Five Anastasia and two Febroniae: a guided tour in the maze of Anastasia legends

We will see, in this section, how deeply the legend of Anastasia the Widow was rooted in Roman legends. We will refrain, however, from attempts to collect the relevant Roman legends into a single puzzle. These legends are available to us as piles of tesserae from crumbled mosaics.

Even though, in this section, we limit ourselves to the pertinent non-Anastasian Roman legends, several important topics belonging to this already limited domain will be skipped (but addressed later, section 7; see also Stem 2 in Part One). It is necessary, at this stage, to obtain a general outline of the Roman hagiographical substrate of the legend of St Anastasia. More details will follow later.

2.1 Martyr Eutychianus: Pope Eutychianus and the Roman Martyr Eutychius

The elder martyr Eutychianus was the leading figure among those who were, together with Anastasia, transported to the Palmaria islands in the punctured ship. He is usually considered as unknown elsewhere, but this is not true. His figure results from an amalgamation of the historical Pope Eutychianus and the historical Roman martyr Eutychius who entered Roman hagiography no later than the fifth century (probably in the late fourth).

In LLA (ch. 35), Eutychianus is presented as a bishop, even though his title is never made explicit ⁴⁹. The context, nevertheless, is clear: he has been condemned in Rome, as all others who were put on the punctured ship (the Aquileian editor deleted any mention of Rome in the corresponding scenes, but the context leaves no room for doubt). Anastasia asked him to make a prayer and perform baptism for those with them and even “kissed his knees” (osculari coepit genua eius). Anastasia's words Da orationem et baptizentur universi (“Make a prayer [sc., perform the appropriate ecclesiastical rite] and let them all be baptized”) ⁵⁰ have a sacramental meaning and would have been addressed only to a priest. Other elements of the context mark his rank as higher than that of an ordinary priest and allow us to identify him as a bishop (kissing his knees by Anastasia, his earlier status of a rich man and a philosopher) - evidently, a bishop of Rome, taken into account that he has been condemned in Rome, and that he became the last companion of Anastasia, another Roman martyr of the highest rank.

In Rome, there was no historical martyr Eutychianus. However, the historical Pope Eutychianus (274-282), while not a martyr, became a martyr in later legends. Their earliest occurence is in the so-called second editing of the Liber Pontificalis, somewhere in the middle of the sixth century and after the Three Chapters affair ⁵¹, but it must date to an earlier tradition. As Louis

Duchesne stated concerning Pope Eutychianus, “.. .nous ne possedons pas, tant s'en faut, tous les recits qui circulerent a Rome, du IV^e au VII^e siecle, sur les martyrs et leurs sanctuaires” [32, p. 159]. Some of them, however, can be recovered, even though with many lacunae.

The historical Pope Eutychianus is beyond the scope of our study. We are interested in the martyr Pope Eutychianus created in the fourth or fifth century and also called Eutychius - thus according to manuscript B¹ of the Liber Pontificalis, one of the earliest ones (late seventh century) ⁵². This oscillation of the name of the martyr Pope between Eutychianus and Eutychius already in the Roman evidence is significant for his identification with both the historical Roman martyr Eutychius and the companion of St Thessalonica commemorated on December 19 (see below, section 2.2.2).

The legend of the Roman martyr Eutychius is lost, but some traces are available thanks to both literary sources and archaeology. A brief and not very clear story of his martyrdom has survived in the short elogium (Nr 21) to the martyr written by Pope Damasus (366-384) within the span of two years, 383-384 ⁵³. The martyr's mention in the so-called Martyrologium Hieronymianum on July 2 ⁵⁴ erroneously attributes the deposition of his relics to the cemetery of Callistus [26, p. 348] instead of their real place in the catacombs of St Sebastian near to the St Sebastian basilica on the Via Appia; the marble plate with Damasus's elogium, in perfect condition, is now preserved in the basilica, whereas it had originally been placed underground, marking the grave in the catacombs that had been revealed to Damasus in a dream as being that of the martyr ⁵⁵. The relevant part of the catacombs has been called, according to recently found inscriptions, ad limina dom(i)ni Eutyci, thus testifying that the grave of Eutychius has been considered as the main holy object of the area ⁵⁶.

Already Johann Peter Kirsch supposed that a confusion between the martyr Eutychius and Pope Eutychianus took place: according to him, the Martyrologium Hieronymianum would have meant, in the entry on July 2, not the martyr but the Pope; the error would have been provoked by two facts: Eutychius is here commemorated together with Pope Miltiades (311-314), and both Popes Miltiades and Eutychianus were deposed in the catacomb of Callistus. According to Kirsch's hypothesis, the martyr indicated in the Damasian elogium is not mentioned in the Martyrologium at all, whereas Pope Eutychianus is commemorated twice, together with his proper commemoration day December 8 [45, S. 69]. This hypothesis has been rejected by Delehaye, especially on the ground that Pope Eutychianus already had his own commemoration day ⁵⁷.

