The Emperor Julian and the Passion of Sergius and Bacchus

The passion of Sergius and Bacchus (BHG 1624) describes the deaths of two members of the imperial bodyguard under Galerius Maximianus, Bacchus at Barbalissus, and Sergius at Resapha. Although archaeology has proven that Resapha was the focus for an important cult of Sergius by c. 425 at latest, the passion has often been dismissed as a fiction. Others have argued that these martyrs were executed under Maximinus, not Maximianus. Yet the claim that Maximianus punished the martyrs by dressing them in women’s clothing points towards the reign of Julian, the only emperor who ever inflicted such humiliating punishment upon his soldiers. Other elements within the passion reinforce this impression, that it relates to the sufferings of two confessors under Julian, such that it is clear that its author used a historical account of such confessors under Julian as the main source for his fiction.

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