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Memorializing a Lethal Saint: The Sanctification of Violence in the Life of Barsauma
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2025
Abstract
Samuel’s Life of Barsauma, a little-studied, late fifth-century Syriac text, commemorates the ascetic career of a nasty saint. One of the most noticeable features of this monastic hagiography is the high degree and diversity of violence: Barsauma is frequently portrayed as the victim of violence by his adversaries and the perpetrator of violence against his adversaries. Yet, the Life of Barsauma stands out from other late ancient monastic hagiographies because of its enthusiastic depiction of the saint’s lethality. According to Samuel, Barsauma uses his curse to kill an array of individuals, and the mere presence of him and his disciples leads to the mass deaths of Jews gathered in Jerusalem. For most late ancient hagiographers, a saint’s performance of violence was something to be downplayed or specifically rationalized, and rarely if ever would a saint’s performance of holy violence lead to the death of one person, let alone many people. The Life of Barsauma’s deviation from contemporary hagiographical convention compels this article’s investigation into the meaning that Samuel hoped to communicate through his thorough depiction of a lethally violent saint. I argue that Samuel’s Life constitutes the literary amplification of a memory about the historical Barsauma, and an exhortation for the monks of Barsauma’s monastery to imitate him with similarly violent actions. In the end, Samuel’s defies the conventions of monastic hagiography in order to authorize readers to perform their own acts of violence as they construct and police the monastic community’s sectarian boundaries.
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- © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of American Society of Church History
References
1 For example, David Hume, The Natural History of Religions 9.3 (ed. Tom L. Beauchamp, David Hume: A Dissertation on the Passions; The Natural History of Religion. A Critical Edition, The Clarendon Edition of the Works of David Hume [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007], 61) and Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Volume 1, Penguin Classics (London and New York: Penguin Books, 1995), 447 (volume 1, chapter xv). Similar arguments have been made about monotheism: see Regina Schwartz, The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism (Chicago, I.L.: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 25–38; Barrington Moore, Jr., Moral Purity and Persecution in History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), 3–26, 100–104; Thomas Sizgorich, “Sanctified Violence: Monotheist Militancy as the Tie That Bound Christian Rome and Islam,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 77 (2009): 895–921; Jan Assman, The Price of Monotheism, trans. Robert Savage (Stanford, C.A.: Stanford University Press, 2010), 13–14; Polymnia Athanassiadi, Vers la pensée unique: La montée de l’intolerance dans l’Antiquité tardive (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2010), 39–41. Religion too: see Hector Avalos, Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2005), 93–112, with the same argument continued in The Reality of Religious Violence: From Biblical to Modern Times, Bible in the Modern World 72 (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2019). New Atheist thinkers have propagated similar claims in public-facing venues; see, for example, Sam Harris, End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2005), 25–45; and Richard Dawkins, “Religion’s Misguided Missiles,” The Guardian, 15 September 2001 (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/sep/15/september11.politicsphilosophyandsociety1; accessed 28 October 2024).
2 For a recent articulation of this view, see Charles Kimball, “Religion and Violence from Christian Theological Perspectives,” in The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence, ed. Mark Juergensmeyer, Margo Kitts, and Michael Jerryson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 424–434. In three articles on Christian intolerance in late antiquity (“Lambs into Lions: Explaining Early Christian Intolerance,” Past & Present 153:1 [November 1996]: 3–36; “Intolerance, Religious Violence, and Political Legitimacy in Late Antiquity,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 79:1 [March 2011]: 193–235; and “Monotheism and Violence,” Journal of Late Antiquity 6:2 [Fall 2013]: 251–263), H. A. Drake wonders how “how it can be that a religion whose foundation texts include the injunction to love one’s enemies and ‘turn the other cheek,’ whose central figure relied on the pastoral imagery of the shepherd and his flock, and who himself became characterized as a sacrificial lamb—how can it be that such a religion was also inherently disposed to accept coercion as a means to implement its goals? How did lambs become lions?” (“Lambs into Lions,” 6, with the same query reworded at “Monotheism and Violence,” 252). While Drake deconstructs and dismisses some answers to that question, he does not challenge the constructed paradox – that peaceable Christians practiced violence – at its center. For post-Constantinian violence as originating in the collective trauma of pre-Constantinian persecution and martyrdom, see, for example, Michael Gaddis, There Is No Crime for Those Who Have Christ: Religious Violence in the Christian Roman Empire, Transformation of the Classical Heritage 39 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 43–45; Thomas Sizgorich, Violence and Belief in Late Antiquity: Militant Devotion in Christianity and Islam, Divinations: Re-reading Late Ancient Religion (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 7–8.