I would agree with Delehaye in rejecting Kirsch's hypothesis “as it is” but I consider Kirsch's basic intuition to be true: although the martyr commemorated on July 2 is, indeed, the Roman martyr Eutychius whose martyrdom is known from the Damasian elogium, the confusion between this martyr and Pope Eutychianus took place, and Kirsch was right in explaining with such confusion the erroneous indication of the place of the Eutychius's grave in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum. Indeed, in the Martyrologium, martyr Eutychius stands together with Pope Miltiades, as if he was another Pope, Eutychianus, who has been buried in the same catacomb as Miltiades - in the area designated for popes. The Pope did not replace the martyr (pace Kirsch) nor vice versa, but the two resulted into a new hagiographic character - the martyr pope whose name was oscillating between Eutychianus and Eutychius, and who is known to us from the second “edition” of the Liber Pontificalis.

Such confusion would have not been possible within the realm of literary sources, because these sources themselves were dependent on the locations of the sacred objects they described. As far as the graves of the martyr Eutychius and Pope Eutychianus were known as two separate objects, such confusion would have been impossible. However, the grave of the martyr had been abandoned and probably lost after either landslides or one of the earthquakes in the fifth century (such as those that took place in 402, 429, and 443) that eventually destroyed “his” area in the catacomb ex Vigna Chiaraviglio and forced the translation of the marble plate with the Damasian elogium to the crypt of St Sebastian. The new grave of the martyr Eutychius in the crypt of St Sebastian has been venerated since the late sixth century at the latest ⁵⁸, but the circumstances of the translation of the relics remain obscure; there is no sign that it would have taken place at all. It looks much more plausible that the original grave has been simply lost in one of the cataclysms of the first half of the fifth century, whereas the new grave in the St Sebastian crypt appeared substantially later, due to the quite common process of “autogenesis” of the venerated tombs and relics (yielding the relics previously lost or belonging to the saints that have never existed in the material world). The marble plate with the Damasian elogium would have been the only material link between the two graves of Eutychius.

Therefore, I would conclude that the cult of Pope Eutychianus absorbed the cult of the martyr Eutychius - in the way that both cults continued to exist separately but now also together with a third cult, that of Pope Eutychianus which acquired features of the martyr Eutychius, particularly that of being a martyr.

It was not unusual for a saint to acquire several biographies even without acquiring several sets of relics: the example of Theodore the Teron and Theodore the Stratelates sharing a single set of relics in Euchaita is probably the most well known but is not unique; it is interesting due to its early date (probably the fourth century). Another example is our St Anastasia herself.

Some uncertainty with the relics of Eutychius that certainly took place sometime in the first half of the fifth century, together with the high rank of the martyr in the eyes of the people and the similarity of his name with the name of the holy Pope, would have been enough for creating our martyr Pope Eutychianus/Eutychius. This solution is corroborated by the fact that the cult of martyr Eutychius alone became marginalised relatively soon after the late fourth century, and the relevant Passio has been lost; probably, the preservation of the Damasian marble plate was the only cause of the preservation of at least a vague memory of the martyr.

To sum up: Eutychianus is indeed the semi-imaginary (but semi-historical) pope of Rome, whose name was oscillating between Eutychianus and Eutychius, and whose biography was created using those of the historical Pope Eutychianus (not a martyr) and the historical Roman martyr Eutychius. This cult of a semi- imaginary saint was established by the middle of the fifth century, when it contributed to the legend of Anastasia.

2.2 The Companions of Eutychianus: 270 Martyrs

Those who were baptised by Eutychianus became martyrs. Their number was “more than two hundred men and seventy women, not including small children” (amplius quam ducenti viri et septuaginta feminae exceptis parvulis) ⁵⁹. This number of martyrs, connected with the semi-legendary Eutychianus/Eutychius, is also a part of the hagiographical substrate: their legend pre-existed that of Anastasia.

2.2.1 The Historical Pope and His Care of Martyrs

According to the Liber Pontificalis ⁶⁰, but only its second recension, Pope Eutychianus et martyrio coronatur (“and was crowned with martyrdom”). Among his deeds, it was stated - in both recensions - that he has buried many martyrs, whose exact number is, according to the manuscripts, either 342 or 362 (the latter number is provided by the manuscript B¹): Hic temporibus suis per diversa loca CCCXLII [B¹CCCLXII\ maryris manu sua sepelivit “In his time he buried 342 [362\ martyrs in various places with his own hands.” In connection with this activity, it is said that Pope Eutychianus established a rule concerning the mode of the burial of the martyrs. The Latin text of this rule is not completely clear but, for us, the very fact of some legislative activity related to the burial of the martyrs is important: together with the textological data allowing us to attribute the papal care of the bodies of the martyrs to the earliest recension of the Liber Pontificalis (ca 530), where Pope Eutychianus was still not a martyr, we have to conclude that Eutychianus was associated with a great assembly of martyrs already before having been merged with martyr Eutychius (in whose hagiographical dossier there was no such assembly, see below).

