Download PDF | John Haldon (transl.) - A Tale of Two Saints_ The Martyrdoms and Miracles of Saints Theodore _The Recruit_ and _The General_Liverpool University Press (2016).
164 Pages
FOREWORD
St Theodore tér6n (t)pev, ‘the Recruit’) numbered among the most popular saints of the Byzantine world from the later fourth century, and is attributed with working a number of miracles through his intercession with God on behalf of those who prayed to him or visited his churches, especially that at Euchaita. This small provincial settlement had, by the later fourth century, as Gregory of Nyssa informs us, become a flourishing centre of worship and devotion to him. By the later ninth century a second Theodore, the stratélatés/otpatnratns, or ‘the General’, had appeared, a product of the particular social and cultural context of the middle of the ninth century and afterwards.
At the same time the iconography of the saint was developing apace, with the second Theodore appearing from the tenth century, although the difference between the two in representation is not always clearly made without an accompanying textual indication. The iconography of both saints Theodore has been thoroughly examined in a number of studies, and need not detain us here, except to note that the evolution of the accounts of the martyrdom is paralleled by the evolution of the two versions of the saint in the visual tradition.' The present translation of and commentary on two collections of miracles and five martyrdom accounts of the two saints Theodore grew out of work related to the Avkat Archaeological Project, a survey of the area of ancient Euchaita in north-central Turkey, chiefly because of the topical interest of the second collection, which was probably compiled in the later seventh or perhaps the early eighth century.
This short collection (BHG 1764) is of primary importance for the history of the Byzantine world in the seventh century not only for the detail it offers about life in a provincial town during a period of warfare and invasion but also because it is the only account of any kind — hagiographical or other — from this period written from a local perspective about a provincial city, apart from the much better-known and better-studied miracles of St Demetrius in Thessaloniki: all our other sources, with very few exceptions at this time, are written from a Constantinopolitan perspective. The miracles tell us about the physical appearance of the city, about the reaction of its populace to attack and the devastation wrought by the invaders, and about the role of the cult of St Theodore and the nature of popular piety in the provinces. It presents, in short, a graphic illustration of life for some of the inhabitants of a seventh-century Byzantine province.
Scholars of hagiography (Delehaye, Halkin), of the history of Byzantine art (Walter) and of early Byzantium (Kazhdan, Trombley, Zuckerman, Artun) have all devoted studies to various aspects of the cult of St Theodore or to the miracles, especially to those in BHG 1764, and what follows owes a great deal to their work. In the discussion of the texts, below, I will argue that the text of BHG 1764 is undoubtedly a product of the last years of the tenth or more probably the middle years of the eleventh century, but that we can detect a number of layers, the earliest of which is equally clearly to be located in the later seventh century. All the texts presented here merit further discussion, because a careful examination reveals a good deal about both the stages of evolution through which these accounts went and the process of incremental change that produced the versions that are extant today. In addition, and as intimated above, the results of recent archaeological research in the region of Euchaita can now be brought into the picture to throw new light on some of the written evidence.
The relationship of the texts to one another and their likely dates of composition will be considered in detail in Chapter 2. The earliest collection (BHG 1765c) has remained for the most part neglected except for the publications of its first editor, Sigalas, in the 1920s and 1930s, although Delehaye devoted some attention to it. Unlike the later martyrdom account and the miracles found in BHG 1764, it represents a very different, perhaps more traditional, collection, written down in the second half of the fifth century and characteristic of much similar late antique hagiographical writing. Roughly contemporary with the better-known collection of the miracles of St Thekla, it merits greater attention not only for its historical and cultural—-historical value but also because it offers a useful comparison and contrast with the later collection. While some of the miracle stories circulated independently, they were generally transmitted — and heard — in the context of accounts of the passion or martyrdom of the saint and, in order to retain the context within which these collections were presented and used, I have therefore also included some versions of these accounts, since they also cast important light on the date of composition and the evolution of such collections.
