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The Chaoskampf motif in the lives of the Military Saints

  • TITLU în română: Motivul Chaoskampf în vieţile Sfinţilor Militari
  • Subiect: One of the mast popular and, simultaneously, one of the mast unusual motifs in hagiography is that of the battle against the dragon. Although it is generally perceived as a late addition to Christian culture, namely through the interpretation Christiana of older pagan myths, late l9th century scholars such as Hermann Gunkel have identified a similar image in the Old Testament, where God is said to have fought a sea-monster. According to Gunkel, this motif stemmed from the Near Eastern tradition of the Chaoskampf, the primordial battle against the forces of Chaos. This theory proved to be popular, although later scholars criticized its adherents for failing to properly define this "Chaos". The purpose of this paper is to interpret the hagiographical motif as a battle against Chaos, which is defined in the terms of its first attestation, in Hesiod's Theogony: a boundless and formless primordial entity that generates timeless evils like Death and Plague, but not concrete and mortal monsters like the Hydra. While the Old Testament dragon is simply bound by God, the military saints' opponent is killed outright. While the hagiographical motif is not a Chaoskampf on a concrete level, most versions of the story point out that the dragon is, in fact, a symbol of paganism or, more generally, of evil, which means that the military saints are expected to fight a perennial enemy. This is furtherly confirmed by the folkloric traditions associated with these saints, whose holidays mark the triumph of order over disorder, one way or another.
  • Limba de redactare: engleză
  • Vezi publicația: Etudes Byzantines et Post-Byzantines
  • Editura: Editura Academiei Române
  • Loc publicare: Bucureşti
  • Anul publicaţiei: 2016
  • Referinţă bibliografică pentru nr. revistă: VII; anul 2016
  • Paginaţia: 193-204
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