Papers Presented at the Seventh British Patristics Conference, Cardiff, 5-7 September 2018 [1 ed.] 9042941677, 9789042941670, 9789042941687

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STUDIA PATRISTICA VOL. CII

Including Papers Presented at the Seventh British Patristics Conference, Cardiff, 5–7 September 2018 Edited by N. BAKER-BRIAN and J. LÖSSL

PEETERS LEUVEN – PARIS – BRISTOL, CT

2021

STUDIA PATRISTICA VOL. CII

STUDIA PATRISTICA Editor: Markus Vinzent, King’s College London and Max Weber Centre, University of Erfurt

STUDIA PATRISTICA VOL. CII

Including Papers Presented at the Seventh British Patristics Conference, Cardiff, 5–7 September 2018 Edited by N. BAKER-BRIAN and J. LÖSSL

PEETERS LEUVEN – PARIS – BRISTOL, CT

2021

© Peeters Publishers — Louvain — Belgium 2021 All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form. D/2021/0602/46 ISBN: 978-90-429-4167-0 eISBN: 978-90-429-4168-7 A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Printed in Belgium by Peeters, Leuven

Table of Contents

Nicholas BAKER-BRIAN and Josef LÖSSL Introduction .........................................................................................

1

PART I: ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY, EARLY CHRISTIANITY AND JUDAISM Ilaria L.E. RAMELLI The Logos/Nous One-Many between ‘Pagan’ and Christian Platonism

11

David L. DUSENBURY World City: Towards a New Reading of Nemesius of Emesa’s De natura hominis ....................................................................................

45

Susanna TOWERS The Manichaean Demoness Ăz and Yetzer Hara ...............................

63

PART II: CHRISTIANITY IN ITS CULTURAL CONTEXT FROM THE SECOND TO THE FOURTH CENTURY Josef LÖSSL Greek and Barbarian Paideia in Tatian’s Oratio ad Graecos ............

79

Nicholas J. BAKER-BRIAN Revisiting Proba’s Confession: The Proem of the Vergilian Cento and the Reign of Julian the Apostate .................................................. 103 Zac ESTERSON Was Fortunatianus of Aquileia an Anti-Victorinus of Pettau? A Study in Inheritance, Convergence, Divergence and Regional Context ....... 119 James F. WELLINGTON Subverting Subversion: An Ontological Reading of Gregory of Nyssa’s Refutation of Slavery in In Ecclesiasten Homiliae IV ....................... 141 Sara PARVIS Constantinople 360 and Constantinople 381: A Tale of Two Councils 153

VI

Table of Contents

PART III: AUGUSTINE AND HIS AGE Phillip J. BROWN Figurabat Ecclesiam: Figuration, Friendship and the Unity of the Church in Augustine’s Sixth Tractate on John ................................... 175 Georgiana HUIAN ‘In the Synagogue of Gods’: Augustine’s Notion of Deification in Sermon 23B (Mainz 13) ...................................................................... 191 Math OSSEFORTH Augustine in the Underworld: An Example of Intertextuality in Saint Augustine’s Confessions ...................................................................... 205 Marcin WYSOCKI How to Survive the End of the World? A Study of Latin Christian Letters of the 4th and 5th Century ....................................................... 217

PART IV: THE END OF ANTIQUITY AND BEYOND Georgios SISKOS Identical Foundations of Opposite Christologies: Nestorius of Constantinople and Severus of Antioch. The Critique of St. Maximus the Confessor ............................................................................................. 231 Michael MUTHREICH The Second Dionysian Text in Manuscript ‘Vat. Sir. 123’ ................. 247 Hellen DAYTON A Natural Source of Spiritual Healing Lost in Translation: On Chapter II 45 of the 300 Kephalaia by Nikitas Stithatos ........................... 259 Andrej KUTARŇA Human Will and Divine Grace – Damascene’s Teaching on Theosis and its Echo in Aquinas ...................................................................... 269

Abbreviations AA.SS AAWG.PH AB AC ACL ACO ACW AHDLMA AJAH AJP AKK AKPAW ALMA ALW AnalBoll ANCL ANF ANRW AnSt AnThA APOT AR ARW ASS AThANT Aug AugSt AW AZ BA BAC BASOR BDAG BEHE BETL BGL BHG BHL

see ASS. Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen Philologisch-historische Klasse, Göttingen. Analecta Bollandiana, Brussels. Antike und Christentum, ed. F.J. Dölger, Münster. Antiquité classique, Louvain. Acta conciliorum oecumenicorum, ed. E. Schwartz, Berlin. Ancient Christian Writers, ed. J. Quasten and J.C. Plumpe, Westminster (Md.)/London. Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge, Paris. American Journal of Ancient History, Cambridge, Mass. American Journal of Philology, Baltimore. Archiv für katholisches Kirchenrecht, Mainz. Abhandlungen der königlichen Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin. Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi (Bulletin du Cange), Paris/Brussels. Archiv für Liturgiewissenschaft, Regensburg. Analecta Bollandiana, Brussels. Ante-Nicene Christian Library, Edinburgh. Ante-Nicene Fathers, Buffalo/New York. Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, ed H. Temporini et al., Berlin. Anatolian Studies, London. Année théologique augustinienne, Paris. Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English, ed. R.E. Charles, Oxford. Archivum Romanicum, Florence. Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, Berlin/Leipzig. Acta Sanctorum, ed. the Bollandists, Brussels. Abhandlungen zur Theologie des Alten und Neuen Testaments, Zürich. Augustinianum, Rome. Augustinian Studies, Villanova (USA). Athanasius Werke, ed. H.-G. Opitz et al., Berlin. Archäologische Zeitung, Berlin. Bibliothèque augustinienne, Paris. Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, Madrid. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, New Haven, Conn. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd edn F.W. Danker, Chicago. Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes Études, Paris. Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, Louvain. Benediktinisches Geistesleben, St. Ottilien. Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca, Brussels. Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina Antiquae et Mediae Aetatis, Brussels.

VIII BHO BHTh BJ BJRULM BKV BKV2 BKV3 BLE BoJ BS BSL BWAT Byz BZ BZNW CAr CBQ CChr.CM CChr.SA CChr.SG CChr.SL CH CIL CP(h) CPG CPL CQ CR CSCO

CSEL CSHB CTh CUF CW DAC

Abbreviations

Bibliotheca Hagiographica Orientalis, Brussels. Beiträge zur historischen Theologie, Tübingen. Bursians Jahresbericht über die Fortschritte der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, Leipzig. Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Manchester. Bibliothek der Kirchenväter, ed. F.X. Reithmayr and V. Thalhofer, Kempten. Bibliothek der Kirchenväter, ed. O. Bardenhewer, Th. Schermann, and C. Weyman, Kempten/Munich. Bibliothek der Kirchenväter. Zweite Reihe, ed. O. Bardenhewer, J. Zellinger, and J. Martin, Munich. Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique, Toulouse. Bonner Jahrbücher, Bonn. Bibliotheca sacra, London. Bolletino di studi latini, Naples. Beiträge zur Wissenschaft vom Alten Testament, Leipzig/Stuttgart. Byzantion, Leuven. Byzantinische Zeitschrift, Leipzig. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, Berlin. Cahiers Archéologique, Paris. Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Washington. Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis, Turnhout/Paris. Corpus Christianorum, Series Apocryphorum, Turnhout/Paris. Corpus Christianorum, Series Graeca, Turnhout/Paris. Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, Turnhout/Paris. Church History, Chicago. Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, Berlin. Classical Philology, Chicago. Clavis Patrum Graecorum, ed. M. Geerard, vols. I-VI, Turnhout. Clavis Patrum Latinorum (SE 3), ed. E. Dekkers and A. Gaar, Turnhout. Classical Quarterly, London/Oxford. The Classical Review, London/Oxford. Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, Louvain. Aeth = Scriptores Aethiopici Ar = Scriptores Arabici Arm = Scriptores Armeniaci Copt = Scriptores Coptici Iber = Scriptores Iberici Syr = Scriptores Syri Subs = Subsidia Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vienna. Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae, Bonn. Collectanea Theologica, Lvov. Collection des Universités de France publiée sous le patronage de l’Association Guillaume Budé, Paris. Catholic World, New York. Dictionary of the Apostolic Church, ed. J. Hastings, Edinburgh.

Abbreviations

DACL DAL DB DBS DCB DHGE Did DOP DOS DR DS DSp DTC EA ECatt ECQ EE EECh EKK EH EO EtByz ETL EWNT ExpT FC FGH FKDG FRL FS FThSt FTS FZThPh GCS GDV GLNT GNO GRBS

IX

see DAL Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, ed. F. Cabrol, H. Leclercq, Paris. Dictionnaire de la Bible, Paris. Dictionnaire de la Bible, Supplément, Paris. Dictionary of Christian Biography, Literature, Sects, and Doctrines, ed. W. Smith and H. Wace, 4 vols, London. Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastique, ed. A. Baudrillart, Paris. Didaskalia, Lisbon. Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Cambridge, Mass., subsequently Washington, D.C. Dumbarton Oaks Studies, Cambridge, Mass., subsequently Washington, D.C. Downside Review, Stratton on the Fosse, Bath. H.J. Denzinger and A. Schönmetzer, ed., Enchiridion Symbolorum, Barcelona/Freiburg i.B./Rome. Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, ed. M. Viller, S.J., and others, Paris. Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, ed. A. Vacant, E. Mangenot, and E. Amann, Paris. Études augustiniennes, Paris. Enciclopedia Cattolica, Rome. Eastern Churches Quarterly, Ramsgate. Estudios eclesiasticos, Madrid. Encyclopedia of the Early Church, ed. A. Di Berardino, Cambridge. Evangelisch-Katholischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament, Neukirchen. Enchiridion Fontium Historiae Ecclesiasticae Antiquae, ed. Ueding-Kirch, 6th ed., Barcelona. Échos d’Orient, Paris. Études Byzantines, Paris. Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses, Louvain. Exegetisches Wörterbuch zum NT, ed. H.R. Balz et al., Stuttgart. The Expository Times, Edinburgh. The Fathers of the Church, New York. Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, Berlin. Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte, Göttingen. Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments, Göttingen. Festschrift. Freiburger theologische Studien, Freiburg i.B. Frankfurter theologische Studien, Frankfurt a.M. Freiburger Zeitschrift für Theologie und Philosophie, Freiburg/Switzerland. Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller, Leipzig/Berlin. Geschichtsschreiber der deutschen Vorzeit, Stuttgart. Grande Lessico del Nuovo Testamento, Genoa. Gregorii Nysseni Opera, Leiden. Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, Cambridge, Mass.

X GWV HbNT HDR HJG HKG HNT HO HSCP HTR HTS HZ ICC ILCV ILS J(b)AC JBL JdI JECS JEH JJS JLH JPTh JQR JRS JSJ JSOR JTS KAV KeTh KJ(b) LCL LNPF L(O)F LSJ LThK LXX MA MAMA Mansi MBTh

Abbreviations

Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, Offenburg. Handbuch zum Neuen Testament. Tübingen. Harvard Dissertations in Religion, Missoula. Historisches Jahrbuch der Görresgesellschaft, successively Munich, Cologne and Munich/Freiburg i.B. Handbuch der Kirchengeschichte, Tübingen. Handbuch zum Neuen Testament, Tübingen. Handbuch der Orientalistik, Leiden. Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Cambridge, Mass. Harvard Theological Review, Cambridge, Mass. Harvard Theological Studies, Cambridge, Mass. Historische Zeitschrift, Munich/Berlin. The International Critical Commentary of the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, Edinburgh. Inscriptiones Latinae Christianae Veteres, ed. E. Diehl, Berlin. Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, ed. H. Dessau, Berlin. Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum, Münster. Journal of Biblical Literature, Philadelphia, Pa., then various places. Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Berlin. Journal of Early Christian Studies, Baltimore. The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, London. Journal of Jewish Studies, London. Jahrbuch für Liturgik und Hymnologie, Kassel. Jahrbücher für protestantische Theologie, Leipzig/Freiburg i.B. Jewish Quarterly Review, Philadelphia. Journal of Roman Studies, London. Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman Period, Leiden. Journal of the Society of Oriental Research, Chicago. Journal of Theological Studies, Oxford. Kommentar zu den apostolischen Vätern, Göttingen. Kerk en Theologie, ’s Gravenhage. Kirchliches Jahrbuch für die evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, Gütersloh. The Loeb Classical Library, London/Cambridge, Mass. A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, ed. P. Schaff and H. Wace, Buffalo/New York. Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church, Oxford. H.G. Liddell and R. Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, new (9th) edn H.S. Jones, Oxford. Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, Freiburg i.B. Septuagint. Moyen-Âge, Brussels. Monumenta Asiae Minoris Antiqua, London. J.D. Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, Florence, 1759-1798. Reprint and continuation: Paris/Leipzig, 1901-1927. Münsterische Beiträge zur Theologie, Münster.

Abbreviations

MCom MGH ML MPG MSR MThZ Mus NA28 NGWG NH(M)S NIV NKJV NovTest NPNF NRSV NRTh NTA NT.S NTS NTTSD OBO OCA OCP OECS OLA OLP Or OrChr OrSyr PG PGL PL PLRE PLS PO PRE PS PTA PThR PTS PW QLP QuLi RAC RACh

XI

Miscelanea Comillas, Comillas/Santander. Monumenta germaniae historica. Hanover/Berlin. Mediaevalia Lovaniensia, Louvain. See PG. Mélanges de science religieuse, Lille. Münchener theologische Zeitschrift, Munich. Le Muséon, Louvain. Nestle-Aland, Novum Testamentum Graece, 28th edition, Stuttgart. Nachrichten der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen. Nag Hammadi (and Manichaean) Studies, Leiden. New International Version. New King James Version. Novum Testamentum, Leiden. See LNPF. New Revised Standard Version. Nouvelle Revue Théologique, Tournai/Louvain/Paris. Neutestamentliche Abhandlungen, Münster. Novum Testamentum Supplements, Leiden. New Testament Studies, Cambridge/Washington. New Testament Tools, Studies and Documents, Leiden/Boston. Orbis biblicus et orientalis, Freiburg, Switz., then Louvain. Orientalia Christiana Analecta, Rome. Orientalia Christiana Periodica, Rome. Oxford Early Christian Studies, Oxford. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta, Louvain. Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica, Louvain. Orientalia. Commentarii editi a Pontificio Instituto Biblico, Rome. Oriens Christianus, Leipzig, then Wiesbaden. L’Orient Syrien, Paris. Migne, Patrologia, series graeca. A Patristic Greek Lexicon, ed. G.L. Lampe, Oxford. Migne, Patrologia, series latina. The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, ed. A.H.M. Jones et al., Cambridge. Migne, Patrologia, series latina. Supplementum ed. A. Hamman. Patrologia Orientalis, Paris. Paulys Realenzyklopädie der classischen Alterthumswissenschaft, Stuttgart. Patrologia Syriaca, Paris. Papyrologische Texte und Abhandlungen, Bonn. Princeton Theological Review, Princeton. Patristische Texte und Studien, Berlin. Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, ed. G. Wissowa, Stuttgart. Questions liturgiques et paroissiales, Louvain. Questions liturgiques, Louvain. Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana, Rome. Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, Stuttgart.

XII RAM RAug RBen RB(ibl) RE

Abbreviations

Revue d’ascétique et de mystique, Paris. Recherches Augustiniennes, Paris. Revue Bénédictine, Maredsous. Revue biblique, Paris. Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, founded by J.J. Herzog, 3e ed. A. Hauck, Leipzig. REA(ug) Revue des études Augustiniennes, Paris. REB Revue des études byzantines, Paris. RED Rerum ecclesiasticarum documenta, Rome. RÉL Revue des études latines, Paris. REG Revue des études grecques, Paris. RevSR Revue des sciences religieuses, Strasbourg. RevThom Revue thomiste, Toulouse. RFIC Rivista di filologia e d’istruzione classica, Turin. RGG Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Gunkel-Zscharnack, Tübingen RHE Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, Louvain. RhMus Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, Bonn. RHR Revue de l’histoire des religions, Paris. RHT Revue d’Histoire des Textes, Paris. RMAL Revue du Moyen-Âge Latin, Paris. ROC Revue de l’Orient chrétien, Paris. RPh Revue de philologie, Paris. RQ Römische Quartalschrift, Freiburg i.B. RQH Revue des questions historiques, Paris. RSLR Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa, Florence. RSPT, RSPh Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, Paris. RSR Recherches de science religieuse, Paris. RTAM Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale, Louvain. RthL Revue théologique de Louvain, Louvain. RTM Rivista di teologia morale, Bologna. Sal Salesianum, Roma. SBA Schweizerische Beiträge zur Altertumswissenschaft, Basel. SBS Stuttgarter Bibelstudien, Stuttgart. ScEc Sciences ecclésiastiques, Bruges. SCh, SC Sources chrétiennes, Paris. SD Studies and Documents, ed. K. Lake and S. Lake. London/Philadelphia. SE Sacris Erudiri, Bruges. SDHI Studia et documenta historiae et iuris, Roma. SH Subsidia Hagiographica, Brussels. SHA Scriptores Historiae Augustae. SJMS Speculum. Journal of Mediaeval Studies, Cambridge, Mass. SM Studien und Mitteilungen zur Geschichte des Benediktinerordens und seiner Zweige, Munich. SO Symbolae Osloenses, Oslo. SP Studia Patristica, successively Berlin, Kalamazoo, Leuven. SPM Stromata Patristica et Mediaevalia, ed. C. Mohrmann and J. Quasten, Utrecht.

Abbreviations

SQ SQAW SSL StudMed SVigChr SVF TDNT TE ThGl ThJ ThLZ ThPh ThQ ThR ThWAT ThWNT ThZ TLG TP TRE TS TThZ TU USQR VC VetChr VT WBC WUNT WZKM YUP ZAC ZAM ZAW ZDPV ZKG ZKTh ZNW ZRG ZThK

XIII

Sammlung ausgewählter Quellenschriften zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte, Tübingen. Schriften und Quellen der Alten Welt, Berlin. Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, Louvain. Studi Medievali, Turin. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, Leiden. Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, ed. J. von Arnim, Leipzig. Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Grand Rapids, Mich. Teologia espiritual, Valencia. Theologie und Glaube, Paderborn. Theologische Jahrbücher, Leipzig. Theologische Literaturzeitung, Leipzig. Theologie und Philosophie, Freiburg i.B. Theologische Quartalschrift, Tübingen. Theologische Rundschau, Tübingen. Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Alten Testament, Stuttgart. Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament, Stuttgart. Theologische Zeitschrift, Basel. Thesaurus Linguae Graecae. Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Lancaster, Pa. Theologische Realenzyklopädie, Berlin. Theological Studies, New York and various places; now Washington, DC. Trierer theologische Zeitschrift, Trier. Texte und Untersuchungen, Leipzig/Berlin. Union Seminary Quarterly Review, New York. Vigiliae Christianae, Amsterdam. Vetera Christianorum, Bari (Italy). Vetus Testamentum, Leiden. Word Biblical Commentary, Waco. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, Tübingen. Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, Vienna. Yale University Press, New Haven. Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum, Berlin. Zeitschrift für Aszese und Mystik, Innsbruck, then Würzburg. Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, Giessen, then Berlin. Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins, Leipzig. Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, Gotha, then Stuttgart. Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie, Vienna. Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche, Giessen, then Berlin. Zeitschrift für Rechtsgeschichte, Weimar. Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, Tübingen.

