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Stephen the Martyr (Acts VI–VIII) in the Early Jerusalem Lectionary System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 January 2017

HUGO MÉNDEZ
HUGO MÉNDEZ*
Affiliation:
Department of Religious Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 125 Carolina Hall, NC 27599-3225, USA; e-mail: hmendez@email.unc.edu
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Abstract

Lectionary and homiletic sources indicate that the Church of Jerusalem commemorated Stephen twice within the same two-week period (26/27 December and 7 January). Few studies have explored the origins of these feasts, the relationship between their appointed readings and the phenomenon of parallel, or redundant, feasts in fifth-century Jerusalem. This study will locate the development of these feasts within the struggle of the Church of Jerusalem to develop a local cult of martyrs after the Constantinian settlement.

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Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 68 , Issue 1 , January 2017 , pp. 22 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

The legalisation of Christianity marked a dramatic turning point in the history of the Church of Jerusalem. Prior to 313 ce Jerusalem was a modest Roman military colony, with only a small and obscure Christian population.Footnote 1 Within the century, however, the city had become a leading Christian urban centre and pilgrimage destination:

No longer a Jewish city, this Roman colonia was ready ground for Christian urbanization. Edifices for worship and for the veneration of sites traditionally associated with the life of Christ could now be constructed. This new Aelia (later to be renamed Jerusalem) drew a considerable number of Christians as inhabitants by the late fourth century… Centers of worship multiplied under later imperial patronage, especially that of Theodosius the Great and his wife, Eudoxia, as well as Eudocia, sister of Theodosius ii.Footnote 2

Unsurprisingly, this dramatic expansion was accompanied by dramatic changes in the city's Christian ritual life. Fortunately, many of these developments through the late fourth and early fifth centuries can be reconstructed from contemporary sources. The Itinerarium Egeriae (Diary of Egeria), dating to c. 381–4, provides the earliest description of the stational liturgy of Jerusalem.Footnote 3 Complementing this source is the Codex Climaci Rescriptus (Climacus III), an Aramaic palimpsest preserving lessons from an early stage of the hagiopolite lectionary system.Footnote 4 Anchoring the other end of this period are three manuscripts of the so-called Armenian lectionary of Jerusalem (AL), two of which reflect successive periods of hagiopolite worship (Codex Jerusalem 121 [J], of 417–39, and Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, ms arm. 44 [P], of 439–42), and one of which represents an eclectic text (Yerevan, ms 985 [E]).Footnote 5 Understanding of this later period is further enriched by several festal homilies of Hesychius, an early fifth-century priest in Jerusalem, which have been edited by Michel Aubineau.Footnote 6

Unfortunately, even the wealth of information contained in these sources provides only a fragmentary understanding of the city's shifting worship patterns, and more important, the social forces directing them. Consider, for instance, the evolution of the canon of readings appointed for the second day of the octave of the Epiphany (7 January).Footnote 7

At the time reflected in Climacus III, these lessons were virtually identical to those prescribed for the first day of the octave, save for the Gospel (the Gospel selections following a cyclical reading of the Matthean infancy narrative):

Canons for Epiphany i, ii in Climacus III

According to Egeria, these two stations also occurred in the same location: Golgotha, within the Holy Sepulchre complex.Footnote 8

However, by the period represented by the Armenian lectionary, the latter celebration took a radically different form:

iii – The second day, they gather at the Martyrium of St Stephen, and this canon is performed:

Psalm v, Antiphon: ‘Lord, as with a shield, [crown us] with your favor.’ [v.13b LXX]

Reading from the Acts of the Apostles: 18 : ‘Stephen, a man full of grace and strength… and devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him.’ [vi. 8–viii. 2]

Reading from the Letter of the Apostle Paul to Titus : 19 : ‘For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people … let no one despise you.’ [ii. 11–15]

Alleluia, Psalm xx [LXX; xxi MT]: ‘Lord, in your strength, [Psalm: the King will rejoice].’ [xx. 2 LXX]

Gospel according to John : 20 : ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies… if anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.’ [xii. 24–6]Footnote 9

All of the station's readings but one, Titus ii.11–15, were supplanted by readings appropriate for a memorialisation of Stephen.Footnote 10 Furthermore, the celebration was relocated to the ‘Martyrium of St Stephen’, which held the relics of Stephen purportedly discovered in 415.Footnote 11

Strikingly, these changes to the Epiphany ii station made it nearly indistinguishable from a celebration held only eleven days earlier, on 26/27 December ‘[commemoration] of Saint Stephen’ at the same martyrium.Footnote 12 Only the absence of the second Epistle reading, from Titus ii.11–15, distinguishes the two feasts:

lxxii [J:] 27 Dec., of Saint Stephen, and this canon is performed [E: 26 Dec., commemoration of holy Stephen]:

Psalm v, Antiphon: ‘Lord, as with a shield, crown us with your favor.’ [v.13b LXX]

Reading from the Acts of the Apostles: 249: ‘Stephen, a man full of grace and strength … and devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him.’ [vi. 8–viii. 2]

Alleluia, Psalm xx [LXX; xxi MT]

‘Lord, in your strength [P: the King will rejoice].’ [xx. 2 LXX]

Gospel according to John: 250: ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies… if anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.’ [xii. 24–6]Footnote 13

This feast is also unattested in the earlier hagiopolite sources, though those are admittedly fragmentary.Footnote 14

Still more peculiar, it appears that the reformed Epiphany ii station was, in its own time, considered a dedicated memorial of Stephen parallel to the 26/27 December celebration. It was certainly transmitted as such in later centuries. In contemporary communities of the West Syriac riteFootnote 15 the same feast appears in the week following Epiphany, displaced one day by a memorial of the beheading of John the Baptist.Footnote 16 There, it stands as a true commemoration of Stephen:

6 Jan. Denho (‘Dawn’; i.e., the Epiphany).

7 Jan. Beheading of John the Baptiser.

8 Jan. Mar Stephen, chief among the deacons and first of the martyrs.

Moreover, a homily of Hesychius indicates that the fifth-century Jerusalem Church observed multiple feasts for Stephen:

But it is we who rightly owe [Stephen] more numerous feasts … it is in our midst that he obtained the election to his ministry and the part of his martyrdom.

