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Home , Constantine the Great, Inventio, John Kourkouas, Liutprand of Cremona, Mopsuestia, Theodore Abu Qurrah

Maria Conterno Shaping the Good Christian King under Muslim Rule: and the Torahin the Melkite Chronicle of Agapius of Mabbug (Tenth Century)

Introduction

The word ‘Melkite’ from the Semitic root m-l-k,which givesthe wordfor ‘king’ in Syriac (malkō)and Arabic (malik). The expression ‘Melkite Christians,’ therefore, means literally ‘the Christians of the King.’ It wascoined in the late eighth–early ninth century to indicate those Christians living under Muslim rule – mostlyin Egypt,Palestineand – who shared the Chalcedonian, dyothelete faith of the Byzantine .First attested in East Syrian (Nestorian) and Syrian Orthodox(Ja- cobite) sources,¹ the term ‘Melkites’ was clearlyborn with adisparagingconnotation, pointing at asupposed political loyalty to the emperor of as well as at the acceptanceofacreed thathad been not onlysanctioned, but forgedbypolit-

The researchleading to thispublication wasfunded by aFWO (Funds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek) post-doctoral fellowship and represents acontinuation of the work on Christian Arabic historiogra- phy Istarted as apost-doctoralresearcher in Peter VanNuffelen’sproject ‘MemoryofEmpire: the Post-Imperial Historiography of ,’ which received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’sSeventh Framework Programme (FP/2007–2013) /ERC Grant, agreement n. 313153. Ifirst presented and discussed the subject of thispaper at the workshop ‘Text and ContextinLate Antiquity,’ organised by the Center forthe Study of of the He- brew UniversityofJerusalem on 14–15 February2016. The subsequent researchIcarried out on it benefited substantially from the feedback and suggestions Ireceived on thatoccasion.

 Syrian OrthodoxChristians whoadopted Severus of ’smiaphysitedoctrine arealso called ‘monophysites’ or ‘Jacobites’ after Jacob Baradeus (c. 500 –578), the figure whomost significantly contributed to the establishment and organisation of the Syrian OrthodoxChurch as an independent institution after the split caused by the Council of (451). East Syrian Christians, whoadopt- ed the dyophysite doctrine preached by TheodoreofMopsuestia, arealso labelled ‘Nestorians’ after , the of Constantinople whose contested theological positions led to the Council of in 431. The terms ‘monophysites’ and ‘Nestorians,’ although often still used in scholarship, have been pointedout as problematic and incorrect,see D. Winkler, “Miaphysitism: aNew Term for Use in the History of Dogma and in Ecumenical Theology”, TheHarp 10 (1997), 33 – 40 and S.P. Brock, “The “Nestorian” : alamentable misnomer”, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Libraryof Manchester 78.3 (1996), 1–14.

OpenAccess. ©2021Maria Conterno, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative CommonsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110725612-020 422 Maria Conterno

ical rulers.² The monothelete controversy,which troubled the Byzantine Church for most of the seventh century,had eventuallybrought about asplit in the eastern Chal- cedonian communities with the birth of aseparate church – the Maroniteone – that rejected the dyothelete imposed by the SixthEcumenical Council of 680/1.³ Thereafter,the dyothelete Chalcedonians wereleft with the stigma of being ‘the friends of the emperor’;for this reason, they came to be called, and then started to call themselves, ‘Melkites.’ It comes as no surprise then,thatfor the Melkites the figure of the Christian king was rich in symbolic importasmuch as in thornyim- plications, and it inevitablyplayedarole in the process of self-definitionand iden- tity-building of their communities.This is evident,for instance,inthe wayinwhich Christian kingsofagespast are treated in historiographical works.⁴ More precisely, the wayinwhich Melkite historians remoulded the late antique historiographical and hagiographical material to portray certain Christian kings, and to thus shape their ideal Christian ruler,can be very tellingabout the present issues with which they were confronted and about the ‘hottest topics’ in their apologetic agenda. Aremarkable example of this is provided by arather singular narrative concern- ing Constantine the Great contained in one of the earliest Melkite Arabic chronicles, the so-called Kitābal-ʿunwānofAgapius of Mabbug.⁵ Agapius was the Melkite bish- op of the city of Mabbug, ancient and modern-dayManbij in northern Syria.⁶ In the ⁷ he wroteauniversalchronicle in Arabic divided into two parts: from the Creation to and from Christ to his own time (the latter pre- served onlyuptothe year 780). Agapius livedatthe crossroads between and the Islamic world, geographicallyaswell as culturally. In the manuscripts he is referred to either as ‘Agabius’ or ‘Mahbub (the Arabic equivalent) ibn Qustantin al-

 On the origin, first attestations and spread of the term see S.H. Griffith, “‘Melkites’, ‘Jacobites’ and the christological controversies in Arabic in third/ninth century Syria”,inD.Thomas (ed.), Syrian Christiansunder . Thefirst thousand years,Leiden – Boston – 2001,9–55 (esp. 11–18).  Acreed regarded as an unorthodoxinnovation and labelled by both Maronite and miaphysitesour- cesas‘Maximianist ’ (afterMaximus the ).  Forageneral overview of Melkite historiographybeforemodern times,see J. Nasrallah, Histoiredu mouvement littérairedans l’église melchite du Ve au XXesiècle,Louvain – Paris 1979 – 1989,vol. II. t. 2, 49–55;vol. III. t. 1, 167–175; vol. III t. 2, 95 – 101.  The title Kitābal-ʿunwān (literally ‘Book of the title’)isdue to the misreadingofacorruptedline in the preface by one of the editors,Alexander Vasiliev.Inthe manuscripts,the work is presented as Kitābal-taʾrīkh, ‘Book of history,’ or just Taʾrīkh, ‘History.’ It is accessible in twoeditions,both pub- lished at the beginning of the last century:L.Cheikho, Agapius episcopus Mabbugensis:Historia uni- versalis /Kitābal-ʿunwān (Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 65 – Scriptores Arabici 10), Paris 1912; A.A.Vasiliev, Kitab al-ʿunvan. Histoireuniverselle écrite par Agapius (Mahboub)deMenbidj (PO 5.4, 7.4, 8.3, 11.1), Paris 1910 –1915.  This pieceofinformationisprovided in the header of the onlymanuscript preservingthe second part of the chronicle, the codex Florence,Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Or.323.  The terminus post quem of 941/2 ce can be gatheredfromone of the chronological summaries con- tained in the chronicle, whereAgapius says that 330years have passed since the beginning of Islamic rule. Shaping the Good Christian King under Muslim Rule 423

Rumi,’ namely ‘Agapius/Mahbub son of Constantine the Greek,’ and his work pro- vides manyindications that he must have had arelatively good knowledge of Greek, if not even aGreek education. The tenth century witnessed the triumphal, al- beit ephemeral, reconquest of Northern Syria by the . In the , under the guidance of the Domestikos of the Scholai John ,the Byzantine armyhad become – with changing fortunes – more resolutelyaggressive against Muslim frontier strongholds and raided bases, includingTheodosioupolis, Melitene, Samosataand .The definitive capitulation of Melitene in 934inaugurated a phase of successful and durableexpansion, which graduallybrokethe resistance of the Hamdanid emir of , Sayf al-Dawla, and brought within afew decades the reconquest of (961), and Cyprus (963–965), Mopsuestia and Tarsus (965), Antaradosand Gabala (968), and eventuallyAntioch in 969. Aleppowas stormed, taken repeatedly, and turned into asemi-independent buffer state whose Muslim emir had to payatribute to the emperor and provide military support against the Fatimids. The Eastern frontier kept evolving until well into the eleventh century before it began erodingafter confrontations with the Seljuk Turks and the annexa- tions of Larissa/Shaizar (999), (1030) and Hierapolis/Manbij (1069). Although in Agapius’ lifetime Manbij was still under Muslim control, Byzantium was literally around the corner and the whole region wasbeginning to gravitate again around Constantinople. This had of course implications for the Christians living there, par- ticularlythe Melkite Christians. Although in communion with the Byzantine Church, the Melkites had soon de- velopedadistinct cultural identity which set them apart both from the other Eastern Christians (Jacobites, Maronites, East Syrians) and from the Byzantine dyothelete Chalcedonians (Greek Orthodox). The main distinguishing feature wastheir use of the Greek patristic corpus while at the sametime adopting Arabic for not only dailybut alsoliterary and religious uses.⁸ Thisgavebirth to an Arabic-speaking but ‘Greek-minded’ hierarchyorganised around the three of Antioch, , and Alexandria. In the tenth century,when the Byzantine ‘reconquista’ of Northern Syria began, the processwas alreadyadvanced enough to prevent the completeassimilation of Syrian Melkites to the Byzantine Church. Nonetheless, the reconquest of Antioch in 969led to acertain degree of ‘re-Byzantinisation’ of the , especiallyvisible in the liturgy,⁹ and to arevival of the Greek lan- guage. This inaugurated along season of coexistenceand competition between Greek and Arabic within the Melkite communities,with the formerremainingthe of-

