medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Following the first entry under 29. January in the originally tenth- and eleventh-century Synaxary of Constantinople, Byzantine-rite churches celebrate today a translation of the relics of Ignatius the Godbearer (i.e. St. Ignatius of Antioch). Medieval synaxary notices for this feast tell us that it was celebrated in the Great Church (i.e. Hagia Sophia; in the later Middle Ages visitors report having seen one or both of Ignatius' legs in the convent of the Virgin Pantanassa near the church of the Hodegetria). But we are not informed as to either the date or the circumstances of this translation.
An English-language translation of St. John Chrysostom's homily on Ignatius in the presence of his relics in greater Antioch (where, according to Chrysostom, they had been brought after Ignatius had suffered martyrdom in Rome by _damnatio ad bestias_) is here:
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1905.htm
It is often assumed that today's feast commemorates this initial translation. Another possibility is the translation of relics of Ignatius to the former temple of the Tyche of Antioch when the latter was converted to a church of this saint in the reign of Theodosius II (see Evagrius, _Historia ecclesiastica_, 1. 16).
Two period-pertinent images of the Translation of the Relics of St. Ignatius the Godbearer:
a) as depicted in the late tenth- or very early eleventh-century so-called Menologion of Basil II (Cittą del Vaticano, BAV, Vat. gr. 1613, p. 355):
http://tinyurl.com/zqursum
b) as depicted (upper register in panel at lower right) in an earlier fourteenth-century pictorial menologion from Thessaloniki (betw. 1322 and 1340; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Gr. th. f. 1, fol. 26v):
http://image.ox.ac.uk/images/bodleian/msgrthf1/26v.jpg
Best,
John Dillon
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