medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
6. July is also the feast day of:
Astius of Durrës (d. ca. 100, supposedly). We know about Astius (in Greek, Asteios and Astios; in Albanian, Asti) from notices in early medieval Greek menologia and synaxaries drawing upon a now lost legendary Passio. These make him a bishop of Dyrrachium (now Durrës in Albania; in Italian, Durazzo) who, in a persecution under the emperor Trajan and after refusing in the presence of the city's leading citizens to sacrifice before the idols, was sentenced by the governor of Illyricum to severe flagellation. Having refused a renewed opportunity to abandon his faith, Astius then was smeared with honey and was left bound to a cross in blazing sunlight where the bites of flies and wasps finished him off. Thus far the legend.
Witnesses of the SynCP have Astius under either 5. July or 6. July; the latter is the day of his feast in the Albanian Orthodox Church. Some Orthodox churches celebrate him on 4. June. He has yet to have an entry of his own in the RM, though prior to the latter's revision of 2001 he received a mention there in an entry for the Dyrrachian martyrs Peregrinus, Lucian, Pompey, Hesychius, Papius, Saturninus, and Germanus.
Astius (lower register; upper register, St. Isaurus) as depicted in a later thirteenth-century panel painting (ca. 1260) now in the National Museum of Serbia, Belgrade:
http://www.aiwaz.net/panopticon/Saint-Astios-and-Saint-Isauro/gi4804c18
Astius (upper register; lower register, St. Isaurus) as depicted in a later thirteenth-century fresco (betw. 1260 and 1263) in the the altar area of the church of the Apostles in the Patriarchate of Peć at Peć in, depending on one's view of the matter, either Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo:
http://tinyurl.com/6jc5eda
Astius as depicted in the late thirteenth-century frescoes (ca. 1295) by Michael Astrapas and Eutychios in the church of the Peribleptos (now Sv. Climent Novi) in Ohrid:
http://tinyurl.com/6drlwft
Astius as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1314 and ca. 1320) by Michael Astrapas and Eutychios in the church of St. Nicetas the Goth (Sv. Nikita) at Čučer in today's Čučer-Sandevo in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia:
http://tinyurl.com/4yz37fv
Astius as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1312 and ca. 1321/22) in one of the little domes of the monastery church of the Theotokos at Gračanica 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/3jbqgv5
Best,
John Dillon
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