Cult of Relics C 03

Defenders of Cities
The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

Robert Wiśniewski
Print publication date: 2018

Print ISBN-13: 9780199675562
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: February 2019
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199675562.001.0001
Defenders of Cities
Robert Wiśniewski
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780199675562.003.0003
Abstract and Keywords

This chapter studies early testimonies to the use of relics as efficient palladia
and examines the sources of this phenomenon, which unlike exorcizing and
healing had no parallels in the Bible: the prophets, Christ, and the Apostles were
never portrayed as powerful protectors of cities. For this reason the Greek and
Roman background of this phenomenon deserves a detailed study aimed at
finding out if there was any connection between the saints’ relics and the
guardian statues and amulets whose growing popularity is attested in the late
antique sources. This chapter argues that the Christian belief in the protection
provided by the saints ran in parallel with the widespread belief in the power of
amulets and that despite evident interactions between Christian and non-
Christian practices it cannot be seen as resulting directly from pagan beliefs.
Keywords: relic, palladium, protection, amulet, guardian statue, saint
In January 402, Paulinus, then presbyter at Nola, wrote one of the poems with
which he celebrated the annual commemoration of St Felix. The body of the
saint lay in the new basilica built by Paulinus not far from the city. That year the
poem directly referred to a new grave threat menacing Italy: the Goths led by
Alaric had just crossed the Alps and were about to invade the peninsula.
Paulinus, confident of receiving help from St Felix, prayed to him in the
following words:
I beg you, ask Christ to lend our cause His benevolent support … Once the
Lord has allowed you fair fortune for the Roman domain, bid the elements
that serve you, Felix, to minister to our good … Let sun and moon in
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Defenders of Cities
harmony under your control remain poised, and keep the stars stationary
in suspended course till the victory of Rome is finally accomplished. In
Assyrian Babylon, Daniel victoriously tamed the lions by welling prayer; so
now Felix, you must tame the uncivilised barbarians, and Christ must
shatter them so that they recline as captives at your feet.1
Paulinus is one of the first Christian writers we know of who clearly expressed
their firm belief in the extension of the protection of the saints to the cities
which possessed their relics. In his Natalicia, we find three instances in which he
refers to their power, with the mention of their capability to halt the invading
enemies or ward them off from the city walls. The earliest reference dates back
to the beginning of 402, as we have seen in the passage quoted above. In 405, he
assured his readers of the protection of the Apostles Peter and Paul over Rome
and that of Andrew and Timothy over Constantinople. In 407, he again praised
Peter and Paul, Felix, and other martyrs who had saved Italy from a renewed
threat of advancing Goths.2
(p.49) How common was the belief in the Saints’ Protection over Cities?
It is not entirely clear whether Paulinus expressed a belief which was already
widely shared in his day or rather promoted a new idea. A definitive answer to
this question is not that easy to find, but it seems that his confidence was not
universally shared among his audience.3 In his Poem 26 he went out of his way
to convince his audience that Felix could help the empire in distress: he referred
to the Bible (quoting diverse examples of Old Testament intercessors), appealed
to logic (explaining that Felix was close to God, who did marvellous things to
help His people) and to popular knowledge (insisting that Nola was familiar with
Felix’s miracles for the benefit of various individuals).4 Also, he declared that he
placed his trust in the power of Felix, but nowhere did he mention people
actually praying to the saint, gathering at his grave, or displaying the relics in
the face of the approaching enemy.
We should also note that Paulinus’ contemporaries rarely express belief in the
protective power of saints. Such advocates of the cult of relics as Ambrose,
Victricius of Rouen, and Jerome do not suggest that the saints can defend
communities against invaders.5 Although an argument ex silentio should never
be fully trusted, this reticence seems to be significant in the case of authors who
lived during the period of barbarian invasions and often described them.6 In
February 402, when Paulinus was writing his Poem 26 and Alaric’s troops were
ravaging northern Italy, Gaudentius of Brescia delivered a sermon at the
dedication of the basilica known as the Concilium sanctorum, ‘the Gathering of
the Saints’. The entire sermon is devoted to the saints whose relics were
deposited in the new church.7 The author mentions the barbarian threat which
prevented some bishops from attending the ceremony,8 but does not suggest in
any way that relics have the power to keep the enemy at bay. Presumably in the
same year, Maximus of Turin preached a series of sermons concerning the
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danger caused by the barbarians. He summoned his audience to look for God’s
help by living virtuous lives, prayer, fasting, integrity, orthodox faith, and acts of
charity,9 but did not mention the saints whose relics were kept in Turin, although
he referred to them in other (p.50) sermons, and believed that they were
defensores capable of helping people in the world to come (in futuro).10 Another
case in point is that of Toulouse, a city which was attacked in 407, but managed
to withstand barbarian raids, and possessed the body of its bishop and martyr, St
Saturninus. His relics were certainly much venerated in the locality; only a few
years earlier, in 402 or 403, they were transferred to the new basilica built by
Bishop Exuperius. And yet Jerome, who in 406 had written his fiery defence of
the cult of relics specifically at the request of his friends from Toulouse and who
was well informed about the siege in 407 by the very same people, assumed the
city ‘had been kept from falling hitherto by the merits of its reverend bishop
Exuperius’, still alive at that time, and did not mention Saturninus at all.11
All this demonstrates that in Milan, Rouen, Brescia, Turin, and Toulouse the
belief in protection by the martyrs and their relics was not entirely obvious. Yet
this is not to say that Paulinus’ views were an isolated phenomenon. Indeed, in
the writings of his contemporaries we do find some traces of looking for martyrs’
support in war. In the 380s Gregory of Nyssa, preaching a sermon on the feast of
St Theodore of Euchaita, much venerated in Pontus, invoked the martyr thus:
‘The infamous Scythians [i.e. Goths] gestating war against us are not far. As a
soldier, defend us!’—and expressed his conviction that the Apostles would take
care of the churches that they had founded or in which they had suffered.12 In
the 390s, Ammianus Marcellinus sneered at the general Sabinianus, the
commander of the Roman army in the East, who in 359 had visited some tombs
in Edessa before departing for the war with Persia, with the obvious intention of
looking for help from the martyrs.13 Around 406, Sulpicius Severus scoffed at
the Emperor Constantius’ behaviour during the battle of Mursa, in 351, in the
following words:
For at that time, when a battle was fought at Mursa against Magnentius,
Constantius had not the courage to go down to witness for himself the
conflict, but took up his abode in a basilica of the martyrs which stood
outside the town, Valens who was then the bishop of the place being with
him to keep up his courage.14
About the same time as Paulinus wrote his Poem 26, Rufinus of Aquileia, an
acquaintance of his, recounted very earnestly how the Emperor Theodosius I,
before the war against Eugenius (393), ‘visited with priests all the places of
prayer, and clad in hair-cloth lay prostrated before the tombs of the martyrs and
Apostles, begging for trustworthy help of the saints’.15 One of those places can
be identified as the sanctuary at Hebdomon, close to Constantinople, (p.51)
where the head of John the Baptist was deposited. According to Sozomen,
Theodosius’ victory in the battle of the Frigidus was announced there by a
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demon, lamenting his defeat at the hands of St John through the mouth of an
energumen.16
Another early trace of the belief in saints’ help can be found in the poet
Claudian, who ridiculed a certain dux by the name of Jacobus:
By the ashes of St Paul and the shrine of revered St Peter, do not pull my
verses to pieces, General James. So may St Thomas prove a buckler to
protect thy breast and St Bartholomew bear thee company to the wars; so
may the blessed saints prevent the barbarians from crossing the Alps and
Suzanna endow thee with her strength; so, should any savage foe seek to
swim across the Danube, let him be drowned therein like the swift chariots
of Pharaoh; so may an avenging javelin strike the Getic hordes and the
favour of Thecla guide the armies of Rome; so may thy guests dying in
their efforts to out-drink thee assure thy board its triumph of hospitality
and the broached casks overcome thy thirst; so may thy hand ne'er be red
with an enemy's blood—do not, I say, pull my verses to pieces.17
The epigram was written about 403, and its addressee was probably in command
of some forces in one of the Alpine provinces during the first onslaught of
Alaric’s troops on Italy.18 It may be that already in that war Jacobus manifested
his belief in the power of saints and their relics, for the only piece of information
that we have about him apart from the quoted passage is a letter of Bishop
Vigilius, which says that Jacobus was responsible for the transfer of the relics of
the martyrs of Anaunia to Constantinople.19
Prudentius, also Paulinus’ contemporary, rejoiced that the ‘holy maid Eulalia
honours with her bones and tends with her love her Emerita (Mérida)’, and the
martyrs Emeritus and Chelidonius ‘protect the folk who dwell by Ebro’s
waters’ (i.e. in Calahorra). He also believed that the martyrs would represent
and protect their cities on the Day of Judgement.20
Slightly later, Augustine mentioned in his De cura pro mortuis that St Felix
appeared on the city walls during the siege of Nola, about which he learned from
some eyewitnesses.21 He also suggested that some people were disappointed
because the saints apparently failed to save the city of Rome from (p.52) being
sacked in 410. They would sneer at those who relied on the martyrs for help:
‘Peter’s body lies in Rome’, people are saying, ‘Paul’s body lies in Rome,
Laurence’s body lies in Rome, the bodies of other holy martyrs lie in Rome;
and Rome is grief-stricken, and Rome is being devastated, afflicted,
crushed, burnt; death stalking the streets in so many ways, by hunger, by
pestilence, by the sword. Where are the memorial shrines (memoriae) of
the Apostles?’22
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Those who became disillusioned about the power of martyrs had evidently
placed their trust in them before. At the same time in the East, the author of the
anonymous Sermon on St Thomas the Apostle23 expressed his hope that the
saint, who had already banished Arians from Thrace, would also liberate the
West—he was presumably referring to Alaric’s invasion.24
All this evidence comes from the end of the fourth and beginning of the fifth
century and should be considered along with the reticence on the part of the
authors named above. Interestingly, if Sulpicius Severus and Ammianus did not
project into the past a belief which only appeared in their days, we do see
Roman commanders looking for martyrs’ help in virtually all major conflicts of
the second half of the fourth century, namely the war with Persia during the
reign of Constantius (356: Ammianus), the civil wars against Magnentius (353:
Sulpicius Severus) and Eugenius (394: Rufinus, Sozomen), and Alaric’s invasion
at the turn of the fifth century (Ps.-Chrysostom, Claudian, Paulinus, and
Augustine).
Moreover, the silence of the authors who were interested in the cult of relics but
did not write about their protective power can be partly explained if we examine
their writings against the historical background of the second half of the fourth
century. In that period the West simply was not faced with any serious threats
which would have called for help from above. There were no major natural
disasters, the great tsunami of 365 affected only the eastern part of the
Mediterranean,25 and, after the subjugation of the Alamanni by Julian, the West
did not expect any imminent danger of a barbarian invasion. The situation in
Italy changed only in 402, with Alaric’s first raid into the peninsula, in Gaul on
the last day of 406, with the fall of the Rhine frontier, and in Spain in 409, with
the coming of the Visigoths. Now, almost all the works which praised relics but
failed to express a belief in their protection against the enemy had been written
before the provinces of their authors were attacked. Victricius’ De laude
sanctorum was written in Gaul in 395, Ambrose died in (p.53) Italy in 397, the
last writings of Sulpicius Severus in Gaul date back to c.405, Jerome published
his Adversus Vigilantium, a defence of the cult of relics, directed to his Gallic
friends, in 406, and Prudentius’ Peristephanon was composed in Spain before
405.26 Thus, Paulinus was simply the first ardent supporter of the cult of saints
in the West, who wrote in a region directly threatened by Germanic invasions.
The silence of contemporary Greek advocates of the cult of saints can be
explained in a similar way. Their homelands were not seriously threatened in
their lifetimes, and so it is no surprise that of the Cappadocian Fathers only
Gregory of Nyssa referred, in the passage quoted above, to the power of the
martyr Theodore, who could protect Pontus against the threat of an invasion.27
The only major city which was then clearly in peril was Constantinople and John
Chrysostom, its bishop, assured its inhabitants that it was protected by some
unspecified Egyptian martyrs whose relics had been brought from Alexandria.28
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Unlike the accounts of healing miracles, traces of the belief in the protective
power of the saints occur rather rarely in the later literature of the fifth century.
Hagiographers, church historians, chroniclers, and preachers hardly ever
mention any role for relics in the defence of the cities. In the West, only the
Chronicle of Hydatius, composed around 486, contains a brief remark saying
that in 456 ‘Theoderic was preparing to pillage Emerita (Mérida) but was
deterred by warnings from the blessed martyr Eulalia’ (beatae Eulaliae martyris
terretur ostentis). Mérida was the place of Eulalia’s burial.29 We may add to that
the tale of St Stephen’s attempt to save Metz, where his relics were kept, from
an attack of the Huns in the middle of the fifth century. According to this story,
St Stephen was interceding for Metz with Peter and Paul. It proved to be of no
avail, because God had already decided the fate of the city. Still, he managed to
save at least his own chapel from destruction.30 The problem is that this
particular story was recorded only by Gregory of Tours (p.54) at the end of the
sixth century and there is no guarantee that it really dates back to the times of
the Hunnic invasion.31
In Greek fifth-century literature an important witness of the protection secured

