The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor (AM 5920) describes how in 427/428 the right hand of *Stephen (the First Martyr, S00030) was brought to Constantinople, and how the emperor's sister Pulcheria had a vision of Stephen, and founded a church dedicated to him. Chronicle compiled in the Byzantine Empire in the early 9th c., using extracts from earlier Greek texts.
Evidence ID
E08009
Type of Evidence
Literary - Other narrative texts (including Histories)
Major author/Major anonymous work
Theophanes
Chronicle of Theophanes, AM 5920 [AD 427/8]
Τούτῳ τῷ ἔτει Θεοδόσιος ὁ εὐσεβὴς κατὰ μίμησιν τῆς μακαρίας Πουλχερίας πολλὰ χρήματα τῷ ἀρχιεπισκόπῳ Ἱεροσολύμων ἀπέστειλεν εἰς διάδοσιν τῶν χρείαν ἐχόντων, καὶ σταυρὸν χρυσοῦν διάλιθον πρὸς τὸ παγῆναι ἐν τῷ ἁγίῳ κρανίῳ. ὁ δὲ ἀρχιεπίσκοπος ἀντίδωρον ἀποστέλλει λείψανα τῆς δεξιᾶς χειρὸς τοῦ πρωτομάρτυρος Στεφάνου διὰ τοῦ ἐν ἁγίοις Πασσαρίωνος. τούτου δὲ εἰς Χαλκηδόνα φθάσαντος, θεωρεῖ ἡ μακαρία Πουλχερία αὐτῇ τῇ νυκτὶ ἐν ὁράματι τὸν ἅγιον Στέφανον λέγοντα αὐτῇ· "ἰδού, ἡ προσευχή σου εἰσηκούσθη, καὶ ἡ αἴτησίς σου γέγονεν, καὶ ἦλθον εἰς Χαλκηδόνα." ἡ δὲ ἀναστᾶσα καὶ τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτῆς λαβοῦσα ἐξῆλθεν εἰς συνάντησιν τῶν ἁγίων λειψάνων, καὶ ταῦτα εἰς τὸ παλάτιον λαβοῦσα κτίζει οἶκον ἔνδοξον τῷ ἁγίῳ πρωτομάρτυρι κἀκεῖ τὰ ἅγια κατέθετο λείψανα.
'Ιn this year the pious Theodosios, in imitation of the blessed Pulcheria, sent much money to the archbishop of Jerusalem for distribution among those in need. He also sent a golden cross, set with precious stones to be fixed on the holy site of Calvary. The archbishop sent as a return gift the relics of the right hand of the first martyr Stephen, by means of Passarion, one of the holy men. In the very night that he reached Chalcedon the blessed Pulcheria saw St Stephen saying to her in a vision, "Behold, your prayer has been heard, your request is fulfilled, and I have come to Chalcedon." She arose and, taking her brother, went out to meet the holy relics and, taking them into the palace, she built a wonderful church for the holy First Martyr and deposited his holy relics there.'
Text: de Boor 1883, 86-7.
Translation: Mango and Scott 1997, 135-6.
Cult PlacesMiracle after death
RelicsBodily relic - arm/hand/finger
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesMonarchs and their family
Cult building - dependent (chapel, baptistery, etc.)