Miracle stories and martyrdom accounts were a fundamental element in Byzantine and medieval Christian culture in general: they were a means of representing the relationship between the human and the divine, the secular and the sacred; and of confirming the perceptions of the listener that they belonged to a community of the faithful united by a common history of struggle against evil and that there were inspiring models to follow in dealing with adversity, both personal and communal. In what follows we will look at the content of the miracle collections, with their highly local relevance, as well as at the ways in which both miracle stories and martyrdom accounts reflected changing social and economic relationships across several centuries. Both miracle stories and accounts of the martyrdom offer information to the modern reader about day-to-day life, the assumptions and beliefs of the ‘ordinary’ recipient of the stories and the form and content of particular saints’ cults. In presenting for the first time a translation of these particular texts into English, I hope I have made more accessible to non-specialists in particular some key documents from the cultural world of the eastern Roman empire, documents that reveal some aspects of what Norman Baynes called ‘the thought-world of east Rome’.
INTRODUCTION
St Theodore ‘the Recruit’
St Theodore ‘the Recruit’ (¢ér6n), martyred at Amasia under Maximian (Galerius) and Maximinus (Daia), was one of the best known and most popular of the Byzantine warrior-saints, perhaps at least as popular as St George or St Demetrius and probably more so than St Merkourios, St Procopius or St Eutropios, among others.' He is associated in his Passio with the city of Amasia and the nearby settlement or estate of Euchaita. The latter is not known before the Roman period, and remained until the later fourth century a small rural settlement or estate within the territory of the city of Amasia.”? Although his remains were quite soon after his death transferred to Euchaita, Amasia was apparently the original place of both the martyrdom and the burial of Theodore, and remained a focus for devotion — indeed, in the final lines of one, probably later, account of the martyrdom reference is made to a disagreement between the people of Amasia and those of Euchaita about where his remains should be interred.* John Mauropous, the eleventh-century metropolitan of Euchaita, mentions a wondrous column to which the saint had been bound during his torture, still to be seen in his day in the city; and a much earlier inscription of the emperor Anastasius (491-518) now in Amasia probably refers to Euchaita, when it mentions Theodore as the guardian of ‘this city’.*
Euchaita owed its importance almost entirely to the fact that the remains of St Theodore were buried there. A flourishing focus for honouring the saint, it attracted visitors and pilgrims as early as the later fourth century AD and, along with several other sites, grew into one of the foremost pilgrimage centres in Anatolia.° A panegyric composed in the late fourth or very early fifth century devoted to the saint, and attributed to Gregory of Nyssa (BHG 1760), represents possibly the earliest version of the martyrdom, upon which all subsequent more elaborate versions were based. According to the legend, which in its basic outlines seems to have been well established by the end of the fourth century, the body of St Theodore was taken from Amasia and interred at Euchaita. Reference to the pious Eusebia, who performed this act of devotion, appears already in the encomium by Chrysippos, written in the 450s or 460s (see below).° The pious woman who takes and preserves the martyr’s remains was, of course, a common motif in many ancient martyrologies, as the pun on the name itself suggests.’ While the translation of a saint’s remains becomes a usual feature of martyrdom accounts and hagiographies, this is a relatively early occurrence. The first recorded transfer is that of the remains of St Babylas in the early 350s by the Caesar Constantius Gallus, from the saint’s original burial place near Antioch to the specially built church in the suburb of Daphne. The event was described a little later in a homily of John Chrysostom.® When exactly the translation of Theodore’s remains actually took place remains unclear, but the church of Theodore at Euchaita soon became the centre of a busy pilgrim traffic — according to Gregory of Nyssa, ‘we celebrate this day with annual feasts and yet the stream of people arriving here because of their zeal for the martyrs never ceases’, and Gregory’s ekphrasis of the church has justly been seen as a masterpiece of the genre.’ Chrysippos of Jerusalem likewise points to the flow of pilgrims from far and wide, a sentiment (and, of course, a topos) repeated in later accounts of the martyrdom as well as by John Mauropous.
