Patrick Comerford
In recent weeks, I was reflecting in my prayer diary on my blog each morning on the icons in the new iconostasis or icon screen in the Orthodox Church in Stony Stratford.
There is a pattern and a set of traditional norms that decides the place and themes of icons in the icon screens in churches and the themes in the frescoes around the apse and behind and above the altar. But quite often many of the other icons and frescoes in churches are accidental or a random choice, reflecting the interests and piety of the commissioning priest, donors, parishioners or even the artists completing the icons and frescoes.
The new Church of the Transfiguration in the village of Piskopianó in the hills above Hersonissos in Crete, for example, is being gradually filled with new and interesting frescoes, with more added each time I return to visit the village over the years.
Because this is a very wide church, compared to its length, it has a large number of walls and pillars to be filled with frescoes, and it is interesting to see how their themes are being chosen thoughtfully and carefully.
One pillar has been filled with four figures I have often seen in churches in Greece but that I seldom see outside Greece: Saint Sophia and her daughters Pistis, Elpis and Agape.
For a long time I simply thought that was a pious or figurative representation of Wisdom as the mother of the three theological virtues, Faith, Hope and Love.
The name Sophia (Σοφία) means ‘wisdom’ in Greek. The Greek lettering over the other three figures in these icons names them as Pistis, Elpis, and Agape, or Πίστις (Faith), Ελπίδα (Hope) and Αγάπη (Love). In Latin their names would be Fides, Spes and Caritas.
I had always read these figures and their names in these icons and frescoes as allegorical or figurative – until I was back in Piskopianó some weeks ago. Then I heard of the tradition that these four were saints from Italy – a mother and her three daughters, who were martyrs for the Christian faith round the year 126 CE, during the reign of the Emperor Hadrian.
According to this tradition, Saint Sophia of Rome was the mother of Faith (12), Hope (10) and Love (9). An official named Antiochus denounced them to the Emperor Hadrian (117-138), who ordered them to be brought to Rome. Realising that they would be taken before the emperor, the mother and daughters prayed for the strength not to fear torture and death.
When they were brought before the emperor, all present were amazed at their composure. Summoning each sister in turn, Hadrian demanded they offer sacrifices to the goddess Artemis. The girls remained unyielding, and the emperor ordered them to be tortured. They were burned over iron gratings, physically mutilated, sexually assaulted, and thrown into red-hot ovens and cauldrons of boiling tar, and yet they survived. The youngest child, Love, was tied to a wheel and beaten with rods until her body was covered with bloody welts.
Saint Sophia was forced to watch their suffering, but remained courageous and urged her daughters to endure their suffering. All three girls were then beheaded by the sword.
The emperor allowed Sophia to take away the bodies of her daughters. She placed them in coffins, loaded them onto a wagon, drove beyond the city limits, and buried the girls on a high hill. Saint Sophia sat by the graves of her daughters for three days, and finally died. Other Christians buried her beside her daughters, and all four were soon venerated as martyrs.
However, there are conflicting traditions about Saint Sophia and her daughters, and whether Saint Sophia of Rome is to be identified with Saint Sopia of Milan. Another tradition says Saint Sophia was a martyr during the Diocletian Persecution (303-304). This conflicts with widespread tradition in Greek, Armenian and Georgian sources that place Sophia and her daughters in the reign of Hadrian and that say she died not as a martyr but mourning her martyred daughters.
The veneration of Saint Sophia of Milan became indistinguishable from that of Saint Sophia of Rome. References from the time of Gregory the Great suggest two groups of martyrs, mother and daughters, one buried on the Aurelian Way and the other on the Via Appia. Their tomb in a crypt beneath the church afterwards erected to Saint Pancratius was visited by pilgrims from the seventh century on.
The relics were moved to the women’s convent at Eschau in Alsace in 778, and from there the cult spread to Germany. There is a 14th-century fresco of the saints in a chapel in Cologne Cathedral, and Saint Sophia is depicted on a column in Saint Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna, dating from the 15th century. Her feast day of 15 May was observed in German, Belgian and English breviaries in the 16th century.
Although earlier editions of the Roman Martyrology commemorated Faith, Hope and Love on 1 August and their mother Sophia on 30 September, the present catalogue of saints in the Roman Catholic Church has no feast dedicated to these three girls or their mother. The only Saint Sophia included today is an early Christian virgin martyr of Picenum in Italy, commemorated with her companion Vissia on 12 April.
An early Christian martyr, Saint Faith (Fides) of Aquitania in southern Franc, is celebrated on 6 October; a Saint Hope (Spes), an abbess of Nursia who died ca 517, is commemorated on 23 May; and Saint Charity (Caritas) is included among saints with similar names on 16 April and 7 September. Their feast day of 1 August was not entered in the General Roman Calendar, and they have since been removed from the Roman Martyrology.
Perhaps the veneration of the three saints named after the three theological virtues arose in the sixth century, based on common inscriptions found in the catacombs. Critical scholarship now agrees that the tradition is invented, part of a tradition inspired and developed through pious readings of Latin inscriptions referring to women who were named after Holy Wisdom and after the theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Love.
But all four – Wisdom, Faith, Hope and Love – remain a pillar of the Church, at least in Piskopianó.
