4

The Life of Martha

At some point after the death of Symeon the Younger, a new saint was created for his shrine, although one whose connection to the stylite could hardly have been stronger: his mother, Martha.¹ The record of her veneration is preserved in her hagiographic Life, which has been little discussed in modern scholarship.² This work, edited but not translated by Van den Ven towards the end of his edition and translation of the Life of Symeon, was seemingly also written by one of the monks of Symeon’s monastery.³ Van den Ven expressed a negative (and doubtless accurate) view of the work’s historical reliability, commenting, ‘s’il existe des faits réels au fond de ce roman historique, de caractère très artificiel, il est impossible de les découvrir’.⁴ Nonetheless, as evidence for the development of a cult, as a literary composition containing a distinctive vision of piety, and as the Life of a holy woman who was neither a martyr nor a nun, the text possesses considerable historical interest.

Unfortunately, there is no secure evidence to provide a precise dating for the Life. Van den Ven has shown that, although it contains some strange inconsistencies in chronology when compared to the Life of Symeon, its author undoubtedly knew of the latter work (probably, as suggested above, dating from the late sixth or early seventh century).⁵ The earliest manuscript containing the whole Life of Martha dates from the tenth/eleventh century, but there is a late ninth-century manuscript containing a part of the text, leaving a window of approximately two and a half centuries in which the work could have been produced.⁶ Van den Ven has argued that it most probably dates from the seventh century, and is not much later than the Life of the stylite himself, since its style and language are very similar to that of the longer Life, as is its picture of the community on the ‘Wonderful Mountain’; he notes too that its author understands the meaning of obscure phrases such as ‘καμασίνη μηλωτή’ (the covering which sheltered Symeon on his column) which were misunderstood by later adapters of Symeon’s Life.⁷

Details fit a seventh-century date of composition and there are no obvious anachronisms. To give an example, one visitor is described as taking from Symeon’s monastery ‘the clay tokens moulded from his image’.⁸ Archaeological evidence suggests that the shrine on the ‘Wonderful Mountain’ produced clay tokens in the sixth and seventh centuries, but lead tokens in the middle Byzantine period.⁹ The Life also refers to opponents of Symeon in his lifetime and appears keen to avert criticism of his decision to build an oratory for himself and Martha, which seems most likely to have been a contentious issue relatively close to his life.¹⁰ It thus appears probable that the Life dates from the early seventh century; certainly, as we will see, many of its themes resonate with other works of that period, and it contains nothing to suggest that it was written after the Arab conquests. Charles Kuper and Dina Boero have recently argued, on the basis of the text’s interest in Jerusalem and the relic of the True Cross, that the hagiographer was writing in the period 614–29/30 and that the Life was ‘composed in response to the theft of the True Cross by the Sasanians [in 614]’.¹¹ This link to the Persian sack of Jerusalem is not certain, but a date in this period is plausible, and would situate the composition of the text at a time of high tension in the Middle East.

The Life of Martha is very unusual in both subject matter and structure. Although several late antique saints’ Lives feature the holy men’s mothers as pious auxiliary characters, the Life of Martha is unique in taking as its central figure the mother of a famous holy man. Nor does the work have the clear narrative arch of a typical holy biography. To give a brief outline, the first ten chapters consist of an overview of Martha’s pious politeia (way of life), with very little specific information about her life. Then, over twenty chapters (11–33) are devoted to an extended account of her death, from a series of premonitory visions until her initial burial in Daphne and subsequent reburial on the ‘Wonderful Mountain’. The next ten chapters (34–44) recount her posthumous healing miracles, and are followed by six chapters (45–51) relating to the building of a new oratory, and the translation of Martha’s body to this shrine. The final lengthy section (52–70), perhaps the most isolated part of the Life, consists of a series of visions, miracles, and letter exchanges relating to Symeon’s acquisition of a relic of the True Cross from Jerusalem for his monastery; Martha is noticeably less present in this part of the text. The Life finishes with the report of two more healing miracles and a conventional conclusion, stressing her continued performance of miracles and intercession with Christ (71–3). It is possible that it was not originally conceived as a whole; in particular, the awkwardly phrased transition into the section describing Symeon’s acquisition of a relic of the True Cross, as well as the different tone of this section from the rest of the Life, suggests that it may have been added after the original account of Martha’s life and miracles.¹² On the other hand, as we will see, certain themes do run throughout the entire work.

It is worth noting from the outset that the unusual features of the work are not explained by Martha’s gender.¹³ Three dominant ‘models’ of female holiness have been identified within late antique hagiography, none of which are applicable to Martha: the ‘harlot-saint’, the ‘patrician philanthropist’, and ‘the cloistered nun’.¹⁴ This concept of three ‘models’ for female holiness may be too schematic, failing to appreciate the diversity of late antique hagiography.¹⁵ Nonetheless, there are characteristics of many biographies of holy women which are noticeably absent from Martha’s Life, including, most strikingly, an emphasis on the body, celibacy, and asceticism.¹⁶ Apart from a solitary comment that Martha often fasted, especially on Wednesdays and Fridays, the author of Martha’s Life makes no reference to Martha mortifying her body or shunning fine clothes and jewellery, despite these being dominant themes in much hagiography relating to women;¹⁷ nor does he attempt to excuse her for not maintaining her virginity by stressing either her reluctance to marry or her later adoption of a celibate lifestyle.¹⁸

It has been argued that the Lives of women provided more powerfully than the biographies of holy men the hope of redemption for all humankind, since if a woman, a descendant of Eve, could overcome her inherently sinful body and become holy then so could anyone.¹⁹ The Life of Martha does not fit into this pattern, given its lack of interest in its subject’s body and sexuality. The hagiographer does, however, draw on some common late antique models of female sanctity, in particular the biblical humble, serving, and ministering women exemplified by Martha, sister of Lazarus, in the Gospel of Luke.²⁰ Her Life thus utilizes elements of the conventional portrayal of female holiness without being entirely conventional, strongly emphasizing Martha’s devoted care for the religious and for the poor at the expense of discussing her asceticism and chastity. This stress on her ministration, and in particular her ministration to the priests and monks of Symeon’s monastery, is at the heart of the text, as we shall see.

In order to understand better the structure and contents of the Life, we need to consider its hagiographer’s aims and ideals. At their most basic level, most saints’ Lives were concerned with cult promotion, and the Life of Martha is no different. Indeed, it contains hints that Martha’s cult was controversial and needed defending, which may reflect the highly unusual nature of Martha’s position as a mother of a saint venerated in her own right. In contrast with the Life of Symeon, which only mentions Martha in passing and depicts her as pious but not holy, the Life of Martha depicts its female subject as a fount of miracles and ongoing source of healing. This is only one of several divergences in perspective from the Life of Symeon. Strikingly, the disasters and polemic which predominate in the Life of Symeon play a much more limited role in the Life of his mother. The scope of Martha’s hagiography is much reduced, and the claims made about miracles are less ambitious. Whereas Symeon’s hagiographer presented the stylite as a single, spectacular, beacon of holiness and salvation, Martha’s hagiographer instead acknowledges a range of sources of sanctity and of routes to salvation. An emphasis on the salvific powers of the liturgy and of the sacraments runs throughout the text, and in many ways explains its distinctive structure. The burden of salvation is moved away from the exceptional holy man towards the individual actions of supplicants and worshippers. The hagiographer thus displays a rather different set of priorities and interests from the author of the Life of Symeon, which may reflect a wider shift in ways of responding to the challenges facing saints’ cults in the seventh century.

Cult Promotion and Apologetic

The need to venerate Martha’s tomb and to participate in her liturgical commemorations, and the dangers of failure to do so, run as a leitmotif through her hagiographic Life. Several cautionary stories in the later parts of the text provide warnings of the negative consequences of the neglect of proper ritual duties. In one example, a certain Sergios son of Antoninos, from the village of Charandamas, fell prey to a severe fever because ‘he refused to go near to any corpse, thinking it an abomination. Behaving in just the same way towards the relic of the blessed woman he did not go near it or put his shoulder underneath it.’²¹ The connection between his refusal to honour Martha’s corpse and the disease is stressed in his later confession: ‘I shunned handling the precious relic of the holy Symeon’s mother and that is why these terrible judgements have befallen me.’²² One of Symeon’s monks fell severely ill because: ‘he drew near to the precious coffin of the blessed woman to light the lamp, but, possessed by a scornful and disbelieving thought, he instead quenched it and went away grumbling, not recognizing that the fault was in himself.’²³

In a third example, when Symeon’s monks were neglecting the lamp on Martha’s coffin, one of the remiss brothers, the monastery’s manager, fell extremely ill. When he was on the brink of death, Martha appeared to him with a reproach: ‘What were you all thinking when you didn’t light my lamp? Do you not know that I am one who shares in the light of heaven and needs nothing of that kind, if not for the sake of your own salvation?’²⁴ This makes clear that ritual care for the saint was not intended to glorify the saint—who was already dwelling in glory—but to benefit the soul of the worshipper. The manager was cured after Martha brought the Eucharistic bread forward to his stomach, and thenceforth was diligent in lighting her lamp. These miracles where disease is caused by failure to carry out the appropriate rituals are clearly intended to emphasize the importance of attending to the saint’s tomb, and the danger to both body and soul of failing to do so.

These reports of scepticism and neglect of Martha’s veneration should not be dismissed as mere hagiographic topoi.²⁵ Her hagiographer seems to have had a specific apologetic goal in writing the Life. There are various hints in the Life that Martha’s cult was a sensitive topic—possibly, though this is never stated explicitly, due to accusations that Symeon’s encouragement of her cult was self-promoting or inappropriate due to their family connection—and that the performance of services in her honour might need justification. In one episode, we are told that Symeon refrained from ordering his disciples to attend to the lamp on Martha’s coffin, out of fear that it would be thought that she was only revered because of his commands:

For when the saint saw the brothers not bothering to light the lamp on her precious coffin, he did not command them to do this. This [he did], partly, so that it would not be thought by unbelieving people and those with weaker understanding that he himself was requiring and demanding the things done to honour her. But this [he did] also as a way of educating his brothers and wishing them to be taught through experience to offer the honours due to the saints willingly and not under compulsion.²⁶

This implies that Symeon (or the hagiographer) was concerned that some people might think that he was forcing the promotion of her cult, perhaps for self-aggrandizing reasons. Similar fears are recounted in relation to Symeon’s building of a new oratory for Martha’s body. The Life claims that even after Martha had appeared to Symeon and the other brothers demanding the construction of a new oratory:

The saint, although he had such an intention on the basis of revelation, held himself back cautiously at that time, and was not willing to embark on such a project, both so that some more simple-minded, unfaithful people should not be put to the test, come up with foolish ideas and accuse the just man [Symeon] of illicit behaviour, and also because he was planning to prepare a single house for himself and her, so that they would not be separated from one another even there, as in fact happened sometime later [emphasis mine].²⁷

This reference to potential critics (denigrated as ‘simple-minded’ and ‘unfaithful’) of the saint’s decision to build the shrine seems to reflect, again, fears that Symeon would be accused of self-aggrandizement by promoting his mother’s cult. The whole extended sequence of visions and signs preceding the construction of the shrine should therefore be seen as an attempt to justify the decision to build the shrine, whether or not this in fact took place in the precise context described in the work.