 See Griffith (cf. fn. 2).  See H. Kennedy, “The MelkiteChurch from the Islamic Conquest to the :Continuity and Adaptation in the Byzantine Legacy”,inThe17th International Byzantine Congress: MajorPapers, New Rochelle – New 1986,325–343(repr.inH.Kennedy, TheByzantine and the Early Islamic Near East,Burlington 2006,XII); K.-P.Todt, “Region und griechisch-orthodoxesPatriarchat vonAnti- ocheia in mittelbyzantinischeZeit (969–1084)”,Byzantinische Zeitschrift 94 (2001), 239–267. Forthe parallel process in Jerusalem, see D. Galadza, Liturgy and Byzantinization in Jerusalem,Oxford2017. 424 Maria Conterno

ficial religious languageevenafter the definitive withdrawal of the Byzantine Empire from the region, but the latter taking the lion’sshare in everydaylife and literarypro- duction.¹⁰ Agapius, therefore, livedalso at aturning point in the history of Syrian Melkites communities,when their process of self-definition was still awork in prog- ress but adurable changewas alreadylooming large.The long passageonConstan- tine the Great presented and discussed in this paper bears clear signs of these spe- cific historical, cultural, and social circumstances.

The ‘Septuagint-Tampering-Constantine’ Excursus

The episode in question is not to be found in the part of the chronicle dealingwith the reign of Constantine but is nested within amulti-layered flash-forward narrative about the translation of the Septuagint set by Agapius at the time of Abraham.When reportingthe genealogyofthe biblical patriarchs and its chronology,Agapius is very keen to stress the fact that the correct numbers of the patriarchal chronology are to be found onlyinthe Greek translation of the Torah, whereas those contained in the Hebrew Torahand in the Syriac translation are wrong, having been altered by the JewishHighPriests at the time of . There are indeed various discrepancies be- tween the biblical chronology attested in the Masoretic text of the Torahand in the Septuagint,which are well known and much studied,and remainaphilological co- nundrum to date.¹¹ Agapius introducesthe story of the tampering at the very begin- ning,when he givesafirst overviewofAdam’sdescendants:

The followingcalculation appears in the translation of the Seventy wise men: it is written that Adam lived230 years, then Seth was born to him, and fromthe dayofSeth’sbirth to when Enosh was born to him 205years [passed], and this makes435 years.From Enosh’sbirth to when Cain- an was born to Enosh 190 years [passed], which makes625 years.From the dayofCainan’sbirth to when Malahalel was born to Cainan,170 years [passed],and this makes795 years. AfterMa- lahalel’sbirth Adam reached 930years, which was the length of his life. But according to what is in the Torahwhich is in the hands of the Jews – sincethey have tampered with and subtracted fromitthe years takeninto account in the calculation of the chro- nologyofthe world, namelythe years they subtractedfromthe patriarchs’ livesbeforetheir sons wereborn (and the Torahofthe Syrians comesfrom the Torah, because the Syriac Torahwas translated from the Hebrewone after Christianity [came] and after the corruption [of the

 This ‘linguistic split’ eventuallyled the Melkites to separate from the Greek OrthodoxChurch and to seek in 1729 the union with the ChurchofRome, which allowed them to abandon Greek and have their own liturgy in Arabic.  Forrecent, comprehensive discussions of the question see G. Larsson, “The Chronologyofthe Pentateuch: AComparisonofthe MT and LXX,” Journal of Biblical Literature 102(1983), 401–409; J. Hughes, Secrets of the times:myth and historyinbiblical chronology,Oxford1990;D.V.Etz, “The Numbers of Genesis V3–31:ASuggestedConversion and its Implications,” Vetus Testamentum 43 (1993), 171– 189;M.Rösel, Übersetzung als Vollendung der Auslegung:Studien zur Genesis-Septuaginta, Berlin (1994), 129–144. Shaping the Good Christian King under Muslim Rule 425

text]) – it is written in it that Adam liveduntil the ninth generation of the sons of his sons,that is until the year 56 from the birth of Lamek son of Enoch, because they subtractedfromthe years of Adam and of other patriarchs 100 years beforethe birth of their sons and they added them to the years of their livesafter the birth of their sons.The Jewish priests Annas and Caiaphas want- ed to denythe advent of the Messiah and [they said] that the time when he would come had not arrivedyet.According to the timespan in the HebrewTorah, then, in whatthey recorded and wrote [we read] that Adam lived130 years and gave birth to Seth; from Seth’sbirth to Enosh’s, 105 years; fromEnosh’sbirth to Cainan’s, 90 years; from Cainan’sbirth to Malahalel, 70 years; from Malahalel’sbirth to Jared, 65 years […].¹²

He continues to narrate the biblical history more in detail, providingfor each of the patriarchs the totalyears of life and the ageofbegetting¹³ accordingtoboththe Sep- tuagint and to what he calls the ‘manipulated,’‘altered,’ or ‘false Torahofthe Jews’– which, he regularlyadds, was translated and adopted by SyriacChristians.¹⁴ When he reaches the time of Abraham,heexplains once more the reasons of such discrep- ancies between the Greek and the Hebrew/Syriac text of the , inserting in his narrativealong,multi-layered flash-forward,which can be summarised as follows.¹⁵ After Jesus’ death and resurrection, the Jewish High Priests Annas and Caiaphas tampered with the biblical chronology in order to prove, accordingtothe Sacred Scriptures, that the time of the Messiah was yettocome and therefore, that Jesus of could not be the Christ.They shrank the chronologyofthe biblical pat- riarchs from Adam to Abraham,countingonthe fact that no one had agood enough knowledge of such aremote past to discover the ruse. They altered the original He- brew text of the Torah, but in the Temple of Jerusalemacopy was alsokept of the Greek translation of the Scriptures made in Alexandria almost300 years before by PtolemyII’srequest.Thistriggers, within the flash-forward, aflash-back to the story of the translation of the Septuagint,which Agapius reports by largely following the traditionalversion of the Letter of Aristeas. At the end of it,wesee King Ptolemy sending out copies of the Greek translation to the major cities of the Mediterranean (, Ephesus, Byzantium), with one broughtbacktoJerusalem by the Seventy-two translators in person:

The wise translatorsaskedhim for one of those copies, in order to boast about it with their fel- lows.Hegrantedittothem, and this was aprovidential disposition of God’s, because he foresaw

 A.A. Vasiliev, Kitabal-ʿunvan. Histoireuniverselle écrite par Agapius (Mahboub)deMenbidj,(PO 5.4), Paris 1910,561– 562.  Namelythe ageatwhich his first son, or the son who continued the genealogical line, was born. The ageofthe world was calculated by summing up the ageofbegetting of all the biblical patriarchs from Adam down to Jesus.  Vasiliev (cf. fn. 12)573,580 –582, 586–589,595,598, 599, 629 – 631, 634– 635.  The excursus takes up morethan 20 pagesinVasiliev’sedition: Vasiliev (cf. fn. 12)636–660.It includes also arésumé of Alexander the Great’sfeats,which led to the establishment of the Ptolemaic kingdom in Egypt. 426 Maria Conterno

and knew in advance, in his knowledge,the iniquitous deeds of their priests and governors, Annas and Caiaphas, and their fellows,against the Messiah at the moment of his appearance.¹⁶

