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41-513: The first religious building on the site of the present church was a Roman monument, perhaps a temple of Attis , whose worship was probably the cause of the Christian persecution in Lyon from 177. In the 5th century, according to tradition, Eucherius of Lyon , 19th bishop of Lyon, built on the ruins of the building a basilica to contain the relics of the martyrs in Lyon, tortured in 177. The church received

82-613: A daimōn who has obtained the person at his birth by lot, is an idea which we find in Plato, undoubtedly from earlier tradition. The famous, paradoxical saying of Heraclitus is already directed against such a view: 'character is for man his daimon ' ". The Hellenistic Greeks divided daemons into good and evil categories: agathodaímōn ( ἀγαθοδαίμων , "noble spirit"), from agathós ( ἀγαθός , "good, brave, noble, moral, lucky, useful"), and kakodaímōn ( κακοδαίμων , " malevolent spirit "), from kakós ( κακός , "bad, evil"). They resemble

123-421: A daimōnion (literally, a "divine something") that frequently warned him—in the form of a "voice"—against mistakes but never told him what to do. The Platonic Socrates, however, never refers to the daimonion as a daimōn ; it was always referred to as an impersonal "something" or "sign". By this term he seems to indicate the true nature of the human soul , his newfound self-consciousness . Paul Shorey sees

164-564: A pomegranate . His head is crowned with a pine garland with fruits , bronze rays of the sun, and on his Phrygian cap is a crescent moon. It was discovered in 1867 at the Campus of the Magna Mater together with other statues. The objects seem to have been hidden there in late antiquity. A plaster cast of it sits in the apse of the Sanctuary of Attis at the Campus of the Magna Mater , while the original

205-483: A divine spirit, but, for example, the ills released by Pandora are deadly deities, keres , not daimones . From Hesiod also, the people of the Golden Age were transformed into daimones by the will of Zeus , to serve mortals benevolently as their guardian spirits; "good beings who dispense riches…[nevertheless], they remain invisible, known only by their acts". The daimones of venerated heroes were localized by

246-527: A pine. When he died as a result of his self-inflicted wounds, violets grew from his blood. Attis' father-in-law-to-be, the king who was giving his daughter in marriage, followed suit, prefiguring the self-castrating corybantes who devoted themselves to Cybele. The heartbroken Agdistis begged Zeus , the Father God, to preserve Attis so his body would never decay or decompose. At the temple of Cybele in Pessinus,

287-406: A scale from good to bad. ... [Plutarch] speaks of ‘great and strong beings in the atmosphere, malevolent and morose, who rejoice in [unlucky days, religious festivals involving violence against the self, etc.], and after gaining them as their lot, they turn to nothing worse.’ ... The use of such malign daemones by human beings seems not to be even remotely imagined here: Xenocrates' intention

328-422: Is the most blessed existence, the highest origin of everything. ‘This is the god. On such a principle heaven depends, and the cosmos.’ The highest, the best is one; but for the movement of the planets a plurality of unmoved movers must further be assumed. In the monotheism of the mind, philosophical speculation has reached an end-point. That even this is a self-projection of a human, of the thinking philosopher,

369-531: Is towards these daemones that we direct purifications and apotropaic rites , all kinds of divination, the art of reading chance utterances, and so on.’ ... This account differs from that of the early Academy in reaching back to the other, Archaic, view of daemones as souls, and thus anticipates the views of Plutarch and Apuleius in the Principate ... It clearly implies that daemones can cause illness to livestock: this traditional dominated view has now reached

410-551: The Academy , of the daemon as a potentially dangerous lesser spirit: Burkert states that in the Symposium , Plato has "laid the foundation" that would make it all but impossible to imagine the daimon in any other way with Eros , who is neither god nor mortal but a mediator in between, and his metaphysical doctrine of an incorporeal, pure actuality, energeia  ... identical to its performance: ‘thinking of thinking’, noesis noeseos