Introduction Nicholas BAKER-BRIAN and Josef LÖSSL, Cardiff

From 5 to 7 September 2018 more than forty scholars from the UK and eleven other nations met at Cardiff University for the seventh British Patristics Conference. Fifteen of the thirty papers that were presented at the conference are included as chapters in this volume. In accordance with the theme of the conference, ‘Religion in Late Antiquity’, the contributions have been selected with a view to their engagement with topics such as religious transformation and innovation, interrelations between religious traditions and between religions and other aspects of culture (philosophy, education, politics and science) and the impact of various aspects of late-antique religion on later periods in history. This intentionally broad theme was intended to encourage contributions to both the conference and subsequent volume that went beyond the traditionally narrow remit of “Patristics” and which considered current and emerging approaches and methods such as identity formation and reception studies (to name only a small selection), and topics ranging from third century Manichaeism to Byzantine Theology. Subsequently, the chapters have been arranged in four main parts: I. Ancient Philosophy, Early Christianity and Judaism; II. Christianity in its Cultural Context from the Second to the Fourth Century; III. Augustine and His Age; IV. The End of Antiquity and Beyond. The first chapter by Ilaria Ramelli examines ‘the Logos/Nous One-Many between “pagan” and Christian Platonism’ in two parts. In the first part Ramelli investigates the concept of ‘Christ-Logos-Wisdom’, God’s mind, as being ‘One-Many’, in a wide range of works of both ‘pagan’ and Christian ‘Imperial Platonists’, notably Philo, Numenius and Bardaisan of Edessa. In this part, Ramelli explores connections between the thought of Bardaisan on one hand and of Porphyry and Plotinus on the other. Part two turns to a group of Christian thinkers and focuses on Origen’s indebtedness to Clement of Alexandria with regard to the concept of the ‘Christ-Logos’ embracing all ‘Logoi’ or ‘Forms’. It also looks at the concept of the ‘One-Many’ between beginning and end together with Plotinus’ parallel construction of the Nous as ‘One-Many’. In the second chapter, ‘World City: Towards a New Reading of Nemesius of Emesa’s De natura hominis’, David Lloyd Dusenbury sets out from the ancient (Stoic) teaching of the world as a city or polity, which was supplemented with the idea that humankind, or human nature (natura hominis), is like a code of civil law (Cicero, fin. 3.62-7). In his work entitled De natura hominis, dating from around AD 390, Nemesius of Emesa rejects some of these ancient Stoic

Studia Patristica CII, 1-8. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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N. BAKER-BRIAN – J. LÖSSL

tenets but also turns against Plato’s idea of the world city sketched in the Timaeus and in a rich vein of post-Platonic texts and commentaries. Nevertheless, as Dusenbury argues, Nemesius did build on the ancient foundations that the human person is a natural-born world-citizen, who is in communion with the whole of creation and indeed with the Demiurge, its maker. Humankind is after all, Nemesius says, a ‘child of God’. This is why Nemesius opens his work with an elaborate description of divine creation as a form of οἰκείωσις, with God as subject, and puts forward a closely reasoned defence of divine providence as a form of διοίκησις, of keeping a household. We do not know how the text ends, as De natura hominis is only extant as a fragment. However, as Dusenbury argues, the idea of a ‘world city’ gives the work a structural and conceptual unity, which many nineteenth and twentieth century source-critical interpreters failed to recognize. The third and final chapter of Part I, by Susanna Towers, is entitled ‘The Manichaean Demoness Ăz and Yetzer Hara’. Towers presents a comparative hamartiological study comparing the Manichaean demoness known from eastern Manichaean texts and yetzer hara (evil inclination), a concept known from pre-rabbinic Jewish literature. In both concepts, sin is constructed as an inner proclivity of demonic origin intrinsic to humanity from its inception, and each reveals an increasing emphasis on sin as excessive sexual desire. Towers proposes that Jewish hamartiology of the first few centuries AD had a major influence on the development of Mani’s doctrine of sin. This is consistent with recent studies which point to the influence of the teachings and practices of a Jewish-Christian ‘sect’ with which Mani was familiar in his youth on his writing. This is also significant for the formation of early Christian teaching on the human relation to sin, as it throws light on the kind of Christianity that existed in Mesopotamia around Mani’s lifetime. The first chapter of the second main part of the volume is Josef Lössl’s ‘Greek and Barbarian Paideia in Tatian’s Oratio ad Graecos’. In critical discussion with some recent literature Lössl traces the motif of ‘the barbarian’ (βάρβαρος, βαρβαρικός) in Tatian’s Oratio ad Graecos and argues that Tatian uses this motif to distance himself from traditional (‘pagan’) ways of looking at Greek Paideia and to outline, albeit but vaguely, a new, ‘barbarian’ (i.e. Christian) way of pursuing Paideia. To highlight the enormity of such a project in Tatian’s time Lössl tries as much as possible to open up the oration towards its wider cultural context, ‘the world of the Second Sophistic’, and in particular its affinity to the works of Lucian of Samosata. Nicholas Baker-Brian, in his chapter ‘Revisiting Proba’s Confession: The proem of the Vergilian Cento and the reign of Julian the Apostate’, reappraises the opening lines of the Vergilian Cento attributed to the fourth century senatorial aristocrat Faltona Betitia Proba. Baker-Brian argues that the Cento’s proem was composed in order to challenge the memorialisation of the principal actors in the civil war of 350-353, namely the emperor Constantius II and his rival,

Introduction

3

the usurper Magnentius. The correct historical context for Proba’s criticism, Baker-Brian suggests, is the short reign of Constantius’ cousin, Julian the Apostate (r. 361-363). The denigration of Constantius II’s military achievements was a central concern for Julian and his supporters. Baker-Brian argues that the Cento’s proem was composed with precisely the same concern in mind, although Proba went beyond the prevailing criticisms of Constantius by taking aim at the role that the emperor’s victory in the civil war had played in the development of his imperial persona as a triumphal ruler. In this way, Proba set in motion an innovative, revisionist paradigm for evaluating Constantius’ reign that was to influence subsequent historians of the period. In his chapter ‘Was Fortunatianus of Aquileia an Anti-Victorinus of Pettau? A Study in Inheritance, Convergence, Divergence and Regional Context’, Zachary Esterson compares the recently discovered Gospel commentaries of Fortunatianus of Aquileia, who wrote in the fourth century, with the commentary on the book of Revelation by the late third-century bishop and author Victorinus of Pettau. Esterson begins with the observation that in many respects Fortunatianus depends on Victorinus, borrows from his work and attests to a continuation and formation of tradition in Latin biblical exegesis. However, Esterson continues, there are also hints that Fortunatianus employs a hermeneutic quite different in tradition and style from Victorinus, more Origenistic and more culturally Latinizing. Most poignantly, Fortunatianus departs from Victorinus in his attitude to questions regarding the end-times and the Antichrist. Unlike Victorinus, Fortunatianus was no longer a millenarian, although he lived in times when events were taking place which millenarians would have seen as significant, such as the attempt, supported by the emperor Julian the Apostate, to rebuild the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. Fortunatianus also lived in a time when Christianity had become legal and was beginning to take on an official role in the Empire, although the reign of Julian was widely perceived as a warning sign that ‘Christian times’ could not be taken for granted. However, the real threat came from within Christianity itself, which was for much of the fourth century more divided than ever before. Considering these different contexts and given the fact that geographically Fortunatianus lived in fourth century northern Italy compared to Victorinus’ third century Pannonia, it is striking that Jews and Judaism, especially Jewish rites, were equally emphasized by both as major threats to Christian identity. In fact, if anything, one gets the impression that the dichotomy had become sharper in Fortunatianus’ work, perhaps under the impression of a continuing strength of Jewish culture in Aquileia or of the above-mentioned attempts to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem, which came to a head under Julian the Apostate. Jim Wellington in his chapter ‘Subverting Subversion’ offers ‘an ontological reading of Gregory of Nyssa’s refutation of slavery in In Ecclesiasten Homiliae IV’. In this brief work Gregory of Nyssa condemns both slavery and usury. But while Gregory’s disavowal of usury is fully in line with conventional

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patristic polemic, his refutation of slavery goes well beyond the patristic consensus, which, while condemning maltreatment of slaves, usually stopped short of denouncing the institution itself. Gregory, Wellington suggests, is operating at several levels: His accusation of the slave-owners’ presumption in their attempt to subvert the order of creation by claiming for themselves divine sovereignty over their fellow human beings also implies a criticism of Origen, Gregory’s theological role-model. Origen, in his at least partial reliance on a (in Gregory’s view) defective Platonic ontology (in which a line is drawn between soul and body rather than creator and creature), had conceived of the origin of intelligent and bodily beings more as a fall caused by the satiety or hubris (κόρος) of pure intellects over against God – the One – rather than a positive creative act freely performed by God. Consequently, he had not sufficiently emphasized the goodness and dignity of all creation and the supreme power and majesty of the creator. By prioritising this latter insight Gregory was also able to attack slavery as an attempt to overturn the law of nature established through creation and to subvert the creator God himself. His own subversive views on slavery further undermined that subversion in a move that called in question some of the teachings of Origen himself. To complete Part II Sara Parvis writes ‘A Tale of Two Councils’, an account of the rapidly moving – and profoundly changing – events leading up from ‘Constantinople 360’ to ‘Constantinople 381’. She begins with the observation that while in later times (from about 440 onwards and until today) the latter of the two was held to be the more important one, contemporaries had no doubt that precedence was due to the former. The main reason for this, according to Parvis, was not because of the strengths of the earlier Council or any achievements attributed to it, but because of its weaknesses and failures. As the two decades following it – and the reigns of the emperors Constantius II, Julian, Jovian, Valens and Theodosius during that period – showed, ‘Constantinople 360’ had conjured up divisions and conflicts which successive emperors and bishops attempted but failed to settle, and when a successful settlement was reached with Constantinople 381, it was hardly noticed at the time. Only later was it recognized that – and how – the long crisis was eventually overcome. Parvis discusses in great detail the events leading up to and resulting from the earlier Council and contrasts them with the situation in and following 381. While the earlier Council was characterised and accompanied by many noisy and blustery political activities which, however, lacked depth and achieved little, Constantinople 381 had a comparatively narrow remit and trod softly but was followed up by carefully targeted and politically competent manoeuvres. As a result its impact far exceeded expectations and endured in the long term. With Part III and the age of Augustine we move from the fourth to the fifth century AD. Four chapters are included in this part. In ‘Figurabat Ecclesiam: Figuration, Friendship and the Unity of the Church in Augustine’s Sixth Tractate on John’ Phillip J. Brown aims to demonstrate how a theology of friendship

Introduction

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is developed in Augustine’s sixth tractate on the Gospel of John. The notion of friendship as ecclesially-binding emerges from Augustine’s engagement with Donatism. Applying rhetorical methods and drawing on the Christian concept of figuration, Augustine embeds and displays his vision of intimate unity as a sacred binding within the Church (ecclesia), the body of Christ. His appeal to friendship is an appeal to a Christian calling, to become friends with God, amici dei. His ‘theology of friendship’ is predicated on the notion that the Church is Christ’s body and as such the exclusive place of salvific, unitive love, the summit of caritas, amicitia Christi. Augustine exemplifies his vision of this kind of friendship through the figures of John the Baptist and Donatus. The two are hugely contrasting images, one, John the Baptist, truly representing the Church (figurabat ecclesiam), the other, Donatus, representing his own separate interests and thus a ‘disfiguring’ rather than a ‘figurative’, beautifying power. John the Baptist is being depicted as amicus sponsi, the friend of the bridegroom whose happiness consists in seeing and perceiving the couple and their happiness thus reflecting their beauty and radiance. In contrast, the Donatists in their separation and resentment are non amici sponsi, excluded from that beauty and happiness. For Augustine, friendship (amicitia), that valued institution of ancient culture, becomes something inherently related to God, to Christ, and to the ‘body of Christ’, the genuine and exclusive place of ‘triune unitive love’, the vessel of true Christian friendship, the Church. Along similar lines, Georgiana Huian deals with another short text of Augustine’s, the recently discovered Sermo 23B (Mainz 13), ‘Sermon Dolbeau 6’, and explores in it the notion of deification, Augustine’s vision of the deified faithful as a ‘synagogue of gods’. The sermon dates from the winter of 403404 and was probably preached in Carthage. The phrase ‘synagogue of gods’ is taken from Psalm 81(82):1: ‘God has stood up in the synagogue of gods’. In his sermon Augustine turns this seemingly problematic text to his advantage. He contrasts the frailty and mortality of humanity with the loftiness of the Christian vocation and stipulates that no less than deification is now a possibility thanks to the Incarnation of the Son of God. Starting from the Psalm verse he is ‘playing’ with the text and inventing new divine epithets such as ‘deifying God,’ ‘god-making God’, ‘God, who himself is not made, making gods’, and creating new words such as deificator and deificus. In order to illustrate Augustine’s originality and his exegetical and homiletic competence at display in the sermon, Huian compares it with other writings in which deification is a theme, e.g. as transfiguration into that which one loves (Ep. Io. Tr. 2.14), becoming children of God (En. Ps. 49.2, 94.6), ‘seeing God’ (En. Ps. 49.2), progressing to the loving knowledge of God (Trin. 9.11.16), achieving the eschatological perfection of the image of God in man (Trin. 14.19.25). In particular, she examines the image of ‘the synagogue of gods’ in connection with other images such as ‘becoming god’ by participation or by grace (S. 23B.6; En. Ps. 49.2; 94.6), especially in contrast with the counter-image of ‘becoming like senseless idols’,

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eclipsing the inner senses and ruining the image of God in man (S. 23B.5). Finally, she also contextualises and interprets the metaphors of the goldsmith’s furnace and the oil press (S. 23B.12 and 15) as images related to the inner shaping of a true Christian and to the ‘time of discernment’. Math Osseforth in his chapter on ‘Augustine in the Underworld’ studies ‘an example of intertextuality in Saint Augustine’s Confessions’. His examples of intertextuality are all relating to Virgil’s Aeneid, which douses the Confessions in a color Vergilianus, a gloomy shade. Osseforth argues that this Classical frame of reference makes the early autobiographical narrative appear as more than just the life story of an individual. It is exemplary. A reader with roughly the same educational background as Augustine will perceive the young Augustine as an individual but also as inhabiting a world that is for all that matters familiar to his own. Osseforth focuses his analysis on the reflections on memory in Confessions book 10, which he argues allude to the underworld passage in book 6 of the Aeneid. In doing so he goes against some earlier research and highlights the importance of Virgil as ‘the (Roman) poet’ and the Aeneid as the ‘universal’ Roman narrative, comparable with Scripture. Augustine was emotionally involved with this world. He identified with key characters in the story, not least Aeneas. He needed to work his way through it in order to free himself from it, and so did his readers. His conversion was ultimately not just that of an individual but that of a whole universe. Towards the end of his chapter Osseforth widens the scope and compares Augustine with other authors from the period who related Classical Roman (Latin) and Christian (reading) experiences in their works, e.g. Proba, author of the Cento, and Ambrose of Milan. This is also a technique employed by the author of the last chapter of this part of the volume, Marcin Wysocki, who writes about ‘How to Survive the End of the World? A Study of Latin Christian Letters of the 4th and 5th Century’. Wysocki compares a selection of letters by three authors, Jerome, Paulinus of Nola and Augustine. He finds references to ‘the end of the world’ in all of them, not just as theological references to a Christian eschatology but as references to events going on in the ‘real world’, invasions, wars, oppression, crime, natural disasters and economic, moral and cultural decline. Each of the three authors, Wysocki argues, develop a slightly different perspective on what is essentially the same reality. For Jerome it is the end of classical civilisation, for Paulinus, the end of material cares and powers, for Augustine, the end of the world as a whole, but not in the sense that the world will disappear into nothingness but rather in the sense that it is being transformed into a new, spiritual, reality. Wysocki’s chapter about reflections on the end of the world in the age of Augustine is a suitable transition to Part IV of the volume, ‘The End of Antiquity and Beyond’. This part contains four chapters, on Maximus the Confessor’s critique of the christologies of Nestorius and Severus of Antioch, on the Syriac translation of a text by Ps.-Dionysius, on Chapter 45 of the 300 Kephalaia by

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Nikitas Stithatos, and on John of Damascus’ teaching on theosis and its echo in Thomas Aquinas. In ‘Identical Foundations of Opposite Christologies: Nestorius of Constantinople and Severus of Antioch. The Critique of St. Maximus the Confessor’, Georgios Siskos sets out from the observation that in his critical engagement with Monotheletism Maximus the Confessor found that Monotheletism was based on an axiom shared by Nestorianism and Severan Monophysitism. At first glance this seems hardly credible. Nestorianism and Monophysitism are known to be fundamentally opposed to one another. However, as Siskos explains in his chapter, it is not a clash of different axioms that is at the heart of the controversy but opposing interpretations of one identical, common (and, moreover, from a Chalcedonian view-point, false) axiom, namely the idea that every nature is in essence, necessarily, self-sufficient. The consequences are separation in Nestorianism and confusion in Monophysitism. The chapter discusses a number of textual sources used by Maximus in his critique which illustrate this point. A second point discussed in the chapter is that while Nestorius formulated the third prosopon of Union in Christ in order to establish the two hypostases and two natural prosopa in Christ, Severus formulated a fictional notion of epinoia of the two hypostases in order to eliminate the duality of the hypostases in Christ. Third, and finally, whereas Nestorius uses gnomi in order to unite the two hypostases by keeping them intact yet at the same time divided, Severus uses the indifference in natural qualities to exclude the possibility of a second hypostasis, since in his view such a concept would only cause division between God, the Word (i.e. the Logos, or Son), and the Son’s humanity. Siskos concludes that it is only because of their common subscription to the axiom that every nature is necessarily self-subsistent that Nestorius and Severus develop such additional constructions as gnomi and natural qualities. By contrast, thus Siskos, following Maximus’ solution, the Chalcedonian concepts of hypostatic union and communication of idioms avoid both extremes and put Christology on a surer footing than Nestorius’ or Severus’ teachings could ever have done. Michael Muthreich’s chapter ‘The Second Dionysian Text in Manuscript Vat. Sir. 123’ engages with Syriac codicological and textual research. The text in question is an excerpt of epistle VIII of the Corpus Dionysiacum. In the manuscript it is following the ‘Epistola ad s. Timotheum de passione apostolorum Petri et Pauli’ (CPG 6631) attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite. In the catalogue of the Vatican Library it is listed under the title ‘De Sacerdotio’. Muthreich reports that in previous research the little text, which is in fact an excerpt from the eighth letter to Demophilos (CPG 6611), has been oddly neglected. After comparing it with other extant translations of the letter to Demophilos he concludes that it can be assumed that the translation goes back to the first translator of the Corpus Dionysiacum into Syriac, Sergius of Reshaina. It closely corresponds, for example, to the fragment of letter VIII

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extant in manuscript Sinaiticus Syriacus 52 (S1), usually seen as the translation of Sergius. Muthreich outlines the main features of the manuscript (Vat. Sir. 123), gives a short description of the excerpt from letter VIII, and provides a text with an English translation. A yet later period, the early eleventh century, is reflected in Hellen Dayton’s chapter on Nicetas Pectoratus, Greek Saint Nikitas Stithatos (ca. 10051090). Dayton discusses a specific translation issue in Stithatos’ main work, the 300 Kephalaia. In chapter 45 of that work, Stithatos discusses the phenomenon of ‘tears of compunction’ (katanuxis). Against the common English translation of the Philokalia (4.119) Dayton argues that Stithatos understood our human ability to shed such tears to be ‘natural’, or ‘physical’, implanted in us. The English translation on the contrary presents it as ‘unnatural’. Dayton suggests that as a result, the translation understands the essential healing process of conscience as a peculiar esoteric intellectual operation. The intellect is abased and the heart shut off. However, Dayton shows that the Greek text does not describe the heart as ‘shuttered’ but as ‘worn out’, and the intellect not as ‘humbled’ or ‘humiliated’ in the sense of ‘debased’ but as ‘having become humble-minded’, which from the standpoint of Eastern Orthodox spirituality is not a crushing tragedy but rather clears the way for a revival, opening a new and better pathway for the soul, and crucially, Dayton concludes, doing so naturally. The last chapter of Part IV as well as of the volume is Andrej Kutarňa’s ‘Human Will and Divine Grace – Damascene’s Teaching on Theosis and its Echo in Aquinas’. John of Damascus, Kutarňa observes, is one of the most frequently cited authors in the Summa theologiae. Teachings on deification (theosis), which are spread across John’s work in a rather unsystematic way are gathered in Thomas’ work with an attempt at a more systematic treatment. But one has to keep in mind the original context of John’s teachings, the Iconoclast controversy. John wrote about the Orthodox Faith defending the Holy Images and arguing against heresies. In these contexts John strongly ties his concept of deification to the original biblical teaching of the creation of humans in the image of God (Gn. 1:26). Further ‘degrees’ of deification can be identified in his work at the level of human free will and of virtues, fruits of free will as well as of God’s grace as operating through the Sacraments, without which deification would not be attainable, especially after the Fall. Aquinas adapted and developed these ideas in STh I q. 93 a. 9. One of the interesting questions in this regard is how he dealt with Damascene’s specific way of describing the ‘collaboration’ between human free will and divine grace in the process of deification, deification understood here as the attainment of God’s likeness. Humans already received this likeness at creation. Here the question is how it can come to its realisation or perfection through grace and virtue. Kutarňa’s chapter throws some interesting light on Damascene’s influence on Aquinas and also its limits, not least since Aquinas remained also strongly influenced by the Augustinian tradition.

PART I

ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY, EARLY CHRISTIANITY AND JUDAISM

The Logos/Nous One-Many between ‘Pagan’ and Christian Platonism Ilaria L.E. RAMELLI, Durham / Milan / Erfurt

ABSTRACT In this essay, composed of two parts, I shall investigate the notion of Christ-LogosWisdom, God’s Mind, as being One-Many, in imperial Platonism, ‘pagan’, Jewish, and Christian, including Philo, Bardaisan of Edessa, and Numenius; hints in Irenaeus and the philosophical argument of Clement of Alexandria; the concept of Nous as One-Many in Plotinus, and the complex and rich reception of Christ-Logos-Wisdom as One-Many in Origen of Alexandria and one of his most faithful and insightful followers: Gregory of Nyssa. They will be shown to apply the notion of Logos-Nous as One-Many to Christ in two different ways: one in connection with creation, as in Clement and Origen, as the seat of all Ideas/logoi of creation; and another in reference to Christ’s humanity as coinciding with all humankind, a concept that has important consequences on their eschatology as well.