Already Duchesne connected the number of the martyrs buried by Eutychianus with the number of the martyrs deposed in the St Silvestre basilica on the Via Salaria, as reported in a seventh-century itinerary ⁶¹, even though, as Duchesne himself noted, there is neither a hagiographical tradition explaining who these martyrs were nor any explicit link between them and Eutychianus. However, their total number is, according to the different manuscripts, either 365 or 362, and the number 362 is present among the readings of the Liber Pontificalis; moreover, “...entre CCCXLII et CCCLXII la difference n'est pas grande, au point de vue paleographique, pas plus qu'entre CCCLXII et CCCLXV” ⁶². We can add, to Duchesne's argumentation, that the reading “362” in this itinerary, in spite of being that of one manuscript against two, is the earliest one (this manuscript is of the eighth century, whereas the two others of the ninth or tenth century). Therefore, it is most plausible that the Liber Pontificalis implicitly attributed to Pope Eutychianus the burial of the 362 martyrs on the Via Salaria.

The number 270 accompanying Eutychianus in LLA refers to some other collective grave (or a pair of graves with the distribution 200 + 70, because LLA divides the sum of 270 into these parts) than that of the 362 martyrs of the Via Salaria.

A group of 270 martyrs has been possibly venerated in Rome in the catacomb ad clivam Cucumeris (“at the Cucumber Hill”, situated not far from the St Silvestre basilica on the Via Salaria), although the available data are not sufficiently clear ⁶³. It is possible than the number 270 goes back to some tradition related to the collective graves of this area - well known near ca 400 AD but confused and obscured in the later sources available to us.

LLA associates with Eutychius another group of martyrs, those 120 persons who were put in the punctured ship (ch. 35) ⁶⁴. The number 120 is relatively popular in the Roman Passiones and catacombs ⁶⁵, including the cemetery of Thrason on the Via Salaria Nuova⁶⁶, situated less than 2 km from the same basilica of St Silvestre on the Via Salaria.

The results of this short inquiry are not precise but sufficient to conclude that the numbers of the martyrs with Eutychianus, both 270 and 120, were associated with his name in some Roman legends.

2.2.2 Eutychianus/Eutychius and Those with Him in the East: Eutychius and Thessalonica

The following legend is important to show that the story of Eutychianus with 270 martyrs was a part of the Constantinopolitan legend of Anastasia.

This is the entry of the Synaxarium of Constantinople and its predecessor, the calendar of the Typikon of the Great Church on December 19:

Fig. 2

We immediately recognise, in this Eutychius, Eutychianus of LLA together with his companion martyrs, 200 men and 70 women. Only St Thessalonica looks somewhat strange in the place of Anastasia.

This entry is absent from the Armenian version of the Synaxarium, but omissions of such commemorations of little significance are, for this version, quite possible. The presence of this entry in the Typikon is sufficient to prove that it belongs to the earliest recension of the Synaxarium.

This entry in the Georgian version of the Synaxarium has an addition: áãîáä^áî î^üááäá îòäáî^ãîáîçäÜ [98, p. 102] (“they were martyrized in Thessalonica”). The Georgian translation was made by the famous writer George the Hagiorite (1009-1065). Obviously, he translated this phrase from his Greek original, where it was added by one of the Byzantine editors.

Nothing more is known so far about these saints.

There are a number of martyrs bearing the name of Eutychius and one other female martyr Thessalonica (a saint of Amphipolis in Macedonia whose “epic” Passio known from its epitome in the Synaxarium which made her suffer at the hands of her father, a pagan priest, together with Auctus and Taurion; all the three are commemorated on November 7 ⁶⁸). The legend of Thessalonica of Amphipolis consists of a series of cliches known from other legends but, as it seems, shows no connection to the dossier of Anastasia.

Our present Thessalonica, a companion of Eutychius, has a very strong connection to Anastasia's dossier and, more specially, to its insular segment. Such a coincidence of the number 270 itself (which does not occur elsewhere in hagiography), its distribution between the two sexes (200 and 70), and the very name of Eutychius that we already know as alternating with Eutychianus leaves no doubt that we are dealing with an off-spring of Anastasia's dossier. The date of the commemoration of Eutychius and Thessalonica, December 19, is hardly by chance so close to December 22, the day of Anastasia.

The change of the name of Anastasia to Thessalonica is understandable, especially if it occurred in a legend composed in the city of Thessalonica, exactly as it is specified by the notice preserved in the Georgian version.

The cult of Eutychius and Thessalonica must have had a Thessalonian origin, but it must have been based on the Greek source of LLA, the Constantinopolitan legend of Anastasia. It is clear from chronological considerations: by ca 900 (the date of the Typikon of the Great Church), this cult had already become a liturgical tradition recognised in the capital. It was impossible for BHG 81, the Greek translation of LLA made in 824, over the timespan of about 80 years, to spark development of a new cult in Thessalonica and, then, to provide its recognition in Constantinople. Such processes require centuries.

Therefore, we obtain proof that the story of Eutychianus/Eutychius and the 270 martyrs with him was already a part of the plot of the Constantinopolitan Anastasia legend.

