Five anastasiae and two Febroniae : a guided tour in the maze oF anastasia legends Part One

The recent data related to the legend of St Anastasia in Byzantium require a fresh analysis of the mutually connected cults of Anastasia and Febronia in both the Christian East and West. Part One of the present study is focused on the East, whereas Part Two will be focused on the Latin West. In Part One, the cult of Anastasia is discussed especially in Constantinople from the mid-fifth to the fourteenth centuries, with special attention to the epoch when the Imperial Church was Monothelite (seventh century). In this epoch, a new avatar of St Anastasia was created, the Roman Virgin, whose Passio was written on the basis of Syriac hagiographic documents. The cult of this second Anastasia was backed by Monothelite Syrians, whereas the fifth-century cult of Anastasia in Constantinople was backed by the Goths. Transformations of Anastasia cults in the era of state Monothelitism were interwoven with a new Syriac cult of Febronia of Nisibis that appeared in the capital shortly after its creation in Syria in a Severian “Monophysite” milieu.

copies ("well over 200" 3 ). BHG 81 did not exist in Greek before 824, whereas it later became the most popular version. Even though Delehaye knew most of the remaining Anastasia legends, he considered them as either unconnected to BHG 81 or (in the obvious case of legend BHG 83b ascribed in the manuscripts to either john of Damascus or john of Euboea) as being later than it. This caused him to believe that the contents of LLA had not been known in Constantinople before 824. Nevertheless, Delehaye had already noticed an apparent paradox of this Martyrdom: "Ce long récit, qui doit être rangé incontestablement parmi les Passions romaines, offert cette particularité qu'il n'y est fait mention d'aucun martyr romain" [44, p. 151].
This apparent paradox should be resolved in both possible ways that will be discussed below. On the one hand, LLA appeared in Rome as a borrowing from Constantinople. Theodore Krithinos took back to Byzantium a Byzantine legend that was then semi-forgotten in its homeland. On the other hand, the earlier Constantinopolitan legend used, in its core, hagiographical legends composed in Rome and dedicated to the martyrs of Rome.
The first part of the present study will be focused on the non-Roman elements of the cult(s) of Anastasia(e). The second part will be focused on the Roman cult(s).

the martyrdom of anastasia and theodota
Before departing for the field, I summarise the data that became available after Delehaye, which were studied in detail in my previous article [84].
The legend BHG 83b (a panegyric ascribed to a certain john, either of Damascus or of Euboea) was edited, in 1988, by Bonifatius Kotter among the spuria of john of Damascus [79, S. 279-303]. It was both the editio princeps and a critical edition. From the manuscript tradition, Kotter concluded that the terminus post quem non for the common archetype of the available manuscripts of the panegyric is ca 800. In other words, this panegyric is older than BHG 81.
It is highly unlikely that a Byzantine panegyrist, the author of BHG 83b, used any sources in Latin, and, therefore, his panegyric is important evidence of the accessibility of the allegedly "Roman" legend in Byzantium before ca 800. The legend itself, being the main source of the panegyric, must have been even older.
This evidence is corroborated by the Georgian part of the hagiographical dossier of Anastasia. Besides the Georgian translation of BHG 83b (still unpublished and unstudied) and other pieces familiar from the Greek part of the dossier, the Georgian dossier contains a martyrdom very close to BHG 83b in the part of martyrdom properly (BHG 83b consists of two parts: a long original panegyric and a recension of the martyrdom, which is similar to this Georgian text). I have proved that this Georgian text was translated from Arabic (in Palestine between the eighth and tenth century), while the Arabic was translated from the lost Greek [86]. Quite recently, after the publication of my study, I found an Arabic recension almost identical to the lost Arabic original of this Georgian text 4 .
The Martyrdom known to us from LLA and BHG 81 is, in this recension, reduced mostly to two plot lines, those of Anastasia and Theodota, whereas the line of the Thessalonian martyrs Irena and her companions is barely traceable, exclusively due to the negligence of the Byzantine editor. Thus, this recension could be called Passio Anastasiae et Theodotae (I will use this title but without forgetting that it is a modern label by Korneli Kekelidze, who introduced it for convenience only 5 ).
With this abbreviated but perfectly recognisable recension of the "Roman" Martyrdom LLA, we are, with the lost Greek original of the Martyrdom of Anastasia and Theodota, in the middle of the eighth century at the latest, if not in the seventh.
The relations between the mentioned texts, both preserved and lost (marked with the asterisk 6 ), are presented in Stem 1 ( fig. 1).
We have to retain from BHG 83b and its Georgian translation the fact that the legend of the Roman dame Anastasia the Widow was quite well known in Greek long before 824. Therefore, the Latin original of BHG 81 (LLA) is an edited version of a Greek source.
We will exclude from the following dossier the Middle Byzantine apocalyptic traditions related to Anastasia 7 . These traditions are indirect evidence of the high status of her cult in the previous period, that is, before the ninth century, but not a significant source of earlier hagiographical material. The Middle Byzantine apocalypses were interested in Anastasia's authoritative name but in hardly any of her legends.

the Programme of the Present study
I will discuss the most known and most important legend of Anastasia, that of Anastasia the Widow, only after having exhausted lesserknown parts of two hagiographical dossiers, those of Anastasiae and Febroniae. I presume, however, that the plot of the legend of the Widow is already known to the reader, as well as the fact that her church in Constantinople (where her relics were moved from Sirmium) was constructed, in the fifth century, with the help of the Goths.
I will begin with a compact and not especially rich but somewhat interesting dossier of the "Monophysite" Anastasia, Anastasia the Patrician. It will be not without interest per se, whereas, in the present study, it will be mostly interesting as evidence of the great importance of the Anastasia cult -and precisely that of Anastasia the Widow -already in the sixthcentury Constantinople.
Then, I will turn to a very important legend, that of Anastasia the Virgin. I hope to prove that this is a legend of the epoch when the official Church of Constantinople was Monothelite. It was catalysed by the cult of the martyr Febronia of Nisibis, then quite new but quite important for Constantinople. This legend of Anastasia the Virgin is exactly that which replaced, in Constantinople, the older legend of Anastasia the Widow, known to us through the Latin intermediary (LLA) and the abbreviated recension of the Martyrdom of Anastasia and Theodota.
Then, I will discuss the Constantinopolitan legend, whose appearance must have been motivated by the transport of the relics of the historical martyr Anastasia from Sirmium to Constantinople in ca 469. A decisive reconstruction of this legend, however, will become possible only after an analysis of the Roman traditions of the Anastasia cults in Part Two of the present study.
The outline of Part One of the present study is the following: B. Lourié. Five Anastasiae and Two Febroniae: A Guided Tour in the Maze of Anastasia Legends. Part One -The hagiographical dossier of Anastasia the Patrician (section 2).
-The hagiographical dossier of St Febronia and its connexion with Anastasia's dossier (section 3).
-The hagiographical dossier of Anastasia the Virgin, its dependence on Febronia's dossier and other Syriac sources, and its polemical function against the cult of Anastasia the Widow (section 4).
-A comparison between two major Constantinopolitan cults of Anastasiae, those of the Widow and of the Virgin (section 5).
-The Gothic background of Anastasia the Widow's cult in Constantinople (section 6).
-The role of the saints of Sirmium, Nicaea, and Thessalonica in the Constantinopolitan cult of St Anastasia the Widow (section 7).
Part Two of the present study will be dedicated to the Roman dossier. Definite conclusions on the origin of the cult of Anastasia will be postponed to the end of Part Two. However, many intermediary conclusions concerning the development of different cults in Constantinople and Rome will be reached throughout the two parts of the present study.

anastasia the Patrician: a "monophysite" legend of another widow
The legend of Anastasia the Patrician is preserved in Greek 8 , Syriac 9 , Arabic 10 , Ethiopic 11 , and Syro-Palestinian (Palestinian Christian Aramaic) 12 languages but remains understudied 13 . The Syro-Palestinian version is preserved in a short fragment only but it is significant because of the early date of the manuscript, the seventh century. This is important for dating the legend in one of its recensions, namely, that included in the collection of stories ascribed to Daniel of Scete.
The present-day scholarly consensus does not acknowledge in this Anastasia any historicity. Her story is overtly anti-justinianic: justinian, according to the legend, tried to take the patrician lady Anastasia as his wife while his own wife was still alive, but Anastasia escaped to Egypt, where she established a women's monastery near Alexandria. After the death of his wife, justinian tried to take Anastasia to himself despite her monastic status. Nevertheless, the legend is not hostile to justinian's wife Theodora even in its Greek recensions; in the "Monophysite" recensions, Empress Theodora is helping Anastasia to flee to Egypt. There is no doubt that the Sitz im Leben of the legend is to be found in the Severianist "Monophysite" milieu of the late sixth century, which had been previously protected by Empress Theodora. However, given that this milieu was split, in the second half of the sixth century, into a dozen factions, the exact Sitz im Leben remains obscure.
The story is focused on the events in Egypt, which still await identification. Anastasia established a monastery near Alexandria (at either Penton, according to the Greek recensions, or Ennaton, according to the Syriac; others versions do not specify the place) and remained there until the death of Empress Theodora (548), when she fled to the Scete and lived there under the guise of a eunuch for 28 years, that is, until 575/576 (depending on the method of counting implied, either inclusive or exclusive; the common method was inclusive). The latter date is probably connected to the re-establishing of the Severianist patriarchate in 575 (widowed since the death of Theodosius, the Severianist patriarch of Alexandria, in 567), when two patriarchs, Theodore and Peter IV, were consecrated by two rival factions almost immediately one after another; the faction of Peter IV (that eventually won) had been led by the monks of monasteries in Ennaton (a locality at the ninth milestone west of Alexandria, where "Monophysite" monasteries were abundant; the Penton was a nearby place at the fifth milestone occupied by Melkite monastics). All this would suggest that the legend was produced by the ecclesiastical party of Damian -a monk from Ennaton of Syrian origin, a "grey cardinal" under Peter IV (575-576/577), and himself the Severianist jacobite patriarch of Alexandria from 577/578 to 605/606 14 .
Regardless of the raison d'être of this legend, a conditio sine qua non for its creation must have been a close connexion -well known to a large audience outside Constantinople -between the capital and the imperial cult of Anastasia; otherwise, the link between Anastasia and justinian would have been pointless, and this element of anti-justinianic satire would have lost its effect.
The Anastasia of this story is certainly a patrician lady (αὕτη πρώτη πατρικία οὖσα τοῦ βασιλέως [42, col. 523] "...she, being the first patrician of the emperor..."), even though it is not explicitly said that she is a widow. One can understand the concern of the hagiographer, because he had to preserve both the high and independent social status of Anastasia -available to widows but not to unmarried girls -and her virginity. justinian, in this legend, combines the roles played in the Byzantine and Latin legend of Anastasia the Widow by Diocletian and Dulcitius (the governor of Macedonia who appeared as the persecutor of Agape, Irene, and Chionia and went mad because of his passion for adultery). The late sixth-century "Monophysite" legend of Anastasia the Patrician is, therefore, an indirect but important witness of the cult of Anastasia the Widow in the sixth-century Constantinople.
As the Martyrdom of Anastasia and Theodota, the legend of Anastasia the Patrician is a product of the decomposition of the legend of Anastasia the Widow that will be in the centre of our interest.
We have to retain from the above analysis, moreover, that the legend of Anastasia the Patrician explains, among other things, why her relics are unavailable for veneration: they remained buried in a remote corner of the Egyptian desert.