It might seem surprising that a hagiographer writing in the seventh century, sometime after Symeon’s death in 592, should be concerned about defending Symeon’s decision to venerate his mother. It is important to remember here, however, that Martha’s cult was unprecedented. I am not aware of any mothers of late antique ascetic holy men being venerated as saints in their own right.²⁸ Perhaps the closest parallel comes in the Life of Alypios the Stylite, whose mother is given a prominent role and depicted in very pious terms. She is not, however, shown as a miracle-worker, and it is quite likely that the hagiographer is in any case here drawing upon the story of Symeon and Martha.²⁹ Hagiographers typically paid little attention to their subjects’ biological families after the initial description of their birth and departure from the family home. In the spirit of Christ’s injunctions in the Gospels to eschew family ties, holy men are often shown distancing themselves from their families, if not completely rejecting them.³⁰ A particularly strict attitude appears in the Bohairic and Greek Lives of Pachomios, in which Pachomios’s protégé, Theodore, is said to have refused to see his mother when she came to visit him at his monastery. In the Bohairic version, Theodore asks rhetorically:

If I go out to meet her, will I not be found at fault before the Lord for having transgressed his commandment which is written in the Gospel?…I would not spare her even if it were necessary to kill her, just as the sons of Levi of old acted by an order the Lord gave them through Moses.³¹

In the Greek version of this episode, he is said to have added, ‘I too, I have no mother, nor anything of the world, for it passes.’ Pachomios approved of his harsh attitude, commenting, ‘If you love God more than your mother, shall I prevent you? I shall rather encourage you. For, he who loves his father or his mother more than me is not worthy of me.’³²

Other hagiographers were less harsh, but still emphasized a degree of distance from biological families. Symeon Stylites the Elder, the Younger’s famous predecessor, was reportedly so strict in his prohibition of women from his enclosure that, according to one of his hagiographers, he even refused access to his own mother shortly before her death—although he did then bury her at the foot of his column.³³ Monastic leaders tended to encourage separation from biological families (although in practice monks often maintained family ties).³⁴ Strikingly, Martha’s own hagiographer presents Symeon as someone who had transcended his earthly family: Martha, in her final speech to Symeon before her death, tells him that ‘having sought His [God’s] mercy, which is superior to lives [?], you have not recognized father and mother. For the creator is your father and mother and family, along with all the saints.’³⁵ This passage is highly paradoxical, delivered as part of a mother’s farewell speech to her son. It is not surprising, therefore, that the veneration of an ascetic’s mother as a saint in her own right, at that same ascetic’s monastery, might prove controversial.

It is important to note here that the decision to promote Martha as a miracle-working saint seems to have been made consciously at some time after the death of her son: there is no suggestion in the Life of Symeon that his mother was herself worthy of reverence.³⁶ In the stylite’s Life, Martha appears as a pious, and sometimes important, but occasional, character.³⁷ She is most active at the start of the Life, which describes her (reluctant) marriage to Symeon’s father John, her success in converting John to a more pious way of life, her vision of John the Baptist proclaiming her imminent conception of a holy son, and her nurturing of Symeon until, at the age of six, he was led by a white-robed man to the monastic community in which he spent the rest of his life.³⁸ After this, her appearances in the Life are far less frequent, but nonetheless hint at her importance: both John, the head of the monastery joined by Symeon, and Ephraim, patriarch of Antioch, supposedly mentioned Martha on their deathbeds, while she is involved in some of the most dramatic episodes in the saint’s adult life, including his response to a devastating earthquake, the procession celebrating his elevation to the column in the centre of the new complex on the ‘Wonderful Mountain’, and his resurrection of his disciple Konon after his death from the plague.³⁹ In these episodes, however, she plays only a supporting role, and her own life is paid little attention; we only learn of her death by chance, as a service held in her memory is the setting for one of Symeon’s miracles.⁴⁰ Although she sometimes intercedes with Symeon, she never intercedes directly with God, and there is no suggestion that she can perform miracles.⁴¹ Material evidence supports the view that Martha’s cult was a late addition to the site. While later medieval pilgrim tokens from Symeon’s shrine depict Martha (and the saint’s most famous disciple, Konon) as well as Symeon, the earliest tokens feature Symeon alone.⁴² Martha, then, does not seem to have been venerated as a saint at the shrine in the sixth century.

And yet her position was ambiguous from an early date. We do learn in passing from the Life of Symeon that the stylite held commemorative services in memory of his mother at the monastery.⁴³ It has been generally accepted—admittedly based in large part on the Life of Martha—that the south church in the monastic complex was built fairly soon after Martha’s death to house her relic, and that Symeon intended that after his death he too would be buried there with her.⁴⁴ Martha therefore clearly had a privileged position at the shrine during her son’s lifetime, despite seemingly not being recognised as a saint; it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the stylite’s familial ties to his mother were the primary reason for her commemoration. Given the dominant ascetic discourse of the rejection of the biological family (although this was always complex, and often balanced with more positive comments on family ties), it is not surprising that Symeon’s apparent devotion to his mother might be viewed with scepticism; and, more particularly, that her veneration at his cult might need defending.⁴⁵

It is notable that while in parts of the Life of Martha, Martha’s devotion, support, and moral concern for her son are presented as part of her piety, her hagiographer also emphasizes that her status does not derive merely from her link to Symeon; she has independent holiness.⁴⁶ After the monastery’s manager had fallen ill due to neglect of Martha’s veneration, he repented and recovered, and subsequently vowed to continue lighting the lamp on her tomb. Martha appeared to him in his sleep, stating, ‘All of you did not glorify me, nor am I glorified because of my son, but grace and glory came to me from the source whence I awaited the Lord with anxious expectation and he attended to me and heard my prayer [emphasis mine]’.⁴⁷ The hagiographer, through Martha’s voice, states clearly that her glory is not merely a reflection of her son’s; she has her own holiness.

Paul Van den Ven suggested that Martha’s Life was written by a monk of Symeon’s monastery who was particularly devoted to the saint’s mother, felt that she had been neglected in her son’s hagiography, and wanted to rectify this offense.⁴⁸ This is not impossible, but it seems more likely, given the apologetic passages discussed above emphasizing that Symeon had not created his mother’s cult, and given the complex position of family loyalties within ascetic ideology, that the hagiographer had a more targeted goal: to justify the continued veneration of Martha, and in particular to promote the validity and importance of the memorial services in her honour. As we will see, the memorial services for her death play a crucial role in the text, particularly as a setting for her miracles. By showing Martha to be a powerful holy woman in her own right, and by associating her miracles with the rituals at her shrine, the Life encourages participation in her cult by offering the possibility of wonder-working: twice in the text the author explicitly states that miracles are still occurring at her tomb.⁴⁹ The hagiographer creates a new vision of Martha as independent saint, in part intended as a retrospective justification for her veneration, in part to create a new focus of cult on the ‘Wonderful Mountain’. He is not afraid to depart from the picture of Martha given in the Life of Symeon. The new role given to Martha is not the only difference between her hagiographic Life and that of her son. The text displays a broader reorientation of approaches and attitudes, which may reflect a new way of responding to the challenges facing the cult and the monastery after the disasters of the sixth century.

A Reorientation of Priorities

Martha’s hagiographer strikes a very different tone from the Life of Symeon the Younger. While he does continue some specific arguments of the earlier hagiographer, including a rejection of monetary transactions and an attack on the monk Angoulas, he eschews most of the apologetic and polemical lines of the Life of Symeon. The disasters affecting Antioch play a much smaller role in Martha’s Life: the plague features, but military disasters and earthquakes do not. Instead of providing scapegoats for crisis, Martha’s hagiographer adopts an individualistic focus, blaming people’s sufferings on their failure to carry out proper cultic veneration. The Life is less ambitious in many respects than Symeon’s; we do not encounter emperors or nobles, nor mass miracles wrought for large groups of people. Equally, whereas Symeon’s hagiographer seemed to suppress other sources of sanctity, presenting Symeon as a unique beacon of holiness, Martha’s hagiographer portrays a much more diverse landscape of salvation, commemorating various relics, holy men, and other vehicles of grace.

The Life of Martha does pick up on some individual lines of argument in the Life of Symeon. For instance, Martha’s hagiographer presents a further attack on Angoulas, the bête-noire of the Life of Symeon: he claims that Angoulas attempted to impede the proper building of Martha’s oratory, by persuading one of the builders to begin construction according to his own plans, rather than to those revealed by the deceased Martha to Symeon.⁵⁰ Unfortunately, it is difficult to be sure whether the author of the Life of Martha had additional information about Angoulas, and was, perhaps, one of his monastic opponents (which would suggest an early date for the Life), or whether he had just heard the name in the Life of Symeon or from oral traditions at the monastery and thus mentioned this well-known opponent of the saint to lend his account veracity, and to show that efforts to thwart the building of the oratory were in vain. Martha’s hagiographer also continues the economic arguments of the Life of Symeon. As discussed in the previous chapter, Symeon is presented by his hagiographer as radically anti-economic, refusing to accept any gifts or to engage in monetary transactions. Martha’s hagiographer continues this theme, claiming that Symeon had been unwilling to build his church complex on the ‘Wonderful Mountain’ until God promised ‘that the work would be completed without money’.⁵¹ These similarities to the Life of Symeon, which show that Martha’s hagiographer was very familiar with the traditions of the saint’s shrine and with the earlier hagiography, only serve to highlight the broader differences in emphasis between the two texts, which go far beyond the differing portrayals of Martha herself.

Most strikingly, the Life of Martha does not continue most of the apologetic and polemical lines of the Life of Symeon. It refers neither to paganism nor to the other forms of heterodoxy that are so prevalent in the earlier Life. No vitriolic attacks on local notables appear; indeed, almost all characters who appear in the Life are local villagers, or visitors whose social background is not specified. One exception, perhaps, is a certain Sergios, who we are told was the son of Antoninos the φροντιστής (overseer?), someone who presumably possessed some authority in local society. Sergios fell ill after refusing to venerate any corpse, including Martha’s. He was only cured after he confessed, repented, and promised to respect Martha’s body in future.⁵² While this story features a prominent local committing a sin, his social status is not emphasized, and his sin and punishment are similar to those of other characters in the text; there is nothing to compare to the stories about rich sceptics of Symeon turning out to be crypto-pagans and meeting with dire punishments.