Part I Imperial Platonism, ‘Pagan’ and Christian: Numenius, Philo, and Bardaisan of Edessa Clement’s concept of the Logos being ‘all realities as One’, which will be examined, must be understood against the background of the so-called Middle Platonism, in which the Logos is the seat of the Ideas or Forms (the noetic cosmos), which are the paradigms of reality, and joins them into unity. In Middle Platonism, indeed, Plato’s Ideas – which were located, albeit not dimensionally but transcendentally, in the hyperouranios – become thoughts of God and are thereby located in God’s Mind or the divine Logos,1 and are participated to individual minds. According to the testimony of Syrianus, ‘the [Middle] Platonists Plutarch, Atticus, and Democritus thought that the universal logoi, subsisting eternally [διαιωνίως] in the substance that is the soul, are the Ideas/Forms [τὰς ἰδέας]’ (C.Met. 105.36-38 Kroll). 1

George Boys-Stones, Platonist Philosophy 80BC to AD250: An Introduction and Collection of Sources in Translation (Cambridge, 2018), Ch. 5, explores when Ideas began to be regarded as the thoughts of God.

Studia Patristica CII, 11-44. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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The Middle Platonist and Neopythagorean Numenius, who exerted a huge influence on both Origen and Plotinus, illustrated this idea, in connection with the creation, by a simile: as a pilot steers a ship looking at heaven, so does the demiurge create by drawing matter together in harmony and directing the created harmony through the paradigmatic forms, by contemplating them in the superior god, of whom they are thoughts (F18 DP). Numenius’ second God is intermediate between the First and creation, therefore double in nature and activity (F11; 12; 21) – like Clement’s and Origen’s divine Logos-Nous and like Plotinus’ Nous – the world’s Creator-Demiurge, ποιητής–δημιουργός, and governor (F13.21; 18). Qua Demiurge, it is θεωρητικός (F16.10-12), because it contains the Forms of all, as Christ-Logos-Wisdom does in Origen. For Christian Middle Platonists, such as Bardaisan of Edessa and Clement, God’s Logos is Christ;2 therefore, Christ/Logos is the place of all Ideas and unifies them all. In this respect, Clement was surely inspired also by Philo, with whose writings he was well acquainted and who was close to Middle Platonism. Philo saw in the Logos,3 which is one, the totality of powers which are identical to the Ideas/Forms. He also conceived of the Ideas as the intelligible paradigm of sense-perceptible realities. This paradigm, unlike that of Plato in his Timaeus, is created by God, in that it is God’s thought, and exists in God’s Logos. Like an architect who forms the intelligible paradigm of a city in his mind, so is God’s Logos the seat of ‘the world composed by the Ideas’.4 Whether the Logos in Philo is a hypostasis of its own, endowed with a substantial status – such as it will become in Origen thanks to its identification with Christ –, or it is simply an aspect or property of God, is much debated. It is not my intention to tackle this thorny question here, although the former alternative seems to me more probable;5 what is relevant to the present investigation is 2 Oleh Kindiy, Christos Didaskalos: The Christology of Clement of Alexandria (Saarbrücken, 2008), offers a useful survey of the history of research in Clement’s ‘logology’, which in his view ‘comprehensively combined Christian theology with Hellenistic philosophy and poetry, traditional Jewish theology and hermeneutics, and Gnostic cosmology’ (3). 3 On Philo’s theology of the Logos literature abounds; I cite only Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines. The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia, 2004), 112-47; id., ‘The Gospel of the Memra’, HTR 94 (2001), 243-84; Scott Mackie, ‘Seeing God in Philo of Alexandria: The Logos, the Powers, or the Existent One?’, StudPhilo 21 (2009), 25-47; Ilaria Ramelli, ‘The Father in the Son, the Son in the Father (John 10:38, 14:10, 17:21): Sources and Reception of Dynamic Unity in Middle and Neoplatonism, ‘Pagan’ and Christian’, lecture at the international conference, Die Quellen der Idee der dynamischen Einheit – des reziproken Ineinseins – im Iohannesevangelium, Erfurt, June 2018 (forthcoming in Journal of the Bible and Its Reception). 4 Ὁ ἐκ τῶν ἰδεῶν κόσμος (Opif. 17-20). 5 According to Roberto Radice, Philo is the first who considered the Logos a hypostasis, just as the prologue to the Gospel of John did: ‘Philo’s Theology and Theory of Creation’, in Adam Kamesar (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Philo (Cambridge, 2010), 125-45, 137. As he remarks, this notion had no parallel in Middle Platonism. I observe that it has a parallel elsewhere, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, which might even have been influenced by Philo, and which was paramount to the formation of the technical use of ὑπόστασις in Origen: see Ilaria Ramelli,

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that the Logos, according to Philo, plays a core role in the creation of the world. Now, shortly after Philo, John, the author of what subsequently became the fourth canonical Gospel, also assigned this role to the Logos, which he already identified with Christ,6 as Clement, Origen, and many Patristic philosophers did. The Logos is for Philo – just as for Clement, Origen, and Gregory of Nyssa – the ‘image of God’ (Philo here uses ἀπεικόνισμα, which is close to εἰκών, usually privileged by the Fathers since it is the Biblical term from Genesis). Philo also describes the Logos as God’s ‘shadow’ (LA III 96). The human being is in the image of the Logos, who is the image of God; in this way, God is only a paradigm, the Logos is both a copy and a paradigm, and the human being is only a copy. Philo, indeed, thought that the Logos is the real image of God (Conf. 97) and that the human being was created as an image (εἰκών) of the Logos (Opif. 134; 139). Thus, the human being can be an image of God because it is an image of the Logos – of course in its nous, not in its body (Opif. 69). The Logos is both an instrumental and an exemplary cause in the constitution of the world (this double causality is also at work in Bardaisan, as we shall see on the next section): for the Logos, in Philo’s view, also has the paradigms of all creatures in itself; thus, it is a real intermediary, μεσίτης, between God and the world, and between unity and multiplicity (LA III 150; Legat. 55). The latter respect is that which is most developed by Clement of Alexandria. But already Bardaisan of Edessa († 222), who might have been a teacher of Clement and likely was a Christian Middle Platonist,7 developed the notion of the divine Logos One-Many with regard to his role in creation. Bardaisan of Edessa and Connections with Porphyry and Plotinus A fragment, quoted literally from Bardaisan’s On India by the Neoplatonist Porphyry, describes ‘a large natural cave in a very high mountain, approximately in the middle of the earth. In that cave there is a statue, standing; they say that its height is about ten or twelve cubits. It has its arms spread out, in the symbol of the cross [ἐν τύπῳ σταυροῦ]’, or perhaps ‘in the mystery of the cross’. Τύπος bears both meanings, ‘symbol’ and ‘mystery’, and Bardaisan ‘Origen, Greek Philosophy, and the Birth of the Trinitarian Meaning of Hypostasis’, HTR 105 (2012), 302-50. 6 Ilaria Ramelli, ‘The Logos in the Johannine Prologue and Its Philosophical Reception’, in Stanley E. Porter and Andrew W. Pitts (eds), Johannine Prologue and its Resonances (Leiden, forthcoming) and the Introduction to John 13-7, Novum Testamentum Patristicum. 7 I presented some arguments in Ilaria Ramelli, Bardaisan of Edessa (Piscataway, 2009), 45-6; see the whole work for his philosophical ideas and Ilaria Ramelli, ‘The Mysteries of Scripture: Allegorical Exegesis and the Heritage of Stoicism, Philo, and Pantaenus’, in Veronika Černuskova, Judith L. Kovacs and Jana Platova (eds), Clement’s Biblical Exegesis. Proceedings of the Second Colloquium on Clement of Alexandria, Prague-Olomouc 29-31 May 2014 (Leiden, 2016), 80-110.

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used the phrase ‘the mystery of the cross’ in his cosmology, as is attested by Barhadbshabba ‘Arbaya (a source belonging to the so-called ‘first cosmological tradition’, PO 23, 191-2).8 The element of the cross must go back to Bardaisan himself. It cannot be due to Porphyry, who was hostile to Christianity and, for example, praised Origen for his intelligence and learning, but deplored his adhesion to Christianity as a way of life.9 The reference to the cross must have been present in Bardaisan’s work, because Porphyry would have never added it himself. Indeed, both the continuation of the fragment preserved by Porphyry and the cosmological traditions confirm that the cross of which Bardaisan is speaking in our Porphyrian fragment is that of Christ. In the Porphyrian fragment, since the crucified human being bears the representation of the cosmos in itself in the paradigms of creatures that (Middle Platonically) make up the Mind of God, Christ’s Cross is presented in its cosmological value, for its role in the creation of the cosmos and in cosmic reconciliation, and for its continual presence in the cosmos. For Christ is the Logos, which, in one respect, is also immanent in the universe. The cosmological value of Christ’s Cross was already predicated by Justin, very few decades before Bardaisan. Moreover, Justin repeatedly speaks of the ‘Mystery of the Cross’,10 which he sees as a cosmological mystery. The cross of Christ, in his view, is hidden all over the universe, which symbolically shows it everywhere. Plato, according to Justin, was somehow aware of this, but he mistook the cross for a χίασμα, a khi shape (X). According to Justin, what Plato identified as a X form is in fact the symbol of the cross of Christ (Dial. Tryph. passim;11 1 Apol. 60). He refers Tim. 36b-c (ἐχίασεν αὐτὸν ἐν τῷ παντί) to Christ: ‘in reference to the Son of God’. Plato misunderstood as X what in fact is the ‘symbol’ or ‘Mystery of the Cross:’ τύπος σταυροῦ (the very same expression as is found in Bardaisan’s fragment preserved by Porphyry in reference to the Christological-cosmological statue). This is why Plato affirms that ‘the Power [δύναμιν] that comes after the first God is embedded as a X in the 8 On this testimony see I. Ramelli, Bardaisan of Edessa (2009), 298-311; ead., ‘Preexistence of Souls? The ἀρχή and τέλος of Rational Creatures in Origen and Some Origenians’, SP 56 (2013), 167-226. On the source see ead., ‘Barhadbeshabba ‘Arbaya’, in The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2018). 9 See Ilaria Ramelli, ‘Origen and the Stoic Allegorical Tradition: Continuity and Innovation’, Invigilata Lucernis 28 (2006), 195-226; ead., ‘Origen, Patristic Philosophy, and Christian Platonism: Re-Thinking the Christianisation of Hellenism’, VigChr 63 (2009), 217-63; ead., ‘Origen and the Platonic Tradition’, in J. Warren Smith (ed.), Plato and Christ: Platonism in Early Christian Theology, special topics issue of Religions 8 (2017), 1-21. Further arguments in ‘Porphyry and the Motif of Christianity as παράνομος’, in John Finamore and Tomáš Nejeschleba (eds), Platonism and its Legacy (Lydney, 2019), 173-98. 10 See Ilaria Ramelli, ‘Divine Power in Origen of Alexandria: Sources and Aftermath’, in Anna Marmodoro and Irini-Fotini Viltanioti (eds), Divine Powers in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2017), 177-98. 11 Full analysis in I. Ramelli, ‘Divine Power’ (2017).

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universe [κεχιάσθαι ἐν τῷ παντί]’. This Power is the Logos, ‘which Plato said is embedded as a X in the universe’ (κεχιάσθαι ἐν τῷ παντί). For Bardaisan too, and for Origen as well, Christ is Logos and Power/Dynamis, as well as Wisdom. Justin shows the same cosmological conception of the Mystery of the Cross as Bardaisan does. Bardaisan may have known Justin’s thought, perhaps by means of Tatian, a disciple of Justin’s. Bardaisan, indeed, was very probably acquainted with Tatian’s work, at least the Diatessaron. Bardaisan, in the continuation of the Porphyrian fragment, describes the cosmic Crucified as vertically androgynous12 and as having the whole cosmos carved upon itself: sun, moon, angels, and all creatures. For all the beings are represented on the cosmic statue: ‘They say that on this statue the sun is carved on the right breast, all around, and the moon on the left one, and along the two arms … a great deal of angels are artistically carved and all the beings that are found in the cosmos [ὅσα ἐστὶν ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ], that is, the sky, the mountains, the sea, the rivers, the ocean, the plants, and in sum all the beings that exists [ἁπλῶς ὅσα ἔστι]’. This statue therefore represents: 1) qua androgynous, the sum of the microcosmos (humanity), and 2) due to the representation of the cosmos on it, the whole of the macrocosmos (the universe). This because, for the Christian Bardaisan, it is Christ, Christ as all humanity and the cosmic Christ together. In India both cosmological statues, with all creatures carved on them, and vertically androgynous ones have been found,13 but none of the statues found represents a crucified person. Therefore, the synthesis of the cosmic and the androgynous statues in our Porphyrian fragment must be due to Bardaisan himself; furthermore, Bardaisan added the element of the Cross – unattested in the Indian statues – as well as details whose meaning I shall investigate, such as that the statue lives and its material is impossible to determine. The connection drawn by Bardaisan between micro- and macrocosmos seems to reflect the Timaeus. For Plato’s dialogue draws a close relationship between the cosmic soul and the human rational soul, the only immortal faculty of the human soul: God the Demiurge creates both the cosmic and the human soul with the same elements and criteria and the same mixture.14 Porphyry was interested in this topic, and therefore in Bardaisan’s fragment. Plotinus also was, who attached this micro-macrocosmos relation to the nous: each human nous is in direct correspondence with the universal Nous, the second hypostasis produced by the first (the One), and the activity of the human 12 ‘The right part of its face is masculine, the left feminine. Likewise, the right arm, too, and the right foot, and the whole right side are masculine, whereas the left ones are feminine. Therefore, at this sight one was struck by this mixture, and wondered how it was possible to see such a difference of the two vertical halves in one and the same body in an indivisible way’. 13 Cristiano Castelletti, Porfirio, Sullo Stige (Milan, 2006), has photographs of these statues. 14 The first mixture, with which the human intellectual soul is created, is identical to that with which the cosmic soul is created; the second mixture is also described as identical, but less pure.

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nous is analogous to that of the universal nous.15 In this connection, it is revealing that in the continuation of the second Porphyrian fragment, the statue representing both humanity and the cosmos is surmounted by an enthroned divine figure: the nous. For the nous is the divine part in each human being; its activity is the same as that of God’s Logos (in its transcendent aspect)16 in respect to the world: it governs it. It is not accidental that, immediately afterwards, Bardaisan’s statement makes it clear that he indeed interpreted his ‘statue’ in the light of Plato’s Timaeus: ‘They say that it was God to give this statue to his Son [τῷ Υἱῷ], when he was founding the cosmos [τὸν κόσμον ἔκτιζεν], that he might have a model to contemplate [θεατὸν ἔχῃ παράδειγμα]’. This entails that the statue represents the cosmos and at the same time its ideal model. It is a crucified human being because it must indicate that the cosmos was created by Christ-Logos in the Mystery of the Cross. Christ-Logos is both the creator/founder of the cosmos and the ideal model of the cosmos, as κόσμος νοητός. The focus on the Timaeus displayed by Bardaisan’s fragment, and the idea of the Son of God as One-Many qua noetic creator, is a characteristic of Middle Platonism, which is the broad intellectual framework in which both Bardaisan and Origen operated.17 All Middle Platonists, ‘pagans’ and Christians (including Clement and Origen), as well as Jewish (Philo), absorbed much of Stoicism, especially on the ethical plane. They indeed display Platonic metaphysics and Stoicising ethics. So, it is not surprising to find Stoic ethical elements in Bardaisan, especially in the BLC,18 which reflects Bardaisan’s anti-deterministic arguments, the same that were supported by Origen and the Origenian tradition as well. 15 On Plotinus see recently Eyjólfur Kjalar Emilsson, Plotinus on Intellect (Oxford, 2007), Ch. 4. 16 Indeed, God’s Logos in its transcendent aspect is one with the Nous; the Logos also has an immanent aspect: after the creation, it remains in the cosmos, in all of its logoi. 17 See Ilaria Ramelli, ‘Bardaisan of Edessa, Origen, and Imperial Philosophy: A Middle Platonic Context?’, Aram 30 (2018), 1-26; on Origen ‘Origen, Patristic Philosophy’, and a work on Origen in preparation. 18 These elements in BLC are highlighted by Paul Robertson, ‘Greco-Roman Ethical-Philosophical Influences in Bardaisan’s Book of the Laws of Countries’, VigChr 71 (2017), 511-40, who repeatedly accepts (512, 513, 515, 516, 517, 529, 537) my analysis of Bardaisan’s philosophical elements as a Middle Platonist with Stoic influences throughout (in Bardaisan of Edessa [2009], ‘Origen, Patristic Philosophy’ [2009], and ‘Bardaisan of Edessa, Origen’ [2018]) and focuses precisely on Stoic (and partially Cynic and Epicurean) ethics in BLC. He receives my conjecture of an interpolation in the ‘tares’ passage in BLC as reflecting ‘later, disparate authorial and/or editorial hands’ (528-29). He emphasises that Bardaisan did not rely on primary philosophical sources, but rather on handbooks, public lectures, educated gatherings, aristocratic dinner parties, etc. (518). However, he likely knew Plato’s dialogues. On Bardaisan’s use of the Stoic category of adiaphora and his blending of Stoic and Platonic tenets in this respect and his notion of social justice, see Ilaria Ramelli, Social Justice and the Legitimacy of Slavery: The Role of Philosophical Asceticism from Ancient Judaism to Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2016), 131-5.

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Bardaisan Christianised Plato’s notion of God and of the ideal paradigm used in the creation of the world, interpreting the Son of God as the Logos who, according to the Prologue of John, was the agent of the creation. The ‘cosmological traditions’ fully confirm this point. Bardaisan describes Christ as the Son of God and the agent of creation. As an equivalent of the Timaeus’ good God, the Demiurge, and the Ideas that are his paradigm for the creation of the world, Bardaisan presents God, God’s Son who acts as a Demiurge and is Christ-Logos (as the ‘cosmological traditions’ further prove, speaking of the engagement of the Logos, Word of Thought, in the creation), and the ideal paradigm of the cosmos. The latter is again identifiable with Christ-Logos because God’s Logos is the seat of the Ideas (seen as God’s thoughts) in Middle Platonism, and therefore is the transcending unity of all that exists, ‘all in One’, to put it with Clement of Alexandria (see the next section). As a consequence, the ideal model of the cosmos created by Christ-Logos is Christ, the cosmic Christ. This is why Bardaisan’s mysterious statue with the cosmos carved upon it spreads its arms in the shape of a cross, and is a living human being, but imperishable. Bardaisan clearly reads the Timaeus in the light of both Christianity and Middle Platonism. To sum up, we have: in Plato’s Timaeus, God the Demiurge + the Ideas as paradigms; in Bardaisan’s De India, God + God’s Son (= Christ-Logos the Creator) who is also the ideal paradigm (Ideas in God’s mind = Christ-Logos as noetic cosmos). Like Bardaisan, Origen also regarded Christ-Logos-Wisdom as the seat of the Ideas (again, Middle-Platonically conceived) or logoi (with a more Stoic term, but adopted in Middle Platonism, Plotinus and later Christian Platonists as well), the ‘archetypes’ of all beings, and the agent of the creation (Comm. in Io. I 19,114-5, analysed below). Soon after in the fragment preserved by Porphyry, Bardaisan declares that the mysterious statue is incorruptible; he tried to determine its material, but in vain.19 The statue bled and sweat,20 and was therefore alive, but at the same time it was incorruptible: ‘it is rather similar to imperishable/incorruptible wood, absolutely incorruptible. However, it is no wood’.21 The reason is probably to be sought in the fact that the body of the statue represents the incorruptible 19 ‘I asked’, Bardaisan says, ‘of what material it is made. Sandales assured that nobody knows of what material that statue is, and the others, too, confirmed his statement. Indeed, it is neither of gold, nor or silver, nor of bronze, nor of stone or any other material’. 20 ‘They added that a king wanted to remove one hair of those found around his neck, and that blood gushed out. That king was so scared that he could hardly recover, thanks to the Brahmans’ prayers. … They also say that, during the hottest periods, this whole statue sweats, and that the Brahmans fan it; thus, it stops sweating. Should they not fan it, it would produce so much sweat as to soak the ground around it’. 21 For a striking parallel between this description and a similar description of the body of Christ by Hippolytus, a contemporary of both Origen and Bardaisan, see Ilaria Ramelli, ‘The Body of Christ as Imperishable Wood: Hippolytus and Bardaisan of Edessa’s Complex Christology’, in Select Proceedings of the 12th Symposium Syriacum, 2016 (Rome, 2020).

