SAINT ERROR

Thanks to a reader for today’s icon images.

There are various reasons for icons depicting  a gathering of saints.  Sometimes they are the name saints of family members, sometimes “special needs” saints believed to specialize in various aids to the believer, sometimes a mixture of the two.

Today’s icon of a gathering of saints is a bit unusual.

(Permanent Exhibition at the Episcopal Seminary of Messina, Italy)

As you see, there is a “New Testament Trinity” image at the top, and in the group of saints below, one stands out in the center.  He is identified by his abbreviated title inscription, which appears to have been taken directly from a church calendar or a podlinnik.  Why?  Because the title inscriptions are all in the grammatical “of” form used in those texts.  Not just the inscription of Sisoe, but of all the saints depicted.  I have put their names into the standard form here.

His inscription reads:

PREPODOBNAGO OTSA NASHEGO SISOYA
VELIKAGO MESATSA IIULYA 6 DNYA

“OF OUR VENERABLE FATHER SISOY
THE GREAT, MONTH JULY, 6TH DAY”

So this fellow in monk’s garb is the Egyptian saint Sisoes the Great (Сисой Великий / Sisoy Velikiy), also known as Sisoe.  In Russian you may also see it spelled Сысой as a first name You will recall him from this previous posting:

SISOE AND ALEXANDER

So who are all these other saints?  Well, if we look at the name inscriptions in their halos, we will see what makes this icon a bit different. 

Here are those at left.  From top to bottom they are:

Asteriy,
Presviter, Kirin, Avvakum
Valentin, Avdifaks, Rufin,
Ermiy, Vasiliy, Peregrin, Ruf,
Filiks, Innokentiy, Isavr.

Now those on the right:

Aronos,
Kutoniy, Kapik, Koint,
Dion, Diodor, Satour,
Lukiya, Marina Marfa, Isidor,
Riks, Antoniy, Lukian

These are saints commemorated on the same day as Sisoe the Great  — July 6th.  So we may assume that Sisoe was the name saint of a person for whom the icon was made, and for emphasis and added power to the icon,  all the other saints commemorated on that day were added too.  Such individual icons showing all the saints for a particular day are not common.

Now as I have mentioned in previous postings, Russian icon painters were sometimes illiterate or near illiterate.  They made mistakes.  That is why we find this obscure fellow Presviter depicted among the saints for July 6th.  You perhaps noticed that I put his name in bold italics in the first list of names for the saints on the left.

What happened? 

Well, in the usual podlinniki (painters’ manuals), under the saints for July 6th, we find an entry for Ualentina/Valentina presvitera.  You will notice a saint Valentin in the image above, just below Presvitera.  Now Valentina presvitera is the “of ” form of Valentin presviter — “Valentin the Presbyter.”  The painter, however, mistakenly misread the clerical rank presvitera here as the name of a separate saint, so that is why we find an extra saint “Presviter” in this icon — a painter’s error. 

This icon with its oddities gives us a little insight into the way icons were often painted off a list of names found in a podlinnik or a church calendar.  In this icon the painter did not even bother to change the grammatical “of” form found in such texts to the usual form found in name inscriptions, and of course he added the non-existent saint Presbyter by misreading the text.