Scholars such as Delehaye and Walter have emphasised the fact that the influence of the cult seems to have expanded quite rapidly from the fourth century — churches and chapels dedicated to the saint were to be found in such widely different places as Constantinople (where later the saint exercised a particular protection over the city and where the patrician Sphorakios built a church in the saint’s honour in the 450s),'! Edessa, Gerasa, Jerusalem, Rome, north Africa and probably the Balkans.'? Images of St Theodore appear from as early as the fifth and sixth centuries.’ In the first half of the sixth century the western pilgrim Theodosius mentions the Civitas Euchaita, ubi est sanctus martyr Theodorus,“ that had by then become an important centre of pilgrimage: the Patriarch Eutychius (552-565) halted at Euchaita on his way through as he was returning from Amasia to Constantinople'® and Alypius the stylite visited in the early seventh century.'® At the same period the monk John the Anchorite visited Euchaita and the church of St Theodore, possibly on a number of occasions, as he was wont to travel from cult centre to cult centre,'’ and in the tenth century it was known that the shield of St Theodore was hung in the church dedicated to the saint at Dalisandos in Isauria."*
The origins of the cult of St Theodore must be understood in the context of the development of the veneration of ‘soldier saints’ more generally. And although this is not the place to review the extensive literature on the subject, the beginnings of Theodore’s cult are reasonably well understood —at least as well understood as the evidence permits, as a number of recent studies have made clear.’? Theodore seems already by the sixth century, certainly by the later seventh, to have been associated with the slaying of a dragon, as seals of the bishops of Euchaita dated to the later sixth, seventh and eighth centuries showing the figure of the saint impaling a dragon illustrate. In this he was not alone, although the dragon motif underwent several changes across the period from the sixth or seventh century into the tenth and eleventh centuries and beyond.” Representations of Theodore and the dragon were by the tenth century to be found as far afield as on the church of the holy cross at Aght’amar in Armenia as well as in other Caucasian contexts of the ninth—tenth centuries, in rock-cut churches in Cappadocia, or on an icon in the monastery of St Catherine on Mt Sinai.”! According to the developed version of the legend, the saint killed the fearsome serpent near Euchaita, a point which increased his popularity considerably and seems to have contributed to a further expansion of the repertoire of both stories and miracles. Like many saint’s cults in Anatolia, as well as elsewhere, Theodore’s was probably bound up, if not directly then by context and local tradition, with earlier non-Christian beliefs, heroes and practices, and there is probably some connection between the cult of Theodore and ancient Anatolian traditions of the Holy Rider. And the dragon was, of course, symbolic of evil and of Satan.” In Chrysippos’ encomium Theodore is credited with ridding the district around Euchaita of an infestation of serpents and other beasts, and it has been suggested that this early account may thus be a first, dim reflection of the origins of the presence of the cult at Euchaita.*? Whether this act can be connected with the suggestion that Theodore’s cult at Euchaita was imposed upon an earlier pagan cult — perhaps that of the central Anatolian deity Mén (who is also found represented on occasion mounted, with a lance, trampling an ox-head) and/or that of the Holy Rider — remains unclear.” It is worth noting that in a Coptic fragment of the seventh-century Life of the patriarch Benjamin of Alexandria the inhabitants of what appears to be Euchaita are mentioned in passing as known for their sacrificing to a nearby serpent, perhaps a reflection of an ancient local cult (or a misunderstanding of the Theodore story).”> But that Theodore replaced an ancient cultic tradition involving a serpent and snakes is not implausible, given the way in which other Christian cults replaced earlier pagan traditions in Asia Minor at this period.”* Delehaye was extremely dismissive, if not cynical, about tracing any saint’s cult back to a pre-Christian context in this way, although more recent scholarship has been somewhat more tolerant in this respect. But, as Delehaye pointed out, the dragon or serpent is an almost universal folk motif, and there is no evidence other than these somewhat allusive references to any such tradition at Amasia or Euchaita. The question deserves more attention than can be given here, but the work of Pancaroglu may suggest some possible directions for further research.’ In any case, the dragon story was certainly in circulation in the Byzantine world by the later seventh century,”* was known in Egypt already by the same time, and may well have been known in the Balkans already by the fifth century. The story of Theodore and the dragon appears to pre-date that of George and the dragon by some centuries, at least in the iconographic tradition.”
St Theodore ‘the General’
Theodore ‘the Recruit’ had some regional competition, for by the later ninth century two saints Theodore were venerated: the original, and St Theodore ‘the General’ (stratélatés).*° Theodore the General first appears at this time in literary sources, so his local tradition probably pre-dates this by some years. He was especially popular thereafter among the Anatolian military élite, although in many respects — apart from his promotion to general — the second Theodore is much like the first, and accounts of his martyrdom and early life follow more or less closely the details of those of Theodore the Recruit. The origins of the cult remain unknown: Oikonomideés hypothesised that it reflected the post-iconoclastic misidentification of older images of St Theodore in civilian and in military dress, with the latter being taken as a different saint from the former; in contrast, Walter suggested that it lies in the existence of an earlier and largely forgotten cult of a Theodore who was martyred under Diocletian and was rewarded with the title stratélatés for his suffering.*! Hypothetical though they are, neither of these is implausible.