3 See Robert Ford Campany, “On the Very Idea of Religions (in the Modern West and in Early Medieval China),” History of Religions 42:4 (May 2003): 287–319, with insights just as applicable to scholarship on “the Church” or “Christianity” as it does to scholarship on Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. See William T. Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 15–56, for a deconstruction of the reification of religious violence.
4 One example that provides a model for historians of other time periods and geographies is Matthew Bowman, Christian: The Politics of a Word in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018).
5 Natalie Zemon Davis, “The Rites of Violence: The Religious Riot in Sixteenth-Century France,” Past & Present 59:1 (May 1973): 51–91.
6 For the Hellenistic period, see Michael Champion and Lara O’Sullivan, “‘War Is the Father and King of All’: Discourses, Experiences, and Theories of Hellenistic Violence,” in Cultural Perceptions of Violence in the Hellenistic World, ed. Michael Champion and Lara O’Sullivan (Oxford: Routledge, 2017), 1–20. For late antiquity, see Ari Bryen, Violence in Roman Egypt: A Study in Legal Interpretation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 51–85; Brent D. Shaw, Sacred Violence: African Christians and Sectarian Hatred in the Age of Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), offers a particular rich and lengthy example of contextualizing acts of and debates over violence among Donatists and Catholics in fourth and fifth century North Africa. See Cam Grey’s response, “Shock, Horror, or Same Old Same Old? Everyday Violence in Augustine’s Africa,” Journal of Late Antiquity 6:2 (Fall 2013): 216–232. For the Middle Ages, see David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages, new paperback edition (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998).
7 SOP 361:89v: ܬܫܥܝܬܐ ܕܢܨܚܢܘܗܝ ܕܓܒܝܐ ܘܪܝܫܐ ܕܐܒܝܠܐ ܩܕܝܫܐ ܘܠܒܝܫ ܠܐܠܗܐ ܪܒܐ ܡܪܝ ܒܪܨܘܡܐ ܓܪܒܝܝ. Unless otherwise noted, as in this instance, I cite Andrew Palmer’s translation of the Life of Barsauma in The Life of the Syrian Saint Barsauma: Eulogy of a Hero of the Resistance to the Council of Chalcedon, Transformation of the Classical Heritage 61 (Oakland: University of California Press, 2020), with reference to the text’s only complete (but unedited) manuscript – Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate 361:89v–119v (= Damascus 12/17), abbreviated as SOP 361. I remain grateful to Archbishop Patriarchal Secretary Mor Joseph Bali for sending me high-resolution images to examine alongside Palmer’s translation.
8 On the date, see Andrew Palmer, “The West-Syrian Monastic Founder Barṣawmo: A Historial Review of the Scholarly Literature,” Orientalia Christiana, Festschrift für Hubert Kaufhold zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Peter Bruns und Heinz Oto Luthe (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2013), 399–413, at 408; Andrew Palmer, “A Tale of Two Synods: The Archimandrite Barsumas at Ephesus in 449 and Chalcedon in 451,” Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 66:1/2 (2014): 37–61, at 39; and Volker Menze, “Introduction,” in The Wandering Holy Man: The Life of Barsauma, Christian Asceticism, and Religious Conflict in Late Antique Palestine, ed. Johannes Hahn and Volker Menze, Transformation of the Classical Heritage 61 (Oakland: University of California Press, 2020), 8–10; also Johannes Hahn, “‘It Is Not Lawful for Samaritans to Have Dealings with Christians!’ Samaritans in the Life of Barsauma,” in Wandering Holy Man, ed. Hahn and Menze, 121–148, esp. 145–146. Their arguments have corrected Ernst Honigmann, Le couvent de Barṣaumā et le Patriarcat jacobite d’Antioche et de Syrie, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 146 (Louvain: L. Durbecq, 1954), 15–16; Arthur Vööbus, History of Asceticism in Syrian Orient: A Contribution to the History of Culture in the Near East, II: Early Monasticism in Mesopotamia and Syria, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 197, 17 (Louvain: Sécretariat du CorpusSCO, 1960), 197, and Lucas Van Rompay, “Barsawmo,” in Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage, ed. Sebastian P. Brock, Aaron Michael Butts, George Anton Kiraz, and Lucas Van Rompay (Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias Press, 2011), 59.