by the saints is Theodoret of Cyrrhus, who claimed that the cities which
possessed corporeal remains of martyrs venerated them as ‘guardians and
defenders’ (ὡς πολιούχους τιμῶσι καὶ φύλακας).32 We may suppose that this
general remark also referred to protection against enemies and natural
disasters, but this is not explicitly stated. The fifth-century author of the
Miracles of St Thecla laid out his views more clearly, presenting the role of the
saints in the world in the following way:
Thus because God is the lover of mankind, the most compassionate and
generous, he sowed the saints over the earth, as if he divided the earth
among excellent physicians. Thus, on the one hand, the saints can easily
perform miracles, for they are in a way closer to those in need and able to
act immediately, bringing healing. On the other hand, through the agency
of God’s grace and power, they can perform great deeds which demand His
help in the highest degree, acting as ambassadors, intercessors, and
persuaders for the sake of nations, cities, races and peoples, against
pestilences, wars, hungers, droughts, earthquakes, and against all things
that only the hand of God can control and master.33
The protection of the community against wars and cataclysms is presented here
as a category apart, distinct from the day-to-day miraculous activity of the
saints. This general reflection is followed by an account of Thecla’s interventions
in the rescue of a few Cilician towns attacked by Isaurians. The saint appeared
on the walls of Seleucia repulsing the enemy with battle cries and thunderclaps,
attacked in person the besiegers of Iconium, ordered the construction of a
shrine (naos) dedicated to her which was to protect the road to Selinus, and
finally delivered a band of brigands who had robbed her sanctuary into the
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hands of Roman soldiers. Gilbert Dagron dates the Isaurian raids from which
Thecla supposedly rescued those three Cilician cities to the 360s and 370s, but
her interventions were described only a hundred years later34 and so one should
regard these passages rather as a testimony to late fifth-century belief.
The fifth-century evidence might seem rather scanty, but it does not mean that
belief in the protective power of relics dwindled in that period. General remarks
of Theodoret and the author of the Miracles of St Thecla can even (p.55)
suggest the contrary. On closer examination, the shortage of episodes
illustrating this belief is not surprising. If a city or province was not in danger,
there was no reason to write about protection guaranteed by relics. And this was
the case with the Asiatic part of the empire, which, having seen the wars of
Constantius II, the fiasco of Julian’s expedition,35 and the peace with Persia
concluded by Jovian in 363, was not threatened with any major invasion, except
for the Hunnic raid in 395. The only city besieged by the Persians before the
Anastasian War of 502 was Theodosiopolis in Osrhoene, attacked in 421–2. No
source mentions a role played by relics in its successful defence, but Theodoret
tells an interesting story about a lithobolos, or stone thrower, with which the
local bishop Eunomius killed a blasphemous Sassanian lesser king. What is
interesting is the name of the machine, ‘Thomas the Apostle’, presumably given
in order to secure the support of the saint.36 Other towns could have feared only
more or less organized bandits, like the Isaurian raiders. When the situation
deteriorated again in the sixth century, with the renewed conflict with Persia and
the subsequent Avar and Slavic attacks, the mentions of saints bringing help to
cities reappear in the evidence. Resapha, the place of the cult of St Sergius, was
besieged by Chosraw II, but the Persians did not take it. According to Evagrius it
was saved by the saint, for the besiegers were frightened by a vision of an
immense army which appeared miraculously on the city walls.37 As for the threat
posed by the Slavs, the collection of the Miracles of St Demetrios consists mostly
of miracles by which Thessalonica was saved from their incursions.38
If the silence of the sources about saints protecting cities is understandable in