anastasia and Febronia in monothelite Constantinople
The cult of Anastasia in Constantinople was initially dedicated to a unique saint. Its centre was the Anastasia church in the central part of the city, where her relics were deposited. However, this unique saint later acquired several competing biographies. Leaving aside the "monophysite" legend of Anastasia the Patrician (whose relics, according to her legend, must have disappeared in the Egyptian desert), we meet two competing Anastasiae among the Chalcedonians. One of them is Anastasia the Widow mentioned earlier, and another one is Anastasia the Virgin (BHG 76z 15 ; Metaphrastic paraphrase BHG 77). This Virgin has little to do with the Widow, even though the Widow was also a virgin, due to her revulsion for her pagan husband.
Paul Devos demonstrated, in 1962, that, in its major part, the Greek text of the legend of the Virgin is copy-pasted verbatim from the Greek recension of the Martyrdom of Febronia of Nisibis (BHG 569) [49]. He did not explain, however, the raison d'être of such a "plagiarised" text, nor did he explain the meaning of the details that were not borrowed from the Martyrdom of Febronia.
Fortunately, the reason for the connexion between the cults of Anastasia and Febronia becomes immediately clear after having examined the cult of Febronia in Constantinople.
The cult of Febronia appeared, in Constantinople, as a necessary supplement to the late sixth-century cult of St Artemius as the healer 16 . This cult was focused on the relics of St Artemius deposited (presumably, in the late sixth century) in the St john the Forerunner church in the Oxeia quarter. St Artemius's specialisation as a healer was rather narrow: it was restricted to genital diseases and hernias 17 . For a treatment of these diseases of women, the help of a female healer would have been welcome, and this female healer became Febronia. At least, such an explanation was provided by the anonymous compiler of the Miracles of St Artemius (BHG 173), who worked between 658 and 668 18 . These Miracles, which preserve memories from the late sixth century up through the time of the compiler, contain the first mentions ever of Febronia in Byzantium. There was no trace of the cult of Febronia in Constantinople before these Miracles, which were composed by a Monothelite author (admirer of the Monothelite Emperors especially known by their religious zeal, Heraclius and Constans II), when the Patriarchate of Constantinople was Monothelite.
Febronia's connexion with the cult of Anastasia was predefined by topography. Sacred topography is often an implicit but very important topic of the Passions épiques 19 . The church of St john the Forerunner containing both relics of St Artemius and an interior chapel (εὐκτήριον) of St Febronia (without any relics) was located somewhere near the crossroads adorned by the bronze Tetrapylon at the intersection of the Mesa (the principal street of Constantinople) and the perpendicular street lined by the colonnades of Domninos (τῶν Δομνίνου ἐμβόλων), between the Forum of Theodosius (about 300 m to the west) and the Forum of Constantine (less than 300 m to the east).
The church of Anastasia, where her relics were deposited, was located somewhere inside the colonnades of Domninos (ἐν τοῖς Δομνίνου ἐμβόλαις), so close to the church of St john the Forerunner that the regular procession (λιτή) from this church during the all-night vigil (παννυχίς) reached the church of Anastasia. This implies a distance of several hundred metres. Such a procession is mentioned in Miracle 29 as something typical 20 ; I would presume that this was a part of the weekly Sunday service. This means that, liturgically, the church of St john with its cult of three saints, two males and one female, on the one hand, and the church of St Anastasia, on the other, formed a unique complex, where a diffusion between the cults of the two female martyrs became inevitable. However, this is still not an explanation of the meaning and composition of the Anastasia the Virgin legend, even if it is a necessary constituent of such an explanation (for the explanation, see below, section 4).
The location of the Anastasia church between the two fora is also worth noting, because it will be of importance for the Anastasia cult in Rome.

st Febronia, the First one
In our study, we meet two Febroniae. The first one is the renowned martyr of Nisibis venerated throughout the Christian world, alike in the East and in the West, among the Chalcedonians, "Monophysites", and "Nestorians" 21 . It was this Febronia that was venerated in her chapel within the church of St john the Forerunner together with St Artemius. The second, a distinct Febronia, is an imaginary daughter of Emperor Heraclius, whose personality we will discuss later (section 3.3).

date of the Febronia legend:
between 628 and 639 The recent study by Michel Kaplan [78] became a major step toward understanding the origins of the cult of St Febronia of Nisibis. Nevertheless, this step still does not reach the destination. Extremely helpful is Kaplan's supposition that the cult has been "imported" to Constantinople from Nisibis, when the respective part of the Sassanid Empire was conquered by Emperor Heraclius, that is, between 628 (when Nisibis was reconquered from the Persians) and 639 (when Nisibis fell to the Arabs). It was a short period when Nisibis returned to the Roman Empire. Previously, in 363, this city fell to the Persians under Shapur II, who defeated the Roman army led by julian the Apostate.
Kaplan rightly noticed that, for the author of the Martyrdom of Febronia, Nisibis is a part of the Roman Empire [78, p. 41]. Given that this Martyrdom is a Passion épique according to the classification by Hippolyte Delehaye, its geography must represent the actual geography of the hagiographer. Because a pre-363 date is excluded, the remaining date falls within the interval from 628 to 639.
Some considerations would support this dating by Kaplan. There is only indirect evidence of the existence of a cult of Febronia before the seventh century. In the eleventh-century 22 metric Life of one of the fathers of "Nestorian" monasticism, Rabban Bar ʿEta ( † 611 or 621) by Abraham Zabaya (BHO 137; BHS 771), it is said that, in 563, a sister of the saint, "...built her nunnery in the name of the martyr [feminine: ‫]ܤܗܕܬܐ‬ Pambrônîyâ / Who was martyrized in Nisibis in the days of Diocletian" 23 . There could be no doubt that Abraham Zabaya meant our Febronia of Nisibis as the patron saint of the monastery. By his time, however, the cult of this Febronia had been long established among the "Nestorians". Even if this monastery initially was dedicated to some Febronia, there is no way to know what her accompanying hagiographical legend was. Regardless of whether Febronia had any historical prototype (which is itself an unresolvable question), the legend of Febronia as known to us might have been a new creation designed to replace an older legend, as it was customary to reshape the established cult of a saint within a new ideological framework. Therefore, the eleventhcentury witness of Abraham Zabaya is not especially relevant to the Febronia whose legend we know 24 . Finally, we will see (section 3.1.3), that "our" Febronia legend is "monophysite." This fact alone is sufficient to exclude any relation of this legend to a sixth-century "Nestorian" monastery, even though Febronia might have been venerated there with another legend.
Kaplan's dating is also reinforced by the absolute "epic" chronology chosen by the hagiographer. He placed the Martyrdom under Diocletian, which was normal for the Byzantine epic legends. A Syriac hagiographer working in the Sassanid Empire would have chosen, for the very same purpose, the persecution of Shapur II. I would add that the martyrdom of a nun in Nisibis under Shapur after 363 would have looked historically convincing, but the authors of epic martyrdoms do not care for such things. In the "language" of the Syriac epic martyrdoms produced in Persia, the name of Shapur II has the same meaning as the name of Diocletian in the Byzantine "language" of epic hagiography. If the Roman "era of martyrs" began with Diocletian, then the Persian "era of martyrs" began with Shapur II. Speaking in terms of critical hagiography, we have to agree with Kaplan that the hagiographer of Febronia wrote in the Roman (Greek) hagiographical "language" and not the Persian (Syriac) one. However, a hagiographical "language" is not the same thing as a language in the ordinary sense of the word. Being written in a Greek hagiographical language does not preclude a hagiographical work from being written in Syriac. Kaplan hesitates on this point but tends to accept the alternative hypothesis -that the Martyrdom was written in Greek. Kaplan's hypothesis on the raison d'être of the Martyrdom is not completely satisfying either, while my own resolution of this problem will be not extremely different from his.

martyrdom of Febronia:
syriac, not greek After hesitation by earlier scholars, a study by jean Simon [113] established, in 1924, a consensus that the Syriac text of the Martyrdom of Febronia BHS 147 (BHO 302) 25 is the original one, whereas the Greek recension BHG 569 26 is a translation from Syriac. Until recently, only Paul Devos dared to express his doubts about the priority of the Syriac: "Avant de reprendre l'examen de ce problème, il faudrait établir avec soin le texte des deux Passions, grecque et syriaque." [48, p. 299, note 3]. There is no critical edition of the Syriac text even now, but the critical edition of the Greek recension was published in 1990 by Paolo Chiesa. He accompanied his publication with a paragraph reconsidering Simon's study and concluding that the original text is the Greek [31, pp. 353-355]. This conclusion was supported by Kaplan as "une demonstration extrêmement convaincante". Nevertheless, for Kaplan, "...la question de la tradition du texte n'est pas définitivement résolue"; he justly refers here to the bilingualism of the population of Nisibis and concludes that it is "...difficile de savoir si un original est en grec ou en syriaque" 27 .
We have to acknowledge that the intuition by Paul Devos was justified: the critical edition of the Greek text did affect Jean Simon's argumentation. Chiesa demonstrated that two senseless Greek phrases pointed out by Simon resulted not from the translator's errors, as Simon thought, but from errors accumulated in the Greek manuscript transmission; both are preserved in error-free forms in manuscripts unknown to Simon. Moreover, Chiesa annihilated three other arguments by Simon 28 and put forward a unique positive argument for the Greek original that seems to him decisive. This argument is related to the lament of abbess Bryene over the corpse of Febronia, her spiritual daughter: it is in Syriac (even the Greek recension contains Syriac words transliterated with Greek letters) and is introduced by the hagiographer's remark that the abbess spoke "in the Syriac language". This remark is present not only in the Greek text but in the Syriac as well. According to Chiesa, this would have been senseless if the hagiographer wrote in Syriac 29 .
This argument is, in fact, not so strong and by no means decisive. The Martyrdom, anyway, was written in a Hellenised milieu; this fact is noticed by all scholars, including Simon. This milieu was bilingual, using both Greek and Syriac, but neither Chiesa nor Kaplan realised this fact properly. The disputed phrase about the Syriac language in the mouth of Bryene follows an account of the nuns' negotiations with Roman officials and guards, where only Greek would have been applicable. Bryene's lament begins when the nuns returned to their home, after an abrupt change of scenery accentuated by a language switch. If such an explanation of the disputed phrase is, at least, possible, then Chiesa's "decisive" argument is no longer decisive. Therefore, we are now authorised to look at what remains of Simon's argumentation.
I accept Chiesa's negative arguments, thus acknowledging that Simon's argumentation now becomes weakened. However, Chiesa did not exhaust Simon's arguments; he did not even mention most of them except only the five that he managed to refute. Which of Simon's arguments remain?
The first and most weighty portion of Simon's arguments is based on the syntax: the frequency of constructions with either an absolute genitive followed with a personal form of the verb related to the same subject or, instead of an expected absolute genitive, a participial phrase with the subject in the nominative. "Il n'est pas naturel qu'un Grec cultivé écrivant spontanément en sa langue commette coup sur coup tant d'anacoluthes vicieuses. L'explication qui vient d'abord à l'esprit, c'est que cet auteur a traduit un texte syriaque et qu'il s'est laissé influencer par le syntaxe syriaque : les propositions participiales introduites par la conjonction ‫ܟܕ‬ correspondent en grec à la fois aux propositions au génitif absolu et aux propositions à un mode personnel" 30 .The second series is based on the lexical "erreurs de 'polysémie'" (three of which remained unrefuted) and "les quiproquos purs et simples" (of which one remained unrefuted) 31 . To sum up: the regular occurrence of Syriac syntactic features together with four errors of translation; this is certainly not too bad. Simon's argumentation, even if weakened, still holds water, and its refutation by Chiesa is too superficial to be accepted.
If there still could be any doubts whether the Martyrdom of Febronia was written in Syriac, they must dissipate after we have identified the confessional milieu of this work.