This explains the frequency of the festal spectacles we hold in his honor, and we often put crowns on his nuptial canopy, frequently we go up leaping for joy to his wine-press, and we sing a marriage hymn as we say the words of the harvest song: ‘Lord, you have crowned us with the shield of your favor’ [Psalm v.13].Footnote 17

Hesychius' reference to the Psalm appointed for the 26/27 December and Epiphany ii celebrations (‘Lord, you have crowned us’) suggests that the ‘numerous feasts’ that he describes include at least these regular dates.Footnote 18

The presence of two celebrations on the Jerusalem calendar, nearly identical in content and situated within the same two-week period, is remarkable. Unfortunately, few attempts have been made to explore the origins of these ostensibly redundant celebrations, especially the changes to the Epiphany ii station in the period 384–439. Still less has been done to understand the relationship between these feasts in the perception of the Jerusalem Church. This article argues that the origin of both feasts may be located in the Church of Jerusalem's struggle to develop a local cult of martyrs parallel to those long since in place in other cities.

Previous studies

To the extent that previous studies have explored this issue, they have done so only briefly. Over a century ago, F. C. Conybeare cited these duplicate feasts for Stephen as evidence that the calendar system ‘implied in the lectionary was already a conflation of at least two earlier ones’ available to the Armenians, ‘one of which placed Christmas on December 25, the other on January 6’.Footnote 19 Conybeare's interpretation of the Armenian lectionary as a conflation of two calendars with different starting points has long since been discarded, however.Footnote 20 The lectionary faithfully reflects a period in the Jerusalem liturgy before ‘the idea of a 25 December nativity celebration was broached early in the fifth century, abortively as it turned out’.Footnote 21

Athanase Renoux, taking a different approach, cites the same cognates as evidence that the 26/27 December feast of Stephen was already in place in Jerusalem in 415, the year of the translation of his relics and the dedication of his martyrium.Footnote 22 In turn, he speculates that the reformed Epiphany ii station emerged from an attempt to integrate that martyrium into the highest celebrations of the Jerusalem calendar, including the octave of the Epiphany.Footnote 23 The mere desire to associate the martyrium with the Epiphany octave, however, could not have triggered all the peculiar features of the Epiphany ii celebration. For instance, the martyrium also served as the station for the 9 March ‘commemoration of the Forty Saints’ (AL, entry xiv), but that celebration does not appear to have utilised the canon appointed for the feasts of Stephen.Footnote 24 Why then was the canon for Stephen imported into the Epiphany octave, producing what Hesychius calls a ‘feast’ for Stephen? Renoux's explanation also fails to explain the association of the station with the second day of the Epiphany octave in particular, rather than any other date in the octave.

An inversion of Renoux's scheme appears in Walter Ray's landmark though unpublished study of the Jerusalem calendar.Footnote 25 Unlike Renoux, Ray rejects the possibility that the Church of Jerusalem could have itself developed two redundant commemorations for Stephen, particularly in such close proximity to one another. Instead, he asserts that only the reformed Epiphany ii station was native to Jerusalem, and that it alone represented a true commemoration of Stephen. In turn, he suggests that the 26/27 December feast must have represented a commemoration of a different kind: a memorial of the discovery and translation of Stephen's relics.Footnote 26

We saw… that this commemoration of Stephen [on the day after the Epiphany] is fairly recent; it does not appear in Lewis' Climacus iii and Egeria does not know it. It is difficult to believe that, had there been a commemoration of Stephen already at the end of December, the Jerusalem Church would have instituted another so close to it. The reverse, however, is entirely possible, since the December feast in Jerusalem was attached to the memory of the transfer of Stephen's relics into the church on Mt Zion on December 26, 415. It seems reasonable to suppose that the December feast of Stephen in Jerusalem was inaugurated on that date.Footnote 27

On the one hand, Ray is correct to reconstruct a non-hagiopolite origin for the 26/27 December feast of Stephen, given its attestation in other regions at least a half century earlier.Footnote 28 Nevertheless, the 26/27 December feast does not, for this reason, have a ‘different origin’ relative to the reformed Epiphany ii station. In fact, even in its 7 January position, the feast bears striking similarities to the 26 December feast for Stephen celebrated in late fourth-century Cappadocia. That feast in fact emerged from a desire to commemorate Stephen (1) at the head of the annual cycle of martyr commemorations, specifically; (2) on the first date immediately following the beginning of the liturgical year, a boundary point that coincided with the Christmas memorial of the birth of Jesus.Footnote 29 However, whereas Christmas inaugurated the liturgical year in Cappadocia, the Jerusalem nativity feast, i.e., the Epiphany, inaugurated the hagiopolite liturgical year. Thus, the vigil liturgy of Epiphany (AL, entry i), celebrated in the vicinity of Bethlehem, marks the first entry in the Armenian lectionary. These parallels can hardly be coincidental. The practice of commemorating Stephen at the head of the annual order was, in fact, a signature practice of the cult of Stephen in this period, and defended in contemporary homilies.Footnote 30 Viewed in this context, the reformed Epiphany ii station almost certainly emerged in imitation of the practice of other communities, and thus, in a contact situation.Footnote 31 Surprisingly, then, it would seem that the 26 December feast of Stephen known in other regions was integrated by the Church of Jerusalem on two separate occasions, in two distinct positions.