But perhaps more significant is the fact that this change in status was not limited to Theodore alone, since an increasing emphasis on their military status and achievements affected several other ‘military’ martyrs at this time, including Demetrius, George and Procopius, just as some hagiographies were similarly rewritten to upgrade their heroes — St Ioannikios, for example, transformed in a tenth-century rewriting of his Life from a deserter, in the original account, to an officer and commander. While it is surely correct that this reflects an imperial interest, most evident in the writing of Leo VI,* we should also take into account the growing importance and in particular the increasing self-awareness of the militarised middle Byzantine provincial élite from the middle and later ninth century, especially in the context of the growth of a saint’s cult in which the hero is a general of noble birth and high rank, of impeccable moral and religious standing, whose behaviour might serve as a model for the whole social élite.** At Doliché (Diiliik) in Commagene a stone slab, probably of the tenth century, with a large sculptured cross and an invocation in Greek to Theodore stratélatés, stood at a site (Diilik Baba Tepesi) that by the fourteenth century had become an Islamic cult centre. The inscription may illustrate the close association between military elite and St Theodore ‘the General’: the region was reconquered by East Roman forces under Nicephorus Phocas in 962 and Doliché itself became the headquarters of the new small thema or military district of Teloukh.
It was not simply in respect of their role as heroic fighters for the faith or a reflection of élite values that the military saints occupied such a central place in medieval eastern Roman perceptions. The military saints were also the symbolic bearers of victory over external foes, both real and spiritual. This may also have contributed to the increasingly heroic quality of, as well as the amount of detail given in, accounts of saints’ encounters with dragons, a motif that parallels chronologically the rise — or perhaps the reappearance of — aristocratic notions of family honour and genealogy within the east Roman social élite from the later ninth century onwards.*
It is important to underline the point that the accounts of Theodore the General’s life and martyrdom include elements that would be expected in a ninth- or tenth-century version of the deeds of a senior military person: his noble family origins, his easy communication — as a member of the state élite — with the ruler, his integrity and sense of honour. These are all attributes that we find in other sources reflecting élite values and views, and not far removed from those that would have been found also in the originally orally transmitted epic tales of the hero Digenis Akritas, for example: tales that appear to have come into being at some point during the ninth or tenth century. Indeed, in the metaphrastic passio of St Theodore the General the saint’s behaviour towards the emperor is not dissimilar to that exhibited by the akritic hero towards the Byzantine emperor during his visit to the provinces.** Furthermore, such doubles were not unique — St Sabas the Goth was paired by St Sabas the stratélatés (although his martyrdom was very different from that of the original Sabas). He also appears in the manuscript tradition for the first time in the ninth century, and probably for the same or very similar reasons as St Theodore the stratélatés. Likewise, St Andrew the soldier gains a companion, Andrew the stratélatés.*’ Indicative of the change is the fact that Theodore the Recruit now also appears with many of the attributes of his élite counterpart from the tenth century onwards,** and it is not without significance that at the end of the tenth century the general Nikephoros Ouranos, a member of this élite, one of Basil II’s most effective commanders and author of a military treatise which incorporated both late Roman and more recent practical military handbooks, composed his own encomium of the Recruit, based on the earlier tradition but showing some very marked signs of the influence of the martydrom stories of the General.*
The earliest encomium for this general Theodore is that penned by Niketas David of Paphlagonia in the early tenth century;” shortly thereafter another eulogy was composed by a certain Euthymios protasékrétés/ Tpotaoynkpytys.*! And, while these writers kept the two Theodores separate, there was clearly some merging of the two; indeed, in some cases churches were dedicated to ‘the two Theodores’, and they were generally associated from this time in the hagiological and encomiastic literature. John Mauropous, who wrote an epigram on two images of the saint(s), appears to ignore or implicitly deny their separate identities.” Certainly by the ninth century the two Theodores were the subject of popular tales as well as liturgical celebration, as the hymns or kanones in their honour attributed to an otherwise unknown but probably later ninth-century hymnographer George illustrate.’ Leo the Deacon reports that the emperor John I Tzimiskes invoked St Theodore the stratélatés in his battles, and that the mysterious figure seen on a white charger at the battle of Dorostolon in 971 was the saint, come to help the emperor.** A good indication of the importance and symbolic value of Theodore the General for the eastern Roman military élite is the fact that by the twelfth century at the latest the epic of Digenis Akritas has the eponymous hero construct a church in honour of Theodore the General within the courtyard of his palace on the Euphrates, in which he inters his father.
