medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Herewith a link to last year's "Saints of the day" for 10. December (including Maurus of Rome, Eulalia of Mérida, Valeria of Limoges, Gemellus, Thomas of Farfa, pope Gregory III, Luke of Melicuccà):
http://tinyurl.com/6qdjgn9
10. December is also the feast day of:
Mennas, Hermogenes, and Eugraphus (?). According to their obviously legendary earlier Passio BHG 1270 (its Metaphrastic re-working is BHG 1271), which proclaims itself to have been written by St. Athanasius of Alexandria, this supposed group of martyrs of Alexandria in Egypt suffered under a Maximinus whom some take to be Maximinus Thrax (r. 235-238) and whom others identify with Maximinus Daia (r. 305-313). Hearing of civic disorder in Alexandria that emperor sent as his envoy to restore harmony the sage orator Mennas (his name in Greek is spelled with but a single 'n'; sometimes called M. the Athenian, he is more usually referred to, from wording in the Passio, as M. Kallikelados [i.e. 'of fair and resounding voice'] ). But Mennas was also a crypto-Christian. When he arrived in Alexandria he declared his faith openly, practiced acts of mercy, operated miracles, and cast down idols. Angry pagans denounced him to the emperor, who in turn sent an Athenian named Hermogenes to restore order. En route, Hermogenes received a dream informing him that he would soon know the true king.
Once in Alexandria, Hermogenes convoked a public assembly in the theater. Mennas used this occasion to deliver an oration that lasted for four hours and that caused the populace to acclaim the One God. On the following day Hermogenes ordered that Mennas be wounded in the feet, have his eyes and tongue torn out, and be cut to pieces. Having somehow survived this gruesome punishment, Mennas was taken to prison where Christ cured him fully and announced the imminent conversion of Hermogenes. Unaware of what God had in store for him, Hemogenes called another public assembly in the theater for the purpose of viewing Mennas' execution; when Mennas appeared before him in better shape than he had been prior to his torture and guarded by two angels, Hermogenes acknowledged the truth of the god of Mennas. On the following day, he called yet another assembly at which Mennas preached and then baptized Hermogenes, whom thirty bishops in attendance promptly ordained bishop.
When word of all this reached the emperor that worthy went to Alexandria with a very large body of soldiers, arrested and interrogated Mennas and Hermogenes, and ordered different but similarly gruesome deaths for each. After these sentences were carried out Mennas' angels cured both martyrs, who then appeared before the emperor at the very moment when he was proclaiming to the people his triumph over the Galilean. Mennas' significantly named secretary Eugraphus ('writes correctly') attempted to quell the emperor's rage by pointing out its futility, whereupon the emperor killed him outright and ordered that Mennas and Hermogenes be decapitated. Before that sentence was carried out Mennas asked that he be buried in Byzantium; the emperor refused and instead had Mennas' body enclosed in an iron coffin which latter was then cast into the sea. Over the next twenty days the coffin, accompanied by two angels bearing torches, floated to Chalcedon, where the bishop hid the saint's remains in his church. After Maximinus' death at the hands of angels those relics were brought out out and were buried near the shore.
Thus far pseudo-Athanasius. St. Symeon the Metaphrast in his version adds that Mennas' final burial place was near the walls of the city's acropolis (the city being of course being the anachronistically important Byzantium [not yet Constantinople]). Synaxary notices under 17. February recounts the discovery on that day and prompted by an apparition of the saint himself, in the reign of an emperor Basil (opinions differ as whether this is Basil I or Basil II), of Mennas' remains on the shore near the acropolis of Constantinople.