Ray's relative ordering of the two feasts is also problematic. Although he finds it ‘difficult to believe that, had there been a commemoration of Stephen already at the end of December the Jerusalem Church would have instituted another so close to it’, the opposite is no less true. If the Church of Jerusalem had long since developed a feast for Stephen within the Epiphany octave, why did it not utilise that immanent occasion for the translation of Stephen's relics? This alternative would have required a delay of no more than eleven days – a tolerable, if not trivial, length of time. In turn, the dramatic unveiling of Stephen's relics would have occurred during the Epiphany octave, one of the principal celebrations of the year, when spectacular crowds would have been expected in Jerusalem. Why forego this broad exposure for Stephen's relics – a source of immense pride to the city, and a powerful magnet for future pilgrimage – to import a second, non-native and redundant feast in such close proximity to the first celebration? And, for that matter, how could the Church have executed this elaborate solution in so short a space of time? (If the timetable indicated in the Epistle of Lucian is accurate, the discovery of the relics of Stephen occurred only five days before 26 December.)

More likely, as Renoux assumes, the feast of 26/27 December was already observed in Jerusalem in 415, and the sudden invention of the relics of Stephen in late December was timed to coincide with this existing festival. It is certainly striking that the Epistle of Lucian, the traditional account of the transfer, lends no support to Ray's reconstruction. That source only records that ‘the remains of the martyr were translated on the seventh of the Kalends of January’ (‘translatae sunt autem reliquiae ipsius Martyris septimo kalendas ianuarias’), with no further indication that the event coincided with the introduction of a new, annual feast in Jerusalem.Footnote 32 Furthermore, it is obvious that the late December cluster of feasts reflected in the 26/27, 28 and 29 December entries in the Armenian lectionary spread throughout the Mediterranean with remarkable speed, penetrating Cappadocia no later than 380, Pontus no later than 390 and Syria no later than 411. (In all likelihood, its introduction into each of these regions preceded these first attestations by several years.) There is no reason to doubt that this cluster could have been introduced into a pilgrimage centre like Jerusalem in the decades preceding 415, a target window at least a half century in length.Footnote 33

Notably, the 26/27 December feast of Stephen exhibits several primitive characteristics not exhibited by the reformed Epiphany ii station – characteristics that suggest that it is older. First, only the 26/27 December feast is juxtaposed with feasts for John and James (29 December) and Peter and Paul (28 December); the Epiphany ii memorialisation of Stephen stands in isolation. Of these two arrangements, the former is decidedly more likely to have been primitive. Again, both feasts can be traced to the late December cluster of feasts which are attested in Nicomedia and Nyssa. That cluster spread across the Churches of the Mediterranean as it filled perceived lacunae in the their cycle of annual commemorations.Footnote 34 However, those communities that already commemorated saints within the cluster do not seem to have adopted all the feasts of this cluster. The Calendar of Carthage, for instance, attests only the 26 December feast of Stephen, and (in a modified form) the 27 December feast of James and John. The Carthaginian Church evidently did not adopt the 28 December feast of Peter and Paul since it had long before adopted a feast for these Apostles of Western origin, on 29 June. In this case, the reformed Epiphany ii station for Stephen could scarcely have preceded its 26/27 December counterpart. Prior to its contact with the late December cluster of feasts for Stephen, James, John, Peter, and Paul, the Church of Jerusalem would have lacked a discrete memorial not only of Stephen, but also for the other Apostles. This is obvious from the absence of vestigial memorials for these figures elsewhere on the calendar, save for a single feast to all the apostolic saints on 23 August,Footnote 35 and also from the eventual incorporation of the 28 and 29 December feasts for these figures, undoubtedly to fill this lacuna. In this case, once it had come into contact with the post-Nativity cluster then, the Jerusalem calendar would almost certainly have sought to assimilate all three feasts at once. And, in fact, it appears that it did so, precisely by integrating the late December feasts without change into its own calendar. (Of course, by the period represented in the Armenian lectionary these feasts were displaced to 27, 28 and 29 December.Footnote 36 ) The feast of Stephen embedded in this group, then, must be the more primitive celebration of the protomartyr at Jerusalem.

A closer inspection of the canons prescribed for the 26/27 December and Epiphany ii celebrations in the Armenian lectionary lends support to this conclusion. These canons are identical, save for an additional New Testament lesson prescribed for the latter (Titus ii.11–15). Since the Armenian lectionary ordinarily appoints only a single New Testament reading for each celebration,Footnote 37 this extra reading represents a secondary expansion of a simpler, and by extension, more primitive canon for Stephen, parallel in structure to those appointed for the closely-related December feasts of Peter and Paul and James and John. That primitive canon is retained in only one entry of the lectionary: the ‘commemoration of Stephen’ on 26/27 December.

