Five Hundred Bones from Constantinople: Monks, Manuscripts, and Memory at the Eastern Borders of Byzantium

Abstract

This article traces the diachronic uses of the literary motif of “relics coming from Constantinople to monasteries in the East” in Syriac hagiography. Although this motif was seen in Syriac literature as early as the sixth century, there seems to be an increase in the employment of these stories around the twelfth century in saints’ lives local to northern Mesopotamia. In light of two texts—the Life of Abḥay and the Life of Aḥā—the article argues that stories about Constantinopolitan relics (martyrs’ bones or pieces of the True Cross) were oriented toward different modes of remembering Byzantium in the Syriac Church in the Middle Ages. The article further argues that these stories also created space to reflect on the Syriac Church’s relations with the Armenian Church in the medieval Near East. The article thus shows the power of narrative in creating cultural memory, building communal identity, and catalyzing religious rivalry.

Introduction

According to the Life of Abḥay, the holy man, once a bishop of Nicaea, acquired five hundred pieces of relics in Constantinople and brought them to northern Mesopotamia. ¹ A peculiar narrative episode in a Syriac hagiographical text thus places Constantinopolitan martyrs’ bones in a monastery on the banks of the Euphrates, in the region of Samosata. ² The original composition date of this text is unknown, but it was edited by the renowned patriarch Michael the Syrian (d. 1199). ³ In light of this and other Syriac hagiographical texts that narrate stories of relics coming from Constantinople, I will revisit the Syrian Orthodox Church’s memories of Byzantium in the Middle Ages. ⁴ Building upon the voluminous scholarship on cultural memory in the premodern world, ⁵ I will analyze the ways in which stories about “relics coming from Constantinople” were oriented toward new meanings by Syriac hagiographers. ⁶ Narratives about Constantinopolitan relics were employed in Syriac hagiography as early as the sixth century. Yet, in the Middle Ages, these stories were used in saints’ lives to create local hagio-geographies in promoting particular monasteries, while reshaping memories of Byzantium in the Syriac Church. ⁷ Thus, with creative uses of the motif of Constantinopolitan relics, hagiography functioned as a tool for remembering different aspects of the Roman past in the Syrian Orthodox Church. The spatiotemporal frames these stories created, I will further demonstrate, also became interpretative tools for the cross-generational consumers of these stories to reflect on the broader political developments and religious rivalries of their times. ⁸

I focus on two understudied texts in this article: the Life of Abḥay, edited by the aforementioned Michael the Syrian, and the Life of Aḥā of Rīšʿaynā. ⁹ Like many Syriac hagiographical texts, the authorship and dating of these lives are obscured by multiple editorial layers. Nevertheless, with their inclusion of the narrative episodes about Constantinopolitan relics, these lives contribute to three areas of study: Syriac hagiography, Syriac-Byzantine relations, and collective memory in the Middle Ages. Hagiographical narratives about Constantinopolitan relics localized the real and imagined connections to Byzantium within the broad Syriac landscape by discursively depositing the relics at particular sites. At the same time, these narratives reveal different modes of remembering Byzantium, since some give extensive accounts of the Royal City while others appear to have muted the memories of Byzantium, focusing only on the relics themselves. Such a complex understanding of the narrative, as a thread of literature that articulates in-group and out-group dynamics across different sociotemporal frames, ¹⁰ nuances our understanding of collective memories of Christian communities in the medieval Near East.

Stories about Constantinopolitan relics, like the martyrs’ bones Abḥay brought from Constantinople, are rare in Syriac hagiography. Likely the earliest prominent example is an episode in the sixth-century Life of Peter the Iberian (d. 491) written by the Antiochene priest John Rufus, a story that we will analyze shortly. ¹¹ The motif of Constantinopolitan relics found important articulations in later Syriac hagiography, as the Life of Abḥay demonstrates. Although the motif itself seems to have a long genealogy, extending from the sixth to the twelfth century and beyond, it was used in the creation of new hagio-geographies: while Peter translates relics from Constantinople to the monastery of Maiuma in Palestine, Abḥay brings a different set of Constantinopolitan relics to northern Mesopotamia. Thus, the story in the Life of Abḥay localizes the memory of Byzantium and anchors it to a new place, the upper Euphrates region. A story about Constantinopolitan relics is also found in the Life of Aḥā of Rīšʿaynā. In this text, the motif again reorients the reader toward a new hagio-geography, this time placing the relics at the borders of Armenia in northern Mesopotamia. In addition to this new localization, the story of Constantinopolitan relics also blurs the memory of Byzantium in the latter text, which barely speaks about the Royal City. The differences between these representations give a glimpse into the complex discursive methods of creating Byzantine memories in the Syrian Orthodox Church through the use of hagiography.

Narratives representing Byzantium and Constantinople in a positive light are common in Syriac literature. ¹² While pre-Chalcedonian figures such as Constantine I (r. 306–337) and Theodosius II (r. 402–450) were often praised as pious Christians or generous benefactors, ¹³ pro-Byzantine rhetoric was not limited to the portrayals of these emperors. Depending on the broader sociopolitical events, pro-Byzantine rhetoric periodically became prominent in Syriac literature. For example, with the Byzantine reconquests of the former provinces in the Near East in the tenth century, the empress Theodora (d. 548) was depicted in increasingly positive terms in Syriac historiography. ¹⁴ Roman emperors and empresses praising Syrian saints is also a well-known trope in Syriac literature. ¹⁵ Similarly, there are stories portraying Roman imperial figures as generous benefactors of Syriac churches and monasteries. ¹⁶ Despite this rich repertoire of representations of the Roman Empire, stories about relics transferred from Constantinople to the East are rare, the texts that I analyze in this article being sporadic examples. While the reasons behind this infrequent usage may be elusive to us, the instances of the employment of this motif shed great light on the ways in which the Roman Empire was remembered by Syriac communities. My aim is to show the nuances of these processes with two diachronic articulations of the hagiographical motif of Constantinopolitan relics.

