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Is There Room for Doubt in Christian Faith? Romanos the Melodist and John the Monk on the Apostle Thomas

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Is There Room for Doubt in Christian Faith? Romanos the Melodist and John the Monk on the Apostle Thomas chapter 6 Is There Room for Doubt in Christian Faith? Romanos the Melodist and John the Monk on the Apostle Thomas Mary B. Cunningham The apostle Thomas, also known as “the twin”, is an important but puzzling figure in Christian tradition. He is mentioned as one of the twelve disciples in all four canonical Gospels, but attracts notice especially in the Gospel of John where we hear (in connection with the miracle of the raising of Lazarus) that Thomas was willing to die with Jesus (Jn 11:16) and that, alone among the remaining disciples, he required physical proof of the resurrection when Christ appeared to them in the upper room (Jn 20:26–29). After placing his hand in the latter’s wounded side, Thomas declared, “My Lord and my God!” (Jn 20:28), thus becoming the first person to confess Christ’s divinity, according to the Evangelist John. Early Christian traditions, some of which are cited by Eusebius of Caesarea, state that Thomas went on to evangelise Syria and places further East, as far as southern India.1 A variety of apocryphal texts includ- ing the Acts, Apocalypse, and Gospels of Thomas, which either describe the apostle’s missionary activities or transmit secret teachings purportedly written down by “Didymus Judas Thomas”, have emerged in the course of the last two millennia.2 Some traditions, such as the story that Thomas arrived late at the tomb of the Virgin Mary—but in time to see her ascending to heaven and to re- ceive a belt which she threw down to him—reflect John’s depiction of Thomas as a faithful, albeit dilatory, follower of Christ.3 It appears that this apostle was seen, at quite an early stage in Christian tradition, as a model of faith, charac- terised by thoughtful investigation and indefatigable missionary activity. The Byzantine Church celebrated St Thomas on two main dates in the fixed and movable calendars. The first of these, 6 October, was the saint’s official 1 Eusebius, HE 3.1 (Bardy 1952, 97; trans. Williamson 1965, 107). 2 Apocryphal New Testament (Elliott 1993, 68–83, 123–147, 439–511). 3 Such traditions exist in association with the modern cults of the relic both at the Vatopedi Monastery on Mt Athos and the Cathedral of St Mary of the Holy Belt (Um al Zennar) at Homs, Syria. On the ‘late apostle’ traditions, see Shoemaker 2002, 67–71. © Mary B. Cunningham, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004439573_008 108 Cunningham feast-day,4 for which a kanon attributed to the ninth-century hymnographer Theophanes survives, along with troparia, stichera and aposticha that are sung especially in Vespers and Matins.5 The hymnography for the saint’s feast celebrates both Thomas’s activity as a missionary and his exploration of Christ’s resurrected body, as recounted in John 20:26–29. The latter pas- sage was probably read out in most churches and monasteries at the Divine Liturgy for this day, as the Typikon of the Great Church suggests.6 The second date, which occurred in the movable calendar that revolved around Easter, be- longed to the period between that great feast and Pentecost and came, during the Middle Byzantine period, to be served by the liturgical book known as the Pentekostarion. This was the Sunday of Thomas, which occurred a week after Easter and celebrated—both “historically” and liturgically—Christ’s entrance, as the resurrected Lord, into the room where the eleven remaining disciples were staying in Jerusalem.7 The feast-day served as a kind of “seal” for the pas- chal celebrations that followed the Passion and resurrection of Christ: it con- firmed the reality of the latter, but also underlined the need for acceptance and faith on the part of humanity. The reading of this section of John’s Gospel appears to have been instituted early, according both to the late fourth-century journal of Egeria and the fifth-century Armenian Lectionary of Jerusalem;8 it is also attested in the surviving Constantinopolitan liturgical sources.9 This chapter, which focuses on two important Byzantine hymns that were both probably composed for the movable Sunday of Thomas (although they both also deal with themes that are relevant to St Thomas’s feast on 6 October), has two main goals. The first, which is probably the most significant in the context of this volume, is to compare the literary and performative aspects of two hymns that celebrated the apostle Thomas, one of which is a kontakion and the other a kanon.10 Romanos the Melodist’s kontakion, “On Doubting Thomas”, was composed in the sixth century and intended for the vigil 4 This presumably commemorates the date on which St Thomas was martyred, an event which took place according to Syriac tradition at Mylapore, near Madras. The apostle’s body was translated in the fourth century to Edessa, in Syria, before being transferred to Ortona in the Abruzzi. St Thomas’s feast-day is celebrated on 3 July in the Roman Catholic and Syriac Churches and on 21 December in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer (which may reflect earlier Roman Catholic practice). See Cross and Livingston 1997, 1612–1613. 5 Menaion 1888, vol. 1, 341–349. 6 The full reading for the day was Jn 20:19–31; see Typikon of the Great Church (Mateos 1962, vol. 1, 62). 7 Pentekostarion 1883, 40–58. 8 Egeria, Travels (Pétré 1971, 244–245); Armenian Lectionary (Renoux 1971, 324–325). 9 For example, Typikon of the Great Church (Mateos 1962, vol. 2, 109). 10 For another recent comparative study of this kind, see Arentzen 2019..
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