Fortunately, the origin of the additional lesson for the reformed Epiphany ii station is not hard to discover: Titus ii.11–15 is the Epistle appointed for both the vigil and dawn liturgies on Epiphany itself, the preceding entries in the lectionary (nos i, ii). More important, Titus ii.11–15 is also the Epistle indicated for the second day of the Epiphany octave in the period represented by Climacus III :

Evidently, this older lesson was retained through the transformation of the station to preserve a link between the station and the broader Epiphany octave. The lesson not only explores the central themes of the Epiphany as a ‘salvation-redemption feast’,Footnote 38 it also contains two instances of word play on the term ‘Epiphany’:

For the grace of God has appeared [Ἐπεϕάνη] for the salvation of all persons, training us to renounce irreligion and worldly passions, and to live sober, upright, and godly lives in this world, awaiting our blessed hope, the appearing [ἐπιϕάνειαν] of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all iniquity and to purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds. Declare these things; exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no one disregard you. [Titus ii.11–15]

Analysed in this manner, the canon for the reformed Epiphany ii station is a derivative product, fusing the Epistle from the older station at ‘the greater church, which is in Golgotha’ with the canon originally developed for the 26/27 December feast.Footnote 39

The date of the changes to the Epiphany II station

At this juncture, it is appropriate to review what can be said, with at least relative certainty, about the origins of the 26/27 December feast for Stephen at Jerusalem, and about the origins of the reformed Epiphany ii station:

  1. 1. In the fourth through fifth centuries, the Church of Jerusalem was in extended contact with communities that, like the Churches of Nicomedia and Cappadocia, commemorated Stephen within a cluster of feasts falling between 26 and 28 December.

  2. 2. These commemorations were directly integrated into the Jerusalem calendar on 26–28 December as the first discrete memorials for these saints in Jerusalem.

  3. 3. This borrowing occurred before 415, since the 26 December feast was already known and celebrated in Jerusalem at that date, as indicated in the Epistle of Lucian.

  4. 4. The 26 December feast served as the occasion for the transfer of Stephen's relics in 415.

  5. 5. The typical canon for Stephen was developed for the 26 December feast.

  6. 6. The 26 December feast for Stephen at Jerusalem was dislocated to 27 December in the years following 415, since the Epistle of Lucian knows nothing of that date.

  7. 7. The 26 December feast of Stephen was borrowed a second time into the Jerusalem calendar, not on 26 December, but on the second day of the octave of the Epiphany.

  8. 8. This date was selected in mutatis mutandis imitation of the practice of other Churches, which assigned to Stephen the first free date after the beginning of the liturgical year in Jerusalem.

  9. 9. The typical canon for Stephen first developed for the 26/27 December feast was also modified for use on the second day of the octave of the Epiphany to maintain a link between that festivity and the larger celebration.

  10. 10. This reformed Epiphany ii station was unknown to Egeria or Climacus III , indicating an absolute terminus post quem of about 384.

I believe that it is possible further to narrow the terminus post quem. As argued by Renoux, it seems more likely that the dedication of the new Martyrium of St Stephen preceded, and inspired, the changes to the Epiphany ii station, than the reverse.Footnote 40 Notably, one other station of the Epiphany octave breaks from the themes of the octave: Epiphany vi (11 Jan.), which by the period reflected in the Armenian lectionary, was celebrated in the Lazarium.Footnote 41 (At the time of Egeria, the Lazarium was the station of the fifth day of the octave, while Sion served as the station for the sixth day.) That celebration uses, in a slightly modified form,Footnote 42 the canon prescribed for Lazarus Saturday, which was celebrated at the same location:

It is inconceivable that this canon could have been performed on Epiphany vi prior to the change that moved the celebration from Sion to the Lazarium. In this instance, as in others, it would appear that stational choice dictated the lessons for the day. (Compare Egeria: ‘all the hymns and antiphons and readings … are always relevant to the day which is being observed and to the place in which they are used’.Footnote 43 ) In like manner, then, it would seem that the canon for the reformed Epiphany ii station presupposes the celebration's setting at the Martyrium of St Stephen. Hesychius suggests as much when he links the prescribed words in the canon for Stephen with a setting at that site: ‘we often put crowns on his nuptial canopy, frequently we go up leaping for joy to his wine-press, and we sing a marriage hymn as we say the words of the harvest song: “Lord, you have crowned us with the shield of your favor”’ [Psalm v.13].Footnote 44 In that case, then, the changes to the Epiphany ii station can be dated to the period immediately following the discovery of Stephen's relics, and the dedication of the martyrium.

The contexts of the changes to the Epiphany II station

However, the development of the reformed Epiphany ii station cannot simply be credited to the intense interest in Stephen's cult following the discovery of his relics. It must be remembered that that discovery was artificial, manufactured by the leadership of the Jerusalem Church. Instead, the root causes of all the developments around 415 should be investigated, beginning with the invention of Stephen's relics, but now extending to the development of the reformed Epiphany ii station. Those events are best understood as consequences of Stephen's universal popularity in the period:

It is common wisdom that Stephen's cult catapulted into prominence with the purported discovery of his relics in 415 ce. However, our findings suggest that this cult was no less energized in a number of fourth century communities. It is perhaps in this climate that the later discovery of his relics is best understood. As communities accorded Stephen the highest position in their sanctoral cycles as the ‘martyr of martyrs’ and ‘chief of the confessors’, the absence of his relics became unbearable. The responsibility to produce them weighed heavily on the church of Jerusalem. In this light, we should understand the discovery of Stephen's bones, and their enshrinement at a dedicated Martyrium, less as the cause of the Protomartyr's widespread fame than as its consequence.Footnote 45

Still, the unique and local significance of Stephen to the Church of Jerusalem cannot be overlooked. Although the Church had a unique claim to sites associated with Jesus, it had little to offer the burgeoning public devotion to the cult of the martyrs, already a driving force of Christian pilgrimage. As the site of only a small and obscure Christian population between 135 and 313, ‘die jerusalemer Kirche … über kaum eigene Blutzeugen und kein einziges entsprechendes Monument (Martyrium) verfertigt’,Footnote 46 no doubt to the embarrassment of the city. Thus, in a century in which ‘the celebration of the martyrs’ ‘girded the entire Christian calendar’,Footnote 47 the city was incapable of rivalling the extensive catalogues of local martyr ‘nativities’ typical of other, larger urban Christian centres like Rome and Nicomedia.Footnote 48 There was, then, every incentive and motive for the Church of Jerusalem to stretch the fame of its few (and generally ancient) local martyrs as far as possible. It was particularly crucial that the Church of Jerusalem capitalise on Stephen's fame, since Stephen was ‘the firstborn of the martyrs’.Footnote 49 What the Church of Jerusalem lacked in terms of quantity, it believed it could make up, through Stephen, in quality.

