Christian Novels from the Menologion

343 Pages·2017·13.012 MB·English

by  Symeon Metaphrastes, Stratis Papaioannou

DUMBARTON OAKS MEDIEVAL LIBRARY
Jan M. Ziolkowski, General Editor
Alice-Mary Talbot, Byzantine Greek Editor
Byzantine Greek Editorial Board
Alexander Alexakis
Charles Barber
John Duffy
Niels Gaul
Richard Greenfield
Anthony Kaldellis
Derek Krueger
Stratis Papaioannou
Claudia Rapp
Byzantine Greek Advisory Board
Albrecht Berger Antony Littlewood
Wolfram Brandes Margaret Mullett
Elizabeth Fisher Jan OlofRosenqvist
Clive Foss Jonathan Shepard
JohnHaldon Denis Sullivan
Robert Jordan John Wortley
Christian Novels from
the Menologion of
Symeon Metaphrastes
Edited and Translated by
STRATIS PAPAIOANNOU
<DUMBARTON OAKS
Ji°EDIEVAL J:.!YRARY
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
LONDON, ENGLAND
2017
Copyright© 2017 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Printed in the United States ofA merica
Library ofC ongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Symeon, Metaphrastes, active 10th century, author. I
Papaioannou, Stratis, editor, translator. I Container of (expression):
Symeon, Metaphrastes, active 10th century. Works. Selections. I
Container of (expression): Symeon, Metaphrastes, active 10th century.
Works. English Selections.
Title: Christian novels from the menologion of Symeon Metaphrastes /
edited and translated by Stratis Papaioannou.
Other titles: Dumbarton Oaks medieval library; 45.
Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press,
2017.I
Series: Dumbarton Oaks medieval library; 45 I Texts in Greek with
English translations on facing pages ; introduction and notes in English. I
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016048602 I ISBN 9780674975064 (alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Christian hagiography. I Christian women saints. I
Christian saints. I Orthodox Eastern Church-Liturgy.
Classification: LCC BX380 .S96 2017 I DDC 270.3092'2 {B}-dc23 LC
record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016048602
Contents
Introduction vn
LIFE, CONDUCT, AND PASSION OF
SAINTS KYPRIANOS AND IouSTINA I
LIFE AND CONDUCT OF
SAINT PELAGIA OF ANTIOCH 61
LIFE, CONDUCT, AND PASSION OF
THE HOLY AND GLORIOUS MARTYRS
GALAKTION AND EPISTEME 85
MIRACLE CONCERNING EUPHEMIA
THE YOUNG MAIDEN 117
PASSION OF THE HOLY AND TRIUMPHANT
MARTYR OF CHRIST BARBARA 153
LIFE, CONDUCT, AND PASSION OF
THE HOLY MARTYR OF CHRIST
SAINT EUGENIA AND HER PARENTS 183
CONTENTS
Abbreviations 263
Note on the Text 265
Notes to the Text 275
Notes to the Translation 283
Bibliography 3I3
Index JI5
Vl
Introduction
About four hundred years after his death, pilgrims in Con
stantinople were paying their respects to the relics of
Symeon Metaphrastes, the author of the six texts edited and
translated into English for the first time in this volume.
"You go east from St. Sophia toward the sea; on the right
is the monastery called Hodegetria . . . The body of St.
Symeon is in this church," we read in a late fourteenth
century Russian guidebook to the capital of Byzantium,
while Markos Eugenikos, writing some decades later, in
forms us that Metaphrastes's body was preserved "intact
and unmouldered."1 This miraculous preservation was just
one more aspect, perhaps the most spectacular, of the long
tradition of reverence and admiration for Symeon Meta
phrastes, whose epithet means "reviser" in Greek. His pri
mary, if not his only, saintly achievement was the composi
tion of a menologion: a ten-volume liturgical collection of
saints' lives and martyrdom accounts, mostly by earlier au
thors, that he rewrote, revising their content and style. This
grand effort merited Metaphrastes the fame of a rescuer
who salvaged the biographies of the saints from oblivion.
A landmark of orthodox Christianity, Metaphrastes's
tenth-century Menologion could be regarded as -and we can
say this without exaggeration-one of the most important
Byzantine literary creations. It was the culmination of a
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INTRODUCTION
long history of Christian storytelling in Greek, ensuring the
popularity of certain stories that satisfied the need of Byz
antines for moral edification as well as their appetite for en
tertainment in the context of worship and beyond. It also
represented a major Byzantine literary trend, that of rewrit
ing in a rhetorical register (metaphrasis); this trend reflected
the tastes and interests of the Constantinopolitan upper
classes, which were formed during a period of revival for
Byzantine political and cultural authority, in the ninth
through the twelfth centuries. Given that the predilections
of this social group were influential for the solidification of
what we identify as Byzantine Christianity, Metaphrastes's
rewriting project came to play a seminal role in the creation
of a religious and cultural tradition with an immense appeal
and longevity.
Metaphrastes's Menologion enjoyed popularity for several
centuries, surpassed only by the Bible and some of the great
early Byzantine fathers of the Church and comparable to
Jacobus de Voragine's hagiographical bestseller, the late me
dieval Golden Legend, in Western Europe.2 All together, the
manuscripts that preserve different parts of Metaphrastes's
Menologion number well over seven hundred. Metaphrastes's
work thus affected generations of Byzantine readers and lis
teners as well as writers, even if it remains virtually unknown
to the wider (even Byzantinophile) public.
It is easy to state the importance of Metaphrastes in the
