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Marinos bishop of Monembasia (eighth century)

 
 

Obverse

Cruciform invocative monogram (type V): in the quarters: ΤΣ|ΔΛ. Wreath border.

Θεοτόκε βοήθει τῷ σῷ δούλῳ

Reverse

Inscription of three lines, decoration above. Wreath border.


.ΜΑΡΙΝ
ΕΠΙΣΚ/
ΜΝΕΜ/

Μαρίνῳ ἐπισκόπῳ Μωνεμβασίας

Obverse

Cruciform invocative monogram (type V): in the quarters: ΤΣ|ΔΛ. Wreath border.

Θεοτόκε βοήθει τῷ σῷ δούλῳ

Reverse

Inscription of three lines, decoration above. Wreath border.


.ΜΑΡΙΝ
ΕΠΙΣΚ/
ΜΝΕΜ/

Μαρίνῳ ἐπισκόπῳ Μωνεμβασίας

Accession number BZS.1951.31.5.2765
Diameter 22.0 mm
Previous Editions

DO Seals 2, no. 33.1.

Translation

Θεοτόκε βοήθει τῷ σῷ δούλῳ Μαρίνῳ ἐπισκόπῳ Μωνεμβασίας.

Theotokos, help your servant Marinos bishop of Monembasia.

Commentary

No bishop Marinos is mentioned in the synodikon, but this is not surprising since the owner of the present bulla lived before the restoration of the cult of the images and may well have been an iconoclast himself.

Monembasia in the southeast of the Pelonnesos. This was a de novo foundation of the 6th or the 7th century (the date and the causes are dispute). The earliest mention of a bishop of Monembasia, Peter. is of 787. From around the same time comes this seal. The bishopric is mentioned in the controversial iconoclastic notitia; from the early 10th century onward it is regularly listed as a suffragan of Corinth (Darrouzès, Notitiae, no. 3, line 772; no. 7, line 491) until its elevation to metropolis in the 13th century. See Laurent, Corpus V/1, 430-31; Fedalto, 511-12; ODB II, 1394-95; Harris Kalligas, Byzantine Monemvasia. The Sources (Monemvasia, 1990). We have an incomplete list of the bishops and metropolitans of Monembasia (Gouillard, Synodikon, 117, cf. 281-82) which had been studied in detail of V. Laurent, EO 32 (1933) 129-61.

Note the popular forms of the placename preserved on the seals: Μονοβάσια or Μονοβασιά, Μονεμβάσα or Μονεμβασά. On these forms, see Ἀρχεῖον Πόντου 19 (1954) 325-37; cf. Kalligas, Byzantine Monemvasia, 35, note 2.

Bibliography

  • Catalogue of the Byzantine Seals at Dumbarton Oaks and at the Fogg Museum of Art, Vol. 2: South of the Balkans, the Islands, South of Asia Minor (Open in Zotero)
  • Notitiae Episcopatuum Ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae (Open in Zotero)
  • Le Corpus des sceaux de l’empire byzantin (Open in Zotero)
  • Hierarchia Ecclesiastica Orientalis: Series episcoporum ecclesiarum christianarum orientalium (Open in Zotero)
  • Byzantine Monemvasia: The Sources (Open in Zotero)
  • Le Synodikon de l’orthodoxie: Édition et commentaire (Open in Zotero)