Judas Cyriacus (Cyriacus of Ancona, Cyriacus of Jerusalem, Quiriacus, Quiricus, Kyriakos); es, Quirico, it, Ciriaco), d. ca. AD 360, is the

patron saint A patron saint, patroness saint, patron hallow or heavenly protector is a saint who in Catholicism, Anglicanism, or Eastern Orthodoxy is regarded as the heavenly advocate of a nation, place, craft, activity, class, clan, family, or perso ...

Ancona Ancona (, also , ) is a city and a seaport in the Marche region in central Italy, with a population of around 101,997 . Ancona is the capital of the province of Ancona and of the region. The city is located northeast of Rome, on the Adriatic ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

. His feast day is celebrated in the

Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

on 4 May.

Judas Cyriacus, Bishop of Ancona

He is said to have been the bishop of Ancona who died or was killed during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. His feast is celebrated in the

Eastern Orthodox Church The Eastern Orthodox Church, also called the Orthodox Church, is the second-largest Christian church, with approximately 220 million baptized members. It operates as a communion of autocephalous churches, each governed by its bishops vi ...

on 14 April. (Judas Cyriacus of Ancona is often confused with the legendary Bishop Judas Cyriacus of Jerusalem (''Saint Cyriacus of Jerusalem''), who was killed during a disturbance there, in 133 AD. The 2nd century Bishop Judah Kyriakos of Jerusalem is said to the last in the desposynic line for that post, some of his predecessors being descendants from the family of Jesus. This meant that '2nd century' Judah Kyriakos was the last Christian Bishop of Jerusalem of Jewish origins.)

Judas Cyriacus and the True Cross

Judas Cyriacus by Palma il Giovane The local tradition of Ancona has identified this saint with the

Jew Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""T ...

named Judas Quiriacus or Kyriakos. According to legend, a Jew Judas Kyriakos aided the Empress Helena in finding the

True Cross The True Cross is the cross upon which Jesus was said to have been crucified, particularly as an object of religious veneration. There are no early accounts that the apostles or early Christians preserved the physical cross themselves, althoug ...

, which had been buried at Golgotha after the crucifixion. The oldest extant

Syriac Syriac may refer to: *Syriac language, an ancient dialect of Middle Aramaic *Sureth, one of the modern dialects of Syriac spoken in the Nineveh Plains region * Syriac alphabet ** Syriac (Unicode block) ** Syriac Supplement * Neo-Aramaic languages a ...

text of the legend of the discovery of the True Cross by Judas Kyriakos dates from c. 500 AD. Its recent editor and translator says that the manuscript is "of great value for the history of the legend of the ''inventio crucis''".

Sozomen Salamanes Hermias Sozomenos ( grc-gre, Σαλαμάνης Ἑρμείας Σωζομενός; la, Sozomenus; c. 400 – c. 450 AD), also known as Sozomen, was a Roman lawyer and historian of the Christian Church. Family and home He was born aro ...

(died c. 450 AD), in his ''Ecclesiastical History'

states that it was said (by whom he does not say) that the location of the Holy Sepulchre was "disclosed by a Hebrew who dwelt in the East, and who derived his information from some documents which had come to him by paternal inheritance" (although Sozomen himself disputes this account) and that a dead person was also revived by the touch of the Cross. Later, popular versions of this story state that a Jew who assisted Helena was named Jude or Judas, but later converted to Christianity and took the name Kyriakos (kyriakos means "lordly" or "lord-like" in Greek). Among the three accounts about the discovery of the True Cross that circulated throughout the Roman Empire in the 4th century, the two most widely repeated both credited Helena, the aged mother of

Constantine the Great Constantine I ( , ; la, Flavius Valerius Constantinus, ; ; 27 February 22 May 337), also known as Constantine the Great, was Roman emperor from AD 306 to 337, the first one to convert to Christianity. Born in Naissus, Dacia Mediterran ...

, who travelled to

Jerusalem Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...

at her son's request. To recover it, it was necessary to demolish a temple, perhaps dedicated to Venus, that occupied the site. In one, Judas knew of the location of the Cross; he had been the recipient of that secret knowledge which was handed down the paternal line of his family, and revealed it under torture. As J. W. Drijvers, the editor of the text, has noted,

The Judas Kyriakos legend originated in Greek, but became also known in Latin and Syriac and later on in many vernacular languages. This version relates how Helena discovered the Cross with the help of a Jew Judas, who later converted and received the name Kyriakos. It became the most popular version of the three.

