The Cult of Stephen in Jerusalem: Inventing a Patron Martyr by Hugo M�ndez (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Cult of Stephen in Jerusalem: Inventing a Patron Martyr by Hugo Méndez Kyle Smith Hugo Méndez The Cult of Stephen in Jerusalem: Inventing a Patron Martyr Oxford Early Christian Studies Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022 Pp. xiv + 175. $90.00. Twenty years ago, in explaining the need for a comprehensive dossier on Stephen, François Bovon lamented what he characterized as a lack of dialogue between New Testament scholars and historians of Christianity in late antiquity ("The Dossier on Stephen, the First Martyr," HTR 96.3 [2003]: 279–315). The former, he said, stop with the Stephen of Acts; meanwhile, the latter do not start until the fourth century, with the rise of the cult of Stephen the martyr. Neither group cares to "bridge the gap" and unite "two phases of a continuous history." Noble as Bovon's attempt at interdisciplinary reconciliation may have been, there was no "continuous history" of the first Christian martyr. Most especially not in Jerusalem. The Holy City—as Hugo Méndez makes clear in his important new contribution to the study of Stephen—was late to embrace its patron: Jerusalem "boasted numerous pilgrimage sites associated with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, [but] it lacked even a single tomb or monument associated with a local Christian martyr up to the late fourth century" (6). If Jerusalem wanted a civic hero, Stephen may have been the obvious choice, but cities do not "inherit their claims" on local saints; they curate them, Méndez says, "consciously shaping them to serve specific programs and ends" (12). After lying dormant for centuries, Stephen sprang to life again on distant shores, eventually making his way back to Jerusalem and the church of Hagia Sion, where his bones were reinterred on his feast day, December 26, in the year 415 c.e To explain how Stephen was reintroduced to his city, Méndez focuses his study on the liturgical life of fifth-century Jerusalem. The city's "feasts, material relics, architectural spaces, and lectionary readings," he writes, all deepened the city's claims on Stephen "as a local patron" (16). It was, he continues, two local bishops of Jerusalem, John II and Juvenal—episcopal successors of Cyril—who were the most influential in "moving a once peripheral figure to the center of the city's ritual practice and memorialization" (11). John presided over the inventio of Stephen's relics and the transfer of his bones to Hagia Sion; Juvenal hastened the later dedication of "the largest ecclesiastical complex in the city . . . a grand [End Page 261] and imposing basilica located just outside its principal gate." By the mid-fifth century, it was Stephen who had "three days on the Jerusalem calendar at a time when Mary boasted only two and only a few dozen saints claimed even one" (59). Stephen, the "first-born of the martyrs," sits at the head of the liturgical year—on the day after Christmas, Méndez explains—where he presides "over the entire choir of martyrs that follows" (25). But Christmas came late to Jerusalem, being forcibly imposed on the city in the sixth century. Instead of December 25, "Jerusalem interpreted the Epiphany [on January 6] as the starting point of its liturgical year" (53). Aware of the importance of December 26, Jerusalem did adopt that feast for Stephen, but it also developed another for him on January 7, "the second day of the Epiphany octave," which arose from a "desire to emulate the practice of those cities that accorded Stephen the first position in the annual cycle of martyr feasts" (101). At the same time, a third feast was added for Stephen following Easter, further strengthening the martyr's local prestige while simultaneously proclaiming Jerusalem's connection to Stephen "to the masses of visitors already flooding the city during those special seasons" (128). Of course, and as Méndez explains throughout his book, a martyr's cult needs more than just days on the calendar to thrive. The Revelatio Sancti Stephani, a text that identifies "Christian Jerusalem as the preordained resting place" of Stephen's relics, casts the city as "the unique conduit of their power" and narrates...