The Invention of a Saint: The Case of Artemios at Constantinople

Date:

Thursday, December 4, 2014 - 5:30pm to 7:00pm

Artemios, an unpopular dux of Egypt under Constantius II turned into a healer-saint in sixth-century Constantinople, is a well-known character. We will examine the main problems regarding Artemios’ dossier, namely the enigmatic circumstances of his death, the hypothesis according to which he would have been made an Arian martyr in Antioch and the reasons why he started to be venerated as a healer many years later in Constantinople.

Aude Busine is Research Associate at the Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS) and Lecturer at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB). Her main interest lies in interactions between pagan and Christian religious practices and particularly in diverse forms of divination. She is currently working on the etiological functions of hagiography as well as on Christian praises of Greek cities. She published Paroles d'Apollon: Pratiques et traditions oraculaires dans l'Antiquité tardive (IIe-VIe siècles), Leiden 2005, and recently ‘From Stones to Myth: Temple Destruction and Civic Identity in the Late Antique Roman East’, JLA 6 (2013), 325-346.