After that,Agapius repeats in even more detail the story of the tamperingand con- cludes:

Todayit[i.e., the altered Torah] is in the hands of those Christians who use the Syriac idiom, and the true Torahtranslated by the Seventy was not shown to them until Constantine reigned, son of the believer,whose reign was 305 years after the advent of the Messiah.¹⁷

These words triggerone more jump forward in time, starting the narrative about Con- stantine. AccordingtoAgapius, Constantine went in person to Jerusalem in search of the of Christ and of the books of the Prophets.Someofthe Jews, afraid that the truth about the tamperingwould be discovered, decided to getahead of the game by leaking the story of the tampering to the emperor.The emperorthen summonedthe HighPriests and asked for an explanation, but they denied everything stubbornly, so he jailed them and had the copies of the Greek translation fetched from Alexandria, Rome and the other cities. Once they became aware of this, the HighPriests decided to confess in order to have theirlife spared and they gave their copy of the Septuagint to the Emperor.Constantine compared all the Greek copies with the Hebrew one and he found out that the Hebrew text had actuallybeen tampered with, and that only the Septuagint preserved the original text of the Torah. Since the Jews kept putting forward lame excuses, he convokedsome Christian and ordered them to counter the Jews’ in adispute. The bishops smashed the Jews’ versions by revealing the whole truth that had been hiddenfor centuries, providing further proof in achronological exegesis of Daniel’sprophecyofthe 70 (Dn 9:24–27), from which the exact date of the Messiah’sarrivalcan be calculated. The long digression ends as follows:

As the alteredTorah and all the books of the Prophets that areinpossession of the Christians in Syriac copies arespread in all the parts of the earth from East to West,the Christiansare not able [to explain] the cause of this shortcoming in its translation and the reasons of the issue, but [as for] all the scholars and wise men and whoever tried to translatethe books of the Prophets by interpretingand renderingthem from one languagetoanother,ortoexplain their meaningand interpret their content,they did not change anythinginit, or their translation is based on the Syriac Scriptures, which areatodds with what is in the translation of the Seventy,inwhat the Jews alteredand changedafter the resurrection of the Messiah.¹⁸

 Vasiliev (cf. fn. 12)644–645.  Vasiliev (cf. fn. 12)647.  Vasiliev (cf. fn.12)659–660. Shaping the Good Christian King under Muslim Rule 427

The Apparent Targets: Syriac Christiansand Jews

In justone sentence, Agapius dismisses centuries of exegesis and biblical studies in Syriac, because they werebased on an altered biblical text,namelythe Syriac trans- lation made on the Hebrew original and known as the Peshitta. Such an inherent vice implicitlycalls into question the whole theological thought of SyrianOrthodoxand East SyrianChristians, who are clearlyone of the targets of this digression. Syriac, though,was not exclusivelythe languageofJacobites and Nestorians:inpre- and earlyIslamic time it was in fact spoken and used in the liturgy by eastern Chalcedo- nians as well,¹⁹ and was stillbeing usedasliturgical languagebysome Melkites even at the time of Agapius and later.This is suggestedbyanumber of Melkite lectionaries produced in the monasteries of the Black Mountain, near Antioch, duringthe second Byzantine domination of Northern Syria. These are Syriac translations of Byzantine liturgical books in which everything is remarkablytranslated from Greek except for the Biblical pericopes, whose text matches the Peshitta.²⁰ Theselectionaries attest on the one hand to the process of ‘Byzantinisation’ of Melkite liturgy inaugurated by the reconquest of Antioch and on the other hand to acertain resilienceofSyriac as a religious languageamong the Melkites.Between the lines of Agapius’ text,therefore, we can also read an appeal to thoseMelkite Christians who were still using the Syriac translation of the Bible, thus sharing such an important identity marker as language with heretics rather thanwith the orthodoxChalcedonians.John Lamoreux, who has recentlytranslatedand commented on the ‘Septuagint-Tampering-Constantine’ ex- cursus in asource-book for the history of Melkite Christianity,²¹ argues thatAgapius must have found the whole narrative block in aSyriac sourceand just translated and incorporated it in his chronicle. Thenarrative would have been originallypart of a treatise addressingboth Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian Syriac Christians with the aim of convincing them to abandon the Syriac translation of the Scriptures

 On the Greek-Syriac bilingualism of eastern Christians see S.P. Brock, “Greek and Syriac in Late Antique Syria”,inA.K. Bowman and G. Woolf (eds.), Literacy and Powerinthe Ancient World,Cam- bridge – New York 1994,149–160.MorespecificallyonGreek and Syriac among eastern Chalcedoni- ans/Melkites: S.H. Griffith, “From Aramaic to Arabic: the Languages of the Monasteries of in the Byzantine and EarlyIslamic Periods”,DOP 51 (1997), 11–31;S.P.Brock, “Syriac into Greek at Mar Saba: The Translation of St.Isaac the Syrian,” in J. Patrich (ed.), TheSabaite Heritage in the Orthodox Church from the Fifth Centurytothe Present, Louvain 2001,201–208; A.M. Butts, Language Changein the Wake of Empire: Syriac in Its Greco-Roman Context (Linguistic Studies in Ancient West Semitic 11), Winona Lake, IN 2016.  See S.P. Brock, “Syriac Manuscripts copied on the Black Mountain, near Antioch”,inR.Schulz and M. Görg(eds.), Lingua Restituta Orientalis:Festgabe fürJulius Assfalg,Wiesbaden 1990,59–67.  J.C. Lamoreux, “Agapius of Manbij”,inS.Noble – A. Treiger(eds.), The OrthodoxChurch in the Arab World700–1700,DeKalb IL 2014,136–159. 428 Maria Conterno

based on the Hebrew text in favour of one based on the Septuagint.²² Thishypothesis raises the important question of the competition among the different translations of the Bible in late antique eastern Christian communities,aquestion that goes beyond the scope of the present paper.²³ Regardless of its origin, however,Agapius’ re-use of this narrative in his Arabic chronicle responds to his own agenda and results in a sweepingvilification of the Syriac languageand of SyriacChristianity altogether. The anti-Jewishaim of the story is plain, too, and here Agapius is not proposing anything new.Not onlywas the mutual accusation of tampering with the Scriptures a long-standingtopos in Christian-Jewishpolemics,²⁴ but Muslims would soon appro- priate this topos and use it against both Jews and Christians.The accusation of taḥrīf (falsification) addressed to the ‘People of the Book’ is in fact alreadypresent in the Quran,²⁵ and the Iranian polymath Al-Biruni (973 – 1048), who wrotesome fifty years after Agapius, seems to sketch the very scenario in which Agapius’sexcursus origi- nated. In his Chronology of AncientNations, he discusses the differences between the Jewishand Christian computations of the world eraand their mutualaccusations of inaccuracy,finding faultswith both:

The Jews and Christians differ widelyonthis subject; for,according to the doctrine of the Jews, the time between Adam and Alexander is 3,448 years, whilst,accordingtothe Christian doc- trine, it is 5,180 years. The Christiansreproach the Jews with havingdiminishedthe number of years with the view of makingthe appearance of Jesus fall into the fourth millennium in the middle of the seven millennia, which are, according to their view,the time of the duration

