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Martyrdom in East and West: The Saga of St George of Nobatia and England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

William H. C. Frend
William H. C. Frend*
Affiliation:
University of glasgow
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Extract

Martyrs were the heroes of the Early Church. For a long period after the reign of Constantine until Benedictine monasticism took over their mantle, their lives and exploits provided a focus for the idealism of Christians in Western Europe. They represented the victory of human steadfastness and loyalty in defence of the faith triumphing over irreligious tyranny and the powers of evil. In the East, however, where Constantine had emphasized as early as 324 his complete rejection of the persecutions of his pagan predecessors, it was not long before memories of the past were transformed to meet other pressing needs of the day. Threatened first by Germanic and Slav invaders and then by the armies of Islam, Byzantine cities sought the protection of martyrs and the heavenly hierarchy that led from them through the Archangel Michael to the Virgin herself. In Nobatia, the northernmost of the three Nubian kingdoms that straddled the Nile valley between Aswan and a point south of Khartoum, the military martyrs, George, Mercurius, Theodore, and Demetrius seconded the endeavours of Michael and the Virgin to preserve the kingdoms and their Christian religion.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 30: Martyrs and Martyrologies , 1993 , pp. 47 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1993

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References

1 For this theme, see J. van Oort’s study of the genesis of Augustine’s De civitate Dei Jerusalem and Babylon (Leiden, 1991), esp. ch. 4.

2 Augustine, Contra literas Petiliani, ii.89.196, PL 43, col. 321.

3 For many examples, see Berthier, A. et al., Les Vestiges du Christianisme antique dans la Numidie centrale (Algiers, 1942)Google Scholar, esp. Pt iii, Le Culte.

4 Augustine, Sermo, 280, 281, 282, PL 39, cols. 1280–6.

5 Ibid., 284.3, and in particular, through God’s grace, an argument, therefore, against Pelagius.

6 Enarratio in Ps. 120.13, PL 37, cols 1616–17.

7 Prudentius, Peristephanon, ed. I. Bergman, CSEL 61, x, lines 6–10, 121ff.

8 Ibid., vii.

9 Thus Paulinus of Nola threw up his career in imperial service in 395 to dedicate his life to tending the shrine of Felix of Nola, a reputed mattyr under the Emperor Decius in 250. He died c.431.

10 Victricius, De laude sanctorum, i, PL 20, col. 443.

11 Brown, P, Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (London, 1081), p. 16.Google Scholar

12 Prudentius, Peristephanon, iv, lines 53–7.

13 Jerome, Contra Vigilantum, PL 23, written in 406.

14 Many examples quoted by H. Delehaye, Les Passions des Martyrs et lesgenres littéraires (Brussels, 1921), pp. 273–87-

15 Brown, Society and the Holy, pp. 166–95, in a distinguished essay, ‘Eastern and Western Christendom in Late Antiquity: the Parting of the Ways’.

16 Eusebius, Life of Constantine, ed. I. A. Heikel, Die grieschischen christlichen Schriftsteller, Eusebius, I (Leipzig, 1902), ii.49: ‘No sympathy with the former emperors’.

17 Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica, X.9.6, and De laude Constantinì, ed. Heikel, 1.6, Constantine, ‘administering this world’s affairs in imitation of God himself, receiving as it were a transcript of the Divine sovereignty’.

18 See Baynes, N. H., ‘The Supernatural Defenders of Constantinople’, Byzantine Studies and other Essays, ch. 17 (London, 1955).Google Scholar

19 George of Pisidia, Bell Avar, ed. A. Pertusi (Ettal, 1959), lines 1–9: see A. Cameron, ‘Corippus’ Poem on Justin II; a terminus of Antique Art?’ in Continuity and Change in Sixth Century Byzantium (London, 1981), vi, p. 165.

20 See Saxer, V., ‘Demetrius the Martyr’ in Angelo di Berardino, ed. and Adrian Walford, tr., The Encyclopaedia of the Early Church, 2 vols (Cambridge, 1991)Google Scholar, and for his share of the patronage of the city with the Virgin and Theodore, E. Pelikanidou, ‘Thessalonica’ in ibid.

21 The story is told by John of Ephesus, Historia ecclesiastica, pt iv.27, ed. E. W. Brooks, CSCO, Scriptores Syri (Paris and Louvain, 1935–6).

22 See Adams, W. Y., Nubia, Corridor to Africa (London, 1977)Google Scholar, 71ff.

23 Ibid., 81ff.

24 Published by Michalowski, K., Faras, Die Kathedrale aus dem Wüstensand (Einsiedeln, 1967).Google Scholar

25 See Frend, W. H. C., ‘Fragments of a version of the Acta S. Georgii from Q’asr lbrim’, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum, 32 (1989), pp. 89–104.Google Scholar

26 My conclusions derived from a study of the Acta S. Georgii, ibid., pp. 103–4.

27 Ibid., pp. 89–90, where I have also outlined the legend of St George given below.

28 See Delehaye, Les Passions, pp. 279ff.

29 Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica, viii.9.4-5.

30 For discussion of this incident and parallels in other epic martyrdoms for a pretended concession by the martyr, see Delehaye, Les Passions, pp. 263–4.

31 Michalowski, Faras (Warsaw, 1974) (updated version of work referred to above, n. 24), p. 116, pl.14. The identification is very probable rather than absolutely sure, as the name below the word ‘Hagios’ on the fresco has been lost.

32 Ibid., pl.41.

33 Listed, ibid., p.324.

34 Ibid., pl.34, and 66, and p. 273.

35 For the spread of the cult of St George throughout the Byzantine East, see H. Delehaye, Les Origines du culte des martyrs (Brussels, 1933), pp. 86, 175, 184, 186, 213, 237.

36 Paul van Moorsel, Jean Jacquet, and Hans Schneider, The Central Church of Abdullah Nirqi (Leiden, 1975), pp. 109–11.

37 Shinnie, P. L. and Chitrick, H. N., Ghazali, a Monastery in the Northern Sudan = Sudan Antiquities Service, Occasional Papers, no. 5 (Khartoum, 1961), p. 98.Google Scholar

38 See U. Monneret de Villard, Nubia Mediaevale, 4, plate clxxv (Cairo 1935–53), and for a possible second example, from Abdullah Nirqi, P. van Moorsel, ‘Gli scavi olandesi in Nubia’ = Acta of the Seventh International Congress of Christian Archaeology (Barcelona, 1972), p. 594, plates 7 and 8.

39 Frend, W. H. C., ‘Fragments of an Acta Martyrum from Q’asr Ibrim’, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum, 29 (1986), pp. 66–70.Google Scholar

40 Described and illustrated in Michalowski, Faras, pp. 200–3, and plates 42 and 43.

41 See ODCC, ‘George St. Patron Saint of England and Martyr’, from which the information in this paragraph is taken.

42 Thus, the somewhat desultory correspondence in The Times, 24 April-10 May 1992. Interestingly, while the claims of King Edward the Martyr, murdered at Corfe Castle in 978, and even St Radegund, were pressed as substitutes, no attempt was made to restore Edward the Confessor, while the record of the discovery of the actual MSS of the Acta S. Georgii at Q’asr Ibrim was refused publication.