Seven Sleepers

The legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus tells of the falling asleep of seven young men in a cave, who wake up after a great deal of time has passed.

The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus are viewed as saints by Christians.

The basic outline of the tale appears in Gregory of Tours (b. 538 - d. 594), and in Paul the Deacon's (b. 720 - d. 799) History of the Lombards. The best known version of the story appears in Jacobus de Voragine's Golden Legend.

Their story also appears in the Qur'an (Surah 18, verse 9-26) [1], which also includes a dog among the seven.

The Legend

Decius orders the walling in of the Seven Sleepers. From a 14th century manuscript.

The outline of the story is that during the persecutions of the Roman emperor Decius, around 250, seven young men were accused of Christianity. They were given some time to recant their faith; they gave their worldly goods to the poor, and retired to a mountain to pray, where they fell asleep. The emperor, seeing that their attitude towards paganism had not improved, ordered the mouth of the cave to be sealed.

Decades pass. At some later time — usually, during the reign of Theodosius (379 - 395) — the landowner decides to open up the sealed mouth of the cave, to use it as a cattle pen. He opens it and finds the sleepers inside. They awaken, imagining that they have slept but one day. One of their number returns to Ephesus. He is astounded to find buildings with crosses attached; people he deals with are astounded to find a man trying to spend old coins from the reign of Decius. The bishop is summoned, to interview the sleepers; they tell him their miracle story, and die praising God.

The Seven Sleepers are commemorated as 'the Seven Holy Sleepers, Maximian, Malchus, Martinian, Denis, John, Serapion, and Constantine' (other names are given in other sources) on 27 July according to the Roman Martyrology in the Office of Prime before the reforms of the late 1960s. The commemoration was suppressed in the modern Roman Breviary. The Seven Sleepers are commemorated with feasts in the Byzantine Calendar on 4 August and 22 October.

The career of the legend

As the earliest versions of the legend spread from Ephesus; an early Christian catacomb came to be associated with it, attracting pilgrims. On the slopes of Mount Pion (Mount Coelian) near Ephesus (near modern Selçuk in Turkey), the 'Grotto' of the Seven Sleepers with ruins of the church built over it was excavated in 1927-28. The excavation brought to light several hundred graves which were dated to the 5th and 6th centuries. Inscriptions dedicated to the Seven Sleepers were found on the walls of the church and in the graves. The 'Grotto' is still shown to tourists.

Syriac origins

The legend appeared in several Syriac sources before Gregory's lifetime. It was retold by Symeon Metaphrastes.

The Seven Sleepers form the subject of a homily in verse by the Edessan poet Jacob of Saruq ('Sarugh') (died 521), which was published in the Acta Sanctorum. Another 6th century version, in a Syrian manuscript in the British Museum (Cat. Syr. Mss, p. 1090), gives eight sleepers. There are considerable variations as to their names.

Another Syriac version is printed in Land’s Anecdota, iii. 87ff; see also Barhebraeus, Chron. eccles. i. 142ff., and cf Assemani, Bib. Or. i. 335ff.

Dissemination

The legend rapidly attained a wide diffusion throughout Christendom, popularized in the West by Gregory of Tours, in his late 6th century collection of miracles, De gloria martyrum (Glory of the Martyrs). Gregory says that he had the legend from “a certain Syrian,“.

In the 7th century, the myth gained an even wider audience by being incorporated into the Qur'an, in Sura 18, Al-Kahf, verse 9 to 14. Here an inscription in the cave is mentioned:

Do you think that the Fellows of the Cave and the Inscription were of Our wonderful signs?

When the youths sought refuge in the cave, they said: Our Lord! grant us mercy from Thee, and provide for us a right course in our affair.

In the following century, Paul the Deacon told the tale in his History of the Lombards (i.4) but gave it a different setting:

In the farthest boundaries of Germany toward the west-north-west, on the shore of the ocean itself, a cave is seen under a projecting rock, where for an unknown time seven men repose wrapped in a long sleep.

Their dress identifies them as Romans, according to Paul, and none of the local barbarians dare touch them.

During the period of the Crusades, bones from the sepulchres near Ephesus, identified as relics of the Seven Sleepers, were transported to Marseille, France in a large stone coffin, which remained a trophy of the church of Saint Victoire, Marseille.

The Seven Sleepers were included in the Golden Legend compilation, the most popular book of the later Middle Ages, which fixed a precise date for their resurrection, AD 478, in the reign of Theodosius.(1)

Early modern literature

The myth had become proverbial in 16th century Protestant culture. The poet John Donne could ask, with a skeptical undertone,

'were we not wean'd till then?

But suck'd on countrey pleasures, childishly?

Or snorted we in the seaven sleepers den?' -John Donne, 'The good-morrow'

Little is heard of the Seven Sleepers during the Enlightenment, but the legend revived with the coming of Romanticism. The Golden Legend may have been the source for retellings of the Seven Sleepers in Thomas de Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-eater, in a poem by Goethe, and Washington Irving's Rip van Winkle. It also might have an influence on the motif of the 'king in the mountain'.

Islamic interpretation

The Islamic version is related in Surah (Chapter) Al-Kahf (18, "The Cave"), of the Qur'an. The holy Quran tells the story of the sleepers in detail, but does not give importance to their number. In the Quran God says, they (the Jews) ask you about their number, say to them, only God knows it best. ^[1] It also mentions a dog along the sleepers. The Quran states that the period of time these sleepers spent in the cave was three hundred years during which the calendar of their people was changed from Gregorian (solar) to lunar and, as a result, the period of their sleep has increased to 309 (lunar) years. When they woke up, they had no idea they slept for centuries and thought they only slept a few hours. When they sent one of them to buy food, that's when their story became known. Scholars have postulated that the reason they were discovered is that the coins they were using to buy food were out of circulation for ages and that drew the attention of the town's people. After the story was widely known, the sleepers died, just as the moral of their story was impressed on the people, that is God resurrects the dead and protects true believers.

During the time of prophet Muhammad, the Jews of Medina challenged him to tell them the story of the sleepers knowing that none of the Arabs knew about it. God then sent Gabriel to reveal the story to him through Surah Al-Kahf. After hearing it from him, the Jews confirmed that he told the same story they knew.

Linguistic derivative in Norwegian

The legend of the seven sleepers have originated the word 'syvsover' (literally seven-sleeper) in Norwegian, as in 'one of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus'. In Norwegian it has come to refer to someone who "sleeps hard and long". The word secondarily refers to hibernating rodents.

Notes

^ *Sura al-Kahf at Wikisource

External references

ru-sib:Гробня семи спячих

[1] *Sura al-Kahf at Wikisource

[1]