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 some Christians and Muslims.
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
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 Scandinavian, German and Hungarian
The legend of the seven sleepers has given origin to the word syvsover (literally seven-sleeper) in both Swedish,
Norwegian and Danish, 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
"Siebenschläfer" in German and "hétalvó" in Hungarian bear a meaning similar to the Scandinavian; they characterize someone who
usually sleeps long, waking up later than what is considered necessary or proper.
Notes
External references
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