From Hippo-Angelophania to Equestrian Hagiophania: Angels and Holy Horsemen in Proto-Byzantine Worship (4th–7th Century)

Apparitions of providential horsemen find their matrix in ancient dioscurophanies, such as the one reported at Lake Regillus (499 BC) by Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Through a phenomenon of symbolic porosity, this figure of the celestial horseman resurfaces in Judeo-Hellenistic literature precisely in 2 Maccabees 3:25–26, where two young horsemen repel Heliodorus in direct continuity with the warrior angels of the Old Testament. Within proto-Byzantine Christianity, this tradition fosters the emergence of a cult of mounted military saints, such as George or Demetrios of Thessaloniki, conceived as a reappropriation of angelophany for which the Archangel Michael remains the model. Between angel and saint, however, an intermediate still angelic figure emerges: King Solomon on horseback, master exorcist whose seal protects amulets against demons. In his wake appears the most enigmatic case, and the core of this paper: Saint Sissinios, whose name accompanies Solomon's on the very same phylacteries prior to any Christian hagiographic elaboration, and whose iconography absorbs the angelic repertoire of exorcism. The shift from angelophany to equestrian hagiophany thus attests to a continuous porosity between the celestial and terrestrial spheres: the same protective figures, first mobilized against the domestic demon, are reinvested as signs (semeia) legitimizing imperial just war making the holy horseman an operator at once apotropaic and martial within proto-Byzantine warfare ideology.