Lazare

Lazare is a character of the origin of the Christianisme, appearing in the New Testament and the Eastern and Western legends of the beginning of the Christian history.

What the Bible says

According to the Gospel of Jean, Lazare was a friend of Jesus, brother of Marthe and Marie de Béthanie. It is him whom the Christ would have ressuscity, making it leave its tomb. One can read this passage in the Évangile of Jean, with the chapter 11.

The Western tradition

The legend wants that after the death of Christ it embarked towards the Provence in company of his sisters Marthe and Marie de Béthanie like several other people, and that he was the first bishop of Marseilles.

With the Moyen-âge one made the owner of the of it leprous, confusing it with the character of the parabola brought back by Luc. Its name corresponds to Hebrew אלעזר elazar (= God helped).

The Relique S which one venerates with the Cathédrale Saint-Lazare of Autun are perhaps not those of the biblical Lazare, but would be those D `a bishop of Marseilles of the 5th century which took part in the evangelization of Provence and was decapitated under the reign of Domitien, in year 94.

Festival : the July 29th, with his/her sister, Marthe.

The Eastern tradition

Another tradition reports that after the Pentecost, Lazare, ressuscity, joined the Apôtres and came to Cyprus to make work of evangelization. Saint Pierre would have invested it first bishop of Kition and he would have lived eighteen more years after his resurrection, before dying like each and everyone.

The fact is that its tomb is always venerated with Larnaka, city which is the seat of évêché current of Kition. At the 7th century, the inhabitants had to flee their devastated city and to settle not far from there, in the West of the salted lagoon. The new city was called Kition, like the antique quoted. Only the tomb of Lazare had remained on the old site which was called " Larnax" , the relic, or in modern Greek " Larnaka" , relics. The city kept this name due to the relic of Lazare when the inhabitants reinstated the original site of their city and Kition is only one village, however equipped with one of the very rare Byzantine mosaics which remained to us of before the destruction iconoclasts.

The emperor Leon VI Wise the (886 - 912) had a great veneration for Lazare saint. He made build with Constantinople a church with his name and placed there the body of the saint who it had ordered to go to seek in Larnaka. it is probably there that the relic was taken in 1204 to be transported to Occident.

Festivals : saturdays take care of the Branches (its resurrection) and the October 17th (translation of its relics from Cyprus to Constantinople).

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