451-428: The daimonion not as an inspiration but as "a kind of spiritual tact checking Socrates from any act opposed to his true moral and intellectual interests." Regarding the charge brought against Socrates in 399 BC, Plato surmised "Socrates does wrong because he does not believe in the gods in whom the city believes, but introduces other daemonic beings..." Burkert notes that "a special being watches over each individual,

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492-624: The Arabic jinni (or genie ), and in their humble efforts to help mediate the good and ill fortunes of human life, they resemble the Christian guardian angel and adversarial demon , respectively. Eudaimonia ( εὐδαιμονία ) came to mean "well-being" or "happiness". The comparable Roman concept is the genius who accompanies and protects a person or presides over a place (see genius loci ). A distorted view of Homer 's daemon results from an anachronistic reading in light of later characterizations by Plato and Xenocrates , his successor as head of

533-520: The Mother of Gods" contains a detailed Neoplatonic analysis of Attis. In that work Julian says: "Of him [Attis] the myth relates that, after being exposed at birth near the eddying stream of the river Gallus, he grew up like a flower, and when he had grown to be fair and tall, he was beloved by the Mother of the Gods. And she entrusted all things to him, and moreover set on his head the starry cap." On this passage,

574-681: The Propagation of the Faith. The church has been directed by priests and laity of the Emmanuel Community since 1996. Attis Attis ( / ˈ æ t ɪ s / ; Ancient Greek : Ἄττις , also Ἄτυς , Ἄττυς , Ἄττης ) was the consort of Cybele , in Phrygian and Greek mythology . His priests were eunuchs , the Galli , as explained by origin myths pertaining to Attis castrating himself. Attis

615-428: The boar's tusk of winter", and hence a connection to similar-sounding Attis was a mistake, but the long-standing error is still found in modern sources. Daemon (mythology) The Ancient Greek : δαίμων , spelled daimon or daemon (meaning "god", "godlike", "power", "fate"), originally referred to a lesser deity or guiding spirit, such as the daimons of ancient Greek religion and mythology and later

656-634: The boar. Pausanias adds, to corroborate this story, that the Gauls who inhabited Pessinos abstained from pork. This myth element may have been invented solely to explain the unusual dietary laws of the Lydian Gauls . In Rome, the eunuch followers of Cybele were called galli . Julian describes the orgiastic cult of Cybele and its spread. It began in Anatolia and was adopted in Greece, and eventually Republican Rome ;

697-535: The city of Lyon began, and they ended in 1998. The church is mainly built in the Gothic style with a Renaissance portal . Among its particularities are: In the 17th century, theologian Bédien Morange was cantor and canon of Saint-Nizier. In the 19th century, the parish hosted famous spiritual people such as Frederic Ozanam , founder of the Saint-Vincent de Paul conferences, and Pauline-Marie Jaricot , foundress of

738-412: The construction of shrines, so as not to wander restlessly, and were believed to confer protection and good fortune on those offering their respects. One tradition of Greek thought, which found agreement in the mind of Plato , was of a daimon which existed within a person from their birth, and that each individual was obtained by a singular daimon prior to their birth by way of lot . Homer 's use of

779-618: The cult of Attis, her reborn eunuch consort, accompanied her. The first literary reference to Attis is the subject of one of the most famous poems by Catullus ( Catullus 63 ), apparently before Attis had begun to be worshipped in Rome, as Attis' worship began in the early Empire. In 1675, Jean-Baptiste Lully , who was attached to Louis XIV's court, composed an opera titled Atys . In 1780, Niccolo Piccinni composed his own Atys . Oscar Wilde mentions Attis' self-mutilation in his poem The Sphinx , published in 1894: Emperor Julian's "Hymn to

820-500: The daimons of Hellenistic religion and philosophy . The word is derived from Proto-Indo-European daimon "provider, divider (of fortunes or destinies)," from the root *da- "to divide". Daimons were possibly seen as the souls of men of the golden age , tutelary deities , or the forces of fate. See also daimonic : a religious, philosophical, literary and psychological concept. Daimons are lesser divinities or spirits, often personifications of abstract concepts, beings of