time of peace, there was even less reason to write about the support provided by
relics if a war broke out and a besieged city fell or surrendered—which
happened many a time in the West. At the very beginning of the fifth century,
Paulinus could have been thinking that his hopes for the help of the saints were
not in vain. In February 402, he wrote (Carmen 26) that the power of Christ,
acting through St Felix, can crush the barbarians, and the barbarians were
indeed crushed in the battle of Pollentia in the spring of the same year.39 But
later on the situation changed. The series of Natalicia for the festivals of St Felix
came to an end in 407. Since this happened three years before the (p.56)
second invasion of Alaric there is no ground then to attribute it to Paulinus’
disappointment with his patron saint who failed to defend Nola, just as Peter,
Paul, and other martyrs failed to defend Rome in 410. Still, it is doubtful whether
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Paulinus would have still been willing to sing St Felix’s praises after the sack of
Rome and Nola in summer that year.
A good example of a city which probably put its trust in saintly defenders,
without however leaving clear traces of this in literary evidence, is Maipherqat
in Sophene, on the frontier between the Roman Empire and Persia. At the end of
the fourth century Maipherqat was not much more than a village, but it was
developed and fortified by Bishop Marutha, who deposited in it relics of a
number of saints, mostly from Persia, and changed its name to Martyropolis.
Marutha’s project was endorsed by the Emperor Theodosius II, who probably
hoped that this frontier post would be strengthened by the saints. Yet we can
hardly see this in the evidence. The foundation of the city took place in a period
of détente between the Romans and the Persians which lasted until 502. In 502,
when war broke out, Martyropolis was captured, and the same happened again
in 589. None of these events was a good occasion to write about protection
provided by the saints.40 Only inhabitants of cities which were endangered and
then rescued, or at least not taken, could bear witness to a belief in the saints’
protection. And this group was simply not very large.
All this shows that the limited amount of literary evidence for the belief in
question can be misleading. Fortunately, this belief had a good chance of leaving
traces in epigraphical evidence. People who hoped to be healed or delivered
from a demon did not express it in monumental inscriptions. Those who sought
perpetual protection from a saint for their city sometimes did. An early sixth-
century inscription from Euchaita, for instance, calls St Theodore ‘the guardian
of this town’.41 In Jerash (in Jordan), a late fifth-century inscription calls the
same saint ‘an unageing defence and barrier against ill for the town and the
dwellers therein and its citizens yet to be’.42 Peasants from Crete ask St Nicolas:
‘Help this village!’43 The inhabitants of Tyre address their plea to God, but call
Tyre ‘the city of the God-Bearer’.44 Inscriptions like these do not tell us anything
about specific events, but they are a manifest sign of trust in the protection of
saints. It is difficult to assess how strongly this trust was associated with relics;
but we can say that it appeared early, lasted long, and was probably much more
common than the sources suggest.
(p.57) Non-Christian Parallels

What was the origin of the belief in the protective power of relics? Certainly, it
emerged from the belief in the power of saints over demons, discussed in
Chapter 2. Yet such a development was not inevitable, because defending cities,
unlike expelling demons, healing, and prophesying, did not conform to the
pattern of biblical miracles. Neither Jesus nor the Apostles protected towns or
promised to do so in the future. All predictions concerning cities which can be
found in the New Testament foretold their more or less immediate destruction,
in accordance with God’s will.45 In the Old Testament, examples of a God-sent
rescue for Jerusalem are few and far between and unconnected with the
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presence of any special object.46 Even the Ark of the Covenant, sometimes
considered a source of power, never played any role in the defence of the city.47
The protective function of sacred objects connected with gods and heroes was
unquestionably more important in classical antiquity, even if in literary sources
objects of this sort do not appear as frequently as one might expect, and the
archaeological evidence is usually difficult to interpret.48 The most obvious
parallels to the relics of the martyrs are certainly the bones of the heroes whose
burials in agorae, city gates, or city walls are attested by both textual and
material evidence.49 It is interesting to note that this evidence does not suggest
that heroes’ bones had an intrinsic power or created an invisible bulwark
surrounding the city. Instead, they guaranteed that the hero actually resided in
the city and, if properly venerated and summoned, would act personally as its
defender.50 And this belief, as we shall see, closely resembles the role played by
the relics of the saints. This parallel, however, is distant in time from the
emergence of the Christian phenomenon. Even if the cult of heroes was not
entirely dead in Late Antiquity (as illustrated in the evidence presented
below),51 the protective role of their tombs was by then marginal. As early as the
second century AD, Pausanias, who mentioned over fifty places of (p.58) the
cult of heroes in his Description of Greece, some of them including burial sites,
did not present any of these as a source of protective power. Furthermore, even
tombs placed in the very entrance to a city, that is, in the location which modern
scholars regard as an obvious indication of the originally protective character of
the burial, were no longer seen in this way in Pausanias’ time. He explains, for
instance, that the hero Aetolus was buried in the very gate of Olympia simply
due to an oracle which forbade his dead body to be laid either outside the city or
within its precincts.52 All this suggests that the tombs of the heroes could hardly
have played a major role in the emergence of the Christian belief, although some
influence is not impossible.
Yet the tombs of the heroes were not the only powerful objects which protected
cities in the Greek and Roman world. The most famous object of this type was
probably the Palladium, or a wooden statue of Pallas Athena, believed to have
been brought from Troy by Aeneas and thereafter kept in the temple of Vesta in
the Roman Forum. In modern scholarship, the term ‘palladium’ is used to denote
an object belonging to the broad category of city-protecting talismans.53
However, in fact the Palladium was a class by itself. Certainly, the Romans
believed in the divine protection of cities; this belief is clearly visible in the rite
of evocatio, used in the Republican period to win over the favour of the gods of a
besieged enemy. This belief, however, was not accompanied by any known
attempts at stealing or neutralizing divine effigies. It is true that according to
the Aeneid, Ulysses and Diomedes had stolen the Palladium from Troy, thus
depriving the city of its surest defence. But in this they had no followers.54
Protective statues are absent from the literary history of Roman wars. In Roman
archaeology we do find many examples of niches left in city gates, which today
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are usually thought to have been designed to enshrine statuettes of protective

deities,55 but it is not clear whether these statuettes were indeed considered to
be objects endowed with power or mere representations of divine patrons.
Nevertheless, the silence of the sources is a weak argument for the non-
existence of the phenomenon, and Christopher Faraone is probably right in
supposing that the scarcity of evidence of protective statues and other powerful
objects in classical antiquity may result from a disdain Greek philosophy had
long cultivated toward such devices. This disdain, widespread in the
rationalizing historiography of Thucydidean tradition, does not necessarily
reflect, however, what most people of the Mediterranean thought about
talismans protecting communities.56
More importantly, whatever the situation was in the classical era, late antique
authors had no qualms of this sort and protective statues appear in (p.59)
numerous instances in the literary evidence from this period. Admittedly, in
some cases their crucial role could have been invented or overemphasized by
religiously engaged writers. Still, the very fact that these authors found it
important to mention such objects is symptomatic of the belief in their power.
Late antique statues had diverse and specialized functions. Some of them
protected the cities against natural disasters. In the fifth-century Quaestiones et
responsiones of Pseudo-Justinus, we find the earliest explicit mention of
talismans against the winds, storms, mice, and wild beasts, designed supposedly
by the first-century Neopythagorean philosopher Apollonius of Tyana. It is
interesting to note that talismans such as these are not mentioned by
Philostratus, the early third-century author of the Life of Apollonius, and this
suggests that they were invented at a later date.57 According to Malalas, in the
time of Constantine, Ploutarchos, the governor of Syria and a Christian,
discovered in Antioch a bronze statue of Poseidon, which was a talisman
(telesma) against earthquakes.58 Malalas wrote at the beginning of the sixth
century, but being an Antiochene he could draw his information from some
reliable local tradition.59 Writing in the same period, the historian Zosimus
reported that in 375 the city of Athens was saved from an earthquake by the
erection of a statue of Achilles dedicated by the theurgist Nestorius.60
Other statues were destined to impede enemies invading the frontiers.

