Skip to Content

Longinos metropolitan of Ikonion (seventh/eighth century)

 
 

Obverse

Facing profile busts of St. Peter (left) with a short beard, holding what could be a cross and two keys, and St. Paul wearing a pointed beard, holding a book. No epigraphy visible. Wreath border.

Reverse

Inscription of six lines. Wreath border.

.....
οκεβ....
ιλονγι..
μητροπολ
ηττη
κονει

[Θεοτ]όκε β[οήθε]ι Λονγί[νου] μητροπολήτου τοῦ Ἠκονείου

Obverse

Facing profile busts of St. Peter (left) with a short beard, holding what could be a cross and two keys, and St. Paul wearing a pointed beard, holding a book. No epigraphy visible. Wreath border.

Reverse

Inscription of six lines. Wreath border.

.....
οκεβ....
ιλονγι..
μητροπολ
ηττη
κονει

[Θεοτ]όκε β[οήθε]ι Λονγί[νου] μητροπολήτου τοῦ Ἠκονείου

Accession number BZS.1951.31.5.598
Diameter 25.0 mm
Previous Editions

DO Seals 3, no. 91.1; Laurent, Corpus V/1, no. 538; and Zacos-Veglery, no. 2967.

Translation

Θεοτόκε βοήθει Λονγίνου μητροπολήτου τοῦ Ἠκονείου.

Mother of God, help Longinos, metropolitan of Ikonion.

Commentary

Previous editors ignored the loss of a line at top and wrongly read the abbreviation ΘΚΕ. Laurent dated this specimen to the ninth/tenth centuries, but this may have been a typographical error: later in the volume (Corpus V/1, no. 939) he dated a similar seal of one Longinus, metropolitan of an unspecified see to the seventh or eighth century, and assumed that this man might be identical to the owner of the present specimen.

Always a very important nexus of the road system in Asia Minor, Ikonion (modern Konya) served for a time in the eleventh century as a military base for a unit of 1,000 infantrymen, commanded by a taxiarch (Seyrig, no. 181). The city had a Christian community in apostolic times, and its bishops are attested from the third century onward. It appears in all notitiae episcopatuum. It became the capital of the Seljuk sultanate of Rum in the twelfth century. See Laurent, Corpus V/1, 399; Zgusta, 195-96; Galatien und Lykaonien, 176-78; ODB II, 985.

Bibliography