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E05550: Bede, in his Martyrology, records the feast on 14 May in Syria of *Victor and Corona/Stephanis (martyrs of Damascus, S01630). Written in Latin at Wearmouth-Jarrow (north-east Britain), 725/731.

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posted on 2018-05-27, 00:00 authored by bsavill

Bede, Martyrology

III Id. Mai. In Syria, natalis Victoris et Coronae, sub Antonino Imperatore, duce Alexandriae Sebastiano. Erat autem Victor miles a Cilicia, cui Sebastianus in confessione fidei confrigi digitos et evelli iussit a cute. Deinde illum iussit in caminum ignis mitti, ubi triduo permanens non est laesus. Deinde venenum bibere iussus non est mortuus, sed veneficium potius ad fidem convertit. Deinde iussum est nervos corporis ipsius tolli, deinde oleum bulliens mitti in pudendis eius. Post haec iussit ardentes lampades suspenso ad latera applicari. Post hoc acetum et calcem simul misceri et dari in ore; deinde oculos erui; deinde triduo iusum capite suspendi; et dum adhuc spiraret, iussit eum excoriari. Tunc Corona, cum esset uxor cuiusdam militis, coepit beatificare sanctum Victorem pro gloria martyrii. Id dum faceret, vidit duas coronas de caelo lapsas, unam Victori et alteram sibi missam. Cumque hoc cunctis audientibus protestaretur, tenta est a iudice, et iussum est duas arbores palmae curvari ad invicem, et cannabinis funibus ligari Coronam in utraque, manibus et pedibus, et sic arbores dimitti. Quod dum fieret divisa est Corona in duas partes: erat autem annorum sexdecim. Tunc quoque Victor decollatus et ipse victoriae perennis triumphum promeruit.

'14 May. In Syria, the feast of Victor and Corona, under the emperor Antoninus, when Sebastianus was commander at Alexandria. Victor was a soldier from Cilicia, whom Sebastianus had ordered, as a result of his confession of faith, to have his fingers broken and torn from the skin. Then he ordered him to be put in a furnace of fire where, remaining for three days, he was not harmed. Next, having been ordered to drink poison, he did not die, but converted the poisoner to the faith. Then he was ordered to have the sinews of his very body removed, then to have boiling oil placed on his private parts. After these things, [Sebastianus] ordered him to be hung up and have burning torches applied to his sides. After this, for vinegar and lime to be mixed together and given to him in his mouth; for his eyes to be plucked out; for him to be hung from his head downward for three days; and when he was still breathing, [Sebastianus] ordered him to be skinned. Then Corona, although she was the wife of a certain soldier, began to bless Saint Victor for the glory of his martyrdom. While she was doing that, she saw two crowns, which had fallen down from heaven, one sent for Victor and the other for her. And since she was declaring this in public to all who were listening, she was detained by the judge, and it was ordered for two palm trees to be bent toward each other, and for Corona to be tied with hemp ropes by her hands and feet to both of them, and thus for the trees to be released. When this was done, Corona was divided into two parts: she was sixteen years old. Then Victor was also beheaded and himself earned the triumph of everlasting victory.'

Text: Quentin 1908, 94-5. Translation: Lifshitz 2000, 185, lightly modified.

History

Evidence ID

E05550

Saint Name

Victor and Stephania/Corona, martyrs of Damaskos or Antioch : S01630

Saint Name in Source

Victor, Corona

Related Saint Records

https://oxford.figshare.com/articles/Viktor_and_Stephanis_Corona_martyrs_of_Damascus/13733548

Type of Evidence

Liturgical texts - Calendars and martyrologies Literary - Hagiographical - Other saint-related texts

