CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2015
| Author | Vukovic, Marijana |
|---|---|
| Title | Martyr Memories: The Afterlife of the Martyrdom of Irenaeus of Sirmium between East and West in Medieval Hagiographical Collections (Eighth - Eleventh Centuries) |
| Summary | This dissertation explores the “afterlife,” uses and medieval readings of an early Christian martyrdom narrative, the Martyrdom of Irenaeus of Sirmium. I reconstruct the cultural and social contexts of the text centuries after it was composed as reflected in Latin, Greek, Old Church Slavonic, Armenian and Georgian manuscripts. This narrative is a paradigmatic representative of its genre: anonymous, without exact dating, allegedly written in the fourth century. Bereft of information about the original language and the original version, it records the death and martyrdom of an early Christian bishop Irenaeus of Sirmium. The “afterlife” encompasses the places and the collections, in which this text was included, its relation with the cult, as well as its textual transformations. The Martyrdom of Irenaeus belongs to the genre of martyrdom literature, which had a changing status and ambiguous treatment from Late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages. One of the purposes of this literature might have been the exhortation to martyrdom and the establishment of a model behavior for Christians facing persecution. After CE 313, however, encouraging martyrdom was curtailed to simple veneration and memory. Created at the threshold of the acceptance of Christianity as a tolerated religion, martyrdom literature went through processes of rewriting and purification to be acceptable after the age of transition. “Rewriting” is clearly observable in the great deal of textual variations of the Martyrdom of Irenaeus. The study of these textual variants constitutes the core of this dissertation. Textual variants, however, do not reveal much in their own right without taking into consideration the communities behind the texts. The communities that rewrote this text in different languages were bound to a multiplicity of places, environments, and realms. These circumstances influenced the text. The analysis of different contexts contributed to understanding of the way the martyr was “remembered” in various Christian communities. The Middle Ages were chronologically removed from the age of Early Christian martyrs. The distance compelled me to reflect on the uses of the past in the early medieval period. I dealt with the uses of the past through my case study of the Martyrdom of Irenaeus. |
| Supervisor | Marianne Sághy |
| Department | Medieval Studies PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2015/vukovic_marijana.pdf |
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