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human body, as it was before the fall and will be again after the resurrection. This idea was developed by Origen and then Gregory Nyssen,22 and Bardaisan seems to share it. At the same time, it is the body of the cosmos, which Plato, Tim. 30b, and the Stoics deemed a living being, and in which Christ is omnipresent as immanent Logos;23 the cross in the statue indicates that the Logos created the cosmos ‘according to the Mystery of the Cross’, as the ‘first cosmological tradition’ confirms. The statue of the cosmic Christ also represents all humanity, because Christ has assumed humanity as his body. This is why this statue is alive and human, and has the shape of a human being. Bardaisan’s statue, therefore, represents the cosmos (having all beings carved upon itself) and the human being (since it represents a man and a woman at the same time), as subsumed in Christ (as the shape of the cross indicates). The relation between macro- and microcosmos was emphasised by the Platonic tradition, in which the individual human soul has a cosmic counterpart in the cosmic soul, as is clear in the Timaeus and is developed in the long history of Platonism, down to Plotinus and later Neoplatonism.24 Likewise, especially in Middle Platonism, the cosmic Logos (God’s Logos, the seat of the Ideas) has its individual counterpart in the logos or rational faculty of each rational being; this is a notion that is also found in Origen. The statue is the ideal paradigm used by Christ-Logos in the creation of the world, which was made ‘according to the Mystery of the Cross’, and this paradigm is Christ-Logos in that it is the cosmic Christ, since in Middle Platonism the Ideas are God’s thoughts belonging to the divine Logos.25 Thus, Christ-Logos is both the creator of the cosmos and its ideal model. As a consequence, ChristLogos incorporates the two active principles that, according to Plato’s Timaeus, intervened in the creation of the world: the Demiurge, the good God, and the ideal paradigm that the Demiurge followed in the creation. The passive principle is matter in Plato; in Bardaisan’s cosmological traditions it is represented by the elements or ‘beings’, which, however, are not uncreated as Plato’s matter is, but are creatures of God as is stated in the Book of the Laws of Countries: and here, again, we have a remarkable similarity with Origen, who deemed matter a creature of God.26 22 See Ilaria Ramelli, ‘Gregory of Nyssa on the Soul (and the Restoration): From Plato to Origen’, in Anna Marmodoro and Neil McLynn (eds), Exploring Gregory of Nyssa: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives (Oxford, 2018), 110-41. 23 This is confirmed by a fragment of Bardaisan preserved by Ephrem and analysed in I. Ramelli, Bardaisan of Edessa (2009). 24 See, among the most recent contributions, Jean-François Pradeau (ed.), Études Platoniciennes IV. Les puissances de l’âme selon Platon (Paris, 2007), and G. Boys-Stones, Platonist Philosophy (2018), Chs 8-12 on psychology and the world soul in so-called Middle Platonism. 25 I. Ramelli, ‘Bardaisan of Edessa, Origen, and Imperial Philosophy’ (2018). 26 See Ilaria Ramelli, ‘The Dialogue of Adamantius: A Document of Origen’s Thought? Part One’, in SP 52 (2012), 71-98. Further arguments in Ilaria Ramelli, ‘The Dialogue of Adamantius:

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Bardaisan’s image of decorations representing, as paradigms (Ideas or logoi), the creatures on the body of Christ-Logos finds an impressive parallel in Origen’s conception of the paradigms (Ideas or logoi) of creatures that at the beginning were found as decorations on the body of Christ-Logos-Wisdom.27 These, Origen explains, were on the body of Christ-Wisdom as the creator of this cosmos, and constituted his ‘intelligible Beauty with many decorations’ (πολυποίκιλον νοητὸν κάλλος). The notion of the body of Christ-Logos-Wisdom covered with decorations that are the paradigms of all creatures is identical in Origen and in Bardaisan, and, remarkably, it seems absent from other authors anterior to them or contemporary with them.28 Origen might have read Bardaisan’s treatise, composed as it was some thirty-five years before his own death. This would have been of interest to him, given its Christianised reading of Plato’s Timaeus and Middle Platonism. Plotinus might have known perhaps Bardaisan’s imagery (surely known to Porphyry), and Origen’s one, and might have reversed it in his description of matter, last in the cosmic scale, as ‘decorated corpse’.29 Since Porphyry and perhaps Plotinus’s school were acquainted with Bardaisan’s treatise, it is certainly possible that Origen – a disciple of Ammonius Saccas like Plotinus, and who read many of the same philosophers as Plotinus did – read it in the same Greek translation, or redaction, that was available to them around 250-280. Alternatively, Bardaisan and Origen may depend on an unknown common source. This, or both of them, might have been inspired by Genesis 37, in which Joseph, the favourite son of Jacob, received from his father a ‘decorated tunic’ (χιτῶνα ποικίλον), which may be echoed, along with Eph. 3:10, in Origen’s πολυποίκιλον νοητὸν κάλλος, given that Jacob was a type of Christ in the Syriac and the Greek tradition, and his tunic was related to Jesus’ body: both Jacob’ tunic and Christ’s body are decorated. The body of Christ is decorated by the paradigms of all creatures. A divine image sits on a throne over the head of the statue in Bardaisan’s fragment from Porphyry: it represents the human and cosmic intellect: ‘They say that over its head [sc. of the statue] there is the image of a deity [ἄγαλμα], sitting on a sort of throne’. The intellect or nous is divine, as in Plato’s Timaeus, where the intellectual souls are called ‘gods’ (though being inferior divinities, Preparing the Critical Edition and a Reappraisal’, forthcoming in Rheinisches Museum. A critical edition and a monograph are in preparation. 27 Comm. in Io. XIX 22,147, with a reminiscence of Eph. 3:10. Similarity pointed out in I. Ramelli, Bardaisan of Edessa (2009), 106, and in I. Ramelli, ‘Preexistence of Souls?’ (2013). Now Panayiotis Tzamalikos agrees: Anaxagoras, Origen, and Neoplatonism. The Legacy of Anaxagoras to Classical and Late Antiquity (Berlin, 2016), 884-5, cf. 782-90. A review is forthcoming in Gnomon. 28 Clement cited Eph. 3:10 in Strom. II 3,27,1, but joining it to Hebr. 1:1 and referring it to the variety of God’s Wisdom in art, science, faith, and prophecy, and not to the logoi of creation on the body of Christ-Logos-Wisdom. 29 Nεκρὸν κεκοσμημένον, Enn. II 4,5,18.

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produced by the Demiurge). In each human, as well as in the cosmos, the intellect is in the royal seat due to its ruling office as ἡγεμονικόν (a Stoic term adopted by Middle Platonists and Christians). The nous is described as both kingly and divine, as in Bardaisan’s fragment, by another Middle Platonist strongly influenced by Stoicism, and a perfect contemporary of Bardaisan, such as Maximus of Tyre.30 What is more, the depiction of the νοῦς as ἄγαλμα in Bardaisan is identical to Origen’s description of God’s transcendent Logos and the νοῦς of every human being as an ἄγαλμα, in two passages, one of which preserved in Greek. In Princ. I 2,8 Origen describes the Son-Logos as a divine statue that reproduces God the Father; the latter is like a huge statue that fills the world, while the Son is an identical statue, but smaller, so as to be apprehended by creatures’ intellectual sight (this metaphor of Origen’s will inspire his followers, Eusebius and Athanasius).31 Cels. VIII 7-18 even preserves the term ἄγαλμα used by Origen in reference both to the Son-Logos, the image of the Father, and to the νοῦς of every human who imitates Christ.32 Bardaisan conceived the human being as divided into body, vital soul, and the intellectual soul, regarded as the divine component in each human. That the image of God is not in the body, nor in the inferior soul, but in the intellect, is a notion that Bardaisan shares with Philo, Origen, and Gregory Nyssen.33 Indeed, a comparison between Bardaisan’s Porphyrian fragment and Philo, who was close to Middle Platonism, is highly interesting.34 Philo in De opif. 69-71 observes that the human being is after God’s image and likeness, but this image and likeness should not be individuated in human bodies, but in the nous, which is ‘the ἡγεμών of the soul’.35 Philo goes on to claim that the intellect of each 30 Diss. 11,8h-i: λείπεται δὴ ὥσπερ εἰς ἀκρόπολιν ἀναβιβασαμένους τῷ λόγῳ τὸν θεὸν ἱδρῦσαι κατὰ τὸν νοῦν αὐτὸν ἀρχηγικώτατον … ἐντελέστατον, ὁ νοῶν ἀεί, καὶ πάντα, καὶ ἅμα, ‘The only possible conclusion is, so to speak, to take God up to the acropolis in our argument and to establish him in the citadel of the supreme commander, intellect … it does not yet rank as perfect intellect, unless you add it the further property of thinking eternally, and thinking all things, and all together’ (trans. Michael Trapp with changes). 31 Eusebius in his treatise against Marcellus illustrates the relationship between the Father and the Son-Logos by means of the relationship between the emperor and a statue of his; Athanasius does the very same in C. Ar. 3, 6. 32 ‘Of all the images in creation, the most excellent by far is that which is in our Saviour, who said: ‘The Father is inside me’. And a statue [ἄγαλμα] in the image of God the Creator is present in each of those who endeavour to imitate him. They made that statue by contemplating God with a pure heart’. 33 See Ilaria Ramelli, ‘Philosophical Allegoresis of Scripture in Philo and Its Legacy in Gregory of Nyssa’, StudPhilo 20 (2008), 55-99. 34 It would be important to explore more systematically the possible reception of Philo in Bardaisan, although the evidence is problematic. 35 On Philo’s notion of the human intellect as εἰκών of God (albeit without mention of Bardaisan) see Stefanie Lorenzen, Das Paulinische Eikon-Konzept. Semantische Analysen zur Sapientia Salomonis, zu Philon, und den Paulusbriefen (Tübingen, 2008).

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human is modelled on that of the universe as its archetype, and is ‘a god of the person who bears it around as a divine image’ (θεὸς τοῦ φέροντος καὶ ἀγαλματοφοροῦντος αὐτόν). This is the same notion of the intellect as a divine image in the human being as is found in Bardaisan. The nous of the whole cosmos, according to Philo, just as according to Bardaisan, has the same function as the individual nous in each human. Its nature or substance is unclear: ἄδηλον ἔχει τὴν οὐσίαν. This detail of the impossibility of determining the substance is common to both, but referred by Bardaisan, not to the nous proper, but to the statue that is the symbol of the cosmic Adam and cosmic Christ. In our fragment, the human νοῦς corresponds to the cosmic intellect, ruling and divine, and Bardaisan could easily identify it with Christ-Logos in his transcendent aspect (not as the immanent Logos). Christ’s body is, therefore, humanity and the cosmos at the same time, and it is crucified precisely because it is Christ’s; the intellect of this body is the transcendent Logos. For Bardaisan, it is the Stoic and Middle-Platonic Logos (the former immanent, the latter transcendent), but also the Christian Logos that is Christ. Bardaisan, especially in his Porphyrian fragment, describes Christ-Logos as both the transcendent unity of all existing beings (the cosmic Christ) and the transcendent unity of all humanity (the new Adam). As the seat of the Forms, qua the noetic world, Christ-Logos, the Son of God, is seen by Bardaisan as the exemplary cause of the creation of the cosmos, but at the same time he is also considered by him to be its efficient cause, in that he also plays the role of Plato’s Demiurge. It is striking that these two functions in creation (efficient cause and noetic cause at the same time) were ascribed to Christ-Logos by Origen as well.36 Some Hints in Irenaeus and Clement’s Full-Blown Arguments Irenaeus also supported the idea of the Logos as the noetic form of God,37 but without providing a real philosophical demonstration. This is rather offered by Clement and developed by Origen and Plotinus. According to Clement, the Logos is the seat of the Forms or Ideas, as is clear from Strom. IV 25,156, also interesting with respect to Clement’s Trinitarian (or ‘binitarian’) doctrine.38 36

I point this out in a future monograph on Origen. See Jackson Lashier, ‘Irenaeus as Logos Theologian’, VigChr 66 (2012), 341-61, who shows how Logos theology underlines the union of Father and Son; Dragos Giulea, ‘Origen’s Christology in Pre-Nicene Setting: The Logos as the Noetic Form of God’, ETL 92 (2016), 40737; Bogdan Bucur, ‘Scholarly Frameworks for Reading Irenaeus’, VigChr 72 (2018), 255-82; 258-62. 38 Bogdan Bucur, ‘Revisiting Christian Oeyen’, VigChr 61 (2007), 381-413, 391-2, and Bogdan Bucur, Angelomorphic Pneumatology: Clement of Alexandria and Other Early Christian Witnesses (Leiden, 2009), in which he studies angelic imagery applied to the Holy Spirit and, on the basis of Excerpta ex Theodoto, Eclogae propheticae, and Adumbrationes, shows that Clement maintained an angelomorphic pneumatology connected with spirit Christology, within a theological framework of ‘binitarianism’ and the Jewish and Christian traditions on the seven 37

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In Strom. IV 25,155,2-157,2, Clement begins to speak in 155,2 of a God posited by Plato who contemplates the Ideas (τὸν τῶν ἰδεῶν θεωρητικὸν θεόν), like Numenius’ above-mentioned θεωρητικός God (F16.10-12), because it contains the Forms of all, as Christ-Logos-Wisdom does in Origen. Clement is observing that, according to Plato, the nous, or Intellect, is like a divinity which is able to contemplate the Ideas and the invisible god and inhabits the human beings (155,2). The nous or intellect is the seat of the Ideas, and is itself God, as God is nous: νοῦς δὲ χῶρα ἰδεῶν, νοῦς δὲ ὁ θεός. Now, this god who can contemplate the invisible God (τὸν ἀοράτου θεοῦ θεωρητικὸν θεόν) lives within humans; indeed, Socrates called ‘god’ the Stranger of Elea, because he was most dialectic. The soul depicted by Plato, absorbed in the contemplation of the Ideas and detached from the sense-perceptible world, is assimilated by Clement to an angel who is with Christ, contemplates (is θεωρητικός), and always looks at the will of God (155,4). Clement, building up the equation, ‘soul : Ideas = angel : Christ’, draws a parallel, not only between the soul and an angel, but also between the Ideas and Christ. This, which at first might sound odd, is perfectly clear on the basis of Clement’s very notion – surely partially indebted to Philo39 – of Christ as Logos and, as such, as the seat of the Ideas. Immediately afterwards, in Strom. IV 25,156,1, indeed, Clement describes the Logos as Wisdom, Science, and Truth, all notions – which in Philo were already attributes of the Logos and in Origen will be epinoiai of Christ40 – that pertain to the gnoseological field, which in turn is closely related to the wellknown function of Christ-Logos as teacher and pedagogue in Clement’s view.41 These gnoseological notions allow Clement to claim that the Son-Logos is intelligible and knowable, unlike the Father: the Father cannot be demonstrated and therefore cannot be known scientifically (ἀναπόδεικτος ὢν οὐκ ἔστιν ἐπιστημονικός), while the Son, as said, is Wisdom, Science, Truth, and the like (σοφία, ἐπιστήμη, ἀλήθεια … ἀπόδειξιν ἔχει καὶ διέξοδον). The Son is the sum and unification of all the powers of the spirit, ‘all in one’: ‘all the powers of the spirit taken together [πᾶσαι αἱ δυνάμεις τοῦ prōtoktistoi angels. See also Christian Oeyen, Eine frühchristliche Engelpneumatologie bei Klemens von Alexandrien (Bern, 1966); Manlio Simonetti, ‘Note di cristologia pneumatica’, Aug. 12 (1972), 201-32; Luis F. Ladaría, El Espíritu en Clemente Alejandrino (Madrid, 1980). 39 We do not know how deeply Clement was indebted to the ‘Stoic’ Pantaenus, his teacher, on this score. 40 These will be taken up also by Gregory of Nyssa. For his reflection on the attributes of Christ see Johannes Zachhuber, ‘Christological Titles: Conceptually Applied?’, in Lenka Karfíková, Scot Douglass and Johannes Zachhuber (eds), Gregory of Nyssa: Contra Eunomium II. An English Version with Supporting Studies (Leiden, 2007), commentary section on C. Eun. II 294-358. 41 On which see Judith L. Kovacs, ‘Divine Pedagogy and the Gnostic Teacher according to Clement of Alexandria’, JECS 9 (2001), 3-25, also with wide-ranging documentation, and O. Kindiy, Christos Didaskalos (2008), Part C, on Christ-Logos as Didaskalos, New Song, and High Priest.

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πνεύματος συλλήβδην], transformed into one single thing [ἕν τι πρᾶγμα γενόμεναι], end up into the same being [συντελοῦσιν εἰς τὸ αὐτό]: the Son’ (156,1). They ‘concur to constitute the Son’, ‘contribute to the Son’ (συντελοῦσιν εἰς), so that the Son seems to be the sum of all these spiritual dynameis (ἀπαρέμφατος δέ ἐστι τῆς περὶ ἑκάστης αὐτοῦ τῶν δυνάμεων ἐννοίας),42 which were probably assimilated by Clement to the Ideas in the Logos and the angels – indeed, he seems to have joined the speculation on the Logos to the Jewish Christian doctrine of angelic powers. The Son is not determined (ἀπαρέμφατος) by the notion or ennoia of each one of his ‘powers’. This suggests that Christ-Logos is not simply the sum total of all these dynameis, but transcends them in a superior unity. This will be the case with Origen: Christ is not merely the sum of all of his epinoiai, but transcends them in a superior unity. My hypothesis is supported by Clement’s explication immediately afterwards: ‘Indeed, the Son is not simply ‘one thing’ as one thing [οὐ γίνεται ἀτεχνῶς ἓν ὡς ἕν]; nor is he ‘many things’ as parts of a sum [πολλὰ ὡς μέρη], but he is One as All things’ (ἀλλ᾽ ὡς πάντα ἕν, 156,2), Unity in Multiplicity as One-Many. The Logos is not only One and not only All, but All in One and One as All, the unity of multiplicity that transcends the many (here the many dynameis, but also the many Ideas or the many human beings: see below for the implications that will be developed by Origen) and makes them one. ‘Hence also all things’ (πάντα), Clement goes on to explain, ‘for the Son himself is the circle that embraces all the powers, which are encircled and unified into one’ (πασῶν τῶν δυνάμεων εἰς ἓν εἰλουμένων καὶ ἑνουμένων). The Logos is the principle of all things, also because it is the main agent of creation, and it embraces all of them in a superior unity. In the subsequent section (157,1), the notion of circularity in reference to the Logos’s encompassing all is further developed: ‘For this reason the Logos is said to be the Alpha and the Omega,43 because only in his case does the end coincide with the beginning [οὗ μόνου τὸ τέλος ἀρχὴ γίνεται]; the Logos ends with the first principle [τελευτᾷ ἐπὶ τὴν ἄνωθεν ἀρχήν], without admitting of any interruption at any point’. The Logos, being God, has no duality, no multiplicity, no interruption, no division, but it rather resolves every division and unifies multiplicity. The correspondence between the beginning and the end is 42 This conception seems to me to be already very clear in Justin, one of the very first Patristic philosophers, and influenced by Platonism as well. In his Dialogue with Trypho (61,1), Justin calls Christ precisely Dynamis and Logos, in addition to Sophia: ‘God begot him from himself in the beginning, before all creatures, Power of Logos [δύναμις λογική] … Child, Wisdom [Σοφία] … God, Lord, and Logos’. Remarkably, Justin’s expression, ‘Power of Logos begotten in the beginning’, in reference to Christ, also corresponds to Bardaisan’s designation of Christ in a fragment preserved by Ephrem: ‘Power of the primordial Logos’ (see I. Ramelli, ‘Divine Power’ [2017]). 43 Rev. 1:8; 22:13.

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affirmed by Plotinus as well, and will be a tenet of the doctrine of apokatastasis for Origen and later supporters of the doctrine, including Evagrius.44 Exactly because the Logos is the transcendent unity of all, then ‘to believe in Christ and through Christ means to become unified and simple [μοναδικόν], being unified [ἑνουμένον] in the Logos continually, without distractions or interruptions, whereas not to believe means to be in disagreement, separated, and divided’ (Strom. IV 25,157,2). This will be the very reason for the fall in Origen, and its reversal will promote the restoration of all.45 Clement’s conception of the Logos ὡς πάντα ἕν helps us to decide a difficult question in Clement’s doctrine of the Logos, which has been discussed since the late nineteenth century, when Paden delineated Clement’s Logos as consubstantial with God the Father, along the lines of Nicene theology. Paden’s position was rightly criticised as unhistorical by several scholars, such as Jean Daniélou and Salvatore Lilla; according to them, however, Clement posited two, or even three, different Logoi, the first immanent within God’s mind, and the other(s) emanating from the first and projecting from divine immanence into the ‘economic’ dimension, either as creator of the cosmos or as the first creature. Other scholars, such as Eric Osborn or Mark Edwards, to my mind more accurately, individuate in Clement’s thought one and only one Logos, the Son of God, Christ-Logos, whose various ‘economic’ functions are identified, especially by Osborn, with different aspects of the same Logos.46 I find that Clement’s conception of Christ-Logos, the divine Nous, ὡς πάντα ἕν, as I have here examined it, fits much better in the latter scholarly view. Here ends Part I of this chapter. In Part II, which follows hereinafter, I will investigate the Logos/Mind of God as One-Many and its implications in Origen, Plotinus, and others.