9 (Ps.-)Besa, Life of Shenoute 129; Sulpicius Severus, Life of Martin 15.1–3; Callinicus, Life of Hypatius 30.1; History of the Monks of Egypt 8.26; Life of Rabbula 16; and Mark the Deacon, Life of Porphyry of Gaza 66–75.
10 For one example, see the story of James of Nisbis using effective speech to pulverize a stone and terrify a judge into reversing an unjust decision at Religious History 1.6 (ed. Pierre Canivet and Alice Leroy-Molinghen, Théodoret de Cyr. Histoire des moines de Syrie. «Histoire philothée» I–XIII, Source chrétiennes 234 [Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1977], 170). See the classic discussion of Theodoret’s cursing monks in Peter Brown, “The Rise of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity,” Journal of Roman Studies 61 (1971): 80–101. On cursing in various late ancient contexts, see David Frankfurter, “Curses, Blessings, and Ritual Authority: Egyptian Magic in Comparative Perspective,” Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 5:1 (January 2005): 157–185; David Brakke, “Cursing Monks: The Early Monastic Context of Two Christian Prayers for Justice from Egypt,” Studia Patristica 124.21 (2021): 139–156; Bradley K. Storin, “On the Death Curse in Late Antique Hagiography,” in Discipline, Authority, and Texts in Late Ancient Religion: Essays in Honor of David Brakke, ed. Ellen Muehlberger and Bradley K. Storin, Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages 43 (Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming).
11 Chris L. de Wet, “The Discipline of Domination: Asceticism, Violence and Monastic Curses in Theodoret’s Historia Religiosa,” in Religious Violence in the Ancient World: From Classical Athens to Late Antiquity, ed. Jitse H. F. Dijkstra and Christian R. Raschle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 323–344, at 326.
12 de Wet, “Discipline of Domination,” 342–343, referring to Michel Foucault’s discussion of the executioner’s shame in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977), 9–10.
13 (Ps.-)Dioscorus, Life of Macarius of Tkōw 5.1–11. On this accusation of a pagan sacrificing children for ritual atrocity, see David Frankfurter, Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and Satanic Abuse in History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006), 107–108.
14 Barsauma appears several times in the Acts – twice in laudatory letters written by Emperor Theodosius II in the run-up to Ephesus II in 449 (Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum. Tomus Alter. Volumen Primum. Pars Prima [= ACO] II, I, 1.47–48 [ed. Edward Schwartz (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1933), 7]), once in the minutes of Ephesus II (ACO II, I, 1.109 [ed. Schwartz, 85]), and twice by hostile bishops at Chalcedon (ACO II, I, 1.851 [ed. Schwartz, 851]; ACO II, I, 2.77–81 [ed. Schwartz, 116]).
15 Vööbus, History of Asceticism in the Syrian Orient, II: Early Monasticism in Mesopotamia and Syria, 196.
16 See Michael Penn, R. Jordan Crouser, and Philip Abbott, “Serto before Serto: Reexamining the Earliest Development of Syriac Script,” Aramaic Studies 18:1 (2020): 46–63.
17 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 165.1 (trans. Palmer, 139; SOP 361:119v: “Samuel the elder,” 
).