Febronia, a "monophysite" authority for not working on Friday
The Martyrdom of Febronia, in either Syriac or Greek (as well as in the two mediaeval Latin versions) contains very precise liturgical data which has so far been neglected by scholars. In the monastery of Febronia, Friday was the weekday dedicated to the study of the Holy Scriptures and kept free from any work.
According to the rule of the founder of the monastery, Platonia, whose disciple the actual abbess Bryene was, the sisters were not permitted "to do any work at all on Fridays; instead they used to gather in the place for prayer [or "chapel", ‫ܠܘܬܐ‬ ‫ܨ‬ ‫ܒܝܬ‬ / εὐκτήριον] and celebrate the Office of Matins ‫ܕܨܦܪܐ(‬ ‫;")ܬܫܡܫܬܐ‬ most of the day until Vespers ‫)ܪܡܫܐ(‬ 32 , except the services of canonical hours, was dedicated to studying the Scriptures which were read aloud by one of the sisters 33 . Febronia became this reader of the Scriptures on Fridays, which is important for the plot of the legend 34 . In this way, the importance of this particular kind of Friday veneration is emphasised with special force. The symbolism of the sixth day, Friday, is reflected as well in the sixth year -the six-year period between the martyrdom of Febronia and the completion of her shrine (temple: ‫,ܗܝܟܠܐ‬ ναός) in Nisibis 35 .
This veneration of Friday in such a radical form was not a common feature in Syriac Christendom. It is quite well known, however, from sixth-century and later sources, all of them being originally written in Syriac 36 , while also partially preserved in Greek and Arabic. I would add now to this collection one late sixth-century piece in Arabic 37 ; the whole dossier is still waiting for publication 38 .
The Arabic homily in which a prohibition of any work on Friday seems to be suppressed by a mediaeval editor while remaining discernible is preserved in a unique manuscript (Parisinus arabicus 281). This piece dedicated to the veneration of two exceptional weekdays, Friday and Sunday, contains one place where the text is corrupted. Michel van Esbroeck proposed a quasiliteral translation that does not make sense, but it could be ameliorated based on a slightly different restoration of the Arabic 39 . The manuscript is to be read, in the relevant place, as following 40  The people who insisted on the abstention from work on Friday were Syrians and, more precisely, Severian "monophysites" 41 . This is still not a sufficiently precise definition of their confession(s), given that the total number of the Severians in the sixth century was about a dozen, but, nevertheless, it is better than nothing.
It is extremely unlikely that any text insisting on the prohibition of work on Friday would have been produced, in the sixth or seventh centuries, by non-Severians and not in Syriac.

Commemoration dates: Febronia and John the Forerunner
The conclusion about Febronia's Syriac and Severian "monophysite" origins is corroborated by her commemoration day. In the Byzantine tradition, as well as in the late "monophysite" documents, Febronia's day is june 25. Nevertheless, in the earliest manuscript of the Syriac Martyrdom (British Library, Add. 14647 dated to 688) the first cathedral vigil dedicated to Febronia fell on june 24, with the number written down in full: "the vigil on twentyfour june" ‫ܒܚܙܪܢ(‬ ‫ܘܐܪܒܥܐ‬ ‫ܒܥܣܪܝܢ‬ ‫)ܫܗܪܐ‬ 42 thus making unlikely a scribal error in the date. However, the Martyrdom describes a two-day festival whose second day was june 25 (in Syriac, once again the number is written down) 43 .
A festival of Febronia on june 24 was unacceptable in any liturgical tradition where this day was occupied by the Nativity of john the Forerunner. In the seventh century, such at least was the situation in Constantinople but still not in the Syriac "monophysite" communities, which accepted this feast of john much later. The feast of John the Forerunner on June 24 was artificially constructed as an expansion of the Christmas celebration on December 25 and, therefore, the Annunciation on March 25 44 . This Christmas date was categorically rejected by the Armenians. Unlike them, most Syrians accepted the date at an earlier period but were not so enthusiastic about its expansion into june. Therefore, in the "monophysite" calendar in a manuscript ascribed to jacob of Edessa and datable to ca 675 or, at least, to the late seventh century, there is still no Nativity of john the Forerunner 45 . The date of june 24 for Febronia was, in the seventh century, still available for the "Monophysites" even if already occupied in Constantinople.
In Constantinople, however, the original date of Febronia's feast seems to have predefined the choice of the main place of Febronia's cult, a church of john the Forerunner, where Febronia's day has been inserted within the frame of the liturgical cycle of the Nativity of john. Michel Kaplan has already noticed this result of the coincidence between the two commemorations 46 .

the syriac martyrdom of Febronia: its Sitz im Leben and the date of anastasia the virgin
The Martyrdom in the available recension was composed later than some venerated relics appeared in a monastery near Nisibis. Our text, as it was duly noted by Michel Kaplan, aimed at a practical goal: to explain why the relics of Febronia must remain in her monastery instead of being transferred into the church dedicated to Febronia in Nisibis, which was constructed by the bishop of this city. The Martyrdom elaborates at length on the bishop's attempt to remove the relics, which was foiled by a miracle. The bishop was able to transfer to Nisibis only one tooth. As was normal and even normative for the Passions épiques, this Martyrdom was written for reasons connected to ecclesiastical politics, namely, in the interests of the autonomy of the monastery from the episcopal power.
Kaplan thinks that such events (an attempt to remove the relics of Febronia to the cathedral in Nisibis, probably the famous St jacob of Nisibis church) would have taken place when the Roman administration returned to Nisibis in 629. Here I agree with him. He, however, considers the possibility of a conflict with Byzantine officials as the first concern of the hagiographer (and, therefore, his reason for writing in Greek). A conflict with the Syriac "monophysite" bishop of Nisibis, Abraham, who arrived in the city no later than in 631 under the protection of the Byzantine administration 47 , would have been, according to Kaplan, a less urgent danger, and, therefore, the Martyrdom was translated into Syriac later [78, p. 47]. I agree with the dating of the available recension of the Martyrdom to the 630s. Nevertheless, Kaplan's reconstruction of the events is untenable for several reasons, not only because the original of the Martyrdom was in Syriac.
The Martyrdom says nothing about a danger to the relics from any secular officials or some religious persecution but states clearly the danger from a bishop of the same faith, to whom the monastery was subordinated. A miraculous intervention of Febronia herself was needed precisely because there was no canonical way to prevent the bishop from removing the relics. In the eyes of the hagiographer, the formal ecclesiastical law was on the bishop's side.
The hagiographer, moreover, did not miss an opportunity to pinpoint the bishop's moral right to the relics with a wisecrack: before the arrival of the pagan persecutors, he said, "even the bishop of the city hid out of fear ‫ܕܚܠܬܐ(‬ ‫")ܡܢ‬ 48 . Similar was the situation of the "monophysites" in Nisibis under the Persian rule, when they did not have a bishop of their own.
We have to conclude that the Martyrdom of Febronia in its known recension was a response of the "monophysite" monastery which preserved her relics to the arrival of the first "monophysite" bishop of Nisibis Abraham between 629 and 631.
This conclusion provides us with a terminus post quem for the creation of the Martyrdom of Anastasia the Virgin, the 630s. The real date could be later but hardly by much, because the cult of Febronia lost its former popularity by the end of the seventh century. Therefore, we have to date the Martyrdom of Anastasia the Virgin to the middle of the seventh century 49 .

the second Febronia (Feuronia)
The Constantinopolitan Synaxarium mentions, on either 27 or 28 of October, another Febronia, an ascetic, who was a daughter of Emperor Heraclius. The name is the same as that of the first Febronia but the spelling is different: Φευρωνία instead of Φεβρωνία, with no other variant readings in the manuscripts. The latter spelling is an exact transliteration of the Syriac ‫,)ܦܒܪܘܢܝܐ(‬ whereas the former is not. Perhaps this difference in spelling was established deliberately for avoiding confusion between two homonymous saints.
And the commemoration of our venerable mother and wonderworker Feuronia that was a daughter of Emperor Heraclius. This commemoration is absent from the Typikon of the Great Church 50 (ca 900), whose calendar became the core of the mid-tenth century Synaxarium of Constantinople 51 , but it certainly belongs to the earliest recension of the Synaxarium. This recension is accessible through the Armenian translation made in 991/992 by joseph of Constantinople 52 , which is earlier than the earliest Greek manuscripts of the Synaxarium. In joseph's Armenian translation, an exact rendering of this entry is present 53 . The commemoration date is October 28, never 27, which is a weighty while not decisive argument for this date as the original one.
Some historians took this Synaxarium entry so seriously that they list Feuronia among the children of Emperor Heraclius. Feuronia, however, is not known outside the Synaxarium 54 . A virgin martyr who is the daughter of a pagan king or an emperor was an ancient hagiographic topos, but here we are in the presence of its modification: a legend where the imaginary daughter of a historical pious (in the eyes of the hagiographer) emperor becomes monastic and a symbolical figure important to her confession. The striking parallel is Hilaria, an (imaginary) daughter of Emperor Zeno 55 . Hilaria was "monophysite", whereas Feuronia was "monothelete", a fruit of the union between the State Chalcedonism and the Severian "Monophysitism". Perhaps an even closer relative of Feuronia is Constantia, also a sainted virgin, the imaginary daughter of Emperor Constantine the Great (not to be confused with his real daughter Constantina) 56 .
Being a purely symbolical figure, this daughter of Emperor Heraclius says a lot about Constantinopolitan piety in the monothelete epoch. Her commemoration date, especially October 28 that looks to be the original one, is close to one of the two commemoration dates of Anastasia the Virgin, October 29. Their cults are clearly interconnected, especially if considered against the background of the interwoven Constantinopolitan cults of Anastasia the Virgin and Febronia of Nisibis. The imaginary Feuronia was an echo of the no less imaginary but much more famous Anastasia the Virgin, which yielded to enforce the cult of Emperor Heraclius established in the monothelete tradition 57 . No wonder that, after the abrogation (in the State Church) of the cult of Emperor Heraclius, the cult of his symbolical daughter has had no brilliant prospects. The legend summarised in the Synaxarium seems to be irreparably lost.

where anastasia the virgin
Found her sophia The Martyrdom of Anastasia the Virgin derives from the Martyrdom of Febronia mostly in the description of interrogations and tortures and, to a lesser extent, several other details. Some no less important background 58 of this legend is related to the city of Edessa. Anastasia the Virgin was born as a Roman child from the marriage of Edessa and Nisibis. In this section, we explore her Edessian lineage. only in an Arabic epitome of unknown date and its Ethiopic translation of the fourteenth century 60 , without leaving any trace in either the original Syriac language or Greek. However, the legend is preserved in the oral tradition by the clergy of the Church of Virgins within the complex of rock-hewn churches in the famous Ethiopian site of Lalibäla. There, the story of these virgins has been told up to the present time along the same lines as it was first recorded by a European scholar in the 1520s, and as it is presented in the Arabic / Ethiopic epitome 61 .