 Namelythe so-called Syro-Hexapla,atranslation based on the Septuagint of ’s Hexapla produced by Paul of Tella in 617; see A.G. Salvesen, “Syro-Hexapla”,inS.P.Brock – G. Kiraz, A.M. Butts – L. VanRompay, Encyclopedic Dictionaryofthe Syriac Heritage,394–395.  Idiscuss this issue, as well as various hypotheses on the origin of the excursus, in M. Conterno, “Found in translation: Agapius,the Septuagint,and the ‘falsified’ Torahofthe Jews”,inM.Conterno – M. Mazzola (ed.), Intercultural ExchangeinLate Antique Historiography,Leuven2020, 143 – 167. See also R.B. terHaar Romeny, “The Peshitta and its Rivals. On the Assessment of the Peshitta and Other Versions of the in Syriac Exegetical Literature”, TheHarp 11–12 (1998–1999), 21–31.  See S. Benoit, “L’inspiration des Septanted’aprèsles Pères de l’église”,inL’homme devant Dieu. Mélanges H. Lubac,3vols., Paris 1963, vol. I, 169–187; W.,Adler, “The Jews as falsifiers:chargesof tendentious emendation in anti-Jewish Christian polemic”,inD.Goldenberg (ed.), Translation of Scriptures: Proceedings of aConferenceatthe AnnenbergResearch Institute, May15, 1989,Philadel- phia 1990,1–27;Y.Moss, “Versions and Perversions of Genesis:JacobofEdessa, Saadia Gaon and the Falsification of Biblical History”,inA.M. Butts – S. Gross (eds.), Syriac . Intersections across the FirstMillennium,Tübingen2020, 207–231; Conterno (cf. fn. 23)151–158.  See J.-M. Gaudeul – R. Caspar, “Textes de la tradition musulmane concernant le taḥrīf (falsifica- tion) des Écritures”,Islamochristiana 6(1980), 61– 104;G.S.Reynolds, “On the Qur’anic accusation of Scriptural Falsification (taḥrīf)and Christian Anti-Jewish Polemic”,Journal of the American Oriental Society 130.2 (2010), 189–202; D. Thomas, “The Bible in EarlyMuslim Anti-Christian Polemic”, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 1(1996), 29–38;C.Adang, “Medieval Muslim Polemic against the Jew- ish Scriptures”,inJ.Waardenburg(ed.), Muslim Receptions of Other Religions.AHistorical Survey,Ox- ford – New York 1999,143 – 168. Shaping the Good Christian King underMuslim Rule 429

of the world, so as not to coincide with that time at which, as the prophets after Moses had prophesied, the birth of Jesus from apurevirgin at the end of time was to take place.²⁶

He rejects the Christian numerological interpretationsofDaniel’sprophecybased on the Syriac languagebecause the original languageofthe prophetical revelation was Hebrew,but he alsorepliestothe claims of superiority of the Septuagint:

Now this [i.e., the Greek translation orderedbyPtolemy] is the copyofthe Christians,and peo- ple think that in it no alteration or transposition has takenplace. The Jews,however,givequitea different account, viz. that they made the translation under compulsion and that they yielded to the king’sdemand onlyfromfear of violenceand maltreatment,and not beforehavingagreed upon invertingand confoundingthe texts of the book.²⁷

Al-Biruni eventuallyargues that,historically, the onlyuncorrupted text of the Torah should be the Samaritan one. If read against the backdrop of Muslim accusations of taḥrīf,Agapius’ blamegame seems thereforemeant to turnthe tables on the Jews in order to clear the Christians of such accusations. And since the attack to the Jews implied an attack to Syriac Christians as well, the Melkites are implicitly the only ones who come out clean from the whole taḥrīf affair. The possibletargets of this digression, and the context that urgedAgapius to deal in such an extensive waywith the inconsistencies of biblical chronology, seem thereforeclear.Besides putting forth the aboveapologetic function,Agapius’ concern for chronologicalaccuracyalso responds to the natureofthe work he was writing and reflects his approach to history.The attention paid to absoluteand rela- tive chronology and to chronological questions – such as the date of the Creation, the world’,the dateofthe Incarnation, the date of the end of times – has been long recognised as aspecific feature of Christian universalhistories, and Agapius is no exception to that.²⁸ What is more, at the end of the first part of his work Agapius claims thathewill carry on his narrative “until the moment of the end of the world and the termination of the years of the world, based on what the Prophets

 C.E. Sachau, The Chronology of Ancient Nations:anEnglishversion of the Arabic text of the Athâr- ul-BâkiyaofAlbîrûnî,London 1879,18.  Sachau(cf. fn. 26)24. Al-Biruni is referringheretoone of the Rabbinic versions of the Septuagint story,according to which the Seventy intentionallyinserted changesintheir translation because they did not want the true word of God to fall into the hands of the pagans.See E. Tov, “The Rabbinic tradition concerning the ‘alterations’ inserted intothe Greek Pentateuch and their relation to the orig- inal text of the LXX”, Journal for the Study of Judaism 15 (1984), 65– 89.  W. Adler, Time Immemorial: archaic historyand its sourcesinChristian chronography from Julius Africanus to George Syncellus,Washington, D.C.1989;B.Croke, “The origins of the Christian World Chronicle”,inB.Croke – A.M. Emmett (eds.), Historyand Historians in Late Antiquity,Sydney 1983, 116–131 ;repr.inB.Croke, Christian Chronicles of Byzantine history, 5th–6th centuries,Aldershot 1992,VI; A. Marsham, “Universal Histories in and the Islamic World, c. 700 – 1400”,inS. Foot – C.F. Robinson (eds.), The OxfordHandbook of Historical Writing.Volume 2: 400–1400,Oxford 2012,431–456. 430 Maria Conterno

and God’srevealed books sayonthis regard,accordingtowhat reason and dic- tate.”²⁹ Unfortunatelythe final part of the chronicle is missing,but in view of this passageone should assume that it wasnot just limited to the author’stime:it even contained an eschatological section, thus possiblyrepresenting the onlyexam- ple of a ‘full’ universal history covering the entirety of the world’slifespan. Chrono- logical accuracy understandablyassumes an exceptional importance in his chroni- cle, which clarifies even better Agapius’ insistenceonthe interpretation of Daniel’s prophecyofthe 70 weeks and on the (accordingtohim) correct and incorrect num- bers of Genesis’ genealogy. Still, the role of Constantine in all this remains somewhat baffling.

AStory of Interwoven Echoes

The narrative concerning Constantine is amedley of themestaken from the hagio- graphical tradition on Constantine and Helena, most of which are very easy to rec- ognise. No visit of Constantine’stoJerusalem is historicallyattested, and no hagio- graphical tradition contains one either,but the emperor’striptothe HolyCity in search of Christ’srelics clearlyparallels the story of the Inventio Crucis,Helena’smis- sion to recover the True narrated in the Greek ecclesiastical histories.³⁰ The In- ventio Crucis generated in the East avariant called the Judas Ciriacus Legend,pre- served onlyinSyriac, and a ‘twin legend’ (reported, too, by Agapius in the second part of the chronicle³¹)accordingtowhich the of the Cross wasfirst discovered by Protonike, the converted wife of the Emperor . The Jews’ leakingthe tam- pering story and the HighPriests’ stubbornlydenying it mirror antitheticallythe Judas Ciriacus Legend in which the Jews denyknowing wherethe Cross is hidden but eventuallyone of them, Judas, reveals the secret to Helena and becomes Chris- tian with the name of Ciriacus.³² Constantine’sorder to fetch the copies of the Sep- tuagint from various cities across the Mediterranean echoes an episode with astron- gerhistoricalbackground, namely Constantine’srequest to produce fifty copies of the Scriptures for the churches of Constantinople,attested by in his .³³ Finally, the dispute between the bishopsand the HighPriests recalls