18 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 165.2 (trans. Palmer, 139; SOP 361:119v).
19 See Honigmann, Le couvent de Barṣaumā, 36–46.
20 See Honigmann, Le couvent de Barṣaumā, 47–51, and Hubert Kaufhold, “Notizen zur späten Geschichte des Baraumô-Klosters,” Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 3:2 (2000[2010]), 223–46. For the clergy members who spent time here, see Michael the Syrian, Chronicle 17.9, 17.11, 21.2.
21 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 3A (trans. Palmer, 21; SOP 361:90r).
22 Ibid.
23 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 4.1–2, 5.1, 7.1–2, 17.1, 22.1, 25.1–3, 32.1, 76.1, 89.1. On the violence of the monastic life broadly, see Christine Luckritz-Marquis, Death of the Desert: Monastic Memory and the Loss of Egypt’s Golden Age, Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022), 15–19.
24 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 4.2. See Reuven Kiperwasser and Serge Ruzer, “Cleansing the Sacred Space: The Holy Land and Its Inhabitants in the Pilgrimage Narrative of Barsauma,” in Wandering Holy Man, ed. Hahn and Menze, 104–120.
25 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 7.2–8.1.
26 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 28.1 (trans. Palmer, 33; SOP 361:92v: 
).
27 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 17.1 (trans. Palmer, 29; SOP 361:92v).
28 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 17.4, 6.
29 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 10.1–2, 19.1.
30 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 3b.8, 11–12 (trans. Palmer, 21–22; SOP 361:90v). On Syriac mourners, see Sebastian P. Brock, “Early Syrian Asceticism,” Numen 20:1 (1973): 1–19, esp. 18–19.
31 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 110.4 (trans. Palmer, 97; SOP 361:108v).
32 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 110.7–9 (trans. Palmer, 97–98; SOP 361:108v).
33 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 110.15 (trans. Palmer, 99; SOP 361:108v–109r).
34 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 110.16 (trans. Palmer, 99; SOP 361:109r).
35 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 145.2 (trans. Palmer, 124; SOP 361:116r).
36 Marcian sends military troops to enforce Chalcedon and arrest Barsauma (Samuel, Life of Barsauma 119.1–4, 121.1–3); the Chalcedonian clergy curses him and tasks one bishop with assassinating him (Samuel, Life of Barsauma 120.1–11, 133.1–4, 143.1–5).
37 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 145.16 (trans. Palmer, 125; SOP 361:116v).
38 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 146.1 (trans. Palmer, 126; SOP 361:116v).
39 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 147.1, 148.8 (trans. Palmer, 126–127; SOP 361:116v–117r).
40 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 148.12 (trans. Palmer, 128; SOP 361:117r). The language of the “curse” is a concatenation of Dt 28:15, Ps 62:3, Lv 26:36, and Dt 28.25.
41 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 148.8, 14 (trans. Palmer, 128; SOP 361:117r).
42 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 34.1 (trans. Palmer, 37; SOP 361:93v). The sentiment is repeated at Samuel, Life of Barsauma 45.1.
43 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 34.2 (trans. Palmer, 37; SOP 361:93v).
44 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 36.5–6 (trans. Palmer, 42; SOP 361:95r).
45 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 39.1 (trans. Palmer, 43; SOP 361:95r).
46 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 42.3 (trans. Palmer, 44; SOP 361:95v).
47 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 42.6 (trans. Palmer, 45; SOP 361:95v). Achor (
) refers to the valley where the Israelites stoned Achan and his household for stealing items commanded to be destroyed (Joshua 7).
48 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 43.2 (trans. Palmer, 45; SOP 361:95v).
49 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 44.6 (trans. Palmer, 46–47; SOP 361:95v).
50 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 62.1, 61.2, 63.1 (trans. Palmer, 54–56; SOP 361:97v). SOP 361 places Samuel, Life of Barsauma 61 after 62, but Palmer asserts that other manuscripts switch the order. Ultimately, the sequence does not affect the narrative.
51 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 62.3.
52 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 62.5 (trans. Palmer, 55; SOP 361:97v).