The interlaced relationship between hagiography and collective memory in premodern Christian communities barely warrants the ink. It has been well established in scholarship that oral and textual narrators of saints’ stories enabled their audiences to contour their communities through real and imagined connections to the divine past. ¹⁷ The community-building function of the narrative is observed also in the stories about Constantinopolitan relics in Syriac hagiography. On the one hand, such stories contributed to the prestige of specific places where relics were buried; ¹⁸ on the other hand, they provided Syriac communities with a space to rearticulate their memories of the Roman Empire. In what follows, I will present a literary analysis of the two saints’ lives that include stories about Constantinopolitan relics, and I will show how these texts contributed to Syriac memories of the Roman Empire in their comparable yet distinct ways.

Martyrs’ Bones in the Life of Abḥay

A. The Narrative

The Life of Abḥay can be separated into three parts: 1) the youth of Abḥay and his early monastic career in northern Mesopotamia; 2) his travel to Constantinople and service at the court of Theodosius (probably referring to Theodosius II); and 3) his return to northern Mesopotamia and founding of a monastery. Let us take a closer look at the succession of events and the representation of relics: The Life opens with a praise of relics. After summoning his readers to listen to the story of Abḥay, the author says:

Who is it that, when he sees the dead corpses in which the divine strength they wore is preserved, and while by nature they are dead and decayed, the power that they received lives in them; and because of this, they help all who take refuge in them with undivided faith, giving healing to the sick and the weak; and those who are afflicted by demons, they grant them to be free from them; and those who are pressed in trials of chastisements, they redeem them from the scourging and sufferings; who does not believe and become firm by all these things that are written in the narratives about them which by their hands become strong and strong again? … Who then doubts, when he sees the many witnesses to the acts beyond nature, which the bones of the holy ones faithfully perform? For witnesses of martyrs [are] the miracle working of their bones.¹⁹

Following the opening passage, the author begins to narrate Abḥay’s pious deeds, and we do not hear about relic veneration until the second half of the Life. Abḥay was born to a Christian family in the outskirts of Mardin. ²⁰ He was well versed in Syriac and Greek, the language of the Arameans and the language of the Romans, respectively, the author says. ²¹ Abḥay and his brother Zuqā, after their parents die, sell their possessions and enter monastic life. The two brothers are first ordained deacons, then they are offered priesthood, which Zuqā refuses and Abḥay accepts. ²² Troubled by the fame and praise brought by the healings they perform, the two brothers leave their monastic community; Zuqā founds a small monastery in a nearby region, and Abḥay goes to Caesarea in Cappadocia. ²³ Abḥay performs many miracles, which the Roman governor Proclus mentions to the emperor Theodosius. Upon Theodosius’s request, in the second part of the Life, Abḥay goes to Constantinople, greeted there by the emperor himself. ²⁴ Abḥay settles at a certain Monastery of St. John in Constantinople and becomes the spiritual protector of the city, especially after the city’s defeat of the Bulgar attacks. ²⁵ He is ordained as the bishop of Nicaea under the generous benefaction and patronage of the emperor. ²⁶

A short time after Abḥay took office in Nicaea, the author says, the miracle of the Youths of Ephesus took place. ²⁷ The emperor goes to see the youths that had woken up from their miraculous sleep, converses with them, and builds a church upon the cave in which they had fallen asleep. Abḥay also travels with the emperor to see this miracle, performing numerous miracles on the way to Ephesus. The holy man even goes to Athens, where philosophers test his knowledge, before arriving at Ephesus. ²⁸ In the rest of the text, the emperor continuously appoints Abḥay to heal the sick and preach to Christian communities in many cities of the empire. Abḥay thus becomes the spiritual advisor of the emperor and stays in the capital until the emperor dies. In this second part of the Life, the author returns to the veneration of relics in Constantinople.

In this episode, the emperor is distressed that not all of the relics in Constantinople bring healing to those who venerate them. “A certain thought arose in the emperor’s mind about the bones of saints and relics of holy men which were venerated at the churches of Christians: why did some of them perform mighty deeds and miracles while some did not? Why indeed were they venerated by believers equally—those that do not perform mighty deeds together with those that do?” ²⁹ Thus, the emperor suspects that some of the martyrs’ bones venerated in the city are inauthentic. Not wanting to cause any schism in the city, the emperor keeps his thoughts about relics to himself. But the continued, unusual quietness of the emperor leads to confusion in the city, and the nobles summon Abḥay to learn what is distressing the emperor. ³⁰ The latter reveals the reason of his distress to Abḥay, telling him that he had a dream in which he was ordered to test the relics in the city to sift out false martyrs’ bones. ³¹ After much contemplation and supplications, the emperor, Abḥay, and other bishops collect all of the relics in the city: “The emperor, with imperial letters, and with a strict and urgent command, collected all the bones of the holy martyrs from every region. He ordered that their names would be written on reliquaries.” ³² They then throw the relics into fire to test their authenticity. The majority of the relics (nine thousand pieces) do not burn; they prove real, and the emperor’s faith in relics is restored. ³³ The relics are then distributed to many regions of the empire after this fire ordeal and confirmation, according to the story. ³⁴