861-539: The damage caused by several bands of Huguenot , which plundered the bishops of Lyon's tombs, then those of the French Revolution . After the French Revolution, the church served as flour warehouse. In the late 18th century, the project to transform the church into a gallery was abandoned after a petition signed by 100 notables. The sacristy was built in 1816, and the organ was installed in 1886. The church

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902-507: The deities, these figures were not always depicted without considerable moral ambiguity: On this account, the other traditional notion of the daemon as related to the souls of the dead is elided in favour of a spatial scenario which evidently also graduated in moral terms; though [Plato] says nothing of that here, it is a necessary inference from her account, just as Eros is midway between deficiency and plenitude. ... Indeed, Xenocrates ... explicitly understood daemones as ranged along

943-520: The exception of the agathodaemon , honored first with a libation in ceremonial wine-drinking, especially at the sanctuary of Dionysus , and represented in iconography by the chthonic serpent . Burkert suggests that, for Plato, theology rests on two Forms : the Good and the Simple; which "Xenocrates unequivocally called the unity god" in sharp contrast to the poet's gods of epic and tragedy. Although much like

984-399: The god Attis with the similar-sounding name of the god Atys . The name "Atys" is often seen in ancient Aegean cultures; it was mentioned by Herodotus , however Herodotus was describing Atys , the son of Croesus , a human in a historical account. The 19th-century conflation of the man Atys's name with the mythology of the god he was presumably named after, "Atys the sun god, slain by

1025-531: The great Phrygian trading city of Pessinos , which lay under the lee of Mount Agdistis . The mountain was personified as a daemon , whom foreigners associated with the Great Mother Cybele . In the late 4th century BCE, a cult of Attis became a feature of the Greek world. The story of his origins at Agdistis recorded by the traveller Pausanias have some distinctly non-Greek elements. Pausanias

1066-566: The mother of the gods was still called Agdistis, the geographer Strabo recounted. As neighbouring Lydia came to control Phrygia, the cult of Attis was given a Lydian context too. Attis is said to have introduced to Lydia the cult of the Mother Goddess Cybele, incurring the jealousy of Zeus , who sent a boar to destroy the Lydian crops. Then certain Lydians, with Attis himself, were killed by

1107-465: The name "Church of Holy Apostles". In the 6th century, the bishops were buried in the church, particularly Nicetius of Lyon , the 28th bishop. The body of the latter attracted a crowd and his presumed great miracles led the church to take his name. Saint Austregisilus was abbot here during the 7th century. In the early 8th century, the church has been ravaged by the Saracens and by Charles Martel . It

1148-456: The priestess Diotima teaches Socrates that love is not a deity, but rather a "great daimōn" (202d). She goes on to explain that "everything daimōnion is between divine and mortal" (202d–e), and she describes daimōns as "interpreting and transporting human things to the gods and divine things to men; entreaties and sacrifices from below, and ordinances and requitals from above..." (202e). In Plato's Apology of Socrates , Socrates claimed to have

1189-502: The same nature as both mortals and deities, similar to ghosts , chthonic heroes, spirit guides , forces of nature, or the deities themselves (see Plato's Symposium ). According to Hesiod's myth, "great and powerful figures were to be honoured after death as a daimon…" A daimon is not so much a type of quasi-divine being, according to Walter Burkert , but rather a non-personified "peculiar mode" of their activity. In Hesiod 's Theogony , Phaëton becomes an incorporeal daimon or

1230-399: The scholiast ( Wright ) says: "The whole passage implies the identification of Attis with nature...cf. 162A where Attis is called 'Nature,' φύσις." The most important representation of Attis is the lifesize statue discovered at Ostia Antica , near the mouth of Rome's river. The statue is of a reclining Attis, after the emasculation. In his left hand is a shepherd's crook , in his right hand

1271-519: The typically Anatolian costume of the god: trousers fastened together down the front of the legs with toggles and the Phrygian cap . In 2007, in the ruins of Herculaneum a wooden throne was discovered adorned with a relief of Attis beneath a sacred pine tree, gathering cones. Various finds suggest that the cult of Attis was popular in Herculaneum at the time of the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE. Nineteenth century scholarship wrongly identified