The hagiographer does continue to refer to scepticism about Symeon and his miracles, but it is not painted in socio-economic terms or associated with paganism. Martha, in her final speech to her son before her death, urges him:

Don’t let reproaches grieve you, child, I implore you. Don’t be vexed at the disbelief of some people, but pray for everyone to the son of God, He who because of his boundless love of man attained such humility and said of those who crucified him, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing’.⁵³

This might seem too generic to relate to particular criticism, but a subsequent exhortation does draw a connection to the saint’s opponents in Antioch: ‘Always remember the whole world in your requests to God; and pray too for your city in which you were born and its inhabitants…forgive the hard-hearted, because of the lovers of Christ who are in it [i.e., presumably, Antioch].’⁵⁴ The hagiographer thus alludes to opposition to the saint in Antioch, in a fairly conciliatory fashion.

In the final section of the text, relating to the relic of the True Cross, a monastic visitor to the shrine is afflicted with doubt and scepticism on his journey home, condemning Symeon as a magician and rejecting the clay pilgrimage tokens which he had apparently taken from the shrine:

The Devil prompted him to say to himself about the servant of God that this man was a magician and this was why the powers worked in him. ‘For from the beginning of time, except when the Lord was present (on earth), who ever saw or heard of anyone performing such signs? So they are not products of good works, and I have made a mistake in handling his clay tokens moulded from his image.’⁵⁵

The monk then threw the clay tokens on the fire (except for one which was accidentally saved by falling in his clothing).⁵⁶ He was immediately afflicted by leprosy, until he ‘came to his senses’, repented, apologized to the saint, and smeared himself with the remaining pilgrimage token. This is reminiscent of the more general accounts of scepticism about the validity of Symeon’s miraculous powers as found in the Life of Symeon.⁵⁷ The need to refute scepticism about Symeon has not, then, disappeared for Martha’s hagiographer, but he addresses the question in a different way, avoiding socio-economic polemic and the scapegoating of wealthy pagans.

Equally strikingly, the disasters that preoccupy the earlier hagiographer play a comparatively limited role in Martha’s Life. An outbreak of the plague does occupy several chapters of the text: before Martha’s death, she foresees some of the inhabitants of Daphne seeking Symeon’s help against the plague, while after her death, both she and Symeon are said to have cured many inhabitants of local villages.⁵⁸ The severity of the plague is again stressed: ‘for there was great mortality among men in that time.’⁵⁹ Yet no elaborate theological justifications for this outbreak are developed comparable to those in the Life of Symeon. Still more strikingly, neither the Persian invasion of Antioch nor the severe earthquakes in northern Syria, which occupy such a prominent place in the Life of Symeon, are mentioned at all by Martha’s hagiographer. The Life of Symeon had given Martha a place in some of these dramatic events; on one occasion during an earthquake, she appealed to Symeon to prohibit visitors to the monastery for a day so that he could spend the time supplicating God; she later during the plague implored Symeon to ask God to spare his people.⁶⁰

It is noteworthy that Martha’s hagiographer does not recount these episodes and does not mention the earthquakes at all; given that he seems to be very familiar with the Life of Symeon, this must be seen as a deliberate omission. He thus adopts a very different approach towards the challenges of Symeon’s career from that of the stylite’s own biography: eschewing polemic, he refers to some of the tensions allusively, and veils others in complete silence. The hagiographer in fact seems less ambitious than the author of the Life of Symeon in his claims about the powers of holy men. He generally avoids recounting mass miracles conducted for the benefit of many people (the most ambitious are the healing of several villages from the plague; all the others relate to one or two individuals). We should remember, here, that the hagiographer may well have been writing during the period of Persian ascendancy in the Middle East, a time of particular strife, and one in which it became still harder to present saints as defensive barriers for the Christian Roman population.

This may relate too to another importance difference between the Life of Martha and the Life of Symeon; Martha’s hagiographer is far more willing to recognize multiple sources of holiness and sanctity. As argued in the previous chapter, Symeon’s hagiographer seems to suppress deliberately any explicit reference to rival holy men or relics, from Symeon Stylites the Elder to the holy Thomas whose body was reported to have stopped an outbreak of the plague in Antioch. Martha’s hagiographer is much less exclusionary: not only does he present Martha’s holiness as a complement to Symeon’s, claiming that ‘even now Christ ceaselessly works healings through her’, he also refers to various other relics and sources of sanctity.⁶¹ He draws upon the story of Thomas also recounted in the Ecclesiastical History of Evagrios Scholastikos. Evagrios reports that Thomas was initially buried in the ‘tombs of the foreigners’ in Daphne, but that, when his body kept miraculously appearing on top of new corpses added into the tomb, bishop Ephraim organized for his body to be translated to Antioch itself.⁶² Martha’s hagiographer refers to this more obliquely; Martha expresses the desire to be buried in the pandect in Daphne, where ‘the blessed and holy Thomas’ had lain until he was glorified and transferred with honour to Antioch.⁶³ The hagiographer thus tries to set Martha in relation to this renowned Antiochene holy men, perhaps reflecting a desire to integrate her cult into the broader regional holy landscape.

Martha is also presented as a devotee of numerous holy men and martyrs: she tells Symeon that ‘journeying to every holy house continuously I have zealously implored the holy martyrs of Christ our God to shield and help you. I have honoured every holy man, stealing [?] prayers for you.’⁶⁴ This is particularly striking, since it suggests that even Symeon himself was in need of the intercession and prayers of martyrs and holy men. In addition, the final section of the text revolves around the acquisition of a piece of the ‘life-giving’ True Cross. The fragment of the Cross is sent to Symeon in a reliquary which also contains fragments from the rock of Golgotha and the rock rolled by the angel from Christ’s tomb.⁶⁵ The hagiographer describes the relic of the Cross as ‘more precious than every relic of the saints, than every treasure’.⁶⁶

The hagiographer thus shows the ‘Wonderful Mountain’ in possession of multiple sources of holiness: not only Symeon himself, but also Martha and a relic of the True Cross. He also acknowledges the broader landscape of sanctity, referring to other Antiochene saints and conceding that even Symeon could benefit from others’ prayers. As with the avoidance of large-scale miracles, this may represent a subtle downsizing of ambitions, a tacit acknowledgement that Symeon did not bear the full responsibility of interceding for humanity to God. This argument should not be pressed too far; Symeon still clearly bears considerable miraculous powers in the Life and is certainly regarded as a vessel of salvation. The Guardian of the Cross in Jerusalem, for instance, implores Symeon to intercede for him ‘so that through your blessed prayers I may meet with some small mercy from the saviour Christ’.⁶⁷ Nonetheless, the multiplying of sources of holiness seems again to show a subtle shifting of approach away from the grander claims of the stylite’s own hagiographer.

Above all, this changed approach is shown by Martha’s hagiographer’s exceptional interest in liturgy, ritual, and the sacraments. This is arguably the dominant theme of the Life, and one which knits together its unusual structure and sometimes divergent sections. Whereas Symeon’s hagiographer used extensive descriptions of ritual to emphasize Symeon’s ‘integration’ into the broader Church, Martha’s hagiographer goes further, presenting liturgy and the sacraments as the key basis of Christian salvation.⁶⁸ At the same time, he presents an individualized view of miracles, placing responsibility for the avoidance of illness, for healings, and for salvation, on individual Christians’ proper performance of ritual and liturgical practices.

Liturgy and Ritual Practice

Liturgy and ritual suffuse the Life of Martha, linking the different, and sometimes apparently disparate, sections of the work. In the first part of the text, describing her lifetime, Martha is not depicted as an ascetic; rather her life is marked by pious attendance to priests and monks, and by devoted participation in various liturgical rituals: ‘she took care of the offering of many lights and much incense’, while:

in all her days she did not miss the lamplight and dawn services, being especially enthusiastic for the night vigils performed at memorials for the holy martyrs. The first to attend the church and never held back by any concern, she partook of the life that saves us, the body and blood of the son of God…throughout the holy and divine liturgy she gave incense to the priests, asking them to join with her in her requests to God.⁶⁹

A monk urged her to sit down in church, but she rebuked him respectfully, saying that sitting during the liturgy was contemptuous of God.⁷⁰ She is said to have admired, anointed, and refreshed priests.⁷¹ Even her charity took place in a sacramental context: she provided cloths for farmers who were baptizing their children (and was at her request buried wrapped in some of these cloths), as well as taking care of the dead.⁷² Martha’s Life is far from the first hagiographic work to emphasize its subject’s participation in church rituals. As we have seen, however, its author neglects other tropes of female piety such as asceticism and dutiful wifehood, with the effect that liturgical participation is presented as the key element in Martha’s holiness.

Liturgy is still more important in the next section of the Life, Martha’s death. She prepares for death by participating in the sacraments and the liturgy: she takes the Eucharist in Symeon’s monastery, and goes to the church of John the Baptist to pray, ‘since a service was being conducted’.⁷³ She tells Symeon in one of her last addresses to him that:

During every service and before every altar, with endless incense I have offered tears to God for your survival, and journeying to every holy house continuously I have zealously implored the holy martyrs of Christ our God to shield and help you. I have honoured every holy man, stealing [?] prayers for you.⁷⁴

As discussed above, this is especially noteworthy, as it suggests that not only Martha herself but also Symeon was in need of ritual supplications before God, and the intercession of martyrs and holy men.

To some extent, an emphasis on liturgical preparations for death is conventional, and must reflect actual practice as well as the hagiographer’s interest.⁷⁵ Yet Martha’s hagiographer goes further than most earlier hagiography, in stating explicitly that it was Martha’s devotion to church, and participation in rituals and sacraments, that achieved her salvation. While it is true that her palace in heaven, seen by her in a vision before her death, was supposedly built by Symeon, the Virgin Mary says to her, ‘look, honour has been given to you; stay here, as a reward for fearing the Lord and honouring the church of God [emphasis mine]’.⁷⁶ Furthermore, Martha herself emphasizes before her death that salvation is achieved through the Eucharist, saying in a prayer to God, ‘I have gained confidence because I trust to be saved through the salvific participation in your life-giving body and blood, given to us by you for the forgiveness of mistakes, so that you may remove my transgressions and purify my sins’.⁷⁷

After her death, too, the importance of appropriate funerary rites for salvation is stressed; after John, a lector and local villager, has a vision of a chariot of cherubim over Martha’s tomb, Symeon tells him:

Glorify the Lord, child. For you have found grace to see, as far as was possible for you, the holy creatures of the cherubim who rides a chariot and arrived in response to the invocation of the hymnody and sanctified in her relic her falling asleep in death, because both I and she, conceived in sins, needed release granted by him, while standing in the halls of the Lord’s house.⁷⁸

Symeon’s claim that not only Martha, but he himself, needs a heavenly visitation in response to the hymnody to assure salvation, is particularly striking. Although liturgy is undoubtedly a key motif of the Life of Symeon the Younger—the text is suffused with mentions of incense, with elaborate descriptions of liturgical processions, and with references to the Eucharist—there is less sense that participation in ecclesiastical rites was the key requirement for salvation.⁷⁹ Rather, the focus on liturgy in the text has been interpreted as an attempt to emphasize the stylite’s ‘integration’ within ecclesial worship.⁸⁰ The Life of Martha thus accords an even more important role to liturgy and the sacraments; the hagiographer uses her brief life and her lengthy death scene to present an inclusive vision of salvation, focusing on dedication to ecclesial rituals, participation in the Eucharist, and proper funeral rites.

