Aude Busine
Université libre de Bruxelles, Histoire, Faculty Member
- Late Antique Religion, Early Christianity, Late Antique and Byzantine History, Ancient History, Hellenistic and Roman Asia Minor, Greek Epigraphy, and 28 moreGreek Oracles and Divination, Late Antique Hagiography, Byzantine Hagiography, Saints' Cults, Cult of Saints, Healing cults, Miracles Stories, Classics, Classics: Ancient History and Archaeology, Ancient Greek Religion, Late Antiquity, Late Antique and Byzantine Studies, Patristics and Late Antiquity, Libanius, Byzantine Studies, Late Roman Empire, Greek Patristics, History of Christianity, Hagiography, Roman History, Roman Temples, Late Antique Archaeology, Late Antique Art and Archaeology, Martyrdom, Roman Religion, Greek and Roman Epigraphy, Porphyry, and Early Christian Archaeologyedit
In Religious Practices and Christianization of the Late Antique City, historians, archaeologists and historians of religion provide studies of the phenomenon of the Christianization of the Roman Empire within the context of the... more
In Religious Practices and Christianization of the Late Antique City, historians, archaeologists and historians of religion provide studies of the phenomenon of the Christianization of the Roman Empire within the context of the transformations and eventual decline of the Greco-Roman city. The eleven papers brought together here aim to describe the possible links between religious, but also political, economic and social mutations engendered by Christianity and the evolution of the antique city. Combining a multiplicity of sources and analytical approaches, this book seeks to measure the impact on the city of the progressive abandonment of traditional cults to the advantage of new Christian religious practices.
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Abstract: This paper focuses on three famous hexameters allegedly uttered by Apollo in Delphi for Emperor Julian by means of his physician Oribasius. Since the 19th century, this text, in which Apollo announces the destruction of his... more
Abstract: This paper focuses on three famous hexameters allegedly uttered by Apollo in Delphi for Emperor Julian by means of his physician Oribasius. Since the 19th century, this text, in which Apollo announces the destruction of his temple and the silence of the oracle, has been the subject of numerous interpretations. Some scholars consider it as a genuine oracle really produced in Delphi and intended to the pagan Emperor while he was in Antioch (362-363). Others argue that it is a Christian forgery written up shortly after Julian's death as an anti-pagan propaganda tool. In this paper, I first discuss the literary context for the quotation of the oracle, that is the Artemii Passio, a seventh-century anonymous fictitious hagiographical work. In my opinion, nothing allows to date the text from the fourth century as its attribution to the lost Church History of Philostorgius is not grounded. Second, I explain how the hagiographer built the episode and I give a new interpretation of this prophecy, comparing it to similar late Byzantine pseudo-oracles about the fate of pagan temples.
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The aim of this paper is to investigate the links between hagiography on the one hand and cult on the ground on the other, by addressing the questions of the historicity of martyrdom narratives and of their creation and development... more
The aim of this paper is to investigate the links between hagiography on the one hand and cult on the ground on the other, by addressing the questions of the historicity of martyrdom narratives and of their creation and development through time. It will focus on the cases of two Galatian saints who initially had nothing in common, namely Basil of Ancyra, an iconic martyr of Emperor Julian, and Basilissa, a little-known young woman supposed to have been killed under Decius. In the still ongoing debates on Julian's implication in the persecution of Christians, scholars have discussed at length the reliability of Basil’s Passion as a historical source. Surprisingly, scholarship has so far never considered to what extent narratives regarding Basil’s life and sufferings came to support the development of a local cult devoted to the Ancyrene martyr. Hagiography will be here analysed in an etiological perspective, aiming at understanding when, how and why these stories were constituted over time. We shall first argue that these martyrdom narratives prove to be fictitious, and that, consequently, Basil's and Basilissa's cults cannot have originally developed as the result of the commemoration of genuine local martyrs buried in situ. I will then suggest that their worship appears to have first developed in Ancyra as the prolongation of a local traditional cult. I will finally attempt to reconstruct the manner in which hagiographers elaborated many years later the stories of these saints who had never existed.