Non Liturgical ActivityConstruction of cult buildings
MiraclesMiracle after death
Apparition, vision, dream, revelation
Revelation of hidden knowledge (past, present and future)
RelicsBodily relic - arm/hand/finger
Transfer, translation and deposition of relics
Transfer/presence of relics from distant countries
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesMonarchs and their family
Women
Ecclesiastics - bishops
Ecclesiastics - monks/nuns/hermits
Source
Theophanes (759/60-818) came from a wealthy and politically prominent family from Constantinople. After marriage and a brief career as a secular official, he became a monk, living in the monastic communities centred around Mount Sigriane in Bithynia, and eventually abbot of the community known as Megas Agros. He acquired the epithet 'Confessor' (Homologetes) through his resistance to the renewal of Iconoclasm by the emperor Leo V (813-820), which led to Theophanes' imprisonment and then exile to the island of Samothrace, where he died. For full discussion of the evidence for Theophanes' life, see Mango and Scott 1997, xliv-lii, and, for a briefer summary, his entry ('Theophanes 18') in the Prosopography of the Byzantine Empire (http://www.pbe.kcl.ac.uk).The Chronicle of Theophanes covers the period from 284/5 to 812/813. It was a continuation of the Chronicle of George Synkellos (ob. c. 810) which ran from the creation of the world to 284. George had apparently intended to continue his chronicle down to his own time but died before he could do so; the extent to which Theophanes, in producing his chronicle, was simply editing and polishing material already collected by George remains uncertain (see Mango and Scott 1997, liv-lv). The Chronicle of George Synkellos contains some material relevant to the cult of saints, up to its stopping point in 284; however, this is not included in the CSLA database because the sources for all George's information (chiefly Eusebius) survive and have database entries in their own right.
Theophanes and his sources
The key characteristic of Theophanes’ Chronicle is that it is not a composition of Theophanes’ own, but a patchwork of extracts from earlier sources, collected and arranged in chronicle form, in other words under an entry for each year. Theophanes’ role was confined to piecing the patchwork together (i.e. removing pieces from their original context and placing them under individual years), and to some extent condensing and abbreviating material. As he put it in his preface: 'I did not set down anything of my own composition, but have made a selection from the ancient historians and prose-writers and have consigned to their proper places the events of every year, assigned without confusion' (trans. Mango and Scott 1997, 2). Since many of Theophanes’ sources are still extant, the extracts in his chronicle can often be compared with the original, which shows that that this was indeed his method of compilation, though he makes occasional editorial interventions, and sometimes misunderstands source material (Mango and Scott 1997, lxxii, xci-xcv; Howard-Johnston 2010, 272-3, 276-84).
It is because Theophanes' Chronicle is essentially a compilation of earlier sources that a number of extracts from the Chronicle are included in the CSLA database, even though the work itself dates from more than a century after AD 700, our usual cut-off point for evidence. We have not included material which reproduces sources that have their own entries in our database (such as Eusebius, John Malalas, Theodore Lector, Procopius, and Theophylact Simocatta), but have included entries (for the period up to 700) for items in Theophanes whose original source is lost.
For discussion of Theophanes' work as a whole, see the introduction to Mango and Scott's translation (Mango and Scott 1997, xliii-c); Howard-Johnston 2010, 268-312; and the essays in Jankowiak and Montinaro 2015.
Chronology
Theophanes' chronology is based primarily on the annus mundi (year since Creation). There was more than one system of calculating AM dates: the one used by Theophanes, following George Synkellos, was the Alexandrian era, which started from the equivalent of 5492 BC, thus making the first year of the chronicle, AD 284/5, the AM year 5777. The first day of the year under the Alexandrian system was 25 March, and this was used by George Synkellos; however, it is evident that Theophanes (without ever stating his practice explicitly) used 1 September as the first day of his chronicle years, thus matching the standard secular dating system in the Byzantine empire (indictions): see Mango and Scott 1997, lxvi. While the year-by-year chronology is based on the annus mundi, Theophanes includes considerable other information in the heading for each entry (not given here): the year from the Incarnation (the same principle as AD dating, but the system used by Theophanes dated the Incarnation to AD 8/9), and the regnal years of the Roman emperor (Theophanes only ever lists one emperor here, normally the one ruling in Constantinople), the king of Persia (the Caliph in later entries), and the bishops of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. The accuracy and mutual consistency of these different forms of dating varies considerably across different entries. In the body of each entry, Theophanes often preserves the form of dating used by his source, such as consular years or indictions. For a full overview, see Mango and Scott 1997, lxiii-lxxiv.
