Three Men in the Fire (×3)

Abstract

The Old Hispanic liturgy for Córdoban saints Faustus, Januarius, and Martialis associates the martyrs with the three men thrown into the fiery furnace (Daniel 3). This article explores the compilation choices and musical strategies that establish this biblical parallel, their possible motivations, and how a liturgy emphasizing these biblical heroes would have been received by the community that used it. The chants and prayers for Faustus, Januarius, and Martialis are borrowed from the liturgy for another trio of Iberian saints (Fructuosus, Augurius, and Eulogius), and I argue that these chants may have been selected to capitalize on the layers of cultural associations that had accrued to Daniel 3. Contemporary biblical illuminations, illustrated Beatus Apocalypse commentaries, and anti-Islamic polemics alike emphasize the Babylonian location of the three men in the furnace. In anti-Islamic polemic, Babylon becomes Córdoba, the capital of the Umayyad caliphate. These textual and artistic traditions were prominent at the monastery of San Millán de la Cogolla, the presumed origin of the earliest witness to the surviving liturgy for Faustus, Januarius, and Martialis. After newly identifying anti-Islamic polemical aspects of the saints’ passio, I propose that the choice to highlight Daniel 3 in Faustus, Januarius, and Martialis’s liturgy emphasized the saints’ Córdoban origin and inscribed their story within the contemporary contexts of Muslim-Christian relationships.