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11 The Ideological and Cultural Dimensions 143

“Ignatios the Deacon in both his ideological guises ... interspersed his wri-tings with classical allusions and proverbs ... he affected Attic forms ... he used the most refined Classics ... he plundered one of the highest achie-vements of late second Sophistics — the Funeral Oration on Saint Basil” (ibid., pp. 127—128). His stylistic guide was Gregory of Nazianzos, whereas “the unpretentious hagiographer Cyril of Skythopohs of the sixth century was the main literary model’’ of Stephen the Deacon’sZ-t/e of St. Stephen the Younger, although he drewideas from Commentaries on Porphyry and Origen. The Life of St. Philaretos the Merciful by his grandson Niketas used as model the Book of Job and is uniąue in the Byzantine literary production of its time (it was written in 822): Sevćenko considers it "the last specimen of a series of which the Apophtegmata Pałrum, the Historia Lausiaca, John Moschos’ Spiritml Meadow, some Collections of Miracles, such as those of Artemios, and Leontius of Neapolis’ Lives are previous examples. The Life of Philaretos was out of step with literary history” (ibid., p. 128). This resulted from the process of imitation of old saints’ lives by both saints and hagiographers as both ideological and structural models (supra, par. 13).

16.    The Life of St. Eudokimos (807—840) survives only in its Meta-phrastic version. A young Cappadocian nobleman who served in the court of Theophillos (829—842) and was appointed stratopedarches of his native province, he fought successfully against the Arabs and died in his residence at Charsinon at the age of thirty-three. His relics, to which eight miracles are attributed, were brought to Constantinople by his mother, who was living in the Capital with his father, despite the protests of the Charsianites; they built for him a very beautiful church dedicated to the B.V.M. (G. da Costa-Louillet, Byzantion, 25—27, 1955—56—57, pp. 783—788). This philan-thropous mihtary Saint who combined sanctity with military life and its ideo-logy might have been a conventional Iconoclast, like his biographer. For both, Iconoclasm was not the major issue at stake, especially in view of the abso-lution of Theophilos by the Church after his death with his widów empress Theodora’s strenuous intitiative (W. Regel, Analecta Byzantino-Russica, 1891, pp. 19—39). His military achievements, his humaneness and justice exalted in a text which makes no hint at his Iconoclastic ideology and acti-vities (ibid., pp. 40—43) offer an explanation and the background of St. Eudokimos’ and his biographer's attitude to him.

17.    An important military saint’s Life, that of St. Nicholas of Vounaina was compostd in a very high style by a well-educated monk of Thessaly, Nicholas himself, in the mid-tenth century. The Saint, who was bom in the East, was appointed military leader of Larissa by the emperor Leo the Wise. Together with twelve of his soldiers, he was martyred by the Arabs in 901 or 902 when they invaded Thessaly. He was killed when he, having been arrested, rejected an offer to save his life by joining Islam. Though the Mar-tyrion of the Saint uses topoi and scriptural ąuestions, it is a sound historical source (D.Z. Sophianos, Hagios Nicolaos o en Vounaine, 1972 (idem, O Ha-gios Nicolaos o Neos tes Vounaines [I'ai], 1986). The most impressive element in this Martyr’s Life is the phrasing of his rejection of conversion, which is repeated with smali variations in the innumerable Neomartyrs’ Lives of the

Ottoman period. The brave martyrdom of St. Nicholas is the other side of

the coin of military sanctity provided by St. Eudokimos, who died peace-