Seven Sleepers of Ephesus.

The legend of the seven sleeping saints of Ephesus was born in response to the heresy denying the resurrection of bodies at the time of the Parousia, or the second coming of Christ. In 4th and 5th century the Eastern Christians doubted that a body, nothing of which is left after death could come to life again. Would only intact remains be resurrected? To counter that heresy, the story of the seven lads who died during the reign of Trajan Decius in 3rd century was used. The young aristocrats served in the army and were Christians. They refused to offer sacrifices to pagan deities at the request of the emperor who came to Ephesus, so they hid in a cave and kept praying. The emperor had the entrance to the cave bricked up condemning them to certain death. According to legend, the lads did not die but fell asleep and were woken up nearly two hundred years later when the entrance to the cave was accidentally exposed during construction work. Without realising the passage of time, they sent one of them to fetch bread and when he wanted to pay with coins bearing Decius' likeness, he was suspected of hiding the treasure and led to the intendant. To explain his innocence, he led the citizens of Ephesus to the cave. The local bishop understood that God was pointing to the mystery of Christ's Resurrection by awakening the Saints after such a long time in order to strengthen credence of the resurrection of the body. The story of the seven sleepers of Ephesus reached Russia in 12th century through hegumen Danil who, when describing his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, quoted the apocryphal story of the sleeping lads. In the Russian Orthodox Church, they are remembered on 17 August and 4 November (4 August and 22 October according to the Julian calendar). In the Eastern Christian tradition, the sleeping lads of Ephesus are revered as intercessors in insomnia, and their images usually appear in small and fine art, such as the icon exhibited here.

Teresa Bagińska-Żurawska https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9243-3967