 A.A. Vasiliev, Kitab al-ʿunvan. Histoireuniverselle écrite par Agapius (Mahboub)deMenbidj (PO 11.1), Paris 1915,144.  Socr., hist.eccl. 2.17;Sozom. 2.1; Theod., hist.eccl. 17.  A.A. Vasiliev, Kitab al-ʿunvan. Histoireuniverselle écrite par Agapius (Mahboub)deMenbidj (PO 7.4), Paris 1911, 487–488. On the Judas Ciriacus and the Protonike Legend see J.W. Drijvers, Helena Au- gusta:The Mother of Constantine the Great and the Legend of her Finding of the ,Leiden 1992.  J.W. Drijvers, TheFinding of the True Cross: TheJudas Kyriakos Legend in Syriac.Introduction, Text and Translation (CSCO 565), Leuven 1997.  Euseb., vita Const.34–37.Onthe parallel between the two narrativessee A. Wasserstein – D. Was- serstein, TheLegend of the Septuagintfrom ClassicalAntiquity to Today,Cambridge 2006,150 –151. Shaping the Good Christian King under Muslim Rule 431

the Actus Sylvestri,the legend of Constantine’shealing,conversion and by Sylvester in Rome. Constantine has Sylvester confront twelve rabbis in apublic debate after the Jews try to convince Constantine that their God and not Christ has performedthe miracle thathealed him; the debate is won triumphantlybythe Pope. Interestingly,inaneastern variant of the legend, preserved by Agapius himself and by the Chronicle of Seert (a tenth-century East Syrian ecclesiastical history in Arabic), Constantine summons twelve Christian bishops, instead of Sylvester alone, to debate against the rabbis.³⁴ Other disputes present in the Constantinian tra- dition are also called to mind, such as the one alreadymentioned between Helena and the Jews in the Judas Ciriacus Legend,orthe dispute between Constantine him- self and the pagan priests following Constantine’svision of the Cross in the sky,pre- served in aSyriac liturgical poem on the finding of the Cross.³⁵ Agapius’ narrative seems indeedacomposition of alreadyexisting materials skilfullytailored to a new context – very much like the of Constantine in Rome. Besides recalling various elements of the Constantinian saga, the story of Con- stantine’srecovery of the Septuagint alsoparallels other accounts centred on the re-discovery of lost or hiddenwisdom by avirtuous king,the most conspicuous prec- edent being the biblical king Josiah.³⁶ Accordingtothe second book of Kingsand the second book of Chronicles,³⁷ duringthe restoration of the Temple of Jerusalem or- dered by Josiah the workers found the Book of the Law(namely the Torah, or possi- blyjust Deuteronomy), which had been disregarded and totallyforgotten by the Jews. The ‘Septuagint-Tampering-Constantine excursus’ in Agapius presents some signifi- cant points of contact with the story of Josiah. When the book found in the Temple is broughttohim, Josiah immediatelyconsults the most reliable religious authority, the prophetess Hulda, who tells him that after Moses’sdeath the people of Israel had been led astray and ignored God’scommandments;likewise Constantine, once he has receivedthe copies of the Septuagint and compared them with the Hebrew Torah, summons the Christian bishops who reveal to him how the authentic word of God had remained hiddensince Jesus’ time by explaining the discrepancies and instructinghim on the meaning of Daniel’sprophecyofthe seventy weeks. After receiving the prophetess’ response, Josiah renews the long-forgotten Covenant between Israel and the Lordand has the people pledge themselvestoit. Similarly,

 Vasiliev (cf. fn. 29) 543; A. Scher, Histoirenestorienne (Chronique de Seert),Part I.1(PO 4.3), Paris 1908, 262. On the various versions of the Actus Sylvestri see T. Canella, Gli ‘Actus Sylvestri’.Genesi di una leggenda su Costantino Imperatore, 2006.  See S.P. Brock, “TwoSyriac Poems on the Invention of the Cross,” in N. el-Khoury – H. Crouzel – R. Reinhardt (eds.), LebendigeÜberlieferung: Prozesse der Annäherung und Auslegung.Festschrift für Hermann-Josef Vogt zum60. Geburtstag,Beirut – Ostfildern 1992, 55–82; repr.inS.P.Brock, From Ephrem to Romanos.Interactions between Syriac and Greek in Late Antiquity (Variorum Collected Stud- ies Series CS664), Aldershot – Brooksfield, VT 1999,XI.  Another example is the discovery of the works of DictysofCretebythe Emperor Claudius,nar- rated in Ioh. Mal.10.28.  2Kgs 22:8 – 23:3 and 2Chr 34:14 – 28. 432 Maria Conterno

the Jews’ plot is exposed and the ‘true Torah’ is handed out to the world again after Constantine’sintervention.Animplicit anticipation of Josiah’sstory can be found in Deuteronomy, whereweread thatafter having written the Book of the Law, Moses foresees the Jew’sfuture disobedience and fall into sin and orders the Book of the Lawbepreserved beside the Arc of the Covenantsothat it would be found again and remind the Jews of their misconduct.³⁸ Similarly,Agapius says that it wasthanks to the Lord’sProvidence that one of the copies of the Septuagint was brought to Jer- usalem and preserved in the Temple because God alreadyknew thatthe Jews were going to crucify Christ and then tamper with the HolyScripturestohide the truth. In Agapius’ narrative,therefore, Constantine reduplicates the biblical model of the pious king predestined to bring back to light the wordofGod after it has been obli- terated by the sinful Jews. Oddlyenough, Josiah is presented onlyvery brieflyinhis chronicle and his re-discovery of the Book of the Lawisnot mentioned at all,³⁹ leav- ing no intra-textual parallel between the twofigures.Wecan assume that Agapius relied on his readers’ knowledge of biblical history and thoughtthat the association between Constantine and his biblical precedentwould be clear even if he did not tell Josiah’sstory in the chronicle. Or,onthe contrary,heintentionallyavoided the dou- blet,asitwere, and simplytransferred Josiah’srole to Constantine, in order to make the latter the onlyprovidential ‘re-discoverer of God’sword’ in world history.But again: whyConstantine?

Constantine’s(Difficult) Legacy

The star of Constantine the Great had never gone down in the Christian world, but in tenth-centuryByzantium the figure of the first Christian emperorwas experiencing a particularlysignificant revival. Constantine wasakey figure in the propaganda of the Macedonian ,especiallyunder his namesake,the learned emperor Constan- tine VII Porphyrogennetos (945–959).⁴⁰ The dynasty’sfounder,(867–886), had alreadybeen associated with Constantine the Great in eulogies and iconography

 Dt 31:26 – 29 (New International Version): “Take this Book of the Lawand placeitbeside the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord your God. Thereitwill remain as awitness against you. ForIknow how rebellious and stiff-necked youare.Ifyou have been rebellious against the Lord while Iamstill alive and with you, how much morewill yourebel after Idie! Assemble before me all the elders of your tribes and all your officials,sothat Ican speak these wordsintheir hearingand call the heavens and the earth to testify against them. ForIknow that after my death youare suretobecome utterly corrupt and to turn from the wayIhave commanded you. In days to come, disaster will fall on you because youwill do evil in the sight of the Lordand arouse his anger by what your hands have made.”  Vasiliev (cf. fn. 29) 203.  See A. Markopoulos, “Constantine the Great in Macedonian historiography: models and ap- proaches”,inP.Magdalino (ed.), New Constantines. TheRhythm of Imperial RenewalinByzantium, 4th–13th centuries,Aldershot 1994,159–170. Shaping the Good Christian King under Muslim Rule 433

duringhis lifetime⁴¹ but once the dynastic line was well established, Basil’shumble origins and the irregular wayinwhich he had taken the (that is, by murdering his predecessor III) became among the main stumbling blocks for imperial ideology. Constantine VII went so far as to ascribetoBasil’smother ablood-link with none the less than Constantine the Great,claiming thus for his grandfather (and for himself)not just noble ancestry but the highest imperial legitimacy.⁴² In his dynastic propaganda – which influenced, directlyorindirectly, the whole contemporaryliter- ary production – Porphyrogennetos presented himself not justasadescendant of Constantine I, but as the Constantine the Great of his owntime. The impact of the Macedonian propaganda was not limited to Constantinople or to the borders of the Byzantine Empire: the ‘rumour’ of Constantine VII’sfamilyrelation to Constan- tine the Great reached the West thanks to Liutprand of Cremona’s Antapodosis⁴³ and the imperial Constantinian ideologyalso boosted the ongoingreconquest of North- ern Syria. The transfer of the HolyMandilion from EdessatoConstantinople after the siegeofthe city in 944,for instance, was presented as aparallel to the retrieval of the relics of the cross by Helena.⁴⁴ Agapius was writing preciselyinthat regionin those very years,⁴⁵ and the Melkites on both sides of the advancingborder werelikely to be the most immediate recipients of Byzantine propaganda. This should be defi- nitelytaken into account when trying to understand the origin of the ‘Septuagint- Tampering-Constantine’ narrative and Agapius’ reasons for includingitinhis chroni- cle. But in order to produce an entirelycompellingexplanation to the involvement of Constantine in the ‘Septuagint-Tampering’ story,weneed to look at the Islamic and the Syriac traditions as well. Constantine the Great wasconsidered by Muslim historians as the first Byzantine emperor,and he was often placed by side with Ardashir,the founder of the Sas- sanid dynasty,asone of the most important kingsofpre-Islamic times.⁴⁶ Yetheisnot presented in acompletelypositive light by the Islamic tradition. Muhammad was the

