The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor (AM 5950) states that in 457/458, the relics of *Anastasia (martyr of Sirmium, S00602) were translated from Sirmium to Constantinople and deposited in her church there. Chronicle compiled in the Byzantine Empire in the early 9th c., using extracts from earlier Greek texts.
Evidence ID
E08019
Type of Evidence
Literary - Other narrative texts (including Histories)
Major author/Major anonymous work
Theophanes
Chronicle of Theophanes, AM 5950 [AD 457/8]
Τῷ δ᾿ αὐτῷ ἔτει ἠνέχθη τὸ λείψανον τῆς ἁγίας Ἀναστασίας ἀπὸ τοῦ Σερμίου καὶ κατετέθη ἐν τῷ ναῷ αὐτῆς ἐν τοῖς Δομνίνου ἐμβόλοις.
'In the same year the relics of St Anastasia were brought from Sermium and deposited in her church in the portico of Domninus.'
Text: de Boor 1883, 111.
Translation: Mango and Scott 1997, 170.
Cult PlacesBodily relic - unspecified
Cult building - independent (church)
RelicsBodily relic - unspecified
Transfer, translation and deposition of relics
Transfer/presence of relics from distant countries
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 church of Anastasia in Constantinople was not originally associated with the martyr of Sirmium: it was founded in the 4th century by Gregory of Nazianzus, who devised the name to symbolise the resurrection (anastasis) of the Nicene church in Constantinople after a period of Arian dominance (see E01395). The link with the martyr Anastasia is not attested before the translation of her relics: in 457/458 according to Theophanes; other sources are vaguer and date the event only to the reign of Leo I (457-474).The translation of Anastasia's relics is mentioned in the Life of Markianos (E08054), an ecclesiastic at Constantinople who is claimed in his Life to have rebuilt the church of Anastasia. The Life also claims that gifts were given to the church by Ardabur, the son of the politically powerful military commander Aspar (in return for which Markianos supposedly arranged for readings at the church to be given in Gothic). Since Ardabur and Aspar were Homoian Goths, and since the cult of Anastasia seems to have been particularly strong in the Gothic Homoian church, it has been suggested that they may have been responsible for the transfer of her relics (e.g. Mango and Scott 1997, 171, n. 8). For full discussion, see Snee 1998; and on the church of Anastasia in general, Janin 1969, 22-25.
Mango and Scott, in their notes to this passage, identify it as being dependent on Theodore Lector, though as they acknowledge, the passage, which appears in the Patrologia Graeca edition of Theodore (PG 86/1, 216A-B), is omitted from the critical edition by Hansen.
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:
Janin, R., La géographie ecclésiastique de l'empire byzantin. I: Les églises et les monastères de la ville de Constantinople. (2nd ed.; Paris, 1969).
Snee, R., "Gregory Nazianzen's Anastasia Church: Arianism, the Goths, and Hagiography," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 52 (1998), 157-186.
Record Created By
David Lambert
Date of Entry
27/10/2020
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00602 | Anastasia, martyr of Sirmium and Rome | Ἀναστασία | Certain |
|---|
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