According to Augustine, in 394 pagans hoped that Theodosius’ army, marching
towards Italy from the East, would be stopped by some golden effigies of Jupiter
which guarded the Alpine passes.61 Unfortunately, we do not know who erected
them and whether they were set up immediately before the approach of the
Theodosian army or much earlier. The early fifth-century pagan historian
Olympiodorus says that Sicily avoided the invasion of Alaric’s Goths in 410
thanks to a sacred statue which protected it against fire from Etna and enemies
from overseas, and that the island was ultimately captured only after the statue
had been removed.62 The same author mentions effigies representing barbarian
peoples buried on the border of Thrace which guarded the province from the
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attacks of barbarians. When these statues were dug up during the reign of
Constantius III,63 the Huns, Sarmatians, and Goths invaded the country.64
Interestingly, there is also one other source mentioning the protection of this
particular province by a statue buried within its limits, (p.60) namely an
epigram known from the Greek Anthology: ‘inscribed on the base of [a statute
of] Ares that lies buried in Thrace. It says that “as long as the fierce Ares here
has been laid low upon the ground, the Gothic people shall never set foot upon
Thrace”.’65 The two episodes mentioned by Olympiodorus date from the first half
of the fifth century, which means that they occurred in his day. Nevertheless, it is
impossible to say when the statues began to be treated as apotropaic objects.
The epigram mentioning Ares is certainly datable to Late Antiquity, because the
Goths referred to in the inscription approached the Roman borders only in the
third century.66
The reappearance of sacred statues in literary sources is partly due to the

interest in divine powerful objects, growing most notably among Neoplatonic
philosophers since the times of Iamblichus.67 This interest can be well illustrated
by a short remark of the Emperor Julian. Writing in 355, he emphasizes that
when the Gauls captured Rome, at the beginning of the fourth century BC, the
citizens ‘occupied the hill on which stands the famous statue of Jupiter’ and the
enemy did not dare to attack. The emphasis put on the role of the statue, which
is absent from other ancient sources, suggests that Julian revised the well-
known story of the Gallic siege in keeping with his Neoplatonic views.68
Nevertheless, it is probable that we are dealing with something more than a
mere intellectual novelty which caused the powerful statues of old to reappear in
the evidence. In some cases the Neoplatonic belief did result in the erection of
new statues, such as that mentioned by Zosimus. After all, people living in that
period in various parts of the empire were probably ready both to seek new
methods of protecting their cities and to return to the old ones.
The lack of a biblical pattern for talismans protecting cities and the growing
interest in such objects among ‘pagans’ at the end of the fourth century leads us
to the question of whether and, if so, to what degree Christian beliefs and
practices in this sphere were influenced by pagan customs.
How did it Work?

In order to understand the relation between Christian and pagan beliefs in this
sphere it is worth taking a closer look at the ways in which protective relics
were supposed to work. Let us return to Paulinus. It is interesting to note that,
(p.61) when writing about the protection guaranteed to Rome and
Constantinople by the Apostles and to Nola by Felix, he never refers directly to
their relics. Admittedly, in his opinion the saints succoured the cities where their
bodies lay, but the connection between their graves and heavenly protection is
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not stressed and is rather indirect.69 And this, for a few reasons, seems to have
been a common view.
First, there is no strict topographical correlation between the place where relics
were kept and the territory protected by saints. The tomb of Felix was not in
Nola itself, but in the place which later came to be known as Cimitile, a
cemetery, about 2 kilometres away from the city which the saint was supposed to
defend. Moreover, as we have seen, Paulinus believed that Felix, and other saints
too, fought against the barbarians not only at the local level—they were also able
to come to help in places far away from where their relics lay.70 The same can be
said about the protective miracles of St Thecla. Her sanctuary was located near
Seleucia, not in Seleucia itself, which did not prevent her from defending this
and other cities against pirates and brigands. It should also be noted that the
general Sabinianus and the Emperor Theodosius I, who sought the assistance of
saints before setting out for war, did not take any relics with them.
Secondly, the authors who evoked the protective power of saints did not pay any
special attention to their relics on such occasions. Nor did they present saints’
graves as sources of miraculous power capable of surrounding the city with
invisible walls. In Paulinus’ poems the protective role of saints consisted in their
interceding with God on behalf of cities. In the Miracles of St Thecla, the saint is
usually presented as protecting the city directly, fighting in person against the
enemy, but in both cases, directly or not, it was the saints who defended the
cities—not their physical remains. It is worth noting that in Seleucia, and later in
Thessalonica, the most famous example of a saint-protected city (during the
Slavic invasions), the very presence of relics was disputable at best. Neither did
Seleucia have the body of St Thecla nor Thessalonica that of St Demetrius.71
Admittedly, we do observe certain efforts to discover or produce their relics, or
prove that they had always been in place, but it does not imply that people
actually thought that the protective power derived from their presence. The
relics do not play any role at all in the accounts of St Thecla’s and St Demetrius’
interventions in defence of the cities.72 Arguably, it was rather the belief in the
presence of relics that resulted from the experience of being protected by saints
than vice versa. Moreover, (p.62) there were other methods of bringing saints’
attention to a besieged city: let us recall the stone thrower in Theodosiopolis
named after Thomas the Apostle. The actual possession of relics was not
necessary.
Thirdly, unlike the aforementioned sacred statues located on the borders of