In Anatolia Theodore stratélatés is associated in the sources with another city not far from Euchaita, named as Euchaina/Euchaneia (or even Euchaia), where Tzimiskes is reported to have reconstructed the church of St Theodore, changing the name of the town to Theodoroupolis in commemoration of the saint’s miraculous support for the imperial forces at the battle of Dorostolon in 971.“° While some confusion about both Euchaita—Euchaina and the two Theodores has reigned among modern historians as well as among contemporaries (already in the eulogy of Euthymios protasékrétés the General is interred at Euchaita, not Euchaina),*”’ there seems no doubt that the two places were distinct, as convincingly argued by Oikonomidés, and while Leo the deacon, for example, reports that it was Dorostolon/Dristra that the emperor renamed following his victory over the Rus’, the later tradition is fairly clear that it was Euchaina. It is quite possible that John I, who clearly had a particular devotion to the saint, renamed more than one city after him, or named one city after Theodore the Recruit and others, or another, after Theodore the General (and there was, in any case, another fortress in the Balkans named Theodoroupolis, mentioned in the sixth century by Procopius).**
In respect of the Anatolian city Walter objected that ‘two different episcopal sees could hardly have been situated’ close to one another, but the evidence seems to suggest otherwise — given the possibility of the church restructuring the local ecclesiastical administrative arrangements (as was done for Euchaita in the later ninth century, for example), there is no reason why they could not have been. Indeed, according to the Synaxarion of Constantinople, Euchaneia is noted explicitly to have been close to Euchaita.” The bishops of Euchaina/Euchaneia (attested first in the eleventh century) appear in synodal lists along with the bishops of Euchaita (attested from the early sixth century: see below), and there is an eleventh-century seal of a bishop John of Euchaneia. Lazaros of Galesion in the eleventh century visited Euchaneia and then Euchaita on his pilgrimage, finding the local inhabitants most unfriendly and being chased by a large black dog! At a Constantinopolitan synod held in 1173 both Constantine of Euchaita and Leo of Euchaneia were present.*’ The identity and location of Euchaina remain problematic. Oikonomideés, following references in the thirteenth-century Danismendname, suggested Corum, not far to the south-west of Euchaita, and this seems a likely identification. But it may equally be identified with the nearby village of Cavgan (later Cagna), now Elmapinar, lying a little to the west of Beyézii/ Avkat, where survey work suggests there was once also a church (although the date has not been established).
There were several feast-days in honour of St Theodore térdn: the oldest — on 17 February — appears to have been the original date of Theodore’s martyrdom; by the eleventh century there were feast-days on the first Saturday of Lent and on 8 June, referred to as the anthismos/ av@1on0¢ or rhodismos/podiouoc; and a further feast was held on the Saturday of mid-pentecost.* This was a special feast for an icon which represented the saint as a pezos (foot soldier). The image, depicting him in his military equipment, was supposedly painted at the request of Theodore’s patroness Eusebia.* One of these feast-days was accompanied by a panégyris, or fair, which attracted pilgrims and merchants and brought considerable wealth into the city.** Such fairs were associated across the Byzantine world with saints’ feasts and were often major events attracting people from far and wide, including merchants and traders. John Mauropous’ writings suggest that the feasts for St Theodore were regularly observed.*
There had probably been some confusion about which Theodore was to be celebrated on which feast-day, because in March 1166 the emperor Manuel issued a novella stipulating that, among other details, the feast for Theodore ¢ér6n was to be observed on 17 February, while those for Theodore the stratélatés were to be on 7 February, the date of his martyrdom, and 8 June, when the relics were translated from Euchaneia to Serres in Thrace, from where they seem later to have been moved first to Mesembria and then, in 1267, to Venice.