 Markopoulos (cf. fn. 40) 160 –162.  Vita Basilii,inTheophanes Continuatus 215.  Liutprand of Cremona, Antapodosis 1.7.  See A. Cameron, “The History of the : the TellingofaStory”,inC.Mango – O. Pritsak – U.M. Pasicznyk (eds.), Okeanos: Essayspresented to Ihor Sevcenkoonhis Sixtieth Birthday by his Colleagues and Students,Cambridge,MA, 1984,80–94;Markopoulos (cf. fn. 40) 165.  The terminus post quem of 941/2 ce is givenbyone of the chronological summaries provided by Agapius in the chronicle, whereasal-Masʿudi’scitation of the chronicle in his Book of Admonition and Revision,written around 956,provides the terminus ante quem.  On Constantine the Great in the Islamic tradition, see N.M. El-Cheikh, “The conversion of Con- stantine the Great: areading of Arabic-Muslim sources”,inJournal of TurkishStudies 36 (2011), 69 – 83 and M. Di Branco, Storie Arabe di Greci ediRomani. La Grecia eRoma nella storiografia arabo-islamica medievale, 2009,136–142. Foramoredetailed studyofthe representation of Con- stantine in Arabic (both Islamic and Christian) historiographysee J. Stutz, Constantinus Arabicus.Die arabische Geschichtsschreibung und das christlischeRom,PiscatawayNJ2017, who also comments brieflyupon Agapius’ excursus (83–90,with partial German translation). 434 Maria Conterno

‘Seal of the Prophets’ and his revelation stands in continuity both with the Jewish and the Christian ones but also with the intention to correct them since both have been perverted in the course of time. Christians and Constantine, in particularas convener of the council of , wereopen to criticism because church councils regularlyintroducedmajor deviations from Jesus’ doctrine and the contents of the Scriptures. Particularlyrelevant for our understandingofAgapius’ digression is the anti-Christian treatise written by the Muslim theologian ʿAbdal-Jabbar ibn Ahmad, entitled TheEstablishmentofProofs for the Prophethood of OurMaster Mo- hammad.⁴⁷ One of ʿAbdal-Jabbar’smain polemical points against the Christians is that they perverted Christ’soriginal doctrine, moulding their religion to make it more palatable to the Romans out of pure political opportunism.Heaccusesthe Christians of abandoning the Hebrew languageand adopting Greek in order to cover their manipulations of the Scriptures and the and he claims that the full ‘Romanisation’ of the Christian doctrine was achievedpreciselyunder Constan- tine, with the council of Nicaea. About the council he says:⁴⁸

Forthis reason 318 men were assembled in Nicaeainthe land of the Romans, and they estab- lished the doxology of the creed which Ihavealreadyquoted. They submitted the creed to Con- stantine, whoaccepted it and imposed it upon his subjects,killingthose whorefusedtoaccept it.The recusants were forcedtomakeashow of acceptingthe creed,out of fear of the sword,and all the other formulas were abolished. Those whofollowed the [true] religion of Christ wereper- secuted, forced to venerate the cross,eat pork, and follow the religious practices of the Romans.

And again, simulating adispute with the Christians:

If they say ‘We accept what they saybecause they have performed miracles,’ we can point to the preceding account in which we have shown that the whole business began with Constantine the son of Helena, that Christ had taught them to observethe lawofMoses and follow the practices which himself had shown them during his lifetime […]. The story of their abandonment of these doctrines can be found in their book called the and in their Synod.

ʿAbdal-Jabbar is the first Muslim author to put forward such polemicalarguments against the Christians, at least to our knowledge.Hewas born in 935, thereforehe was active at least one or two generations after Agapius.Itisadmittedlydifficult to tell what in his work is innovative and what instead comes from alreadycirculat- ing polemicaltopoi. Yet, very similar allegations on the part of the Muslims can be inferred from earlier Christian Arabic apologetics. Sydney Griffith, for instance, has argued that Theodore AbuQurrah’svery specific arguments in his treatise On Or-

 ʿAbdal-Jabbar, Tathbit dalaʾil-Nubuwwat Sayyidina Muhammad,ed. ʿA. ʿUthman, 2vols., Beirut 1966.OnʿAbdal-Jabbar and his work see G.S.Reynolds, AMuslim Theologianinthe Sectarian Milieu: Abdal-Jabbar and the Critique of ChristianOrigins,Leiden 2004.  An English translation and discussion of the relevantpassagescan be found in S.M. Stern, “ʿAbd al-Jabbār’saccountofhow Christ’sreligion was falsified by the adoption of Roman customs”, JThS 19 (1968), 128–185, esp. 145, 151. Shaping the Good Christian King under Muslim Rule 435

thodoxy (late eighth/earlyninth century) allow us to deducethat he was countering, among manyattacks, an attempt to demean Melkite doctrines by alleging thatthey werederived from the authority of the Byzantine emperor rather thanfrom the Bible; he alsopointed preciselytothe church councils as the fateful tool of distortion of the true religion.⁴⁹ Theodore writes for instance:

It is necessary for the church to praise Christ,sincehemade the kings subject to her,that they might serveher fathers and her teachers,because every kinginwhose time one of these councils convened, was one of the most pious of all, since he supported it by hostingitand restrainedthe divisions in it so that the fathers might be able to investigateintothe religion with protection and composureand to carry out its decision. As far as the kinghimself is concerned, it did not belongtohim to investigate into the religious matter or to confirm the decision about any- thing. He was merelyaservant to the fathers,listening to them obedientlyand acceptingwhat- ever they decided in the religious matter without participating with them in anyofthe investi- gations.⁵⁰

Likewise, the Arab JacobiteHabib ibn Khidma AbuRaʾita al-Takriti (c. 770–c. 835) de- voted alarge section of his brief treatise entitled TheRefutation of the Melkites con- cerning the Union [of the Divinity and Humanity in Christ] to defend the who convened the first three ecumenical councils,especiallyConstantine, presentinghim as the one who made it possiblefor the council Fathers to define the true faith thus protecting the Church and the Christian doctrine from the lies of the heretics.⁵¹ Abu Raʾita’streatise was written as aletter addressed to the Armenian ruler Ashot ibn Sambat Msaker with the aim of countering preciselyTheodore AbuQurrah’sattempt at convertingthe miaphysiteArmenians to Chalcedonian Christianity.SandraToe- nies Keating’sthorough analysis of the text,though,has demonstrated that Abu Raʾita expectedhis letter to be read or heard by Muslims as well⁵² and thatsome of his arguments (includingthe fervent apology of Constantine) can onlybeex- plained as responses to the attacks of Muslim controversialists against the Christi- ans. Besides corroborating what can be inferred from Theodore AbuQurrah’streaty On Orthodoxy,Abu Raʾita’sletter showsthat not onlythe Melkites,but also non-Chal- cedonian Christians, felt that in the light of the fifth-century developments the image of Constantine as the first convener of achurch council wassomehow problematic and needed to be claimed and justified. The Syriactradition shows thatthis was al- readythe case before Constantine and the church councils became the targetofMus- lim criticism.

