7. This was when Constantine the iconoclast had seized
power, the enemy of the true faith who had been persuaded and converted by a
Jewish mindset, and he brought war and persecution upon the monks with evil
intent. He ordered the expulsion and destruction of the holy images and the burning
with fire of the image of our Lord, the saving Word of God, and of our Lady the
holy Theotokos, and of all the saints. When the holy, orthodox, and upright fathers
were serving the order and strength of the church and were setting up images of
the saints in them for the commemoration of their good deeds and on account of
their struggles, if someone honored and venerated them, the emperor and his
mistaken associates called them idolaters.
This was something very foolish and mistaken, which was neither
worthy in God’s sight nor did it excuse the other things. He was forcefully
urging all to go and watch diabolic hippodromes, theaters, horrible spectacles,
and games. And he ordered that his own disgraced image should be venerated and
honored in every place, and those who tried to prevent this he sentenced to be
tortured. Yet he dishonored and insulted images of the king of kings and of his
mother, and of the apostles and martyrs and all the saints. He sentenced those
who honored them to torture, for he cut off their limbs and cut out their eyes
and sent them into exile and threw them into the sea and killed many with the
sword. And so he did not honor Christ God, who gave him the honor of being
emperor, so much as he honored himself, who was not worthy of the honor of being
emperor. (“Passion of Romanos the Neomartyr (d. 780),” trans. Stephen J. Shoemaker,
in Three Christian Martyrdoms from Early Islamic Palestine [Middle
Eastern Texts Initiative; Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2016], 159,
161)
9. And as they went along the way of captivity, there arose
among them a conversation regarding the commemoration of holy icons. Then the
nobleman George began to offer a discourse on holy icons. And he called them
idols and those who praise them idolaters. And he harassed them with myriad
obscenities and rebukes and reviled all those who opposed the emperor Constantine’s
decree, for this man was maleficent and full of pride and wickedness. Nevertheless,
the holy fathers, as was fitting for men beloved by God, humbly taught him
wisely and with kind words, so that they converted him from impiety and heresy,
and he changed his viewpoint and professed the rule of the orthodox faith and
was brought to the apostolic church by the holy fathers. And they brought forth
many apostolic words of testimony from the holy books and the sayings of the
teachers. Yet this wretched one, if perhaps not at the moment when he converted
to the faith, nevertheless showed wickedness and evil with all of his might. He
fought them scornfully and furiously with hateful words, and if somehow it were
possible, he was urgently longing for their death, as enemies of the emperor,
if he were not bound by his hands and feet, for he was restrained from doing
any evil. And he was watched by guards and could not fulfill his evil wish.
(Ibid., 163, 165)
12. Then all those imprisoned were thoroughly amazed,
believers and unbelievers, by their persistence in prayer, so that because of
them God was glorified and praised. And through them was fulfilled the saying
of the Lord, “Let your light so shine before people, so that they will see your
good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” And they had always
before their eyes Christ, who filled their hearts with joy and gladness and who
said, “I say this to you, where then two or three are gathered in my name, I am
among them.” Thus he taught in the holy gospel and said, “You will be hated by
all because of my name; blessed are you when people persecute you and revile
you, and they will defame you; rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in
heaven.” Then the enemy, the jealous devil and the opponent of those who toil,
could not bear such an example from the blessed ones, because in such a
dwelling place, among evildoers and sinners, they shone forth kindness and devotion.
And he cast into the heart of George the prince, who was a fitting vessel
filled with his will, that he should trouble and disturb the holy and worthy
fathers. And he incited all the Greeks who were imprisoned there and said to
them, “These monks are enemies of your emperor” and called them icon
worshippers and idolaters. For so the infidel emperor Constantine called them,
and he tried to persuade all the commoners and unlearned to despite, persecute,
and reproach them as idolaters. Because of this all those who were reverent
worshippers and were beloved by God were terrified and tormented by them,
especially those who had chosen the angelic life and put on the holy monastic
scheme. The emperor was completely unable to hear their story, and he made
unmentionable the names of those who were truly worthy of mention, this one who
is truly unworthy of mention for his foolishness; for thus he was persecuting
and massacring the saints and innocent people with every kind of torment, and
he led the simple and ignorant people into error so that in every place they
beat and massacred them, and he desired and had set his heart on eradicating
and destroying the monastic scheme completely. And this opponent of God did not
know that this schema is from John the Baptist, and whoever is its enemy of John
the Baptist. (Ibid., 169, 171)
In terms of the manuscript evidence
for this text, Shoemaker noted that:
The martyrdom survives only in a Georgian translation,
which itself depends on an Arabic version that has not survived. Although there
has been some question as to whether Stephen may have composed this narrative
originally in Arabic, a Greek original seems much more likely for several
reasons, as others have also noted. Two Georgian manuscripts from the tenth and
eleventh centuries preserve this martyrdom, although only one of these has been
previously edited. In 1910 Alexander Khakhanov published an edition of Romanos’s
martyrdom from MS Athos Iviron 8 (10th c.; fols. 273v-293r; designated as A in
the textual notes), while in the very same year Kekelidze published a Russian translation—without
edition—of this martyrdom from MS Tbilisi A 95 (11th c.; fols. 440v-454r;
designated as T in the textual notes). (Ibid., xxxvii-xxxviii)
Further Reading:
Answering Fundamentalist Protestants and Roman Catholic/Eastern Orthodox on Images/Icons
