The Barbarian Plain: Saint Sergius between Rome and Iran (Volume 28) (Transformation of the Classical Heritage)

During the fifth and sixth centuries A.D. there arose on the Euphrates frontier, between the empires of Rome and Iran, a city girded with glittering gypsum walls. Within these walls stood a great church, a shrine for the relics of Saint Sergius, who was martyred there, at Rusafa, in the early fourth century. Around Rusafa stretched the "Barbarian Plain," inhabited by Rome's Arab allies, many of whom revered the saint. Elizabeth Key Fowden examines the rise of the cult of Sergius in late antiquity, drawing on literary accounts, inscriptions, archaeology, images, and the landscape itself to construct a many-faceted picture of the role of religion in this frontier society. Focusing on the socio-cultural as well as the political dimensions of the Sergius cult, her study sheds light on the lives of the ordinary faithful, as well as on religion's place in the strategic calculations of hostile empires. Beginning with a detailed analysis of the surviving accounts of the martyrdom of Sergius, Fowden provides a discussion of Syrian Rusafa-Sergiopolis, traces the spread of the Sergius cult in Syria and Mesopotamia, and provides a provocative interpretation of the relation between the saint's presence at Rusafa and his role in frontier defense. She also discusses Arab Christianity in the context of late Roman culture in the East, as well as the continuation of the Sergius tradition after the Muslim conquest, emphasizing the changes and continuities brought by the rise of Islam. Frontmatter LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (page ix) PREFACE (page xi) ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (page xiii) NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION (page xv) ABBREVIATIONS (page xvii) MAPS (page xx) Introduction (page 1) 1. Portraits of a Martyr (page 7) 2. Martyr Cult on the Frontier: The Case of Mayperqat (page 45) 3. Rusafa (page 60) 4. The Spread of the Sergius Cult in Syria and Mesopotamia (page 101) 5. Frontier Shrine and Frontier Saint (page 130) 6. The Cult of S. Sergius after the Islamic Conquest (page 174) BIBLIOGRAPHY (page 193) INDEX (page 219) Focusing on the socio-cultural as well as the political dimensions of the Sergius cult, this study sheds light on the lives of the ordinary faithful, as well as on religion's place in the strategic calculations of hostile empires. It discusses Arab Christianity in the context of late Roman culture in the East. Not long before 431, Bishop Alexander of Hierapolis/Manbij in northern Syria invested three hundred pounds of gold to build a church in the middle of the Syrian steppe, a region he himself described as a wilderness.