 S.H. Griffith, “Muslims and Church Councils:the Apology of TheodoreAbūQurrah”, Studia Pat- ristica 25 (1993), 270 –299.  Translation by Griffith (cf. fn. 49)289.  S. Toenies Keating, “Ḥabībibn Khidma Abū Rāʾiṭaal-Takrītī’s ‘The Refutation of the Melkites con- cerning the Union [of the Divinity and Humanity in Christ]’ (III)”,inD.Thomas (ed.), Christians at the heart of Islamic rule: church life and scholarship in ʿAbbasid ,Leiden – Boston 2003,39–53.  Toenies Keating(cf. fn. 51) 45 – 48 (see esp. fn. 53). 436 Maria Conterno

The so-called Canons of Marutha of Maipherqat – the Syriac canons allegedlyis- sued from the synod held in -Ctesiphon in 410 – are transmitted together with asmall corpus of narrativesonConstantine and Helena. These include an ac- count of the council of Nicaea that presents us with ahighlysymbolic scene in which Constantine giveshis ring,his sceptre, and his sword to the 318 bishops say- ing: “Behold, todaypower is giventoyou on the whole Church, the ,and the Empire, and to all the ranks that are subjected to the clergyand the empire. God will deem youresponsible for the salvation or perdition of all the Church’ssons.”⁵³ This very passage, in which Constantine literallygives carte blanche to the bishopson both religious and political matters, clearlyaims at freeinghim from the blame of having interfered with doctrinal matters while implicitly setting abenchmark for his successors and implicitly condemning those who did not follow his example.⁵⁴ Although these materials are preserved exclusively in the East Syrian tradition, it has been argued that the sections pertainingtoHelena and to the council of Nicaea originated in the miaphysitecirclesaround Rabbula of Edessainthe years 430 – 440.⁵⁵ This apologetic picture of Constantine, therefore, circulatedacross the various Syriactraditions and in addition to defending the reputation of the first Christian king,italso worked – very conveniently – as an implicit legitimation of the existence of Christian Churches that did not respond to aChristian king.Incontrast is the un- apologetic judgement of John of Phenek, who does not even take the trouble of clear- ing Constantine’sname. On the contrary,the seventh-century East Syrian author ex- plicitlypoints his finger at the council of Nicaea as the door through which dispute and corruption entered the Church, and he depicts all Christian kingsinavery neg- ative light:

There had been manygatherings of bishops prior to that at Nicaea, but they had not been ecu- menical, and their aim was not to make anew creed, […]. But oncethere was respite,and be- lievingkings held swayoverthe Romans,itwas then that corruption and intrigues entered the churches,and therewereagreat manycreeds and assemblies of bishops,seeingthat each year they made anew creed. Peace and quiet thus broughtconsiderableloss upon them, for lovers of

 A. Vööbus (ed. and transl.), TheCanons ascribed to Mārūtā of Maipherqaṭ and related sources (CSCO 439 – 440,Scriptores Syri 191–192),2vols., Leuven 1982, 107(transl.), 135 (Syriac text). The same account of the Council of Nicaea is contained also in Barhadbeshabba ʿArbaia’secclesiastical history,see F. Nau(ed. and transl.), Première partie de l’HistoiredeBarḥadbešabba Arbaya (PO 23.2), Paris 1932, 207.  Forabroader analysis see M. Conterno, “Cultoememoria di Costantino nelle chiese sire.Agiog- rafia costantiniana nella liturgia enella storiografia siriaca”,inA.Melloni – P. Brown et al. (eds.), Flavius ValeriusConstantinus Maximus .Una enciclopedia internazionale sulla figura, il mito,lacritica elafunzione dell’imperatoredell’“editto” di Milano,6vols., Bologna – Rome 2013, vol.2, 425 – 439.  See J.W. Drijvers, “Marutha of Maïpherqat on Helena , Jerusalem and the Council of Ni- caea”, Studia Patristica 34 (2001), 51– 64. Shaping the Good Christian King under Muslim Rule 437

fame did not fail to stir up trouble, furtively usinggold to win the imperial ear,sothat they could playabout with the kings as if they werechildren.⁵⁶

Even before the Muslims started accusing Constantine of having ushered in the prac- tice of imperial interferenceonfaith matters,Christians of all confessions felt the need to accommodate the figure of the convener of the council of Nicaea, especially in light of what the fifth-century councils had broughtabout.Church councils and Church-State relations werethereforesensitiveissues for all Eastern Christians, but much more so for the Melkites,whose very denomination encapsulated this conten- tious point.Itisindeedtelling that,before the diffusion of the term ‘Melkites,’ the Chalcedonians werelabelled the ‘synodites’ in Syrian Orthodoxsources, with an im- plicit referencetotheir endorsement of the . Just as it happened with the accusation of corruption of the Scriptures, this polemicalweapon was soon taken up by the Muslims, who, in their attack against the Ahlal-Kitāb (People of the Book)left no internal disagreement unexploited, be it between Jews and Christians or among the different Christian confessions.And Constantine was inevitably caught in the middle.But Islamic sources reveal thatChristians and Muslims werenot the onlyones who fashionedportraits of Constantine based on theirown agenda. The above-mentioned Muslim theologian ʿAbdal-Jabbar offers his readers afour- pageaccount of Constantine’slife and deeds that contains rather peculiarinforma- tion. SamuelSternhas proposed adetailed analysis of this material and has convinc- ingly argued that it comes from an anti-hagiographical tradition on Constantine or- iginated in the pagan, Sabian, milieu of .⁵⁷ The city of Harran plays a prominent role indeed in ʿAbdal-Jabbar’snarrative:accordingtoit, Helena came from Harran and Constantine carriedout there amost fiercepersecution of the pa- gans,which is described at length. Furthermore, two specific customs of the Harra- nian Sabians appear in the story – namelytheir strong aversion to leprosy and their prohibition of eating beans – and they are singled out as aspecific targetofConstan- tine’spersecution. Stern has spotted traces of this very same pagan tradition in three more Muslim texts:⁵⁸ – Al-Masʿudi’shistorical compendium TheBookofAdmonition and Revision (c. 956) – Al-Iskaf’streatise On the PrudentConduct of Government (late tenth–earlyelev- enth century) – Miskawayh’shistory entitled Experiences of the Nations (late tenth–earlyelev- enth century)

 Translation by S.P. Brock, see S.P. Brock, “North in the Late Seventh Century:Book XV of John bar Penkāyē’sRīšMellē”, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 9(1987), 51–75,esp. 59; repr.inS.P.Brock, Studies in Syriac Christianity,Hampshire – Brookfield VT 1992, II.  Stern (cf. fn. 48) 159–164.  Stern (cf. fn. 48) 164–176. 438 Maria Conterno

Al-Masʿudi explicitlystates thataccordingtopagan (namely Sabian) versions of the story,Constantine had adopted the Christian religion not because of anymiraculous healing but because leprosy was adisease that the pagans,contrary to the Christi- ans, would not tolerate in aking.Most remarkably, Al-Iskaf and Miskawayh bothre- port avariant version that includes atrip of Constantine’stoJerusalem and adispute between Jews and Christians. The Romans wanted to depose Constantine because of his leprosy,but

Constantinesaid to the Romans: ‘Give me adelaysothat Ican visit Jerusalem; when Icome back, Ishall resign my rule over you.’ They agreed and he went to Jerusalem. He askedthe Jews and the Christians to hold adisputation; choosingChristianity he and his followers adopt- ed that religion. He then returned to the land of the Romans,bringingwith him monks,priests, and bishops,and invited the Romans to become Christians.The greater part accepted his call, and with their help they foughtthose who refused. He overcame them, burnt and destroyed their books and their , builtchurches and convertedthe people to Christianity by the sword.⁵⁹

ʿAbdal-Jabbar,Al-Iskaf and Miskawayh wroteapproximatelyhalf acenturyafter Aga- pius, but Al-Masʿudi was Agapius’ contemporary and his Book of Admonitionand Re- was completed shortlyafter the latter’schronicle. Stern has provided compel- ling evidence that all the negative narrativesonConstantine reported by these four authorscome from amanifold, possiblyoral, tradition that wasalreadycirculating at,orevenbefore, Agapius’ time. By preservingthese fragments of pagan anti-Con- stantinian propaganda, the Muslim sources provide the last piece of the puzzle,- ablingustosketch the context and the issues that urgedAgapius (or his source) to fabricatethis brand-new episodeofthe Constantinian saga.

