The Tomb and the Octagon

The pilgrimage complex of St. Philip at Hierapolis comprises two related structures: the long-known octagonal martyrium of the fifth century, set high on the hill, and the tomb-church excavated in 2011 below it, built around a first-century Roman tomb. This file describes the two buildings and how they relate, explains the translation of the relics (Hierapolis → Constantinople → Rome) that accounts for the empty tomb, and reads what the architecture says about the cult of the apostle in late antiquity.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)

The Octagonal Martyrium

High above the ancient city, on the hill across the necropolis, stand the remains of the Martyrium of St. Philip, an octagonal church dated to the fifth century (c. early-to-mid 400s). Its plan is striking and deliberate: a central octagonal core, roofed in antiquity (probably by a timber pyramid or dome), set within a square of radiating chapels and surrounded by rooms that served pilgrims (D’Andria, Biblical Archaeology Review 37, no. 4, 2011; Huttner, Early Christianity in the Lycus Valley, 2013). The octagonal, centrally-planned form is characteristic of late-antique martyria — buildings raised to mark and celebrate the place of a martyr — and the structure had long been known and identified as Philip’s martyrium before the 2011 discovery. It was the architectural sign that Hierapolis honored Philip as its martyr-apostle on a grand scale.

For a long time the octagon was assumed to be the focus of the cult — perhaps even to stand over the tomb itself. The 2011 excavation revised that picture.

The Tomb-Church Below

About forty meters from the octagonal martyrium, lower on the slope, the excavators in 2011 uncovered a separate, previously unknown church — a three-nave basilica — built directly around an earlier first-century Roman tomb (D’Andria, OrthoChristian.com account; BAR 2011; see The Martyrium Found 2011). It was here, not in the octagon, that the actual venerated grave lay. The relationship of the two buildings is now understood as a single great pilgrimage sanctuary: the tomb-church enclosing and honoring the grave, and the octagonal martyrium nearby serving the gathering and celebration of pilgrims — the two together forming a complex that drew “thousands upon thousands” over the centuries, as the worn marble steps attest (D’Andria, OrthoChristian). The discovery clarified that the cult had a true tomb-focus (the first-century grave) distinct from the celebratory martyrium-octagon — a configuration paralleled at other great late-antique shrines.

The Translation of the Relics

A tomb venerated as an apostle’s, yet found without identifiable relics, raises an obvious question — and the tradition supplies the answer: the relics of Philip were translated away from Hierapolis in antiquity. According to D’Andria’s account of the sources, the apostle’s body was first taken to Constantinople — to remove it from the danger of profanation amid the upheavals of the period — and subsequently, in the sixth century, under Pope Pelagius I, conveyed to Rome, where it was laid in the church built for the apostles Philip and James, the Basilica of the Holy Apostles (Santi Apostoli) (D’Andria, OrthoChristian; BAR 2011). The relics of Philip and James the Less are venerated at Santi Apostoli in Rome to this day, and the dedication of that basilica to the two apostles is itself an old witness to the translation. [Disputed: the details and dating of the translation of Philip's relics (Hierapolis → Constantinople, then to Rome under Pelagius I in the sixth century, to the Basilica of the Holy Apostles) rest on the medieval and Byzantine tradition and the Roman dedication; the broad fact of the relics' presence at Santi Apostoli is well attested, while the precise route and chronology are traditional.] The translation accounts naturally for the state of the 2011 tomb: a grave long and intensely venerated as the apostle’s, from which the body had been removed centuries before — exactly what the excavators found, and exactly why D’Andria did not claim to have recovered the apostle’s bones (see The Martyrium Found 2011).

What the Architecture Says

The buildings are themselves a kind of testimony, and they say something the texts alone cannot. The sheer scale and richness of the complex — a grand octagonal martyrium and a richly appointed tomb-basilica, with pilgrim lodgings, processional ways, and barriers to manage crowds — establish that by the fifth and sixth centuries Hierapolis was a major center of apostolic pilgrimage, a destination of the first rank in Christian Asia Minor. The deliberate enshrining of a first-century tomb under a later church shows that the community believed, from an early date, that it possessed the actual grave of the apostle and built to honor it. And the octagonal martyrium-form places Philip’s cult firmly within the great age of martyr-veneration that produced the centrally-planned shrines across the late-antique world (Huttner, 2013; see Iconography and Cult). The stones confirm, beyond reasonable doubt, that Hierapolis venerated Philip as its apostle and martyr on a monumental scale — even as the precise identification of the tomb’s occupant remains, in the excavators’ own framing, a cautious hypothesis rather than a proof (see Reception and Legacy).

See Also

References

  • D’Andria, Francesco. “Conversion, Crucifixion and Celebration: St. Philip’s Martyrium at Hierapolis Draws Thousands over the Centuries.” Biblical Archaeology Review 37, no. 4 (2011): 34–46. (The octagonal martyrium, the tomb-church, the complex.)
  • D’Andria, Francesco. “How I Discovered the Tomb of the Apostle Philip.” OrthoChristian.com (English translation). (The two structures; the translation of the relics to Constantinople and to Rome under Pelagius I.)
  • Huttner, Ulrich. Early Christianity in the Lycus Valley. Leiden: Brill, 2013. (The martyrium and the architecture of the cult.)