Sicily, Thrace, or Italy in order to guard straits, passes, and frontiers, the saints
protected peoples and communities rather than thoroughfares and territories.
They did not play the role of talismans but that of patrons.
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Certainly, the notion that the saints do not need their bodily remains in order to
act wherever they wish is perfectly correct from the theological point of view;
the same refers to healing miracles as well. But in the latter case, such an
opinion was rather a result of developments which took place at a later date,
following doctrinal reflection on the cult of saints. It is unquestionable that the
earliest healing miracles occurred at the tombs of martyrs. And even if at the
end of the sixth century Gregory the Great was at pains to convince his readers
that martyrs performed more miracles in places which did not possess their
relics,73 the common opinion must have been exactly the opposite. It seems that
while the belief in the power of exorcisms and healing miracles traces its origin
mostly from an experience of direct contact with relics, the belief in their
protective power derives from reflection on the role of the saints as intercessors
and helpers in all spheres of human life, or (to use a technical term) as patrons.
The idea of the patronus in the late antique cult of saints has been widely
discussed in scholarship.74 It seems to be of particular importance for the belief
in the saints’ protection over cities. In Latin literature, the term ‘patronus’
appears in reference to the saints only at the end of the fourth century, and only
in a few authors. Maximus of Turin, Gaudentius of Brescia, and Jerome,75 all of
whom are important witnesses of the development of the cult of relics, did not
use that term, and, interestingly, as we have seen, none of them mentions
protection provided by saints to cities. It was only Paulinus of Nola who began to
use the term patronus regularly with reference to St Felix. It occurs about forty
times in his poems and letters, which is a substantial number even considering
the fact that he wrote a lot about saints. It is tempting, therefore, to presume
that the use of the term ‘patronus’ and the belief in the protective power of
saints were connected. That connection, however, should not be overstressed.
What is essential is not the word itself, but the way of thinking about the saints
as protectors and intercessors. Victricius, for instance, never calls the saints
patroni, but refers to them as judges, advocates, brothers in arms, and powers
(iudices, advocati, commilitones, and potestates).76 His view of the connection
between the city and the (p.63) saints whose relics it possessed seems to have
been very similar to that of Paulinus. In Greek, there is no equivalent term which
could convey exactly the same meaning as patronus. John Chrysostom and
Asterius of Amasea, both contemporary with Paulinus and Victricius, refer to
martyrs as prostatai (leaders, the closest equivalent of patroni); Theodoret, as
poliouchoi (protecting the city) and phylakes (guards); the author of the Miracles
of Saint Thecla considers the saints presbeuontes (envoys) and addresses Thecla
as the promachos, poliouchos (the fighter for and protector), and mētēr (mother)
of Seleucia.77 It is true that only some of these authors evoke the power of saints
in cases of a military threat, but, as we have already seen, it seems to be a result
of the relatively safe political and military situation in which most of them wrote.
It is also the political and military context that is the main reason why Ambrose,
who did refer to the saints as the patroni of the Church in Milan, did not mention
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their protective role, for when he was writing about martyrs, the cities of Italy
were safe and secure.78
The idea of patron saints and the perception of the link between relics and the
protection of the city as indirect may make one think of the relationship between
Greek heroes and their bones. As we have seen, they were considered not so
much a source of protective power by themselves as a guarantee of the hero’s
presence. This leads us back to the relations between Christian beliefs and
centuries-old Greek practices. The cult of heroes was not entirely dead in Late
Antiquity. Sarpedonios, a local hero whose tomb was venerated in Seleucia in
Isauria, is mentioned several times in the Miracles of St Thecla, and the
narrative suggests that the new saint took over the healing functions performed
previously by the hero of old.79 I have already mentioned the remark of Zosimus
about a statue of Achilles that saved Athens from an earthquake in 375. As we
learn from the same author, the appearance of Achilles and Athena was believed
to have stopped the Gothic troops led by Alaric from taking that city in 395.80
Finally, at the end of the fourth century, Servius claims that the Roman pignora,
or sacred and powerful objects which protected the city, included the ashes of
Orestes.81 Still, we need to be cautious about making far-reaching extrapolations
based on this evidence. First, the survival of the cult of heroes in Late Antiquity
is poorly documented; in fact, all sources on this topic put together do not stand
comparison with those available for the study of the cult of saints. Secondly, the
cult of heroes was, at best, a marginal phenomenon in the West, where the idea
of saint protectors appeared at an early date. Thus, if a direct borrowing is not
impossible, in most (p.64) cases we are probably dealing with a parallel and
largely independent development.
In all, the belief in the help of saint protectors should be distinguished from the
belief in the effectiveness of talisman-like objects. However, it would be
simplistic to make a clear-cut distinction between the late antique pagan statues
or talismans on the one hand, supposed to create impassable barriers against
enemies, wild beasts, natural disasters, and plagues, and the Christian saints on
the other, who cared for their cities, regardless of whether their relics were kept
there or not. In fact, pagans and Christians alike believed in both the help of
supernatural defenders, only tangentially related to material objects, and the
power of talismans. Interestingly, Christians also had their city-protecting
talismans, and, even more interestingly, these talismans seem to have appeared
earlier than city-protecting relics. Although these objects are not directly related
to the cult of saints, they must be discussed in this chapter.
Christian Talismans and Talisman-Like Objects

The earliest Christian object known to us which was believed to be a powerful
protection against the onslaught of enemies was the famous letter of Christ to
King Abgar, enshrined in Edessa. The letter was mentioned already at the
beginning of the fourth century by Eusebius of Caesarea, who devoted a
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substantial passage to the correspondence of Jesus with Abgar, but did not
suggest in any way that the letter defended the city.82 About 384, however, the
pilgrim Egeria heard from the local bishop the story of a Persian siege of Edessa
which had taken place in the days of King Abgar. The enemy failed to capture
the city thanks to the presence of Christ’s letter. When the Persian troops
approached, the king, holding the letter in his hand, prayed with his army at the
city gate and called on Christ’s promise that no enemy would ever enter Edessa.
Suddenly, darkness fell and made the Persians stop at the third milestone from
the city walls. As we can see, at the time when Egeria visited Edessa, the letter
did contain the promise that the city would never be taken. This promise is
absent from the earlier version of the letter quoted by Eusebius. Also, Egeria
remarked that she had read a version of this letter in her native land and it
differed from the one shown to her in Edessa. It is probable that the difference
consisted in the promise of security, which must have been added to the text
only after the time of Eusebius.83 If that was the case, we are dealing here with
a reinterpretation of history resulting from the (p.65) emergence, or growth, of
the belief in the protective power of certain sacred objects—a phenomenon
resembling the episode of the statue of Jupiter and the defence of the Capitol.
The letter of Jesus played the same role as the statues described by
Olympiodorus—its very presence created an impenetrable barrier around the
city.
The letter of Jesus to Abgar is the only Christian palladium-like object mentioned
by a fourth-century source. Later authors, however, bear testimony to a group of
such talismans supposedly enshrined by Constantine in his new capital. The
provenance of some of them was undeniably Christian, while others were
evidently of pagan origin, but since their literary histories are closely
intertwined, they should be discussed together. The objects in question are the
Palladium of Troy, the fragments of the True Cross, and the relics of the Apostles
Andrew, Luke, and Timothy. A distinct group is formed by Marian relics whose
transfer to Constantinople is attributed not to Constantine, but to several fifth-
century emperors.84
The first authors to mention the Palladium, the protective sacred object par
excellence, are Procopius and John Malalas, both writing around the middle of
the sixth century, followed by the seventh-century anonymous author of the
Chronicon Paschale.85 All three claim that Constantine transferred the Palladium
from Rome and placed it in Constantinople, beneath the porphyry column on
which his own statue was set up. Only Procopius specifies the source of his
information and contends that he learned about this from Byzantinoi, that is the
inhabitants of the new capital. This piece of information is not trustworthy. It is
true that Constantine brought to his city a number of statues from all over the
empire.86 It is also true that he had a porphyry column erected in his forum
which was one of the most important landmarks in the topography of the city
from its dedication in 330.87 Nevertheless, before the sixth century no source
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mentions the presence of the Palladium in Constantinople or its removal from