2.3 Eutychius/Eutyches and an Exiled Dame in the Pontine Islands

The Roman legends connecting Eutychianus/ Eutychius with a great group of martyrs did not contain any specific connection between him and a dame from the Roman nobility. Such a legend was connected with another Roman martyr with a similar but different name, Eutyches. The legend of Eutyches and a great Roman dame is preserved “encapsulated” in a larger legend that we need to discuss first.

2.3.1. Flavia Domitilla in the Fourth-Century Roman Hagiography

The long legend is the Roman Passio of Nereus and Achilleus and those with them. This is an amalgam of six histories with an introduction (BHL 6058): Rescriptum Marcelli (an elaboration on otherwise known Latin Petrine apocrypha, BHL 6059), Passio SS. Petronillae et Feliculae (BHL 6061), Passio S. Nicomedes (BHL 6062), Passio SS. Nerei et Achillei (BHL 6063), Passio S. Eutychetis, Victorini etMaronis (BHL 6064) - the main object of our interest, chapters 19-20 of the whole compilation, - and Passio S. Domitillae (BHL 6066) ⁶⁹. Despite the claim of the Latin author that he translated his text from Greek, the extant Greek recension, BHG 1327 ⁷⁰, is a translation from the Latin; the Latin author tried to gain more confidence by referring to an authoritative Greek source ⁷¹. The Passio belongs to hagiographical elaborations on the pseudo-apostolic acts. The action takes place in the entourage of Apostle Peter. One of the acting persons is his daughter Petronilla.

Domitilla is the main character of the whole composition. Her historical prototype is the granddaughter of Emperor Vespasian and a niece of Emperor Domitian Flavia Domitilla, the wife the consul Flavius Clement who was an uncle of Domitian ⁷². Both spouses were Christians. In 95, they were persecuted by Domitian out of religious motives. Clement was executed, whereas Flavia Domitilla was exiled to the Pontine islands (namely, Ponza), where she died after having spent many years in exile. In the Passio of Nereus and Achilleus, Flavia Domitilla was made a contemporary of Apostle Peter, somewhat anachronistically but by the standards of hagiography, only slightly.

In the fourth-century Christian tradition, this Flavia Domitilla has been transformed into another Flavia Domitilla, a niece of consul Clement - perhaps a lesser historical personage and already the third Flavia Domitilla in a row (because the wife of Vespasian who was the mother of the exiled historical Flavia Domitilla was also called Flavia Domitilla). For our purposes, the difference between the second (historical) and the third (to a lesser extent historical) Flaviae Domitillae is insignificant, whereas significant is the fact, that, in the late fourth century, the cellulae in the island of the Pontia where Flavia Domitilla “underwent a long martyrdom” (in quibus illa [Domitilla] longum Martyrion duxerat) was a place of pilgrimage. A friend of Hieronymus, Paula, visited these “cells” on her way to the Holy Land as a source of inspiration for her further monastic life ⁷³.

The long legend of Domitilla and other people around her is now dated to the second half of the fifth century ⁷⁴. The story of the martyrs Eutyches (so in Latin; in Greek Ewbxtog “Eutychius”), Victorinus, and Maro BHL 6064 is present in all early manuscripts of the Latin legend (from eighth to tenth century) [47, p. 125].

2.3.2 Eutychius in the Background of the Passio of Nereus and Achilleus

One would be tempted to claim that the long Passio BHL 6058-6066 was used as a source by the Constantinopolitan hagiographer of Anastasia, who extracted from it both a great Roman dame exiled to the Pontine islands and the martyr Eutychius. Chronology would allow such a hypothesis providing that the long Passio was composed ca 450. Nevertheless, such a conclusion is unacceptable due to hagiographical reasons. In the long Passio, there is no pair made up of Domitilla and Eutyches, but a group formed by Domitilla with a trio of Eutyches, Victorinus, and Maro. Each of the three is buried in a specific place in the vicinity of Rome and is mentioned as such in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum; namely, Eutyches has been buried on the Via Nomentana - at the 16^th mile according to the Passio or at the 18^th mile according to the Martyrologium ⁷⁵. In this legend, there is no individual martyr Eutyches/Eutychius deposed in closiness to the city of Rome.

Therefore, the Passio of Nereus and Achilleus would have not been a source of the Constantinopolitan legend of Anastasia. This Passio and the legend of Anastasia must have had a common source related to the martyr Eutychius.

Apparently, Eutychius the martyr of Rome has nothing to do with Eutyches, a companion of Victorinus and Maro. They were not only buried in different places, but one of them was inside the city while another was outside. The cults that were developed around their respective graves were certainly not identical. Nevertheless, there are marks that the long Passio of Nereus and Achilleus absorbed the original legend of the martyr Eutychius as well. An episodic character, Felicula, repeats the most striking elements of Eutychius's legend that we know from Damasus.

Among the very few things we know about Eutychius's martyrdom, there are two facts: he apparently died of starvation after having been without food two periods of six days, apparently by his own will (verses 6-7) ⁷⁶:

BIS SENI TRANSIERE DIES ALIMENTA

NEGANTUR

twice six days passed, the food is denied;

MITTITUR IN BARATHRUM...

he is thrown into a deep dungeon.

