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E00372: Gregory of Tours, in his Glory of the Martyrs (5), recounts the legend of *Helena (empress and mother of Constantine, ob. 328, S00185) finding the nails from Christ's crucifixion, incorporating two into the bridle of *Constantine (emperor, ob. 337, S00186), calming the Adriatic Sea with another, and incorporating the fourth into a statue of him in Constantinople. Written in Latin in Tours (north-west Gaul), 580/594.

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posted on 2015-04-08, 00:00 authored by pnowakowski
Gregory of Tours, Glory of the Martyrs 5

The empress Helena, discovered the nails of Christ's crucifixion. Two of these she used to reinforce the bridle of Constantine's horse, so that he might be successful against his enemies. A third nail she ordered to be thrown into the Adriatic, which successfully calmed the huge waves that had drowned so many.

Quaeritur etiam, quid de his clavis fuerit factum. Duo sunt, quae supra diximus, aptati in freno, tertius proiectus in fretum, quartum adserunt esse defixum in capite statuae Constantini, quae civitati, ut aiunt, totae excelsior esse suspicetur, scilicet ut tota cui eminet munitionem salutis quodadmodo galea coronata est.

'The question arises, what was done with these nails? Two, as I said earlier, were inserted in a bridle, a third was thrown into the sea. Some claim that the fourth was affixed to the head of a statue of Constantine which, so they say, is supposed to rise above the entire city [of Constantinople], with the result that what one might call a helmet of salvation crowns the entire fortification over which it towers.'

The emperor Justin proved the power of the bridle, when he used it to defend himself against a demon.

Text: Krusch 1969, 41. Translation: Van Dam 2004, 6-7. Summary: Bryan Ward-Perkins

History

Evidence ID

E00372

Saint Name

Helena, empress, mother of Constantine, ob. 328 : S00185 Constantine the Great, emperor, ob. 337 : S00186

Saint Name in Source

Helena Constantinus

Type of Evidence

Literary - Hagiographical - Collections of miracles Literary - Hagiographical - Other saint-related texts

Language

  • Latin

Evidence not before

583

Evidence not after

593

Activity not before

326

Activity not after

593

Place of Evidence - Region

Gaul and Frankish kingdoms

Place of Evidence - City, village, etc

Tours

Place of evidence - City name in other Language(s)

Tours Tours Tours Toronica urbs Prisciniacensim vicus Pressigny Turonorum civitas Ceratensis vicus Céré

Major author/Major anonymous work

Gregory of Tours

Cult activities - Rejection, Condemnation, Scepticism

Uncertainty/scepticism/rejection of a saint

Cult Activities - Miracles

Miracle during lifetime Power over elements (fire, earthquakes, floods, weather) Miraculous interventions in war Miraculous protection - of people and their property Miraculous protection - of communities, towns, armies

Cult Activities - Protagonists in Cult and Narratives

Relatives of the saint Foreigners (including Barbarians) Merchants and artisans Monarchs and their family

