Holy Healers in Rome

Scrinium
The article is dedicated to four saints represented in the Chapel of Holy Physicians in Santa Maria Antiqua church in Rome. Two saints are identified for the first time (Jonas and Procopius), one previously hypothetical identification is confirmed (Barachisius), and the meaning of the cult of St Dometius in Rome is discussed. The hagiographical dossier of Sts Jonas and Barachisius is examined in detail. Based on this examination, it is argued that the earliest recensions of their martyrdom must go back to the Syriac Chalcedonian archetype written in the 590s, which, in turn, derived from a Syriac “Nestorian” hagiographical work produced in sixth-century Iran and related to the mid-sixth-century rebellion of prince Anōšazād against his father Khosrow I. The Chalcedonian counterpart of this lost hagiographical work was paraphrased by Ferdowsi.