Seven Sleepers

A 19th century German painting of the 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

File:7sleepersmedievalmanuscript.jpg

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 passed. At some later time — usually, during the reign of Theodosius (379 - 395) — the landowner decided to open up the sealed mouth of the cave, to use it as a cattle pen. He opened it and found the sleepers inside. They awoke, imagining that they had slept but one day. One of their number returned to Ephesus. He was astounded to find buildings with crosses attached; the townspeople were astounded to find a man trying to spend old coins from the reign of Decius. The bishop was summoned to interview the sleepers; they told him their miracle story, and died 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. See Islamic Interpretation.

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, Washington Irving's Rip van Winkle, H.G. Wells's "The Sleeper Awakes" and Woody Allen's "Sleeper". 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. 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. According to tradition, 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.

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, the coins he used to buy food were out of circulation and drew the attention of the town's people. After the story was widely known, the sleepers died. The Quran also mentions a dog along the sleepers.

Linguistic derivatives in Norwegian and Hungarian

The legend of the seven sleepers has given origin to the word syvsover (literally seven-sleeper) in Norwegian, as in 'one of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus'. It has come to refer to someone who "sleeps hard and long". The word secondarily refers to a hibernating rodent, the Edible dormouse. The word hétalvó in Hungarian bears a meaning similar to the Norwegian; it characterizes someone who usually sleeps long, waking up later than what is considered necessary or proper.

Notes

External references

ar:أهل الكهف de:Sieben Märtyrer von Ephesus id:Maxalmena nl:Zeven Slapers van Efeze no:De Hellige Syv Sovere ru-sib:Гробня семи спячих sv:Sju sovare

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