The martyrdom of Judas Cyriacus

After assisting Helena with the finding of the True Cross, Judas Cyriacus was baptized, consecrated as bishop of Jerusalem, and

martyr A martyr (, ''mártys'', "witness", or , ''marturia'', stem , ''martyr-'') is someone who suffers persecution and death for advocating, renouncing, or refusing to renounce or advocate, a religious belief or other cause as demanded by an externa ...

ed during the persecutions of Julian the Apostate, which would place his death in the 4th century. Another saint, named Saint Cyriacus, died during this century, and there may have been confusion between the two saints. In the legendary ''Acts'' of his martyrdom, at first written in Greek and than translated in Latin and Syriac, he engaged in dialogue with the emperor Julian and, along with his mother Anna, was described as being subjected to horrible torments. The Empress Galla Placidia is said to have presented Ancona with the

relics In religion, a relic is an object or article of religious significance from the past. It usually consists of the physical remains of a saint or the personal effects of the saint or venerated person preserved for purposes of veneration as a tang ...

of Judas Cyriacus. However, the saint's head was located at

Provins Provins () is a commune in the Seine-et-Marne department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France. Known for its well-preserved medieval architecture and importance throughout the Middle Ages as an economic center and a host of annu ...

Henry I of Champagne Henry I (December 1127 – March 16, 1181), known as the Liberal, was count of Champagne from 1152 to 1181. He was the eldest son of Count Theobald II of Champagne, who was also count of Blois, and his wife, Matilda of Carinthia. Biography Henry ...

brought it from

and built a church in this town to contain it. This still stands as the Saint Quiriace Collegiate Church, although construction work during the 12th century was never completed due to financial difficulties during the reign of Philippe le Bel. A dome was added in the 17th century, and the old families of Provins who lived in the upper town were called "Children of the Dome.

Cathedral of San Ciriaco

Monte Guasco, in Ancona, the location of the

Duomo ''Duomo'' (, ) is an Italian term for a church with the features of, or having been built to serve as, a cathedral, whether or not it currently plays this role. Monza Cathedral, for example, has never been a diocesan seat and is by definition n ...

is dedicated to Saint Judas Cyriacus. It is said to occupy the site of a temple of

Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus (like Mercury) appears in Earth's sky never f ...

, who is mentioned by

Catullus Gaius Valerius Catullus (; 84 - 54 BCE), often referred to simply as Catullus (, ), was a Latin poet of the late Roman Republic who wrote chiefly in the neoteric style of poetry, focusing on personal life rather than classical heroes. His ...

and

Juvenal Decimus Junius Juvenalis (), known in English as Juvenal ( ), was a Roman poet active in the late first and early second century CE. He is the author of the collection of satirical poems known as the '' Satires''. The details of Juvenal's life ...

as the

tutelary deity A tutelary () (also tutelar) is a deity or a spirit who is a guardian, patron, or protector of a particular place, geographic feature, person, lineage, nation, culture, or occupation. The etymology of "tutelary" expresses the concept of safety an ...

of the place. It was consecrated in 1128 and completed in 1189. Some writers suppose that the original church was in the form of a

Latin cross A Latin cross or ''crux immissa'' is a type of cross in which the vertical beam sticks above the crossbeam, with the three upper arms either equally long or with the vertical topmost arm shorter than the two horizontal arms, and always with a mu ...

and belonged to the 8th century. An early restoration was completed in 1234. It is a fine Romanesque building in grey stone, built in the form of a

Greek cross The Christian cross, with or without a figure of Christ included, is the main religious symbol of Christianity. A cross with a figure of Christ affixed to it is termed a ''crucifix'' and the figure is often referred to as the ''corpus'' (La ...

, with a dodecagonal dome over the center slightly altered by Margaritone d'Arezzo in 1270. The body purported to be Cyriacus' lies prostrate and visible in his tomb.

References

*J.W. Drijvers, ''The Finding of the True Cross: The Judas Kyriakos Legend in Syriac. Introduction, Text and Translation'', 1997.

External links

* Edward Bickersteth Birks (Esq., M.A., Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, son of

Thomas Rawson Birks Thomas Rawson Birks (28 September 1810 – 19 July 1883) was an English theologian and controversialist, who figured in the debate to try to resolve theology and science. He rose to be Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University ...