Ioannis Vatatzeia
Ioannis Vatatzeia (Greek Ιωάννης Βατάτζεια) is an Eastern Orthodox Christian festival celebrated on November 4 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics) to honor the life, deeds and almsgiving of John III Doukas Vatatzes (1193 - 1254), canonized as Saint John the Merciful, or St. John the Eleemosynary King[1]. It is a public holiday in the Thracian city of Didymóteicho, the home town of Vatatzes, where a church was dedicated to him in 2010. Vatatzes is one of only two Byzantine emperors still venerated as a saint by the Orthodox Church, the other being Constantine the Great.[2]
History[edit]
Byzantine and Medieval Period[edit]
Within ten years of Vatatzes’ death in 1254, he was celebrated with an annual feast day known as the Vatatzeia, particularly in the communities of Magnesia, where he died, and Nymphaeum, where he often resided.[3] The medieval feast day for the canonized king persisted for several hundred years in Greece, and resembled the Hellenic harvest feast day popular during his reign. Vatatzes is known as a πατὴρ τῶν Ἑλλήνων (“father of the Greeks”) because of the classical Hellenic traditions he brought to the Empire of Nicea[4], and the modern holy day's enduring themes of “felicitas” and “philanthropia” are reminiscent of Vatatzes' social, political and religious philosophy which served as the basis for the Hellenic cultural reforms he used to align his kingdom with the Roman heritage of Constantine the Great.
Renaissance Period[edit]
The Eastern Orthodox Christian church has commemorated John III Doukas Vatatzes on November 4th since the 14th Century, though there is no specific liturgy for him on that day. However, there are two known akolouthia for him including an 1874 copy of an older Magnesian Menaion for the month of November, which shows that by 16th Century, he was well established as, “the holy glorious equal of the Apostles and emperor John Vatatzes, the new almsgiver in Magnesia.”[5] The relevant hymns in the Menaion are preserved in only one known manuscript in the library of the Leimonos monastery on Lesbos, Greece, and include references to the feast day for the almsgiver John Vatazes as Ioannis Vatatzeia.[6]
Modern Era[edit]
Didymoteicho still hosts the largest Vatatzeia festivals[7] but it was a well-documented festival throughout the diasporic Greek communities in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries[8]. The Vatatzeia celebrations in the modern Magnesian regions of Greece still retain a continuity of the same traditions, liturgies, and practices dating back to the very earliest celebrations in the 1300s. The endurance of Vatatzes’ legacy in modern day Greek identity can been seen in this holiday, and its veneration of John Vatatzes.[9]
References[edit]
- ↑ Demetrios J. Constantelos, Emperor John Vatatzes’ Social Concern: Basis for Canonization. Kahponomia,1972
- ↑ Papayianni Aphrodite. “Emperor John III Doukas Vatatzes: An Orthodox Saint”. Byzantinos Domos 14: 27–31. (2005)
- ↑ Manuel I. Gedeon, TlarpiapxiKol Tliva/ces. Constantinople, 1884, p. 588
- ↑ L. Ciolfi, "John III Vatatzes Redivivus: Creating One of the Roots of Modern Greek Identity". Princeton University Press, 2016
- ↑ ”Polemis Demetrios, Remains of an acoluthia for the emperor John Ducas Vatatzes” in C. Mango & O. Pritsak (eds.), Okeanos. Essays Presented to Ihor Sevcenko on His Sixtieth Birthday by His Colleagues and Students. Ukranian Research Institute, Harvard University, 1983, p. 543
- ↑ Apostolos Spanos, Imperial Sanctity in Byzantium: The case of the emperor John III Vatatzes. University of Agder, 2011
- ↑ Lorenzo M. Ciolfi, "John III Vatazes, Byzantine imperial saint?" BULLETIN OF BRITISH BYZANTINE STUDIES, 2014
- ↑ Nicole Kappatos, Greek Immigration to Richmond, Virginia, and the Southern Variant Theory. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2014
- ↑ Alice Gardiner, The Lascarids of Nicaea: The Story of an Empire in Exile, 1912, (Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1964), p. 196
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