“The food is denied” would point to a willing starvation. The barathrum “deep dungeon” is, most probably, the Cloaca maxima ⁷⁷.

In the long Passio of Nereus and Achilleus, Felicula, a young virgin, dies of starvation after having been without food for two periods as well, whereas not of six but seven days. Then, “.her body was taken down and thrown into the sewer” (deposita & pracipitata est in cloacam) ⁷⁸.

Felicula is introduced in an artificial manner, as a duplication of her foster-sister Petronilla (one of the major characters of the legend). After Petronilla's death, she became the object of undesirable attention from Petronilla's persecutor. Regardless of how naturally she was introduced into the plot, her hagiographical coordinate of place remains important. The Passio as a whole is constructed similarly to an itinerary unifying within a common network the catacombs of Domitilla, the nearby arcosolium with the famous fresco depicting the deceased matron Veneranda with Petronilla as her guardian saint and a psychopomp, and the basilica of Nereus and Achilleus having an underground part, in the catacombs of Domitilla.

Other characters (Nicomedes and the trio of Eutychius, Victorinus, and Maro) also represent otherwise known Christian shrines. Felicula is apparently represented in the same way - the place of her grave is stated to be at the seventh mile of the Via Ardeatina (on the same road as the catacombs of Domitilla but substantially farer from the city), where her relics are preserved usque in hodiernum diem (“until the present day”) (ch. 17) ⁷⁹. However, this locality is the only one in the Passio that is not verifiable from other written sources or archaeologically [54, p. 208]. It is hardly possible that the locality indicated in the Passio would have been fictitious, but the related shrine was rather short lived. This topographical indication could be interpreted as intended to support a new cultic place, but the attempt did not have much success.

The parallels between the legends of Felicula and Eutychius are not accidental: the motif of throwing the body of a saint into a sewer was sufficiently popular, it is true, but its combination with death by starvation after having refused food, and especially following a series of two periods without food one immediately after another, is unique. The presence of Felicula in the Passio of Nereus and Achilleus is proof that its author used the legend of the Roman martyr Eutychius.

The main features of Eutychius's legendary biography were transmitted to Felicula, whereas Eutychius's name was used for another purpose - as a link with the legend of the trio of Eutyches, Victorinus, and Maro. The near-identity of the names of Eutychius and Eutyches would have been useful for the identification of the two martyrs. In a similar way, the biographies of Nereus and Achilleus were also changed in their Passio: in their elogium by Damasus, Nr 8 [88, pp. 98-101], they were warriors, but, in their Passio, they became eunuch servants, chamberlains of a great dame.

For the author of the Passio of Nereus and Achilleus, it was important to create a network of several martyr shrines both inside and outside the city by unifying them within a single legendary plot. The plot was subordinated to a pilgrimage route. Thus, he invented, for three graves located outside the city at a significant distance from each other, the unique trio of martyrs Eutyches, Victorinus, and Maro ⁸⁰.

In the Passio, the whole trio of these martyrs is connected with Domitilla (as her servants) when she was on one of the Pontine islands. It looks like an amplification of a simpler plot, where Domitilla was accompanied, on the island, by Eutyches/ Eutychius/Eutychianus without Victorinus and Maro. At least, the most economic explanation would consist in a supposition that there was a legend of Domitilla with some Eutychius in the Pontine islands. Then, what we see in the Passio of Nereus and Achilleus, on the one hand, and in the legend of Anastasia, on the other, appeared as two different modes of amplification of this legend:

1. There was a legend of Domitilla with Eutychius in the Pontine islands (not preserved).

2. In the Passio ofNereus and Achilleus, it was amplified with the addition of the trio of Eutyches (identified with Eutychius), Victorinus, and Maro.

3. In the legend of Anastasia, it was amplified with the addition of the legend of Pope Eutychianus (identified with Eutychius) and two groups of martyrs, 120 and 270.

4. Moreover, in the legend of Anastasia, Domitilla changed her name to Anastasia.

3. The Roman Hagiographical Substrate. II: An Outline of the Early Roman Anastasia Legend

There are a number of indications, both direct and indirect, of the Roman pre-sixth-century cult of St Anastasia. Normally, they are interpreted as if they refer to LLA. In fact, mostly they are not so specific as to allow us to define exactly which legend of Anastasia is meant. In the present section, we will discuss these indications, excluding, however, those that are directly related to the Roman church of St Anastasia. This church will be discussed in section 6. As a result, we will be able to discern between the data that, despite being somehow related to the Anastasia legends, do not contribute to our knowledge of the early Anastasia cult in Rome and the documents allowing us to figure out an outline of the early Roman legend of St Anastasia.

3.1 The Prologue Omnia quae

We begin with the part of LLA that has had a literary career of its own, the prologue Omnia quae (no BHL number, see section 2 above). It contains a textual intercession with the early fifth-century Passio Sebastiani. Regardless of how this intercession could be explained (borrowing from the prologue to the Passio or vice versa or borrowing from a common source), the likelihood that this prologue was written by the author of LLA or of its earlier recension is extremely low.