Following Theodosius’s death, in the third part of the Life, Abḥay and his disciple Andreas leave Constantinople, with nothing from the abundant treasure of imperial riches, but with five hundred pieces of relics. ³⁵ Just as Moses carried the people of Israel from Egypt, the author says, Abḥay and his disciple carried the bones of the holy fathers. The two holy men travel to Alexandria, to the Holy Land, and to Syria with the relics from Constantinople. They eventually start dwelling at a cave near Samosata (in the Gargar region) on the banks of the Euphrates. At this location, the two holy men found the Monastery of Abḥay. They build a church and a “house of saints” (burial chamber) for the martyrs’ bones. ³⁶ The Life of Abḥay, with this lengthy account on relics, connects a monastery in northern Mesopotamia to Constantinople.

It is unclear when the Life was originally composed. The reference to the Bulgar attacks at Constantinople provides the eighth century as a terminus post quem, but the earliest manuscript witnesses to the Life are from the twelfth century: the manuscript Bodleian Syriac 163, dated to the year 1177 CE, ³⁷ and the manuscript British Library Add. 12174, completed in 1197 CE. ³⁸ The former manuscript includes the Life of Abḥay and ten other hagiographical narratives and ends with a story narrating the apparition of a fragment of the True Cross to a group of people. ³⁹ The explicit of the manuscript says it was written by a deacon named Aaron “in the days of Michael, Patriarch of Antioch.” ⁴⁰ This note is significant in situating Bod. Syr. 163 in relation to BL 12174, since the latter is also associated with Michael the Syrian.

BL 12174 includes seventy-eight texts. The majority of the texts in the manuscript are saints’ stories, but it also includes an account of Constantine’s reign and two accounts of the discovery of the Holy Cross. In the explicit of the Life of Abḥay, we read that “Michael, patriarch of the apostolic see of Antioch,” edited the story in the year 1496 of the Greeks (1185 CE). ⁴¹ In his Chronicle, Michael frequently mentions the monastery of Abḥay but does not mention a bishop of Nicaea named Abḥay. ⁴² Nevertheless, Michael is well known for his hagiographical writings, ⁴³ and it is plausible that he edited the Life of Abḥay. One of the notes at the end of BL 12174, again, seemingly written by Michael the Syrian, states that the book was commissioned by the deacon Ṣalībā, ⁴⁴ who, like Michael, was educated at the patriarchal Monastery of Barṣawmā near Melitene in northern Mesopotamia. ⁴⁵ This note indicates that the British Library manuscript as a whole was produced upon commission, and Michael might have collated and edited all of the hagiographical texts in it, and not only the Life of Abḥay, during his controversial tenure as the Syrian Orthodox patriarch of Antioch (1166–1199).

It is not clear what Michael’s editorial process entailed. The Life of Abḥay was likely originally written earlier, but due to the dearth of manuscript evidence, it is difficult to sort Michael’s editorial changes from the previous redaction(s) of the Life. The only extant earlier version, in Bod. Syr. 163, is different from Michael’s edition in important ways. For example, the discourse about relics at the very beginning of the Life is not included in this earlier version, which is overall less detailed than Michael’s edition. ⁴⁶ However, the episode when the Constantinopolitan relics are tested with fire is included in the story, albeit with slightly different details. ⁴⁷ Thus, the relics episode in the Life of Abḥay does not seem to be Michael’s addition.

Aphram Barsoum states that the Life was originally written by the aforementioned John Rufus, yet he does not provide the source for this information. ⁴⁸ Abḥay is not mentioned in John Rufus’s Plerophoriae or in his other works. ⁴⁹ Therefore, until further manuscript evidence is available, John Rufus’s authorship of the Life of Abḥay remains tentative. Still, even if John did not author the Life, his most famous work, the Life of Peter the Iberian, which is also included in BL 12174 shortly before the Life of Abḥay, ⁵⁰ displays important parallels to the latter. Considering the narrative similarities, to which we will shortly return, Michael or the original author of the Life of Abḥay might have modeled the Life on John Rufus’s work, albeit making some important modifications to situate Abḥay in his northern Mesopotamian context. The only secure information we have for the Life is that it was edited by Michael the Syrian in the twelfth century.

B. The Life of Abḥay within Syriac Hagiography

How does the representation of Byzantium in the Life of Abḥay relate to broader Syriac hagiographical discourses in the twelfth century? BL 12174, which witnesses the Life of Abḥay, includes a number of other Syriac texts that praise the history of Byzantium and highlight the connections between Constantinople and the Syriac Church. For example, an account of the baptism of Constantine by the bishop Sylvester, ⁵¹ the Life of Abraham—a native of Constantinople and the teacher of the Syriac holy man Barṣawmā ⁵² —and two accounts of the Invention of the Holy Cross by the Byzantine empresses Protonice and Helena ⁵³ are among the stories about Constantinople in this manuscript. Thus, the Life was, to follow Aleida Assmann’s theorization, canonized among other Syriac hagiographical works. ⁵⁴ A collection of hagiographical texts is canonical not in being “immune to ups and downs of social taste” ⁵⁵ but in keeping the cultural artifacts (in this case, saints’ stories) in active circulation for the use and reinterpretation of future generations. BL 12174 is an attestation to the twelfth-century Syriac intellectual milieu that reinforced a memory of spiritual connections between the Syriac Church and the Royal City.

