Tracing the Cult of St Eudoxios in the Eastern Mediterranean between the 10th and 11th Century

The Martyrdom of Saints Eudoxios, Romylos, Zenon, and Makarios is a composite late antique martyrology, originally composed in Greek, that unites two distinct narratives: the martyrdom of the Praepositus Romylos under Emperor Trajan and the martyrdom of the Komēs Eudoxios together with Zenon, Makarios, and 1104 fellow soldiers under the Emperor Diocletian. Their shared site of execution, Melitene, provides the unifying frame. Between 991 and 1092 CE, both abbreviated and full Armenian versions of this martyrology appeared for the first time, with the vita longior translated in Melitene itself. This paper situates the emergence of the cult of Saints Eudoxios, Romylos, Zenon, and Makarios within the Armenian liturgical tradition in the context of Chalcedonian Armenian translators active in the Byzantine Empire during the tenth and eleventh centuries. It argues that the cult’s translation into Armenian functioned both as a locally meaningful act of veneration within the Armenian Chalcedonian community of Melitene at the close of the eleventh century, and, when considered alongside the Melkite Christian Arabic tradition, as a reflection of the broader socio-cultural and political dynamics of Byzantine expansion into Anatolia, the Caucasus, Mesopotamia, and northern Syria during the tenth and eleventh centuries. More specifically, it interprets the cult’s Armenian reception within networks of textual dissemination and translation that operated as instruments of Byzantine imperial and ecclesiastical intrusion, consolidating hegemony by constructing, reinforcing, and sustaining a transregional confessional space oriented toward the authority and praxis of a Constantinopolitan centre.