Discussion
The story of the translation of the right hand (dexia) of the protomartyr Stephen from Palestine to Constantinople and its reception by Pulcheria, the sister of the emperor Theodosius II, is unique to Theophanes. In his account, the relic is sent by the bishop of Jerusalem in return for gifts from the emperor, and is brought by Passarion, a well-attested holy man in Palestine (S01502). After being alerted to the arrival of the relic by a vision of Stephen, Pulcheria receives it and creates a shrine for it inside the palace (ταῦτα εἰς τὸ παλάτιον λαβοῦσα κτίζει οἶκον ἔνδοξον). This latter is generally taken to be the chapel of Stephen in the palace which is sporadically mentioned by later sources (e.g. E07985; see Janin 1969, 473-4.). The event appears under 427/8 in the chronicle, and if Theophanes is correct about the involvement of Passarion it cannot have been later since he died in November 428; it has been suggested that it took place several years earlier, in 421 (Holum 1977).The lack of any reference to this incident in historical sources earlier than Theophanes has led some to doubt its reality (e.g. Wortley 1980, Mango 2004), dismissing it as either pure fiction or a garbled version of other occasions when relics of Stephen were translated to Constantinople (e.g. E03601). The chief support for Theophanes' account is a homily by Proclus (E05403), who was bishop of Constantinople from 434 to 446, though the homily would have been delivered earlier in his career. This refers to the reception of (unspecified) relics of Stephen in the palace by 'our empress and virgin' (i.e. Pulcheria). The homily by Proclus certainly coheres very plausibly with the account by Theophanes, and close scrutiny of the text uncovers circumstantial details which appear to support the hypothesis that this was its context (see discussion in E05403). It is fair to say, however, that it does not provide an absolutely full and unambiguous confirmation, and views about the issue continue to differ (compare Holum 1982, 104, n. 116, who states that Proclus' homily 'permits no reasonable doubt' as to the truth of Theophanes' account, with Mango 2004, 31, who dismisses the use of Proclus to vindicate Theophanes as 'an edifice of speculation').
It has been argued (Holum and Vikan 1979; more briefly in Holum 1982, 103-9) that the event described by Theophanes is depicted on the Trier Ivory, a late antique carved ivory plaque which shows an adventus ceremony in which a reliquary carried by two men seated on a cart is received by a man and a woman in imperial costume surrounded by courtiers, with the woman given particular prominence. As with the homily by Proclus, the details of the Trier Ivory appear to fit Theophanes' account closely, but on the other hand not so closely as to exclude any other possibilities and thus provide indisputable confirmation.
Bibliography
Edition:de Boor, C., Theophanis Chronographia (Leipzig: Teubner, 1883).
English translation and commentary:
Mango, C., and Scott, R., The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor: Byzantine and Near Eastern History AD 284-813 (Oxford: OUP, 1997).
On Theophanes:
Howard-Johnston, J., Witnesses to a World Crisis: Historians and Histories of the Middle East in the Seventh Century (Oxford: OUP, 2010).
Jankowiak, M., and Montinaro, P. (eds.), Studies in Theophanes (Travaux et mémoires 19; Paris: Centre d'Histoire et Civilisation de Byzance, 2015).
Further reading:
Holum, K.G., and Vikan, G., "The Trier Ivory, Adventus Ceremonial, and the Relics of St. Stephen," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 33 (1979), 113-133.
Holum, K.G., "Pulcheria's Crusade and the Ideology of Imperial Victory," Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 18:2 (1977), 153-172.
Holum, K.G., Theodosian Empresses: Women and Imperial Dominion in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).
Janin, R., La géographie ecclésiastique de l'empire byzantin. I: Les églises et les monastères de la ville de Constantinople. (2nd ed.; Paris, 1969).
Mango, C., "A fake inscription of the empress Eudocia and Pulcheria's relic of Saint Stephen," Nea Rhome 1 (2004), 23-34.
Wortley, J., "The Trier Ivory Reconsidered," Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 21:4 (1980), 381-394.
Record Created By
David Lambert
Date of Entry
16/10/2020
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00030 | Stephen, the First Martyr | Στέφανος | Certain |
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