abbess sophia of edessa
The site of Lalibäla was created in about the twelfth century as a "copy" of the Syrian Edessa, and even its official name was Roha (from Ruhā "Edessa" in Arabic derived, in turn, from Syriac Urhay).
The Edessian "sacred topography" transplanted to this New Edessa in Ethiopia is difficult to date. However, in the case of these virgins led by Sophia, the lack of any mention in the preserved Syriac sources would suggest an earlier date. Moreover, elsewhere I tried to substantiate a hypothesis that this legend would have contributed to the cult underlying another church dedicated to some "Virgins," which was one of the most important churches of Aksum, the ancient Ethiopian capital [4, pp. 177-178]. This would suggest a pre-seventh-century date for the Edessian legend. Finally, the fact that the persecutor of our virgins is julian the Apostate on his way to Persia reveals the taste of Syrian hagiographers of the sixth century, when they produced a number of "sequels" to the Syriac Romance of Julian.
Be as it may, the Martyrdom of the Edessian monastery headed by abbess Sophia was an important legend in a large part of the "monophysite" world. In the field of hagiography, the "monophysite" world was never separated from the Chalcedonian until the Arab conquest (and even their later mutual isolation has never become absolute) 62 . Edessa in particular took an important role in the ecclesiastical policy of justin I (517-527). A legend dedicated to another Sophia of Edessa (to be discussed in the next section) was also written in Syriac but by a hagiographer residing in Constantinople 63 . Edessa was always a part of the Roman Empire: it never fell to the Persians except for a relatively short period from 610 to 628; indeed, it was eventually lost to the Arabs in 638.
The Edessian legend of Sophia and her nuns runs as follows. On his way to Persia, julian the Apostate passed Edessa (a fictitious episode). There, he found a monastery with fifty virgins led by their abbess Sophia. The symbolical number of nuns, fifty (referring to the Pentecost and the gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed on this day), is the same as in the Martyrdom of Febronia, although this is a very common topos, known, e.g., from some recensions of the Armenian Martyrdom of the Rhipsimeans (virgins leaded by St Rhipsime) or some western legends, e.g., of St Sunniva. In the Roman monastery of our Anastasia the Virgin, there were only five nuns with their abbess Sophia. Although five is not fifty, these numbers are hardly unconnected. I would understand "five" in the legend of Anastasia the Virgin as a metonymy-like reference to "fifty".
The legend of Anastasia the Virgin thus absorbed the "monophysite" legend of the Edessian abbess Sophia, which was preserved in the Egyptian "monophysite" milieu. The legend of Anastasia the Virgin itself was preserved in some Egyptian milieux. Its summary in the Synaxarium of the Coptic Church 64 is not a proof of this fact for the pre-Arab epoch, because this twelfth-century "monophysite" Synaxarium is heavily dependent on Melkite models, whereas the Greek recension BHG 76x contains Anastasia's commemoration date according to the Egyptian calendar (μηνὶ κατ' Αἰγυπτίους φαωφὶ δωδεκάτῃ) 65 . I am not sure whether we need, for explaining this Egyptian month name, to evoke, after Devos and Halkin, the Egyptian colony in Constantinople 66 , because, in the sixth century, the communications between Constantinople and Alexandria were intensive, and the same competing Church groups were acting in both cities.

mother sophia in edessa: the anti-gothic background
of anastasia the virgin Our hagiographer's interest in Syrian legends and especially in Edessa and a mother figure named Sophia becomes more understandable in the context of another Edessian legend -written in Constantinople, but in Syriac and by a Syrian closely related to Edessa. This is a legend of enormous popularity, both in Syriac and, even more, in the Greek version: The Miracle of the Edessian confessors Shmona, Guria, and Ḥabbib (in the Byzantine tradition, Gurias, Samonas, and Abib) with the virgin Euphemia, married to "the Goth," and her mother Sophia 67 . The legend has remained a favourite in the popular piety of Orthodox countries up to the present day.
I have argued elsewhere that the legend of Euphemia and the Goth was composed, in the 520s, as an anti-Chalcedonian response to the earliest recension(s) of the Chalcedonian legend of the miracle of St Euphemia with the Chalcedonian Horos. The direct prototype of "the Goth" of the legend was the enfant terrible of the Chalcedonian party, the Byzantine general Vitalian, killed on the orders of Emperor justin I, also a Chalcedonian, in 520; Vitalian was actually nicknamed "the Goth" 68 . However, the original significance of the legend was forgotten almost immediately, and its popularity overcame all confessional barriers.
There is no need to summarise here a legend so widely known but I will note some features important to our study of the legend of Anastasia.
"The Goth" of the legend is the incarnation of evil. He has no other proper name but is always called simply "the Goth". Sophia and her daughter Euphemia are pious and simple women living in Edessa who were, at first, deceived by the Goth, but then saved and avenged with the help of the Edessian confessors. Such sharply negative feelings towards the Goths were "traditional" for Edessa (at least, after 395, when the Goths arrived in Edessa as a part of the Roman army but plundered the city worse than the enemies had). This probably was not, in the 520s, a common attitude toward the Goths in Constantinople. However, after the beginning of the Gothic war in 536, the anti-Gothic rhetoric would certainly have been called for.
In the legend of Anastasia the Virgin created in a later epoch, Anastasia with her spiritual mother Sophia evoked in the audience's memory the situation of Euphemia and her mother Sophia with the Goth. No Goth was explicitly mentioned in the legend of Anastasia, but the earlier Anastasia cult in the Anastasia church of Constantinople was in many respects "Gothic", including such striking feature as liturgical readings of Scriptures in the Gothic language; it is already a well-known fact, and we will provide more evidence below (section 6). If the cult of Anastasia the Virgin was created for reshaping the earlier Anastasia cult in order to make it free from any Gothic overtones, such a reference to mother Sophia and Edessa would have been extremely helpful.
T h e e c c l e s i a s t i c a l t o p o g r a p h y o f Constantinople would have certainly corroborated this mutual attraction between the Anastasia cult and the cult of Gurias, Samonas, and Abib. Their "martyrium" (a church dedicated to them, where, theoretically speaking, their relics must have been deposed 69 ) was located near the forum of Constantine 70 , that is, just several hundred metres from the church of Anastasia.
An important conclusion imposes itself: the legend of Anastasia the Virgin was composed as anti-Gothic, with the purpose of replacing the earlier "pro-Gothic" legend that we will discuss below.

where and when anastasia met her sophia
So far, one important motif in the legend of Anastasia the Virgin remains unexplained: why the name of Anastasia's abbess is Sophia. In Byzantium, this name was always heavily loaded with symbolical references to liturgy and sacred topography and, therefore, in the seventh century, its meaning would have been easily recognisable.
Anastasia the Virgin, born in the seventh century, inherited her connexion with Sophia from her predecessor, Anastasia the Widow. This connexion goes back to the sixth-century liturgy of Constantinople, when the liturgical cycle of Christmas was reshaped with celebrations specific to the church of Saint Sophia constructed by Justinian. Both second and first consecrations of the justinianic Saint Sophia are relevant for understanding the cult of St Anastasia in Constantinople.
The second dedication of Saint Sophia took place in 562, when the church was rebuilt after a series of earthquakes in the 550s, particularly after the collapse of the dome on May 7, 558. The commemoration of this event within the pre-Christmas stational liturgy occupied two days, December 22 and 23. On December 22, the opening of the doors of Saint Sophia was commemorated (τὰ ἀνοίξια τῆς Μεγάλης Ἐκκλησίας) and, on December 23, the dedication (consecration, τὰ ἐγκαίνια) 71 . Since 562, St Anastasia (both martyr and church) and Saint Sophia (the church) shared the same commemoration date, December 22. Before this, they were interconnected even more closely, although not in the calendar. The first dedication of the Justinianic Saint Sophia took place on the 27 th of December in 537 (this date is preserved by historians but not by the liturgical calendar, where it was replaced by the dates of the second dedication). At that time, the church of St Anastasia was directly involved in the ceremony: καὶ ἐξ ῆλθεν ἡ λιτὴ ἀπὸ τῆς ἁγίας Ἀναστασίας, καθημένου Μηνᾶ τοῦ πατριάρχου ἐν τῷ βασιλικῷ ὀχήματι, καὶ τοῦ βασιλέως συλλιτανεύοντος τῷ λαῷ [120, p. 217 AM 6030] ("The procession set out from Saint Anastasia, with Menas the patriarch sitting in the imperial carriage and the emperor joining in the procession with the people" 72 ). The church of Anastasia initially figured in this ceremony as one of the principal churches of the capital, as Constantinople still was in the second half of the fifth century. By 562, the rank of this church would decrease. This change was natural in the course of the Gothic war waged by Justinian (535-554) because the highest rank of the church housing the relics of St Anastasia was backed by the Goths.
Nevertheless, the memory of St Anastasia became interwoven with Saint Sophia, and these mutual connexions became represented in the liturgical calendar.

the two anastasiae of rome:
the "syrian" against the "gothic" Stem 2 ( fig. 2) shows how the Passio of Anastasia the Virgin has been constructed.
The anti-Gothic plot line was assembled using Sophia and her virgin daughter; this pair was borrowed from the highly popular legend of Euphemia and the Goth. Then, to make the framework fitting for the Martyrdom of a virgin, another Edessian legend was used, the Martyrdom of Sophia and her virgin nuns. Finally, the resulting structure was filled ad libitum with the mounting foam -the "plagiarised" text of the legend of Febronia, which is Syrian as well.
To borrow plot elements from Syriac hagiography as from a construction set is certainly not a method yielding chefs d'oeuvre, but, for modest propagandist tasks, it works. Eventually, the new Anastasia became only a little less famous than the old. For the period between the mid-seventh century and the Iconoclastic epoch, however, it seems that Anastasia the Virgin was considered as the only legal owner of the body deposed in the Anastasia church.
We do not know what happened to the Anastasiae in the Iconoclastic times and later, up to the tenth century (see below, section 7). Hippolyte Delehaye and, following him, Paul Devos thought that the legend of Anastasia the Virgin was created before the translation of LLA in 824 for filling an informational vacuum 73 . I have tried to demonstrate that the purpose of creating a new legend was just the opposite: it consisted in concealing the old legend with a new one, severing all connexions with Sirmium and the Goths. As Michel van Esbroeck noticed, "Rien n'élimine mieux un document que la création d'un parallèle destiné à le remplacer" [53, p. 283]. The legend of Anastasia the Virgin has been created as such a "concealing" document with respect to the fifth-century Byzantine legend of Anastasia the Widow.

anastasia the virgin's burial in rome
In the Martyrdom of Anastasia the Virgin, all the events take place in Rome. No Roman realities are mentioned, however. The only exception is the place of Anastasia's burial, now barely recognisable in the manuscripts: the Forum 74 . The hagiographer had Anastasia buried on the Forum -and this in the pagan epoch when any burials within city walls were strictly forbidden. Halkin argued that the hagiographer meant the Forum Boarum and the church of the titulus Anastasiae located nearby, at the foot of the Palatine Hill 75 . I have argued that the Byzantine hagiographer implied the Forum Romanum, but this notion, for him, was a metonymy for a larger place, the whole centre of Rome and especially the Palatine Hill; therefore, Halkin was, nevertheless, right in identifying the reference to the titulus Anastasiae. In the mid-seventh century, the Palatine Hill became the centre of Byzantine Rome and of monothelete "orthodoxy", when Constans II returned the Patriarchate of Rome to a union (interrupted from 649 to 654) with the monothelete patriarchates of the East [87, pp. 183-185].
Halkin considered the locating of the burial here as resulting from a mere confusion with Anastasia the Widow, to whom the church at the foot of the Palatine was dedicated [70, p. 171], but I would consider it as one of the techniques for replacing the previous cult of Anastasia with a new one. This was a historical period when Constantinopolitan authorities were operating in Rome, not without success.
In Greek legends, Rome was used as a substitute for Constantinople when the time of narrative action was pre-Constantine. Michel van Esbroeck wrote, commenting on the "Roman" martyrs Sophia with Pistis, Elpis, and Agape, who symbolised Constantinopolitan realities: "But why in Rome? At the time of the persecutions, Byzantium was not yet the capital of the empire. A legend arising in Greek lands had to validate its position by drawing the setting for its martyrdoms from the ancient capital. Why else could one set such a universal destiny?" [51, p. 135].
In the case of Anastasia, placing the saint and especially her relics in Rome served to legitimize the deposition of her relics in the New Rome, Constantinople. What belonged to ancient Rome in the pre-Constantine epoch now belongs to Constantinople. We will see (in Part Two of this study) that the previous Anastasia legend, that of the Widow, also provided Anastasia's burial in Rome. Both legends, most likely, treated the titulus Anastasiae as the place of this burial in the past and a kind of a cenotaph of the saint in the present. Anastasia the Virgin's burial on the Forum thus was projected on her actual burial in the New Rome, near the forum of Constantine and the forum of Theodosius, the two principal fora of the capital.
Halkin was right in considering the Anastasia church at the foot of the Palatine Hill as involved in the cult of Anastasia the Virgin. Moreover, together with the scholarly consensus, he thought that this church was dedicated even earlier to Anastasia the Widow. We will return to this church later (Part Two of the present study). Now it is important to notice that the competition between the cults of two Anastasiae was not limited to the New Rome but reached the Old Rome as well.

two anastasiae in Constantinople:
the "syrian" against the "gothic" The points of contact between the new and the old legends associated with the same relics and the same church are limited neither to those where the repulsive forces were at work (the anti-Gothic motifs of the later legend vs the implicitly Gothic of the earlier) nor those where the most obvious attractive forces acted (the uniformity of the name of Anastasia and her virginity). Paul Devos himself pointed out two moments in the Martyrdom of the Virgin which could be supposed to be borrowed in the Martyrdom of the Widow. One of them, the name Probos of the Roman official who interrogated the Virgin and who interrogated the Widow in Sirmium, seemed even to Devos rather not accidental 76 . Indeed, I think that this Probos must be identified as a migrant from the earlier legend to the later (on him, see Part Two of the present study).
There is another important difference between the two competing Anastasia legends. The earlier is "Gothic", while the later is "Syriac". In the period of Monotheletism, the Syrians rose to power, especially in ecclesiastical matters, to an extent comparable with the secular power of the Goths in the third quarter of the fifth century.