In 415 Jerusalem laid claim to Stephen's cult in the most dramatic way possible: producing his relics. From then on, the Church was in a position to assume leadership of that cult as its unrivalled centre. As it consolidated these claims, however, the Church of Jerusalem understood that its devotion to Stephen must not be surpassed by that of other regions. Attention quickly fell on the signature practice of Stephen's liturgical cult: the practice of placing Stephen at the head of the calendar. Although Jerusalem had long before adopted 26 December as the feast of Stephen that inaugurated the year in other regions, that feast stood at an unmarked position in the peculiar arrangement of the Jerusalem calendar, beside no synchronic liturgical axis. This arrangement now proved intolerable.

Transferring the late December feast to a position near the head of its own liturgical calendar was not a satisfactory solution, since pilgrims from around the Mediterranean were familiar with a 26/27 December feast for Stephen.Footnote 50 Furthermore, the 26 December date was still historically significant as the occasion of the translation of the relics of Stephen in late December 415. Only the creation of a second feast was appropriate. Of course, both of these restrictions suggest that the second commemoration for Stephen was instituted before the commemoration of Stephen on 26 December was displaced to the 27th. This is consistent with the conclusion that the changes to the Epiphany ii station occurred soon after the invention of Stephen's relics, perhaps in 416–17. To avoid a strict redundancy between the old and new feasts, the Church of Jerusalem continued to recognise only the late December date as the ‘commemoration of Saint Stephen’ proper (so entry lxxii in E), identifying the reformed Epiphany ii celebration as a distinct type of festival: a special station in honour of a saint, integrated within a festal octave.Footnote 51 In this, we can appreciate the forces that not only triggered the creation of new feasts, but those that triggered the elaboration of new categories of feasts through the fifth century.

Popularly, the two feasts were probably distinguished in another respect. By the turn of the fifth century, the 26/27 December feast of Stephen had become so widely disseminated that the Christians of Jerusalem would have perceived it as the universal commemoration of Stephen. Thus, Hesychius opens his 26/27 December homilyFootnote 52 with the words: ‘in Stephen's honour let all the earth celebrate his feast’. On the other hand, the 7 January date could only have been perceived as a special, local celebration of Stephen. Certainly, that feast had a distinctly local colour: it originated in Jerusalem, it was celebrated in no other city in its earliest years,Footnote 53 and its significance could only be appreciated within the peculiar design of the Jerusalem calendar. Furthermore, Hesychius suggests the local colour of the feast when he insists that the residents of Jerusalem ‘owe [Stephen] more numerous feasts’ than their contemporaries, partly with reference to the Epiphany ii station. In his view, the development of additional, unique celebrations of Stephen, observed nowhere else, reinforce the city's exclusive link to its native son. This phenomenon is remarkable: no previous study has indicated a distinction between universal and local feasts for the same martyr in another late antique Christian calendar. Of course, the phenomenon of the ‘universal feast’ was a relatively new one at the time, emerging as the dates of local martyr ‘nativities’ were freely exchanged between Christian communities. In the hagiopolite evidence a previously undocumented tension between ‘locality’ and ‘universality’ in martyr cults of the period can therefore be located.

Whatever the feast's significance to the residents of Jerusalem, however, the stational liturgy of Jerusalem was designed primarily with the pilgrim in mind. The presence of multiple commemorations for Stephen in Jerusalem guaranteed that the hundreds, even thousands of pilgrims who flooded the city for the weeklong festivities would have several opportunities to attend a special liturgy in honour of the Protomartyr, in the presence of his relics.Footnote 54 Most important, at all of these liturgies, the leaders of the Church of Jerusalem could repeatedly seize upon the fame of Stephen to impress upon their hearers the unique privileges and prestige of the Jerusalem Church. The opening words of Hesychius' encomium for Stephen aptly illustrate this rhetorical programme:

The ‘crown’ of graces, beaming rays out of Jerusalem, filled entire cities and regions, nations and peoples, tribes and languages with a knowledge of God that is inextinguishable.

He is a citizen of the cross, a relative of Bethlehem, a descendant of the Resurrection, a table attendant of Sion, a herald of the Ascension. It is in our midst that he fixed his abode and his tents; it is in our midst that he obtained the election to his ministry and the part of his martyrdom. In this spot he had his sacrificial altar and the bema of his blessing, the field of his teaching, the theatre of his eloquence. From this spot he was taken up into heaven and left us to go to Christ.Footnote 55

In her comments on this homily, Pauline Allen incorrectly deduces that its audience was primarily made up of ‘residents of Jerusalem, because the homilist takes great pains to glorify the city, while at the same time exaggerating the feats of its first martyr’.Footnote 56 In fact, the pilgrims attending the same liturgy came precisely because they shared Hesychius' fixation with the city, the spot from which Stephen ‘was taken up into heaven’, and penchant for ‘exaggerating the feats of’ Jerusalem's ‘first martyr’. Jerusalem capitalised on this fact in its own rise to patriarchal status. As popular demand for Stephen grew, Jerusalem's supply of festivities in his honour also grew.

