| Paper 1544-a | The Memory of the Governors of the Egyptian Provinces in Later Hagiographical Sources about the Great Persecution
(Language: English)
Anna Salsano, Dipartimento di Scienze dell'Antichità, Università degli Studi di Roma 'La Sapienza'
Giulia Agostini, Dipartimento di Scienze dell'Antichità, Università degli Studi di Roma 'La Sapienza'
Index terms: Byzantine Studies, Genealogy and Prosopography, Hagiography |
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| Abstract | Paper -a:
Our paper will focus on the memory of praefecti and praesides of the Egyptian provinces in later Greek and Coptic hagiographical sources about the Great Persecution (303-313). These governors usually acted as judges in trials against martyrs, and they are often characters of acta martyrum. Some of the earlier acta are based on court transcripts and direct witnesses, therefore they are historically trustworthy and provide prosopographical data; others are elaborations of historical facts influenced by memory and perception of these earlier events in Late Antiquity. The comparison with papyrological documentation allows verifying the historical value of different sources.
Paper -b:
This paper presents a comparative study of two early narrative traditions that preserve the legend of St Juliana, a martyr of the Diocletian Persecutions: the Latin Passio S. Iulianæ (c. 600) and the Old English Juliana (c. 850). Conventional approaches define both variants as sanctioning violence against the non-Christian Other. As my study demonstrates, however, the Latin and Old English variants actually represent diametrical differences in theological conceptions. Whereas the Latin presents God as an archon of retribution, a figure who sanctions violence against a Manichean daemon, the Old English Juliana depicts God as an archon of transcendent affiliation, a figure who exposes the Manichean pretensions of a deofol as self-destroying idolatry. This theological contrast, in turn, frames remarkable differences in the characterization of Juliana as an ethical exemplar: Whereas the Latin saint, as a paragon of Stoicized Christianity, actively perpetrates violence against the non-Christian Other, the Old English saint, as a paragon of transcendent affiliation, ultimately renounces violence against the non-Christian Other.
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