ABSTRACT
As the translator wrote in his introduction to the latest edition of the Miracula of St Artemius, ‘A saint who specializes in healing hernias and testicular and genital diseases is scarcely a bore and … the charm of the stories and the vivid personality of the saint would be sufficient reason’ for an English translation.1 Surely no one will disagree with the judgment, but unfortunately allusions in the Miracula to Artemius’ social status are few and the Passio a Ioanne Monacho is laconic.2 However, from these and other sources, we do learn that Artemius is attested from the late fourth century, when he was concerned with the Translation of the relics of Sts Timothy, Andrew and Luke to Constantinople. Later he was appointed prefect in Egypt, where he sought out the whereabouts of St Athanasius by torturing a virgin; this suggests that he had Arian tendencies. He was probably denounced by Egyptians during the reign of Julian the Apostate for destroying statues of pagan gods. When he refused to offer cult to Apollo, he was degraded and executed. The virgin Ariste had his body embalmed and sent to Constantinople. The earliest Passio, written about 430 some seventy years after his death, is now lost, but later versions suggest that it was conventional. One detail given in the Miracula no. 32, is that he received before dying the gift of healing, because his own body was crushed.3 Crushing, in fact, was one of his ways of healing diseased testicles.