References

1 A full discussion appears in Irshai, Oded, ‘From oblivion to fame: the history of the Palestinian Church (135–303 ce)’, in Limor, Ora and Stroumsa, Guy G. (eds), Christians and Christianity in the Holy Land: from the origins to the Latin kingdoms, Turnhout 2006, 91–140 Google Scholar.

2 Baldovin, John, The urban character of Christian worship: the origins, development, and meaning of stational liturgy, Rome 1987, 46.Google Scholar

3 Itinerarium Egeriae, trans. and notes in Wilkinson, John, Egeria's travels, Oxford 1999 Google Scholar.

4 Agnes Smith Lewis, Codex Climaci rescriptus, Cambridge 1909 Google Scholar.

5 Renoux, Athanase, Le Codex arménien Jérusalem 121, PO xxxv/1,2 Turnhout 1971 Google Scholar.

6 Aubineau, Michel, Les Homélies festales d'Hésychius de Jérusalem, Brussels 1978–80Google Scholar.

7 This will be referred to as Epiphany ii.

8 Itinerarium Egeriae xxv.10–11. Golgotha was also the site of the liturgy for the third day of the octave. ‘This Holy Sepulchre-Golgotha area consisted of several shrines and a basilica within a walled precinct’; the Constantinian ‘basilica, called the Martyrium’, stood ‘over the place where Christ's cross was discovered’: Baldovin, John, The liturgy in ancient Jerusalem, Nottingham 1989, 7 Google Scholar. Thus, for Egeria, ‘the Great Church on Golgotha’ (Iterarium Egeriae xxv.10) is ‘the Great Church, the Martyrium’ (cf. xxxii.1). In the Armenian lectionary, this station is referred to as the ‘Holy Martyrium in the City’: Renoux, Le Codex arménien, ii. 193–4. However, as Wilkinson notes, ‘the site as a whole’ was also ‘described by the name Golgotha, and Egeria invariably used the name in this sense, as Cyril had before her’: Egeria's travels, 42. The Anastasis rotunda, another part of the Holy Sepulchre-Golgotha complex, was recognised as the site of Christ's tomb: Baldovin, Urban character, 47–8.

9 Renoux, Le Codex arménien, ii. 217.

10 In the Greek, the Psalm antiphon appointed for the reformed Epiphany ii station contains an obvious word play on the name of Stephen (Gr. Στέϕανος, or ‘crown’): ‘For you bless the righteous one, O Lord; / as a shield of good will, you crowned us [ἐστεϕάνωσας]’: Psalm v.13b LXX. The association of the Alleluia Psalm with this feast is also rooted in a similar word play: ‘For you came near to him with blessings of kindness; you set upon his head a crown [στέϕανον] of costly stone: Psalm xx. 3 LXX. The first Epistle, from Acts vi.7–viii.2, provides the New Testament's only account of Stephen's martyrdom in full. Finally, the brief Gospel reading suits the new martyrological spirit of the celebration: ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life will lose it, but he who hates his life in this world will preserve it to life eternal’: John xii. 24–6.

11 Renoux identifies this ‘martyrium’ with the diakonikon of the basilica of Holy Sion, and not the later basilica for Stephen built under Eudocia: Le Codex arménien, i. 36–40; ii. 198–202. This conclusion has recently been challenged by Vered Shalev-Hurvitz, who identifies the martyrium with the chapel of the women's monastery, founded by Melania the Younger: Holy sites encircled: the early Byzantine concentric churches of Jerusalem, Oxford 2015, 18–19 Google Scholar.

12 Whereas the J reads, ‘27 Dec., of Saint Stephen’, E has: ‘26 Dec., commemoration of holy Stephen’. E's date is almost certainly incorrect for the period represented by the Armenian lectionary. However, since the 27 December feast stood at 26 December as late as 415 (see discussion below), this feast will hereinafter be consistently referred to as the ‘26/27 December’ commemoration of Stephen.

13 Given the Armenian lectionary’s dependence on a Greek Vorlage, I have chosen to translate the excerpts indicated in Renoux directly from the LXX and Byzantine MT, rather than from the Armenian.

14 Egeria's diary is not preserved in its entirety, and in any case may never have included a discussion of the late December martyr feasts.

15 Among West Syriac Christians, only the Maronites do not retain this feast, fixing the feast of St Stephen instead on the hagiopolite date of 27 December. It is also peculiar that 7 January retains its primitive character as a concomitant feast of the Epiphany (‘Praises of John the Baptiser’), distinct from the 29 August ‘Beheading of John the Baptiser’.

16 This memorial corresponds to the Synaxis of John the Baptist in the Byzantine rite, which preserves its primitive form as a ‘concomitant feast’ of the Epiphany: Baumstark, Anton, Comparative liturgy, trans. Cross, F. L., Westminster, Md 1958, 182 Google Scholar. For instance, the stichera appointed for the feast are exclusively interested in John's role at the Baptism: ‘Beholding you, O Christ, coming to him and requesting baptism, the Forerunner cried out trembling … “you should baptise your servant!”’ (7 January Stichera on ‘Lord I have cried’, for the Forerunner [Tone 1], n. 3; cf. the Gospel at the Divine Liturgy: John i. 29–34). In the West Syriac tradition, however, this feast has been specialised into a commemoration of John's martyrdom.

17 Hesychius of Jerusalem, ‘A homily in praise of Stephen the First Martyr’, 2–3, in ‘Let us die that we may live’: Greek homilies on Christian martyrs from Asia Minor, Palestine and Syria, c. 350–c. 450 AD, ed. Allen, Pauline, Boudewijn Dehandschutter, Johan Leemans and Wendy Mayer, New York 2003, 196 Google Scholar.