44 See Ilaria Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis. A Critical Assessment from the New Testament to Eriugena (Leiden, 2013); further in Ilaria Ramelli, A Larger Hope? Universal Salvation in Christianity from the Origins to Julian of Norwich, preface R. Bauckham (New York, 2019). For Plotinus and later Neoplatonists, a separate work on philosophical theories of apokatastasis is in the works. 45 See Ilaria Ramelli, ‘Harmony between arkhē and telos in Patristic Platonism and the Imagery of Astronomical Harmony Applied to the Apokatastasis Theory’, IJPT 7 (2013), 1-49; ead., ‘Apokatastasis and Epektasis in Hom. in Cant.: The Relation between Two Core Doctrines in Gregory and Roots in Origen’, in Giulio Maspero, Miguel Brugarolas and Ilaria Vigorelli (eds), Gregory of Nyssa: In Canticum Canticorum. Commentary and Supporting Studies. Proceedings of the 13th International Colloquium on Gregory of Nyssa (Rome, 17-20 September 2014) (Leiden, 2018), 312-39. 46 Mark Edwards, ‘Clement of Alexandria and His Doctrine of the Logos’, VigChr 54 (2000), 159-77; Piotr Ashwin-Siejkowski, Clement of Alexandria on Trial: The Evidence of ‘Heresy’ from Photius’ Bibliotheca (Leiden, 2010), 63-5. Fabienne Jourdan, ‘Le Logos de Clément soumis à la question’, REAug 56 (2010), 135-72 thinks of two Logoi for Clement, but takes as Clement’s own a statement that Clement was probably citing from ‘Gnostic’ opponents; see I. Ramelli, ‘Origen, Greek Philosophy’ (2013).

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Part II Origen’s Indebtedness to Clement: Christ-Logos as Embracing All Logoi/ Forms; One-Many between Beginning and End, and Plotinus’ Parallel of Nous as One-Many Although the relation between Clement and Origen is problematic,47 Origen surely was familiar with Clement’s work and seems to have absorbed and developed Clement’s notion of Christ-Logos as the seat of the Forms-Ideas or Logoi and the transcendent unity of all logoi,48 which I have illustrated in the first part of this essay, as well as his contrast between God the Father as simply One and the Logos as One-Many. In his Commentary on John, I 20,119, Origen develops Clement’s conception of the Logos being ‘One as All’. He remarks that, whereas God the Father is One and absolutely simply One (πάντη ἕν ἐστι καὶ ἁπλοῦν), Christ the Logos is ‘One through All’ and ‘One as All’: διὰ τὰ πολλά … πολλὰ γίνεται … τάχα πάντα ταῦτα. Origen explains this notion ibidem I 31,219, in which he clarifies the reason why Christ is said to be ‘the first and the last’ in Revelation (which makes it clear that Origen had in mind the passage by Clement that I have examined beforehand, likewise referring to Rev. 22:13, as I have indicated). Christ is described as the first and the last not because he is not what is in between; on the contrary, ‘he is the first, the last, and all that is in between’, as Christ-Logos is or becomes ‘all things’ (τὰ πάντα γέγονε αὐτός). Origen applies to Christ himself the idea of God as being ‘all in all’ (πάντα γὰρ καὶ ἐν πᾶσι) in the eschatological scenario (ibid. I 31,225). This concept was one of the favourite supports of Origen’s theory of apokatastasis.49 The dialectic between unity and multiplicity is evident in this initial section of Origen’s Commentary on John, where he describes Christ as one, and yet having many epinoiai, which he lists and discusses: Christ-Logos-Wisdom is one and at the same time is ‘a multitude of goods’. For Origen, Wisdom is Christ’s first epinoia, the second being Logos in Comm. in Io. I50 – or vice versa: ‘Logos, Wisdom, Truth, Justice, Peace, and all virtues’ (Comm. in Cant. III 6,4), which Origen taught.51 Christ is ‘Logos, Wisdom, Justice, Truth’ and the Lord 47

See I. Ramelli, ‘Mysteries of Scripture’ (2016). The distinction between Forms/Ideai and Logoi is explored in a study on Origen in preparation. 49 I. Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis (2013), Chapter on Origen; ead., Origen (in preparation), Chapter 2. 50 John McGuckin, ‘Structural Design and Apologetical Intent in Origen’s Commentary on John’, in Origeniana VI (Leuven, 1995), 441-57, shows that the architecture of Commentary on John is structured precisely on Christ’s epinoiai. On these see Joseph Wolinski, ‘Le recours aux Ἐπίνοιαι du Christ dans le Commentaire sur Jean’, in Origeniana VI (1999), 465-92. Cf. Theo Kobusch, ‘Das Johannesevangelium’, RTPM 81 (2014), 213-35, 213-26: for Origen John constituted Christian metaphysics, as later for Eriugena. 51 Tobias Georges, ‘Origenes Lehrer der göttlichen Tugenden’, in id. and Ilinca Tanaseanu (eds), Bedeutende Lehrerfiguren (Tübingen, 2015), 123-52. 48

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of all these (Cels. VIII 15). There, is, indeed, an order of the epinoiai (τάξις, Comm. in Io. I 31,223). Christ is Wisdom and Logos ‘for himself and for others’, while he is other epinoiai such as way, door etc. only ‘for others’ (Comm. in Io. II 126). Even ‘God’s Son’ is an epinoia of Christ. Christ-Logos declares to all creatures the meaning of the mysteries of God’s Wisdom – again Christ (Princ. I 2,3). In Comm. in Io. I 19,114-5 Origen uses the metaphor of the project in the mind of the architect that was already employed by Philo, as seen in Part I of this essay, to explain the relation between the Logos and the paradigm of the world: A house or a ship are built according to architectonic models, so that one can say that the principle of the house or of the ship consists in the paradigms and logoi that are found in the craftsman. In the same way, I think, all the things were made according to the logoi of the future realities that God had already manifested beforehand in Wisdom. It is necessary to maintain that God founded [κτίσας], so to say, a living Wisdom, and handed it the task of transmitting the structure [πλάσις] and the forms [εἴδη], and, to my mind, also the substances [οὐσίαι], from the archetypes contained in it to beings and matter. (Orig. Comm. in Io. I 19,114-5)

Christ-Logos is the living Wisdom of God, who contains all the archetypal logoi that are the paradigms of all creation. Origen in Princ. I 4,5 declares that the logoi existed in God’s Logos-Wisdom eternally, before their creation as substances (οὐσίαι, the very same word used in Comm. in Io. I 19,114-5): neque ingenitas et coaeternas Deo creaturas dicamus, neque rursus, cum nihil boni prius egerit Deus, in id ut ageret esse conversum, cum verus sit ille sermo qui scriptus est quia ‘Omnia in sapientia fecisti’.52 Et si utique in Sapientia omnia facta sunt, cum Sapientia semper fuerit, secundum praefigurationem et praeformationem semper erant in Sapientia ea, quae protinus etiam substantialiter facta sunt. (Orig. Princ. I 4.5)

Here, clearly, substantialiter means ‘as οὐσίαι’: such a creation is later than the eternal prefiguration of all logoi or paradigms of creatures in divine Wisdom. Origen is representing the eternal presence of the logoi of all things in Christ-Logos-Wisdom as a middle way between the coeternity of creatures with God and the notion of a creation in time before which God was idle. I have already remarked above, in the section on Bardaisan, how this (broadly Middle Platonic) conception coincides with the image of Christ-Wisdom containing all the paradigms of beings in Bardaisan of Edessa, as quoted by Porphyry. In Princ. I 2,2, Origen similarly claims that the Son-Logos-Wisdom contained in itself ab aeterno the ‘principles’, ‘reasons’ and ‘forms’ of the whole creation: initia, rationes, and species in Rufinus’ version, corresponding to ἀρχαί, λόγοι, and εἴδη. These are the Forms/Ideas/Logoi in which, according to the Platonic category of participation (μέθεξις), every existing being participates. For example, 52

Ps. 102:24.

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the Idea of Justice is described by Origen according to this category: ChristLogos is Justice itself, the Idea of Justice, and every just creature is such insofar as it participates in this Idea/Form: ‘Our Saviour does not participate in Justice, but rather, being Justice itself, is participated in [μετέχεται] by the just’ (Cels. VI 64).53 This would be impossible if the Son, as Christ-Logos, were not eternal and coeternal with the Father, a point that Origen defended against subordinationistic tendencies according to which ‘there was a time when (the Son) did not exist’.54 Origen, as I have demonstrated elsewhere,55 was the first to ‘import’ this formula into Christian theological debates. In connection with the existence of rational beings (λογικά) before the fall, we cannot really think of a ‘preexistence of souls’.56 According to Origen, it is not the case that there existed bare souls before the creation of the material world, and that these got incarnated as a kind of punishment after their fall. For the logika had fine, spiritual bodies from the very beginning of their existence as creatures, that is, as οὐσίαι and not only as paradigmatic logoi in the Logos like all other logoi of the future creatures. Indeed, Origen repeats that no creature can exist without a body; only the holy Trinity, who is no creature, can, as he claims for example in Princ. II 2,2: ‘it is impossible to assert that any other nature can live without a body apart from the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit … rational creatures cannot live or have ever lived without matter; for only the Trinity can live without a body’.57 Similarly, matter did not exist before creation, because matter, according to Origen, cannot subsist without forms.58 This is also significant in relation to the later Christian doctrine of the 53

A study on Origen in preparation will investigate the application of the notion of participation in Origen. 54 See Ilaria Ramelli, ‘The Trinitarian Theology of Gregory of Nyssa in his In Illud: Tunc et ipse Filius: His Polemic against ‘Arian’ Subordinationism and Apokatastasis’, in Volker Henning Drecoll and Margitta Berghaus (eds), Gregory of Nyssa: The Minor Treatises on Trinitarian Theology and Apollinarism (Leiden, 2011), 445-78; ead., ‘Origen’s Anti-Subordinationism and Its Heritage in the Nicene and Cappadocian Line’, VigChr 65 (2011), 21-49, in which I argue that Origen, far from being the inspirer of the ‘Arians’, was the inspirer of the Cappadocians’ Trinitarian theology, especially of Nyssen, and their anti-‘Arianism’. Further arguments in my ‘The Father in the Son, the Son in the Father’ (forthcoming). 55 Ilaria Ramelli, ‘Alexander of Aphrodisias: A Source of Origen’s Philosophy?’, Philosophie Antique 14 (2014), 237-90. 56 See I. Ramelli, ‘Preexistence of Souls?’ (2013), 167-226; on Origen specifically further arguments in Ilaria Ramelli, ‘Origen’, in Anna Marmodoro and Sophie Cartwright (eds), A History of Mind and Body in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2018), 245-66. In Gregory: Ilaria Ramelli, ‘Gregory of Nyssa’s Purported Criticism of Origen’s Purported Doctrine of the Preexistence of Souls’, in Svetla Slaveva Griffin and Ilaria Ramelli (eds), Lovers of Souls and Lovers of Bodies: Philosophical and Religious Perspectives in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, MA, 2020), Ch. 14. 57 See also my arguments in Ilaria Ramelli, Gregorio di Nissa sull’Anima e la Resurrezione (Milan, 2007), first Integrative Essay (with reviews by Panayotis Tzamalikos, VigChr 62 [2008], 515-23; Mark Edwards, JEH 60 [2009], 764-65, etc.), and Panayotis Tzamalikos, Origen: Philosophy of History and Eschatology (Leiden, 2007), 43-64. 58 Princ. IV 4,6; Hom. in Ex. 6,5.

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so-called creatio ex nihilo, of which Origen was one of the first and most systematic supporters.59 Origen remarkably presents as ‘certainly possible the hypothesis that Satan is not the principle in an absolute sense of the material creation [πλάσμα] of the Lord, but rather the principle of the many beings who are in a body in such a way as to be an object of derision for angels’ (Comm. in Io. I 17,98),60 whereas some other beings may well be in a body, but not in such a way. The body of angels, and initially of all logika, is fine, subtle, beautiful, and spiritual, very different from the heavy, ugly, and ridiculous corporeality of the devil and his angels, and the corruptible and mortal corporeality, liable to passions, of human beings after the fall. Origen is adamant that even angels have a body, and risen humans will have one as well, not a heavy but a spiritual body (Princ. II 2,2): matter, ‘when it is drawn to inferior creatures, is formed into a thick, solid, and heavy body, so as to distinguish the different visible species in the world, but when it serves more perfect and blessed creatures, it shines forth in the splendour of celestial bodies and adorns both the angels of God and the children of resurrection with a spiritual body’. In Origen’s thought, the dialectic between unity and multiplicity is momentous, as I have thoroughly argued elsewhere.61 It was a primary concern in the ‘pagan’ Platonic tradition, too: in Plato’s own protology, which is based on the transcendent principles of the One and of the indefinite Dyad, and, in Neoplatonism, in Plotinus’ One-Hen, the first of his Triad of hypostases, which transcends not only the sense-perceptible world, but even the intellectual One and Being itself (while Origen was more ambivalent in this respect).62 Ontologically, both the individual intellect and the hypostasis Intellect, in which the former participates, are one-many; the intellect thinks all objects of knowledge simultaneously, and therefore is one, while the objects are many.63 Plotinus’ Nous is One-Many like Origen’s Christ-Logos, both divisible and indivisible into parts (Enn. V 9,8,20-22; V 1,5,1). Plotinus ascribes this characterisation of the Nous–Demiurge64–’secondary One’ as One-Many, as opposed to the ‘primary One’ as ‘absolutely One’, to Plato’s Parmenides (Enn. V 1 [10] 8,23-7), which likely played an important role in Origen’s protology too. 59 Ilaria Ramelli, ‘The Dialogue of Adamantius… Part One’ (2012), 71-98; ‘Part Two’, in SP 54 (2013), 227-73. 60 Job 40:19. 61 I. Ramelli, ‘Harmony between arkhē and telos’ (2013), 1-49. 62 See I. Ramelli, ‘Harmony’ (2013). Pauliina Remes, Neoplatonism (Stocksfield, 2008), ch. 2, sees Neoplatonic metaphysics as a response to two questions in ancient philosophy, the first of which is about the existence and origin of unity and multiplicity. The same dialectic is at work on the anthropological plane: here it is the dialectic between the different ontological levels of human being and the unified human person (ch. 4). See also Pauliina Remes, Plotinus on Self: The Philosophy of the ‘We’ (Cambridge, 2007). 63 See P. Remes, Neoplatonism (2008), 150-1, and the whole ch. 5. 64 Nous identified with Plato’s Demiurge: Enn. 2.3.[52.]18.15; 4.4.[28.]10.1-4.

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Origen’s characterisation of God-Father as ‘absolutely One’ and of the SonWisdom-Demiurge as ‘One-Many’ is identical. This is one of many parallels that call for study and explanation. * * * A second development must be traced with respect to the notion of the divine Mind as One-Many. In Origen’s thought, multiplicity is subsumed and transcended in the Logos’ unity, but also, through the Logos, in the eschatological unity of all rational creatures in God and with God. This state, which is also deification, has often been misrepresented as a sort of pantheism, as though a substantial confusion should occur between God and creatures. But this is ruled out by divine transcendence; the deification of rational creatures will be their will oriented towards God and their leading a divine life – I shall show in a moment that this precise idea will be inherited by Gregory of Nyssa –, and their unity in God is for Origen primarily a unity of will,65 as all rational creatures’ will shall be oriented only to the Good, i.e., God, and no longer to evil, neither will it be any more dispersed among minor or apparent goods, but God will be all goods, all in one, for all. This is precisely the sense in which, for Origen, God will be all in all, and this is the sense of deification. Indeed, according to Origen, unity in the telos will be unity not so much ontologically, but in love-charity, which is also the reason why, in Origen’s view, there will be no more fall from this unity in the apokatastasis: because caritas numquam cadit.66 Origen offers a forceful argument to this end, as ever also buttressed with Biblical exegesis, in his Comm. in Rom. V 10,158-240. He begins with the theoretical basis, at the ontological level, that only God is good, since God is essential Goodness, and all other creatures simply participate in it, and thus can also fall from it if their free will orients itself elsewhere. Only in the eventual apokatastasis will agapē prevent every creature from detaching itself from God, i.e., the Good.67 This does not mean that rational creatures will lose their free will: they will keep it forever. In V 10,158-240 Origen begins with a refutation of those who thought that Christ’s sacrifice would have to be repeated over and over again, an accusation that was curiously levelled against him during the so-called Origenistic controversy, whereas

65

See Ilaria Ramelli, ‘Deification, Greek and Latin Patristics and Orthodox Churches’, in EBR: Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception 6 (Berlin, 2013); ead., ‘Unity’, in Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity 3, ed. Angelo Di Berardino (Downers Grove, IL, 2014), 861-6; ead., Origen (in preparation), ch. 2. 66 Argument in I. Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis (2013), section on Origen. 67 Ilaria Ramelli, ‘Mysticism and Love in Origen, Gregory Nyssen, and Dionysius’, in Emiliano Fiori and Dimitrios Pallis (eds), Dionysius Areopagita Christianus: Approaches to the Reception and Reconstruction of Christian ‘Tradition’ (Leiden, forthcoming).

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Origen himself disproved it.68 The point of Origen’s opponents is based on the possibility of ever new falls on the part of rational creatures. Origen is adamant that this is not at all what he personally teaches and in fact cannot be the case.69 Origen’s rejection is based on two main tenets. The first is that Christ’s sacrifice cannot be repeated, since it occurred once and for all, but its effectiveness was such as to reach already all rational creatures and all eons.70 Hence it is also clear that for Origen the salvation of all rational creatures entirely depends not on a metaphysical necessity but on Christ’s cross – which I have also argued on the basis of many other passages.71 The second tenet is that it is not the case that the fall of all rational creatures, humans and angels, will take place over and over again, indefinitely, because there will come an end of all aeons,72 which will be the eventual apokatastasis, and in that condition no fall will occur any longer, because perfect ἀγάπη will prevent this.73 The principle and guarantee of the eschatological unity is ἀγάπη. Ἀγάπη could not prevent Satan’s fall, or Adam’s, because this took place before the manifestation of Christ’s ἀγάπη.74 This is also one of the reasons why Origen thought that the end would be, not only similar to, but even better than, the beginning,75 68 Unde miror quosdam contra hanc euidentissimam Pauli sententiam [Rom 6:9] uelle asserere quod in futuris iterum saeculis uel eadem uel similia pati necesse sit Christum ut liberari possint etiam hi quos in praesenti uita dispensationis eius medicina sanare non potuit. 69 Easdem etiam in futuris saeculis dispensationes a Christo repetenda esse arbitrantur. Sed ad haec nos breuiter prout possumus respondebimus. 70 Semel Christus mortuus est peccato, et ultra iam non moritur, et quod uiuit uiuit Deo... Manere quidem naturae rationabili semper liberum arbitrium non negamus, sed tantam esse uim crucis Christi et mortis huius, quam in saeculorum finem suscepit, asserimus, quae ad sanitatem et remedium non solum praesentis et futuri sed etiam praeteritorum saeculorum, et non solum humano huic nostro ordini, sed etiam caelestibus uirtutibus ordinibusque sufficiat. Secundum sententiam namque ipsius Pauli apostoli Christus pacificauit per sanguinem crucis suae non solum quae in terra sunt, sed et quae in caelis (V 10,235-236 and 187-195). 71 In Ilaria Ramelli, ‘Origen and Apokatastasis: A Reassessment’, in Henryk Pietras et al. (eds), Origeniana Decima (Leuven, 2011), 649-70. 72 See my arguments in Ilaria Ramelli, ‘Time and Eternity’, in The Routledge Companion to Early Christian Philosophy (Oxford, forthcoming). 73 Quod autem sit quod in futuris saeculis teneat arbitrii libertatem ne rursum corruat in peccatum, breui nos sermone apostolus docet dicens: ‘Caritas numquam cadit’. Idcirco enim et fide et spe maior caritas dicitur quia sola erit per quam delinqui ultra non poterit. Si enim in id anima perfectionis ascenderit ut ex toto corde suo et ex tota mente sua et ex totis uiribus suis diligat Deum et proximum suum tamquam se ipsam, ubi erat peccati locum? ... Caritas omnem creaturam continebit a lapsu, tunc cum erit Deus omnia in omnibus ... Tanta caritatis uis est ut ad se omnia trahat..., maxime cum caritatis causas prior nobis dederit Deus qui unico Filio suo non pepercit, sed pro nobis omnibus tradidit (Comm. in Rom. V 10,195-226). 74 Vel ille qui Lucifer fuit et in caelo oriebatur uel ille qui immaculatus erat a natiuitate sua et cum cherubin positus labi potuit antequam erga beneficia Filii Dei caritatis uinculis stringeretur (Comm. in Rom. V 10,227-230). On its developments see my arguments in ‘Gregory and Evagrius’, in Giulio Maspero, Miguel Brugarolas and Ilaria Vigorelli (eds), Gregory of Nyssa’s Mystical Eschatology (Leuven, 2021), 177-206. 75 On Origen’s theology of freedom, besides the sections I devoted to it in I. Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis (2013) and I. Ramelli, Social Justice (2016), see Georgios

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sometimes hinting at an endless progression that can be taken as an anticipation of Gregory Nyssen’s theory of epektasis.76 Not only does Rufinus’ translation from Origen’s Commentary on Romans, which some deem untrustworthy, prove that after the eventual apokatastasis there will be no new fall and no more aeons, but also Origen’s treatise On Prayer (27.15) proves the same, where he relies on Heb. 9:26 and Eph. 2:7 to argue that there will be an end to the aeons and that Christ’s sacrifice was made ‘once and for all’.77 This strongly confirms the former argument. These aeons point to one end, the eventual apokatastasis of all, attained not by necessity, but by all rational creatures’ voluntary adhesion to the Good, and thanks to God’s grace and to Christ’s work. After it, there will be no more aeons, but the absolute eternity (ἀϊδιότης) of apokatastasis, characterised by harmony, concord, and unity.78 Origen in the above-mentioned passage from his Commentary on Romans also rejects the hypothesis that one rational creature’s free will may endure forever in the opposition to the Good, namely God. He replies with Paul’s revelation that absolutely nothing will be able to separate humans from God’s love, not even death, thus, a fortiori, not even our free will.79 Rational creatures’ free will shall rather be the very instrument of their eternal adhesion to God, and the fact that each single rational creature’s free will shall voluntarily adhere to the Good will also constitute the main feature of the final unity. The One-Many motif comes to the fore again, and again in connection with Christ-Logos who subsumes all humanity and all rational creatures. The variety and multiplicity of rational creatures’ wills and conditions, resulting from the initial fall from Unity, will be subsumed again and transcended into the final Unity. The One-Many dialectic is evident in Origen’s following statement: sicut multorum unus finis, ita ab uno initio multae differentiae ac varietates, quae rursum per bonitatem Dei, per subiectionem Christi atque unitatem Spiritus sancti in unum finem, qui sit initio similis, revocantur. (Princ. I 6,2) Lekkas, Liberté et progrès chez Origène (Turnhout, 2006); Christian Hengstermann, Origenes und der Ursprung der Freiheitsmetaphysik (Münster, 2015); Alfons Fürst, Origenes: Grieche und Christ in römischer Zeit (Stuttgart, 2018). 76 I suggested this in I. Ramelli, ‘Apokatastasis and Epektasis’ (2018). 77 See Ilaria Ramelli, ‘The Universal and Eternal Validity of Jesus’s High-Priestly Sacrifice: The Epistle to the Hebrews in Support of Origen’s Theory of Apokatastasis’, in Richard J. Bauckham et al. (eds), A Cloud of Witnesses: The Theology of Hebrews in Its Ancient Contexts (London 2008), 210-21. 78 See I. Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis (2013); ead., ‘Harmony’ (2013); ead., ‘Time and Eternity’ (forthcoming). 79 Ad hunc namque perfectionis gradum ascenderat apostolus Paulus et in hoc stans confidens dicebat: ‘Quis enim nos separabit a caritate Dei quae est in Christo Iesu? ... neque uita neque mors neque praesentia neque futura neque angeli neque uirtutes neque altitudo neque profundum neque creatura alia poterit nos separare a caritate Dei quae est in Christo Iesu domino nostro’. Ex quibus omnibus euidenter ostenditur quod, si haec omnia quae enumerauit apostolus separare nos non possunt a caritate Dei..., multo magis libertas arbitrii nos ab eius caritate separare non poterit (Comm. in Rom. V 10,212-222).

