A Goose Keeper Among Warriors: The Militarization of the Cult of Saint Tryphon in 13th-Century Nicaea and Its Possible Reflections in Eastern Christian Art

As is well known, the Nicaean Empire of the Laskarid dynasty saw a kind of revival of the cult of Saint Tryphon, an early Christian martyr who suffered in Nicaea, during the reign of Emperor Decius (249–251). Among the Laskarids, Theodore II (1254–1258) was particularly devoted to this saint. He renovated the old church of Saint Tryphon to give it a monumental form and wrote an encomium in honor of the saint. Moreover, the image of Saint Tryphon is often found on the coins of Theodore II. Among these representations, those in which the patron saint of Nicaea is depicted in the guise of a soldier attract particular attention, since according to his vita, Tryphon was only a young goose keeper. As has already been noted in historiography, such an unusual iconographic solution could be related to the data from the sources recounting that Theodore II saw Saint Tryphon in a dream as the leader of his army in 1254, which allegedly further encouraged him to go on a campaign against the Bulgarians. In all likelihood, the described aspect of the cult of Saint Tryphon resonated in art beyond the Nicaean Empire. This is evidenced primarily by the fact that the figure of Saint Tryphon was sometimes included in group representations of warrior saints, as several examples in Serbian wall painting attest. Moreover, in the post-Byzantine period, Saint Tryphon could be represented in military attire and with weapons. It has already been noted that this was sometimes the case in Russian art, but the several representations of Saint Tryphon as a warrior in the wall paintings of monuments in the Balkans, created between the 16th and 18th centuries, have not been taken into account so far. It is justified to ask whether we are dealing with a distant echo of the militarization of the cult of this St Tryphon from the Laskaris era.