53 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 61.2 (trans. Palmer, 55; SOP 361:97v).
54 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 63.1 (trans. Palmer, 56; SOP 361:97v).
55 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 63.6 (trans. Palmer, 56; SOP 361:97v).
56 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 52.1–2, 53.1–3 (plants), 66.1 (“Daughter of the Covenant”; my translation; SOP 361:98r: 
).
57 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 66.3 (trans. Palmer, 58; SOP 361:98r).
58 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 67.1 (trans. Palmer, 58; SOP 361:98r).
59 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 67.2 (trans. Palmer, 58; SOP 361:98r).
60 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 149.7–9 (trans. Palmer, 129; SOP 361:117v).
61 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 109.1, 3 (trans. Palmer, 95–96; SOP 361:108r).
62 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 86.2 (trans. Palmer, 74; SOP 361:102v).
63 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 86.4 (trans. Palmer, 74; SOP 361:102v).
64 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 86.4 (trans. Palmer, 74; SOP 361:102v).
65 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 128.2–3 (trans. Palmer, 114; SOP 361:112r).
66 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 128.5 (trans. Palmer, 114; SOP 361:112r).
67 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 153.1 (trans. Palmer, 133; SOP 361:118r).
68 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 159.1 (trans. Palmer, 136; SOP 361:119r).
69 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 123.2 (trans. Palmer, 110; SOP 361:111r).
70 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 123.14–15 (trans. Palmer, 110–111; SOP 361:111r–111v).
71 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 123.20 (trans. Palmer, 111; SOP 361:111v).
72 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 124.1 (trans. Palmer, 111; SOP 361:111v).
73 On this episode in the Life of Barsauma, see Hagith Sivan, “Subversive Pilgrimages: Barsauma in Jerusalem,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 26:2 (Spring 2018): 53–74, esp. 65–74.
74 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 4.1–2.
75 See Jan Willem Drijvers, “Barsauma, Eudocia, Jerusalem, and the Temple Mount,” in Wandering Holy Man, ed. Hahn and Menze, 89–103.
76 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 91.8 (trans. Palmer, 79; SOP 361:103v).
77 Palmer suggests Is 31:5, Jer 31:23, or Dn 9:24–27 as candidates for prophecies, but the Life keeps it vague.
78 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 92.2–4 (trans. Palmer, 79; SOP 361:103v).
79 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 93.3, 4 (trans. Palmer, 80; SOP 361:103v).
80 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 93.8.
81 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 94.1–9, 95.1–2 (trans. Palmer, 83; SOP 361:105v).
82 Van Rompay, “Barsawmo,” in Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage, 59; Jean Maurice Fiey, Saintes syriaques, ed. Lawrence I. Conrad, Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam (Princeton: Darwin Press, 2004) 49.
83 Gaddis, There Is No Crime, 188. For destruction of synagogues and temples, see Samuel, Life of Barsauma 34.1–36.7, 42.1–6, 44.1–7, 45.1.
84 Volker Menze, “The Dark Side of Holiness: Barsauma the Roasted and the Invention of a Jewish Jerusalem,” in Motions of Late Antiquity: Essays on Religion, Politics, and Society in Honour of Peter Brown, ed. Jamie Kreiner and Helmut Reimitz, Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages 20 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), 231–247, quoted at 241.
85 For example: Callinicus’s mid-fifth century Life of Hypatius describes the purificatory efforts of the founder of the Rufinianae monastery just outside of Constantinople. See Bradley K. Storin, “Monastic Identity and Violence in Callinicus’ Vita Hypatii,” Studia Patristica 129 (2021): 155–166; also, Bradley K. Storin, trans., Callinicus: The Life of Our Sacred Father, Hypatius of the Rufinianae, Cistercian Studies 301 (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2024), 32–35.