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That the final unity is primarily a unity of will is also indicated by Origen’s declaration in Princ. II 1,1 that the cause of the multiplicity and diversity of the present state of things is the free will of rational creatures, which is oriented in different directions after the fall – ‘movements’ in Origen’s terminology are typically the movements of the will toward Good or evil.80 The initial unity was a concord, a unity of will, soon lost with the fall, when rational creatures began to wish something else than the pure Good and got dispersed into a multiplicity of acts of volition. So will also the final unity be. For the end will be similar to the beginning – similar, but, as warned above, not identical: similar in that it will be better, as I have argued apropos the final achievement of likeness with God.81 Gregory of Nyssa’s Indebtedness to Origen: the Logos, the logoi, and the Dialectic of One and Many Although Gregory speaks less than Origen of the divine Mind as One-Many owing to the Ideas it contains, probably because he has quite rarely recourse to nous in reference to God,82 nevertheless he does so sometimes. In Perf. 260B, he depicts Christ-Logos-Wisdom as the seat of all Ideas, here called νοήματα, of realities before the creation of the world, in a way similar to Origen. Through God’s dynamis – identified again as Christ-Logos, as dynamis was one of the epinoiai of Christ already in Origen83 – these Ideas became creatures: ἔργα τὰ νοήματα γίνεται. Origen stated that they became οὐσίαι, as seen above. This is the creation of the world performed by Christ-Logos, but Gregory is always keen on ascribing every dynamis and every energeia to God in general, given the consubstantiality of all Persons, from which derives the identity of their 80 Quod utique si consequenter dictum videtur, quam aliam, ut diximus, causam putabimus tantae huius mundi diversitatis, nisi diversitatem ac varietatem motuum atque prolapsuum eorum, qui ab illa initii unitate atque concordia, in qua primitus procreati sunt, deciderunt et ab illo bonitatis statu commoti atque distracti, diversis dehinc animorum motibus ac desideriis agitati, unum illud et indiscretum naturae suae bonum pro intentionis suae diversitate in varias deduxerunt mentium qualitates? See also Princ. II 1,1: Quam aliam, ut diximus, causam putabimus tantae huius mundi diversitatis, nisi diversitatem ac varietatem motuum atque prolapsuum eorum, qui ab illa initii unitate atque concordia, in qua primitus procreati sunt, deciderunt et ab illo bonitatis statu commoti atque distracti, diversis dehinc animorum motibus ac desideriis agitati, unum illud et indiscretum naturae suae bonum pro intentionis suae diversitate in varias deduxerunt mentium qualitates? 81 See above and I. Ramelli, Gregorio di Nissa (2007), first Integrative Essay; ead., The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis (2013), section on Origen; ead., ‘Apokatastasis and Epektasis’ (2018), also with discussion of other literature. 82 As remarked in Lexicon Gregorianum VI, 610-21. 83 On Christ as dynamis of God in Origen and Nyssen see I. Ramelli, ‘Divine Power’ (2017), 177-98. On the triad Ousia - dynamis - energeia in Gregory, see Ilaria Ramelli, ‘La triade Ousia Energeia - Dynamis in Gregorio di Nissa e nei Cappadoci: Paralleli filosofici e ascendenze origeniane’, in Giulio D’Onofrio (ed.), La Triade nel Neoplatonismo (Turnhout, forthcoming).

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three dynameis and their three energeiai. This act of creation was entirely noetic, since God immaterial created matter just by thinking of its qualities, and the noetic creation of God accounts for all creation.84 The representation of creation in Perf. 260B corresponds to that provided in Hex. 72B: the Forms of all things were contemplated by God, clearly in the divine Mind-Logos, before the actual creation of the relevant realities, and ‘dynamis of the Logos’ brought all these Ideas to reality and substance. Again, the ‘divine dynamis’ created all things in Hom. op. 3: ‘The creation was made impromptu, so to say, by the divine power, in that it was constituted at the same time as the order was given’. Unlike what seems to be implied in his own De perfectione and In hexaëmeron, however, and unlike Philo and Clement, but similarly to the special status of the logika I have demonstrated to be at work in Origen, Gregory here applies the notion of the preexistence of the Ideas of creatures in the Logos, not to all creatures, but only to the human being, or at least primarily and to a greater degree to the human being. All creatures are brought into being by the Logos, but only for the human being, created in the image of the archetypal divine Beauty, did the Logos have an eternal and particularly careful plan.85 Moreover, Gregory’s reflection on the relationship between the simplicity of the divinity and the plurality of its attributes (especially in c. Eun. II 359-86 and 445-560) further indicates that Gregory was particularly interested in the idea of One-Many and of multiplicity subsumed 84 See Cinzia Arruzza, ‘La matière immatérielle chez Grégoire de Nysse’, FZPhTh 54 (2007), 215-23; I. Ramelli, ‘Divine Power’ (2017); Anna Marmodoro, ‘Gregory of Nyssa on the Creation of the World’, in ead. and Brian D. Prince (eds), Causation and Creation in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2015), 94-110, reprinted in ead. and Viltanioti, Divine Powers in Late Antiquity (2017), 218-33. 85 ‘But the decision of the creation of the human being had come before, and the being who was destined to appear was delineated in advance by the artist-creator through the project of the Logos, which foresaw in advance how it would have to be, to which model it had to be similar, for which purpose it should come into being, what it should do after being born, over whom it should exercise command. The Logos considered in advance, one by one, all these points, in such a way that the human being could be allotted a dignity more ancient than its birth, having obtained authority over the (other) beings even before coming to being. For God, according to Scripture, said: ‘Let us make the human being, in our image and likeness, and let they command over fishes in the sea, wild animals on dry land, flying creatures in the sky, and cattle’. What a wonder! The sun is created, and no project, no decision comes first; and the same is the case with the sky, and yet, among all beings in the created world, there is nothing equal to them. And such a wonderful sight is brought to existence only through a word (logos), but the logos does not indicate, in addition, whence, how, and some other detail of the sort. The same is the case also with all the particular creatures, the ether, heavenly bodies, the air that extends between these and the earth, the sea, the dry land, animals, plants, all are brought into existence by the Logos. It is only the creation of the human being that the Creator of the universe approached with extreme care and circumspection, to the point that for it he prepared even matter in advance, before its realisation, and made its form similar to an archetypal Beauty. And, after establishing in advance the end for which this being had to appear in the world, he produced its nature in conformity with that end, and appropriate to its activities, so as to be apt to the established objective’.

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in a superior unity. This expands such a dialectic from the Christological to the Trinitarian plane.86 Gregory also took up Origen’s discourse on the One-Many dialectic in relation to the beginning and the end-telos. While the present life is characterised by division and multiplicity due to the different choices of rational creatures’ free will, the beginning and the end are conceived by him, just as by Origen, as characterised by unity and uniformity, which are basically a unity of will, directed to the Good. For example, Gregory notes that in the beginning, human life was uniform, and with ‘uniform’ I mean that which is contemplated exclusively in the Good, not subject to any mixture with evil. This thesis is confirmed by the first law of God, who, after bestowing upon the human being the participation in the totality of the goods that were found in Eden, without restrictions, interdicted it exclusively from that one whose nature was composed by a mixture of opposites, in that evil was intermingled with the Good, and threatened the transgressor with the death penalty. But the human being, voluntarily, in the movement of its free will, abandoned the lot not mingled with evil, and attracted upon itself the life composed by a mixture of opposites. (An. 81Bff.)

From uniformity there came about a dispersion of volition; this will be reunified in the telos. The end is the assimilation to God–the Good, as results from An. 89ff. as well. Here, Gregory states again that in the beginning ‘human nature was something divine, before the human being acquired the impulse towards evil’ (148AB). It was divine because it was all in the Good, that is, God, and its will was entirely directed toward the Good. Likewise, humanity will be divine again in the end, when all will return to adhering to the Good voluntarily, in the perfect restoration,87 and will return to orient their will entirely and uniformly towards the Good. Christ-Logos as the Unity of Humankind: Soteriological and Eschatological Consequences In more than one way did Clement’s notion of the Logos as subsuming and transcending multiplicity inspire Origen’s and Gregory of Nyssa’s ideas. This is the case (1) with respect to Christ-Logos as containing the logoi of creatures from eternity; (2) to Christ-Logos as being all virtues,88 and (3) as articulating itself into many epinoiai, but also (4) with respect to Christ’s assumption of all humanity, so that the ‘body of Christ’ is not only the body 86 I limit myself to referring to Joseph S. O’Leary, ‘Divine Simplicity and the Plurality of Attributes’, in Gregory of Nyssa: Contra Eunomium II. An English Version (2007), commentary section on II 359-86. 87 See now I. Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis (2013), the section on Gregory Nyssen. 88 On the subsumption of all virtue Ideas, see I. Ramelli, Origen (in preparation), ch. 6.

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of Jesus, but all humankind, which will constitute Christ’s resurrected body in the end, and even the cosmic Christ – already seen in both Bardaisan and Origen – and (5) of the eschatological presence of God ‘all in all’ (πάντα ἐν πᾶσι), where πᾶσι are primarily all humans qua subsumed in Christ, and all the logika, which Christ-Logos assumed upon himself when he became a logikon.89 Indeed, Origen’s and Gregory’s idea that Christ will subsume in himself, in his body, the whole of humanity, so that God will be ‘all in all’ (1Cor. 15:28), derives not only from Ephesians, on the Scriptural side, but also, on the philosophical side, from Clement’s description of the Logos One as All, as One-Many. That the body of the Logos is the whole humankind, so that the Logos, in his humanity, is ‘all humans in one human’, is claimed by Origen more than once. For instance, this notion clearly underlies Hom. in Lev. 7,2,10-2, and entails that the resurrection of Christ was not only the one which occurred historically, but also the great, general resurrection of humanity in the end. At that time, according to Origen, Christ will collect his bones ‘scattered in hell’ to reconstitute the Logos’ whole body: Christ refuses to receive his glory without his limbs, that is, all human beings. For he wishes to be our Logos, i.e., our rational faculty, living in us (with a reference to Lev. 26:12). In Comm. in Io. X 35-6,225-38 Origen affirms that Christ’s body, which is the Temple of living stones erected upon the basement of prophets and apostles, and which thus typologically represents the Church,90 will rise again at all humans’ resurrection, which, in both Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, is closely related to the eventual apokatastasis, in their famous anastasis-apokatastasis binomial. All the bones of this dispersed body will be reassembled, as attested in Psalm 21. After his crucifixion, Christ’s resurrection is regarded by Origen as the symbol of the future resurrection of all humanity: All of Christ’s bones … the temple will rise again, and the body will be resurrected on the third day … it will be placed into the new heaven and new earth, when these bones, the entire house of Israel, will rise in the great day of the Lord, after the defeat of death. Therefore, the resurrection of Christ from his death on the cross, which occurred in the past, embraces the prefiguration / allegory / mystery [μυστήριον] of the resurrection of the whole body of Christ [sc. all humankind] (section 229).

Now, Christ’s body has not yet ‘risen in the final, blessed resurrection that is the object of our hopes’. This ‘great mystery, difficult to conceive / contemplate [δυσθεώρητον]’, is foreseen in Ez. 37:1-11 – a passage related to the resurrection also in Gregory’s De anima 233-4. These are Christ’s scattered bones that will be reassembled in the end (235-6): ‘At the resurrection of This principle, πάντα ἐν πᾶσι, is a tenet of the Patristic doctrine of apokatastasis, but it is also present in ‘pagan’ Platonism, especially Proclus: a specific study will be devoted to this. 90 Section 228. 89

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Christ’s true and most perfect body, Christ’s limbs and bones, now dry … will be reassembled, up to the perfect anthrōpos’.91 Origen stresses the concept of human beings ‘scattered’ in death/perdition and brought to unity by, and in, Christ-Logos also in connection with the motif of Jesus’ gathering into unity the scattered children of God. This notion repeatedly appears in his Commentary on the Gospel of John,92 in which the theme of unity through Christ, especially based on John 17:21,93 is essential. Indeed, not accidentally, here in XXVIII 21.185 Origen joins these two motifs: just while discussing the idea of the dispersed children of God gathered into unity by Jesus’ sacrifice, he remarks that this unity will be achieved when Jesus’ prayer for unity in John 17:21 will be fulfilled: that human multiplicity and dispersion may be brought to unity in God and may imitate the unity that obtains between the persons of the Trinity: ‘Then the prayer of the Saviour will be fulfilled, as I and You are One, they too may be One in us’. It is at this point that Origen introduces the most spiritual and universalistic interpretation of Jesus’ death for Israel and for the dispersed children of God, according to which Christ, clearly in the eventual apokatastasis, will lead to unity all rational creatures (the firstborn child of God = the spiritual Israel), now dispersed: ‘If Israel has a deeper meaning … about which it is written ‘Israel is my firstborn’, and becomes dispersed, you understand that these are the dispersed children of God, for whom Jesus would die, to gather them into unity [συναγάγῃ εἰς ἕν]’. What is this Israel? Here it is all humans and all rational creatures. Origen equates the spiritual Israel with all humans, who will be saved in the end, also in X 36,229. The eschatological reconstitution of Christ’s body is connected by Origen to his interpretation of 1Cor. 15:28 and his equation between universal submission to Christ and God in the telos and universal salvation.94 Gregory of Nyssa 91

Eph. 4:13. See XXVIII 13,98-9, where the Gospel itself is cited: ‘to join into unity not only the people of Israel, but also the children of God scattered everywhere’. Origen is highlighting that Jesus died to collect into unity all the dispersed children of God. In XXVIII 21,178 Origen remarks that these children of God who were dispersed were obviously different from the ‘nation’; then, in 21,179 he sets out to examine or research (ζητεῖν, his favourite methodological verb) who are these ‘children of God’. After criticising the ‘Valentinian’ interpretation that these were the nature of the ‘spiritual’ human beings, he advances the hypothesis that these may have been the just, those who voluntarily, and not by nature, are so (XXVIII 21,183). And in 21,184 he explains that Jesus had to die for the nation, that it might not get lost, and for the children of God who were in a dispersed state, that they might gather together into unity, so as to form one single flock, one single pastor’. See also the more unreliable, but in this case probably authentic, Selecta in Psalmos (PG 12, 1289,29). 93 The Patristic elaboration of John 17 with regard to the unity theme will be analyzed in the volume of Novum Testamentum Patristicum devoted to John 13-7. 94 On which see Ilaria Ramelli, ‘Christian Soteriology and Christian Platonism. Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and the Biblical and Philosophical Basis of the Doctrine of Apokatastasis’, VigChr 61 (2007), 313-56. 92

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will take up this whole set of ideas in his In Illud: Tunc et Ipse Filius.95 According to Origen, Christ will have finished the ‘work’ to which he refers in John 17:4 after making even the last sinner just. For, as long as even one rational creature remains outside the body of Christ and the submission to him, Christ will not be able to submit to God. In all humanity, the body of Christ-Logos made perfect by him, Christ will accomplish his work, as the result of which ‘God will be all in all’.96 Christ-Logos, on his human side, is nothing else than the superior unity of all human creatures together, ‘All as One’, and his eventual submission to the Father, that is, the submission of all humanity to God the Father, will have as a result that God, who is One, and the One par excellence and simply, ἁπλῶς, without multiplicity, will be ‘in all’, and for each of these ‘all’ God will be ‘all’, that is, all goods,97 everything. This conception of God as the One who includes and transcends all goods, and the One in whom all will be, and will be transcended, in the end, and the idea of Christ-Logos as all human beings in one, owe much to the notion of God’s Logos as a transcending synthesis of unity and multiplicity, One as All, One as subsuming All, One-Many. Christ will effect the salvation of those affected by the death of sin when he hands all to the Father. Origen explains in the same passage that this will be possible in that Christ’s body is humanity98 and his submission to the Father is our salvation. Gregory of Nyssa will draw closely on these arguments in his In Illud: Tunc et Ipse Filius.99 Origen also assimilates Christ’s body, in that it is constituted by all humanity, to the heavenly Jerusalem, which he identifies with the eschatological Temple (Christ) of ‘precious living stones’, the rational beings (Cels. VIII 19-20). In this connection, in addition to 1Pt. 2:5, Eph. 2:20, and Isa. 54:11-4, Origen expressly quotes John 2:21, which identifies this Temple with Christ’s body, 95

As I have demonstrated in Ilaria Ramelli, ‘In Illud: Tunc et Ipse Filius… (1Cor 15:27-28): Gregory of Nyssa’s Exegesis, Its Derivations from Origen, and Early Patristic Interpretations Related to Origen’s’, in SP 44 (2010), 259-74. 96 Hom. in Lev. 7,2,6, quoting 1Cor. 15:28. 97 Both Origen and Gregory of Nyssa offer this interpretation of ‘all’ in 1Cor. 15:28 as ‘all goods’. For Origen in particular see, for example, Princ. III 6,2-3: ‘When God becomes all in all [1Cor. 15:28], we cannot admit of evil, lest God be found in evil. That God is said to be ‘all in all’ means that God will be all things also in each individual … in the sense that everything the rational intelligence, freed from any dirtiness of sin and purified from any taint of evil, will be able to perceive, grasp and think, all this will be God…, and so God will be all goods for this intelligence … because evil will not exist any more: for such an intelligence, God, untouched by evil, is all… After removing every sense of evil, only he who is the sole good God will become all for the creature returned to a state of soundness and purity … and not only in few or in many, but ‘in all’ God will be ‘all’, when at last there will be no more death, nor death’s sting, nor evil, most definitely: then God will truly be ‘all in all’’. The sting of death is sin: once sin is removed, there cannot be evil or death. 98 Origen cites 1Cor. 12:27. 99 See I. Ramelli, ‘The Trinitarian Theology’ (2011).