This brings us to a final point, for whereas what purported to be the relics and tomb of Theodore the General were to be seen until the eleventh century, those of Theodore the Recruit were not, or such would appear to have been the case at the time at which John Mauropous was writing. They had previously been dispersed — at least, that is John’s explanation for the absence of a tomb, the location of which he apparently does not know. Visitors to Euchaita came to pray in his church, whereas those who visited Euchaneia came to see the tomb and relics of the General. A later account records that in 1210 the Latin emperor gave the head of St Theodore (presumably the Recruit, since the General’s relics, as noted above, had been translated to Serres), along with other relics, to the cardinal Peter, who passed it through his intermediary Clement to the church of the Virgin Mary at Gaeta.*’ From this it seems that some of what were thought to be St Theodore’s remains had been in Constantinople, although when they had arrived there remains unclear — perhaps already in the fifth century, when the patrician Sphorakios commissioned the building of his church in honour of the saint. While this remains hypothesis, and the reason for this absence at Euchaita remains unknown,°** we may note that in miracle 2 of the eleventh-century collection (dating originally to the seventh century, as we will see), the invading Persians are reported to have ransacked the saint’s tomb and taken the remains, which they divided up among themselves. But these were eventually recovered and restored to a resting place in the rebuilt church by the then bishop, Eleutherios (194.30-195.29). In contrast, in miracle 6 the Arabs planned to dig up the church — presumably in search of the tomb and anything of value they might find within it — perhaps suggesting indirectly also that the tomb or at least the relics had been deposited in a location less obvious to an outsider. They were (of course) unsuccessful in their endeavours, because of divine intervention (198.11—15). It is at least possible, therefore, that whatever the reality behind these stories, the dispersal or loss of the relics, or part of them, dates to this period of disruption.
St Theodore ‘the Recruit’ and Euchaita
Theodore the Recruit is firmly associated with the late Roman and Byzantine city of Euchaita, now identified with the small village of Bey6zii, formerly Avkat, some 55 km to the east of Amasia (mod. Amasya) and within the ilge (sub-province) of Mecitézii, between Amasya and Corum.” Lead seals of the bishops of Euchaita with the saint and the dragon can be dated in the seventh—eighth centuries, and similar seals depicting the slaying of a dragon have been dated respectively to the years around the middle of the sixth century and the period 650—730.° The importance of the cult and of the church in the locality was emphasised by the presence of a version of the apocryphal correspondence between Abgar of Edessa and Christ in an inscription that may have been inserted into the wall of Theodore’s church at some point during the fifth century, possibly by a bishop John.*' Indeed, it was important enough for Euchaita to have been seen as deserving of imperially sponsored defences and a substantial promotion in its ecclesiastical status by the emperor Anastasius I (491-518). According to the impressive inscription erected in the emperor’s name, he had a city wall constructed and at the same time promoted the city to an archbishopric — although the first securely attested bishop was Epiphanius, who attended the sixth ecumenical council in Constantinople in 680, signing himself as bishop of the city of Euchaita and bishop of the metropolis of Euchaita.
The exact point at which the defences were erected (or repaired) and at which the city became a bishopric in the first place remains contested. Such walls were, of course, as much a symbol of urban status as they were efficacious, and, indeed, the later history of the city suggests, as we will see, that they were of limited defensive value. Without further archaeological work it is impossible to be precise, but it is possible that they pre-date Anastasius’ work, which might thus have been a reconstruction or repair.
Its location distant from the imperial capital made Euchaita, early in its history as a city, a place of internal banishment. The deposed patriarch of Antioch Peter the Fuller was sent there by the emperor Zeno in 476—477,° and its remoteness is suggested by the exile of the bishops Peter Mongus (482), Euphemius (496) and Macedonius (511: when the Sabir Huns threatened Euchaita in 515, Macedonius fled to nearby Gangra), as well as others such as the archdeacon Liberatus, exiled there with his bishop Reparatus following the Three Chapters controversy in the middle of the sixth century. Certain heretics were either sent there or had settled there at some point during the tenth century.”
As far as its civic status is concerned, Anastasius’ elevation of Euchaita to ‘city’ would, according to the inscription, have taken place in 515-518, the point at which the Sabir Huns were, or remained, a threat. But it remains unclear whether Euchaita had achieved episcopal status before this time, so that Anastasius actually elevated it to an archbishopric. There is no mention of Euchaita as a see at either the council of Chalcedon in 451 or in Pope Leo’s Encylical of 458.°° Nevertheless, by the middle of the seventh century, according to an episopal notitia of the period, it was twenty-eighth among the autocephalous archbishoprics®” and, by the time Photios became patriarch in the ninth century, the see had been promoted to metropolitan status, with four suffragan sees under its authority.