Research Interests: Late Antique and Byzantine History, Late Antique and Byzantine Studies, Cult of Saints, Emperor Julian, Saints' Cults, and 15 moreGreek Epigraphy, Late Antiquity, Ancient Greek Religion, Late Antique Hagiography, Ancient Anatolia, Byzantine Hagiography, Early Church Fathers, Persecutions, Galatia, Sozomenus, Ancyra, Graeco-Roman Religion, Hagiography (Greek, Basil of Ancyra, and Sozomen
In sixth-century Constantinople, incubation was a very popular practice, and many shrines in martyria or churches welcomed sick people who would bed down, hoping to be healed by a saint during a dream. A church dedicated to Saint John... more
In sixth-century Constantinople, incubation was a very popular practice, and many shrines in martyria or churches welcomed sick people who would bed down, hoping to be healed by a saint during a dream. A church dedicated to Saint John the Baptist, located in an area called Oxeia, hosted incubation rituals surrounding a pair of martyrs, Artemios and Febronia. Their healing activities are attested in a seventh-century collection of forty-five miracles performed by Artemios (BHG 173), a few passages in which allude to Febronia as his female counterpart. Hagiographical texts have recorded Artemios’s and Febronia’s lives and passions, but do not mention their medical cult in Constantinople. Several versions of the Passion of Artemios (BHG 169y–z; 170–71c) say that this former dux of Egypt, close to Emperor Constantius II, was beheaded in Antioch by Emperor Julian and that his relics were subsequently transferred to Constantinople. As for Febronia, her Passions (BHG 659-659h) depict her as a young nun from Nisibis tortured under Diocletian because she refused to apostatize and marry a Roman soldier. At first sight, none of these hagiographical narratives carries any trace of the importance that the saints had in the imperial capital.
The aim of this article is to propose a fresh reading of Artemios’s and Febronia’s dossiers, studied here together for the first time. Artemios’s career, death, and subsequent cult are still being debated by scholars. His Passions enable historians not only to picture Emperor Julian himself as a cruel, bloodthirsty persecutor but also to make conjectures about the Arians’ obscure history and martyrial cults. So far, no satisfactory explanation has been offered as to why an unpopular fourth-century commander in Egypt, linked to the Arian party, came to be venerated many years later in Constantinople as an orthodox healer saint. Febronia’s dossier is much more scant and, until recently, little attention has been paid to the Constantinopolitan healing activity of the nun from Nisibis.
Surprisingly, the raison d’être for the close association of Artemios and Febronia, whose lives and deaths originally had nothing in common, has never been discussed in modern scholarship, even by those examining the foundation of their cult. This article is the first to consider the links between Artemios’s and Febronia’s hagiography and their cult on the ground. To that end, the etiology of their hagiographical narratives will be analyzed, so that we can understand when, why, and how these legends arose. I will begin by reconsidering the issue of the transfer of both martyrial cults from Nisibis and Antioch to the capital. In doing so, I will revise the traditional claim that the dux of Egypt was executed at Antioch and that his martyrial cult initially developed within the Arian community of Antioch. I will then turn to the local cultic context in Constantinople for the fictions of the martyrs’ deaths, drawing on the analysis of both pagan and Christian evidence to propose a new solution to questions about the origin and development of Artemios and Febronia’s joint medical cult: I will argue that this medical cult did not begin with the importation of the relics of the foreign martyrs but was the prolongation of a traditional local cult. This new reading of Artemios’s and Febronia’s Passions will shed light on the strategies behind hagiographical discourses created long after the events described. Those texts, works of fiction, were intended to ensure the development of the saints’ cult, guaranteeing their reception as proper Christian saints
The aim of this article is to propose a fresh reading of Artemios’s and Febronia’s dossiers, studied here together for the first time. Artemios’s career, death, and subsequent cult are still being debated by scholars. His Passions enable historians not only to picture Emperor Julian himself as a cruel, bloodthirsty persecutor but also to make conjectures about the Arians’ obscure history and martyrial cults. So far, no satisfactory explanation has been offered as to why an unpopular fourth-century commander in Egypt, linked to the Arian party, came to be venerated many years later in Constantinople as an orthodox healer saint. Febronia’s dossier is much more scant and, until recently, little attention has been paid to the Constantinopolitan healing activity of the nun from Nisibis.