Such articulations of the memories of Syriac-Byzantine relations are seen in Syriac literature as early as late antiquity, as mentioned above. While the Life of Abḥay fits into this extended genealogy of stories that narrate the spiritual connections between the Syriac world and the Byzantine Empire, it appears to have reshaped those memories in significant ways. The Life of Abḥay uses pro-Byzantine discourse to promote a particular monastery in the upper Euphrates. To illustrate this localization, let us return to the Life of Peter the Iberian by John Rufus.

In a vivid and detailed episode in the Life of Peter the Iberian, Peter, while still a young boy, starts living at the palace of Theodosius II in Constantinople. ⁵⁶ With his piety and asceticism, he becomes exemplary to those at the palace and to Constantinopolitans in general. He performs miracles at the palace with the martyrs’ bones buried in his bed chamber. ⁵⁷ The biggest of these miracles takes place when Peter and his disciple John decide to leave the Royal City and go to the Holy Land. The martyrs, whose bones were kept in reliquaries, come alive and lead the two holy men out of the city. ⁵⁸ In the living company of an army of martyrs, Peter and John, with relics, a gospel book, and a piece of the True Cross, leave Constantinople and arrive in Palestine. ⁵⁹ They bury the relics at the Monastery of Maiuma (which was under the care of Peter), and the piece of the Cross flies away, transforming into a white dove. ⁶⁰

Peter the Iberian’s service at the palace and his relationship with the emperor Theodosius are similar to Abḥay’s experiences in the Royal City. And, Peter and John’s flight from the city with the relics closely resonates with Abḥay and Andreas’s departure from Constantinople with five hundred martyrs’ bones. Given these parallels, the Life of Abḥay might have been modeled on John Rufus’s story, as Barsoum states. Yet, the former text has a completely different geographical orientation. While Peter’s Life is mostly concerned with the geography of the Holy Land, Abḥay is born in northern Mesopotamia and he returns to northern Mesopotamia with the relics. With this geographical reorientation, the Life of Abḥay, while using the same motif in the Life of Peter the Iberian, introduces a new context for Constantinopolitan relics. In other words, the Life of Abḥay shifts the geographical focus from the Holy Land to northern Mesopotamia, but it still remembers the Roman past as a time when Syriac holy men were inhabitants of Constantinople and significant members of the Theodosian court.

Since it is unclear when the Life was originally composed, it is difficult to speculate whether the episode about Constantinopolitan relics was included in the original version of the Life and how the author envisioned this story to function. Nevertheless, in its twelfth-century context, the Life participated in the promotion of northern Mesopotamian monasteries. The foundation story of the Monastery of Abḥay was written for another monastic community, the Monastery of Barṣawmā in Melitene, as the explicit of BL 12174 mentions. What can this context tell us about the ways in which the story of Constantinopolitan relics might have been read in the twelfth century? For this, let us briefly dwell on Melitene.

C. What Does Melitene Have to do with Constantinople?

The epitome of a frontier city, Melitene, on the banks of the Euphrates in northern Mesopotamia, served as the capital of the Roman province of Armenia II during and after the reign of Theodosius I (r. 379–395). ⁶¹ Although the autonomy of Armenian satraps fluctuated under changing Roman legislation, Melitene remained an important administrative, cultural, and military center for various Armenian provinces. ⁶² After the Islamic conquests in the seventh century, the region was ruled by local emirs appointed by Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs until the Byzantine reconquests of eastern Asia Minor in the tenth and eleventh centuries. This period of Byzantine control in and around Melitene ceased with the establishment of the Turkish Danishmend dynasty in the eleventh century. ⁶³ Hereafter, northern Mesopotamia was ruled by Seljuk Turks, Crusader kingdoms, and Mamluks, until the Ottoman conquest of the region in the sixteenth century.

As a result of its strategic position between various ruling powers throughout late antiquity and the Middle Ages, the religious history of Melitene was characterized by diversity and multiculturalism. Greek (Chalcedonian), Armenian (non-Chalcedonian), and Syriac (non-Chalcedonian) Christians, as well as Muslims, were important components of Melitene’s cultural texture. ⁶⁴ While it is impossible to provide a full account of the religious history of the city in the given limited space, we should say a few words about the history of Syrian Orthodox Christianity in this region.

There was a Syriac bishopric in Melitene in late antiquity. ⁶⁵ Although this indicates the presence of a Syriac community, the latter became prominent in the city in the Middle Ages, after the emperor Nikophoros II Phokas (r. 963–969) settled a sizeable Syriac population in Melitene and the broader region. ⁶⁶ In the following centuries, Byzantine emperors patronized the Syriac Church in and around Melitene sporadically and most of the time nominally. ⁶⁷ Despite the absence of continuous imperial support, the Syriac Church appears to have flourished in the region. Well-known clerics were educated in Melitene, held significant patriarchal and bishopric positions in northern Syria and Mesopotamia, and produced voluminous literature. It would not be an overstatement to say that medieval Melitene was among the centers of the Syriac Renaissance. ⁶⁸ The settlement and flourishing of the Syriac Church from the tenth to the thirteenth century in this predominantly Greek and Armenian region resulted in ongoing theological controversies and competition among various religious communities for territory and patronage. Such broad developments were, expectedly, reflected in literature. In Syriac historiography, for example, from the eleventh century on, representations of the Roman history became more prominent in comparison to the ninth- and tenth-century historiographical works. ⁶⁹ One must situate the edition of the Life of Abḥay within these broader sociopolitical developments. Hagiographical stories about Constantinopolitan relics, we may theorize, reinforced the memories of Syriac-Byzantine connections in the pre-Chalcedonian era, while there were important rivalries for Byzantine patronage between various churches in the Near East. We will return to these rivalries below, after incorporating the Life of Aḥā of Rīšʿaynā, with a different articulation of memories of Byzantium, into the discussion.

