medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
The poorly documented Cypriot saint Athanasius of Pentaschino (d. 6th cent.?; also Athananasius of Pentaschoinon; in Greek, Athanasios Pentaschoinites) is first attested from accounts of two of his miracles as related in the seventh-century _Narrationes_ of St. Anastasius the Sinaite. In the first of these, when Athanasius was about twenty he was accused by his stepmother of wasting the family's provisions through acts of hospitality; at his request his father examined the household store and found all -- wine, oil, and wheat -- miraculously reconstituted. Not long after this the charitable young man died. Appearing to sailors caught in a storm, when asked who he was he identified himself to them by name and then guided the vessel to safety near Pentaschoinon, the coastal town in which he had been born. Proceeding to that place, the sailors asked one of the locals (who, unbeknownst to them, was Athanasius' father) where the church of St. Athanasius could be found. He responded that there was no such church but when the sailors described the saint he recognized him as his son, brought them to Athanasius' grave, and asked him if he had saved these seamen. From the grave Athanasius responded that indeed he had. Later still, a metropolitan of Damascus paid a visit to the saint's grave. Thus far Anastasius the Sinaite.
Athanasius' medieval cult is attested to by images in churches on Cyprus where he is depicted as a young deacon (which does not mean that he was one; the ascetic St. John Lampadistes, not known to have been a cleric, is also so depicted). The fifteenth-century chronicler Leontios Macheras characterizes him as a worker of healing miracles. Athanasius' own church at Pentaschoinon / Pentaschino fell victim to an earthquake in 1491. In recent centuries his cult had fallen into desuetude but in 2000 it was restored at today's village of Agios Theodoros in Basiliko (Larnaka prefecture), some six kilometers distant from the ruins of his church. Absent from the originally tenth-century Synaxary of Constantinople (as are many saints from the Byzantine periphery), Athanasius of Pentaschino is commemorated today in local observances in the Greek Orthodox Church of Cyprus. He has yet to grace the pages of the Roman Martyrology.
Some period-pertinent images of St. Athanasius of Pentaschino:
as depicted in a probably earlier thirteenth-century fresco (1201-1225; restored in a campaign lasting from 1969 to early 1972) in the church of the Panagia Amasgou in Monagri (Limassol prefecture) in the Republic of Cyprus:
http://tinyurl.com/83qs4vx
as depicted in a thirteenth-century fresco in the Old Church of the Metamorphosis tou Sotiras in Sotiro (Famagusta prefecture) in the Republic of Cyprus (grayscale view; go to p. 499):
http://tinyurl.com/hrjnpme
Best,
John Dillon
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