Competing anastasiae in the liturgy of Constantinople
In our search for the early forms of the cult of Anastasia, we have to start from the later and proceed to the earlier. The later, however, are confused: too many Anastasiae and too many relics. In this section, we will try to bring order to the relevant data.

Commemorations in the byzantine rite ca 900
Let us begin from the hagiographical coordinates of time.
By the early second millennium, the two most renown Anastasiae, the Virgin and the Widow, occupied their current positions in the liturgical year: in the Byzantine calendar, the Virgin was commemorated twice, on October 12 and 29 [42, cols. 133-134, 171-173], while the Widow once, on December 22 [42, cols. 333-338]; however, the Virgin was counted among the ordinary saints, whereas the Widow was commemorated with a significant solemnity.
The date of October 29 is relatively late. The commemoration of October 29 was celebrated in the otherwise unknown "monastery of Saint Anastasia" (ἐν τῇ μονῇ τῆς ἁγίας Ἀναστασίας) dedicated perhaps to another homonymous saint (obviously, the Widow) 77 . In the tenth century, Anastasia the Virgin was commemorated only once per year, on October 12 78  LLA) already became the main legend of the most famous Anastasia. The Anastasia of this legend was commemorated on December 22 with a great feast, whereas Anastasia the Virgin was commemorated modestly on October 12.

multiplication of the relics of st anastasia(e) in Constantinople
In this section, we turn to the multiple relics attributed to some Anastasiae. The places where these relics were venerated were the hagiographical coordinates for the respective cults.

the life of st andrew the Fool:
the relics are unique By the tenth century, the relics of Anastasia translated from Sirmium remained in her church near to the colonnades of Domninos. Raymond janin has expressed some doubt in this fact judging by a phrase in the Life of St Andrew the Fool (BHG 115z), ch. 2 [75, p. 25] (we will discuss this phrase in the next alinea). The cult of Andrew the Fool developed in a rather complicated way for becoming established by the early tenth century 79 , but the hagiographical novel BHG 115z is certainly datable to the tenth century. The plot of the novel is inserted into the landscape of the tenth-century Constantinople.
This saint was prompted to his feat of foolishness by St Anastasia during "incubation" (curative sleeping) in the church of the martyr. The church is identified as following: εἰς τὸν σεβάσμιον ναὸν τῆς ἁγίας ἐν δόξουμάρτυρος Ἀναστασίας, ὃν ἐδομήσατο ὁ εὐσεβὴς Λέων ὁ Μακέλλης "...to the venerable church of the Holy and Glorious Martyr Anastasia, which the pious Leo Makelles [Leo I] has built" [109, vol. 2, p. 18/19 (txt/tr.)]. This is an exact indication of the church near to the colonnades of Domninos: properly speaking, it was not "built" by Emperor Leo, but was seriously rebuilt under him for the deposition of Anastasia's relics translated from Sirmium (s. below). In the manuscript D (11 th -12 th cent.) this phrase has a variant: instead of ὃν ἐδομήσατο ὁ εὐσεβὴς Λέων ὁ Μακέλλης, it contains εἰς τὰ δὴ Μακέλλους φημί "(that is), I said, in Makelles' (building)" 80 . The meaning of this reading is, therefore, the same. In the printed text of the Life known to scholars before the 1995 Rydén's edition, however, the text of D was printed with an error: Μακέλλου instead of Μακέλλους [103, col. 640 A]. This is why janin supposed that this could be a genitive form of μάκελλον ("indoor market") instead of Μακέλλης. In this case, the location would have been different. Albrecht Berger continued janin's line of thought insisting that the Anastasia church of the Life of St Andrew is a different one, located in the place called Leomakellon. He noticed his disagreement with Rydén but not Rydén's observation concerning the erroneous reading of μακέλλου instead of μακέλλους 81 .
In the Life of St Andrew, we see St Anastasia who, as a holy healer, acquired a specialisation: her patients are those possessed by impure spirits. This conclusion is corroborated by two other tenth-century Lives, those of Irene of Chrysobalanton (BHG 952, written under Basil II, who reigned from 976 to 1025) and Basil the Younger (BHG 263). Both contain episodes with "incubation" of a possessed person in the church of St Anastasia. There is no doubt, among the scholars, that, in the three Lives, the described church is the same, even though only the Life of St Andrew provides an exact address 82 .
In the Life of St Irene of Chrysobalanton, ch. 15, the church is referred to with almost the same words as in the Life of St Andrew the Fool: εἰς τὸν τῆς μεγαλομάρτυρος Ἀναστασίας ναόν "to the temple of Great Martyr Anastasia" 83 .
The mention of this church in the Life of St Basil the Younger refers to the epithet Pharmakolytria, which is of special interest for us. This text is the earliest one where Anastasia deposed in this church is called Φαρμακολύτρια ("She who delivers from intoxication / spells"), while this epithet is paraphrased; otherwise, the wording of the reference to the church is very close to that in the Lives of St Andrew and St Irene: πρὸς τὸν σεβάσμιον ναὸν τῆς πανευφήμου μάρτυρος Ἀναστασίας <...> τῆς τὰ φάρμακα λυούσης "... to the venerable church of the all-praiseworthy martyr Anastasia, the deliverer from poisons". The patient, in this case, became mad after having being poisoned by a sorcerer 84 . This is the second episode, in this Life, related to the healing of someone possessed in the Anastasia church. The first one (ch. 29) is the healing of a possessed woman by St Basil. This woman escaped from the church of St Anastasia where she was brought by force for the incubation [117, pp. 322/323-324/325 (txt/tr.)].

the saint from sirmium became Pharmakolytria
After the eleventh century, the epithet Pharmakolytria appeared in the title of the entry on December 22 in several recensions of the Synaxarium of Constantinople 85 . This means that, in the eleventh century, the epithet Pharmakolytria became semi-official for Anastasia the Widow, while, in the tenth century, it was widely known but remained more popular than official.
Finally, in the early fourteenth century, Nicephorus Callistus Xanthopoulos, in his mention of the translation of Anastasia's relics from Sirmium, still called Pharmakolytria the saint whose relics are in this church 86 .
In 1389, Ignatius of Smolensk "kissed the holy relics of Anastasia" on her feast day December 22. He did not indicate in what church he found them 87 . Nevertheless, we know that December 22 was then the feast of Anastasia the Widow, and, therefore, Ignatius' notice must be understood as a witness to the presence of her relics.
It is likely that, in the fourteenth century, the relics of Anastasia were unique and attributed to Anastasia the Widow. It is not to exclude the possibility that they were transferred to the church of Blachernae 88 . On the eve of the Fourth Crusade, however, the situation was different.

another Pharmakolytria?
There are two sources, however, that apparently refer to another St Anastasia as Pharmakolytria. One of them is Anthony of Novgorod; we will deal with his conundrum of three Anastasiae below. Another one is the late tenth-century Patria Constantinopolitanae.
The Patria contain two accounts of apparently different Anastasia churches. The first one, III.43, summarises the data of the Life of St Marcian concerning the translation of the relics of Anastasia from Sirmium and (re) building of her famous church 89 . This account being "a distillation of the Vita Marciani" 90 does not mention Pharmakolytria because this word does not occur in its late fifth-century source. The second account, III.103, is an urban legend: "Anastasios Dikoros [Emperor from 491 to 518] built Anastasia Pharmakolytria. For previously the house of a patrician called Pharmakas (Φαρμακᾶ λεγομένου) had stood here" 91 . The scholars agree that the name of the fictitious Pharmakas was derived from Pharmakolytria and not vice versa, and "Anastasius was chosen because his name was etymologically related to the name of Anastasia" 92 . For Rydén, this legend was an alternative account of the creation of the same church, even though not recognised as such by the compiler of the Patria. For Berger, this was an account of another church.
Berger's argumentation becomes weaker when we remove from it the references to the tenth-century Lives of Andrew the Fool, Basil the Younger, and Irene of Chrysobalanton. In the tenth century, it was Anastasia the Widow who delivered sufferers from impure spirits through incubation in the presence of her relics in the church near the colonnades of Domninos; it was she who was called Pharmakolytria. Nevertheless, there are later sources that introduce another church of Anastasia, also with Anastasia's relics.
One such church is known from the so-called Anonymus Mercati and Anthony of Novgorod (one of the three Anastasia churches visited by him). Berger follows janin in identifying these two churches 93 . This identification is corroborated by the publication of an earlier and more complete manuscript of the Anonymus Mercati is certainly incomplete. It is important that the Anastasia deposed in this church is called virgin, martyr, and Roman, but without any epithet proper to Anastasia the Widow. It is worth noting that she is not called Pharmakolytria.

the Conundrum of anthony of novgorod
In the account of Anthony of Novgorod, in 1200, the Anastasia church of the Anonymus Mercati is recognisable but St Anastasia whose relics are deposed here was, in Anthony's mind, the Pharmakolytria. Near the monastery of Pantokrator, Anthony mentioned a church "of Anastasia the Virgin; she lies there; she delivers from any spells and poisons" (мученицы анастасии девицы. ту лежить всякое волхвованье и потворы открываеть) 96 . It is clear that, for Anthony, this Anastasia is the Pharmakolytria.
To evaluate the veracity of Anthony's interpretation, we have to recall that, for the hagiographer of Basil the Younger, for the editors of eleventh-century recensions of the Synaxarium of Constantinople, and even for Albrecht Berger, Pharmakolytria is an epithet of the saint whose relics were translated from Sirmium and deposed, in the fifth century, in the church near the colonnades of Domninos. Pharmakolytria is Anastasia the Widow. Berger preserves this truth at the cost of postulating a never witnessed transferral of Anastasia's relics from her first church to the church of the Anonymus Mercati and Anthony of Novgorod [20, S. 515]. Anthony himself, however, did not share this opinion.
For Anthony, Anastasia the Widow was deposed in another church, probably never mentioned elsewhere; at least, locating it is a difficult task 97 . In his account, the Widow is still recognisable, even though his knowledge of BHG 81-82 was far from perfect: святая анастасия в теле лежить. та же замужем была. на <to read но> милостынею и добрым житьемь спаслась есть [76, S. 330] ("...Saint Anastasia lies in the body. She was married but was saved by charity and good life").
Anna jouravel, following Pavel Savvaitov, identifies this saint as Anastasia the Patrician 98 but this is certainly untenable. The Patrician's Life explains why her relics remain unavailable (see above, section 2). Indeed, the Life of St Andrew the Fool explains the same thing as well, but Andrew's relics were possibly available for veneration somewhere in Constantinople 99 . Most important, however, is the fact that Anastasia the Patricia was saved by monastic asceticism, which is something quite different from the good deeds of lay people such as charity and merely "a good life". This fact alone precludes such an identification. It is obvious that Anthony referred to the Passio of the Widow, but he was unaware of its contents, knowing only the marital status of this Anastasia.
As if this confusion was not enough for him, Anthony provides us with a third St Anastasia, also with relics and in a church whose location is unclear: святая анастасия девица в теле лежит 100 ("Saint Anastasia the Virgin lies in the body").
Anthony's account is confused -probably because of his own activity: instead of humbly writing down the comments of his guide, he tried to pose questions to him and enter into dialogue 101 . Nevertheless, it is not to exclude that the number of the relics of different Anastasiae was then three, as Anthony's account states.
There were five Anastasiae venerated in Constantinople (we will discuss all of them in the course of this study 102 ) but only one of them, the Patrician, was forbidden, by her hagiographers, to leave relics. Of the remaining four saints, two were competing for the same relics deposed near the colonnades of Domninos. The two others had every chance to acquire their own relics as well. It is a rule that the relics of saints appear where people need them to appear, regardless of whether the respective saints were completely imaginary or whether their previous relics were stolen or removed.
From the confused account of Anthony, we can retain that there were some relics of a certain Anastasia (but hardly the Pharmakolytria) in the church described earlier by the Anonymus Mercati, and that the relics of Anastasia the Widow were available for veneration -but not necessarily in the church indicated by Anthony. According to the later recensions of the Synaxarium of Constantinople, they remained in the church near the colonnades of Domninos. Their location was perhaps changed (to Blachernae?) during or after the Latin occupation of the city (1204-1261). We cannot be sure that the relics venerated by Anthony as those of Anastasia the Widow belonged to this saint. It is possible that he knew that these relics were venerated in Constantinople but mistook the place.