18 Evidently, those ‘numerous feasts’ also included the Bright Tuesday station at the same martyrium (AL, entry xxxxvii). The Armenian lectionary appoints the signature antiphonal Psalm cited by Hesychius on that occasion too, as well as the same Alleluia Psalm, but not the same lessons. Although the origins of that celebration are also worthy of attention, constraints of space will limit this survey to a study of the 26/27 December and 7 January feasts. These dates are especially peculiar given their nearly identical canons and close proximity to one another.

19 Conybeare, Fredrick Cornwallis and Maclean, A. J., Rituale armenorum, Oxford 1905, 512 Google Scholar.

20 Here, one must especially credit Renoux's analysis: Le Codex arménien, i. 184; ii. 157–9.

21 On this attempt see discussion and sources cited in Roll, Susan K., Towards the origins of Christmas, Kampen 1995, 199–200 Google Scholar. Note the nativity themes in the lessons for entries i and ii (Epiphany ia, b). Also, consider the 25 December entry in E: ‘during this day, in other cities, they celebrate the nativity of Christ’ (entry lxxi).

22 Renoux, Le Codex arménien, i. 176–7 n. 44; cf. Verhelst, Stéphane, Le Lectionnaire de Jérusalem ses traditions judéo-chrétiennes et son histoire, Fribourg 2012, 75 Google Scholar.

23 Compare ‘the enshrining of the bones of the city's most famous martyr was evidently important enough to induce a change in the stational pattern’ of the Epiphany: Baldovin, Urban character, 94.

24 The entry itself states that ‘they gather at the Holy Martyrium of Saint Stephen, and the same canon is performed, and the acts of their martyrdom’, without specifying which canon is in view. Verhelst is convinced that this ‘same canon’ is the typical canon for Stephen: Le Lectionnaire, 75. Renoux is inclined either to agree or to identify this canon with the one appointed ‘for all the commemorations of the holy martyrs’, introduced in the 11 January entry (entry x). In my view, the latter is far more likely, especially given the witness of other manuscripts: ‘and the same canon as for the other saints is executed’ (P), ‘the same canon as for the other martyrs is executed’ (E).

25 Walter Ray's proposal is somewhat ambiguous on this point. As his discussion begins, he argues that ‘a failed introduction of Christmas in the early fifth century might explain another curiosity related to the feast of Stephen in the Armenian lectionary, the fact that there is an almost identical feast of Stephen on the day after Epiphany, only eleven days after the feast of Dec. 27’: ‘August 15 and the development of the Jerusalem calendar’, unpubl. PhD diss. Notre Dame 2000, 284–5. However, by the end of his discussion he has established a chronology whereby the feast of Stephen is already in place in Jerusalem prior to the introduction of the 29 December feast of James and John in Jerusalem, which he suggests (p. 286) ‘might have come in with the failed Christmas feast’.

26 Compare the 27 January ‘Translation of the relics of St John Chrysostom’ in the Byzantine rite, which is distinct from his other feasts.

27 Ray, ‘Jerusalem calendar’, 284.

28 See discussion in Mendez, Hugo, ‘The origin of the post-Nativity commemorations’, Vigiliae Christianae lxviii (2014), 307 Google Scholar.

29 See ibid. 290–309.

30 See, for instance, Asterius of Amasaea, ‘A homily on Stephen the first martyr’, 2–3, PG xl. 337ff.

31 The earlier and widespread attestation of the 26 December feast excludes the inverse possibility, that is, that it was modelled after the Epiphany ii station at Jerusalem. In his discussion of the Epiphany ii celebration, Verhelst similarly concludes that its position was determined by an analogy to the 26 December feast celebrated in other regions: ‘Il est possible que Jean ii, éditeur de LA, connaissait la tradition de la nativité de Jésus le 25 décembre, mais il rejetait cette tradition … Il aurait donc déplacé la fête (et la station) du lendemain du 25 décembre au lendemain du 6 janvier, qui était pour lui la date de la nativité de Jésus’: Le Lectionnaire, 75, cf. 85. Nevertheless, Verhelst fails to recognise the additional significance of 25 December as the first day of the liturgical year, a point which is crucial to this analysis.

32 Lucian, Epistola ad omnem ecclesiam 9, PG xli. 815.

33 E. D. Hunt cites the 26 December entry in the Syriac Martyrology, ‘the first confessor, at Jerusalem, Stephen the Apostle, the chief of the confessors’, as evidence that the feast was observed in Jerusalem in 411: Holy Land pilgrimage in the later Roman Empire, Oxford 1982, 218 n. 84Google Scholar. Certainly, place names in the Syriac Martyrology can be used to isolate the sources of various feasts. However, the roughly contemporary Gothic calendar fragment evidently cites place names only to indicate where particular martyrs met their deaths, for example, 23 October: ‘the many martyrs in the land of the Goths’; 29 November: ‘the old women at Beroea, forty in total’. (For introduction and translation see The Goths in the fourth century, ed. Heather, Peter J. and Matthews, John, Cambridge 1991, 120–2.)Google Scholar

34 Mendez, ‘Post-Nativity commemorations’, 290–309.

35 This feast appears in AL, entry lxv: ‘23 Aug., Of the Apostle Thomas and of other saints, at Bethpage’.

36 Ray works out a plausible scenario for their displacement: ‘Jerusalem calendar’, 282–4.

37 This general rule admits two predictable exceptions. First, on commemorations of Old Testament saints, an appropriate reading (or set of readings) was typically obtained from the Old Testament. In that case, another reading from a New Testament Epistle or Acts was necessarily included before the Gospel (AL, entries liii, lix, lx, lxi, lxii, lxxi). On ‘all the commemorations of the holy martyrs', the Armenian lectionary appoints an additional reading ‘from the acts of their martyrdom’ (entry x; cf. xiv). An additional extra-scriptural lection was also read on ‘the day of the appearance of the Holy Cross in the sky’ (namely, ‘the letter of Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem, to the Emperor Constantius’; entry liv).