In part, this reflects a growing tendency in seventh-century hagiography to emphasize the importance of participation in the sacraments and church rituals.⁸¹ Leontios of Neapolis, in the Life of John the Almsgiver, recounts the story of a clergyman who never went to church and was jealous of his neighbour’s—another priest’s—prosperity, until discovering that the remedy was regular church attendance.⁸² Leontios is still more explicit in his Life of Symeon the Holy Fool, making his hero include failure to take communion among a list of heinous crimes:

While the saint was there (in Emesa), he cried out against many because of the Holy Spirit, and reproached thieves and fornicators. Some he faulted, crying out that they had not taken communion often, and others he reproached for perjury, so that through his inventiveness he nearly put an end to sinning in the whole city [emphasis mine].⁸³

George, the author of the Life of Theodore of Sykeon, attributes to his holy man a long speech emphasizing the importance of attending church and participating in the liturgy, after his servants have failed to wake him for the night service out of concern for his health:

For if, in the presence of a mortal king, not only the healthy, but even the mutilated and the sick hasten to praise him, how much more ought we run together zealously, by night and day, at all times, to praise and laud the heavenly and immortal king of glory, Christ our God, not only those of us who are in good bodily health, but also those who are ill should display enthusiasm, so that he may both drive away our illnesses, if he knows that this would benefit us, and purify our souls from wicked deeds and thoughts and, like a debtor, pay to us the wages for our praises, wages which are not earthly but celestial? And just as one of the poorer people, if he is suddenly brought into the imperial halls and becomes a familiar and unhindered companion to the emperor, desires to have greater and longer association with him…how much more ought we to make greater our conversation of prayer and praise with the heavenly emperor, and to linger desirously in church, and not to hasten to fling off quickly the office of prayer, as if it were a very heavy burden and not something which brings a wage, and not to hasten, at devilish prompting, to depart from church as if from a prison, which is a great transgression? For we should bear this in mind, that when we enter into the house of the Lord, we ascend to heaven itself and we find the heavenly emperor seated on his throne of glory, surrounded by cherubim and seraphim…. and that, although all those attend him with fear, we are allowed to speak to him confidently through ourselves and not through an interpreter, and to praise him and to ask for what we want; but when we leave from there [i.e. church]…we descend to the earthly and material world, bound by our wicked thoughts and preoccupations.⁸⁴

George’s attention is focused very much on the practical (even if often delayed) benefits of church attendance: if we praise God, we are owed a heavenly reward; if we speak to him in church, we can ask for whatever we want. We may even be healed of our diseases, if he judges that this is in our best interests. It is thus, in a sense, a pragmatic rather than spiritual message, and might be thought to be aimed at a wide, not exclusively monastic audience. The act of attending church is made a key constitutive element of salvation.

Martha’s hagiographer is thus far from unique in his interest in ecclesial rituals and in the sacraments; in general, seventh-century hagiography was increasingly oriented towards the liturgical. He does, however, go further than most of his contemporaries, in choosing as his hero a figure who bears no resemblance to the traditional ascetic, monastic subjects of hagiography. Whereas in the Lives of Theodore of Sykeon, John the Almsgiver, and Symeon the Holy Fool, as in other contemporary examples, the new emphasis on liturgy is balanced by a more conventional interest in asceticism, in the Life of Martha liturgy predominates. This is not to suggest that Martha’s hagiographer completely rejected the traditional model of the holy man: in the Life we still find occasional references to Symeon’s performance of impressive miracles.⁸⁵ Yet his choice not to focus on Symeon but on a holy figure presented in very different terms suggests that, even more than many of his contemporaries, he was interested in exploring a different view of piety, and of salvation; salvation is clearly attainable for even an ordinary Christian layperson, as long as he or she is devoted to the rituals of both church and saint’s cult.

How comprehensive, however, is the vision of Martha’s hagiographer? Is he genuinely concerned to encourage devotion to ecclesial and cultic rituals in general, or is his intention solely to promote participation in the cults of Symeon and his mother on the ‘Wonderful Mountain’? The answer, arguably, is twofold. In the first part of the Life, that dealing with Martha’s lifestyle and her death, it does seem that the author presents a general model for salvation. His descriptions of Martha’s devotion to services in honour of the martyrs, of her care for priests, and of her visits to ‘every holy house’ and ‘every holy man’, as well as his emphasis on the salvific powers of the Eucharist and of the funeral hymnody, do not appear to be tied to a particular cult (although her devotion to Symeon is repeatedly stressed).⁸⁶ After the narrative of her death, however, the hagiographer’s focus changes: he is still preoccupied with liturgy and ritual, but now focuses predominantly on the ceremonies at Martha’s shrine. In other words, his ambitions appear to shift from providing a general paradigm for the ideal worshipper to reinforcing the importance of participation in the cultic community on the ‘Wonderful Mountain’.

This new focus emerges very shortly after Martha’s death, in the descriptions of her funeral rites. The hagiographer recounts, in some detail, the series of liturgical acts performed in her honour: her initial burial in Daphne and the transfer of her body from Daphne to Symeon’s monastery are accompanied by psalms, hymns, and incense; when she is brought to the monastery an all-night vigil is performed before her tomb is dug, and in the morning a crowd of clergy and laymen gather, who bury her and perform the Eucharist and funeral ceremony.⁸⁷ After the Eucharist, villagers from Gandigoron come to the monastery, and perform another all-night vigil, ‘so that they also might reap the fruits of the blessed woman’s prayers’, implying that participation in her liturgical remembrance was necessary in order to benefit from her intercession.⁸⁸

The hagiographer’s desire to encourage dedication to and participation in the rites at her shrine becomes still clearer in the next section of the Life, that dealing with Martha’s posthumous miracles. Many of the miracles take place in a liturgical or ritual context: for example, a man from Lycaonia who had been afflicted by demons for thirty years, so that he could not hear the divine liturgy, was healed during the nocturnal odes, having being dragged by an invisible power to Martha’s tomb.⁸⁹ Sergios son of Antoninos, from the village of Charandamas, was cured of a severe fever at the rites for the thirtieth day after Martha’s funeral.⁹⁰ The lamps from her all-night vigils also had healing properties: John, the lector, ‘found a good moment and, unnoticed by everyone, took the wicks of the lamps being burnt for the night vigil’; he took them to his village where he used them to heal the sick and drive out demons.⁹¹ By connecting Martha’s performance of miracles with the liturgical ceremonies at her shrine, the hagiographer seems to be encouraging attendance at these services.

He is also, more specifically, encouraging proper ritual practice, in particular by cautionary tales involving those who neglected their duties. As discussed earlier in the chapter, several stories in the Life report that monks and other visitors fell ill after refusing to venerate Martha’s body or to light the candle on her tomb. These have a clear didactic purpose, warning the audience of the dangers inherent in neglecting rituals. Indeed, it is arguable that one of the primary functions of the work is to teach the audience how to be a good worshipper. The composite (and unusual) nature of the work, consisting of a short biography followed by an extended account of miracles, facilitates this. Whereas a traditional holy Life, with its emphasis on worldly renunciation and on asceticism, does not provide a realistic role model for most worshippers, the Life of Martha is particularly effective as a didactic work: it combines a paradigmatic Life, stripped of extraneous biographical detail, whose protagonist is essentially depicted as an ideal devotee of shrines and holy men, with miracles, which by their structure are very much focused on what a supplicant should do in order to gain divine assistance.⁹² This is not to deny earlier saints’ Lives any didactic role: clearly, they were often intended at least in part to be instructive, and they too contained warnings against those who did not put their faith in the holy men. Some saints’ Lives, including the Life of Symeon the Younger, contain numerous accounts of miracles performed by the holy men, which could themselves contain guidance for potential supplicants at the shrine. Yet saints’ Lives are oriented on the whole towards the perspective of the saint, whereas in the independent miracle collections of deceased saints the supplicant takes the primary role; we perceive the saint through their eyes. The focus is thus on the experience of the supplicant, making them a particularly effective didactic medium for teaching proper cultic practice.⁹³

The unusual feature of the Life of Martha is the combination, within a single work, of these instructive miracle stories with the short Life of the saint herself: the text’s audience is therefore presented first with the exemplary paradigm of the life of the perfect worshipper, and subsequently with miracle stories which warn against the dangerous consequences of improper ritual practice. The work also differs notably from most late sixth- and seventh-century miracle collections, in that it relates to a recently deceased saint, whereas the majority concern long-established cults of early Christian martyrs (including Cosmas and Damian, Cyrus and John, Artemios, and Demetrios). This highlights, again, Martha’s exceptional relatability: she was a near-contemporary figure who had died an ordinary death, rather than a famous, martyred, hero from an era of Christian history which had gained legendary status.

The focus on the experience of the supplicant means that primary responsibility for the success of healing miracles is generally placed on the afflicted individual and their performance of proper ritual practice, rather than on the saint. Martha’s hagiographer suggests that, at least within Symeon’s monastery, disasters only afflicted sinners. After one monk of the monastery, ‘possessed by a scornful and disbelieving thought’, grumbled and quenched the candle on Martha’s coffin, he fell very ill.⁹⁴ He realised that he must have sinned: ‘and so since the grace given to the holy man did not allow anything bad to befall any of them unless one of his commands was disobeyed, the brother naturally asked what he had done wrong.’⁹⁵ He is only cured after confessing and repenting of his sin. Responsibility for well-being thus lies with the individual: illnesses are punishments for sins, and healing can be secured, as the conclusions of this and similar stories show, through repentance and proper liturgical veneration of Martha. Similar stories in which individuals who misbehave are punished until they repent and are cured do appear in the Life of Symeon as in many other hagiographies; this is no innovation by Martha’s hagiographer. But the predominance of these stories, combined with the avoidance of larger-scale miracles, suggests an effort to refocus responsibility for salvation away from the saint and on to the supplicant.⁹⁶

The liturgical and ritual themes of the Life come to a crescendo in its final sections, as the hagiographer completes his portrayal of the sacred origins of the ceremonies at Martha’s shrine. The penultimate major section of the Life, that dealing with the construction of an oratory for Martha and Symeon’s bodies, is suffused with images of incense, prayer, and processions. The series of visions witnessed by the brothers of the monastery encouraging the construction of the shrine were highly liturgical. Symeon had a vision of the shrine being built, and the tomb being moved, ‘and young children circling around the coffin and singing to God most beautifully and delightfully and echoing one another’s alleluia’.⁹⁷ One of the brothers saw Martha outlining the shape of the oratory, and her tomb surrounded by candelabras and shining lights and people singing psalms and alleluias.⁹⁸ Symeon again, in a passage which is lengthy but worth quoting, saw Martha performing a divine doxology which affected his own liturgical practice:

He saw the blessed woman…with great sweetness sending a melodious and delightful angelic utterance on high and saying three times, ‘Glory to you, God, glory to you, alleluia’, and the whole mandra echoed with her as if uttering a voice, and her relic in the tomb was shaken by the doxology. And seized by fear and joy at such grace which God had given to His servant-woman, he remembered divine scripture saying, ‘humbled bones will rejoice’.⁹⁹ Then he stayed still, guarding in his heart that song of the doxology towards God, and from his soul’s delight he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and joined in echoing the heavenly doxology. When the time for the nightly hymns called them, the brothers assembled with him as usual, and taught by him they too joined in echoing that God-given hymn until the first dawning of the Sabbath. And he enjoined that henceforth the same should be done at the lamplight service of the Sabbath and of holy Sunday and every evening, one brother reciting such a hymn three times in front of the tomb and everyone chanting three times in response.¹⁰⁰

Here Symeon’s visionary experience directly affected the liturgy as practised at the monastery; the chant he heard in his vision was apparently incorporated into the lamplight services. The hagiographer thus presents the origins of the current rituals at the shrine as supernatural, thereby sacralizing both the rites themselves and, by implication, their participants. Even the planning of the shrine was sanctified by ritual; Symeon, on Sunday, ordered the plan for the oratory to be drawn, ‘scattering incense’.¹⁰¹ When Martha’s body was transferred to the completed shrine, priests and faithful laymen gathered, with further psalming and hymning, and miracles were performed.¹⁰² Every stage of the construction of the oratory, from preliminary inspiration, to practical planning, and its culmination in the translation of Martha’s body, was thus marked and sanctified by liturgical rituals.

The final section of the Life, the account of Symeon’s acquisition of a relic of the True Cross, stands apart from the rest of the Life and may, as suggested above, have been absent from the work as originally conceived and written. Martha is noticeably less active here: of the nineteen ‘chapters’ (52–70), she is mentioned in only seven, usually briefly, and never speaks. The only miracles are performed through Symeon, not Martha. The lengthy exchange of elaborate letters between Symeon and the staurophylax (Guardian of the Cross) Thomas has no parallels in other parts of the work. Nonetheless, this section is thematically linked to the rest of the Life through, again, the liturgy.¹⁰³ Symeon asks God for a piece of the cross:

For the memorial of your servant-woman whom you have taken to yourself, in return for making known to her faithful soul how to carry in her hands your life-giving cross, when I ascended from power to power to this elevation, and she went ahead in a flood of tears and chanted this refrain: ‘Save us, son of God, who was crucified for us, alleluia.’¹⁰⁴

Martha is thus associated with the cross through past ritual; she carried a cross in the procession in which Symeon moved to his column in the new monastery.¹⁰⁵ Furthermore, it becomes clear that the relic of the True Cross, once attained by Symeon, will be connected to Martha through liturgy: he tells the priest Paul, envoy of the staurophylax, that he wants the relic ‘to be venerated on the day in which His [God’s] love of man consented to sanctify my mother’s falling asleep’.¹⁰⁶ The Life claims that the relic of the cross was brought to Symeon’s monastery on the one-year anniversary of his ascent to the column—although other chronological indicators suggest that this was in fact impossible—highlighting the author’s desire to associate the arrival of the cross with important ceremonies at the monastery.¹⁰⁷ The section concludes with a detailed description of the memorial service held on the first anniversary of Martha’s death:

When the twelve-month period was complete, it was time for the first memorial of the blessed Martha’s falling asleep, and although the brothers said nothing to anyone, by the grace of God great crowds of men and women assembled with candles and lamps to conduct her memorial service. They performed an all-night vigil and then, just before dawn, the life-giving cross was brought forward and all those who had assembled paid reverence to it with hymns, crying: ‘We revere your cross, Master, and we glorify your holy resurrection.’ After the proskynesis the priest Antonios took the cross—while the deacons escorted it in procession with fans and censers, chanting, ‘save us, son of God, who was crucified for us, alleluia’—and laid it down in the treasury. And after a series of readings they celebrated a perfect [eucharistic] service, at which the servant of God conducted the divine mystery.¹⁰⁸

This scene firmly places the relic of the True Cross within the ritual context of the whole Life; again we see candles, lamps, an all-night vigil, psalming and the Eucharist, all in honour of Martha’s memory. The hagiographer, by emphasizing the unparalleled value of the Cross—he describes Symeon requesting ‘something more precious than every relic of the saints, than every treasure, a visible and venerable part of the Lord’s unblemished and salvific cross’¹⁰⁹—implies that its acquisition conferred still greater status and power on the memorial ceremonies on the ‘Wonderful Mountain’.

Conclusion

The liturgical rhythms of the shrine, and in particular the memorial services for Martha’s death, provide the main unifying theme across the Life of Martha. At one level, this has a pragmatic function: to encourage participation in these memorial services and thereby to promote the cult of the shrine on the ‘Wonderful Mountain᾽. There seems to be an apologetic motivation at play: the hagiographer repeatedly defends Symeon from any accusation of having promoted Martha’s cult for self-interested reasons. Martha’s position as a mother of an ascetic venerated in her own right was very unusual and seems to have required defending. More broadly, however, the focus on liturgy seems to reflect a new approach to the challenge of sustaining a saint’s cult in a time, the early seventh century, of widespread crisis. The text instructs its audience in how to live a good, liturgical, and sacramental life as a devotee of the saints, more comprehensively than would be possible in a traditional Life of an ascetic holy man; Martha is a direct model for her own worshippers in a way which her son Symeon could not be. This is not to say that the Life of Martha rejects the old model of the holy man—Symeon still appears to possess impressive powers in the work, although they are the focus of less attention—but it does seem to be exploring newer, and in some ways more practical, models for holiness. The text is in many respects less ambitious in scope than Symeon’s Life: no emperors or great nobles appear as devotees of the saint; there are few mass miracles; and the miracles are almost exclusively healing miracles. The hagiographer acknowledges multiple sources of sanctity and holiness, and avoids the polemical attacks on rich pagans which are such a prominent theme in the stylite’s Life. This might be because the hagiographer’s subject is a woman, and in some respects only an adjunct to her more powerful son. It is more likely, however, given the period in which the Life of Martha seems to have been produced, that its character in fact reflects wider developments in attitudes to the holy; in the late sixth and seventh century many miracle collections of male saints were produced which showed similar tendencies towards less ambitious, predominantly medical, miracles, and in which the Lives of holy figures were diversifying, as traditional, extravagantly ascetic, monastic miracle workers lost their dominant hold over hagiographers’ imaginations. It is these wider developments in hagiography, and their implications for our understanding of the Lives of Symeon and Martha, that form the subject of the final chapter of this book.

¹ A version of this chapter has been published in the Journal of Early Christian Studies: Parker 2016.

² Martha’s Life has recently been briefly discussed in Boero and Kuper 2020, pp. 401–5.

³ Van den Ven 1962–70, I, p. 78*.

⁴ Ibid. p. 92*.

⁵ Ibid. pp. 89*–90*.

⁶ Ibid. pp. 67*–78*. The Life of Martha has survived in four manuscripts, all of which transmit almost identical versions of the text. All four also contain the Life of Symeon (which also survives in several manuscripts that do not contain Martha’s Life). For detailed description of the manuscripts, see ibid. pp. 12*–19*.

⁷ Ibid. p. 78*.

⁸ Τὰς ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς ἐκτετυπωμένας ἐκ τῆς εἰκόνος αὐτοῦ σφραγῖδας: Life of Martha 54 (p. 298).

⁹ For the different types of tokens, see Lafontaine-Dosogne 1967, pp. 146–7; Vikan 1984, pp. 73–4.

¹⁰ See below pp. 172–8, 180.

¹¹ Boero and Kuper 2020, pp. 402, 404–5.

¹² Life of Martha 51 (pp. 295–6).

¹³ As I have argued in more detail in Parker 2016.

¹⁴ Coon 1997, p. xxii; compare also Talbot 1998, p. 2.

¹⁵ Constantinou has identified a wider range of ‘roles’ performed by female saints in hagiography; she focuses on six which she regards as particularly common, ‘the martyr, the penitent, the cross-dresser, the nun, the abbess and the pious wife’, but states that several others existed, including ‘the virgin’, ‘the defender of images’, and the ‘mother of a saint’ (Constantinou 2005, pp. 17–18). Yet given that, as she acknowledges, there are only one or two examples of these last three categories—the Life of Martha is the only example she finds of the ‘mother of a saint’—I would question whether the term ‘role’, in this schematic sense, is useful here.

¹⁶ For the prominent role of the body and associated themes in female hagiography, see, above all, Constantinou 2005: she argues that ‘holy women achieve sanctity almost exclusively through their bodies’ (p. 16).

¹⁷ Life of Martha 2 (p. 254). See Coon 1997, pp. 31–41.

¹⁸ The Life of Symeon takes a more conventional approach, claiming that Martha was very reluctant to marry but eventually yielded to marriage because of the need to obey her parents’ wishes and because of divine instruction: Life of Symeon 1 (p. 3).

¹⁹ Harvey 1990, pp. 45–6; Coon 1997, pp. xvii, 77, 94.

²⁰ See Coon 1997, pp. 41–4. Martha is compared to the biblical Martha explicitly in Life of Martha 10 (pp. 260–1); ministration is also a prominent theme in 4–5 (pp. 256–7) and 7–8 (pp. 258–9). Her humility is emphasized at Life of Martha 10 (pp. 260–1) and 1 (p. 254).

²¹ Παρῃτεῖτο παντὶ νεκρῷ πλησιάσαι, βδελυκτὸν τοῦτο λογιζόμενος. Τοῦτο δὲ αὐτὸ καὶ ἐπὶ τοῦ λειψάνου τῆς ὁσίας πεποιηκὼς οὐ προσήγγισεν, οὐδὲ τὸν ὤμον ὑπέθηκεν: Life of Martha 35 (p. 280).

²² Ἀπεστράφην βαστάσαι τὸ τίμιον λείψανον τῆς μητρὸς τοῦ ἁγίου Συμεὼν καὶ διὰ τοῦτό μοι τὰ δεινὰ ταῦτα ἐπέστησαν κριτήρια: ibid. 35 (p. 280).

²³ Προσεγγίσας…τῇ τιμίᾳ σορῷ τῆς ὁσίας ἐπὶ τὸ ἅψαι τὴν κανδήλαν, περιφρονήσεως καὶ ἀπιστίας λογισμῷ κατασχεθεὶς ἔσβεσεν μᾶλλον καὶ μετὰ γογγυσμοῦ ἀνεχώρει, μὴ διακρίνας ἐν ἑαυτῷ πταῖσμα εἶναι τοῦτο: ibid. 43 (p. 285).