This prologue occurs in five other Passiones and one Latin Vita. Both Henschenius (1675) and Mabillion (1685), independently from each other, supposed that this prologue originally belonged to an entire menologium and not to a specific legend, where it was placed before December 25, the date of the first legend in this menologium. This hypothesis was criticised by Bauduin de Graiffier ⁸¹, but presently, as Francois Dolbeau concluded, it is impossible to decide whether it is true or not [29, pp. 358-359]. Even if it is untrue, that is, even if this prologue was composed for a specific legend, it is impossible to decide for which one. The content of this prologue is unrelated to any specific hagiographical legend.

We have to conclude that any possible references to and quotations from the prologue Omnia quae say nothing about the cult of St Anastasia.

3.2 The Regula magistri

Putting the prologue aside, there are three written sources possibly referring to a pre-sixth- century legend of Anastasia ⁸². The first of them is Regula magistri 10, 44. The text has been dated by Adalbert de Vogue to ca 500/525, a dating which became the scholarly consensus ⁸³.

The sentence identified by de Vogue as a quotation from the interrogation of Irene in LLA (but lacking from the Greek Passio BHG 34) is introduced, in the Regula, with the words Et item dicit scribtura [sic!] [92, pp. 426/427-428/429; cf. 453 (txt/tr.)]. According to de Vogue, it is LLA that is here called “Scripture”, but, under the pen of the author of the Regula, the words scriptura and scriptum est are normally applied also to Christian writings outside the Bible, such as hagiography and the Enchiridion of Sextus ⁸⁴.

It is also possible that the author of the Regula quoted not from LLA but from a source common with LLA. Anyway, the author of the Regula magistri is sufficiently late to be able to quote the Latin predecessor of LLA, that is, the Latin version of the Byzantine legend composed for the translation of Anastasia's relics from Sirmium to Constantinople in 468-470.

3.3 The Libellus ad Gregoriam

The Libellus ad Gregoriam in palatio is a pseudonymous work attributing itself to a certain John, evidently Chrysostom. Since the early twentieth century, it is usually ascribed to Arnobius the Younger (dating to the 430s-450s). Presently, it seems, Cecile Lanery (who applied statistical methods) has definitely confirmed the authorship of Arnobius ⁸⁵.

The reference to Anastasia made in ch. 5 epitomises the earliest form of the Roman Anastasia legend available to us. It must be quoted in full ⁸⁶.

Table 3.

These data are precious: they englobe features of the St Anastasia venerated in Rome before the cult of her relics was established in Constantinople. Here, as in LLA, Anastasia is a Roman matron who was tortured and eventually “permitted to be roasted (assari)" (cf. in LLA: Anastasia per manus et pedes extensa et ligata ad palos fixos, circa media eius ignis incensus est “Anastasia, tied by her hands and feet to fixed stakes, had a fire kindled about her abdomen”⁸⁷) on December 25, on Christmas. Nevertheless, while mentioning her “love of chastity” (amor pudicitiae), Arnobius did not mention her permanent virginity. No wonder: unless he considered her a normal married woman, he would never cite her as an example for Gregoria, a Roman Christian matron experiencing difficulties in her marriage. Indeed, Anastasia as the virginal character of LLA would have been an inappropriate example for Arnobius's purpose. The scholars so far have not been sensitive to this difference between the two Anastasiae, that of Arnobius and that of LLA ⁸⁸.

Arnobius refers to a written Anastasia legend, one of the passiones et gesta that are testified (testantur) by evidentia... scripta (“written evidence”). Therefore, the Roman legend, by the time of Arnobius, already existed in a written form. This form, however, was distinct from LLA.

We will see below (sections 5.1.2 and 5.1.3) that the historical Roman Anastasia who gave her name to the martyr was actually a married woman who had at least one son.

3.4 The Passio Caeciliae

The Passio Caeciliae (BHL 1495) has some similarities with LLA, especially in the structure of the plot but also in phraseology, and is, according to Lanery, a work of Arnobius the Younger as well ⁸⁹. The relevant places are noticed in the edition by Moretti [66, p. 41, n. 184; p. 104; p. 123; p. 156; p. 169]. They suggest that Arnobius as the hagiographer of St Caecilia was influenced by the Anastasia legend known to him. However, these parallels are not so specific as to allow us to discern between LLA and an earlier Roman text paraphrased in the Libellus ad Gregoriam.

I think that, in both cases - those of the Libellus ad Gregoriam and the Passio Caeciliae - Arnobius kept in mind a Latin legend of Anastasia that more or less coincided with what I have called the Roman core of the Anastasia legend. This legend will be further amplified in Constantinople in 468-470 thus resulting in the Byzantine legend written in Greek, this Greek text will be translated into Latin, and this Latin will be edited in Aquileia for becoming LLA.