It is possible that the wall(s) might also pre-date Anastasius’ work (which should thus be seen as a reconstruction or repairing): Theophanes, or rather his source, merely reports that the Sabiri plundered Armenia, Cappadocia, Galatia and Pontus ‘so as to stand near Euchaita at a short distance’. Since they did not take the city it may mean that it was already furnished with walls.” But at some time in the second half of the seventh century, almost certainly during the reign of Constans I, the city also had the promontory behind the urban centre furnished with defensive walls strong enough to dissuade any invaders from attacking. This area, referred to in the second collection of miracles as the ‘strongholds’ (ochyromata) or the ‘fortress’ (kastron), became the refuge for the population of the city during times of danger, and the miracles present a graphic account of the relationship between these defensive emplacements and the lower town. Archaeological survey has shown that the late Roman city was not large and is covered more or less entirely by the modern village, a settlement of some 130 dwellings, a mosque and a school. The church of St Theodore lay a short distance outside the Anastasian walls, which did not, however, completely encircle the town, merely running across the southern limits of the settlement to adjoin the high ground on either side. Associated with the structure that has been provisionally identified with this church are a number of other features, probably ancillary buildings associated with the pilgrim trade and possibly a monastic community, indicated by some of the surviving epigraphic material.”
The textual evidence suggests that the buildings associated with Theodore’s cult — both the church and any other structures — were impressive; the church in particular is singled out as beautifully and lavishly decorated in both Gregory of Nyssa’s late fourth-century homily and the miracle tales of Chrysippos, as well as in the later texts. The original church was destroyed in the Persian attack described in miracles 2 and 3 of the second collection and rebuilt soon after by bishop Eleutherios. Whether or not this building survived the Saracen attacks of the seventh century remains unclear, although both Persian and Arab raiders knew that the church would be a source of treasure — gold and silver liturgical vessels and plate, for example.” If Euchaita did indeed benefit from the attention of John I Tzimiskes in the 970s, as is likely, then it may have been this church that was refurbished or rebuilt. That emperor certainly made substantial donations to other churches and to the Great Lavra on Mt Athos, as well as relaxing the legislation against endowing monastic houses with land that had been introduced by Nikephoros II Phokas a few years earlier.’ His investment in the church of St Theodore at Euchaita illustrates both the importance of the saint and his cult in the eyes of contemporaries as well as the centrality of imperial benefactions. That the town was prosperous, at least during the period of the various feasts and commemorative celebrations, bringing for a short time both wealth and people to Euchaita, is confirmed by John Mauropous.”
The dramatically changed political—strategic situation after the middle of the seventh century gave Euchaita a new importance in the overall strategic geography of the east Roman empire, located as it was a little to the north of one loop of the main route from Ankyra via Gangra to Amasia and onward, and not far from an important crossroads from which roads led south and south-east. With the important city of Amasia only a day’s march to the east it now held a strategic value that it had not possessed hitherto. By the early ninth century it served as one of the bases of the Armeniakon forces, although it does not appear very often in accounts of imperial campaigns.” By the early tenth century, with the frontier now far away once more, its importance as a town must have depended almost entirely on the pilgrims who came to visit the shrine of St Theodore, and, indeed, John Mauropous notes that it becomes a lovely place only during the festivals, emphasising otherwise its isolation and the poverty of the local economy and society. And in spite of its obvious importance as a centre for the honouring of St Theodore, Euchaita appears only very occasionally in the Lives of saints — Lazaros of Galesion visited, as we have seen, and there are other very occasional mentions — but compared with several other such pilgrimage centres (such as that of St Michael at Germia, for example), which have named visitors, we know of hardly any individual visitors. Nor do we have much idea of how Euchaita related to neighbouring settlements and sites in terms of daily interactions, commerce or trade.
With the arrival of the Turks in the years after 1071 Euchaita recedes once again into relative obscurity. Christian refugees are mentioned by John Mauropous in this period.”” Whether or not the danger to the cult of Theodore the Recruit that the Tiirkmen raids posed was recognised must remain unknown.” Thereafter we hear of the see being transferred to the authority of the bishop of Kaisareia, but after the 1320s it disappears from the record, along with the local cult of St Theodore, whose relics had by then been dispersed and distributed among the faithful. Its replacement from the fourteenth century by a local Islamic cult bearing some similarities to that of Theodore is not untypical of Anatolia from this period on.” Euchaita itself — known to Ottoman records from the sixteenth century and afterwards variously as Avkhat or Evhud — appears to have remained an occupied settlement throughout and until today, as the survival of its name suggests. The modern village of Beyézii is its direct descendant.
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