medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On Wednesday, March 31, 2010, at 11:58 pm, I wrote:
> 9. March is also the feast day of:
>
> Forty Martyrs of Sebaste (d. later 3d cent.).
> Although Basil says that the Forty suffered in the middle of the city,
> an early development, enshrined in BHG 1201 and later texts, had them
> spend the night on ice in the middle of the city's lake, then frozen
> over; during that time they received from heaven badges of their
> holiness that in the texts are called _stephanoi_. As a _stephanos_
> is most commonly a garland, the martyrs are often depicted receiving
> martyrs' crowns.
As, for example, in this twelfth-century fresco in the church of Agios Nikolaos tis Stegis at Kakopetria (Limassol prefecture) in the foothills of the Troodos Mountains on Cyprus:
http://tinyurl.com/397nlgh
A view of the church itself:
http://tinyurl.com/2dogwsd
The first of the two pages linked to above offers two lists of the martyrs' names. Versions of such a list circulated separately as well as, in some witnesses, as an appendix to the martyrs' Passio (which itself does not name most of them). Like the martyrs' separately transmitted Testament (BHG 1203), the list is thought to be an early artefact of their cult.
A set of expandable views of eleventh-century mosaic portraits of individual Sebastean martyrs in the cathedral of St. Sophia in Kyiv (Kiev) starts at the bottom right of this page and continues through the next page into the start of the one that follows it:
http://tinyurl.com/28wg4r7
Best again,
John Dillon
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