3.5 The Commemoration of St Anastasia on September 7

The Martyrologium Hieronymianum provides several commemoration dates for St Anastasia. All of them will be discussed in later sections (6 and 7), but now we are interested only in the date of September 7. As we recall, in LLA, this is the date of the deposition of the relics of St Anastasia by Apollonia. This date remains unknown to the Byzantine sources, with the natural exception of BHG 81 (Greek version of LLA) and its paraphrases.

The readings of the Hieronymianum for September 7 are confused but needed to be taken into account due to a relatively early date of this martyrologium (compiled in northern Italy in the second quarter of the fifth century, while actually available in a later recension produced in Auxerre, Gaul, about 592) ⁹⁰. On September 7, the three main manuscripts (E, B, and W) ⁹¹ contradict each other [75, p. 117]:

B: et passio Sci Anastasii

E: sci anastasi epi

W: et pas sci anastasi cum sociis suis

Delehaye proposed two alternative reconstructions. Either the martyr Anastasius of Salona is meant, who is actually commemorated on August 26 (in this case, one has to suppose an error: VII id. sept. instead of VII kal. sept.; moreover, erroneous are the additions episcopi in E and cum sociis suis in W; this Anastasius was a layman, a merchant, who was martyrized alone) or Anastasia whose the day of whose deposition is, according to LLA, September 7 (in this case, the obviously defective reading Anastasi of E and W is to be restored to Anastasiae, the reading episcopi in E is, of course, erroneous, but the reading cum sociis suis in W is at place) ⁹². The second understanding is certainly preferable as it supposes fewer errors in the manuscripts. The reading ofW, in this case, would require only one restoration in the only obviously distorted place (Anastasi). This results in the following restored phrase: et passio sancti Anastasiae cum sociis suis.

Delehaye was hesitant to accept this reading only because he considered December 25 being the true date of St Anastasia's martyrdom. I would add that the early mediaeval editors of the Martyrologium Hieronymianum shared

Delehaye's opinion and, therefore, tried to avoid the commemoration of St Anastasia with her companions on September 7.

Below (section 6) we will see that the commemoration of St Anastasia on December 25 is related to the role of the titulus church of Anastasia in the Roman Christmas stational liturgy and unrelated to St Anastasia as a martyr. It is hardly probable that this date served as the commemoration day of St Anastasia since the very beginning of the St Anastasia cult in Rome. Therefore, another date of her martyrdom must be sought. The Martyrologium Hieronymianum, especially in manuscript W, provides us with exactly what we need, namely, traces of another commemoration day of the saint in the first half of the fifth century. This day is the same as indicated in LLA, with the only difference that LLA, being a later composition, harmonises two commemoration dates allotting to the earlier one the role of the date of deposition.

Let us return to the ending lines of LLA (quoted above, section 2.3.4): ...she [Apollonia] built a basilica where she had buried her. St Anastasia suffered martyrdom on 25 December and was kept in a hidden location. She was subsequently translated to the basilica built in the house of Apollonia on 7 September.

This text is obviously edited even before passing to the hands of the editor who worked in Aquileia trying to eliminate the Roman realities. The previous Roman text was not smooth either. For the author of the original text, there was no need to repeat at the very end of the Passio that Apollonia deposed Anastasia in the basilica in Apollonia's house, unless an editor - not the author - wished to add some new data, namely, to establish two separate days for the martyrdom and the deposition of the relics. In my opinion, the original Roman text contained a unique date, September 7, for the martyrdom.

3.6 Preliminary Conclusions: An Outline of the Early Roman Anastasia Legend

The early Roman legend of St Anastasia roughly coincided with the part of LLA now called by the Bollandists Passio ipsius Anastasiae (BHL 401), although it contained neither an interconnection with the plot line of Chrysogonus nor mention of Fausta. This early Roman Anastasia was born to the pagan parents. She was, indeed, a married woman and not a perpetual virgin.

The original commemoration day of this St Anastasia was September 7. The commemoration on December 25 was added - and became the principal date - only in the middle of the fifth century, perhaps during the pontificate of Leo the Great who drastically changed the role of the church of St Anastasia in Rome (see below, section 6). However, when this old Roman legend was imported to Constantinople in 468-470, the main commemoration date of St Anastasia was already December 25.

roman legend anastasia aquileia

Notes

* This work was accomplished with financial support of RFBR grant No. 21-012-41005 “Jerusalem and Understudied Apocrypha in Slavonic Translations: Textology, History, and Doctrines”.

** The beginning see: Lourie B. Five Anastasiae and Two Febroniae: A Guided Tour in the Maze of Anastasia Legends. Part One. The Oriental Dossier. Vestnik Volgogradskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Seriya 4. Istoriya. Regionovedenie. Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya [Science Journal of Volgograd State University. History. Area Studies. International Relations], 2021, vol. 26, no. 6, pp. 252-289. DOI: https://doi.org/10.15688/ jvolsu4.2021.6.20

¹ Prologue BHL 400 (Historiam priorum sanctorum ad aedificationem nostram), indicated in BHL as that of LLA, although occurs in one of LLA's manuscripts (and, as the epilogue, in another LLA's manuscript), belongs to the Passio of Chrysanthus and Daria (BHL 1787); cf. J. Noret [68, pp. 116-117].