Aḥā and the Piece of the True Cross

A. The Narrative

Abḥay brought a bag of relics from Constantinople and placed them at his monastery in the upper Euphrates. Another holy man from northern Mesopotamia, Aḥā of Rīšʿaynā, also traveled to Constantinople. Although his visit to the Royal City was much shorter than Abḥay’s, he acquired arguably the most venerable of all relics: a piece of the True Cross. Comparing the Life of Aḥā of Rīšʿaynā to the Life of Abḥay illuminates how uses of the same motif can create different memories of the Roman Empire for Syriac communities.

The Life of Aḥā locates the holy man and his exploits on the sixth-century Roman-Persian frontier. The Life can be separated into three parts: 1) Aḥā’s youth, separation from his family, and his time in the Persian army as a crypto-Christian; 2) his monastic foundations in northern Mesopotamia; and 3) his travels to the Holy Land, Athens, Constantinople, and Armenia. Although important turns of plot separate these three parts, there are also major overlaps. The story of his family, for example, continues after Aḥā founds multiple monasteries. His travels to Armenia, too, are interwoven with the stories of his monastic foundations. As Arthur Vööbus observes, the original text appears to have been expanded with simple additional narratives, which makes the editorial layers difficult to separate. ⁷⁰ Aḥā’s story begins at Rīšʿaynā (Rās al-ʿAyn in northern Syria), focuses mostly on northern Mesopotamia, and ends in Armenia; his relics are brought back to the highlands of northern Mesopotamia post mortem. The majority of the events in the story are placed in the northern Mesopotamian countryside. In this text, Constantinopolitan relics are given a brief but important narrative space.

After reviving a ruined monastery at Beth El in northern Mesopotamia, Aḥā tells his fellow monks that he had always desired to be blessed by the Cross on which Christ was crucified. ⁷¹ Thus revealing his intention, he travels to “the land of the Romans,” and in this episode we read about his acquiring a piece of the True Cross in Constantinople:

Then, he went to Rome and to Athens of the Philosophers, and he wandered all the lands of the Romans. After five years, he came to Constantinople, entered the Great ⁷² Church and prayed in it. The Lord made the steward of the church have mercy on him, and he gave him a cell and everything that he needed. And he [i.e. Aḥā] served with him [i.e. the steward] in the church and loved him greatly. And the steward brought a portion [of gifts] to him from the emperor, and Aḥā received the provisions together with the steward of the church. After he [i.e. Aḥā] spent four years with him, he revealed his secret [intention] to him and said to him: “If you want, trust me and give me a piece of the wood of the Cross, as the one who helps me.” When the steward heard this, he got enraged and said to him: “Nobody should hear this word of yours, or you will die.” And after this, such [happened]: He [i.e. the steward] called him at night, and the two of them entered into that place where the wood of the Cross was, and he gave him a piece as thin as hair. And he [i.e. the steward] made a golden amulet for it, wrapped it in pure silk and fine herbs, and he hung it around his neck. Then, he [i.e. Aḥā] went forth and came to the village of ḥadas, to the house of Maksīmūs.⁷³

Aḥā then returns to northern Mesopotamia, crossing the Arsenos River,⁷⁴ travels to Armenia, and converts pagan Armenians to Christianity by uprooting their cultic tree with the power of the Cross.⁷⁵

The Life of Aḥā is a rare text in narrating the translation of a piece of the True Cross from Constantinople. In fact, the only text that includes a similar story, to my knowledge, is the aforementioned Life of Peter the Iberian. When Peter and his disciple leave Constantinople in the living company of the martyrs, they also carry a piece of the True Cross with them to the Holy Land. ⁷⁶ Thus, the story of Aḥā, like that of Abḥay, participates in the tradition of Constantinopolitan relics, yet brings the latter to the upper Tigris, to the border between the land of Syrians and that of Armenians. While the relic blesses and sanctifies this region in the hands of the holy man, the memory of the Roman Empire fades into the background. Different from the Life of Abḥay, the Life of Aḥā does not mention the Roman emperor by name; the holy man does not meet anybody other than the steward of the “Great Church.” Constantinople, in this text, is a vague background for the relic, and the Roman court is altogether irrelevant to the story of Aḥā.

B. Contextualizing the Life of Aḥā

The Sitz im Leben of the Life of Aḥā is as complex as that of Abḥay. The final version of the story is witnessed by Vatican Syriac 37, which also includes the Life of Abḥay. ⁷⁷ It is a problematic manuscript in terms of dating. The majority of the folios in VS 37 were cut and rebound, certain sections are out of sequence, and many of the marginalia have been obscured in the process. Some of the texts in the manuscript are dated. For example, on fol. 139^r, the date 1890 of the Greeks (1579 CE) is given. Yet, because of the eclectic binding and the six different handwritings, one could not assume that a date given on one text also applies to the undated texts in this manuscript. Folia from earlier manuscripts were bound into VS 37, and the section in which the Life of Aḥā is found is one of these undated parts. Despite the lack of a date, this section seems to comprise copies of hagiographical works edited (or authored) by Michael the Syrian.

