One Author and Two Stories: Writing and Using the Life of Theodore of Sykeon

초록

This study examines the seventh century Life of Theodore of Sykeon, who was mostly active in the rural areas, such as Galatia, of the Byzantine Anatolia. George Eleusios, wrote the Life of his teacher and saint twice: the first version when he was a young man and the much lengthier second version after he had become the new hegoumenos of the Sykeon monastery. Unlike our contemporary publishing industry, this was an unusual activity in the traditional convention of authoring Byzantine hagiography. This study of mine attempts to explain what motivated George to embark on his projects by examining the two versions of Theodore’s Life, historical background surrounding the cult of Theodore, and the authorial goal of George: to save the dying cult by using his text as an advertisement method to the pilgrimage market. However, unfortunately, there is no pre-existing earlier studies that had been conducted on this subject. Thus, the research had to be undertaken by analyzing the original manuscript tradition and scarcely remaining relevant yet detached secondary studies. To circumvent this problem and support the polemical claim this study makes, I first illustrated the historical background of Theodore’s life, manuscript tradition of his surviving two versions of the Life, and the difference between these texts that further explains the authorial intention, which was not entirely spiritual.

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