by a visiting French naval officer) and subsequently found its way
into France's Bibliothèque Nationale, where it is now ms. gr. 1286.
Written in gold on vellum dyed in purple and often referred to as the
Sinope Gospels, it is generally similar to the also sixth-century Codex
Purpureus of Rossano but is thought to be slightly earlier. When it came
to Sinop and where it was made (perhaps Caesarea) are not known.
Two views of one of its illuminated pages are shown here (at bottom):
http://www.ou.edu/class/ahi4263/byzhtml/p02-05.html
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post lightly revised)
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