The handwriting seen in the Life of Abḥay (156^v–168^v) in VS 37 continues with an account of the death of Constantius II (r. 337–361) and the ascension of Julian (r. 361–363) to the throne. This account, as Joseph Assemani says, appears to have been excerpted from the Chronicle of Michael. ⁷⁸ Although there is no verbatim parallel narrative in the Chronicle, ⁷⁹ it is possible that this narrative circulated among Michael’s writings in the late Middle Ages. The text that follows in VS 37 is a brief summary of the Life of Jacob of Sarug (Syriac poet and theologian, d. 521), a longer version of which is found in the aforementioned BL 12174. ⁸⁰ Thus, in at least this section in the VS 37, covering the Life of Abḥay, the account of Constantius II, and the Life of Jacob of Sarug, the scribe appears to have copied a group of texts associated with Michael the Syrian. After these texts comes the Life of Aḥā (173^v–192^r), ⁸¹ which indicates that the text might have been grouped with Michael’s writings. The Life was transmitted together with the writings of Michael the Syrian in yet another manuscript, Mardin CCFM 176, tentatively dated to the fourteenth century. ⁸² Thus, although the earliest manuscript evidence is from around the fourteenth century, since the Life of Aḥā was transmitted with other twelfth-century texts, it might have taken its final shape by the twelfth century, given the organization of the extant manuscripts.

The Life is written in simple prose, and its linguistic features do not indicate any particular dating. The hagio-geography of the text is mostly northern Mesopotamian: the region of Ṭūr ʿAbdīn, the river Arsenos, the “mountain of Turks,” ⁸³ among other toponyms used in the Life, are common in northern Mesopotamian literary sources as early as the eighth century. ⁸⁴ Moreover, most of the characters mentioned in the Life (Aḥā’s disciples and patrons) appear to be fictional. Thus, the literary structure and the vocabulary of the text do not indicate a particular time period.

The cult of Aḥā flourished in northern Mesopotamia in the ninth century, for archaeological evidence suggests that the monastery associated with him was extensively renovated in this time period. ⁸⁵ Therefore, an earlier version of the Life might have been in circulation in the ninth century, parallel to the veneration of the saint. This is, however, not attested by any manuscript. The monastery served as the bishop’s seat after the year 1088 and was referred to as Dayrā d-ṣlībā (Monastery of the Cross), which indicates that the tradition of Aḥā bringing a piece of the Cross to northern Mesopotamia was well known in the region by the eleventh century. ⁸⁶

In terms of external literary evidence, the holy man is briefly mentioned in the Qartmin Trilogy (the lives of the founding fathers of the Monastery of Mār Gabriel) as “the bishop of Arzon, who converted Armenians.” ⁸⁷ The earliest manuscript witness to the Trilogy is tentatively dated to the thirteenth century, although the text could have been compiled any time after the ninth century. ⁸⁸ Moreover, in the thirteenth-century Martyrology of Rabban Ṣalībā, Aḥā is commemorated for having brought a piece of the True Cross and as a bishop of Arzon. ⁸⁹ Thus, based on literary and material evidence, we can say that the Life of Aḥā took its final form between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries.

Abḥay, Aḥā, and Constantinopolitan Relics

In order to highlight the different modes of remembering Byzantium, let us recapitulate the similarities between the Life of Abḥay and the Life of Aḥā. These two texts might have been originally authored in earlier time periods, completely separate from each other. Yet, their final versions, preserved together in the Syriac hagiographical tradition, display important parallels. As explained previously, the story of Abḥay bringing martyrs’ bones from Constantinople resonates with a similar episode in the Life of Peter the Iberian. This is significant in that the latter also provides a close parallel to the fragment of the True Cross episode in the Life of Aḥā, since Peter the Iberian acquires a piece of the True Cross in Constantinople together with the martyrs’ bones. Thus, the Life of Aḥā and the Life of Abḥay both include stories of relics that might have been based on a common source.

Both of the lives depict the holy men as going to Athens, which is associated with philosophers, another rare trope in Syriac hagiography. ⁹⁰ Moreover, both of the saints develop intricate relationships with Roman patrons in the course of their monastic endeavors. Abḥay is protected by the Roman governor Proclus, who connects the holy man to the emperor. Aḥā has three Roman patrons: Theodoros, a landlord in northern Mesopotamia and Aḥā’s lifelong patron; ⁹¹ Demetrius the Roman, the commander of a fortress in northern Mesopotamia and a benefactor of Aḥā’s monastery; ⁹² and Maksīmūs and Dursīlā, a Roman household who provided protection and patronage for Aḥā. ⁹³ Last, Abḥay and Aḥā are both connected to the city of Melitene. Abḥay’s monastery is geographically in the vicinity of Melitene. Aḥā is not in that region; but, after converting Armenians, he summons the bishop of Melitene to baptize the converts and ordain priests. ⁹⁴ In addition to these parallels, as shown above, the Life of Aḥā was grouped together with other texts by Michael the Syrian in two manuscripts. Thus, based on narratological and material evidence, although the authorship and editorial layers of the Life of Aḥā are elusive, its connection to the Life of Abḥay goes beyond the mere use of the motif of Constantinopolitan relics.

