Wendy R. Larson
Roanoke College
Translation can mean to change a text from one language into another, but it also may mean to carry something from one location to another; both actions happened to many cults of saints as they were translated from their original Greek forms to new communities in western Europe.
Focusing on the cult of Agia Marina of Antioch, I examine the original Greek Life of Marina and how its translation into Latin and other Western European languages (including Old and Middle English, French, German, and Icelandic) entailed shifts in the Life’s content and audience. In the original 8th century Greek life, Marina says she can offer protection for livestock and against lawsuits, but these elements drop away in translation, and the vitae of St. Margaret (the name used in the western cult) begin to spell out promises of protection for the safety of mothers and health of their babies. The shift is more than simply going from one language into another; aspects of the Marina cult’s Mediterranean roots remain visible in the Latin texts in concepts of demonology and folklore, but they are misread or understood to signify in ways that their original Greek audience would not have anticipated. The Greek foundations of the cult remain embedded in the saint’s life, even after it is translated into new languages.
Byzantine relics, including some of Agia Marina, were forcibly “translated” to Venice following the sack of Constantinople in 1204. Like the texts of the saints lives, the relics preserved an original Greek core that was presented to new audiences in ways that preserved their sacred status, but which made the relics themselves less directly visible (Byzantine relics were typically displayed so that the bones were clearly visible, while western reliquaries were designed to conceal the relics from view, unless intentionally opened).
The translations of both texts and relics from their Greek origins into changed forms in western Europe presented new opportunities for devotion – a way of being “found,” but also entailed a literal loss of relics and the original form of the cult of Agia Marina as it was carried from the Mediterranean world to the north.