St Constantine and »The Army of Heroic Men« Raised by Tiberius II in 574/575: Some Thoughts on the Historical Significance of the Early Byzantine Silver Hoard at Karlsruhe

Abstract

St Constantine and »The Army of Heroic Men« Raised by Tiberius II in 574/575: Some Thoughts on the Historical Significance of the Early Byzantine Silver Hoard at Karlsruhe
The silver hoard comprising six pieces, which the Badisches Landesmuseum Karlsruhe acquired in 1993, belonged to the inventory of a church dedicated to St Constantine. The hoard relates stylistically as well as typologically to Greater Syria and is particularly significant due to its inscriptions. Two of the objects feature Greek votive inscriptions that bear dedications to the memory of a certain Framarich and a certain Karilos. Both names suggest that their bearers originated from a Latin-speaking region, perhaps the Frankish kingdom. These men probably came to Greater Syria as soldiers during Caesar Tiberius II Constantin’s great recruiting campaign in the context of the Sasanian war in 574/575. According to one votive inscription, St Constantine was the patron of the church and he is even depicted as a soldier in armour. This is an extraordinarily early example for his cult and for the depiction of this first Christian emperor to become a saint. The cult of St Constantine clearly reflects the values and the self-perception of the congregation: the idea of a Christian-Roman empire, the concept of the victorious emperor and loyalty to him. The intention behind choosing this holy patron could have been a conscious binding of the foreign soldiers to the emperor and the empire. In general, the emergence and spread of the cult of St Constantine during the 6th and especially the 7th centuries was obviously related to the massive military threat posed and the eventual occupation of core territories of the empire by the Sasanians and later by the Muslim Arabs.