The anonymous author of the Theodoriciana (the so-called Anonymus Valesianus pars posterior) tells of the destruction of the oratory of *Stephen the First Martyr in the suburbs of Verona. Written in Latin probably in Ravenna (northern Italy) in the mid-6th century.
Evidence ID
E08283
Type of Evidence
Literary - Other narrative texts (including Histories)
Theodoriciana (Anonymus Valesianus II) chapter 83
In earlier chapters, the author tells of a pogrom of the Jews in Ravenna and the destruction of their synagogue. The Jews complained to King Theoderic, who resided at the time in Verona. The king decided that the synagogue should be rebuilt at the expense of the Christian Ravennates who had destroyed it.
Ex eo enim [P2: tempore] invenit diabolus locum, quem ad modum hominem bene rem publicam sine querela gubernantem subriperet. nam mox iussit ad Fonticlos in proastio civitatis Veronensis oratorium sancti Stephani, id est altarium subverti.
'In consequence of that, the devil found a circumstance by which he could snatch a man who had hitherto governed the state well without giving cause for complaint. For soon he ordered the overthrow of the oratory of saint Stephen "by the Little Fountains" in the suburbs of Verona, that is its altar.'
Text: König 1997: 90
Translation and summary: M. Szada.
Cult PlacesCult building - oratory
Rejection, Condemnation, SceptisismHeretics
Cult building - oratory
Altar
Rejection, Condemnation, SceptisismDestruction/desecration of saint's shrine
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesHeretics
Monarchs and their family
Source
The Anonymus Valesianus or Excerpta Valesiana is a name given to two Latin fragments edited by a French philologist Henri Valois (1603-76) in his edition of Ammianus Marcellinus in 1636. He found them in the same manuscript and thus edited them together, even though they have nothing to do with each other and were written by different authors. The first one (AV pars prior, AV I) is a short biography of the emperor Constantine and was edited by Mommsen under the title Origo Constantini imperatoris. The second fragment (AV pars posterior, AV II) is a work on Theoderic the Great, thus sometimes called the Chronica Theodoriciana. The text covers the period from 474 to 527. It was written by an author hostile to Gothic rule and Homoianismin, probably in mid-6th century Italy, possibly in Ravenna.Discussion
Scholars do not agree what precisely is meant by "the overthrow of the oratory", especially as there is a difficulty with the text. The manuscripts have "oratorium sancti Stephani, idem situm (or: ibidem situm) altarium subverti". "Id est altarium" is an emendation by Mommsen (1892: 327) who also supposed that it might be an interpolation. Festy (2020: 16) rejects the idea of an emendation, keeping idem situm altarium subuerti and translating it as "ainsi que l'autel qui s'y trouvait" ("as well as the altar sited there").Some scholars have thought that the anonymous author speaks here about a physical demolition of the whole church (Pfeilschifter, Ensslin, Moorhead). Because of Theoderic's well-attested respect for the Nicene church, these historians, however, rejected a religious motive for the destruction and suggested that it was destroyed rather because of its state of disrepair or the need to make way for the construction of fortifications (Theoderic built new walls at Verona).
As, however, the church mentioned here is probably to be identified with Santo Stefano of Verona, a church that exists up to these days and retains parts of its original fifth-century construction, complete destruction does not seem possible. The archaeologist Alessandro Da Lisca in 1936 proposed that only a part of the church was demolished at its east end, but then quickly restored.
König (1986 and 1992: 191) argued that the "overthrow of the altar" meant the reconsecration of the church as Homoian. See also Goltz 2008: 507 who accepts this interpretation and also suggests that it might have been done in agreement with Nicenes (and not as an act of religious violence).
Bibliography
Editions:Festy, M., L'Italie sous Odoacre et Théoderic: Anonyme de Valois II, ed. M. Festy (Paris 2020)
König, I., Aus der Zeit Theoderichs des Grossen: Einleitung, Text, Übersetzung und Kommentar einer anonymen Quelle, (Darmstadt 1997), with introduction, commentary and translation in German
Mommsen, Th., Chronica Theodoriciana in MGH Auctores Antiquissimi 9 (Berlin 1892), 306-28
Further reading:
Ensslin, W., Theoderich der Grosse, (München 1959)
Goltz, A., Barbar-König-Tyrann: das Bild Theoderichs des Grossen in der Überlieferung des 5. bis 9. Jahrhunderts (Berlin 2008)
Moorhead, J., Theoderic in Italy, (Oxford 1992)
Pfeilschifter, G., Der ostgotenkönig Theoderich der Grosse und die katholische Kirche (Münster 1896)
For further references see also A. Di Berardino, Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, s.v. Anonymus Valesianus, 1:138-39.
Record Created By
Marta Szada
Date of Entry
27/03/2023
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00030 | Stephen, the First Martyr | Stephanus | Certain |
|---|
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