² Cf. especially Lanery [52, pp. 56-58], Lapidge [54, pp. 57-62].

³ As summarised by Michael Lapidge [54], adloco.

⁴ The presence of the Capitol and many other details reveal that the action is replaced from Sirmium to Rome.

⁵ Cf.: “As we have seen (c. 19) Theodota - who was a citizen of Nicaea in Bithynia - apparently had a residence in Sirmium, where she was presented to Diocletian, who was in residence there. Are we to understand that Theodota also had a residence in Rome? Or has the author overlooked the fact that Ulpian brought Anastasia back with him from Sirmium to Rome? Or is Ulpian's residence, and the trial of Anastasia, imagined as taking place in Sirmium?” (Lapidge [54, p. 82, fn. 97]).

⁶ Lucillius's name is restored by Moretti [66, p. 172], whereas the manuscripts instead praefecto Lucillio have here praefecto Illyrici (with a single exception having praefecto Lucio). Moretti explains this as an error mendum e perseveratione, because previously there was acting as praefectus Illyrici Probus in Sirmium [66, p. 69]. Lapidge, however, noticed, that this reading affects the geography of the Passio: “The emendation [proposed by Moretti and accepted by him. - B. L.] has the effect of removing the location of Anastasia's trial from Sirmium in Illyricum (where, as we saw in c. 21, the praefectus Illyrici was named Probus, not Lucillius), and raises the possibility that, in the author's conception, Anastasia was tried in Rome by the urban prefect Lucillius, who sentenced her to death by drowning (c. 35)” [54, p. 60, n. 29]. I would consider this place as an especially unfortunate attempt to eliminate Rome from the Martyrdom's geography.

⁷ Lying opposite the Bay of Naples in the Tyrrhenian Sea.

⁸ Delehaye [25, p. 162]: “Cet edifice n'est pas, comme on pourrait le croire, la basilique romaine, le titulusAnastasiae, auquel il n'est fait aucune allusion dans notre legende. C'est une eglise batie, au dire de l'hagiographe, pres de l'endroit oh, d'apres le recit, Anastasie a ete martyrisee, c'est-a-dire dans l'lle Palmaria.”

⁹ For those who analysed LLA as an arbitrary fairy tale without its cult-formative function, the role of Chrysogonus remains unexplainable: cf. Lapidge [54, p. 57, fn. 16]: “It is not clear why the author should have wished to link Anastasia with St Chrysogonus”, with a reference to “the similar doubts raised by Mesnard” [63, p. 36]; the latter monograph has thus far been inaccessible to me.

¹⁰ See, for the details, Lapidge [54, p. 57], with further bibliography.

¹¹ See Part One of the present study, sections 6 and 7, pp. 270-274.

¹² In this respect, especially revealing is the situation ofpatricius Iohannes, Justinian's representative established in Aquileia: he retained communion with both the Patriarch of Aquileia Paulus and Pope Pelagius I, despite Pelagius's demands to choose with whom of those two Iohannes would be in communion (C. Sotinel [81, pp. 104-109]). In general, Claire Sotinel concluded, “[t]he churches separated from Rome [that is, the “tricapitoline” Churches of Aquileia and Milan] flourished under Byzantine rule” [81, p. 107].

¹³ See esp. Sotinel [81]; cf. C. Azzara [8] and R. Bratoz ([11, pp. 517-521] and [10]).

¹⁴ It replaced the early twentieth-century scholarly consensus (established by Dufourcq and Delehaye) proposing a late fifth-century or early sixth-century date. Cf. especially A. Dufourcq [34, vols. I and II], passim; Delehaye [25, p. 151-171]; Moretti [66, pp. 2437] (with a detailed bibliography).

¹⁵ See Lapidge [54, p. 62-63]. There are several explanations of the meaning of LLA as a document understandable outside the cult. Thus, Lapidge proposed that LLA would have been an answer to simple curiosity about the origin of two Roman tituli (churches of Anastasia and of Chrysogonus) or a reading for Roman aristocratic intellectual women (Lapidge [54, pp. 57, 62-63]). Others classify LLA as “stories women want” (Moretti [66, pp. 37-38]) or even “an economical strike at Manichaeism's most vulnerable point” [sc., “the Manichaean stress on virginity”] using the potential of “socially and economically powerful” Christian matrons (K. Cooper [18, p. 142]). Such approaches disregard the very nature of the hagiographical legends (the raison d 'etre of which could not be other than (re)shaping a cult) and treat them as an arbitrary mix of history and fairy tales. Despite this methodological flaw, Moretti contributed to our knowledge of the history of the legend of Anastasia more than anybody else, and we will have to return to her study below. Efthymios Rizos is one of the rare scholars who has seen, in LLA, something more appropriate to the purpose and nature of hagiography calling LLA “a hagiographic product resulting from the collation of a series of initially independent texts, probably reflecting some form of linkage among their cults, which currently eludes us” [72, p. 206]. This “form of linkage” as well the linked cults themselves are the object of our present study.