Theodosius, in his On the Topography of the Holy Land, gives an account of the martyrdom of *Clemens/Clement (bishop of Rome, martyr of the Crimea, S00111) in Cersona on the Crimea, and of how his grave on the sea-bed is miraculously exposed for eight days a year, around the saint's feast day. Written in Latin, perhaps in Africa, 518/540.
Evidence ID
E07924
Type of Evidence
Literary - Pilgrim accounts and itineraries
Theodosius, On the Topography of the Holy Land/'De situ terrae sanctae', 12
In an excursus away from the Holy Land, Theodosius writes of Clemens:
Ciuitas Cersona, quae est ad mare Pontum; ibi domnus Clemens martyrizatus est. In mari memoriam eius cum corpus missus est. Cui domno Clementi anchora ad collum ligata est, et modo in natale eius omnes in barcas ascendunt populus et sacerdotes, et dum ibi uenerint, maris desiccat milia VI, et ubi ipsa arca est, tenduntur super se papiliones et ponitur altaris et per octo dies ibi missas celebrantur et multa mirabilia ibi Domnus facit. Ibi daemonia excludentur. Si quis vero de uexaticis ad ipsam anchoram adtingere potuerit et eam tetigerit, statim liberatur.
'The city of Cersona, which is on the Pontic Sea; there our lord Clemens was martyred. His tomb with his body is set in the sea. An anchor was tied to our lord Clemens' neck, and on his feast day all the people and priests get into boats, and, when they arrive there, the sea dries up for 6 miles around, and, where the sarcophagus is, they set up canopies and an altar and celebrate masses for eight days, and the Lord does many wonders there. There demons are driven out. If one of the possessed is able to reach the anchor and touch it, he is at once set free.'
Text: Geyer 1965, 120.
Translation: Bryan Ward-Perkins.
Liturgical ActivitiesProcession
FestivalsBurial site of a saint - tomb/grave
Non Liturgical ActivityMiracle after death
RelicsBodily relic - entire body
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesEcclesiastics - lesser clergy
Procession
Eucharist associated with cult
FestivalsSaint’s feast
Cult PlacesBurial site of a saint - tomb/grave
Burial site of a saint - sarcophagus/coffin
Non Liturgical ActivityVisiting graves and shrines
MiraclesMiracle after death
Power over elements (fire, earthquakes, floods, weather)
RelicsBodily relic - entire body
Contact relic - instrument of saint’s martyrdom
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesEcclesiastics - lesser clergy
Other lay individuals/ people
Source
Nothing certain is known about Theodosius beyond his name, which is preserved with the title of his work in some of its manuscripts; in its present form the work lacks any kind of introduction or postscript that might shed light on him and his purpose in writing. However, as he wrote in Latin, we can safely assume that he came from the West. The only possible clue to a more precise geographical location comes in §14 (E07925), where he refers to Arianism as religio Wandalorum, 'the religion of the Vandals', which might point to his being from Africa.The date of his text can be placed with some confidence between the years 518 and 540. This is because Theodosius mentions two completed major building projects by the emperor Anastasius (r. 491-518) - a church at the site on the Jordan where John baptised Jesus (§20, see E07914), and military works at Dara (§29) - and tells us in §28 (E07934) that the praepositus Urbicius died sub Anastasio imperatore, 'under the emperor Anastasius', a phrasing that would be very strange if Anasatasius were still alive; but, at the same time, Theodosius does not mention any of the building-projects of the emperor Justinian (r. 527-565), such as his great church, the Nea, in Jerusalem, dedicated in 543. The reference to 'the religion of the Vandals' might point to a date before 534 (the fall of their kingdom in Africa).
The work is held together by its interest in sites that would interest a pious Christian; but is otherwise chaotic. It opens with a number of itineraries in the Holy Land, all starting out from Jerusalem, listing the distances between places, noting why they would be of interest, and all involving several days travel (§1-5); it then moves to a listing of sites in and around Jerusalem itself (§6-11). Thereafter, and for the rest of the book (§12-32), any semblance of structure disappears: in §12-16 we are transported without warning to a seemingly random collection of distant holy places (such as the Crimea, and Memphis in Egypt); in §17-22 some sense of order briefly returns, with chapters about sites in and around Jerusalem and eastwards to the Jordan valley; but from §22 onwards it is hard to see any logic in the ordering of the chapters. Sometimes we are back in Jerusalem, but most of the time we are flitting across the east Christian world, as far afield as Ephesus and Persia.
In some passages, particularly those that describe sites in Jerusalem and down into the Jordan valley, there is enough detail to show that Theodosius had almost certainly himself visited the places he describes, but this is certainly not the case in his literary forays to distant places, and much less clear in the itineraries that open the work (§1-5), which are little more than lists of places, with the distances between them and a brief reference to the biblical events that took place there. These itineraries have been studied in detail by Tsafrir (1986), who suggests that they were constructed with the help of a map specifically created for Christian pilgrims. [Tsafrir's article, though focused on the itineraries, offers an excellent introduction to Theodosius' overall text, and has very helpful maps to illustrate the itineraries.]
As with all the pilgrim texts from the Holy Land, it has been difficult to decide what to include, and what to exclude from our database, focused as it is on the 'cult of saints'. We have necessarily excluded the vast number of sites associated exclusively with the life and miracles of Jesus, and have, of course, included all obvious references to cult sites of Christian saints: their graves, churches, and references to important places in their lives, such as their place of martyrdom. A problem, however, arises when our pilgrims write about sites associated with figures from the Old Testament, since in time many of these certainly acquired Christian cult, but it is generally impossible to tell whether our pilgrims regarded these figures as saints in the Christian tradition, whose power and aid they might invoke, or whether they record the holy sites associated with them through a broader and looser biblical curiosity and veneration. The compromise position we have taken with regard to these Old Testament figures is to include all references to places associated with them where our Christian writers record miraculous occurrences or where there was a church or oratory, and also all references to their graves (though with these latter there is often no explicit reference to Christian cult).
Discussion
Theodosius' account of the martyrdom and of the annual miraculous exposing of the saint's grave is certainly based on the Martyrdom of Clemens (E02488), which it follows closely.Bibliography
Edition:Geyer, P. (ed.), Theodosii De situ terrae sanctae, in Itineraria et alia geographica (Corpus Chistianorum, series Latina 175; Turnhout: Brepols, 1965), 113-125. [A reprint of Geyer's edition for Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Wien 1898.]
Translation:
Wilkinson, J., Jerusalem Pilgrims before the Crusades, 2nd ed. (Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 2002), 103-116.
Further reading:
Tsafrir, Y., "The Maps Used by Theodosius: On the Pilgrim Maps of the Holy Land and Jerusalem in the Sixth Century C. E.",Dumbarton Oaks Papers 40 (1986), 129-145.
Record Created By
Bryan Ward-Perkins
Date of Entry
22/6/2020
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00111 | Clemens/Clement, bishop of Rome, martyr of the Crimea | Clemens | Certain |
|---|
Please quote this record referring to its author, database name, number, and, if possible, stable URL:
Bryan Ward-Perkins, Cult of Saints, E07924 - http://csla.history.ox.ac.uk/record.php?recid=E07924