Historical Aspects of the Story of Euphemia and the Goth

Abstract

In this thesis, we focus on the Story of Euphemia and the Goth, a hybrid literary text written in the second half of the fifth century. Since there is no holistic work on the Story, we undertook the task of examining the text itself, as a systematic examination of the Syriac and the Greek versions of the text itself, as well as the last English translation of the Story, by Francis Burkitt in 1913. We focused on the philological features of the Story and tried to interpret them historically using the standard historical-critical method. By focusing on the philological elements of the Story, we aimed to connect the information with the historical context of the period that the Story allegedly describes (late 4th c.) and the period in which it was written (late 5th c.). Our contextual analysis, which is based on philological features, can be divided into three main aspects. The first aspect examines the historical, military and legal elements of the Story. The second focuses on two Syriac terms: the parmûnârâ' and the fixed expression bnay ḥi're'. More precisely, we attempt tried to recreate the profile of the author of the Story by examining the term parmûnârâ,' and we examined the term bnay ḥi're' both contextually and intertextually, arguing that the term designated people of higher social strata if not the nobility. In addition, we also focus on the socio-political conditions of the fifth century, arguing that the term bnay ḥi're' should not be interpreted simply as f r e e but rather as n o b l e, and we support this thesis with internal evidence from the Story, external evidence taken from the larger literary milieu, as well as the works of philologists and orientalists over the last three centuries. The third aspect of our contextual analysis is related to a philological element that had been overlooked by modern scholarship: the fact that the author of the Story calls Euphemia and Sophia qadîšṯâ', i.e. Saints. Focusing on the text, we examine the validity of this hagiographical feature by examining the Syriac liturgical works of the anti-Chalcedonian Syriac Orthodox Church, i.e. the Syriac menologia, edited by François Nau in 1912. Our discoveries prove the attestation of the Story. The two protagonists of the Story were venerated as Saints by the Syriac-speaking Miaphysites. Through this research, we also discovered that the two protagonists were revered as Saints on the same day that the Chalcedonians celebrated the so-called miracle of the relics of Saint Euphemia of Chalcedon. We argue, therefore, that the Story comes from a Miaphysite milieu. These three aspects form the explanatory framework through which, in the future, we aim to develop a holistic interpretation of the literary themes of the Story as well as the historical context that led to its composition.