The Narrative of Ammonius on the *Forty Martyrs of Sinai and Forty Martyrs of Raithou (S01620) tells the story of the martyrdom on the very same day, at the hands Saracen and Blemmyes raiders, of eighty monks of the Sinai peninsula. Written in Greek, possibly at Mount Sinai or Raithou, probably in the 5th/6th c.
E06949
Literary - Hagiographical - Accounts of martyrdom
Narrative of Ammonios on the Monks of Sinai and Raithou (BHG 1300-1300k)
We have not examined this text in any detail.
Daniel Caner, however, offers a useful short summary of the story (Caner 2010, 53), which we reproduce here:
'Its narrator Ammonius, after describing his visit to monks on Mount Sinai, tells how Saracen raiders suddenly attacked, explaining that they did so because a Saracen king 'who had held the phylarchy' had died. Eventually the Sinai summit burst into flame and scared them off, but not before they had killed 39 monks in four separate places around the mountain; later, as the survivors gathered the dead, a wounded monk prayed for death and died, raising the total number of Sinai martyrs to 40.
Ammonius then relates [in much greater detail] what another unnamed character says had just happened at Rhaithou [a monastic settlement on the coast of the Red Sea], where, on the same day, 40 monks had been slaughtered, this time by barbarian raiders called 'Blemmyes'. He describes the Rhaithou setting, its monks, their relations with Sinai's Pharanites [the inhabitants of Pharan, a city higher up the coast], the Blemmyes' invasion by sea, their slaughter of the monks and subsequent destruction by Pharanite archers, who bury the martyred dead in a tomb nearby. The Report ends with a note explaining that the Mount Sinai and Rhaithou martyrs died and were commemorated on 28 December, and that Ammonius' writings had been found and translated from Coptic into Greek by a monk called John.'
For a full translation: Caner 2010, 149-171.
Source
For the manuscript tradition, see:http://pinakes.irht.cnrs.fr/notices/oeuvre/3879/
For the edition, see Bibliography.
This was a popular work, which exists, not only in Greek, but also in Christian Palestinian Aramaic, Syriac, Arabic and Georgian (Caner 2010, 141).
Discussion
There is a useful discussion of this text in Caner 2010, 51-63 and 141-149: he considers its date, place of origin and possible basis in real events, and argues that the earliest recension of the text is that preserved in Christian Palestinian Aramaic (for which see A. Smith Lewis 1912).The story of the wounded monk praying to join his thirty-nine martyred companions, taking their number up to forty, is a clear echo of the story of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste (E01303), in which, when one of the original forty apostatises, he is substituted by one of the guards, thereby taking the number back up to forty.
An inscription of uncertain date in the monastery at Mount Sinai (E07911), probably refers to these Forty Martyrs of Sinai.
See also, for a loosely related text, E08287, Pseudo-Neilos' Narrations of the Slaughter of the Monks of Mount Sinai and the Capture of Theodulos.
Bibliography
Text:Combefis, F., Illustrium Christi Martyrum Lecti Triumphi (Paris, 1660), 88-132.
Tsames, D.G. and Katsanes, K.G., Τὸ μαρτυρολόγιον τοῦ Σινᾶ (Thessaloniki, 1989), 194-234.
English translation:
Caner, D.F., History and Hagiography from the Late Antique Sinai (Translated Texts for Historians 53; Liverpool, 2010), 149-171.
Smith Lewis, A., The Forty Martyrs of the Sinai Desert and the Story of Eulogios from a Palestinian Syriac and Arabic Palimpsest, Cambridge University Press 1912 (an edition and translation of the Christian Palestinian Aramaic text).
Further reading:
Detoraki, M., "Greek Passions of the Martyrs in Byzantium," in: S. Efthymiadis (ed.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography II: Genres and Contexts (Farnham, 2014), 78-79.
Devreesse, R., "Le christianisme dans la péninsule sinaïtique des origines à l'arrivée des Musulmans," Revue Biblique 49 (1940), 205-223.
Nikolaos Kälviäinen
19/10/2018
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S01620 | Forty Martyrs of Sinai and Forty Martyrs of Raithou (monks killed by Arab and Blemmyes raiders) | Certain |
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Please quote this record referring to its author, database name, number, and, if possible, stable URL:
Nikolaos Kälviäinen, Cult of Saints, E06949 - http://csla.history.ox.ac.uk/record.php?recid=E06949