medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Crébillon's Zenobia derives from the story of Rhadamistus (an Iberian [now one would say 'Georgian'] king of Armenia) and his wife Zenobia in Tacitus, _Annales_, 12. 44-51.
St. Zenobia, sister of St. Zenobius of Aegae (there's also the recently celebrated St. Zenobius of Sidon), is essentially a chaste helper and heroic fellow sufferer. The summary here seems to capture her flavor rather well:
http://ocafs.oca.org/FeastSaintsLife.asp?FSID=103109
Best,
John Dillon
(who changed the SUBJECT line only in order to have this matter file properly in the 'saints of the day' sequence in the archives)
----- Original Message -----
From: Marjorie Greene <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sunday, October 31, 2010 4:20 pm
Subject: Re: [M-R] saints of the day (30. October)
To: [log in to unmask]
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>
> Seeing the name "Zenobia" reminded me of a truly awful play I had to
> read in graduate school, Crébillon's Radamiste et Zénobie. I tried
> googling the play's title to see if there was any connection but came
> up empty. Was Saint Zenobia married? Or is she so legendary, we have
> no clue? Crébillon evidently used Tacitus as his source for the story,
> which was about Radamiste's abandonment of wife Z to go off to war.
> MG
>
> Marjorie Greene
> http://medrelart.shutterfly.com/
>
> --- On Sun, 10/31/10, John Dillon <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>
> From: John Dillon <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: [M-R] saints of the day (30. October)
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Date: Sunday, October 31, 2010, 2:17 PM
>
>
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>
> Yesterday (30. October) was also the feast day of:
>
> 1) Zenobius and Zenobia (d. 303, supposedly). Absent from the early
> martyrologies and with no surviving record of an early cult, Z. and Z.
> are the subjects of a legendary Passio that exists in premetaphrastic
> and metaphrastic versions (BHG 1884, 1885). This makes Zenobius a
> holy and theologically learned bishop of Aegea in Cilicia (today's
> Ayas in Turkey's Adana province) who performed numerous cures in
> Christ's name and who accepted no money for these services. Arrested
> and tried at the outset of the Diocletianic persecution, he was
> subjected to numerous ineffective tortures before finally being
> decapitated. Zenobius' sister Zenobia delivered herself voluntarily
> to the authorities; she shared both her brother's sufferings and his
> demise. Thus far their Passio.
>
> Assuming that Z. and Z. are not just fictional _personae_ of an
> edifying tale, they could be local martyrs the details of whose
> sufferings failed, as was often the case, to outlast them and who
> later were provided with a suitable story drawing in part on the
> reported activity in Aegea of the likewise healing siblings Cosmas and
> Damian. Or one could be a local martyr and the other an opposite-sex
> counterpart created by their hagiographer for narrative interest and
> appeal to a broader audience. In Eastern-rite synaxaries and
> calendars Z. and Z. have appeared under today (and thus shortly before
> Cosmas and Damian, commemorated on 1. November in the Synaxary of
> Constantinople) since at least the tenth century. They entered the RM
> under cardinal Baronio and left it in the revision of 2001.
>
> The martyrdom of Z. and Z. as depicted in the late tenth- or very
> early eleventh-century so-called Menologion of Basil II (Città del
> Vaticano, BAV, Vat. gr. 1613):
> http://tinyurl.com/279bm3f
>
> The martyrdom of Z. and Z. as depicted in the earlier
> fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) in the narthex of
> the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Dečani monastery near
> Peć in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of
> Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
> http://tinyurl.com/2emem2p
>
> Best,
> John Dillon
>
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