Language

Latin

Evidence not before

725

Evidence not after

731

Activity not before

161

Activity not after

731

Place of Evidence - Region

Britain and Ireland

Place of Evidence - City, village, etc

Wearmouth and Jarrow

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

Wearmouth and Jarrow St Albans St Albans Verulamium

Major author/Major anonymous work

Bede

Cult activities - Festivals

Saint’s feast

Cult activities - Non Liturgical Practices and Customs

Transmission, copying and reading saint-related texts

Cult Activities - Protagonists in Cult and Narratives

Soldiers

Source

The Northumbrian monk Bede (673/4-735) included among his many works listed in the final, autobiographical chapter (5.24) of his Ecclesiastical History of the English People (731) 'a martyrology of the festivals (martyrologium de nataliciis) of the holy martyrs, in which I have diligently tried to note down all that I could find about them, not only on what day, but also by what sort of combat and under what judge they overcame the world'. The widely-circulated Martyrology attributed to Bede, known only from continental manuscripts from the ninth century onwards, almost certainly represents that same text, albeit with a number of later additions (not included here). Although the work postdates the year 700, our database includes Bede’s Martyrology since it draws directly upon materials in use at his home monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow – and apparently more widely in Britain – since at least the late seventh century. Moreover, the sheer range of works which Bede evidently consulted, and even directly incorporated into his calendar, gives the Martyrology a special value for our database, since it provides a terminus ante quem of c. 700 for many cultic texts which are otherwise difficult to date. Its main underlying source, however, is a Northumbrian recension of the Martyrologium Hieronymianum. Possibly this had arrived in Britain as early as the mission of Augustine, first bishop of Canterbury (597-?609), but a separate remark by Bede earlier in his Ecclesiastical History (4.18) seems to implicate John, precentor (archicantor) of St Peter’s, Rome. Sent to Britain by Pope Agatho in 679, John not only taught chant at Wearmouth but ‘committed to writing all things necessary for the celebration of festal days throughout the whole year; these writings have been preserved to this day in the monastery and copies have now been made by many others elsewhere’ . Bede may have therefore already found himself immersed in the liturgical world of the Martyrologium Hieronymianum since his oblation to Wearmouth in c. 680: yet he can have only finished his own Martyrology in or after 725, since it incorporates elements of his On the Reckoning of Time, completed that year. Henri Quentin reconstructed the contents of Bede’s Martyrology as it existed before its diverse Carolingian recensions, in his Martyrologes historiques du moyen âge (1908): this posited a calendar of 115 notices across 99 days, running according to the Julian calendar from 1 January (Alamachius of Rome: E05405) to 31 December (Columba of Sens: E05691). One notable feature of the Martyrology is therefore its apparent incompleteness, something that had already attracted attention as early as the ninth century, when the Frankish scholars Ado and Usuard commented on the number of blank entries in Bede’s collection. Conversely, the Martyrology is atypical among other late antique or earlier medieval exempla of its genre in that many of its entries are considerably detailed, embellishing the conventional format of simply date and place of martyrdom with brief 'historic' narratives of the saints concerned derived from Bede's sources. Here we see Bede’s work moving beyond that of simply a copyist or editor, and utilising wider authorities such as the Liber pontificalis; the writings of such authors as Augustine, Jerome, and Eusebius; and, most substantially, diverse Martyrdom accounts from across the Roman world. Thus, while his Martyrology fell well short of covering the full liturgical year, Bede provided on a saint-by-saint basis a text considerably more substantial than those circulating in the Latin West before him. Bede’s selection of entries may appear peculiar to us, particularly in light of his own location. Only three entries relate to saints from Britain (Alban, E05561; Æthelthryth of Ely, E05562; and the two Hewalds, E05631), and none from Ireland or the wider Celtic world. Instead, we find (following Thacker, 2011) 62 notices for Italy, of which 47 are for Rome; 26 for the eastern Roman Empire; 11 for Gaul/Francia; 6 for North Africa; 3 for Persia and Babylon; and 1 for Spain. Possibly we might frame this in light of Bede’s conviction, expressed elsewhere, in the importance of the Roman church and 'orthodox' Roman tradition, especially as opposed to some of the practices of the Irish or Romano-British (c.f. Lifshitz, 2000; Gunn, 2009). Yet even from this perspective Bede’s choices seem peculiar, omitting such pivotal Roman figures as Peter and Paul (or indeed any apostles), Benedict of Nursia, or Gregory the Great. Thacker has proposed an interesting solution to this: the aim of Bede’s text was not to provide a comprehensive liturgical calendar, but rather a set of corrections concerning some of the more obscure feast days, whose dates and details were disputed or unknown among the author’s contemporary milieu. We should add to this, however, the possibility that Bede’s choices were also more straightforwardly dictated by the material he had available. We find certain Martyrdom accounts, such as the Polychronius cycle, repeatedly and disproportionately cited throughout his calendar, with full notices often granted to saints of very little importance: it seems fair to deduce in such cases that Bede simply attempted to draw as much as he could from certain available texts, perhaps compensating for lacunae elsewhere in the Wearmouth-Jarrow library. While the Martyrology may not, therefore, give us anywhere near a full picture of the cult of saints as it was understood in Bede’s Britain, it may hint at some of the debates and uncertainties surrounding the late antique martyrological tradition as it became absorbed into the Anglo-Saxon church at the turn of the eighth century – and, significantly, provides us with a key witness as to which texts lent themselves to this process.

Discussion

Bede's sources for this entry are the Martyrologium Hieronymianum and the Martyrdom of Victor and Corona (E06670) (Quentin 1908, 94-5). His account of the martyrdom follows the plot of the Greek Martyrdom closely; Bede must have had access to this in a Latin translation.

Bibliography

Editions: Quentin, H., Les martyrologes historiques du moyen age: étude sur la formation du martyrologe romain (Paris, 1908), chapter 2. Dubois, J., and G. Renaud, Edition pratique des martyrologes de Bède, de l'anonyme lyonnais et de Florus (Paris, 1976). Translation: Bede, Martyrology, trans. F. Lifshitz, in T. Head (ed.), Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology (New York and London, 2000). Further reading: Gunn, V., Bede’s Historiae: Genre, Rhetoric, and the Construction of Anglo-Saxon Church History (Woodbridge, 2009). Lapidge, M., "Acca of Hexham and the Origin of the Old English Martyrology," Analecta Bollandiana 123 (2005), 29-78. Ó Riain, P., "A Northumbrian Phase in the Formation of the Hieronymian Martyrology: the Evidence of the Martyrology of Tallaght," Analecta Bollandiana 120 (2002), 311-63. Thacker, A., "Bede and his Martyrology," in: E. Mullins and D. Scully (eds.), Listen, O Isles, Unto Me: Studies in Medieval Word and Image in Honour of Jennifer O’Reilly (Cork, 2010), 126-41.

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Keywords

S01630 History

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