medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
According to Sozomen (_Historia ecclesiastica_, 5. 11. 7-11), Basil was a priest of Ancyra (today's Ankara) who under Julian the Apostate (r. 361-363) publicly exhorted fellow Christians not to participate in pagan liturgies, whereupon he was arrested, interrogated by the provincial governor, tortured, and executed. His seemingly legendary Passiones (BHG 242 and 243) have Basil also interrogated by the emperor Julian, whom Basil so angered that Julian ordered him to be flayed alive, after which Basil was executed at Ancyra by exposure _ad bestias_. Relatives gathered his scattered remains and placed them in a martyrial church dedicated to him. Thus far Basil's Passiones. Byzantine menaia have similar accounts that give Basil's place of execution as Caesarea in Cappadocia; corresponding synaxary notices enter Basil of Caesarea under 2. January. Byzantine-rite churches have celebrated this Basil of Ancyra (sometimes construing him as a lay person and sometimes identifying him with his contemporary the deposed semi-Arian bishop of Ancyra exiled to Illyricum in the early 360s) on one or more of the following days: 1. January, 2. January, 22. March, 28. June. Today is his day of commemoration in the Roman Martyrology.
Some period-pertinent images of St. Basil of Ancyra, martyr:
a) as depicted (martyrdom) in the late tenth- or early eleventh-century so-called Menologion of Basil II (Cittą del Vaticano, BAV, cod. Vat. gr. 1613, p. 290 [2. Jan.]):
http://tinyurl.com/jpomvg4
A closer view:
http://tinyurl.com/zuonp6f
b) as depicted (at lower right in the panel at upper left; martyrdom; the nun's veil is from a later repainting) in an earlier fourteenth-century pictorial menologion from Thessaloniki (betw. 1322 and 1340; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Gr. th. f. 1, fol. 32v [2. Jan.]):
http://image.ox.ac.uk/images/bodleian/msgrthf1/23v.jpg
c) as depicted (at lower left in the panel at upper right; holding both a martyr's cross and a book) in an earlier fourteenth-century pictorial menologion from Thessaloniki (betw. 1322 and 1340; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Gr. th. f. 1, fol. 32v [22. March]):
http://image.ox.ac.uk/images/bodleian/msgrthf1/32v.jpg
Best,
John Dillon
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