Rome. Moreover, Procopius did not know of such a source either, for the only
evidence he was able to offer was based on hearsay. The remark about the
transfer of the precious statuette should therefore be rejected as spurious: the
idea that it was placed inside the column appeared most probably only in the
sixth century, although its origin is difficult to determine. All we can say is that
in Procopius’ time the story of the transfer of the Palladium circulated by word
of mouth in Constantinople, and while it suggests that people were convinced at
the time of its protective power, it does not tell us much about fourth- or fifth-
century beliefs.88
(p.66) Another sacred and protective object is mentioned in the 440s by the
church historian Socrates, who claims that in the very statue of Constantine
placed on the top of the porphyry column discussed above a fragment of the
True Cross was enshrined.89 The first author to mention that Constantine
received a piece of this relic is Rufinus, who writes that Helena ‘brought a part
of the salutary wood to her son’, but does not specify where the relic was
deposited.90 Also two other church historians, Sozomen and Theodoret of
Cyrrhus, both writing not much later than Socrates, mention a fragment of the
Cross brought to Constantinople, but the former does not specify the precise
place of its deposition, while the latter claims that it was kept in the imperial
palace.91 None of the four historians directly attributes the power of protecting
the city to the Cross, but Rufinus and Socrates evoke in the adjacent passages
the nails of Christ which were fastened in the helmet of Constantine, apparently
in order to protect him. It seems then that both authors credited the fragments
of the Cross with similar power. Moreover, Socrates, in his version of the story of
the sudden God-sent death of Arius, says that the heretic felt suddenly ill when
‘he came near to the Forum of Constantine, in which the porphyry column
stands’,92 which suggests that the historian considered the column to be an
object endowed with power. Interestingly, another church historian,
Philostorgius, who wrote about a decade earlier than Socrates and slightly later
than Rufinus, ascribed protective power not to the fragment of the Cross, but to
the very statue of the emperor. This part of Philostorgius’ history is known from
the summary made by the eighth-century patriarch Photius, who presents it in
the following way:
Our impious enemy of God [Philostorgius was an Arian] also accuses the
Christians of propitiating with sacrifice the image of Constantine standing
on the porphyry column, of honouring it with lights and incense, of offering
vows to it as though it were a god, and of offering prayers and intercession
to avert impending disasters.93
According to Philostorgius, the statue was thus evidently a talisman, but nothing
indicates that any special object was placed inside. Considering that the
discovery of the Cross by Helena is almost certainly fabricated,94 it seems
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sensible to conclude that Philostorgius was right and that initially the power (p.
67) was attributed to the effigy of the city’s founder, not anything within it.95
The talisman was Christianized later, when it was connected with a piece of the
‘salutary wood’. The story about placing a fragment of the Cross in the statue is
probably of local origin. It circulated in Constantinople around 440, when
Socrates heard it. It was obviously unknown to Rufinus and Philostorgius, and
had not yet reached Theodoret, who, though a contemporary of Sozomen, lived
in Syria. It is more than probable that actually neither Constantine nor his
successors ever placed any fragments of the True Cross in the statue, for such
an important event would have left a trace in the sources.
But in the middle of the fifth century people already believed that the relic was
there and guarded the city.96 The fact that the authors named above located the
protective objects either in the column or in the statue suggests that there was
no firmly established opinion concerning the place of their deposition. Medieval
authors usually claim that several relics were stored in the column. But the
column, including its base, has survived to the present day and it does not have
any room or niche in which the relics could have been kept. Thus a chapel in
which relics were deposited was not a integral part of the column’s design;
possibly it was built close to it only in a later period.97
Another place, whose role as a centre of special power in fourth-century

Constantinople should be discussed, is the imperial complex of Constantine’s
Mausoleum and the Church of the Holy Apostles. There is nothing to suggest
that they were considered powerful objects before the end of the fourth century.
The question is whether they were believed to have a protective function at a
slightly later date. Such a belief is expressed by a single author, Paulinus of
Nola, who claims that:
Indeed, when Constantine was founding the city named after himself and
was the first of the Roman kings to bear the Christian name, the god-sent
idea came to him that since he was embarking on the splendid enterprise
of building a city that would rival Rome, he should also emulate Romulus’
city with further endowment, by gladly defending his walls with the bodies
of the Apostles. He then removed Andrew from the Achaeans and Timothy
from Asia. And so Constantinople now stands with twin towers, vying with
the eminence of great Rome, or rather resembling the defences of Rome;
in that God has counterbalanced Peter and Paul with a protection as great,
since Constantinople has gained the disciple of Paul, and brother of
Peter.98
These verses hardly tell us anything about the actual intention of the emperor, or
emperors, who ordered these two translations. It is also highly doubtful that (p.
68) they reflect beliefs of people living in Constantinople at the beginning of the
fifth century. Paulinus never visited that city, but, as we have seen, believed that
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Nola was protected by Felix, and Rome by Peter, Paul, and a host of other
martyrs. Thus, it was probably his own idea that the relics of other Apostles,
believed to be present in several places in the West, and particularly in the
Italian city of Fundi, where Paulinus himself had deposited Andrew’s
‘ashes’ (cineres),99 should have played the same role in Constantinople. No other
late antique author bears witness to this conviction. It is difficult to estimate
how important the Apostles’ relics were for the inhabitants of Constantinople in
this period. It is intriguing that, while evoked by numerous Western authors,
their relics are not mentioned in the Greek sources, with the sole exception of
Gregory of Nazianzus.100 None of the ancient church historians tells us anything
about their transfers, and by the middle of the sixth century the relics of the
Apostles seem to have been forgotten. Procopius suggests that in the time of
Justinian the specific place of their deposition was unknown; they were
rediscovered by surprised workers only during the reconstruction of the Holy
Apostles’ church.101 Both the silence of the Greek writers and the amazement of
the builders would be difficult to explain if the Apostles’ bodies had been treated
beforehand as a guarantee of the city’s security. Of course, the relics could not
have been discovered if actually no one knew about their existence, but they
could hardly have been considered to be essential, or even important, for the
security of Constantinople.
In a later period the best-known holy objects which protected Constantinople

were the Marian relics, but they started to play this role well beyond the
chronological limits of this book. True, the garments of the Holy Virgin Mary
were brought to the city already in the fifth century, during the reign of Arcadius
or Leo I, but the dependable evidence that they were indeed considered to
protect the capital comes only from the tenth century. The earliest sources which
refer to Mary as bringing help to Constantinople against enemies are the
seventh-century epigram of George Pisides and the Chronicon Paschale. They
both claim that, during the siege of 626, the Avars were frightened by the
apparition of the Virgin on the walls. Neither of these sources, however,
mentions any specific object protecting the city.102
In all, the only sacred objects which guaranteed the security of the city in the
chronological scope of this book were, first, the statue and column of
Constantine, the fragment of the Cross, and finally the Palladium, supposedly
(p.69) enshrined beneath the column. It is difficult to determine when exactly
the conviction of the protective power of the statue appeared for the first time,
but it happened probably not long before Philostorgius, as there is no evidence
that such a belief manifested itself during two dramatic events in which
Constantinople was believed to be saved only thanks to an intervention from
above, namely the catastrophe of Adrianople in 378 and the revolt of the Gothic
troops of Gainas in 399. None of the authors who describe the approach of the
Goths to the city in 378 suggests that it was protected by the statue, the Cross,
or the Palladium, although Ammianus, a pagan, suggests an supernatural help
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when he evokes some caeleste numen which repulsed the invaders.103 Nor is the
salvation of the city and the imperial palace from being burnt by the Goths in
399 associated with the power of the statue. Fifth-century church historians
attributed it to the apparition of an angelic host.104
To sum up, while Constantinople was considered a city defended by a heavenly

power already at the end of the fourth century, during the Gothic invasion and
the revolt of Gainas, the material guarantee of this protection appears in the
evidence only slightly later, at the beginning of the fifth century, first as
Constantine’s statue, then as the fragment of the True Cross deposited in it, and,
much later, in the sixth century, as the Palladium, enshrined in the very same
column. There is no proof that the relics of the Apostles ever played such a role.
Notes:
(1) Paulinus of Nola, Carmen 26 (Nat. 8). 246–58 (trans. P. G. Walsh).
(2) Paulinus of Nola, Carmen 19 (Nat. 11, AD 405). 329–41; Carmen 21 (Nat. 13,
AD 407). 1–12.
(3) Heim 1992, 306.
(4) In the case of Felix this belief is attested by the epigraphic evidence from
Cimitile: CIL X 1338 and 1370; see Orselli 1965, 75–7.
(5) According to Paulinus of Milan, Vita Ambrosii 51, Ambrose, after his death,
helped the Moorish commander Mascezel to win a battle, but this text was
written only c.422.
(6) I have not omitted any examples quoted by Courcelle 1964; Orselli 1965, and
Beaujard 2000.
(7) Gaudentius, Tractatus 17; see Courcelle 1953, 23–4. These saints are John the
Baptist, Thomas and Andrew the Apostles, Luke the Evangelist, the martyrs
Gervasius, Protasius, Nazarius, Sisinnius, Martyrius, Alexander, and the Forty
Martyrs of Sebaste.
(8) Gaudentius, Tractatus 17.2.
(9) Maximus, Sermo 81.3; 82.3; 83.1; 85.2; 86.1–3.
(10) Maximus, Sermo 12.1–2; see also Sermones 105–6.
(11) Jerome, Epistula 123.16.
(12) Gregory of Nyssa, De sancto Theodoro, pp. 70–1; see E. Rizos, CSLA
E01749.
(13) Ammianus, Res gestae 18.7.7.
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(14) Sulpicius Severus, Chronica 2.38.3 (trans. A. Roberts, slightly adapted).
(15) Rufinus, Historia ecclesiastica 11.33 (trans. Ph. Amidon).
(16) Theodosius’ prayer: Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 7.24.2. See also