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1312-490: The words theoí ( θεοί , "gods") and daímones ( δαίμονες ) suggests that, while distinct, they are similar in kind. Later writers developed the distinction between the two. Plato in Cratylus speculates that the word daimōn ( δαίμων , "deity") is synonymous to daēmōn ( δαήμων , "knowing or wise"); however, it is more probably daiō ( δαίω , "to divide, to distribute destinies, to allot"). In Plato's Symposium ,

1353-489: Was also a Phrygian vegetation deity . His self-mutilation, death, and resurrection represents the fruits of the earth, which die in winter only to rise again in the spring. According to Ovid 's Metamorphoses , Attis transformed himself into a pine tree. An Attis cult began around 1250 BCE in Dindymon (today's Murat Dağı of Gediz, Kütahya , Turkey). He was originally a local semi-deity of Phrygia , associated with

1394-515: Was first made remains unanswerable. Much the same thought as [Plato's] is to be found in an explicitly Pythagorean context of probably late Hellenistic composition, the Pythagorean Commentaries , which evidently draws on older popular representations: ‘The whole air is full of souls. We call them daemones and heroes, and it is they who send dreams, signs and illnesses to men; and not only men, but also to sheep and other domestic animals. It

1435-405: Was in the 1970s the center of a popular neighborhood. Its presence was highlighted during its occupation by some prostitutes of the neighborhood in 1975 to express their anger towards police and social harassment. This church has often been perceived as a place of refuge and hospitality in the city. In the beginning in 1968, renovations undertaken by the management of the monument historique and

1476-667: Was moved to the Vatican Museums . A marble bas-relief depicting Cybele in her chariot and Attis, from Magna Graecia , is in the archaeological museum in Venice. The pair also feature prominently on the silver Parabiago plate . A finely executed silvery brass Attis that had been ritually consigned to the Moselle River was recovered during construction in 1963 and is kept at the Rheinisches Landesmuseum of Trier . It shows

1517-574: Was not reflected on in ancient philosophy. In Plato there is an incipient tendency toward the apotheosis of nous . ... He needs a closeness and availability of the divine that is offered neither by the stars nor by metaphysical principles. Here a name emerged to fill the gap, a name which had always designated the incomprehensible yet present activity of a higher power, daimon . Daemons scarcely figure in Greek mythology or Greek art : they are felt, but their unseen presence can only be presumed, with

1558-407: Was rebuilt in the 9th century, at the behest of the bishop Leidrade. Peter Waldo , in the 13th century, was a parishioner. His disciples, shocked by the wealth of the church, even set fire in 1253. From the 14th century to the late 16th century, the church was gradually rebuilt. In 1562, the notables gathered in the church, and in the 17th century, the aldermen were elected in the nave. It suffered

1599-442: Was tended by a he-goat . As Attis grew, his long-haired beauty was godlike, and his parent, Agdistis (as Cybele) then fell in love with him. But Attis' foster parents sent him to Pessinos , where he was to wed the king's daughter. According to some versions the king of Pessinos was Midas . Just as the marriage-song was being sung, Agdistis / Cybele appeared in her transcendent power, and Attis went mad and castrated himself under

1640-400: Was to provide an explanation for the sheer variety of polytheistic religious worship; but it is the potential for moral discrimination offered by the notion of daemones which later ... became one further means of conceptualizing what distinguishes dominated practice from civic religion, and furthering the transformation of that practice into intentional profanation ... Quite when the point

1681-463: Was told that the daemon Agdistis initially bore both male and female sexual organs. The Olympian gods feared Agdistis and they conspired to cause Agditis to accidentally castrate itself, ridding itself of its male organs. From the hemorrhage of Agdistis germinated an almond tree. When the fruits ripened, Nana, daughter of the river Sangarius, took an almond, put it in her bosom, and later became pregnant with baby Attis, whom she abandoned. The infant

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