²⁴ Τί διαλογιζόμενοι οὐχ ἥψατέ μου κανδήλαν ἢ ἀγνοεῖτε ὅτι τοῦ ἐπουρανίου φωτός εἰμι κοινωνὸς ἐγὼ καὶ οὐ προσδέομαί τινος τῶν τοιούτων, εἰ μὴ διὰ τὴν ὑμῶν σωτηρίαν; ibid. 39 (p. 283).

²⁵ On scepticism in saints’ Lives, see above pp. 134, 149–50.

²⁶ ἐπειδὴ γὰρ ἑώρα τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς ὁ ἅγιος καταφρονοῦντας καὶ μὴ ἅπτοντας τὴν ἐπὶ τῆς τιμίας αὐτῆς λάρνακος κανδήλαν, οὐκ ἐπέθετο αὐτοῖς τοῦτο ποιεῖν∙ τοῦτο μέν, ὡς ἂν μὴ νομισθείη ὑπὸ τὼν ἀπίστων καὶ ἀσθενεστέρους ἐχόντων λογισμοὺς αὐτὸς ἐπιτηδεύειν καὶ ἀπαιτεῖν τὰ πρὸς τιμὴν αὐτῆς∙ τοῦτο δέ, καὶ τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς παιδεύων καὶ διὰ τῆς πείρας διδαχθῆναι βουλόμενος ἑκουσίως καὶ οὐκ ἀναγκαστῶς προσαγαγεῖν τὰς ὀφειλομένας τιμὰς τοῖς ἁγίοις: Life of Martha 39 (p. 282).

²⁷ ὁ ἅγιος καίτοι πρόθεσιν ἐξ ἀποκαλύψεως ἔχων τοιαύτην ἐπεῖχεν ἑαυτὸν οἰκονομικῶς τὸ τηνικαῦτα καὶ οὐκ ἠθέλησεν ἀπάρξασθαι τοῦ τοιούτου ἔργου, τοῦτο μὲν διὰ τὸ μὴ πειρασθῆναί τινας τῶν ἁπλουστέρων καὶ ἀπίστων ματαίους ἀναπλάττοντας ἐν ἑαυτοῖς λογισμοὺς καὶ καταλαλοῦντας κατὰ τοῦ δικαίου ἀνομίαν, τοῦτο δὲ καὶ βουλευόμενος ἕνα οἶκον ἐπιτηδεῦσαι ἑαυτῷ τε καὶ αὐτῇ, ὥστε αὐτοὺς καὶ ἐν τούτῳ ἀχωρίστους ἀλλήλων εἶναι, ὅπερ καὶ γέγονε μετά τινας χρόνους: ibid. 46 (p. 288).

²⁸ Peter Hatlie provides a useful summary of Byzantine texts dealing with what he calls ‘ordinary mothers’; the only late antique hagiographies he identifies as treating this theme are those of Martha and Alypios: Hatlie 2009, p. 42.

²⁹ Charles Kuper has suggested that Alypios’s hagiographer was inspired by the Life of Martha; Kuper has published a translation and discussion of the Life of Alypios in the Oxford Cult of Saints Database, Charles N. Kuper, Cult of Saints, E06497: http://csla.history.ox.ac.uk/record.ptwhp?recid=E06497 (accessed 19 March 2021); idem, Cult of Saints, E07158: http://csla.history.ox.ac.uk/record.php?recid=E07158. The Life of Alypios may well have been written after the Life of Martha, since Alypios himself only died during the reign of Heraclius (610–41). The Life of Alypios does seem to echo various stories associated with Symeon the Younger: for instance, Alypios’s legs and knees are said to have worn away because of his ascetic practices (Life of Alypios 24 (pp. 166–7); compare Life of Symeon 31 (pp. 30–1)); and he gave his garment to a pauper (Life of Alypios 23 (pp. 165–5); compare Life of Symeon 77 (pp. 65–6)). Kuper’s suggestion that the prominence attributed to Alypios’s mother may reflect the Martha story thus seems plausible.

³⁰ Christ’s injunction to his followers to separate from their families appears most notably at Luke 14:26, and, in a less harsh form, at Matthew 10:37–8. For a discussion of how early Christian authors interpreted these passages, see Jacobs 2003. For examples in hagiography, see for instance the sensitive discussion in Flusin 1983, pp. 94–7, of the theme of family and the separation therefrom in Cyril of Scythopolis’s Lives of Euthymios and Sabas; the latter text has some stories emphasizing separation, but also allows Sabas to maintain a spiritual relationship with his mother.

³¹ Bohairic Life of Pachomios 37 (p. 39, trans. pp. 60–1).

³² First Greek Life of Pachomios 37 (pp. 22–3; trans. p. 323), with reference to Matthew 10:37; see Flusin 1983, p. 97 n. 58.

³³ Antonios, Life of Symeon Stylites 14 (pp. 36–9, trans. Doran pp. 92–3). Symeon is not hostile to his mother in the episode, but refuses to see her even though she is about to die, only communicating with her through messages; the hagiographer notes she only found him after not knowing where he was for twenty years. The contrast with Symeon the Younger and Martha is notable—although Lane Fox 1997, pp. 184–5, has suggested that Antonios may have been drawing on the legend of Martha in describing the burial of the Elder’s mother at the foot of the column. Symeon the Elder’s mother sometimes appeared in later artistic depictions of the stylite, which Lois Drewer has suggested may also have been inspired by the story of Martha: Drewer 1991–2, pp. 262–4.

³⁴ See esp. Schroeder 2020, ch. 8 (with further references).

³⁵ Αὐτοῦ τὸ ἔλεος ἐξῄτησας, τὸ κρεῖττον ὑπὲρ ζωὰς καὶ πατέρα καὶ μητέρα οὐκ ἐγνώρισας· ὁ γὰρ δημιουργός σου πατὴρ καὶ μητὴρ καὶ γένος ἐστι σὺν πᾶσι τοῖς ἡγιασμένοις: Life of Martha 21 (p. 269); this may echo the Life of Symeon in which the child Symeon is said to have repeated, as a sign of his separation from earthly things, ‘I have a father and I do not have a father; I have a mother and I do not have a mother’ (Life of Symeon 5, p. 7).

³⁶ For a comparison of Martha’s presentation in the two, see Hatlie 2009, p. 51 n. 78.

³⁷ See Van den Ven 1962–70, I, p. 87*.

³⁸ Martha is most active in Life of Symeon 1–8 (pp. 2–9); Symeon is led away in ibid. 10 (pp. 10–11); for his age, see ibid. 12 (p. 11).

³⁹ Ibid. 26 (p. 35), 71 (p. 61), 105–7 (pp. 85–8), 113 (p. 93), 129 (p. 118).

⁴⁰ Ibid. 221 (p. 190).

⁴¹ See e.g. ibid. 101 (p. 79), 127 (p. 127).

⁴² Lafontaine-Dosogne 1967, pp. 143–58, 168–81; Drewer 1991–2, pp. 266–7. There are signs, however, that Martha was sometimes represented before the medieval period, since a mould for pilgrim tokens which may date to the seventh or eighth century has been found which does depict Martha and Konon (Lafontaine-Dosogne 1967, p. 148).

⁴³ Life of Symeon 221 (p. 190).

⁴⁴ Lafontaine-Dosogne 1967, pp. 122–8; Djobadze 1986, pp. 79–81; Henry 2015 pp. 39–41, 89–96, 132–7, and passim; Belgin-Henry 2018, pp. 151, 153. Henry does suggest that other factors may have contributed to the decision to expand the complex at this date.

⁴⁵ The literature on asceticism and family is considerable: for studies which emphasize the complexity of this topic, and elucidate more positive as well as negative attitudes towards family, see e.g. Jacobs 2003; Krawiec 2003; Schroeder 2020, esp. ch. 8.

⁴⁶ For her concern for her son, see e.g. Life of Martha 2 (p. 254), 9 (p. 260), 20 (pp. 267–8).

⁴⁷ Οὐχ ὑμεῖς με ἐδοξάσατε, ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ χάριν τοῦ υἱοῦ μου δεδόξασμαι, ἀλλ’ ἦλθέ μοι ἡ χάρις καὶ ἡ δόξα ἐκεῖθεν ὅθεν ἀπεκδεχομένη ὑπέμεινα τὸν Κύριον καὶ προσέσχε μοι καὶ εἰσήκουσε τῆς δεήσεώς μου: ibid. 40 (p. 283).

⁴⁸ Van den Ven, Vie ancienne I, p. 87*.

⁴⁹ Life of Martha 51 (p. 295), 73 (p. 314).

⁵⁰ Ibid. 50 (pp. 293–5).

⁵¹ ἄνευ χρημάτων πληροῦσθαι τὸ ἔργον: ibid. 64 (p. 307).

⁵² Ibid. 35 (pp. 279–80).

⁵³ Μή σε λυπείτωσαν, τέκνον, λοιδορίαι, παρακαλῶ· μηδὲ ἀγανάκτει ἐπὶ ἀπιστίᾳ τινῶν, ἀλλὰ πάντων ὑπερεύχου τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ, τὸν διὰ τὴν ἄμετρον αὐτοῦ φιλανθρωπίαν εἰς τοιαύτην ἐλάσαντα ταπείνωσιν καὶ λέγοντα περὶ τῶν σταυρωσάντων αὐτόν· ‘Πάτερ, ἄφες αὐτοῖς, οὐ γὰρ οἴδασι τί ποιοῦσιν’: ibid. 21 (p. 268). Cf. Luke 23:34.

⁵⁴ Μνείαν ἀεὶ ποιοῦ ἐν ταῖς πρὸς Θεόν σου δεήσεσι τοῦ κόσμου παντός· ὑπερεύχου δὲ καὶ τῆς πόλεώς σου ἐν ᾗ ἐγεννήθης καὶ τῶν ἐν αὐτῇ…τοὺς σκληροκαρδίους συγγνώμην πάρεχε διὰ τοὺς ὄντας ἐπ’ αὐτῇ φιλοχρίστους: Life of Martha 22 (p. 269).

⁵⁵ Ὑπέβαλε δὲ αὐτῷ ὁ διάβολος εἰπεῖν ἐν ἑαυτῷ περὶ τοῦ δούλου τοῦ Θεοῦ ὅτι ὁ ἄνθρωπος οὗτος φάρμακος ἐστι καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ἐνεργοῦσιν ἐν αὐτῷ αἱ δυνάμεις. ‘Τίς γὰρ εἶδεν ἢ ἤκουσεν ἀπὸ τοῦ αἰῶνος εἰ μὴ ἐν τῇ παρουσίᾳ τοῦ Κυρίου τοσαῦτα σημεῖα γεγενῆσθαι ὑπό τινος; οὐκ ἔστιν οὖν ταῦτα χρηστῶν ἔργων, κἀγὼ πεπλάνημαι βαστάζων αὐτοῦ τὰς ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς ἐκτετυπωμένας ἐκ τῆς εἰκόνος αὐτοῦ σφραγῖδας’: ibid. 54 (p. 298).