Theodoret, Historia ecclesiastica 5.24.3–12. Demoniac’s prophecy: Sozomen,
Historia ecclesiastica 7.24.8.
(17) Claudian, Carmina Minora 50 (trans. M. Platnauer).
(18) See Woods 1991b and Al. Cameron 1970, 224–5.
(19) See Jacobus (1) in PLRE 1, 450, and Woods 1991b for a closer identification
of his office, and Vanderspoel 1986 for the date and identification with the
personage mentioned by Vigilius.
(20) Prudentius, Peristephanon 3.3–5 (Eulalia); 1.115–17 (Emeritus and

Chelidonius), 4.1–60 (local martyrs and the Last Judgement).
(21) Augustine, De cura pro mortuis 19 (written in 420–2); in spite of the fact that
Nola finally was captured: De civitate Dei 1.10.57–63 (written in 413).
(22) Augustine, Sermo 296.6 (trans. E. Hill).
(23) Attributed to John Chrysostom, but spurius according to Clavis Patrum

Graecorum 4574.
(24) Sermo in s. Thomam Apostolum, p. 500. It is that possible some relics of

Thomas were to be found close to Constantinople (in Drypia) and some in the
West. It is by no means evident that the sermon was delivered at the tomb of
Thomas in Edessa, as Courcelle 1964, 35, thinks.
(25) G. Kelly 2004, 141–9.
(26) Hunter 1999, 406–7; Prudentius: Roberts 1993, 2–3; Sulpicius Severus:
Stancliffe 1983, 80–1.
(27) Gregory of Nyssa, De sancto Theodoro, pp. 70–1 (see n. 12). It is not certain
what threat he had in mind—perhaps the Gothic danger caused by Fritigern.
(28) John Chrysostom, Laudatio martyrum Aegyptiorum 1. The venue of this

sermon is uncertain, but E. Rizos, CSLA E02383, convincingly argues that
Constantinople is more probable than Antioch.
(29) Hydatius, Chronica s.a. 456; see also the death of Heremigarius who had
scorned Mérida, ‘thereby causing an affront to the holy martyr Eulalia … was
cast headlong into the river Ana by the hand of God and died’ (s.a. 429, trans.
Burgess).
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(30) Gregory of Tours, Historiarum libri 2.6. See also the story of King Agila, who
profaned the shrine of the martyr Aquisclus in Cordoba, and subsequently ‘was
smitten by vengeance for the present war, and lost there his son, who was killed
together with a large part of the army, and also lost the whole treasure with its
renowned riches. All that through the agency of Aquisclus and other saints’: this
would have happened in 549, but the story is attested only in the second quarter
of the seventh century: Isidore of Seville, Historia Gothorum 45 (trans. G.
Donini).
(31) Other stories in Gregory of Tours about cities and armies protected by relics:
Historiarum libri 3.29, 7.31 and Liber in gloria confessorum 78.
(32) Theodoret, Graecorum affectionum curatio 8.10. According to Canivet SC

57, 28–31 it was written probably between AD 427 and 431.
(33) Miracula Theclae 4.32–43 (trans. S. F. Johnson).
(34) Miracula Theclae 5, 6, 27, and 28 (the two former in AD 354, the two latter
in the 370s, according to Dagron in Miracula Theclae, introduction, pp. 115–18).
(35) No relics are mentioned in accounts of these wars, although we find a

heavenly intervention in Theodoret’s description of the siege of Amida, Historia
ecclesiastica 2.31.8–9 (Shapur terrified by a vision) and 2.31.11–14 (a monk,
Jacob, inflicts a plague of flies and mosquitoes on the Persian besiegers).
(36) Theodoret, Historia ecclesiastica 5.39.12–14.
(37) Evagrius, Historia ecclesiastica 4.28; see E. K. Fowden 1999, 134–5.
(38) See Lemerle 1979–81. See also Evagrius, Historia ecclesiastica 1.13 (the
head of Simeon Stylites protects the army of the East); Historia ecclesiastica
4.28 (St Sergius protects his city against Persians); Theophylact Simocatta,
Historia ecclesiastica 7.15.2 (Alexander of Dryzipara punishes Avars with
plague).
(39) See Guttilla 1989, 19.
(40) For the evidence and discussion, see E. K. Fowden 1999, 45–59.
(41) P. Nowakowski, CSLA E00969.
(42) Trans. A. H. M. Jones; see P. Nowakowski, CSLA E02342.
(43) See P. Nowakowski, CSLA E01368.
(44) See P. Nowakowski, CSLA E01765.
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(45) Matthew 24:1–3, 15–22; Mark 13:1–2, 14–20; Luke 21:5–6, 20–4; Rev. 17:1–
18:24.
(46) 2 Kings 19:35 (the angel of the Lord slays the Assyrian army); 2 Macc. 3:24–
7 (the Temple treasury is defended by a radiant rider).
(47) The two texts which suggest that the Ark could be useful in the battle are
Josh. 6:6–21 (the capture of Jericho) and 1 Sam. 4:2–4 (the war with the
Philistines, in which the Ark fails to bring victory to Israel).
(48) The belief in the protective role of certain statues in Greek and Roman
religion is usually taken for granted: see e.g. Y.-M. Duval 1996, 102. He finds it
superfluous to expatiate upon the belief in the protective power of pagan statues
of gods, which has existed without interruption for hundreds of years, but does
not refer to the evidence.
(49) Archaeological evidence: Kron 1999, 73 and n. 41 (tombs of heroes, with

references to detailed studies).
(50) Rohde 1925, 120–1; see the analysis of the most famous examples of
transfers of the bodies of heroes (especially that of Orestes in Herodotus,
Historiae 1.66–8) in McCauley 1999, 94–5.
(51) Lavan 2011, 453–5.
(52) Pausanias, Graeciae descriptio 5.4.4.
(53) Kitzinger 1954, 110 (about pagan practices).
(54) Virgil, Aeneid 2.160–84. Evocatio could be accompanied by the transfer of

the cult statue only after the capture of the city; see Basanoff 1947, 42–5 and
204.
(55) Faraone 1992, 8.
(56) Faraone 1992, 114.
(57) Quaestiones et responsiones ad orthodoxos 24. The anonymous author is

