Leontius of Neapolis

Despite his important role in the Cypriot church, little is known about the life of Leontius of Neapolis. Given his literary activity in the 640s it is reasonable to assume he was born in the early decades of the century. He probably died sometime during the reign of Constans II (d. 668). In addition to the lives of John the Almsgiver and Symeon the Fool, and a no longer extant Life of Spyridon, he is probably the author of a treatise entitled Against the Jews which includes a defense of the veneration of images, perhaps the earliest defense of icons in the Byzantine world.^[37]

The circumstances surrounding the composition of the Life of John the Almsgiver shed light on Leontius’s role in Cypriot affairs of his own time. Commissioned by the prominent archbishop of Constantia, Arcadius, a benefactor of Cyprus, the Life of John was specifically designed to celebrate Cypriot pride and to honor the aristocratic Cypriot family of which John had been a member. The work attests to the continuing importance of cultural ties between Egypt and Cyprus. While it is impossible to say with certainty that the commissioning of the work postdates the conquest of Alexandria by the Arabs in 641, this seems most likely since refugees came from Alexandria to Cyprus in the aftermath of this event. The work may have served as a rallying cry for the reversal of affairs.^[38]

External evidence also provides clues. Leontius should probably be identified with the Leontius of Neapolis recorded to have been present at the Lateran council held in Rome in October 649. While a coincidence is possible, it seems unlikely that in 649 both Neapolis, Cyprus, and Naples, Italy, would have bishops with identical names. The dating fits nicely, so soon after the Arab invasion of Cyprus, and would make Leontius one of the numerous eastern clerics in attendance at the council who were refugees of the military upheaval in the Levant. Pope Martin hosted the council to condemn the Ekthesis and the teaching of Monotheletism; the drafting of the Acts themselves was carefully engineered by Maximus the Confessor, and they were quickly circulated, much to the displeasure of the Emperor Constans.^[39] No other Cypriot see was represented at the council, but a letter from Sergius, archbishop of Constantia, to Pope Theodore, written in 643 affirming the orthodoxy of the island and expressing his opposition to Monotheletism, was read out in the course of the meetings. It is likely that Leontius would have followed his superior in opposing the doctrine and would have found the proceedings of the council acceptable. Whether Leontius later returned to Cyprus, we do not know. In 649, Mu‘awiya and his troops raided the island of Cyprus, in the words of one chronographer “sacking Constantia and the whole island,”^[40] and with a second raid in 653 decisively removed Cyprus from Byzantine control. According to some Arab sources, the Cypriots negotiated a peace with the Arabs by which they were to pay tribute to their new overlords,^[41] but archeological evidence suggests that life along the coasts of Cyprus was disrupted and that Cypriots turned to the construction of numerous fortifications both along the coast and further inland.^[42] By 692, the archbishop of Constantia and a group of Cypriot refugees were living in exile in Cyzicus in the province of Hellespont near the sea of Marmara.^[43] Leontius may have died in exile.

It is reasonable to assume that Leontius had firsthand knowledge of many of the theological disputes of his day and may have known personally such “international” figures as Sophronius. Distances on Cyprus are short, and travel by sea was easily accomplished. The journey from Neapolis (modern Limassol) to Constantia (Famagusta) took about twenty-four hours by sea.^[44] Leontius’s inclusion of Jews (pp. 145, 154, 163, 168), Monophysites (pp. 146, 154), and even the debate over the status of Origen (pp. 152–53) in the Life of Symeon reflects the diverse religious world with which he was familiar. His interest in pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the veneration of the True Cross on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross reflect the enthusiasm felt throughout the empire for Heraclius’s military successes, symbolized most effectively in his “recovery” of the Cross while on campaign to liberate Jerusalem from the Persians in 622. Heraclius personally restored the Cross to Jerusalem in 630 while on the first pilgrimage ever made to the city by a reigning Christian emperor.^[45] In Leontius’s narrative, composed while Jerusalem was in Arab hands, Symeon travels twice to the holy city to visit the sites connected to the life of Jesus. Whether Leontius’s information about the Holy Land came from his own experience or from travelers’ accounts, we do not know.

Leontius’s work not only reflects the Christian environment in which it was composed, it remains a witness to the survival of Greco-Roman literary and intellectual culture into the seventh century. The first half of the seventh century saw the composition of the last great hexameter epic, George of Pisidia’s Heracliad.^[46] And Theophylact Simocatta’s Ethical Epistles display a great concern with the texts traditionally studied in the educational curriculum. Similarly, the descriptions of Symeon’s shameless behavior, his defecation in public, his consumption of lupines (legumes which cause gas), his ingestion of raw meat, and his dragging a dead dog into the city are references to the anecdotes about Diogenes of Sinope, the Cynic philosopher, preserved in large part in the rhetorical curriculum of Hellenistic and Late Antique schools, where they served to illustrate grammatical points and were utilized as building blocks for composing practice speeches. Allusion to these in Leontius’s text together with the rhetorical character of the introduction to the Life suggests not only that he had received a traditional education, but that he could assume such a level of education among at least a sector of his audience. Thus the Life of Symeon is evidence for the persistence of the Late Ancient educational curriculum and therefore a Christianized version of Greco-Roman secular culture on Cyprus into the mid-seventh century.

The text’s literary aspects as well as various theological concerns to be uncovered in the course of this study raise questions about Leontius’s intended audience. The use of tools derived from the educational tradition shows Leontius to have been a part of a broader Eastern Mediterranean intellectual culture. As we shall see, Leontius utilized literary skill deliberately and effectively. His art points not only toward a local Cypriot audience, but toward a more international readership as well. At the same time, the literary content of the text lies side-by-side with slapstick and bawdy. This diglossic character of Leontius’s work indicates that a text which aimed to manipulate the high cultural tradition also sought to please the common people.

On the eve of the Arab invasion of Cyprus, Late Roman culture was flourishing. Against this background of vibrant social, economic, and religious life, Leontius undertook to make his peculiar literary contribution, a saint’s life which challenged the conventional notions of sanctity and recast the problem of finding holiness in everyday life. To appreciate the significance of Leontius’s achievement, we turn next to the problem of his literary sources.