ARAM, 20 (2008) 163-180. doi: 10.2143/ARAM.20.0.2033127D. WOODS 163 POPE ZACHARIAS (741-52) AND THE HEAD OF ST. GEORGE Dr. DAVID WOODS (University College Cork) Writing probably shortly after the death of his subject, the anonymous au- thor of the life of Pope Zacharias in the Liber Pontificalis preserves a short account of how this pope discovered a neglected and forgotten relic of a St. George: Huiusdemque temporibus magnum thesaurum dominus Deus noster in hac Romana urbe per eundem almificum pontificem propalare dignatus est. In venerabile itaque patriarchio sacratissimum beati Georgii martyris hisdem sanctissimus papa in capsa reconditum repperit caput; in qua et pittacium pariter invenit, litteris exaratum grecis, ipsud esse significantes. Qui sanctissimus papa omnino satisfactus, ilico adgregato huius Romane urbis populo, cum hymnis et canticis spiritalibus in venerabili diaconia eius nomini, sitam in hac Romana civitate, regione secunda, ad Velum aureum, illud deduci fecit, ubi immensa miracula et beneficia omnipotens Deus ad laudem nominis sui per eundem sacratissimum martyrem operare dignatur. In his time Our Lord God saw fit in this city of Rome to disclose a great treasure through this bountiful pontiff. In the venerable patriarchate the holy pope discov- ered St. George the martyr’s sacred head, kept safe in a casket; in this he also found a note made out in Greek letters, indicating its identity. The holy pope, alto- gether satisfied, immediately convened this city of Rome’s people, and caused it to be taken with hymns and spiritual chants to the venerable deaconry which is dedicated to him in this city, in the 2nd region at the Velabrum; and there almighty God sees fit to work infinite miracles and benefits to the praise of his own name through this sacred martyr.1 1 Text from L. Duchesne (ed.), Le Liber Pontificalis: Texte, introduction et commentaire, 2 vols. (Paris, 1886-92), p. 434. Translation from R. Davis, The Lives of the Eighth-Century Popes (Liber Pontificalis) (Translated Texts for Historians 13: Liverpool, 1992), p. 48. I thank Dr. Davis for his comments on an earlier draft of this paper, even where I have stubbornly ig- nored them. On the court of Pope Zacharias, see J. Osborne, “Papal Court Culture during the Pontificate of Zacharias (AD741-52)”, in C. Cubitt (ed.), Court Culture in the Early Middle Ages: The Proceedings of the First Alcuin Conference (Studies in the Early Middle Ages 3: Turnhout, 2003), pp. 223-34. For a recent review of the archaeological evidence, see M.G. Turco, “The Church of St. George in Velabrum in Rome: Techniques of Construction, Materials, and Historical Transformations”, in S. Huerta (ed.), Proceedings of the First International Congress on Construction History (Madrid, 2003), pp. 2001-013. Dating c.635-45, the De Locis Sanctis Martyrum Quae Sunt Foris Civitatis Romae 28 records the existence of a basilica of St. George within Rome, but nothing more is known about this. For a survey of the development of the cult of martyrs at Rome, see A. Thacker, “Rome of the martyrs: Saints, Cults and Relics, fourth to Seventh Centuries", in E. Ó Carragáin and C. Neuman de Vegvar (eds.), Roma Felix-Formation and Reflections of Medieval Rome (Aldershot, 2007), pp. 13-49. 07-0398_Aram20_10_Woods 163 09-16-2008, 17:16 164 POPE ZACHARIAS (741-52) AND THE HEAD OF ST. GEORGE It is noteworthy that the author does not attempt to explain who this St. George was, where he had died, how he had died, or when he had died. It is assumed that the very name of the martyr, George, was enough to allow his identification. At this time, there was only one martyr of this name who en- joyed an almost universal cult throughout the Christian community, in both East and West, the St. George whose primary cult-centre was located at Dios- polis in Palestine.2 Hence the author of this account seems to have assumed that the St. George whose skull Zacharias had brought to light once more was the St. George of Diospolis. In this, he presumably repeats the identification which Pope Zacharias himself had made when he first rediscovered it, and which continued to be made at the church of St. George in the Velabrum when he himself was writing. Modern commentators on this issue tend to repeat this identification at face value, that Zacharias rediscovered what he believed to be the skull of St. George of Diospolis.3 The implication, usually left unstated, is that since the nonsensical story concerning the martyrdom of St. George of Diospolis proves that he had never existed in the first place, it is obvious that the skull cannot really have been his, that is, that it cannot have been a genuine relic.4 The growth in the cult of relics from the late-fourth century