identified either ash Diodorus of Tarsus or Theodoret of Cyrrhus. See Dulière
1970 and Dzielska 1986, 76 and 106–11. It is possible that Eusebius alluded to
the talismans of Apollonius in Contra Hieroclem 40 when he mentioned
‘superstitious devices’ (periergous mechanas) known to his contemporaries and
dedicated in the name of Apollonius.
(58) Malalas, Chronographia 13.3.
(59) See Downey 1935.
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Defenders of Cities
(60) Zosimus, Historia nova 4.18.1–4.
(61) Augustine, De civitate Dei 5.26.31–6; see Y.-M. Duval 1996.
(62) Olympiodorus, fr. 16.
(63) Gillet 1993, 10.
(64) Olympiodorus, fr. 27.
(65) Anthologia Graeca 9.805; see Faraone 1991, 169–70.
(66) It does not seem that the statue of Victory in the Roman curia was
considered to be an apotropaic object, in spite of the fact that pagan senators
strongly opposed its removal. It is rather the ritual that was considered to be
essential for the safety of Rome, not the statue itself; see Lavan 2011, 445–7.
(67) Dodds 1947, 62–6.
(68) Julian, Laudatio Constantii 1.29.
(69) Paulinus of Nola, Carmen 26 (Nat. 8; AD 402); 19 (Nat. 11; AD 405). 329–41;
21 (Nat. 13; AD 407). 25–36.
(70) Paulinus of Nola, Carmen 21 (Nat. 13; AD 407).1–36.
(71) For the relics of Demetrius, see Skedros 1999, 57–9, Woods 2000, and
Bakirtzis 2002; for Thecla, see Davis 2001.
(72) See Lemerle 1979–81.
(73) See Gregory the Great, Dialogi 2.38.
(74) Above all by Brown 1981 and Orselli 1965.
(75) Also Augustine used it in this sense extremely rarely: De cura pro mortuis 6.
(76) Victricius, De laude sanctorum 12.
(77) Miracula Theclae 4.39–40 and 6.2–3.
(78) Ambrose, Epistula 77.11 and Expositio evangelii secundum Lucam 10.12;
also Prudentius, Peristephanon 1.10–12; 2.577–80; 6.142–5; 10.831–5; 13.105–6;
see Palmer 1989, 222–3.
(79) Miracula Theclae 1, 11.10–23, 18.28–32, 40.
(80) Zosimus, Historia nova 5.6.1–3.
(81) Servius, In Aeneidos 7.188; see Ando 2008, 182–3.
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Defenders of Cities
(82) Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 1.13.
(83) Egeria, Itinerarium 19.8–13.
(84) Wortley 2005.
(85) Procopius, Bellum Gothicum 1.15; Malalas, Chronographia 13.7; Chronicon

Paschale s.a. 328.
(86) Eusebius, Vita Constantini 3.54.3–7; Mango 1963; Dagron 1974, 139–40.
(87) Dagron 1974, 37–40.
(88) Dagron 1974, 373–4 draws attention to a passage in Zosimus, Historia nova
2.31.2–3, mentioning the temple and statue of Tyche of Rome erected by
Constantine in the new capital. I cannot assess whether this fact gave rise to the
story of the transfer of the Palladium. See also Ando 2008, 187–9.
(89) Socrates, Historia ecclesiastica 1.17.8. For discussion and review of the
entire evidence, see Klein 2004a, 33–9.
(90) Rufinus, Historia ecclesiastica 10.8.
(91) Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 2.1.9; Theodoret, Historia ecclesiastica

1.18.6.
(92) Socrates, Historia ecclesiastica 1.38.7.
(93) Philostorgius, Historia ecclesiastica 2.17 (trans. Ph. Amidon).
(94) See pp. 114–16.
(95) Later on a similar part was played by the giant equestrian statue of
Justinian: Raby 1987.
(96) Although the first specific mention of its role in the defence concerns only
the Arab siege in 711: Klein 2004a.
(97) Majeska 1984, 260–3.
(98) Paulinus of Nola, Carmen 19.329–42 (written in 405; trans. P. G. Walsh).
(99) Paulinus of Nola, Epistula 32.17.
(100) Gregory of Nazianzus, Contra Iulianum I 69 mentions relics but not the
place where they are deposited.
(101) Procopius, De aedificiis 1.4.18–21.
Page 24 of 25
Defenders of Cities
(102) George Pisides: Anthologia Graeca 1.120–1; Chronicon Paschale s.a. 626;
see Pentcheva 2006, 37–59. According to late ninth-century authors, the icon of
Hodogetria was carried along the rampart during the siege of 717, but this is
very uncertain: see Wortley 2005, 173 and 183.
(103) Ammianus, Res gestae 31.16.4.
(104) Philostorgius, Historia ecclesiastica 11.8; Socrates, Historia ecclesiastica

6.6.18; Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 8.4.10–18. None of the authors suggests
that the city was protected by any divine power against Alaric in 395; see
Claudian, In Rufinum 2.54–8, although Zosimus, Historia nova 5.6.1–3, ascribes
the salvation of Athens attacked by the Goths to the apparition of Athena
Promachos in a ‘statue-like’ shape.
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Defenders of Cities

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

Print publication date: 2018

Abstract and Keywords

Keywords: relic, palladium, protection, amulet, guardian statue, saint

In Greek fifth-century literature an important witness of the protection secured

If the silence of the sources about saints protecting cities is understandable in

(p.57) Non-Christian Parallels

are usually thought to have been designed to enshrine statuettes of protective

Other statues were destined to impede enemies invading the frontiers.

The reappearance of sacred statues in literary sources is partly due to the

How did it Work?

Thirdly, unlike the aforementioned sacred statues located on the borders of

Christian Talismans and Talisman-Like Objects

mentions the presence of the Palladium in Constantinople or its removal from

Another place, whose role as a centre of special power in fourth-century

In a later period the best-known holy objects which protected Constantinople

To sum up, while Constantinople was considered a city defended by a heavenly

(3) Heim 1992, 306.

(8) Gaudentius, Tractatus 17.2.

(9) Maximus, Sermo 81.3; 82.3; 83.1; 85.2; 86.1–3.

(10) Maximus, Sermo 12.1–2; see also Sermones 105–6.

(11) Jerome, Epistula 123.16.

(13) Ammianus, Res gestae 18.7.7.

(14) Sulpicius Severus, Chronica 2.38.3 (trans. A. Roberts, slightly adapted).

(15) Rufinus, Historia ecclesiastica 11.33 (trans. Ph. Amidon).

(16) Theodosius’ prayer: Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 7.24.2. See also

(17) Claudian, Carmina Minora 50 (trans. M. Platnauer).

(18) See Woods 1991b and Al. Cameron 1970, 224–5.

(20) Prudentius, Peristephanon 3.3–5 (Eulalia); 1.115–17 (Emeritus and

(22) Augustine, Sermo 296.6 (trans. E. Hill).

(23) Attributed to John Chrysostom, but spurius according to Clavis Patrum

(24) Sermo in s. Thomam Apostolum, p. 500. It is that possible some relics of

(25) G. Kelly 2004, 141–9.

(28) John Chrysostom, Laudatio martyrum Aegyptiorum 1. The venue of this

(32) Theodoret, Graecorum affectionum curatio 8.10. According to Canivet SC

(33) Miracula Theclae 4.32–43 (trans. S. F. Johnson).

(35) No relics are mentioned in accounts of these wars, although we find a

(36) Theodoret, Historia ecclesiastica 5.39.12–14.

(37) Evagrius, Historia ecclesiastica 4.28; see E. K. Fowden 1999, 134–5.

(39) See Guttilla 1989, 19.

(41) P. Nowakowski, CSLA E00969.

(42) Trans. A. H. M. Jones; see P. Nowakowski, CSLA E02342.

(43) See P. Nowakowski, CSLA E01368.

(44) See P. Nowakowski, CSLA E01765.

(49) Archaeological evidence: Kron 1999, 73 and n. 41 (tombs of heroes, with

(51) Lavan 2011, 453–5.

(52) Pausanias, Graeciae descriptio 5.4.4.

(53) Kitzinger 1954, 110 (about pagan practices).

(54) Virgil, Aeneid 2.160–84. Evocatio could be accompanied by the transfer of

(55) Faraone 1992, 8.

(56) Faraone 1992, 114.

(57) Quaestiones et responsiones ad orthodoxos 24. The anonymous author is

(58) Malalas, Chronographia 13.3.

(59) See Downey 1935.

(60) Zosimus, Historia nova 4.18.1–4.

(61) Augustine, De civitate Dei 5.26.31–6; see Y.-M. Duval 1996.

(62) Olympiodorus, fr. 16.

(63) Gillet 1993, 10.

(64) Olympiodorus, fr. 27.

(65) Anthologia Graeca 9.805; see Faraone 1991, 169–70.

(67) Dodds 1947, 62–6.

(68) Julian, Laudatio Constantii 1.29.

(70) Paulinus of Nola, Carmen 21 (Nat. 13; AD 407).1–36.