OSIRIS (Osiris; Egiz. Wéjr; Gr. "Osíris"). - A deity of primary importance in the Egyptian pantheon, revealing multiple and complex aspects. Originally orthodoxy. The personal collaboration, though not exclusive, of O. in the drafting of the Nicene Creed seems undeniable. He was also president of the Council of Sardica (343), and the canons and a letter to Pope Julius I concerning the Creed of Nicaea are owed to him.
O. also intervened in other grave matters. The Donatists attributed to him the severe imperial decisions of 316, on the occasion of the schism against Bishop Caecilian. The law of the Emperor, of 18 April 321, which facilitates the manumission of slaves in the Churches, is addressed to O. (Cod. Theod., 4, 7): a clear allusion to the part he played in it.
For a long time O. resisted the pressures of Constantius (355), who wanted to make him renounce the Nicene faith and condemn St. Athanasius. His energetic response (356) earned him exile to Sirmium at the hands of the Emperor; and there, by then a centenarian, worn out by hardships and by exile under violence of every kind, the signature was finally wrested from him subscribing to the second formula of Sirmium, which he himself soon afterward retracted in the hour of death, as having been imposed by violence; thus indeed it is attested by St. Athanasius: "In his testament he protested against the violence used and hurled his anathemas against the Arian heresy, ordering that no one should follow it." The Greek Church venerates him as a saint on 27 August.
His whole life was sacrificed to action. He left, however, though brief, certain writings, true literary gems. St. Isidore of Seville attributes to him a letter to his sister, De laude virginitatis, in a serene style, and a treatise De interpretatione vestium sacerdotalium quae sunt in Veteri Testamento, whose genius and sagacity he praises; but nothing of these works has been preserved. St. Athanasius, on the other hand, has transmitted in his Historia Arianorum, 44, the letter to Constantius, an imperishable monument of the fortitude of the great bishop, and at the same time a decisive canon of the jurisdiction and immunity of the Church before every outrage.
Bibliography11 works
Giuseppe Madoz
he was almost certainly an ancient king divinized, whose cult replaced that of the local god of Busiris, a city of the Delta. The tradition of the violent death of O. gave rise to two of his most characteristic aspects: the one of deity of the dead, the other of agricultural deity.
The first is connected to the well-known legend (v. HÓRO; ISIDE) of his treacherous killing by his brother Seth and of the subsequent resurrection in the afterlife, where he reigns eternally over the dead, presiding over the judgment of their souls (v. LIBRO DEI MORTI). From the Middle Kingdom until the end of pharaonic civilization, the priority of O. over all the other deities of the afterlife is documented concordantly by the funerary texts. O. was invoked with the epithet of Wun-nfr (Gr. Ὀννόωρις) = "the Beautiful Being" par excellence, that is, eternally incorrupt; another frequent appellation of his was that of "Lord of the West," that is, of the underworld which every night the sun illuminated with a course inverse to the diurnal one. The possession of a tomb or of a cenotaph or at least of a stele in the great necropolis of Abydos, the ancient sacred city of O. where a reliquary containing his head was preserved, was a guarantee and pledge of a happy otherworldly life. In the same city the "mysteries of O." were celebrated annually, intended to recall his death and resurrection.
Even the aspect of O. as an agricultural deity is connected to a passage of the legend, since the permanence of the corpse of O. in the Nile was placed in relation to the annual beneficent inundation. Therefore O. "the new water of the Nile" determines the periodic renewal of vegetative life. Significant in this regard is the rite by which barley was made to sprout from a modeled earthen image depicting O. The character of cosmic and celestial deity is the fruit of the speculations of the Heliopolitan theologians, who found themselves compelled to introduce O. into their universal system because of the ever-growing favor the god enjoyed. At times O. appears identified with the moon, since the phases of the lunar cycle were placed in relation to the assassination of the god by Seth and to his subsequent rebirth.
Iconographically O. is represented in mummiform shape, tightly wrapped in bandages, at times stylized into an actual garment, which leaves free only the hands and the head: an evident allusion to the embalming of the corpse performed by Anubis. The other attributes, a tall tiara flanked by two ostrich feathers, a scepter and a flagellum, are connected to the royalty of O. His flesh is green, a symbol of eternal youth.
At Busiris the emblem of O. consisted of a kind of pillar (gd), of uncertain derivation.
Bibliography7 works
Sergio Bosticco