Despite the parallels, the two lives portray the Roman Empire differently. The emperor Theodosius and the Royal City appear in a positive light in the Life of Abḥay. Michael, who edited the Life, did not, of course, have a one-dimensional view of the Roman Empire. He in fact portrayed post-Chalcedonian emperors as heretics in some of his other writings. ⁹⁵ Still, during his editorial process he must have approved (if he did not add himself) the Life of Abḥay’s portrayal of pre-Chalcedonian emperors as pious Christians, Constantinople as a source of holy relics, and the connections of these to Syrian monasticism. The Life of Aḥā also perpetuates this ideal in broad terms, for the author of the Life depicts Constantinople as a source of holy relics. Yet the Life, rather than allocating extensive space to narrate the Roman Empire, focuses on the relic itself. This was likely not an active erasure of memory but a different mode of remembering, for the text connects the holy man to the Roman Empire through local Roman patrons. ⁹⁶ Stories of Theodoros, Demetrius, and Maksīmūs and Dursīlā replace the memories of the Royal City and emperors while rendering the memories of the Roman Empire present in households, fortresses, and monasteries in the countryside.

The brief treatment of Constantinople in the Life of Aḥā may be due to the fact that the relic episode was added later, as Vööbus suggests, ⁹⁷ and that whoever edited the text was interested in establishing the prestige of the holy man more than he was in remembering Byzantium. That is, the muted representation of Byzantium might have been a practical choice of the editor. Still, the story of a Syriac holy man acquiring a piece of the True Cross in Constantinople requires further attention, since the very inclusion of this story in the Life ties the latter to the Life of Abḥay and brings us back to the broader intra-Christian rivalries.

Relics and Religious Rivalry

The period from the ninth to the thirteenth century witnessed important cultural encounter, literary exchange, theological debate, and political strife between the Syriac and the Armenian churches. ⁹⁸ Although the two lives analyzed above might have been authored anywhere in this time interval, the memories of Byzantium highlighted in these texts were most effective around the twelfth century, during Michael the Syrian’s patriarchate. Michael himself was among the prominent participants in the political developments. For example, the anti-patriarch to Michael, Theodore b. Wahbun (d. 1193), was supported by the Armenian Catholicos. ⁹⁹ While such controversies took place, there were significant literary engagements between the two churches. Many texts were copied, translated, and interpreted between Syriac and Armenian communities. ¹⁰⁰ Michael the Syrian gave extensive accounts of Armenian communities in his Chronicle, versions of which were translated from Syriac to Armenian. ¹⁰¹ Furthermore, a copy of Michael’s Chronicle, together with other Syriac manuscripts from the library of the Monastery of Barṣawmā, were transferred to the See of the Armenian Catholicos in the thirteenth century. ¹⁰² Theological debates should also be highlighted here. The writings of numerous Syriac clerics, including the works of John bar Šūšan (d. 1073) and Dionysius bar Ṣalībī (d. 1171) refuting the doctrine of the Armenian Church, are witnesses of the theological controversies in the twelfth century and beyond. ¹⁰³ The Syriac Church was intricately related to and closely familiar with the Armenian Church.

Familiarity with the history of the Armenian Church entails familiarity with the prominent alliances between Byzantium and Armenia. ¹⁰⁴ Discovery of Armenian martyrs’ relics, particularly of the patron saint Gregory the Illuminator (d. 331) in the ninth century in Constantinople, were important “gestures of recognition [of the Byzantine Empire] toward the Armenian tradition.” ¹⁰⁵ Relic transmissions from Byzantium to Armenia continued in the following centuries. Basil II’s (d. 1025) endowment of a fragment of the True Cross to the monastery of Aparank^c in Vaspurakan in Armenia was, for example, a well-known event. ¹⁰⁶ There were earlier traditions of the True Cross in the Armenian Church, ¹⁰⁷ yet the tradition about the Constantinopolitan relic appears to have developed in the eleventh century with Basil II’s endowment.

The spiritual connections of the Armenian Church to Byzantium, alongside the periodic political alliances between the two, likely had strong reverberations in the broader social milieu of the Near East. It is worth noting that in the second half of the twelfth century the Armenian clerical hierarchy in Cilicia developed strategic alliances with Byzantium, Rome, and Latin Christians. ¹⁰⁸ In this time period, stories circulated widely in Edessa about the Crusaders using the fragments of True Cross of Vaspurakan. ¹⁰⁹ Although many of these events might have been literary constructions of the Armenian literature, the narratives of Constantinopolitan relics likely opened venues of conversation between various churches. I do not claim that such conversations started in the twelfth century; certainly, they took place in earlier time periods as well. For example, comparing the literatures of the Armenian and Georgian churches in the seventh century, Zaroui Pogossian suggests that the Armenian Homily on the Cross of Varag might have reflected “a possible rivalry between these Caucasian [Armenian and Albanian] princes for obtaining Roman favours and/or asserting their political might and legitimacy through relics, especially one of the True Cross.” ¹¹⁰ Agreeing with Pogossian’s assessment, I argue that the Syriac Church also became a participant in this broader discourse about Constantinopolitan relics in the Near East by the twelfth century. Patronage of Roman emperors could bring protection, financial prosperity, and clerical authority to Christian communities in the East. Considering such high stakes, it is only expected that spiritual connections to Byzantium were narrated in the hagiographies of various communities.

The two Syriac lives analyzed above appear to reflect the concerns of the Syriac Church regarding the Armenian Church. In the context of the competition with the Armenian Church, the Syriac community reinforced memories with which the history of the Syriac Church was connected to the history of Byzantium. Pieces of the True Cross, or five hundred pieces of martyrs’ relics, motifs embellishing the saints’ lives, were the Syrian Orthodox Church’s creation of a Roman past, while the Armenian Church was establishing its connections to the Roman Empire in the present.