38 Mauck, Marchita, ‘The Christmas octave feasts of St Stephen, St John, and the Holy Innocents’, in Hughes, Kathleen (ed.), Finding voice to give God praise: essays in the many languages of the liturgy, Collegeville, Mn 1998, 28–32 Google Scholar.

39 It may also be noteworthy that the Gospel appointed for use on Stephen's feasts is taken from John. Ten of the last twelve Gospels assigned in the lectionary, and none native to other stretches of the calendar's ordinary time, including the Epiphany octave, are taken from the same Gospel, viz.: 23 Aug., Thomas (John xx. 24–31); 13, 14 Sept. (John x. 22–42); 15 Nov., Phillip (John i. 43–51); 30 Nov., Andrew (John i. 35–44); 26/27 Dec. (John xii. 24–36), 28 Dec., Paul and Peter (John xxi.15–19); 29 Dec., James and John (John xxi. 20–5). Readings from John are also concentrated in the Paschal cycle: entries xxxiii, xxxxix, xlii, xliv, xlv, l, li, lii, lviii. The Epiphany vi station (entry vii) also appoints a reading from the Gospel of John. That canon, however, is derived from the first of the Paschal Gospels from John (entry xxxiii). This striking concentration of readings from John may represent the vestiges of an older plan for the distribution of the Gospels throughout the year. (Notably, the Gospels prescribed for the last two feasts of the calendar, the 28 December feast of Paul and Peter and the 29 December feast of James and John, are continuous, bringing the Gospel of John directly to its conclusion. Of course, these dates were almost certainly borrowed in conjunction with the 26/27 December feast of Stephen.) In view of these facts, there is added reason to believe that the core canon of Stephen was originally developed to occupy a position near the end of the hagiopolite liturgical year, specifically, 26/27 December. For another discussion of the distribution of Gospels in the Jerusalem calendar see Verhelst, Le Lectionnaire, 102–6.

40 Otherwise, the question arises: where would the reformed Epiphany ii station have been celebrated prior to the discovery of Stephen's relics?

41 Baldovin, Ancient Jerusalem, 37.

42 ‘A une exception près – la lecture évangélique – ce canon [AL, entry xxxiii] est le meme que celui du sixième jour dans l’Épiphanie’: Renoux, Le Codex arménien, 255 n. 4.

43 Itinerarium Egeriae xlvii. 5.

44 Hesychius, ‘In praise of Stephen’, 196.

45 Mendez, ‘Post-Nativity commemorations’, 308.

46 Buchinger, Harald, ‘Das Jerusalemer Sanctorale: zu Stand und Aufgaben der Forschung’, in Barnard, M., Post, P. and Rose, E. (eds.), A cloud of witnesses: the cult of saints in past and present, Leuven 2005, 106 Google Scholar. Of course, many of Jerusalem's most ancient inhabitants, including Peter and Paul, met their deaths in other cities.

47 Limberis, Vasiliki M., Architects of piety: the Cappadocian Fathers and the cult of the martyrs, New York 2011, 14 Google Scholar. As Richard Nardone notes, in this period ‘sainthood was still associated with martyrdom’: ‘The Church of Jerusalem and the Christian calendar’, in Finkel, Asher and Frizzell, Lawrence (eds), Standing before God: studies on prayer in Scriptures and in tradition with essays in honor of John M. Oesterreicher, New York 1981, 242 Google Scholar.

48 Besides Stephen, James, the brother of John, and James, the brother of the Lord, one could add the deacon Valens and the companions of Pamphilus: Buchinger, ‘Jerusalemer Sanctorale’, 106 n. 47.

49 Hesychius, ‘In praise of Stephen’, 4.

50 As noted above, that feast occurred on 26 December in most regions. In early fifth-century Constantinople, however, it had probably already shifted to 27 December to make room for the 26 December ‘Synaxis of the Theotokos’ that precedes it to this day in the Byzantine rite: Ray, ‘Jerusalem calendar’, 283.

51 This is not to say that the late December feast was the most prominent celebration of Stephen in the Jerusalem year. In fact, the opposite can be argued. The fact that the feast shifted from 26 to 27 Deember despite the significance of the former date as the anniversary of the translation of Stephen's relics suggests that, of these two feasts, the reformed Epiphany ii station was the more stable, and perhaps prominent, celebration of Stephen until at least the mid-fifth century. Certainly, its position at the head of the Jerusalem calendar and within the Epiphany octave gave it greater prestige. A second apparent example of this type obtains on Epiphany iv, which Hesychius characterises as a ‘feast’ of Mary in Homilia iv: Aubineau, Les Homélies festales, i. 184–9; cf. Renoux, Le Codex arménien, ii. 219 n. 5.

52 Hesychius' call ‘let all the earth celebrate his feast’ suits the late December feast for Stephen alone.

53 Again, communities of the West Syriac rite would later adopt the same feast.

54 The nativity themes of the octave also made an association between Christ's ‘nativity’ and Stephen's ‘nativity’ possible, as in, for instance, an encomium for the saint by Fulgentius of Ruspe: Sermo iii.1, PL lxv.729.

55 Hesychius, ‘In praise of Stephen’, 1–2.

56 Allen, ‘Let us die’, 195.