Byzantine world. But how does one introduce him and his
texts to modern readers? Several challenges await us. The
details of Metaphrastes's own life and the precise context
of his literary creation still elude clear comprehension. His
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INTRODUCTION
wider socio historical setting is particularly complex: a whole
series of projects that aimed at military, economic, and cul
tural revival and expansion, not all of them successful or
long-lasting, defined the politics of the Byzantine imperial
court in the tenth century.
Orienting Metaphrastes in literary history presents us
with similar complexity, since the place of the Menologion's
version of each hagiographical story requires an in-depth in
vestigation into the multiple trajectories of Christian story
telling. The enormous appeal of the stories would have been
self-evident to Byzantine audiences, but to modern readers
their emphasis on the supernatural and their devotion to
certain recurrent motifs and character types may be puz
zling. Equally, the sophistication of Metaphrastes's liter
ary style would have been obvious to Byzantine (especially
learned) audiences, but modern readers may be put off by
his preoccupation with rhythm and wordplay or extravagant
eulogy and descriptions that favor the melodramatic. Fi
nally, since the Menologion survives in numerous manuscripts
(more than one hundred for each of our texts), the re
creation of the "original edition" as well as of its subsequent
textual history poses a corresponding number of difficulties.
None of these issues can be treated here satisfactorily.3
Yet a brief elaboration of these matters can provide the nec
essary background so that some of the appeal of these texts
may be restored as they search for new, dedicated readers.
SYMEON METAPHRASTES
Byzantine sources offer us only sparse biographical data
about the creator of the Menologion, which is attributed by
manuscript colophons, dedicatory poems, and Byzantine
ix
INTRODUCTION
authors to a Symeon who is accompanied by the identifiers
magistros, logothetes (tou dromou), and metaphrastes in various
combinations.4 He was born in Constantinople into a well
to-do family during the reign of Leo VI (r. 886-912) and re
ceived a good education in both rhetoric (the art of dis
course) and probably philosophy, which in Byzantium
encompassed all forms of knowledge, from logic and the sci
ences to metaphysics. From at least the late 950s, he was
employed in the imperial court and bureaucracy under sev
eral emperors, from Romanos II (r. 959-963) to Basil II (r.
976-1025), and held high titles and offices (magistros and
logothetes were the last ones he acquired). In this capacity
and at imperial behest, he authored several documents,
texts, and collections, including the Menologion and a chron
icle. He died (perhaps having become a monk in old age) on
November 28 of an unspecified year, probably during the
last decade of the tenth century.5
Almost none of this information can be confirmed with
certainty; we know neither whether our biographical sources
are accurate nor if they pertain to the same Symeon, the au
thor of the Menologion. Even so, time of composition and his
status at the imperial court seem incontrovertible. Internal
evidence from the Menologion itself confirms that parts of its
composition date to after 976 and that its author was cer
tainly well-versed in the Byzantine tradition of learnedness.
The consistent usage of the epithets magistros and logothetes
in manuscripts of the Menologion, as well as details from a
dirge composed soon after Metaphrastes's death by Nike
phoros Ouranos (who died after 1007), also suggest that
Metaphrastes was indeed a high functionary in the imperial
court. Finally, the scale and type of the enterprise can be ex-
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INTRODUCTION
plained best if it was supported by either the emperor him
self or by the highest echelons of Constantinopolitan soci
ety-the powerful eunuch minister Basil Lekapenos, active
from before 959 until 985 when he was deposed by Basil II,
has been proposed as Metaphrastes's possible patron. 6
From the mid-eleventh century onward, Metaphrastes
was certainly viewed as a towering figure of the recent past.
His Menologion was copied in what was apparently mass pro
duction (by premodern standards) and was imitated, further
reworked, and expanded, though never supplanted or sur
passed. He himself was considered an author-saint, on a par
with early Byzantine authorities such as Gregory of Nazian
zos andJohn Chrysostom-the two other most copied and
studied authors in Byzantium.7
METAPHRASTES'S AfENOLOGION
Due to the monumental work of Albert Ehrhard, we know
a great deal about the so-called Menologion itsel£8 This mod
ern designation refers to a liturgical book, usually in multi
ple volumes, that included various texts on saints-mostly
Passions (martyrdom accounts, or martyria) and Lives (biog
raphies, or bioz)-arranged according to the sequence of
feast days in the Byzantine liturgical year that began on Sep
tember 1. Its primary purpose was the provision of a text
dedicated to each saint on his or her feast day to be read
aloud during liturgical services (usually vigils, especially in
monasteries, but also in urban churches).
Such collections had appeared in Byzantium by the end
of the eighth century; yet the menologion was to reach its au
thoritative form in the work of Metaphrastes. Metaphras-
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