⁵⁶ Ibid. 55 (p. 299).

⁵⁷ There are no exactly comparable accounts of scepticism about Symeon’s tokens in the stylite’s own Life, but we do find, on the one hand, general suspicion that his miracles might be wrought through magic (see e.g. Life of Symeon 234 (p. 211)), and, on the other, a reluctance to accept that his tokens are as effective as contact with the saint himself (see ibid. 231 (p. 206), with Vikan 1984, pp. 72–3).

⁵⁸ Life of Martha 16 (p. 265); ibid. 34–5 (pp. 279–80), 37 (p. 281).

⁵⁹ ἦν γὰρ τῷ χρόνῳ ἐκείνῳ θνήσις ἀνθρώπων μεγάλη: ibid. 34 (p. 279).

⁶⁰ Life of Symeon 107 (p. 87), 126–7 (pp. 113–15).

⁶¹ Καὶ νῦν δι’ αὐτῆς ἀπαύστως ἐνεργεῖ Χριστὸς τὰ ἰάματα: Life of Martha 73 (p. 314); similar comments are expressed in 51 (p. 295).

⁶² Evagrios Scholastikos, Ecclesiastical History IV.35 (p. 185; trans. p. 240). A similar story about Thomas, albeit with some differences (it is set during the patriarchate of Domninos rather than Ephraim, and Thomas’s body miraculously expelled women from the tomb) is recounted by John Moschos in the Spiritual Meadow 88 (col. 2915).

⁶³ ὁ μακάριος καὶ ἅγιος Θωμᾶς: Life of Martha 24 (p. 271).

⁶⁴ εἰς πάντα οἶκον ἅγιον πορευομένη συχνῶς, ἐκτενῶς ἐδεόμην τῶν ἁγίων μαρτύρων Χριστοῦ τοῦ Θεοῦ ἡμῶν ὑπερασπίσαι σου καὶ ἀντιλάβεσθαι. Πάντα ὅσιον ἄνδρα ἐτίμησα, συλήσασα σοι προσευχάς: ibid. 20 (p. 268).

⁶⁵ Ibid. 69 (pp. 310–11).

⁶⁶ παντὸς λειψάνου ἁγίων, παντὸς δὲ θησαυροῦ τιμιωτέραν: ibid. 60 (p. 304).

⁶⁷ ἵνα διὰ τῶν ὑμετέρων ὁσίων προσευχῶν τύχω μικροῦ ἐλέους παρὰ τοῦ σωτῆρος Χριστοῦ: ibid. 69 (p. 311).

⁶⁸ On liturgy in the Life of Symeon, see Harvey 1998; Booth 2014, pp. 34–7.

⁶⁹ Ἐπεμελεῖτο φώτων πολλῶν καὶ θυμιαμάτων προσαγωγῆς: Life of Martha 2 (p. 254); Ἐν ὅλοις δὲ τοῖς χρόνοις αὐτῆς λυχνικῶν καὶ ἑωθινῶν οὐκ ἀπελιμπάνετο, σπεύδουσα μάλιστα εἰς τὰς νυκτερινὰς διαγρηγορήσεις τὰς γινομένας ἐν ταῖς τῶν ἁγίων μαρτύρων μνήμαις. Συναγομένη δὲ πρώτη ἐν τῷ κυριακῷ καὶ μηδαμῶς ὑπό τινος φροντίδος κωλυομένη μετελάμβανε τὴν σωτήριον ζωὴν ἡμῶν, τὸ σῶμα καὶ τὸ αἷμα τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ Θεοῦ…. ἐν ὅλῃ δὲ τῇ ἁγίᾳ καὶ θείᾳ λειτουργίᾳ ἐπεδίδου τὸ θυμίαμα τοῖς ἱερεῦσιν, αἰτοῦσα καὶ αὐτοὺς συνεργῆσαι αὐτῇ ἐν ταῖς πρὸς Θεὸν δεήσεσιν αὐτῆς: ibid. 3 (p. 255).

⁷⁰ Ibid. 4 (pp. 255–6).

⁷¹ Ibid. 7 (p. 258).

⁷² Ibid. 4 (p. 256), 28 (p. 274), 5 (pp. 256–7).

⁷³ Ibid. 19 (p. 267); Τηνικαῦτα συνάξεως ἐπιτελουμένης: ibid. 26 (p. 272).

⁷⁴ Ἐν πάσῃ λειτουργίᾳ καὶ ἀπέναντι παντὸς θυσιαστηρίου μετὰ θυμιάματος ἀκαταπαύστου ὑπὲρ τῆς ὑπομονῆς σου δάκρυα προσέφερον τῷ Θεῷ καὶ εἰς πάντα οἶκον ἅγιον πορευομένη συχνῶς, ἐκτενῶς ἐδεόμην τῶν ἁγίων μαρτύρων Χριστοῦ τοῦ Θεοῦ ἡμῶν ὑπερασπίσαι σου καὶ ἀντιλάβεσθαι. Πάντα ὅσιον ἄνδρα ἐτίμησα, συλήσασα σοι προσευχάς: ibid. 20 (p. 268).

⁷⁵ Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Macrina is a particularly noteworthy example of an earlier hagiographic text which emphasizes its heroine’s liturgical life and provides an extended, liturgically focused account of her death. On the liturgical implications of Macrina’s Life, see Krueger 2000, pp. 484–510. Macrina is, of course, a very different figure from Martha: Gregory presents her as an aristocratic, philosophical, beautiful, and (moderately) ascetic virgin with strong family ties. The liturgical focus of Gregory’s text is also very different from that of Martha’s Life, as it lacks the strong cultic dimension of the latter: whereas Gregory’s focus is on prayer and thanksgiving, Martha’s hagiographer also, as we will see, emphasizes the importance of the rituals associated with saints’ shrines.

⁷⁶ Ἰδοὺ δεδώρηταί σοι ἡ τιμὴ αὕτη, καὶ κατάμενε ἐνθάδε, ἀνθ’ ὧν ἐφοβήθης τὸν Κύριον καὶ ἐτίμησας τὴν ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ Θεοῦ: Life of Martha 17 (p. 266).

⁷⁷ Τετόλμηκα τῇ σωτηρίῳ μεταλήψει τοῦ ζωοποιοῦ σου σώματος καὶ αἵματος πιστεύουσα σωθῆναι τῇ δεδωρημένῃ ἡμῖν παρὰ σοῦ εἰς συγχώρησιν παραπτωμάτων, ὅπως ἀφέλῃς τὰς ἀνομίας μου καὶ τὰς ἁμαρτίας μου καθαρίσῃς: ibid. 23 (p. 270).

⁷⁸ Δόξαζε, τέκνον, τὸν Κύριον∙ χάριν γὰρ ηὗρες θεάσασθαι καθὼς ἐχώρεις τὰ ἁγιαστικὰ ζῶα τοῦ ἐπιβεβηκότος ἐπὶ ἅρματος χερουβὶμ παραγενομένου ἐν τῇ ἐπικλήσει τῆς ὑμνῳδίας καὶ ἁγιάσαντος ἐν τῷ λειψάνῳ τοῦ θανάτου τὴν κοίμησιν, καθότι κἀγὼ καὶ αὐτὴ ἐν ἁμαρτίαις συλληφθέντες ἐχρήζομεν τῆς παρ’ αὐτοῦ ἀφέσεως, ἐν αὐλαῖς οἴκου Κυρίου ἱστάμενοι: ibid. 33 (pp. 278–9).

⁷⁹ In one incident in the stylite’s youth the Eucharist is presented in soteriological terms: he is given it in a dream by a priest to save him after Satan has been afflicting him with sexual dreams (Life of Symeon 35 [p. 34]). Yet usually, even where the Eucharist features, it is not explicitly connected with salvation, even in the section in which Symeon is made a priest (132–5 (pp. 124–7)). In Symeon’s lectures on the behaviour necessary for salvation (e.g. 24 (pp. 20–1), 113 (p. 92)), 171 (pp. 152–3)) he makes no mention of the sacraments, nor do they feature in the various accounts of the deaths of pious men (e.g. 36 (pp. 34–6), 109 (pp. 88–9), 257 (p. 223)).

⁸⁰ Harvey 1998; Booth 2014, pp. 34–7.

⁸¹ For the growing importance of liturgy and the sacraments in hagiography across late antiquity and in particular in the seventh century, see Déroche 2002, p. 180; Booth 2014, pp. 7–43 and passim.

⁸² Leontios of Neapolis, Life of John the Almsgiver 51 (pp. 401–2).

⁸³ Leontios of Neapolis, Life of Symeon the Holy Fool (p. 96, trans. p. 165).

⁸⁴ Εἰ γὰρ ἐπὶ φθαρτοῦ βασιλέως οὐ μόνον οἱ ὑγιαίνοντες, ἀλλὰ καὶ οἱ ἠκρωτηριασμένοι καὶ οἱ ἐν ἀσθενείαις εἰς τὴν αὐτοῦ ἐπείγονται εὐφημίαν, πόσῳ μᾶλλον ἡμεῖς εἰς τὴν τοῦ ἐπουρανίου καὶ ἀθανάτου βασιλέως τῆς δόξης Χριστοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ ἡμῶν εὐφημίαν καὶ δοξολογίαν ὀφείλομεν σπουδαίως συντρέχειν νυκτός τε καὶ ἡμέρας κατὰ πᾶσαν ὥραν οὐ μόνον οἱ τῷ σώματι ἐρρωμένοι, ἀλλὰ καὶ οἱ νοσοῦντες τὸ εὐπρόθυμον συνεισφέρειν, ἵνα καὶ τὰς νόσους ἡμῶν, ἐὰν γνῷ συμφέρειν ἡμῖν, ἀπελάσῃ καὶ τὰς ψυχὰς ἡμῶν καθάρῃ τῶν πονηρῶν πράξεων τε καὶ ἐνθυμήσεων καὶ τοὺς μισθοὺς τῶν εὐφημιῶν οὐ γηΐνους, ἀλλ’ οὐρανίους ἡμῖν ὡς χρεώστης ἀποδώσῃ· καὶ ὥσπερ τις τῶν μετριωτέρων, ἐὰν ἐν βασιλικαῖς αὐλαῖς ἄφνω εἰσαχθεὶς γνώριμος τῷ βασιλεῖ καὶ συνόμιλος ἀκωλύτως γένηται, πλείονα καὶ μακροτέραν τὴν μετ’ αὐτοῦ συντυχίαν γίνεσθαι ἐπιποθεῖ…πολλῷ μᾶλλον ἡμεῖς ὀφείλομεν πλείονα τὴν πρὸς τὸν ἐπουράνιον βασιλέα ἡμῶν διάλεξιν τῆς εὐχῆς καὶ δοξολογίας ποιεῖσθαι καὶ ἐγχρονίζειν ποθεινῶς ἐν τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ καὶ μὴ σπεύδειν ὥς τι βαρύτατον φορτίον καὶ οὐχ ὡς μισθοφόρον τὸν τῆς εὐχῆς κανόνα τάχιον ἀπορρῖψαι καὶ ἐπείγεσθαι ἐκ διαβολικῆς ἐνεργείας ὡς ἐκ φρουρᾶς τινος ἐξιέναι τῆς ἐκκλησίας, ὅπερ ἐστὶν μεγάλη παρανομία. Ἐν νῷ γὰρ ὀφείλομεν ἔχειν τοῦτο, ὅτι ἐν τῷ εἰσέρχεσθαι ἡμᾶς εἰς τὸν κυριακὸν οἶκον εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν αὐτὸν ἀνερχόμεθα καὶ τὸν οὐράνιον βασιλέα εὑρίσκομεν καθήμενον ἐπὶ τοῦ θρόνου τῆς δόξης, κυκλούμενον ὑπὸ τῶν χερουβὶμ καὶ σεραφίμ…καὶ ὅτι πάντων ἐκείνων μετὰ φόβου παρεστώτων ἡμεῖς συγχωρούμεθα αὐτῷ τεθαρρηκότες δι’ ἑαυτῶν καὶ οὐ δι’ ἑρμηνέως διαλέγεσθαι καὶ εὐφημεῖν αὐτὸν καὶ αἰτεῖν ἅπερ ἂν θέλωμεν· ὅταν δὲ πάλιν ἐξερχώμεθα ἐκεῖθεν…εἰς τὸν ἐπίγειον καὶ ὑλώδη κόσμον καταβαίνομεν δεσμούμενοι ὑπὸ τῶν πονηρῶν λογισμῶν καὶ φροντίδων: George of Sykeon, Life of Theodore of Sykeon 164 (I, pp. 150–1).