onwards re- sulted in a great demand for relics, and local bishops were often rather uncriti- cal in their acceptance of newly uncovered remains as those of martyrs.5 Inevi- 2 In general, see the Bollandist, Acta Sanctorum Aprilis T. III (Antwerp, 1675), pp. 100-63. In order to set his cult in its proper context, since he was but one of several military martyrs whose cult thrived during the early Byzantine period, see H. Delehaye, Les Légendes Grecques des Saintes Militaires (Paris, 1909); also C. Walter, The Warrior Saints in Byzantine Art and Tradi- tion (Aldershot, 2003). For the history and archaeology of Diospolis, also known as Lydda, see J.J. Schwartz, Lod (Lydda), Israel, from Its Origins through the Byzantine Period 5600BCE – 640CE (BAR International Series 571: Oxford, 1991). 3 See e.g. Bibliotheca Sanctorum 6 (Rome, 1966), p. 518; S. Riches, St. George: Hero, Mar- tyr, and Myth (Thrupp, 2000), pp. 16-17; C. Stace, St. George: Patron Saint of England (Lon- don, 2002), pp. 24-25. 4 The earliest form of the passion records that George was martyred by an otherwise unknown king of Persia, Datianus, at an unspecified location, following a series of miracles during which he had raised the dead, caused wooden objects to transform into living trees, and had even risen from the dead himself on three different occasions. A fifth-century manuscript in Vienna pre- serves fragments of the earliest form of the passion in Greek. See K. Krumbacher, Der heilige Georg in der griechischen Überlieferung (Munich, 1911), 1-3. I have argued elsewhere that the author of original passion of St. George used as the main source and model for his fiction a vari- ant of the earliest form of the passion of another military martyr, St. Christopher of Antioch in Syria. See D. Woods “The Origin of the Cult of St. George”, in M. Humphries and V. Twomey (eds.), Commemorating the Great Persecution, AD303 (Irish Theological Quarterly Book Series 4: Dublin, forthcoming). The earliest form of the passion had been slowly transformed in order to render it much more historically acceptable by the time that St. Andrew of Crete (c.660-740) composed his two sermons in praise of St. George, so that, for example, the ruler who had mar- tyred him was now identified as the Roman emperor Diocletian (284-305). George was eventu- ally identified with the anonymous figure who tore down the first edict of persecution when it was initially posted up in Nicomedia on 24 February 303 (Eusebius, HE 8.5; Lactantius, De Mort. Pers. 13 ), but, as is widely recognized, this figure is probably identifiable as the Evethius whose death in Nicomedia is commemorated by the Syriac martyrology of 411 on that date. 5 In general, see E.D. Hunt, “The Traffic in Relics: Some Late Roman Evidence”, in S. Hackel (ed.), The Byzantine Saint: University of Birmingham 14th Spring Symposium of Byz- 07-0398_Aram20_10_Woods 164 09-16-2008, 17:16 D. WOODS 165 tably, there must have been a great deal of deliberate fraud also, although this is usually impossible to prove at this distance in time.6 Hence the immediate temptation upon reading the account of Pope Zacharias’ apparent rediscovery of the alleged skull of St. George is to treat this relic either as a pious error or an impious fraud which someone had managed to foist upon one of Zacharias’ predecessors in the see of Rome. The possibility that this may have been a genuine relic of some other George rather than of George of Diospolis seems to have been generally ignored. This is precisely the argument which I wish to advance here, that Zacharias misidentified the skull which he rediscovered, that it was a genuine relic of a real martyr by the name of George, but of a far more recent martyr than St. George of Diospolis was supposed to have been. Against Identification as the Head of St. George of Diospolis The first question to ask here is why exactly Zacharias believed that he had rediscovered the head of St. George of Diospolis in particular. Four factors probably contributed to this identification. First, the note which accompanied this skull must have stated the name of the alleged martyr at least, George. One may assume here that Zacharias, who was of Greek origin, would have been able to read it correctly had the writing on the tag been at all legible.7 As to its legibility, since a large number of similar documents from as early as the seventh century have survived in a legible condition even until the present, there seems no reason to assume otherwise in this case.8 Second, the fact that the note was written in Greek suggested that the relic had probably come from the Greek-speaking East, and that the martyr to whom it had belonged ought to have suffered and been buried there.