According to the Synaxary of Constantinople, the feast of the great martyr Mennas of Egypt (11. November) was celebrated in his church near that city's acropolis. The prevailing scholarly view is that this other Mennas represents one of several cultic variations on that saint (whose lack of an early Passio facilitated such 'twigging') and that it arose in connection with the discovery of major relics to be housed in a church that previously had not had such. If -- as is usually supposed -- the Basil of the Finding of Mennas' Relics is Basil I (r. 867-885), this would be another of the several productions of relics (and of newly identified saints) in Constantinople in the decades following the Triumph of Orthodoxy in 843 (see the comment on Andrew 'in Crisi' [20. Oct.] at <http://tinyurl.com/6vcdg4u>). If Hermogenes and Eugraphus were actually local saints of Constantinople whose cult, fallen into desuetude, was revived by making them characters in the Passio, nothing is known about them. They may just be fictions. There is no early evidence for any of these three saints, all of whom have names or, in the case of Mennas Kallikelados, epithets associated with rhetoric or signifying good writing.
Orthodox and other "eastern"-rite churches celebrate Mennas, Hermogenes, and Eugraphus today. Pietro Galesino, the first editor of the RM, entered Mennas and Hermogenes therein under this day; cardinal Baronio added Eugraphus to this elogium. In its revision of 2001 all three ceased to grace the pages of the RM.
A good, black-and-white image of the martyrdom of Mennas, Hermogenes, and Eugraphus (the latter receiving a sword-thrust from Maximinus) as depicted in the late tenth- or very early eleventh-century so-called Menologion of Basil II (Città del Vaticano, BAV, ms. Vat. gr. 1613, fol. 234) will be found in the _Bibliotheca Sanctorum_ at vol. 9, cols. 345-346.
Hermogenes as depicted (with an inscription calling him Hermogenios) in the earlier eleventh-century frescoes of the New Church in the Tokalı Kilise (Buckle Church) at Göreme (Nevşehir province) in Turkey:
http://www.pbase.com/dosseman/image/41572187
The largely vanished larger portrait below and to the right is identified inscriptionally that of Mennas. I couldn't find a view of what is said to be the nearby depiction of Eugraphus.
A reduced, black-and-white view of Mennas Kallikelados as depicted in a fresco of ca. 1300, attributed to Manuel Panselinos, in the Protaton church on Mt. Athos:
http://tinyurl.com/3uvghjr
Hermogenes as depicted in a fresco of ca. 1300, attributed to Manuel Panselinos, in the Protaton church on Mt. Athos:
http://tinyurl.com/cotprk7
http://tinyurl.com/cg9hypw
http://tinyurl.com/d4c4wd2
Eugraphus as depicted in a fresco of ca. 1300, attributed to Manuel Panselinos, in the Protaton church on Mt. Athos:
http://tinyurl.com/7g5n3su
http://tinyurl.com/7uzvcnn
Hermogenes as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1313 and 1318; conservation work in 1968) by the painters Michael Astrapas and Eutychios in the church of St. George at Staro Nagoričane in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia:
http://tinyurl.com/3jkckgd
http://tinyurl.com/3ewxbfs
Eugraphus as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1313 and 1318; conservation work in 1968) by the painters Michael Astrapas and Eutychios in the church of St. George at Staro Nagoričane in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia:
http://tinyurl.com/3wzk4us
http://tinyurl.com/3p2ug9z
Mennas (center) and Hermogenes (at right) as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century mosaics (betw. 1315 and 1321) of the exonarthex in the Chora church in Istanbul:
http://www.ipernity.com/doc/bernard-petit34/9221061/in/album/209335
Eugraphus as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century mosaics (betw. 1315 and 1321) of the exonarthex in the Chora church in Istanbul:
http://tinyurl.com/c8btgnd
The martyrdom of Mennas, Eugraphus, and Hermogenes as depicted in a December calendar scene in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) of the narthex in 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/7yu6gpr
Mennas Kallikelados (at right) as depicted in the earlier sixteenth-century frescoes (1545 or 1546) by Theofanis Strelitzas-Bathas (a.k.a. Theophanes the Cretan) in the katholikon of the Stavronikita monastery on Mt. Athos:
http://tinyurl.com/3uhegcj
Best,
John Dillon
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