Source

Gregory, bishop of Tours from 573 until his death (probably in 594), was the most prolific hagiographer of all Late Antiquity. He wrote four books on the miracles of Martin of Tours, one on those of Julian of Brioude, and two on the miracles of other saints (the Glory of the Martyrs and Glory of the Confessors), as well as a collection of twenty short Lives of sixth-century Gallic saints (the Life of the Fathers). He also included a mass of material on saints in his long and detailed Histories, and produced two independent short works: a Latin version of the Acts of Andrew and a Latin translation of the story of The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. Internal references to datable events and to other work by Gregory, suggest that he wrote the greater part of his Glory of the Martyrs between 585 and 588, though there is one chapter (ch. 82), long before the end of the book, that describes an event that is most readily dated to 590. It is in fact likely that Gregory was collecting and recording these stories throughout his life, and, fortunately for our purposes, precise dating is not of great importance, since his views on the role of saints and the correct ways to venerate them do not seem to have changed during his writing life. The work was probably never fully completed and polished: the version we have closes with four very disparate chapters, including one (105) about the divine punishment of an avaricious woman that bears no obvious connection to the overall theme of the book. (For discussions of the dating, see Van Dam 2004, xi-xii; Shaw 2015, 104-105, 111.) In his preface, Gregory states that his aim in the work is 'to publicise some of the miracles of the saints that have until now been hidden' (aliqua de sanctorum miraculis, quae actenus latuerunt, pandere), so, as in his Glory of the Confessors, his focus is not on the lives of the saints, nor on the details of their martyrdoms, but on miracles they have effected, particularly through their relics. Miracles are recorded from many places; but unsurprisingly the largest number is from Gaul. The book opens, rather curiously, with a sizeable number of miracles and relics of Jesus and his mother Mary, neither of them conventional 'martyrs'. The explanation for this must be that Gregory's interest was really much more in relics and miracles in general than in martyrs specifically. Many of the Gallic saints he included are somewhat obscure, but outside Gaul he concentrates for the most part on major saints; towards the end of the book, however, he slips in a couple of lesser Syrian saints, probably because they had interesting specialisms: Phokas and Domitios, with, respectively, particular skills at curing snake bites and sciatica. In the case of the non-Gallic saints, it is not always clear whether they were attracting active cult in Gaul – Phokas and Domitios, for instance, almost certainly didn't. It is only when Gregory tells us of a church dedication or relic that we can be certain that the saint concerned had serious cult in Gaul: in the case of the martyrs of Rome, for instance, this is true of Clement and Laurence, but not of Chrysanthus and Daria, Pancratius, and John I. Although each section contains extraneous material, the work can be broken down very roughly into the following sections:    *Chapters 1-7: Miracles and relics of Jesus (with some of Mary), including three chapters (5-7) on relics of the Passion. (For the most part, these chapters are not covered in our database.)    *Chapters 8-19: Miracles and relics of Mary and John the Baptist.    *Chapters 20-25: Miraculous images of Jesus, and a spring associated with Easter.    *Chapters 23-34: Miracles and relics of the Apostles and Stephen (i.e. New Testament saints).    *Chapters 35-41: Miracles and relics of the post-apostolic martyrs of Rome.    *Chapters 42-46: And of northern Italy.    *Chapters 47-77: And of Gaul (in no obvious order, except that the first three chapters are occupied by early martyrs). This is the longest section of the book.    *Chapters 78-87: Very miscellaneous, with only marginal references to saints: three anti-Arian stories (79-81); two stories regarding relics of Gregory's (82-83); four stories of the punishment of impure people (84-87).    *Chapters 88-102: Miracles and relics of martyrs of Spain, Africa (just one, Cyprian of Carthage), and the East, in that order.    *Chapters 103-106: Miscellaneous. But tight structuring was never a great concern of Gregory's, so within this broad framework, he often wanders off his main theme. For instance, a clutch of miracle stories relating to John the Baptist (chs. 11-13) lead Gregory into a general discussion of the River Jordan (ch. 16), which then leads him to discuss some springs near Jericho (ch. 17), linked to the preceding chapter by the common theme of 'miraculous waters in the Holy Land', but with no connection to any martyr. Similarly, a miracle story involving relics of St Andrew and the punishment of an Arian count (ch. 78) leads Gregory into three stories against Arians with no relation to saints. These digressions did not bother Gregory and are part of the charm of his work. Gregory very seldom tells us about his sources, which for the most part were certainly oral; he had a wide circle of acquaintances within the Gallic church, and also met and collected stories from travellers from abroad, including (if the source is to be believed) a man who had travelled to India (ch. 31). But Gregory also used a range of written texts, including Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History (chs. 20 and 48), the poems of Prudentius, Paulinus of Nola, and Venantius Fortunatus, and a substantial number of Martyrdoms (Van Dam 2004, xiv-xvi). Because many of his stories are set abroad, Glory of the Martyrs is less informative about cult practices than Glory of the Confessors, with its very local and very Gallic focus, but it is still a gold-mine of information. To take just two examples: the story of Benignus of Dijon is a remarkably rich and detailed account of the discovery and enhancement of a previously unknown martyr (ch. 50), while that of Patroclus of Troyes shows the importance of a written Martyrdom, and the degree of scepticism that might greet a new one (ch. 63). There is a good general discussion of Glory of the Martyrs in Van Dam 2004, ix-xxiii, and of Gregory's hagiography more widely in Shaw 2015. (Bryan Ward-Perkins)

Discussion

For an overview of the Glory of the Martyrs see E00367. Our database, on the cult of saints, does not include entries for the many relics of Christ and his Passion, unless they happen to overlap with material on saintly cult, but we have included this passage because of its presentation of Helena and Constantine. Helena is treated by Gregory as a pious empress and semi-saintly figure. The miracles described in the quoted passage are proofs of the power of the relics of the Passion, but also contribute to the picture of Helena as a saintly empress (for more on Helena, see E00370). Similarly, the nails put in the bridle of Constantine and on his statue in Constantinople have miraculous power themselves, but they also allow the emperor to move to the centre of the story, so emphasising his own sanctity as a protector of Constantinople. The statue in question is certainly that placed on the porphyry column in the centre of Constantine's forum. The cult of Constantine and Helena as proper saints never fully developed in the West, but they were both treated as models of saintly monarchs.

Bibliography

Edition: Krusch, B., Liber in gloria martyrum, in: Gregorii Turonensis Opera. 2: Miracula et opera minora (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum 1.2; 2nd ed.; Hannover, 1969). Translation: Van Dam, R., Gregory of Tours, Glory of the Martyrs (Translated Texts for Historians 4; 2nd ed., Liverpool, 2004). Further reading: Shaw, R., "Chronology, Composition, and Authorial Conception in the Miracula", in: A.C. Murray (ed.), A Companion to Gregory of Tours (Leiden-Boston 2015), 102-140.

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