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once again thus putting forward the equation between Christ’s human side and the whole of humanity, all human beings who ever existed, collected in One. John 2:21 is also commented on in Comm. in Io. X 42,288-96, where Origen describes the eventual resurrection of all humans as ‘the great resurrection of the body of Christ, his holy Church’, and, again, as the (re-)construction of the Temple of Christ’s body.100 This universal resurrection is also a universal restoration, as Origen indicated by joining this event with the ‘return/restoration [apokatastasis] of the people from captivity’ and the building of Jerusalem with ‘precious stones’,101 when Christ will be the light of Jerusalem, according to Isaiah’s prophecy, quoted here. This will take place in the future aeon (X 42,295). The idea of restoration is hammered home soon after: ‘Those who now are in captivity once were inside the Temple, and will return inside: once restored, they will be the most precious stones, since, also according to John’s announcement in Revelation, the winner will be a pillar in the Temple of God, which will not go out’. Gregory of Nyssa, who was very well acquainted with Origen’s ideas and writings, in An. 133 also describes the restoration as everyone’s return into the Temple, which, allegorically, is the true condition of rational creatures or the ‘divine beatitude’. He states, exactly like Origen, that those who are now outside, once restored, will return ‘inside the recesses’ of the Temple. In addition to the Commentary on John, examined above, Origen, in his fragmentary Commentary on Ephesians,102 insisted on the eschatological construction of the body of Christ constituted by all. This will coincide not only with the resurrection, but also with the restoration. In 16,15, for example, this theme of the eschatological building up of Christ’s body is related, once more, to the unity assured by agapē: ‘endeavouring to keep the unity [ἑνότης] of spirit in love … now, the unity of spirit is kept when love binds together [συνδεούσης] those who are unified [ἑνουμένους] according to the spirit, and gathers them together into one and the same [ἕν] body, that of Christ’. In 9,65ff. Origen more directly refers this theme to 1Cor. 15:28: God ‘subjected everything under Christ’s feet, and constituted Christ, a gift, as the head over all beings, for the Church, which is his body, the perfect totality of the one who perfectly accomplishes and completes all in all’.103 Origen in his commentary identified the Church, Christ’s body, with all humans and angels, the same rational creatures portrayed by Gregory in An. 132-136 as participating in the 100

On the strong identification between the Temple and Christ in John see my ‘Jesus, James the Just, a Gate, and an Epigraph’, in Markus Tiwald (ed.), Kein Jota und kein Häkchen des Gesetzes werden vergehen. Das Gesetzesverständnis der Logienquelle auf dem Hintergrund frühjüdischer Theologie (Stuttgart, 2013), 203-29. 101 Section 291. 102 Ed. John A.F. Gregg, ‘Documents: The commentary of Origen upon the epistle to the Ephesians’, JTS 3 (1902), 234-44, 398-420, 554-76. 103 Tὸ πλήρωμα τοῦ τὰ πάντα ἐν πᾶσι πληρουμένου. Cf. 9,136-40; 17,43; 17,93-4.

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heavenly, eschatological feast of apokatastasis.104 Moreover, Origen in Comm. in Io. X 14,83 already described such heavenly feasts, too. Origen inspired Nyssen in his multiple equation between Christ’s body and the Church, Christ’s body and all humanity, and thus the Church as embracing, at least eschatologically, all humankind, saved in a salvific submission to Christ and God. The case is always that of a collective reality subsumed in, and represented by, the person of Christ. Gregory advocated a non-subordinationistic and ‘anti-Arian’ interpretation of 1Cor. 15:28, which was already clearly present in Origen, and indeed Gregory appropriated both the main pillars and the smallest details of the great Alexandrian’s exegesis.105 Now, in Gregory’s argument in In illud 19,19-20,7, the eschatological submission of Christ to God, which will be fully achieved after the rejection of evil by all and thus the disappearance of evil – which, for Nyssen just as for Origen, has no ontological consistence of its own outside bad choices of free will – should be understood as the submission of his body, that is, all human beings, since all humans, by participation, will constitute the body of Christ (1Cor. 10:17).106 Since the body of Christ is also the Church (Col. 1:24-5), as a consequence, the Church ends up with coinciding with all humankind. It is notable that in the relevant passage the One-Many dialectic, that between ‘All’ (humans) and ‘One’ (body of Christ), is underscored from the very beginning and oftentimes. By participation, ‘all’ will contribute to the construction of Christ’s body; all will reach unity of faith and knowledge and will make up Christ in perfect wholeness. Gregory relies on 1Cor. 12:27, Eph. 4:5-16, 2:20, and 4:13, already used by Origen in Princ. I 6,2 for the same function, in support of the apokatastasis: Sicut confirmat nihilominus etiam Paulus apostolus dicens: Donec occurramus omnes in unitatem fidei in virum perfectum, in mensuram aetatis plenitudinis Christi. In II 8,5 as well, Origen stated that multitudo credentium corpus illius dicitur, and I have already cited other important sources concerning 104

See I. Ramelli, ‘Gregory of Nyssa on the Soul (and the Restoration)’ (2018), 110-41. I have demonstrated this thoroughly in I. Ramelli, ‘Anti-Subordinationism’ (2011) and ead., ‘Trinitarian Theology’ (2001). Further arguments in I. Ramelli, ‘Dynamic Unity’ (forthcoming). 106 Methexis or participation has an important Platonic background precisely in the field of the relationship between the multiplicity of sense-perceptible realities and the unity and immutability of each Idea. Since Christ-Logos is the seat of the Ideas for Origen and for Gregory as well, this notion is particularly relevant to the present investigation. The category of human participation in Christ is pivotal for them both, and for Origen it was so important that he even equated participation in the Logos, primarily revealed in Scriptures – another form of the ‘body of Christ’ in his view – with an act of ingestion: both the Eucharistic act concealed in the manducation of Scripture and, typologically, the eating of the Passover Lamb. Indeed, the Paschal Lamb is not considered by Origen to be a typos of Christ’s death on the cross, but rather a typos of Christ as offered and eaten by the Christians; cf. Pasch. 1,41. See Ilaria Ramelli, ‘Origen and the Stoic Allegorical Tradition: Continuity and Innovation’, InvLuc 28 (2006), 195-226; ead., Origen (in preparation), chs. 4 and 6; and Harald Buchinger, Pascha bei Origenes, I-II (Innsbruck, Wien, 2005), II 721. 105

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Origen’s equation between the Church, the body of Christ, and the whole of humanity. Gregory highlights that the ‘whole body’ of Christ will be ‘in accord with itself’ and ‘the entire creation in harmony [ὁμόφωνος] with itself’ (In illud 20,10-1). According to Phil. 2:10-1, to which Gregory expressly refers, every knee will bend, of all beings in heaven, on earth, and in the underworld, and all will proclaim that Christ is the Lord, which means, in his view, that all will believe and be saved. ‘The whole creation’ (Rom. 8:22) will become ‘one single body’, ἓν σῶμα (Ιn illud 20,14). Here, the unity of all human beings in the one body of Christ is extended to all creatures.107 Gregory depends on Origen’s Princ. I 2,10 and I 6,2, where Phil. 2:10-1 is quoted in this connection, and everyone’s submission to Christ in heaven, on earth, and in the underworld (angels, humans and demons) is understood as the salvation of all, in that it is fully voluntary and entails conversion and adhesion to God. In the first passage the voluntary nature of this submission is manifest;108 in the second passage, I 6,2, the universality of the submission in Phil. 2:10 is stressed, and again it is possible to see the dialectic between the multiplicity of all creatures (omnes, omnis universitas) and the unity of the telos (unum finem).109 On the basis of these arguments, Gregory in In illud 21 builds a cogent syllogism: if submission means salvation, according to Origen’s equation and Ps. 61:2, and if ‘every being’ that is in Christ – again conceived as unity in multiplicity – is saved, then, since all will be in Christ’s body, ‘no being [μηδέν] will remain outside the number of the saved’. Gregory’s adamant conclusion is in agreement with Origen’s idea of apokatastasis, together with several other unequivocal passages.110 Gregory argues likewise in In illud 23 as well, but introduces the key concept of agapē in the telos, with a connection that, as I have pointed out, was already central to Origen’s thought:111 if the Father loves the Son (John 17:23), and if all humans are in the Son, as Many subsumed into One, 107

On Gregory’s idea of cosmic harmony, also symbolised by the cross of Christ, and the unity, not only of all humans or all rational creatures, but of all existing beings in the end, see I. Ramelli, Gregorio di Nissa sull’Anima e la Resurrezione (2007), Second Integrative Essay; ead., ‘Il Cristo cosmico e gli animali nella patristica’, in Alma Massaro (ed.), Animal mundi: Le grandi religioni e gli animali = Animal Studies 13 (2015), 15-24. 108 Si omne genu flectitur Iesu, sine dubio Iesus est cui subiecta sunt omnia, et ipse est qui potentatum agit in omnibus, et per quem subiecta sunt Patri omnia. Per sapientiam namque, id est verbo ac ratione, non vi ac necessitate, subiecta sunt … omnipotentiae purissima ac limpidissima gloria cum ratione et sapientia, non vi ac necessitate, cuncta subiecta sunt. 109 In unum finem revocantur omnes hi qui, in nomine Iesu genu flectentes, per hoc ipsum subiectionis suae insignia declararunt, qui sunt caelestium et terrestrium et infernorum, in quibus tribus significationibus omnis universitas indicatur. 110 See, for instance, a passage in V.Moys. II 82, the whole of his In illud, passages in his Oratio catechetica, De anima et resurrectione, De mortuis and De infantibus, plus many other loci scattered throughout his writings, and Ramelli, Gregorio di Nissa sull’anima (2007), first Integrative Essay; ead., ‘Christian Soteriology and Christian Platonism’ (2007); ead., ‘Apokatastasis and Epektasis’ (2018). 111 See I. Ramelli, ‘Mysticism and Love’ (forthcoming).

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then the Father loves all humans as the Son’s body, and the Son’s submission to the Father means that all humanity will ‘attain the knowledge of God and be saved’ (1Tim. 2:4-6): For, if the Father loves the Son, and if we all [πάντες] come to be in the Son, as we become his body through faith in him, as a consequence, the Father, who loves his own Son, also loves the body of the Son as much as he loves the Son himself. But it is we who are that body. Thus, through all that we have said, the meaning of the Apostle’s words is clear: the submission of the Son to the Father indicates that the whole human nature will attain the knowledge of what truly is (sc. God, the truth) and be saved. (Greg. Nyss. In illud 23)

In accordance with the will of God as revealed in 1Timothy, Gregory states that all humanity will be saved and attain the knowledge of the truth. Indeed, if for Gregory the devil will be saved (Or. cat. 26), there cannot be any doubt that all humanity will. Gregory clearly depends on the notion of Christ-Logos being the unity of all human beings when in in illud 21 he states that the eventual elimination of death will have as a consequence that ‘all beings’ will find themselves in life, because all will be in Christ, who is ‘Life’ (John 11:25), and because at the same time Christ’s body will be constituted by ‘all humankind’. Already Origen had emphasised that in the end, at the eventual restoration, all will be in life, because eternal life, i.e. Christ, rules out eternal death altogether (Comm. in Rom. V 7), since they are incompatible with one another; thus, one must be eliminated, and 1Cor. 15:25-8 reveals that this will be death.112 Christ is depicted by Gregory as the Mediator113 because he took up all of humanity, which constitutes his body. That of the Mediator is a role that was not only ascribed to Christ in 1Tim. 2:5, but was already attributed to the human being by Philo. According to the latter, the human being is related to the Logos by means of its soul and to the sense-perceptible world by means of its body,114 in order to function as the mediator between the sense-perceptible and the intelligible and divine world. Now, Christ is the unification and perfection of all humanity, according to both Origen and Gregory; as a consequence, it is no wonder that they took up Philo’s notion of the human being as a mediator and applied it to the perfect human being who is Christ, the transcending summation of all humans. According to Gregory, Christ is the Mediator in that he unifies all to himself and to the Father, again exercising a function of unification of all multiplicity: ‘His body is the whole human nature, to which he, 112 Aeternum aeterno contrarium non erit sed idem; nunc autem certum est mortem vitae esse contrarium: certum est ergo quod, si vita aeterna est, mors esse non possit aeterna … cum mors animae, quae est novissimus inimicus, fuerit destructa … regnum mortis pariter cum morte destructum erit. See Ramelli, Apokatastasis (2013), section on Origen. 113 On this function of Christ in Gregory see Brian Daley, God Visible (Oxford, 2018), 138-47. 114 Det. pot. 82-86. This double condition is repeatedly underscored by Philo in his De opificio mundi.

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descending, united himself. Precisely because of this notion, he was also called Mediator between God and humans ... he united all humans to himself, and, through himself, to the Father’ (In illud 21,10-6). Christ unifies all humans in himself and unites them to the Father through himself, i.e., through his subsuming them in unity in his body. With the same reference to 1Tim. 2:5, Christ’s mediating function was already underlined by Origen often, and exactly in a passage in Princ. II 6,1, which revolves around Christ’s assumption of all humanity through the Inhumanation. Here, Origen depicted Christ as harum omnium creaturarum [i.e., the rational creatures] et Dei medium, id est mediatorem. Also in Cels. III 34 Christ is said by Origen to be ‘διαμεταξύ between the non-generated and the generated nature’, and in his other extant Greek works he defines Christ as μεσίτης five times.115 Consistently with his argument and with the very notion of Christ-Logos as unifying multiplicity, in In illud 22-3 Gregory insists on Christ’s prayer for unity in John 17:20-3. He observes that Christ ‘unifies all’ in himself and to the Father; all become ‘one and the same thing’, ἕν, with Christ and God who are one; Christ, being in the Father, by joining us to himself in unity [ἑνῶσας], accomplishes the union of all humans with God. Christ’s prayer for unity in John 17:20-3 was one of Origen’s favourite biblical quotations in support of the notion of perfect unity in the eventual restoration, which in his view will be the accomplishment of the subsumption of all multiplicity in a superior unity. He refers to this prayer in this connection for example in Princ. I 6,2 (restituetur in illam unitatem quam promittit dominus Iesus dicens…) and II 3,5: ‘Quod dicit Salvator… ‘Sicut ego et tu unum sumus, ut et isti in nobis unum sint’, ostendere videatur plus aliquid quam est saeculum vel saecula, forte etiam plus quam est ‘saecula saeculorum’, id videlicet cum iam non in saeculo sunt omnia, sed omnia et in omnibus Deus’. All beings will be no longer in any aeon, but God will be ‘all in all’ (1Cor. 15:28); beings will be in God rather than in an aeon, and indeed they will be God through deification. In III 6,1 Origen expresses the same idea against the background of the eschatological passage from ‘image’ to ‘likeness’ and from ‘likeness’ to unity.116 The unity of 115 In the fragments from his Commentary on Ephesians (29,22) and in his Commentary on John (VI 15,90) he presents Christ as μεσίτης between God and humans, quoting the same Pauline words as Gregory does in his In illud; in Comm. in Io. II 34,209 he defines Christ as μεσίτης and ἀρχιερεύς, joining the references to Christ in 1Timothy and Hebrews. The same association occurs in his De or. 10,2, where Christ is the main intercessor in that he is μεσίτης and ἀρχιερεύς. Finally, in his Comm. in Rom. I 1-XII 21, from the Catenae, 28,17, Christ’s work as μεσίτης is linked with his accomplishment of peace: ‘having become our μεσίτης, He accomplished peace’. Peace is connected to unity in turn (see I. Ramelli, ‘Harmony’ [2013]). 116 Finem omnium et similitudinem Dei sperandam quae pro meritorum perfectione praestabitur. Haec eadem Dominus … sua intercessione futura designat…: ‘Sicut ego et Tu unum sumus, ita et isti in nobis unum sint’, in quo iam videtur ipsa similitudo proficere et ex simili unum iam fieri, pro eo sine dubio quod in consummatione vel fine omnia et in omnibus Deus est.

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all will precisely depend on the fact that all will eventually be in God and God will be ‘all in all’.117 In the end, the unity of all will be effected by the Spirit (In illud 22), which will restore all humans to unity among themselves and with God, after separation due to sin: ‘For it is impossible that those who are separated from one another may be unified unless they are joined in kinship in the unity of the Spirit ... that through it [sc. Christ’s glory, the Spirit] they may be united with me and through me with you’. Origen had already assigned to the Spirit an essential role in all humans’ return to unity in God.118 For instance, in his Commentary on Romans (VIII 4): Christus enim venit mundum reconciliare Deo et credentes sibi offerre Patri. Quos autem offert Patri Sanctus Spiritus suscipit ut sanctificet eos … atque in soliditatem totius corporis perfectionemque restituat. It is remarkable that here, too, the unity is expressed through the notion of the subsumption of all – here sanctified by the Spirit – into the one ‘body of Christ’. In this does the apokatastasis consist: it is referred to by means of restituat in Rufinus’ Latin translation. In this connection, it is important to point out that Gregory even reworked a Stoic philosophical category in order to explain how Christ-Logos takes up all human beings, and all that pertains to them, in himself in a unity. Gregory utilises the philosophical principle of οἰκείωσις or ‘appropriation’. In his In illud: Tunc et Ipse Filius (20,8) Nyssen explicitly says that Christ, by assuming all humanity, ‘appropriates all that is ours:’ he thus adopts the vocabulary of οἰκείωσις, and associates it with that of harmony, a theme that was dear to him.119 Indeed, Gregory employed the concept of οἰκείωσις in a very sophisticated and articulated manner, applying it in the most constructive and compelling way to the notion of apokatastasis itself, which is presented by him as the supreme act of οἰκείωσις with which God the Trinity will re-appropriate all creatures that belong to God (i.e., the Good) but were alienated by evil.120 Now, this final, glorious οἰκείωσις of God, which will coincide with apokatastasis, is made possible, for Gregory, exclusively by the work of Christ, which is described by him as an οἰκείωσις as well: Christ’s taking all humanity in himself is presented by Nyssen as an appropriation (exactly an οἰκείωσις) of 117 See also III 2,4: ut sint omnes unum, sicut est Pater cum Filio unum … ubi omnes unum sunt, iam diversitas non erit; III 6,6: Omnia restituentur ut unum sint, cum Deus fuerit omnia in omnibus, ‘All will be restored in such a way as to be one, in that God will be all in all’. A host of other passages in other works of Origen’s as well attest to this conception. 118 See Maureen Beyer Moser, Teacher of Holiness (Piscataway, 2005), with my review in Aug. 46 (2006), 265-9. 119 For Gregory’s vocabulary and imagery of harmony see I. Ramelli, ‘Harmony’ (2013). 120 See Ilaria Ramelli, ‘Οἰκείωσις in Gregory’s Theology: Reconstructing His Creative Reception of Stoicism’, in Johan Leemans (ed.), Gregory of Nyssa: Contra Eunomium III. An English Translation with Commentary and Supporting Studies (Leiden, 2014), 643-59; for the roots of Gregory’s appropriation in Origen: Ilaria Ramelli, ‘The Stoic Doctrine of Oikeiosis and its Transformation in Christian Platonism’, Apeiron 47 (2014), 116-40.

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all human beings and all that is human. Only the union of humanity with divinity in Christ paves the way for the deification of humanity itself, which is the end of apokatastasis. But it is clear at this point that Christ’s οἰκείωσις of all humankind rests, once again, on the notion, already indicated by Clement of Alexandria and developed by Origen, of Christ-Logos as the superior unity of a multiplicity, in this case the multiplicity of all human beings. Therefore, it is clear that Origen and Gregory apply the notion of LogosNous as One-Many, anticipated by Bardaisan and Clement and paralleled by Plotinus, to Christ, in several different ways, two of which are the most remarkable: one in connection to creation, the Mind of God as the seat of all Ideas/ Forms/logoi of creation; and another in connection with Christ’s humanity as coinciding with all humankind, a concept that has important consequences on their eschatology as well.

World City: Towards a New Reading of Nemesius of Emesa’s De natura hominis David Lloyd DUSENBURY, Jerusalem

ABSTRACT Stoic philosophers in antiquity held that ‘the world … is like a city and a polity’, and that the nature of humankind (natura hominis) is like ‘a code of civil law’ (Cicero, De finibus III 62-7). In his late-antique anthropological text, De natura hominis (ca. 390 AD), Nemesius of Emesa rejects a number of Stoic tenets. His world city is not theirs. Nemesius criticizes, moreover, salient aspects of the Platonic world city as it is sketched in the Timaeus, and in a rich vein of post-Platonic texts and commentaries. Nevertheless, I will argue here that the 4th-century Syrian philosopher-bishop – like the Stoics and Platonists – held that the human person is a natural-born world-citizen who is in communion with the whole of creation, and indeed, with the Demiurge (since humankind is, as Nemesius says, a ‘child of God’). This is why Nemesius opens his De natura hominis with an elaborate description of divine creation as a form of οἰκείωσις, and his (unfinished) text ends with a closely reasoned defence of divine providence as a form of διοίκησις. It is the idea of a ‘world city’, I claim here, which gives structural and conceptual unity to Nemesius’ De natura hominis – a unity which his 19th and 20th-century source-critical interpreters failed to recognize.