Surprisingly, the raison d’être for the close association of Artemios and Febronia, whose lives and deaths originally had nothing in common, has never been discussed in modern scholarship, even by those examining the foundation of their cult. This article is the first to consider the links between Artemios’s and Febronia’s hagiography and their cult on the ground. To that end, the etiology of their hagiographical narratives will be analyzed, so that we can understand when, why, and how these legends arose. I will begin by reconsidering the issue of the transfer of both martyrial cults from Nisibis and Antioch to the capital. In doing so, I will revise the traditional claim that the dux of Egypt was executed at Antioch and that his martyrial cult initially developed within the Arian community of Antioch. I will then turn to the local cultic context in Constantinople for the fictions of the martyrs’ deaths, drawing on the analysis of both pagan and Christian evidence to propose a new solution to questions about the origin and development of Artemios and Febronia’s joint medical cult: I will argue that this medical cult did not begin with the importation of the relics of the foreign martyrs but was the prolongation of a traditional local cult. This new reading of Artemios’s and Febronia’s Passions will shed light on the strategies behind hagiographical discourses created long after the events described. Those texts, works of fiction, were intended to ensure the development of the saints’ cult, guaranteeing their reception as proper Christian saints
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This paper focuses on the cult and legends surrounding two local martyrs of Cappadocian Caesarea: Gordius and Mamas. It aims at investigating how the hagiographical discourse about the deeds and death of these local saints was connected... more
This paper focuses on the cult and legends surrounding two local martyrs of Cappadocian Caesarea: Gordius and Mamas. It aims at investigating how the hagiographical discourse about the deeds and death of these local saints was connected with the development of their cults. The earliest mentions of both saints are found in two homilies written by Basil of Caesarea when he was bishop of the metropolis of Cappadocia, between 370 and 379. At that time, Christianity in the region was scattered and fragmented. The bishops sought to unify their congregation, notably through the promotion of the cult of martyrs, whether local or imported, and the creation of charitable institutions . In this context, I will analyse the links between the early attestations of the legends of Mamas and Gordius and the establishment of their cults. During Basil’s time, very little was known about their lives and deaths. Over time, the stories surrounding their lives and sufferings became more numerous and elaborate, and the martyrs became heroic figures of hagiographical legends.
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This paper aims to assess narratives of temple destruction by raising the issue of their etiology. It reexamines the famous destructions of the temple of Zeus Belos at Apamea (trad. circa 386) and that of Zeus Marnas at Gaza (trad. circa... more
This paper aims to assess narratives of temple destruction by raising the issue of their etiology. It reexamines the famous destructions of the temple of Zeus Belos at Apamea (trad. circa 386) and that of Zeus Marnas at Gaza (trad. circa 402), both of which, though well-known, have been neglected in recent interpretative studies on holy violence. Both accounts are first analysed through the study of the different contexts in which they were written as well as in terms of the development of episcopal hagiography. This in turn leads to questioning the ways in which such stories were actually elaborated in practice. Through an analysis of various similar discourses on ancient stones, this study sheds new light on an issue which exceeds the phenomenon of temple destruction as such, and relates it to the construction of Late Antique civic identities.
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This article deals with Basil’s use of the rhetorical form of the encômion poleôs (‘praise of city’). In his Homily on the Martyr Gordius, the Cappadocian Father built Gordius the genuine hero of Caesarea. On that occasion, Basil... more
This article deals with Basil’s use of the rhetorical form of the encômion poleôs (‘praise of city’). In his Homily on the Martyr Gordius, the Cappadocian Father built Gordius the genuine hero of Caesarea. On that occasion, Basil criticises the traditional way of praising a city. His emphasis on the qualities of the Saint leads him to reject the classical rules of urban rhetorics, according to which Greek rhetors needed to review the natural settings of a city, its history, including its mythical roots, its institutions and its build- ings. However, Basil’ construction of the sainthood of Gordius reveals the ambivalence of Christian authors toward their local and terrestrial fatherland. On the one hand, they criticise that a city’s material goods could be a source of glory and, more generally, they refuse to praise a place symbolising earthly sins. On the other hand, Basil’s dis- course on the Caesarean martyr extoling the virtues of a local character betrays his civic patriotism and pride.
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Basil’s Passion (6 th cent.), elaborated out of Sozomen HE and claiming the presence of Julian, has no historical basis, and the pairing with the martyr Basilissa (3 rd cent.) was derived from inscriptions concerning a pagan Ancyran cult... more
Basil’s Passion (6 th cent.), elaborated out of Sozomen HE and claiming the presence of Julian, has no historical basis, and the pairing with the martyr Basilissa (3 rd cent.) was derived from inscriptions concerning a pagan Ancyran cult of Basileus and Basilissa.