two anastasiae in Peaceful Coexistence
The Life of St Irene of Chrysobalanton contains a revealing scene (ch. 13). One of Irene's nuns, a native of Cappadocia like herself, became a victim of witchcraft. Irene prayed to her common compatriot Basil the Great. St Basil helped Irene to address the Theotokos, and the latter calls on St Anastasiaobviously as a specialist in such problems: Again Irene heard her saying, 'Call for Anastasia!' At once two women appeared, one of whom was dressed in a monastic habit and was called (it seemed to her) 'the Roman'. Turning to the other (καὶ πάλιν ἀκοῦσαι λεγούσης «τὴν Ἀναστασίαν μοι καλέσατε» καὶ παραστῆναι δύο γυναῖκας αὐτίκα, ὧν τὴν μίαν, σχῆμα περικειμένην μοναχικόν, τὴν Ῥωμαίαν ᾤετο λέγεσθαι· πρὸς δὲ τὴν ἑτέραν ἐπιστραφεῖσα...) the Mother of God said, 'Hasten, with the help of St Basil <the Great>, to inquire carefully into the illness of Irene's disciple and let her be healed, for you have received the gift of effecting such ends from my Son and God.' Then Anastasia and Basil seemed to make obeisance together <...> 103 The appearance of the second Anastasiaeasily recognisable as the Roman nun, Anastasia the Virgin 104 , -is unmotivated by the plot; she is never mentioned again. This Anastasia is not a specialist in delivering from witchcraft but she also answered the call for Anastasia.
At the beginning of this scene, another saint appeared for a moment, equally unmotivated by the plot. After having seen the Theotokos, Irene "...fell at the feet of Our Lady in deep awe and trembling. Lying there she heard a cry from the all-holy Lady calling for Basil and john and saying to them, 'Why has Irene left her flock and come here?' (...ἀκοῦσαί τε κειμένην φωνῆς τῆς πανάγνου Βασίλειον καλούσης καὶ Ἰωάννην, φάναι τε πρὸς αὐτούς· «τίνος χάριν καταλιποῦσα τὸ ποίμνιον αὐτῆς ἐνταῦθα πάρεστιν ἡ Εἰρήνη»). Out of the two Basil told her in detail about all that her daughter in the spirit had suffered <...>" 105 . This john said no word and disappeared after this appearance for an instant.
Unlike fiction, hagiographical narrative is conditioned by the background of the actual sacred topography. Anastasia the Virgin and this john were not required by the plot, but this means that they were required by the sacred topography that, in the late tenth or early eleventh century, still did not allow separating Anastasia the Widow from Anastasia the Virgin and this john. If we recall that Anastasia the Widow abode in the church near the colonnades of Domninos, it becomes clear that this john is the Forerunner, the "owner" of the nearby St john church. These two churches were liturgically interconnected in the seventh century (see above, section 3), and now we see that they continued to be interconnected three centuries later.
Anastasia the Virgin was not exiled by the return of Anastasia the Widow but the two Anastasiae cohabitated in a single church. The translation of LLA made in 824, BHG 81, served to re-establish Anastasia the Widow in her home but it was by no means aggressive toward the cult of Anastasia the Virgin -unlike the legend of Anastasia the Virgin that was created as the weapon of a competing and aggressive new cult.
The Anonymus Mercati described his Anastasia as "virgin" and Anastasia romana. This description is more fitting with Anastasia the Virgin. Let us notice that, in the Life of St Irene, this Anastasia is called "the Roman" to make a distinction between her and Anastasia the Widow. It seems, therefore, that, to some period after 1063 and before the twelfth century, Anastasia the Virgin acquired her own church with her own relics. The Anastasia of these new relics was erroneously taken for the Pharmakolytria by Anthony of Novgorod.

Commemorations in the byzantine rite before 900
The two commemoration dates for the two Anastasiae, the Widow and the Virgin (December 22 and October 12, respectively) were established after a period when Anastasia the Virgin must have been commemorated on the earlier date of Anastasia the Widow. The former occupied the church and the relics of the latter, and, therefore, she must have occupied her commemoration date as well. This situation, after having been established in the seventh century, must have never been challenged before the end of the Monothelete union, that is, before 681 if not 715. It is beyond doubt that this earliest commemoration date of St Anastasia fell in the last days of December, near December 25. It is a priori most probable that the In the earliest copy of the Georgian version of the Martyrdom of Anastasia and Theodota, the commemoration date of these saints is October 22. It is written down in full (განეწესა დღესასწაოჳლი საჴსენებელის მისისა თ(უეს)ა ოკდომბერსა ოცდაორსა "The feast day of their commemoration is established on the twenty second of the month October") in the last lines of the text of the earliest copy, the manuscript Sinaiticus georgicus 11 106 . This manuscript is dated approximately to the tenth century, but its Arabic original was older, and the Greek original of this Arabic was older still. The date of October 22 (and sometimes its alteration, October 23) is preserved in several Georgian calendars and menaea 107  The number 22 is revealing. It is the same day in October as was the main Anastasia day in December. The days of the month tend to be invariant under deliberate substantial shifting of commemoration dates 108 . The most natural explanation of October 22 as the commemoration date of Anastasia and Theodota is a deliberate shift of the earlier commemoration date of Anastasia, December 22. Such a shift must have become necessary when the "Syrian" Anastasia the Virgin replaced the "Gothic" Anastasia the Widow.
When Anastasia the Widow returned to December 22, the most honourable place for St Anastasia in the liturgical calendar, it was Anastasia the Virgin's turn to go into October exile. The 22 nd day of October was, however already appropriated by Anastasia the Widow 109 . Eventually, Anastasia the Virgin stayed at October 12.

anastasia, a saint of the goths, and her "sister" st irene
In this section, we will try to discuss the Constantinopolitan cult of St Anastasia as far as is possible without reading the legend of Anastasia the Widow and without taking into account the veneration of St Anastasia in the West.
Rochelle Snee already facilitated our task by her study on the transformation of a little Anastasia church dedicated to the Resurrection of Christ, where Gregory of Nazianzus served as the Nicaean bishop of Constantinople, into the church of St Anastasia renovated by St Marcian for receiving the relics translated from Sirmium. Although she is somewhat sceptical about such an exact dating of the translation as 468-470 110 , her own dating is very similar: before the assassination of Aspar and Ardabur in the middle of 471, when the tension between Aspar and Emperor Leo I had already become quite perceptible. This means roughly the same years [114, esp. pp. 161-162, 185-186]. For us, it is important that the translation took place when Sirmium had passed from the hands of the Huns to the Ostrogoths (454/455). Without the Ostrogoths' consent, the translation of the relics to Constantinople would have been impossible 111 .

st anastasia in Constantinople:
the Patron of the goths St. Anastasia was especially venerated by the Ostrogoths. In the sixth century, there was an important Gothic Anastasia church in their capital Ravenna 112 . Nevertheless, they consented to the translation. Indeed, the moment was rightly chosen: it was the time when either the future Theoderic the Great lived as a young hostage at the court of Constantinople (for about ten years until 469) or shortly thereafter.
Beside the scanty mentions of Byzantine historiographers, the translation is witnessed by the hagiographical dossier of St Marcian, the Economos and presbyter of the Great Church in Constantinople 113 ; these hagiographical documents reveal the meaning of the translation of St Anastasia's relics. Marcian's most wellknown pre-Metaphrastic Vita BHG 1032 114 is already affected with anti-Arian and anti-Gothic censorship -sometimes to a lesser extent than his Metaphrastic Vita BHG 1034 [118]. However, the most interesting to us is the lesser-known pre-Metaphrastic Vita BHG 1033 115 , which preserves intact the passage related to the Arian Goths.
One of the main accomplishments of Marcian's life was, according to all his biographies, the rebuilding of the St Anastasia church. This church, as it is emphasised by the hagiographers, had long ago served as the shelter of the Orthodox led by Gregory of Nazianzus in the Arian Constantinople. The dedication of this church under Gregory (probably after the Anastasis basilica in jerusalem) had been forgotten by Marcian's times; everybody thought that it was dedicated to martyr Anastasia. Marcian, as his hagiographers said, reconstructed and decorated the former church of Gregory of Nazianzus having in mind Gregory's own hope or prophecy about this 116 .
This action, related to the church especially known by the staunch anti-Arianism of its famous founder, was overtly anti-Arian. At the end of the dedication ceremony, Marcian was slandered by some adversaries before the Patriarch Gennadios, but his innocence was revealed through a miracle. Then, continued the hagiographer, what happened became "a demonstration of the power of God and the triumph over Devil [sc., diabolus "calumniator"] himself and the evil doctrine of Arius" (τὸ δὲ γενόμενον ἔδειξεν τὴν τοῦ Θεοῦ δύναμιν καὶ τρόπαιον ὑπῆρχεν κατ' αὐτοῦ [τοῦ] Διαβόλου καὶ τῆς Ἀρείου κακοδοξίας), because the new church attracted crowds to Orthodoxy 117 . The Vita BHG 1032 unites this dedication and the deposition of the relics into a single event (ch. 5 [128, vol. 4, p. 262]), which is, of course, not necessarily historically true but, at least, explains why the date of the dedication, December 22, became the major commemoration date of St Anastasia in Constantinople.
The most interesting episode proper to BHG 1033 is the following. After having accomplished his magnificent architectural project, Marcian received expressions of gratitude from different social strata, including Emperor Leo (457-474) and even Aspar and his son Ardabur (who will be killed in 471) -those highest officials who made Leo the Emperor; both were Arians, being Goths, and therefore unsuitable for becoming emperors themselves. Aspar was the teacher of the future Theoderic the Great in the years of his staying in Constantinople.
Even though they [Aspar and Ardabur] differed with us in the matter of right faith, nevertheless, out of respect to the Father [sc., Marcian], they brought many different and worthy of admiration utensils for the esteemed and most holy martyrium of the martyr Anastasia, because they were living in its vicinity, north of it 119 . Therefore, the holy man has shown them his gratitude reciprocally with a return gift; (namely,) he has established in the typikon [liturgical regulations specific to a given church] that, on the festal days, the divinely inspired Scriptures are to be read in their mother tongue of the Goths.
Let us notice that such act of gratitude would have hardly been possible without a number of Goths within the congregation of the church and even among the clergy (the lay people are not allowed to read the Scriptures at the liturgy, but these readings are distributed between the readers, the deacons, and the priests).
The church of St Anastasia became the centre of Gothic anti-Arian Orthodoxy, even though it was established with the collaboration of the Arian Goths -not only Aspar and Ardabur but also the Arian Ostrogothic authorities in Sirmium 120 . The Arian St Anastasia church in Ravenna continued the tradition of this cult of St Anastasia as the holy patron of the Gothsbut already within the Arian realm. Regardless of the internal differences between the Nicaean minority and the Arian majority, the Ostrogoths venerated St Anastasia as their common saint and, therefore, certainly venerated her relics deposed in her Constantinopolitan church.
The legend of St Anastasia produced by and for this pro-Gothic cult would have had little chance to survive undamaged in the sixth-century Constantinople.

