Skip to Content

Constantine bishop of Adramyttion (eleventh century)

 
 

Obverse

Bust of St. Athanasios (only head visible). At right is one letter from an identifying inscription: σ. Border of dots.

Reverse

Inscription of four lines. Border of dots:

+κ..
προεδρ
αδραμυ
τιου

Κ[ων(σταντῖνος)] πρόεδρ(ος) Ἀδραμυτίου

Obverse

Bust of St. Athanasios (only head visible). At right is one letter from an identifying inscription: σ. Border of dots.

Reverse

Inscription of four lines. Border of dots:

+κ..
προεδρ
αδραμυ
τιου

Κ[ων(σταντῖνος)] πρόεδρ(ος) Ἀδραμυτίου

Accession number BZS.1955.1.4898
Diameter 13.0 mm
Previous Editions

DO Seals 3, no. 3.3. Cf. Wassiliou-Seibt, Siegel mit metrischen Legenden I, no. 1209.

A better preserved specimen from the same boulloterion is published (with illustration) in Sig. 258 (= Laurent, Corpus V/1, no. 274).

Translation

Κωνσταντῖνος πρόεδρος Ἀδραμυτίου.

Constantine, bishop of Adramyttion.

Commentary

The owner may have been a poet who didn't know it since the simple inscription does make a correct twelve-syllable verse. On St. Athanasios, represented on the obverse, see BZS.1951.31.5.991.

Adramyttion or Atramyttion (modern Edremit) was an important naval base, part of the Thrakesion. After the creation of the theme of Samos, between 843 and 899, Adramyttion and its littoral became the seat of one of its tourmai (De Them., chap. XVI, line 15) while the interior belonged to the strategos of the Thrakesion, who also kept, at least in the ninth century, a tourmarches at Adramyttion. The see, a suffragan of Ephesos, was first attested in 431 and appears in all the notitiae.See Laurent, Corpus V/1, 190; Culerrier, Suffragants d'Ephèse, 153 (episcopal list); ODB I, 227.

Bibliography

  • Catalogue of Byzantine Seals at Dumbarton Oaks and at the Fogg Museum of Art, Vol. 3: West, Northwest, and Central Asia Minor and the Orient (Open in Zotero)
  • De Thematibus (Open in Zotero)
  • Le Corpus des sceaux de l’empire byzantin (Open in Zotero)
  • Les évêchés suffragants d’Ephèse aux 5e-13e siècles (Open in Zotero)
  • Sigillographie de l’Empire byzantin (Open in Zotero)
  • Corpus der byzantinischen Siegel mit metrischen Legenden, Vol. 1, Siegellegenden von Alpha bis inclusive My (Open in Zotero)