Listen to Her: Rewriting Virgin Martyrs as Orators in the Byzantine Passions on St Tatiana and St Ia

The virgin martyr is a familiar heroine in Late-Antique hagiography, whose body and/or beauty is the catalyst for her martyrdom. For Byzantium, scholarship has tended to assume that she occupies a more subdued role since, given historical circumstances, no new virgin martyrs appeared. Those passions that were revised have mainly been analysed for information on the women’s resurrected cult or for linguistic interest. Examination of the rewritten Greek passions of the late-antique martyrs, St Tatiana of Rome (C8th-9th), a deaconess, and Ia of Persia (C13th), reveal women who were transformed into public orators. Technically, the stories follow a ‘standard’ plot whereby a beautiful, virginal girl is subjected to horrific tortures by a male aggressor. Tatiana’s antagonist is Emperor Alexander Severus whilst Ia’s is Shapur II. However, their revisers (an Anonymous and Makarios the monk, respectively) deliberately transformed their chosen martyrs partially by employing rhetorical and philosophical terminology. Each woman now becomes a new type of heroine, whose virtue is linked to, and expressed by, her facility with language. Her body and her beauty are now of little importance. Ia, in particular, has been transformed into an elderly woman. This paper will thus explore the notion of rewriting in tandem with these revisions to see how, and why, virginity and heroism have been reconceptualised.