medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
The Syrian hermit Abraham (if an actual person, d. ca. 336?) is variously known in modern scholarship as Abraham of Edessa and Abraham Kidunaia / Qidunaja. He has an originally perhaps late fifth-century legendary Life in Greek (versions: BHG 5-6d), in Latin (BHL 12; this circulated widely in the _Vitae patrum_), and, dubiously ascribed to St. Ephraem the Syrian, in Syriac (BHO 16, 17). According to these accounts he came from a wealthy family in the vicinity of Edessa. Having been forced into an arranged marriage, he fled after only one week in his new state and for the following ten years lived as a recluse and ascete in an isolated hut. When the bishop of Edessa asked Abraham to attempt to convert to Christianity a nearby still-pagan village (Beth Qidona) that had rejected diocesan clergy, he agreed, moved to the village, and destroyed its idols. For this he attracted opprobrium, then beatings, and finally a severe stoning. The exemplary patience and charity with which he bore his torments together with the villagers' observation that no harm had come to them from the destruction of their idols led in time to the conversion of the entire village. Thereafter Abraham returned to his hermitage and spent the remainder of his life there with the exception of the time it took to rescue a niece named Maria from prostitution and to convert her to a life of holiness. Theodoret tells much the same story of an hermit in Lebanon and there are also parallels from Egypt.
Literary monuments of Abraham's cult include a lengthy hymn in his honor by Ephraem the Syrian (in contradistinction to the aforementioned Life, this is widely accepted as genuinely Ephraemic), an expanded Bios by St. Symeon Metaphrastes (BHG 8), and Hrotsvit of Gandersheim's play _Lapsus et conversio Mariae neptis Habrahae heremicolae_. He is today's saint of the day (29. October) in the tenth-century Metaphrastic Menologion and has the day's second entry in the originally tenth-century Synaxary of Constantinople. Modern Byzantine-Rite churches celebrate him on this day along with his penitent niece Maria. This is also Abraham's day of commemoration in the Roman Martyrology.
Some period-pertinent images of St. Abraham, hermit in Syria:
a) as depicted in the later tenth- or very early eleventh-century so-called Menologion of Basil II (Città del Vaticano, BAV, cod. Vat. gr. 1613, p. 146):
http://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.gr.1613/0168
http://tinyurl.com/zxhhl2g
b) as depicted (at center; at right, Maria) in a thirteenth-century copy of the _Vitae patrum_ in an anonymous early thirteenth-century French-language translation (_La Vie des sainz Peres_; Paris, BnF, ms. Français 1038, fol. 93r):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10507339v/f197.item.zoom
c) as depicted (at right) in an October calendar portrait in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) in the narthex of 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/25jt842
d) as depicted (at center in red roundel) in the mid-fourteenth-century frescoes (ca. 1350) of the arch between the intermediate and the western bays in the church of the Holy Apostles in the Patriarchate of Peć at 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/6olpf6h
e) as depicted (bas-de-page scenes) in a later fourteenth-century copy of Neapolitan origin of the _Vitae patrum_ (betw. 1351 and 1376; New York, J. Pierpont Morgan Library and Museum; Morgan Ms. M.626, fols. 91r, 95v):
1) fol. 91r:
http://ica.themorgan.org/manuscript/page/180/122665
2) fol. 95v:
http://ica.themorgan.org/manuscript/page/189/122665
Best,
John Dillon
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