st anastasia in Constantinople:
the "sister" of st irene Another episode of Marcian's biographies is important for our future reconstruction of the early Byzantine Anastasia legend: she was venerated together with a certain martyr Irene.
The great and beautiful church of St Irene, rebuilt on the site of a modest ancient church, was the last construction erected by Marcian -also because of some divine revelation. This church of Irene called "of Perama" was located at the seashore of the Golden Horn, near the pier of the boats plying their trade between Pera and Galata 121 . Marcian died when the church had not yet been fully decorated, but Empress Verina accomplished the work. Looking at the beautiful church, the people have said: Ἰδοὺ καὶ ἄλλη θυγάτηρ τοῦ ὁσίου Μαρκιανοῦ, ἀδελφὴ τῆς ἁγίας [ἐνδόξου μάρτυρος] Ἀναστασίας 122 "Lo, this is another daughter of holy Marcian, a sister of the saint [glorious martyr] Anastasia!" Modern scholars are unanimous that the St Irene venerated in this church was the central character of the mid-fourth century legend of Irene, whose initial pagan name was Penelope (preserved in Greek as BHG 953 123 ). Her martyrdom took place under a certain Licinius but (as is not infrequent in the temporary structure of the "epic" hagiographical legends) in apostolic times, when she became a follower and companion of Apostle Timotheus. The raison d'être of the legend was the translation of the relics of the Apostle from Ephesus to Constantinople in 356; the empty coffin of Timotheus in Ephesus was represented with the empty coffin of Irene, also in Ephesus, that she left behind her after her resurrection.
Strictly speaking, it needs to be proven whether the Irene of the church "of Perama" was this companion of Apostle Timotheus, because the available Constantinopolitan data are not explicit: they simply mention, on january 21, a synaxis "of Irene in her most holy church that is near the sea" (Εἰρήνης ἐν τῇ ἁγιωτάτῃ αὐτῆς ἐκκλησίᾳ τῇ οὔσῃ πρὸς θάλασσαν) 124 . In the Vitae of Marcian, the day of the dedication of the St Irene church is january 20 125 . However, from this january date the identification of St Irene is perfectly clear. The commemoration of Apostle Timotheus was oscillating within the interval from january 20 to january 22 126 . The commemoration of this Irene was inserted into the liturgical calendar as a part of a Timotheus's liturgical cycle. No doubt, the Irene of our church was Irene-Penelope, even though the regular feast of this martyr was on May 4 or 5 [42, cols. 653, 660].
It is another matter, however, whether our Irene's dependence on Apostle Timotheus was realised in Marcian's times. The Vitae suggest that it was not: at least, they contain no trace of hagiographical traditions related to the Apostle. In this case, the date of the dedication, january 20, would have been retained from the tradition of the earlier Irene church that was replaced with the new one.
Instead of Timotheus's hagiographical traditions, we see that Irene became a "sister" of Anastasia. Such relations between these two martyrs are known from the Constantinopolitan legend of St Anastasia, an abridged recension of which is the Martyrdom of Anastasia and Theodota, and another recension of which is LLA. There, St Irene appeared 127 as a companion of St Anastasia. However, this St Irene is not an imaginary and symbolical companion of Apostle Timotheus but a historical martyr of Thessalonica.

the major blocks of which the anastasia legend was built
The legend of Anastasia the Widow as it is represented by LLA and BHG 81, contains five major blocks, each of them (excluding the Preface) having an autonomous plot line: Both the legend of Theodota with her three sons and the legend of Irene, Agape, and Chionia (points 3 and 4 of the list above) were known, in Byzantium, in forms unconnected to Anastasia. The situation with the legend of Chrysogonus is quite different. We will see (in Part Two of the present study) that, together with the Preface, it is a later addition proper to LLA and previously unknown in Byzantium.
In this section, we will focus ourselves on the two cults used for naturalising Anastasia as a Constantinople citizen. As a saint of Constantinople, Anastasia underwent, in the fifth century, a double assimilation. She was naturalised theologically as a Nicaean saint, and politically as a Thessalonian saint. For the former purpose, she was introduced in Constantinople by the historical martyr of Nicaea Theodota, and for the latter purpose, by the historical martyrs of Thessalonica Irene, Agape, and Chionia.

irene, agape, and Chionia as Companions of anastasia
The three historical martyrs of Thessalonica (they were martyrized in Thessalonica during the same persecutions of Diocletian, when the historical prototype of Anastasia was martyrized in Sirmium) had a Martyrdom of their own. Their Passio BHG 34 is now considered, despite its overall "epic" framework, as containing a genuine record of their interrogation 128 .
In the Constantinopolitan legend, these three martyrs became companions of Anastasia. In the fifth-century context, this would have meant a kind of appropriation of Anastasia by Thessalonica. Thessalonica has been for centuries a rival of Sirmium; the two cities were competing for the status of the capital of the Balkans. Until the end of the fourth century, if not later, the official capital of the "prefecture of Illyricum" was Sirmium, whereas Thessalonica was the second city of this province. In the fifth century, their competition increased to the international level, because Sirmium fell to the Huns in 441-442. By the second half of the fifth century, it was Gothic.
In the legend accompanying the translation of Anastasia's relics from Sirmium, it was impossible to eliminate Sirmium at all. Nevertheless, it was possible to soften the sound of its name and to introduce a more "patriotic" intermediary, Thessalonica.
Were this legend of Anastasia composed in the early sixth century or later, Thessalonica would have been represented in its plot by St Demetrius 129 . However, in the fifth century, St Demetrius had not had time to become a saint warrior of Thessalonica and was still a modest martyr deacon of Sirmium. Sirmium's modern and mediaeval name, Sremska Mitrovica, is an abbreviation of "Dimitrovica" -"city of Demetrius".
The great basilica church dedicated to St Demetrius in Thessalonica was constructed in the first years of the sixth century (or the last years of the fifth century at the earliest) 130 , probably even in the 510s or 520s 131 , thus proclaiming that Thessalonica henceforth is the city of St Demetrius. As Delehaye convincingly argued, the relics of St Demetrius were in fact deposed in Sirmium and not in Thessalonica. What Thessalonica had were only "secondary relics" such as a piece of a cloth (orarion?) impregnated with the blood of the martyr 132 . Demetrius became μυροβλήτης ("myrrh-gusher") much later, most probably in the eleventh century 133 . By this time, of course, his "primary" relics (that is, the body or parts of it) had had to be "found" in Thessalonica. Therefore, the presence of Irene, Agape, and Chionia, but not of Demetrius is a strong proof that the Constantinopolitan legend of Anastasia belongs to the fifth century and not to the sixth.

theodota as a Companion of anastasia
The plot line of St Theodota of Nicaea within the legend of Anastasia is a straightforward expression, in the symbolical language of hagiography, of the Nicaean faith. We already know how important it was in the eyes of St Marcian, when Constantinople was de facto controlled by Arian Goths. This plot line is a recognisable hallmark of the time of the translation of Anastasia's relics. Considered against the background of the plot line of Irene, Agape, and Chionia, this is a decisive argument for attributing the old Constantinopolitan legend of Anastasia to the cult of the saint established after the translation of her relics to the capital.
Theodota, with her three sons, was the most known historical martyr of Nicaea. Her hagiographical dossier contains two long Passions épiques, BHG 1780 and 1781, of which BHG 1781 is sober and has more historical value 134 .

the historical virgin martyr of sirmium
As is often the case, the historic martyr of Sirmium has escaped our search. She was known to neither the Latin Depositio martyrum (composed ca 336) 135 nor the Syriac martyrologium of 411 (translation of the lost Greek document dated to ca 362 [101, pp. 7-26]), which are the earliest available lists of the martyrs for liturgical commemoration. A single fact is certain: in the first half of the fifth century, on the eve of the translation of her relics to Constantinople, she was already a venerated saint deposed in Sirmium. It is impossible to know with certainty whether she was martyrized under Diocletian, although, of course, this supposition looks most likely. Previous scholars believed that, at least, her name was Anastasia, and her commemoration day was December 25, the date preserved by the Martyrologium Hieronymianum. These two suppositions are merely guesses based on the presumption that the fifth-century Roman sources which name the martyr of Sirmium Anastasia and commemorate her on December 25 follow the tradition received from Sirmium. Any other possibilities were never considered, as if we can be sure that the Sirmium cult of Anastasia, from the very beginning in the early fourth century, presumed this name of the saint and this day of her commemoration. In fact, we have no direct witness of this cult in Sirmium in the fourth century, whereas our indirect data could be interpreted in different ways.
It is extremely unlikely that the martyr of Sirmium was called Anastasia. Before the late fourth century or even later, this Christian name was used in the family of Emperor Constantine the Great almost exclusively 136 . This name belongs to the Roman core of the Anastasia legend and, therefore, is unrelated to the martyr of Sirmium.
It is certain, nevertheless, that there was some cult of this martyr in Sirmium, and, therefore, some legend of her. We will return to these problems in Part Two.
Nevertheless, the historicity of St Anastasia as she was created in about 468-470 in Constantinople was not limited to her connexion with the prototype martyr of Sirmium. Her other prototypes were Roman and no less historical.

the roman Core of the anastasia legend(s)
The Nicaean and Thessalonican plot lines were interwoven, in the legend of Anastasia, with the main line of the martyrdom of Anastasia herself, a Roman dame. This part of the legend is the fruit of about a century of development of properly Roman hagiographical traditions. It was certainly borrowed from Rome. This has never been sufficiently analysed, and we will devote Part Two of this study to its investigation. We will call it the Roman core of the Anastasia legend.