Reshaping Constantine between Byzantiumand Islam

Constantine was the Christian ruler par excellence,the prototype of the Christian king crystallised in the Eusebian paradigm. In the tenth centurythe symbolic capital provided by his figure was being intensively exploited by the legitimising propagan- da of the ,adynastythat was graduallybringingnorthern Syria under Byzantine control again. But in the East,Constantine was also acontroversial figure for being the first convener of achurch council. Church councils were seen by Muslims as the means by which Roman emperors had perverted the true Christian faith, and they wereathorn in the flesh for non-Chalcedonian Christians as well. On top of that, ancient pagan accounts thatpresented avery hostile picture of Con-

 Stern (cf. fn. 48) 170 – 171. Al-Iskaf’sand Miskawayh’stexts arevery close. Stern translatesAl-Is- kafs’ textand indicates additions found in Miskawayh’sinthe footnotes. Shaping the Good Christian King under Muslim Rule 439

stantine were still circulating and they werebeing takenupand retold by the Mus- lims. Agapius’ narrative is aperfect example of the impact on historiographyofwhat John Wansbrough has called the ‘Sectarian Milieu.’⁶⁰ In acontext in which all other Christian communities had givenuponthe idea thataChristian empire was needed at all and even pointed out the potential dangers of having aChristian king,Melkites had to defend the figure of Constantine, and thereforeofthe Christian king tout- court,from the crossfire of non-Chalcedonians, Muslims, and even pagans like the Sabians of Harran, in order to legitimise the fact that they shared the same faith as the Byzantine emperors. As Agapius tells us, it was not onlythat Constantine did not pervert the faith but,just like the pious biblical king Josiah, he should be credited with the recovery of the true Word of God, which had been forsakenby the Jews and consequentlymisinterpreted by the Syriac-speaking Christians. And the original Word of God is now preserved onlyinGreek, the languageofthe only legitimate Christian kingdom. Although Constantine’striptoJerusalemand his rediscovery of the Septuagint are not recalled in the account of Constantine’sreign contained in the second half of the chronicle, the two parts are consistent with each other and they work together to conjure up the apologetic imageofConstantine set out above.⁶¹ In narratinghis reign Agapius follows looselythe Greek ecclesiastical histories (notablySocrates of Constantinople and TheodoretofCyrrus). He begins by immediatelypresentingCon- stantine as the first Roman king converted and baptised,then he mentions the foun- dation of Constantinople and the war against , with the episodeofthe Visio Crucis and the related dream that granted him victory.What leadstohis con- version, though,isthe healing baptism performed by the bishop of Rome (whom,re- markably, Agapius calls Eusebius instead of Sylvester⁶²), which is then followed by the dispute between the bishopsand the Jews. After his conversion, Agapius reports his intense activity of churchbuilding and restoration, his laws in favour of the Chris- tians and his engagement in the forced conversion of pagans and Jews. Helen’spil- grimagetoJerusalem is dealt with very briefly, and with just aswift mentionofher recovery of the relics of the Cross. Agapius probablysacrificedHelena’slegend be- cause some fundamental items of its plot alreadyappear in the ‘Septuagint-Tamper- ing-Constantine’ excursusaswell as in the Syriac story of Protonike’sdiscovery of the Cross,for which Agapius makes room under the reign of Claudius. Her endeav- our,though,isrecalled laterinassociationwith Shahrbaraz’srestitution of the relic to .⁶³ The account of the Council of Nicaea starts with the text of the letter

 J.E. Wansbrough, TheSectarian Milieu: Content and Composition of Islamic Salvation History,Ox- ford1979.  Vasiliev (cf. fn. 29) 539 – 564.  This detail betrays Agapius’ familiarity with the Judas-Ciriacus Legend and with the Syriac Romance, see Conterno (cf. fn. 54) 436and Canella (cf. fn. 34) 81–83.  A.A. Vasiliev, Kitab al-ʿunvan. Histoireuniverselle écrite par Agapius (Mahboub)deMenbidj (PO 8.3), Paris 1912,467– 468. 440 Maria Conterno

with which Constantine convened the synod. The imageofthe emperoristhat of an organiser who took care of the practical aspectsand lookedafter the council fathers, attended the council withoutintervening on anyofthe doctrinal matters, and used his authority onlytoenforcethe decisions taken by the bishops. Socrates’ episode of the bishops’ mutual accusations thatConstantine refused to heed⁶⁴ is also present, but in Agapius’ version, instead of encouragingthem to forgive each other Constan- tine says: “If Iweretofind one of the priests under suspicionorput to the test I would cover him with my robe,” aline that signifies awillingness to be the protector of the clergy while not meddling and remainingtotallyimpartial.⁶⁵ Even in the fur- ther episodesinvolving and his partisans and their attempt at being reinstated in the Church, the emperoracts just as amediator whose unique aim appears to be the reconciliation of the parties. It seems, therefore, as though Agapius wanted the two narrativesabout Constantine to echo and support one other but avoided blatant overlaps. Significantly, towards the end of Constantine’sreign we find one of the numer- ous chronologicalrecaps with which the chronicle is interspersed, this time in the form of alist of all the kingsthat ruled from Adam up to Constantine, reported in two different versions accordingtothe authorities of Africanus and John Chrysos- tom.⁶⁶ This clearlyindicates thatConstantine’sreign is perceivedbyAgapius as awa- tershed moment in the succession of kingship on earth. By insertingthe flash-for- ward narrative on his rediscovery of the ‘True Torah’ at the time of Abraham, Agapius creates acircle that connects the first Christian king and his time to other positive kingly figures of the past and the relative pivotalhistoricalmoments: the bib- lical patriarchs,Alexander the Great,PtolemyII, Josiah. Likewise, through the men- tion of Helena’srecovery of the Cross, Constantine is later evoked as an implicit pos- itive parallel to Heraclius, the last Christian king whose regnal years Agapius uses as chronological reference before adopting the Islamic (Hijra) reckoningand caliphal regnal years. Whether Agapius composed the ‘Septuagint-Tampering-Constantine’ excursus himself, copied and pasteditfrom one of his sources, or extracted it and remoulded it at willcannot yetbeascertained, but the reasons whyheeither fabricated or de- cided to include this narrative in his chronicle become apparent if we read it against the backdrop of the problematic reception of the figure of Constantine in the Chris- tian and Islamic Near East.The piece happens to fit perfectlythe agenda of the tenth- century Melkite community of NorthernSyria, and it givesAgapius the chance to up- hold the principle of Christian kingship over and against bothnon-MelkiteChristians

 Socr., hist.eccl. 1.8.  Asimilar line is ascribed to Constantinealso in , whoprobablydepends on the same source,see J.-B. Chabot, Chronique de Michel le Syrien, patriarche jacobite d’Antioche (1166– 1199),4vols., Paris 1899–1924,I,245;Conterno (cf. fn. 54) 430 – 431.  Vasiliev (cf. fn. 29) 553–562. Shaping the Good Christian King under Muslim Rule 441

and Muslims⁶⁷ and to reaffirm the importance of Constantine the Great as one of the linchpins of the chronological architecture of human history designed by God’sProv- idence. As alastquestion, it is worth asking ourselveswhy whoever composed the ‘Sep- tuagint-Tampering-Constantine’ story did not just rework the existinghagiographical material on Constantine for his ownpurposes but invented atotallynew chapter of the Constantinian saga. Of course, anyanswer to this question will remain specula- tive,but one can assume that the author wanted, or needed, to provide new,fresh arguments, based on ‘historicallygrounded evidence,’ preciselytocounter more ef- fectively the attacks of the Muslims, who werebrowsingboth Christian and non- Christian traditions to build their own polemical arguments. And he brilliantly found away to kill twobirds with one stone, turning the tables on the Jews and the Syriac-speaking Christians through the accusation of taḥrīf,while at the same time clearingConstantine of anyblame. Constantine’strip to Jerusalem was most likelyintroduced to rectify the Harranian defamatory accounts,which, as we have seen, represent the onlytradition whereatrip of Constantine’stoJerusalem is to be found,and which in turn had probablyborrowed the detail from the Helena leg- ends. Thenew story,however,should not have sounded totallyunfamiliar either.An entirelynew story would not have been credible, whereas something that sounded familiar could easilybebought as an authentic piece of truth. Thenew composition, therefore, had to be skilfullyplaced within the alreadyexisting historiographical and hagiographical tradition, in order to receive authentication and authority from it – very much like the in Rome.

 On the Muslim readership of Agapius’ chronicle see Conterno (cf. fn. 23)165 – 166.