Site logo

The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity


from its origins to circa AD 700, across the entire Christian world


The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor (AM 5942) states that the empress Pulcheria translated from Ephesus the remains of *Flavianos (bishop of Constantinople, ob. 449, S02069) and had them reburied in the church of the Holy *Apostles (S02422) at Constantinople in 450. Chronicle compiled in the Byzantine Empire in the early 9th c., using extracts from earlier Greek texts.

Evidence ID

E08017

Type of Evidence

Literary - Other narrative texts (including Histories)

Major author/Major anonymous work

Theophanes

Chronicle of Theophanes, AM 5942 [AD 449/50]

Τότε ὁ βασιλεὺς τὴν μακαρίαν Πουλχερίαν πολλὰ παρακαλέσας ἤγαγεν εἰς τὰ βασίλεια· ἥτις εὐθέως ἀποστείλασα εἰς Ἔφεσον ἤγαγε τὸ λείψανον τοῦ ἁγίου Φλαβιανοῦ· καὶ μετὰ δορυφορίας διὰ τῆς Μέσης ἐκκομίσασα ἔθαψεν ἐν τοῖς ἁγίοις ἀποστόλοις.

'Then the emperor, after earnestly beseeching the blessed Pulcheria, brought her back into the palace. She immediately sent to Ephesos to bring back the relics of the holy Flavian. Accompanied by an escort, she carried these along the Mesê and buried them in the Holy Apostles.'


Text: de Boor 1883, 102.
Translation: Mango and Scott 1997, 158-9.

Cult Places

Cult building - independent (church)

Relics

Bodily relic - entire body
Transfer, translation and deposition of relics
Transfer/presence of relics from distant countries

Protagonists in Cult and Narratives

Monarchs and their family
Women

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

Bishop Flavianos of Constantinople was condemned and sent into exile by the Second Council of Ephesus in August 449. He died shortly after the council: the precise circumstances of his death are extremely murky, but many sources suggest that it was the result of ill-treatment either at the council itself or while being taken into exile (see Chadwick 1955). He was buried at Ephesus.

At the time of Ephesus II, Pulcheria, the sister of the emperor Theodosius II, who had been the dominant influence over his regime until the early 440s, had been out of favour for several years during the ascendancy of the eunuch Chrysaphius. Unlike Pulcheria, Chrysaphius supported Theodosius' alignment with the ideas about the nature of Christ put forward by the Constantinopolitan monk Eutyches: namely that Christ had a single, divine nature. These ideas had been condemned as heretical in 448 by a synod at Constantinople presided over by Flavianos. The council at Ephesus overturned this decision, vindicated Eutyches and deposed Flavianos (its decisions would subsequently be overturned themselves by the Council of Chalcedon in 451).

However, a few months after the council, in the spring of 450, Chrysaphius fell from power and Pulcheria returned to her position of influence (for an account of the court politics involved, see Holum 1982, 175-216). In Theophanes' account, the translation of Flavianos' remains to Constantinople is presented as a manifestation of her return to power. However, other sources, such as Theodore Lector (E08114) suggest that the translation took place only after Theodosius' death.


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:
Chadwick, H., "The Exile and Death of Flavian of Constantinople: A Prologue to the Council of Chalcedon," Journal of Theological Studies n.s. 6 (1955), 17-34.

Holum, K.G.,
Theodosian Empresses: Women and Imperial Dominion in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).


Record Created By

David Lambert

Date of Entry

28/10/2020

Related Saint Records
IDNameName in SourceIdentity
S02069Flavianos, bishop of Constantinople, ob. 449ΦλαβιανὀςCertain
S02422All Apostlesοἱ ἁγίοι ἀποστόλοιCertain


Please quote this record referring to its author, database name, number, and, if possible, stable URL:
David Lambert, Cult of Saints, E08017 - http://csla.history.ox.ac.uk/record.php?recid=E08017