Provisional Conclusions
In Part One, we considered the main lines of development of the Byzantine Anastasia cult(s) from the fifth century to about 1200, while provisionally putting aside two minor Anastasia cults that arrived from Rome.
The Monothelete Union brought many changes in the liturgical life of Constantinople. One of the most remarkable was the popularity of Syrian saints, both previously known ones and such a newcomer to the capital as was St Febronia. The origins of the cult of St Febronia remain unknown, but, in its form available to us, it was created (or, probably, reshaped) in a "monophysite" (Severian) monastery near Nisibis during the short period when the Byzantine rule there was restored (from 628 to 639).
The cult of St Febronia, then extremely popular, together with other Syrian cults, contributed to creating a new "monothelete" St Anastasia, the Roman Virgin, with the purpose of replacing the previous one, the Roman Widow. The latter was, in the fifth century, the patron of the Goths, but now, in the seventh century, remained without any specific duty in ecclesiastical or secular politics. Her relics, deposed in her church in Constantinople, continued, nevertheless, to be much venerated. Therefore, she was forced to hand over her relics and her commemoration date December 22 to her young rival. However, the Monothelete Union was not too long-lived, since the Syrian influence in the Patriarchate of Constantinople decreased rapidly, and Anastasia the Widow managed to regain both her relics and her commemoration day.
Thus, Anastasia the Virgin became topographically homeless (there was no church with her relics) and calendrically vagabond (her commemoration day was shifted from December to October, where it was oscillating between different dates, especially October 22, 12, and 29). Anastasia the Widow eventually won. She allowed, however, the commemoration of her former rival, the Virgin, as the second St Anastasia of the capital. Therefore, in due time, Anastasia the Virgin provided herself with relics that were venerated by pilgrims starting in the eleventh century at the latest.
The early Byzantine legend of Anastasia the Widow was published (made known to everybody) at the occasion of the translation of her relics from Sirmium to Constantinople. This event is datable to the interval from 468 to 470. The appropriate legend contained the Roman core of Anastasia legends (that will be discussed in Part Two of the present study) and two important additions from the legends of the Thessalonian martyrs Irene, Agape, and Chionia and of the Nicaean martyr Theodota with her three sons. In the fifth century, these martyrs were known as the holy patrons of the respective cities (St Demetrius did not become the patron of Thessalonica before the sixth century). Thus, the Constantinopolitan cult of St Anastasia was backed by the saints of Thessalonica and Nicaea. Both cities were important with respect to the Goths.
In these years, the Arian Goths headed by Aspar and Ardabur were de facto rulers of Constantinople and the whole Eastern Empire. The translation of the relics from the Gothic Sirmium to Constantinople and the establishment of the Anastasia church in the capital would have been impossible without their involvement, which was indeed very intensive. Nevertheless, this church was strictly Nicaean, even though very open to the Goths (including the reading of Scriptures in Gothic). In such a religious situation, the need of support from the patron saint of Nicaea was obvious. The support of the saints of Byzantine Thessalonica was needed with respect to politics. Thessalonica was then the Byzantine capital of Illyricum, because the former Roman capital of this province, Sirmium, already had passed to the Goths. Now we are prepared to turn ourselves to the Roman core of the Anastasia legends. This will be the topic of Part Two of the present study.
To be continued...  [121, pp. 327-332]. The text, together with my notice on the mutual relations between this Arabic recension and the Georgian Martyrdom of Anastasia and Theodota, is under preparation by Habib Ibrahim. 5 Cf., however, the last paragraph of this Martyrdom in its earliest manuscript, where the title is repeated as following: ესე არს წამებაჲ წ(მი)დისა ანასთასიაჲსი და თეოდ(ო)ტეჲსა და სხუ(ა)თა მათ წ(მიდა)თაჲ რ(ომე)ლნა მათ თანავე იწამნეს "This is the Martyrdom of saint Anastasia and Theodota and other saints who were martyrized together with them"; this title is published only in Gérard Garitte's description of the manuscript [60, p. 32]. 6 In Stem 1, the Arabic recension is still marked with the asterisk, because the preserved Arabic text is not identical to the lost original of the Georgian version. However, it is so close to it that the asterisk could be omitted. 7 Cf. a short discussion, with the most relevant references, by Jane Baun [18, pp. 114-115]. 8 13 See Garitte's entry [62] for the main bibliography and the unresolved problems (even in our days, whereas the relevant fascicule has been published in 1957). The story of Anastasia is lacking from the preserved Coptic version; it is unknown in Armenian either. The Slavonic and Georgian versions represent the Byzantine tradition and therefore are of no particular interest. 14 Cf., for bibliography, Lourié [83]. 15 Edited by Delehaye [44, pp. 250-258]; Halkin denoted recension 76z "the vulgate" and published other recensions: a similar recension BHG 76x called "hagioritique", taking into account the "epitome" recension BHG 78e known from a single manuscript with a great lacuna [70, pp. 159-170], and an interesting "remaniement de Vénise" BHG 76zd (from a unique 16 th -cent. manuscript), where the relics of Anastasia were deposed at the St Anastasia church in Rome dedicated to the Widow, and the two Anastasiae are therefore reunited within a common cult [70, pp. 170-178]. The so-called Passio longior BHG 76y known from a single eleventh-century manuscript remains unpublished. 16 There is a vast bibliography on the evolution of the cult of St Artemius from the fourth to the seventh century and later. Among the most important studies, I would mention those by S.N.C. Lieu [82] (on the early development of the cult), A. Busine [28] (on the Constantinopolitan late sixth-and seventh-century context), and V. Déroche [47] (decline of the cult in the iconoclastic epoch). 17 See, for the medicine aspect, A.P. Alwis's study [11]. 18 19 This aspect of historical value even of the most legendary hagiographical documents is often neglected, even by such great specialists as, e.g., François Halkin [69]. 20 21 Cf. a notice by j.-M. Fiey [58, pp. 79-80], for earlier scholarship, partly outdated. 22 The date according to Fiey [56, pp. 14-15]. 23 Ed. and transl. by E. A. Wallis Budge [26, vol. 1, p. 136; English tr.: vol. 2, pt. 1, p. 203], the translation is slightly edited by myself. Fiey located the monastery on the route to Marga [55, pp. 278-279]. 24 Kaplan [78,pp. 38,40,44], as many others before him, refers to this witness uncritically, without mentioning its late date. 25 The Syriac text edited by Paul Bedjan [19, pp. 573-615]; English translation by Brock and Harvey [25, pp. 150-176]. 26 Critical edition, together with two early Latin versions (BHL 2843 and 2844), by Paolo Chiesa [31, pp. 333-395]. 27 Kaplan focused his discussion of the bilingualism of local Christians on the moving of the "Nestorian" famous theological school from Edessa to Nisibis in the late fifth century [78, pp. 37, 45]. However, as David Taylor pointed out, the Christian population of Mesopotamia practiced Syriac-Greek bilingualism and diglossia quite widely, regardless of the school of Edessa / Nisibis [119]. 28 See [31, p. 354]. Of these three cases, two are related to the spectrum of meaning of Greek words: Chiesa argues, against Simon, that the respective words could have had, in the Byzantine Greek, the same meanings as their correspondents in the Syriac. The third case is a possible confusion between two words that look similar in Syriac spelling; this confusion, however, results anyway in acceptable readings. Chiesa is justified in noticing that such an error could be interpreted, with an equal likelihood, as committed by a Syriac scribe and not necessarily by the Greek translator. 29 Chiesa [31, p. 355]: "Ma decisivo è il fatto, mi pare, che anche nel testo siriaco l'invocazione sia introdotta dalle parole 'cominciò a parlare in lingua siriaca', frase che, all'interno di un testo scritto interamente in lingua siriaca, non ha alcun senso se non in quanto traduzione di una corrispondente espressione in una lingua diversa". 30 One kind of Semitisms in syntax is pointed out by Kaplan, who, however, prefers to explain it through the hypothesis of an educated author who wrote in Greek while his / her mother tongue was Syriac [78, p. 41]. 31 See [113, pp. 72-75]. I do not quote Simon's arguments because I agree with them and have nothing to add. 32 The word "office" ‫)ܬܫܡܫܬܐ(‬ is lacking here, and, therefore, "Vespers" could be understood as either "office of Vespers" or simply "evening". In both cases, the general meaning is the same because the office of Vespers in the evening must have been implied. 74 On this word, corrupted in different ways in the manuscripts, see Delehaye [44, p. 257, fn. 19]. Anastasia is said to be buried ἐν τόπῳ καλουμένῳ Ψόρῳ ( § 9); Delehaye wrote in the footnote to his edition of BHG 76z: "legendum videtur φόρῳ. Versio latina in locum qui vocabatur Proforo". BHG 76x has the same readings with the initial Ψ (ed. Halkin [ 77 See janin [75, p. 26] for a commentary to this location. janin pointed out that, for the monastery dedicated to the commemorated saint, the Synaxarium uses the phrase ἐν τῇ μονῇ αὐτῆς. It is very possible that "the monastery of Anastasia" was an alternative name of the monastery of Anastasis (Resurrection) that existed in the unique complex of buildings with the church of St Anastasia near the colonnades of Domninos; cf. Janin [75, p. 23], and Magdalino [89, p. 62]. 78 The tenth-century recension of the Synaxarium of Constantinople is available through its Armenian translation. For October 12, we read here: Եւ Անաստասիա սրբուհւոյ կուսին։ "And <the commemoration> of Anastasia, the saint virgin" [130, vol. 10, p. 130; cf. pp. [130][131] for three more Armenian recensions of this entry, without any epitome of her Passio either). The title of this entry is an exact rendering of the preserved Greek original that, in turn, goes back to the Typikon of the Great Church: ἄθλησις τῆς ἁγίας Ἀναστασίας τῆς παρθένου "the contest of saint Anastasia the virgin" ([42, col. 133; 94, vol. 1, p. 68]). For December 22, there is here (in all Armenian recensions) a relatively long epitome of LLA [130, vol. 12, pp. 268-273]. This is the text preserved in the Synaxarium of Constantinople in Greek [42, cols. 333-338] but with a different title (without a mention of Φαρμακολυτρία "Deliverer from Potions", a later Byzantine epithet of Anastasia the Widow, which is present in the title of the Synaxarium entry in some of its recensions [42, cols. 333-334]: իշատակ է սրբուհու կուսին Անաստասիա "It is the commemoration of the saint virgin Anastasia" [130, vol. 12, p. 268]. This title is closer to that in the Typikon of the Great Church: ἄθλησις τῆς ἁγίας Ἀναστασίας καὶ σὺν αὐτῇ ἁγίων γυναικῶν [94, vol. 1, p. 142] "the contest of saint Anastasia and with her saint women", but perhaps, for the Armenians, only a unique Anastasia existed, and, therefore, both Anastasiae, those commemorated on October 12 and December 22, are called "Virgin". 79 81 Cf. [20, S. 514]: "Die Andreas-Salos-Vita <...> lokalisiert sie z. B. en tois Makellou [sic!], also in die Nähe des Leomakellon". In the footnote to this place (Anm. 27), Berger refers to Rydén 1974 noticing that Rydén "nevertheless" (trotz) identifies this church with that of the earlier sources (near to the colonnades of Domninos) but does not mention the error in the printed text that he repeated. In a later study, Berger provided an approximate map of the part of Constantinople where he located the respective Anastasia church: A. Berger [21, S. 44, 47-48], once again with a reference to Rydén [108] but quoting, once again, the erroneous reading ta Makellu [21, S. 47]. 82 Rydén [108,; Berger [20, S. 514]. See also two next footnotes. 83 90,91]. There is also an ancient Slavonic version of the Life of Basil the Younger, now published critically and studied [9]. 85 Ed. by Delehaye [42, cols. 333-334] (in Synaxaria selecta). This is an addition to the genuine recension, unknown to the Armenian and other ancient (11 th -cent.) translations of the Synaxarium; the epithet is, of course, absent in the Typikon of the Great Church. Arne Effenberger, taking Berger's identification of the Pharmakolytria with the saint deposed in another church (that Berger located at Leomakellon), goes so far as saying that the Synaxarium of Constantinople made an error: "Nur das Synaxar zum 22. Dezember bezeichnet die in den Emboloi des Domninos verehrte Anastasia irrtümlich als Pharmakolytria" [50, esp. S. 49, Anm. 81]. The Synaxarium, unlike a pelerine account, could not contain "errors": it consists of a written fixation of an actual liturgical practice; therefore, the  [124, pp. 67-93]; for a discussion of the date when the saint became a myrrh-gusher, see esp. [124, p. 93, note 54]. 134 Published, together with an ancient Latin version, by Delehaye [45, pp. 220-225]. 135  Catacombs of Priscilla ICUR 23082 (on the marble plate, now lost) Anastasia / vivas in / aeternitatem ("Anastasia, let you live in eternity") dated to the period from 275 to 325. Of course, nothing is known about her, but it looks a priori unlikely that she was a relative of Constantine the Great. The entire corpus of the Roman Christian Inscriptions, previously published in the series established by G. B. de Rossi in 1857 and continued until presently, ICUR (Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae), is now available as the database EDB.