1. Introduction Nemesius of Emesa’s Περὶ φύσεως ἀνθρώπου is the first patristic treatise on anthropology.1 There is no reason to doubt that Nemesius is, as the most creditable manuscripts attest, a philosopher-bishop of Roman Syria.2 According to a scholarly custom which had become fixed by the middle of the 16th century 1

David Amand, Fatalisme et liberté dans l’antiquité grecque. Recherches sur la survivance de l’argumentation morale antifataliste de Carnéade chez les philosophes grecs et les théologiens chrétiens des quatre premiers siècles (Louvain, 1945; reprint Amsterdam, 1973), 557. 2 The attribution to Nemesius is not in doubt, but from relatively early in the manuscript tradition there is a recurring misattribution to Gregory of Nyssa. See Helen Brown Wicher, ‘Nemesius Emesenus’, in Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum: Mediaeval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries. Volume VI, ed. Paul Oskar Kristeller and Ferdinand Edward Cranz (Washington, DC, 1986), 32-5.

Studia Patristica CII, 45-62. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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and immoveable by the turn of the 19th century,3 his Greek text is known by a Latin title, De natura hominis (hereafter Nat. Hom.).4 Nemesius’ Greek title indicates his familiarity with a Hippocratic text bearing the same title, Περὶ φύσεως ἀνθρώπου (ca. 390 BC).5 According to medical historian Jacques Jouanna, this Περὶ φύσεως ἀνθρώπου (which Jouanna attributes to a physician of Hippocrates’ immediate circle, Polybus of Cos) was one of the most-cited medical texts in antiquity.6 Nemesius himself quotes from the Hippocratic Περὶ φύσεως ἀνθρώπου (whether directly, which cannot be ruled out, or indirectly).7 It is therefore assured that Nemesius’ late-antique Christian anthropology sets itself in line with a type of Hellenistic medical philosophy that originated in pre-Christian antiquity. The source of the bishop’s anthropological genre is, as his title announces, the Hippocratic therapeutic centre on the Greek isle of Cos in the 5th and 4th centuries BC.8 But, significantly, Nemesius’ title is not exclusively Hippocratic. The first Stoic philosopher, Zeno of Citium, is credited with a lost treatise Περὶ ἀνθρώπου φύσεως.9 And it is possible that Nemesius draws on Zeno’s vanished text (directly or indirectly). What is certain is that Nemesius provides one of only two testimonies to a doctrine of Zeno’s concerning the human soul (the other testimony coming from Iamblichus of Apamea, apud Stobaeus).10 Nothing in this contribution rests on the supposition that Nemesius actually cites a doctrine from Zeno’s Περὶ ἀνθρώπου φύσεως. When the bishop reports Zeno’s unique doctrine of the soul, he names no Zenonic text.11 Nevertheless, the possibility that Nemesius knew (or knew of) Zeno’s anthropological text could help to account for the cosmopolitan treatment of anthropology which I believe we find in the Nat. Hom. And more importantly, the possibility of such a citation could help to free Nemesius’ commentators from 3 The titles of Nemesius’ first Renaissance edition and first critical edition are representive: Giorgio Valla, Nemesii philosophi clarissimi De Natura Hominis liber utilissimus (Lyons, 1538); Christian F. Matthaei, Nemesius Emesenus. De natura hominis, Graece et Latine (Magdeburg, 1802; facsimile edition Hildesheim, 1967). 4 The definitive transmission- and reception-history is Moreno Morani, La tradizione manoscritta del ‘De natura hominis’ di Nemesio (Milan, 1981). 5 Hippocrates, De Natura Hominis. La Nature de l’Homme, ed. with French trans. and comm. Jacques Jouanna (Berlin, 1975). See Elizabeth M. Craik, The ‘Hippocratic’ Corpus: Content and Context (London, New York, 2015), 207-13. 6 Jacques Jouanna, Greek Medicine from Hippocrates to Galen (Leiden, Boston, 2013), 313. 7 Nemesius, Nat. Hom. 5. Throughout, page- and line-references are to De natura hominis, ed. Moreno Morani (Leipzig, 1987), here 53,20-54,10. I have used the most recent translation, but have compared it throughout to the Greek and often modified the English: Nemesius, On the Nature of Man (TTH 49), trans. Robert W. Sharples and Philip J. van der Eijk (Liverpool, 2008). 8 Jacques Jouanna, Hippocrates, trans. Malcolm B. DeBevoise (Baltimore, London, 1999), 42-55, 210-42. 9 This is more precisely a subtitle of one of Zeno’s lost treatises, On Impulse or On Human Nature (Περὶ ὁρμῆς ἢ περὶ ἀνθρώπου φύσεως), according to Diogenes Laertius VII 4. 10 SVF I. Zeno et Zenonis Discipuli, ed. Hans von Arnim (Stuttgart, 1964), 39 (fr. 143). 11 Nemesius, Nat. Hom. 15, ed. Morani (1987), 72,7-9.

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the confinement of his anthropology, in generic terms, to medical and physiological concerns. For Zeno, anthropology is a discourse which occurs within a city and which interrogates the possibility of a city.12 Nemesius, too, regards the ubiquity of law and political order, the grim familiarity of crime and punishment, as anthropological data, and treats the origins of political order, the logic of law, and the legitimacy of punishment as anthropological questions. In any case, the Nat. Hom. is a late-antique philosopher-bishop’s ‘conspectus’ (σύντομος) of a rich philosophical genre.13 Nemesius’ text is evidently unfinished, and divided into forty-three chapters which are early (if perhaps not original).14 In bare outline, the Nat. Hom. consists of i. a proem that ends in a striking – and highly influential – panegyric to humankind (Nat. Hom. 1); ii. a pair of chapters on the human soul and its union with the human body (Nat. Hom. 2-3); iii. a pair of chapters on body qua body and the ‘cosmic elements’ which constitute all bodies (Nat. Hom. 4-5); iv. a state-of-the-art description of humankind’s organs, powers, and passions (Nat. Hom. 6-28); and v. a critique of fate and a defence of human freedom and divine governance (Nat. Hom. 29-43). In this contribution, I will begin to sketch a new interpretation of Nemesius’ text. Remarkably, the Nat. Hom. is addressed, not only to Christians, but to Jews and Hellenes.15 As a consequence, it contains a rich fund of Hellenic, Judaic,16 and Christian material. Modern commentators have tended to see it as a sketchbook which can be mined for real or conjectural sources. Modern critics have tended to see Nemesius as a ‘limited man’ who exhibits, in Werner Jaeger’s phrase, a ‘total dependency’ on his sources.17 My claim is that this characterization is misleading, and that it is an archaic (and late-antique) idea of a ‘world city’ which structures Nemesius’ anthropological text and lends it unity.18 12

Diogenes Laertius VII 86-8. Nemesius, Nat. Hom. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 13,16. 14 According to Wicher (citing unpublished research by Benedict Einarson) in ‘Nemesius Emesenus’ (1986), 34. 15 See, for instance, Nemesius, Nat. Hom. 2, ed. Morani (1987), 38,5-10. 16 David Lloyd Dusenbury, ‘Judaic Authority in Nemesius of Emesa’s De natura hominis (390 CE)’, in Geert Roskam and Joseph Verheyden (eds), Light on Creation: Ancient Commentators in Dialogue and Debate on the Origin of the World, STAC 104 (Tübingen, 2017), 127-56. 17 Werner Jaeger, Nemesios von Emesa. Quellenforschungen zum Neuplatonismus und seinen Anfängen bei Poseidonios (Berlin, 1914), 68. 18 Note that κοσμόπολις is not a term used by Nemesius – or by any surviving author of antiquity – in a relevant sense. The term only occurs in the literary record ‘as the title of a magistrate in a handful of Greek city-states’, as noted by Catharine Edwards and Greg Woolf, ‘Cosmopolis: 13

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If my reconstruction of Nemesius’ text is correct, several authoritative discourses – legal and medical, poetic and prophetic – are made to converge upon a decisive tenet of late-antique Roman legal theory: the natural freedom of the human person. We could recall, here, that according to Justinian’s Institutes (a collection which post-dates Nemesius by more than a century, but the substance of which pre-dates him) ‘by the right of nature all humans were originally born free (omnes homines liberi nascebantur)’.19 Nemesius’ ultimate concern is therefore with a question of late-antique ideology which strikingly outlives antiquity. Human freedom is one of the most fiercely contested political tenets in the 21st-century Mediterranean basin, and beyond. As a father of the Syrian church, as a transmitter of Greek medical lore, and as a late-imperial political thinker, Nemesius’ thought deserves to be ‘reconstructed’ in a way that draws upon, yet passes decisively beyond, the 19th and 20th-century practice of source-research. That is the objective of my forthcoming monograph, Nemesius of Emesa on Human Nature: A Reconstruction of the De Natura Hominis.20 In this contribution, I will simply try to show how he sketches the ‘founding’ of his ‘world city’ in the first chapter of the Nat. Hom.

2. Nemesius’ Fundamental Given The first datum of Nemesius of Emesa’s Nat. Hom. is this: The soul is in any case confessed by all humans in common to be superior to the body. For the body is moved as a tool by the soul. Death clearly shows this. For when the body is separated from the soul, it remains totally motionless and inactive, as tools remain immobile when a skilled worker is separated from them.21

Nemesius begins by asserting a primacy or superiority, a κύριος-quality of soul which is revealed – even to those who deny the soul’s immortality – by the absolute inertness of the human dead. Already in Plato’s Phaedo – a dialogue that Nemesius cites in Nat. Hom. 2, and professes to know22 – death is defined as a state in which ‘the body is separated from the soul and exists alone by itself (αὐτὸ καθ᾽ αὑτό)’.23 In neither Rome as World City’, in Catharine Edwards and Greg Woolf (eds), Rome the Cosmopolis (Cambridge, 2003), 2-3. 19 Justinian, Institutes I 2. The (modified) translation here is from Justinian’s Institutes, Latin ed. Paul Krueger with trans. Peter Birks and Grant McLeod (London, 1987), 37. 20 Forthcoming as a volume of Oxford Early Christian Studies. 21 Nemesius, Nat. Hom. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 2,9-13. 22 Ibid. 2, ed. Morani (1987), 22,21-2. 23 Plato, Phaedo 64c. References throughout are to Plato, Euthyphro. Apology. Crito. Phaedo. Phaedrus (LCL), Greek with trans. Harold North Fowler (Cambridge, MA, 1971).

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the Nat. Hom. nor the Phaedo is this definition of death taken to pre-decide the question of the soul’s immortality. On the contrary, Socrates’ question in the Phaedo is whether a philosopher can believe, in light of this definition, that the human soul might exist, after death, ‘alone by itself (αὐτὴ καθ᾽ αὑτήν)’.24 Similarly, in the Nat. Hom., the definition of death introduces the question of the soul’s immortality; it does not resolve it. What the human cadaver reveals to us, therefore, and what is ‘confessed by all humans in common’, is not the immortality of the soul, but the superiority and authority of the soul.25 The human corpse reveals the body to have been a ‘living tool’,26 which is to say – recalling Aristotle’s Politics – a natural slave of the soul.27 Note, however, that the broader concept of ‘natural’ slavery in human cities – which Aristotle argues directly from the soul’s authority in the body,28 and which European philosophers revived (with ruinous consequences) in the Renaissance29 – has no place in the Nat. Hom.30 This recollection of Politics I is not extraneous to Nemesius’ proem. For, in addition to Aristotle’s thematic development of ‘communion’ (κοινωνία) in Politics I, which seems to find a number of echoes in Nat. Hom. 1 (on which, more presently); Nemesius arguably quotes from Politics I further on in Nat. Hom. 1, when he writes that humankind is ‘by nature … a political animal’ (φύσει … πολιτικὸν ζῷον).31 Without of course insisting on a citation here, it is still interesting that in Politics I, the human soul’s κύριος-quality in the body at once reflects, and is reflected by – not only all human political order, but – a vast, intrinsic, ‘political’ order which structures ‘the totality of nature’ (τῆς ἁπάσης φύσεως).32 Aristotle’s world city, in Politics I, is mirrored in the hierarchic unity of soul and body. Similarly, the world city that Nemesius draws up in Nat. Hom. 1 is first intimated by his use of the term κύριος – albeit in the comparative form, κυριωτέρα – to denote the soul’s authority in the body. Humankind’s unique duplicity of substance – that of ‘intellectual soul’ and body – is not anarchic, but 24

Ibid. 66e-67a. Nemesius, Nat. Hom. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 2,9-10. 26 Aristotle, Politics I 2.5 (1253b29-30). References throughout are to Aristotle, Politics (LCL), Greek with trans. Harris Rackham (Cambridge, MA, 1944). 27 Ibid. I 2.11-5 (1254b3-1255a2). 28 Ibid. I 2.11 (1254b7-9): ‘It is natural (κατὰ φύσιν) … for the body to be governed (ἄρχεσθαι) by the soul’. Note that the same form of argumentation appears, with a citation of Posidonius of Apamea – long conjectured to be a source of Nemesius’ proem – at Seneca, Epistles 90.4-5. 29 Anthony Pagden, ‘The Theory of Natural Slavery’, in The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge, 1999), 27-56. 30 The word ‘slave’ (δοῦλος) only appears once in the Nat. Hom. Significantly, Nemesius is not referring to humans: Nemesius, Nat. Hom. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 14,20. 31 Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 9,20. 32 Aristotle, Politics I 2.8-9 (1254a20-33), here I 2.9 (1254a32). 25

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hierarchic.33 It is ‘confessed by all humans’ that the soul possesses a relative mastery in the body.34 The soul is not a tyrant or a god in the body; it is merely κυριωτέρα. Nemesius’ choice of the comparative is not inadvertent. His later chapters on physiology and on autonomy will finely shade the body’s actions into the soul’s passions.35 With regards to breathing, for instance, the body quickly proves to be κυριωτέρα. ‘We cannot hold our breath’, as he points out in Nat. Hom. 28, ‘for even the tenth part of an hour’.36 Nevertheless, Nemesius’ basic datum in the Nat. Hom. is that the soul is κυριωτέρα in the body. The significance of this datum is architectonic in the Nat. Hom. Most important, the forms and limits of the soul’s mastery in the body will determine Nemesius’ physiological schemata in Nat. Hom. 6-28, and such mastery will be insisted upon as a brute fact – on the strength of universal legal phenomena – in Nat. Hom. 29-43. In fact, in the last pages of his text, Nemesius absolutizes in one decisive regard the mastery which he introduces in a relative form in his proem. The basic anthropological datum in Nat. Hom. 1 is that the soul is κυριωτέρα in the body; but in Nat. Hom. 39-41, this datum is both hardened and sharpened. For when committing voluntary acts, Nemesius holds that a human person is not merely κυριωτέρα in the body, but κύριος – a ‘master of their acts’ (πράξεως κύριος).37 Without this form of mastery, Nemesius will insist in the final pages of the Nat. Hom., humans could not be citizens. And without human citizens, he seems to suggest throughout his text’s first pages, the world could not be a communion (κοινωνία), a house or dwelling place (οἶκος) – which is to say, in Peripatetic and Stoic terminology, a city (πόλις). It is time for us to proceed further into his proem, in which – having stated his donnée fondamentale – Nemesius then places humankind within the world.

3. The Creation of the World City Immediately after Nemesius obtains his donnée fondamentale – the human soul’s relative mastery in the human body – he gives a ‘concise account of the wisdom of the Demiurge’ in creating a world whose structural and ontological midpoint is occupied by humankind.38 33

For the concept of ‘intellectual soul’: Nemesius, Nat. Hom. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 1,3-5. Nemesius, Nat. Hom. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 2,9-10. 35 In fact, Nemesius observes the reversibility in a crucial sentence of his treatment of the union of soul and body – a relation which he describes, here, in terms of ‘affinity’ (οἰκειότης): ibid. 3, ed. Morani (1987), 42,110-3. 36 Ibid. 28, ed. Morani (1987), 90,3-6. 37 Ibid. 39, ed. Morani (1987), 113,11, etc. 38 Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 5,7-8: τῆς σοφίας τοῦ δημιουργοῦ συντόμως. 34

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Despite its concision, this is a rich and intriguing piece of late-antique Naturphilosophie, a finely drawn sketch of created ‘powers and natures’.39 In slightly less than three pages (in Morani’s edition), Nemesius observes: a. How a complex substrate of inert matter gives rise to magnetite, a stone which ‘seems’, with its attractive properties, ‘to have exceeded the power and nature of other stones’.40 b. How a vast system of nutritive (plant) life branches, at its upper limits, into ‘bivalves and corals resembling sensitive trees (αἰσθητικὰ δένδρα)’,41 that is to say, into certain types of quasi-sensitive life which ‘the wise men of old were accustomed to call … “zoophytes” (ζῳόφυτα)’.42 c. How certain forms of sensitive (animal) life come, by virtually imperceptible degrees, to exhibit ‘natural forms of understanding (συνέσεις), devices (μηχανάς), and resources (πανουργίας) for their preservation, so that they seem to be near to rational creatures’.43 By way of example, he mentions ‘crows and imitative birds’.44 d. And how, finally, a ‘truly rational living thing’ (τὸ ἀληθῶς λογικὸν ζῷον) – namely, humankind – appears on the earth.45 In heaven, of course, dwells a nebulous tier of ‘intellectual natures’,46 while the deity beckons from beyond the summits of created being. In the surviving literature of late antiquity, Nemesius’ sketch of the scala naturae stands out for its subtlety and completeness. Since the publication of Werner Jaeger’s Nemesios von Emesa in 1914, this sketch has attracted more scholarly attention than any other passage in the Nat. Hom. Moreover, the scholarly commentary since Jaeger has tended to fix on a pair of terms that Nemesius attaches, here, to humankind.47 Μεθόριος. Nemesius writes that humankind both occupies and marks a boundary (μεθόριος) which divides ‘irrational and rational natures’.48 39 Gerhart B. Ladner, ‘The Philosophical Anthropology of Saint Gregory of Nyssa’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 12 (1958), 59-94, 71-2. 40 Nemesius, Nat. Hom. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 3,17-22. 41 Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 3,25-6. 42 Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 4,4-5. 43 Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 4,12-5. 44 Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 4,16-20. For the – to us, surprising – mention of crows, it is instructive to look at Pliny, Historia Naturalis X 60. 45 Nemesius, Nat. Hom. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 4,16. 46 Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 2,22-3. 47 W. Jaeger, Nemesios von Emesa (1914), 96-20; Eiliv Skard, ‘Nemesiosstudien 1. Nemesios und die Genesisexegese von Origen’, Symbolae Osloenses 16 (1936), 23-43; id., ‘Nemesiosstudien 2. Nemesios und Galenos’, Symbolae Osloenses 17 (1937), 9-25; Alberto Siclari, L’antropologia di Nemesio di Emesa (Padova, 1974), 29-50; Anastasios Kallis, Der Mensch im Kosmos. Das Weltbild Nemesios’ von Emesa (Münster, 1978), 48-124; Beatrice Motta, La Mediazione Estrema. L’antropologia di Nemesio de Emesa fra platonismo e aristotelismo (Padova, 2004), 45-122. 48 Nemesius, Nat. Hom. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 5,9.

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Σύνδεσμος. Nemesius asserts that humankind also constitutes the link or bond (σύνδεσμος) which ‘binds both of these natures together’.49 Without denying or diminishing the significance of these terms, or the usefulness of the literature that treats them, my reading of this passage will focus on a pair of terms which have not, to date, received the notice they deserve, namely: Κοινωνία, which denotes sharing, communion, or commonality. Οἰκείωσις, which denotes kinship, affinity, or familiarization (Note that this Greek term is used for clarity and fluidity of exposition. We will, more precisely, be tracking a field of related terms which scholars have treated under the rubric of the term of art, οἰκείωσις, since the 19th century. The term itself, οἰκείωσις, is not used in the Nat. Hom.).50 It is only by attending to Nemesius’ use, in his proem, of κοινωνία (and related terms), along with οἰκείωσις (a field of related terms), that it becomes possible to perceive that he is not merely elaborating a Welteinheitslehre in these initial pages of the Nat. Hom.,51 but that he is articulating a specific conception of the world’s unity – the world as a city. Space will permit no more than a mention, here, of the literature that deals with the Peripatetic (and Christian) concept of κοινωνία,52 or with the Stoic (and Christian) concept of οἰκείωσις.53 We can only register, in passing, that κοινωνία is a definitional concept in Aristotle’s Politics – the first sentence of which asserts that ‘every city is a sort of communion (κοινωνίαν τινά)’54 – and that οἰκείωσις is an ethico-political concept whose influence on lateantique ‘Christian Platonists’ has only recently begun to be recognized55 (as Ilaria 49

Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 5,6. The term οἰκείωσις finds its closest match in Nemesius, Nat. Hom. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 3,7: οἰκείως. 51 A. Kallis, Der Mensch im Kosmos (1978), 60. 52 Julien M. Ogereau, ‘The Jerusalem Collection as Κοινωνία: Paul’s Global Politics of Socio-Economic Equality and Solidarity’, NTS 58 (2012), 360-78; id., Paul’s Koinonia with the Philippians: A Socio-historical Investigation of a Pauline Economic Partnership (Tübingen, 2014). 53 Max Pohlenz, ