This volume brings together the editions and annotated translation of hagiographical texts that recount the legendary stories of seven saints, interconnected by the distinctive novelistic element that characterizes all of them. The editor and translator, Stratis Papaioannou, has presented another collection of texts with a similar “novelistic orientation” in his previous publication in the same series. [1] Yet that was a selection of chiefly martyrs’ Passions from the vast corpus of the Menologion of Symeon Metaphrastes, the famous reviser of earlier hagiographical works who was active in late tenth-/early eleventh-century Constantinople. Apart their general thematic affinities, the stories included in the collection under review share several narrative themes and textual analogues with each other, while the low-register Greek in which they were couched is consistent with their folkloristic nature and appropriate for the general public that they addressed.
To begin with, the Passion of Boniphatios the Martyr (BHG 279) narrates the tale of a slave in Rome who, at the behest of a wealthy noblewoman named Aglais and her lover, travels to the East to gather martyrs’ relics. In Tarsos, Boniphatios will witness the tortures of local martyrs before he meets a martyr’s death himself. His relics were brought to Rome and venerated by Aglais who, now a pious Christian, will take vows in a local monastery. Rome, once again, was the native city of the Man of God, in later times named Alexios, who upon his wedding night embarked on a ship sailing eastwards. In the Syrian city of Edessa the Man of God led the life of a beggar for seventeen years, residing in the narthex of a local church. To avoid having his sanctity revealed, he decided to relocate to Tarsos, but miraculously found himself back in Rome, begging for his daily bread outside his family home. His sanctity would be recognized only posthumously. Apart from the city of Tarsos, similarities between this and Boniphatios’s story include the name of Aglais, borne, in this case, by the saint’s mother.
The third and fourth tales in this collection transfer their subjects from the city to the desert and propound the ideals of extreme asceticism. Thus, the story of Markos the Athenian is set in the farthest reaches of the Egyptian desert where he lived, withdrawn from the inhabited world for no less than ninety-nine years. Before the end of his long life, Markos met abba Serapion with whom he shared his personal story and who became the intradiegetic narrator of his Life (BHG 1039-1041). In turn, the case of Makarios the Roman (BHG 1005/1005d), whose wanderings and travels brought him and his companions to the outer limits of the inhabited world, resembles the stories of Alexios and Markos. Moreover, as a narrative set in exotic places, it intersects with the Alexander Romance, whose popularity in the Byzantine era can be assessed by the number of versions in which it has come down to us. Nuggets of inspiration from theAlexander Romance can be also traced in the mythical tale of Reprebos, a name more likely to stem from the Latin reprobus, “the rejected, the condemned,” than from the Syrian raurab, “big.” Reprebos is introduced as a man who belonged to the race of the Cynocephali (the “Dog-headed”), an anthropophagus (“man-eater”) who changed his name to Christophoros (“Christ-bearer”) after his conversion to Christianity. Gradually, the story of his conversion (BHG 309) effects his transformation into a charismatic holy man, prompt to defend the Christian faith before the pagan emperor Decius and, as a result, meet a martyr’s death.
The Passio and Miracles of George the Martyr (BHG 670a and 687-687k), edited and translated in this collection, are just two of the very many pieces of hagiography dedicated to one of the most popular saints of Christianity. According to the editor and translator, among the good reasons for selecting Passio BHG 670a to be part of this volume were the high degree of imagination that pervades the story of the martyr and the lowbrow prose style. As for the two Miracles that follow, these appear in several versions and exemplify the associations of the saintly martyr with such legends as dragon-slaying and the locking of a demon in a rock.
The idiosyncratic character of the last text contained in this collection, the one dedicated to Niketas the martyr, lies in the fact that the name of this saint looks to have been officially banned in Byzantium. Nonetheless, the absence of his mention-commemoration in liturgical books does not seem to have discouraged the spread of his cult and the writing of a good number of Passions in his honor. The Passion edited in this volume betrays a certain effort to rebrand the saint’s name and fame, acquitting him of any association with heresy.
In addition to their anonymity, the total disentanglement of the above texts and stories from their contemporary history and political reality by and large leaves us in the dark regarding their provenance and chronology. Both the world that they represent and the kind of heroes they portray support the supposition that nearly all of them trace their origins back to late antiquity (the fifth or sixth century). Yet, in view of the different kinds of literary elaboration that these stories may have been subjected to, identifying their place of composition with a particular geographical area and connecting their heroes and plot with a precise historical period can only be a matter of conjecture. Given this uncertainty, in his discussion of each text in the introduction Stratis Papaioannou launches several plausible hypotheses, primarily based either on certain narrative details or on the place of origin of the manuscripts that preserve them. He also endeavors in the introduction to pinpoint the links and parallels that “unite” these stories (vii-viii) as well as to bring out facets of their literary identity and points of interest which could arouse the interest of modern readers. In fact, the value of the pieces that are the focus of this volume lies in their allotting ample space to literary imagination and portraying saintly figures who transcend the limits of a life entrenched in social conventions. Readers will be transported to a literary landscape that typifies the branch of Byzantine hagiography closest to fantasy or magical realism. They will also appreciate the theatricality of most of these stories, which unfold in dialogic form, not to mention the use of narrative techniques employed to introduce and develop both main and supporting characters.
Except for the final text, the Passio of the Martyr Niketas, all these texts were previously only available in an old and usually dated edition. If not representing previously unedited versions, the texts included in this volume are based on a fuller manuscript tradition. As a matter of fact, apparently due to their popularity and wide circulation, each of these texts survives in several versions marked by significant differentiation in terms of readings and linguistic register. Papaioannou appositely calls them “open texts” as regards their manuscript transmission (281), and reasonably distinguishes between versions and redactions, the latter denoting a text subjected to only minor changes. Readers may apprehend such a distinction by referring to the critical apparatus which, as the editing policy of the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library series requires, appear in a separate section of the book and not at the bottom of the Greek text of the critical edition.
All in all, Stratis Papaioannou has put his philological skills and his efforts to excellent use in presenting a sound edition of these Greek texts and producing a readable English translation. Collections of stories of the sort included in this volume contribute to making Byzantine hagiography accessible and available to an audience beyond that of experts. Though largely alien to our esthetics and literary taste, they may appeal to some modern readers at large, especially those enthralled by an extraordinary brand of fiction and plots supported by characters who by their acts, journeys, and feats leave the rational world far behind.
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Note:
1. Stratis Papaioannou, ed. and trans., Christian Novels from the Menologion of Symeon Metaphrastes, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, 45 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017).