⁸⁵ Life of Martha 9 (p. 260), 16 (p. 265), 34 (p. 279).

⁸⁶ See e.g. ibid. 2 (p. 254), 3 (p. 255), 6 (p. 258), 8–9 (pp. 259–60).

⁸⁷ Ibid. 28 (p. 274), 30 (p. 275); ibid. 32 (p. 277).

⁸⁸ Ὅπως καὶ αὐτοὶ τοὺς καρποὺς τῶν εὐχῶν τῆς ὁσίας τρυγήσωσιν: ibid. 33 (p. 278).

⁸⁹ Ibid. 41 (pp. 283–4).

⁹⁰ Ibid. 35–6 (pp. 279–81).

⁹¹ Εὑρηκὼς καιρὸν καὶ λαθὼν πάντας ἐπῆρε τῶν εἰς τὴν αὐτὴν ἀγρυπνίαν καιομένων κανδηλῶν τὰ ἐνλύχνια: ibid. 37 (p. 281).

⁹² Peter Brown has argued (focusing on Western Europe but implicitly extending his arguments across the Christian world) that the ‘notion of imitable sanctity is a theme as vivid and colourful, but as superficial, as a growth of lichen across an ancient rock’, and that, in general, saints were sacred by virtue of their inimitability: Brown 2000, p. 22 and passim.

⁹³ I discuss the didactic nature of miracle collections at further length in Parker 2016, pp. 118–21; see also Maraval 1981.

⁹⁴ περιφρονήσεως καὶ ἀπιστίας λογισμῷ κατασχεθεὶς: Life of Martha 43 (p. 285).

⁹⁵ Ἐπειδὴ οὖν ἡ δεδωρημένη τῷ ἁγίῳ χάρις ἐκτὸς παραβάσεως ἐντολῆς αὐτοῦ οὐδὲν συνεχώρει κακὸν ἐπελθεῖν τινι αὐτῶν, εἰκότως ἠρώτα ὁ ἀδελφὸς τί ἔτυχεν ἡμαρτηκώς: ibid. 43 (p. 285).

⁹⁶ For this theme in other miracle collections of the sixth and seventh centuries, see below, pp. 211–12.

⁹⁷ Παῖδάς τε ὡραίους περικυκλοῦντας τὴν σορὸν καὶ καλὰ λίαν καὶ τερπνὰ ὑμνοῦντας τὸν Θεὸν καὶ ὑπηχοῦντας ἀλλήλοις τὸ ἀλληλούϊα: Life of Martha 45 (p. 287).

⁹⁸ Ibid. 46–7 (pp. 288–9).

⁹⁹ Psalms 50(51):10(8).

¹⁰⁰ Εἶδε τὴν μακαρίαν…μετὰ ἡδύτητος πολλῆς εὐμελῆ καὶ τερπνὴν ἀγγελικὴν εἰς ὕψος ἀναπέμπουσαν φωνὴν καὶ λέγουσαν ἐκ τρίτου∙ ‘Δόξα σοι, ὁ Θεός, δόξα σοι, ἀλληλούϊα’, καὶ συνήχει ἡ μάνδρα ὅλη ὥσπερ φωνὴν διδοῦσα, καὶ τὸ λείψανον αὐτῆς ἐν τῇ θέσει ἐδονεῖτο τῇ δοξολογίᾳ. Καὶ τρόμῳ καὶ χαρᾷ συσχέθεις ἐπὶ τῇ τοσαύτῃ χάριτι τοῦ Θεοῦ ᾗ δέδωκε τῇ δούλῃ αὐτοῦ, ὑπόμνησιν ἔλαβε τῆς θείας γραφῆς λεγούσης∙ ‘Ἀγαλλιάσονται ὀστέα τεταπεινωμένα’. Τότε ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ αὐτοῦ ἔμεινεν διαφυλάττων τὸ μέλος ἐκεῖνο τῆς πρὸς τὸν Θεὸν δοξολογίας, καὶ ἐκ τῆς χαρᾶς τῆς ψυχῆς ἠγαλλιάσατο ἐν τῷ ἁγίῳ πνεύματι καὶ συνυπήχει καὶ αὐτὸς τὴν οὐράνιον δοξολογίαν. Τοῦ δὲ καιροῦ καλοῦντος διὰ τὰς νυκτερινὰς ὑμνῳδίας, συνήχθησαν κατὰ τὸ εἰωθὸς πρὸς αὐτὸν οἱ ἀδελφοί, καὶ μαθόντες παρ’ αὐτοῦ συνυπήχουν καὶ αὐτοὶ τὴν θεόσδοτον ἐκείνην ὑμνῳδίαν ἕως πρωῒ ἐπιφωσκοῦντος σαββάτου. Λοιπὸν οὖν καὶ ἐν τῷ λυχνικῷ τοῦ τε σαββάτου καὶ τῆς ἁγίας κυριακῆς καὶ κατὰ πᾶσαν δὲ ἑσπέραν τοῦτο ἐπέτρεψε γίνεσθαι, ἑνὸς ἀδελφοῦ ἔμπροσθεν τῆς σοροῦ τρίτον λέγοντος τὸν τοιοῦτον ὕμνον καὶ πάντων τρίτον ὑποψαλλόντων: Life of Martha 48 (pp. 289–90).

¹⁰¹ Βαλὼν θυμίαμα: ibid. 49 (p. 290).

¹⁰² Ibid. 51 (p. 295).

¹⁰³ See Van den Ven 1962–70, I, pp. 88*–9*.

¹⁰⁴ Εἰς ἀνάμνησιν ἧς προσελάβου δούλης σου, ἀνθ’ ὧν ἐγνώρισας τῇ πιστῇ αὐτῆς ψυχῇ βαστάσαι ἐν ταῖς χερσὶ τὸν ζωοποιόν σου σταυρὸν, μεταίροντός μου ἐκ δυνάμεως εἰς δύναμιν ἐπὶ ταύτην τὴν ἀνάβασιν, προπορευομένης αὐτῆς ἐν πλήθει δακρύων καὶ τόδε τὸ ᾆσμα λεγούσης ‘Σῶσον ἡμᾶς, υἱὲ τοῦ Θεοῦ, ὁ σταυρωθεὶς δι’ ἡμᾶς, ἀλληλούϊα’: Life of Martha 52 (p. 297).

¹⁰⁵ Life of Symeon 113 (p. 93).

¹⁰⁶ Ἐπὶ τὸ προσκυνεῖσθαι ἐν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ ἐν ᾗ ηὐδόκησεν ἡ αὐτοῦ φιλανθρωπία τῆς ἐμῆς μητρὸς ἁγιάσαι τὴν κοίμησιν: Life of Martha 60 (p. 304).

¹⁰⁷ Van den Ven 1962–70, II, p. 309 n. 2.

¹⁰⁸ Πληρωθέντος δὲ τοῦ δωδεκαμηνιαίου χρόνου, ἐνέστη ἡ πρώτη μνεία τῆς κοιμήσεως τῆς μακαρίας Μάρθας, καὶ μηδενὶ μηδὲν εἰρηκότων τῶν ἀδελφῶν, συνῆλθον τῇ τοῦ Θεοῦ χάριτι ἀνδρῶν τε καὶ γυναικῶν πλήθη πολλὰ μετὰ κηρῶν τε καὶ λαμπάδων, ὥστε τὴν σύναξιν τῆς μνείας αὐτῆς ἐπιτελέσαι∙ καὶ πάννυχον ἀγρυπνίαν ποιήσαντες, ὄρθρου λοιπὸν βαθέως, προτεθέντος τοῦ ζωοποιοῦ σταυροῦ προσεκύνησαν πάντες οἱ συνελθόντες μεθ’ ὕμνων βοῶντες ‘Τὸν σταυρόν σου προσκυνοῦμεν, δέσποτα, καὶ τὴν ἁγίαν σου ἀνάστασιν δοξάζομεν.᾿ Μετὰ δὲ τὴν προσκύνησιν λαβὼν ὁ πρεσβύτερος Ἀντώνιος τὸν σταυρόν, διακόνων ὀψικευόντων μετὰ ῥιπιδίων καὶ θυμιατηρίων καὶ ψαλλόντων∙ ‘Σῶσον ἡμᾶς, υἱὲ τοῦ Θεοῦ, ὁ σταυρωθεὶς δι’ ἡμᾶς, ἀλληλούϊα’, ἀπέθετο αὐτὸν ἐν τῷ κειμηλιαρχίῳ. Καὶ γενομένης ἀκολουθίας τῶν ἀναγνωσμάτων ἐπετέλεσαν τελείαν σύναξιν, τοῦ δούλου τοῦ Θεοῦ τὴν θείαν μυσταγωγίαν ἱερουργήσαντος: Life of Martha 70 (pp. 311–12).

¹⁰⁹ τινα παντὸς λειψάνου ἁγίων, παντὸς δὲ θησαυροῦ τιμιωτέραν, ἐμφανῆ καὶ σεβασμίαν μερίδα τοῦ ἀχράντου δεσποτικοῦ καὶ σωτηρίου ξύλου: ibid. 60 (p. 304).