Syriac-Armenian competition could be interpreted through other literature as well. For example, one can take the Armenian historian Matthew of Edessa’s (d. 1144) depiction of the Byzantine emperor Constantine IX’s (d. 1055) greeting and veneration of the Armenian patriarch Petros Getadarj in Constantinople:

Learning of his arrival, the entire city of Constantinople, together with the great nobles, rushed in excitement to meet the lord Petros and brought him with awesome pomp to Hagia Sophia. There the emperor [Constantine IX] and the patriarch [Michael Keroularios], having come to meet him, brought him to a magnificent palace. And the king ordered that all of lord Petros’ expenses should be covered…. The next day, lord Petros went to call on the emperor at the palace. The king, having heard of his coming, went forth to meet him and ordered that lord Petros be seated on a golden throne. And in this manner, lord Petros lived four years gloriously in Constantinople among the Romans, and every day he grew in glory and honor among the Greeks.¹¹¹

This scene, embellished with details such as the emperor and the Greek patriarch’s excitement to receive the Armenian patriarch, their seating the latter on a golden throne, and their continuous glorification of him, closely resonates with Abḥay’s arrival at Constantinople and reception by the emperor Theodosius:

And when they entered the city and were seen by the archbishop and the emperor, the emperor said to the blessed one, “Pray for me, o God’s servant, because for this I wished to see you, this way you would pray for me. Let the truth unfold before you, o God’s chosen one, that the God who chose you for His service, also to me, a sinner, made known and showed how you separated (yourself) from your monastery and from your blessed brother, and how you came to this region. Therefore, now I ask from you that you don’t distance yourself from me for all the rest of my life.” When the blessed one saw the humility of the words of the righteous emperor and saw also that he deserved true revelations, he thanked God and was happy and rejoiced. The emperor commanded, and they made them dwell at the Monastery of Blessed Yuḥanān.¹¹²

An emperor venerating a saint is certainly a generic, conventional trope of Christian hagiography, and I do not suggest any direct intertextuality between these two texts quoted above. Moreover, the passage from Matthew of Edessa’s chronicle does not fully capture the complex (and often negative) attitudes of the Armenian historian toward the Byzantine Empire. ¹¹³ Nevertheless, the use of this episode in Syriac and Armenian churches’ contemporaneous literatures is noteworthy. The two communities were aware of the claims the other was making, and the way they were making them, for there were voluminous translations between the two communities, as mentioned above. These literary strategies, which played a significant role in the making of Syriac and Armenian identities, were shared between the two Christian communities, not in isolation from each other, but in response and conversation.

One also finds tropes directly mentioning the Armenian communities in medieval Syriac hagiography. Armenians, especially “pagan Armenians,” is a rare motif in Syriac hagiography. ¹¹⁴ Aḥā, as mentioned above, is said to have converted a community of tree-worshiping Armenians, who were in the end baptized by a bishop from Melitene. In the Life of Jacob the Recluse, another text included in both BL 12174 and VS 37, ¹¹⁵ the holy man exchanges letters with King Stephen of Armenia but refuses his gifts. ¹¹⁶ Armenia is more prominent in these narratives relative to late antique Syriac hagiography in which there are rare and vague mentions of Armenia and the Armenians. This quantitative change in stories about Armenia in Syriac hagiography might be due to the ongoing competition with the Armenian Church. This is a preliminary observation, which must be followed by an in-depth comparative analysis of Syriac and Armenian hagiographical traditions to see how religious rivalries are reflected in hagiography. Still, I suggest considering these rivalries while reconstructing the ways in which stories about relics coming from Constantinople were interpreted in the Middle Ages.

Concluding Remarks

Abḥay brings five hundred pieces of martyrs’ bones from Constantinople to the east in the fifth century. A century later, following Abḥay’s itinerary, Aḥā also travels to Constantinople and brings a piece of the True Cross to northern Mesopotamia. Such stories about Constantinopolitan relics first appeared around the sixth century and became prominent by the twelfth century in the Syrian Orthodox Church. By comparing two underexplored Syriac texts that include stories about relics coming from Constantinople, this article demonstrated how hagiography served in the creation of memories of Rome for Syrian Orthodox communities. In the Life of Abḥay, with the holy man’s bringing five hundred pieces of martyrs’ bones from Constantinople, vivid memories of Byzantium, the Royal City, the palace, and the Roman emperor were anchored to a monastery in the upper Euphrates region. In the Life of Aḥā, while a piece of the True Cross was brought to monasteries at the borderland between Syria and Armenia, Byzantine memories faded to the background. With this comparative analysis I have demonstrated the different modes of remembering Byzantium in the Syrian Orthodox Church, highlighting how the motif of Constantinopolitan relics was a literary tool to narrate the past and potential future relationships between Byzantium and the Syriac Church. The motif, I further argued, also rendered Syriac hagiography a space for interpreting the relationships with the neighboring Armenian Church. The latter was often in rivalry with the Syriac Church for Byzantine patronage, patriarchal acknowledgment, and communal presence. Stories like that of Abḥay and Aḥā catalyzed that rivalry. Overall, through the stories of Abḥay and Aḥā, we see a medieval Syriac community that engaged in conversations with various churches near and far and connected its history to a mythical Constantinople from which holy relics came to the monasteries in the East.