I end this second week of sneak peeks with something a bit different. My Small Child saw the statue of Eros in Piccadilly Circus, London (yes, I know it’s really meant to be Anteros, but everyone calls him Eros!), which is the reason for today’s final choice — along with his mom… or is she?
Eros ♂
The Greek God of (sexual) love. He is usually regarded now as the son of Aphrodite by Ares, and familiar to all as a cuddly little cherub with wings and a bow and arrow — but the ancients perceived him very differently. In some early sources, such as Hesiod, he was considered to be one of the three original deities to emerge from Chaos, along with Gaia and Tartarus. The Greeks and Romans recognized and embraced — in a way the Abrahamic religions like to brush pink-cheeked under the carpet — the cardinal importance of sex in the perpetuation of human life and as a generative force. Thus Eros to the Greeks was a handsome, virile, dimple-free young man. It is quite probable that an obscure 4th Century saint, Erotis, is an outright adoption into the saintly fold of a God whom the Church struggled to suppress from the start. Since a major part of its doctrine rests upon sex being classed as a ‘sin’, containing the God of sexual love was always going to be a sticky problem – and slapping a ‘St’ in front may have been one way they dealt with this troublesome Pagan deity that wouldn’t just vanish into a puff of air. Encountered as a genuine given name since the 19th Century.
Aphrodite ♀
The Greek Goddess of love needs little introduction. Known to the Romans as Venus, she was identified by the ancients with native Goddesses across the known world, including the Mesopotamian Ishtar, Phoenician Astarte and Egyptian Hathor. Her association with the Evening and Morning Star is likewise very ancient. The traditional etymology of her name is Greek: aphros ‘foam’, considered a reference to her birth from the foam of the sea. However, this is likely to be Greek wishful thinking again when the name was Hellenized. Its true origin is likely to be pre-Greek or to lie in Asia Minor or Mesopotamia. A possible candidate is the Assyrian Bariritu, a Goddess whose name derives from the Akkadian: barārītu ‘dusk’ and ‘twilight’. She is a known manifestation of Ishtar. 19th Century.
I’m not sure whether St Erotis is made up or not – modern hagiographies usually say whether the saint is probably fictional. For example, Blessed Olive is really just a personification of the olive harvest.
All I could find on Erotis is that he may have been confused or conflated with a female saint of a similar name. It’s very common for ancient saints to have names of pagan origin, given by their parents, and although some chose to change their name to something more Christian, there was no need to do so. You can see there was no pressure to Christianise personal names, as many of the early Christians chose names from pagan Greece or Rome for their own children, apparently not seeing any conflict between the cultures.
They only admit to those which are so blatantly made up that trying to continue the pretence they were real people does more harm than good!
Of course you are right about some genuine ‘saints’ having Pagan names. Contemporary writers/theologists wrote how Christians ought to reject Pagan names, but they were used all the same.
However, those Pagan names which became the names of saints are — almost without exception — names already attested as personal given names. Erotis is not one of them. It is only found in Pagan texts as the genitive form of Eros itself.
He is sometimes thought to be one and the same with the female ‘Erotheis’, another suspect name, this time deriving from Eros + theos ‘a God’…
It is well attested that missionaries were told to turn Pagan temples in Christian ones and Pagan festivals into Christian ones. They were also prepated to lie — not only admitting it, but justifying it!
It is also worth remembering that where the vast majoriry of these early saints are concerned, their existence rests solely upon a ‘Life’ written by a monk long after (sometimes centuries after) they were alleged to have lived. Suffice it to say, modern standards of historiography were unknown, and these ‘Lives’ were more concerned with providing inspirational tales of Christian devotion than recording historical fact. As historical documents, they must therefore be taken with very large pinches of salt.
Erotis is such a shadowy saint, with no contemporary documentation, that I think the case that he/she never existed as a person is high indeed.
Well that could very well be the case – it’s more than a thousand years ago!
(St Paul said there was no need to change a pagan name or even avoid them; he was pretty express in saying that it was fine to take part in anything of the dominant pagan culture, as long as it didn’t involve any actual direct worship).
Indeed! Later Church fathers had different ideas though, once Christianity became the official religion of the Empire!
Maybe they were fed to the lions just one too many times 😉