86 The Greek version of the acts of Chalcedon was likely published as soon as 454 or 455; see Richard Price and Michael Gaddis, The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, Translated Texts for Historians 45, 3 vols. (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2005), 1:79. No systematic evidence for the production and dissemination of either the acts of the Second Council of Ephesus or the acts of the Council of Chalcedon exists; see Fergus Millar, A Greek Roman Empire: Power and Belief under Theodosius II (408–450), Sather Classical Lectures 64 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 237. However, a Latin translation of the acts of Chalcedon was produced in the sixth century, while two Syriac versions of the acts of the Second Council of Ephesus in 449 survive, both dating to the sixth century; see Fergus Millar, “The Syriac Acts of the Second Council of Ephesus (449),” in Chalcedon in Context: Church Councils, 400–700, ed. Richard Price and Mary Whitby (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009), 45–69. Moreover, while in exile in the Great Oasis in Egypt, Nestorius’s Bazaar of Heraclides refers to details such as the death of Flavian and the deposition of Dioscorus at Chalcedon contained in the acts of Chalcedon, thereby suggesting his possession of a copy and the swiftness of textual transmission (ed. Paul Bedjan, Nestorius. Le Livre d’Heraclide de Damas [Leipzig: Harrassowitz, 1910], 471, 514–515).
87 ACO II, I, 1.47–48 (ed. Schwartz, 71); ACO II, I, 1.109 (ed. Schwartz, 85); ACO II, I, 1.851 (ed. Schwartz, 179); ACO II, I, 2.77–81 (ed. Schwartz, 116).
88 ACO II, 1, 1.48 (ed. Schwartz 71; trans. Price and Gaddis, 1:137, modified, my emphasis). Samuel, Life of Barsauma 107 presents the hagiographical version of this letter written by Theodosius, which differs considerably. That Samuel even knows about this letter is noteworthy, though. Of course, Samuel’s knowledge of both the letters and Barsauma’s reputation does not require his access to a copy of the acts of Chalcedon.
89 See also Volker L. Menze, Patriarch Dioscorus of Alexandria: The Last Pharaoh and Ecclesiastical Politics in the Later Roman Empire, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023), 113–114.
90 ACO II, 1, 1.47; ACO II, 1, 1.109 (ed. Schwartz 71, 85).
91 ACO II, 1, 1.176 (ed. Schwartz 93; trans. Price and Gaddis, 1:160). It is noteworthy that, among all the monks and clergy, only Barsauma gets mentioned by name.
92 ACO II, 1, 1.851 (ed. Schwartz 179).
93 Ibid. On the parabalani, see Glen W. Bowersock, “Parabalani: A Terrorist Charity in Late Antiquity,” Anabases 12 (2010): 45–54.
94 ACO II, 1, 2.77–81 (ed. Schwartz 116). Elsewhere in the Acts, for example, ACO II, 1, 1.853 (ed. Schwartz 179), bishops also blame Dioscorus of Alexandria for Flavian’s death.
95 It is possible that Nestorius in exile knows about the charge too; he alludes to a “murderous man” (Bazaar of Heraclides, ed. Bedjan 515: 
) perhaps thinking of Barsauma, and to “those who were murderers” (Bazaar of Heraclides, ed. Bedjan 515: 
) more general reference to Flavian’s attackers.
96 Palmer, “A Tale of Two Synods,” 37.
97 Palmer, “West-Syrian Monastic Founder Barṣawmo,” 401.
98 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 123.3–4 (trans. Palmer, 109, my emphasis; SOP 361:111r).
99 Palmer, “West-Syrian Monastic Founder Barṣawmo,” 401.
100 See Marc van Uytfanghe, “L’origine et les ingredients du discours hagiographique,” Sacris Erudiri 50:1 (January 2011): 35–70, and “L’hagiographie: un ‘genre’ chrétien ou antique tardif?” Analecta Bollandiana 111 (1993): 135–188, especially 147–149; Claudia Rapp, “‘For Next to God, You Are My Salvation’: Reflections on the Rise of the Holy Man,” in The Cult of the Saints in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Essays on the Contribution of Peter Brown, ed. James Howard-Johnston and Paul Anthony Hayward (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 63–81.
