The Barbarian Plain: Saint Sergius between Rome and Iran (review)

Elizabeth Key Fowden. The Barbarian Plain: Saint Sergius between Rome and Iran. The Transformation of the Classical Heritage XXVIII. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999. Pp. xix + 227. $55.00.

Elizabeth Fowden has written a masterful study of the cult of St. Sergius, whose shrine at Rusafa stood at the intersection of Roman and Persian empires on the "Barbarian Plain," where sedentary culture and nomadic life came together and great-power diplomacy and Chalcedonian/Monophysite power-politics confronted one another. Fowden's scholarship, like Sergius' cult, crosses all sorts of boundaries: it combines hagiographical text-criticism (in several languages) with archaeology and art history; religion with military and diplomatic history. Though it focuses narrowly on a single saint and cult, it successfully places Sergius and Rusafa in a larger context. It is a microhistory with a broad relevance, setting a strong example for how such tightly focused studies ought to be done.

Chapter 1 begins with the story of St. Sergius, a martyr of Tetrarchic times whose surviving texts clearly reflect the fifth-century milieu of their composition. Fowden handles critical issues intelligently, not taking the texts at face value, but also not using their late composition as an excuse to toss them out entirely. Here, as throughout the book, she weaves together textual and material evidence, supplementing written sources with visual representations of the saint in mosaics, icons, votive objects, and phylacteries. In general, the book is well provided with maps, site plans, and photographs. Chapter 2 turns north to the fortress town of Mayperqat, taking Marutha's translation of relics into that city (aptly renamed Martyropolis, after the installation of some two hundred eighty thousand holy bones) as a starting point for Fowden's discussion of the role of saints and relics in frontier defense. This is, I think, one of the most interesting of Fowden's accomplishments, an argument for bridging two areas of scholarship (traditionally "hard-headed" military/frontier studies, and the "softer" scholarship of hagiography and saints' cults) not normally thought to have much to say to one another: "divine defense went hand in hand with arms and walls . . . we cannot afford to project onto our evidence a separation of religious belief and political or military action" (3). Throughout the book we see examples of saints and their relics playing a key role in warfare: strengthening walls, repelling besiegers, aiding armies, and protecting individuals. The saints formed the linchpin of what we might call the Christian empire's Strategic Defense Initiative, in which cities, armies, soldiers, and kings placed as much faith in divine protection as modern governments do in high-tech weapons systems.

Chapter 3 brings the focus back to Rusafa, discussing both the physical remains of the site and its situation at a cultural and political crossroads. Chapter 4 explores the spread of Sergius' fame throughout Syria and beyond; considering onomastic practices, the saint's role in Christian takeovers of pagan temples, and the foundation of rival cult sites and monasteries seeking to cash in on Sergius' popularity. Here I would have liked to see more analysis of the intensely competitive relationship between different local cult centers, perhaps with comparative discussion of early medieval Western evidence (a reference to Patrick Geary's Furta Sacra would have been appropriate). In chapter 5, we see St. Sergius stepping out onto the stage of great-power diplomacy. Rusafa became a pivotal flashpoint in the endless cold war between Rome and Persia, attracting political interest and patronage from such key figures as Justinian, Theodora, and most intriguingly, the Persian king Khusrau II. Not himself a Christian, the Iranian monarch nevertheless thanked Sergius for everything from his recovery of the throne to his wife's successful pregnancy. Chapter 6, finally, takes the story into Islamic times. The cult of Sergius illustrates the fascinating complexity of Christian-Muslim relations in the centuries after the conquests, featuring syncretism but also...