Procopius of Caesarea, in his On Buildings, reports that the emperor Justinian (r. 527-565) fortified the city of Kyrrhos/Cyrrhus (northern Syria), partly out of respect for the nearby burial shrine of *Kosmas/Cosmas and Damianos (brothers, physician martyrs of Syria, S00385). Written in Greek at Constantinople, in the 550s.
E08011
Literary - Other narrative texts (including Histories)
Procopius
Procopius of Caesarea, On Buildings, 2.11.2-4
2. Ἦν δέ τι ἐπὶ Συρίας κομιδῇ ἀπημελημένον πολίχνιον, Κῦρος ὄνομα, ὅπερ Ἰουδαῖοι ἐν τοῖς ἄνω χρόνοις ἐδείμαντο, δορυάλωτοι μὲν ἐκ Παλαιστίνης ἐς τὴν Ἀσσυρίαν ἀποκεκομισμένοι πρὸς τοῦ Μήδων στρατοῦ, παρὰ Κύρου δὲ βασιλέως ἀφειμένοι πολλῷ ὕστερον· διὸ δὴ καὶ Κῦρον τὸ χωρίον ἐκάλεσαν, ταῦτα τῷ εὐεργέτῃ ἐκτίνοντες χαριστήρια. 3. προϊόντος δὲ τοῦ χρόνου ἡ Κῦρος τά τε ἄλλα ὑπερώφθη καὶ ἀτείχιστος ὅλως μεμένηκεν. 4. ἀλλὰ βασιλεὺς Ἰουστινιανὸς ἅμα μὲν πρόνοιαν τῆς πολιτείας ποιούμενος, ἅμα δὲ καὶ τοὺς ἁγίους Κοσμᾶν τε καὶ Δαμιανὸν τὰ μάλιστα σέβων, ὧν δὴ ἄγχιστά πη τὰ σώματα καὶ ἐς ἐμὲ κεῖται, πόλιν εὐδαίμονα καὶ λόγου ἀξίαν πολλοῦ, τείχους τε ἀσφαλείᾳ ἐχυρωτάτου καὶ φρουρῶν πλήθει καὶ οἰκοδομιῶν δημοσίων μεγέθει, καὶ τῆς ἄλλης κατασκευῆς τῷ ἐς ἄγαν μεγαλοπρεπεῖ, πεποίηται Κῦρον.
'2. There was a certain utterly neglected fortress in Syria, Cyrus by name, which the Jews built in early times, when they had been carried off as captives from Palestine into Assyria by the army of the Medes and were released much later by King Cyrus; and for this reason they named the place Cyrus, paying this tribute of gratitude to their benefactor. 3. And as time went on this place came to be neglected in general and remained altogether without walls. 4. But the Emperor Justinian, both out of his forethought for the safety of the State, and at the same time as showing especial honour to the Saints Cosmas and Damian, whose bodies lie close by even up to my day, made Cyrus a flourishing city and one of great note through the safety afforded by the strongest possible wall, by the great strength of its garrison, by the size of its public buildings, and by the imposing scale of its other appointments.'
Text: Haury 1913.
Translation: Dewing 1940.
Burial site of a saint - unspecified
RelicsBodily relic - entire body
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesMonarchs and their family
Source
Procopius of Caesarea, (c. 500 – c. 560/561) was a soldier and historian from the Roman province of Palaestina Prima. He accompanied the Roman general Belisarius in the wars of the Emperor Justinian (527-565). He wrote the Wars (or Histories), On Buildings and the Secret History.On Buildings is a panegyric in six books. It lists, and sometimes describes, the buildings erected or renovated by the emperor Justinian throughout the empire (only on Italy is there no information). The bulk of these are churches and shrines dedicated to various saints; the Buildings is therefore a very important text for the evidence it provides of the spread of saintly cults by the mid 6th c.
On Buildings dates from the early 550s to c. 560/561; a terminus post quem is 550/551 as the text mentions the capture of Topirus in Thrace by the Slavs in 550 and describes the city walls of Chalkis in Syria built in 550/551; a probable terminus ante quem is 558 when the dome of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople collapsed, which is not mentioned in the book; or before 560 when the bridge on the river Sangarius was completed, as Procopius reports on the start of works. On Buildings thus belongs to the later years of Justinian’s reign. The work is not finished and is probably Procopius’ last work. It glorifies Justinian, depicting him as a great builder and an emperor restlessly transforming the state, expanding and reforming it, destroying paganism, extirpating heresy, and re-establishing the firm foundations of the Christian faith (Elsner 2007: 35).
More on the text: Downey 1947; Elsner 2007; Greatrex 1994 and 2013.
Overview of the text:
Book 1.
Constantinople and its suburbs
Book 2.
Frontier provinces of Mesopotamia and Syria.
Book 3.
Armenia, Tzanica, and the shores of the Black Sea.
Book 4.
Illyricum and Thrace (the Balkans).
Book 5.
Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine.
Book 6.
North Africa, from Alexandria to central Algeria.
Discussion
The hagiography of Kosmas and Damianos is surprisingly unclear as to the location of their graves; so this passage, in a well informed empire-wide text, is important as evidence that this was believed, in Constantinopolitan and imperial circles, to have been outside Kyrrhos.Bibliography
Edition:Haury, J., Procopii Caesariensis opera omnia, vol. 4: Περι κτισματων libri VI sive de aedificiis (Leipzig: Teubner, 1962-64).
Translations and Commentaries:
Compagnoni, G.R., Procopio di Cesarea, Degli Edifici. Traduzione dal greco di G. Compagnoni (Milan: Tipi di Francesco Sonzogno, 1828).
Dewing, H.B., Procopius, On Buildings. Translated into English by H.B. Dewing, vol. 7 (London: William Heinemann, New York: Macmillan, 1940).
Grotowski, P.Ł., Prokopiusz z Cezarei, O Budowlach. Przełożył, wstępem, objaśnieniami i komentarzem opatrzył P.Ł. Grotowski (Warsaw: Proszynski i S-ka, 2006).
Roques, D., Procope de Césarée. Constructions de Justinien Ier. Introduction, traduction, commentaire, cartes et index par D. Roques (Alessandria: Edizioni dell'Orso, 2011).
Veh, O., and Pülhorn, W. (eds.), Procopii opera. De Aedificiis. With a Commentary by W. Pülhorn (Munich: Heimeran, 1977).
Further Reading:
Downey, G.A., “The Composition of Procopius’ ‘De Aedificiis’," Transactions of the American Philological Association 78 (1947), 171-183.
Elsner, J., “The Rhetoric of Buildings in De Aedificiis of Procopius”, in: L. James (ed.), Art and Text in Byzantine Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 33-57.
Greatrex, G., “The Dates of Procopius’ Works,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 18 (1994), 101-14.
Greatrex, G., “The Date of Procopius Buildings in the Light of Recent Scholarship,” Estudios bizantinos 1 (2013), 13-29.
Julia Doroszewska, Bryan Ward-Perkins
24/10/2020
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00385 | Kosmas and Damianos, brothers, physician martyrs of Syria | Κοσμᾶς, Δαμιανὸς | Certain |
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