101 See James Corke-Webster and Christa Grey, “Introduction,” in The Hagiographical Experiment: Developing Discourses of Sainthood (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 1–26, quoted at 11. For conventional hagiographical portraits, see Robert Browning, “The ‘Low Level’ Saint’s Life in the Early Byzantine World,” in The Byzantine Saint, ed. Sergei Hackel (Crestwood: Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001), 117–127.
102 See the various topical and thematic essays in Stephanos Efthymiadis, ed., The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography, Volume I: Periods and Places, Ashgate Research Companions (London and New York: Routledge, 2011), and Stephanos Efthymiadis, ed., The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography, Volume II: Genres and Contexts, Ashgate Research Companions (London and New York: Routledge, 2014).
103 Claudia Rapp, “Author, Audience, Text and Saint: Two Modes of Early Byzantine Hagiography,” in Scandinavian Journal of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 1 (2015): 111–129, quoted at 122–123.
104 Athanasius, Life of Antony prol.3.
105 Callinicus, Life of Hypatius prol.6–8.
106 Jerome, Life of Paul prol.1.
107 Augustine, Confessions 8.12.29, referring to Athanasius, Life of Antony 2.3.
108 Samuel, Life of Barsauma 9.1, 14.1–4, 18.1–3, 27.1, 28.1–2, 48.1, 49.1–4, 59.1–5, 60.1–3, 64.1–4, 68.1, 69.1–3, 70.1–73.1, 76.1–4, 77.1–4, 80.1–5, 82.1–4, 85.1–2, 88.1–4.
109 On the diversity of Miaphysite communities arrayed against Chalcedon, see Jack Tannous, The Making of the Medieval Middle East: Religion, Society, and Simple Believers (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2018), 14, 105. For a classic history of the Miaphysite movement, see W. H. C. Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972). For a classic overview of three important Miaphysite theologians, see Roberta C. Chesnut, Three Monophysite Christologies: Severus of Antioch, Philoxenus of Mabbug, and Jacob of Sarug (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976); see now the lucid précis of Mark DelCogliano, ed., The Cambridge Edition of Early Christian Writings, Volume 4: Christ, Chalcedon and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), xxiv–xxxii.
110 See ACO II, 2, 2.4, 23 (ed. Schwartz, 159, 162). On Canon 23 among those appended without formal conciliar approval, see Price and Gaddis, Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, 3:92–93.
111 For a Palestinian context, see Bernard Flusin, “L’hagiographie palestinienne et la réception du concile de Chalcédoine,” in ΛΕΙΜΩΝ: Studies Presented to Lennart Rydén on His Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. J.-O. Rosenquist, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis 6 (Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet, 1996), 25–47, and Jan-Eric Steppa, John Rufus and World Vision of Anti-Chalcedonian Culture, Gorgias Studies in Early Christianity and Patristics 4, second revised edition (Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias Press, 2014), xxvi–xxxvi; also Jan-Eric Steppa, “Heresy and Orthodoxy: The Anti-Chalcedonian Hagiography of John Rufus,” in Christian Gaza in Late Antiquity, ed. Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony and Aryeh Kofsky, Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture 3 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 89–106.
112 See Volker L. Menze, Justinian and the Making of the Syrian Orthodox Church, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 5.
113 See discussion above.
114 Mar Marcos, “Religious Violence and Hagiography in Late Antiquity,” Numen 62:2/3 (March 2015): 169–196, at 190–191.
115 David Frankfurter, “‘Religious Violence’: A Phenomenology,” Ancient Jew Review (24 February 2016) (https://www.ancientjewreview.com/read/2016/2/24/religious-violence-a-phenomenology; accessed on 25 June 2024). Wendy Mayer’s overview of scholarship cautiously endorses this stance, but she reminds readers “we cannot go back into the past and test the impact of narrated violence on individuals or groups via interviews, surveys and media footage. The conclusions drawn as a result of this kind of approach can only ever be and will always remain speculative” (“Religious Violence in Late Antiquity: Current Approaches, Trends and Issues,” in Religious Violence in the Ancient World, ed. Dijkstra and Raschle, 251–265, quoted at 264).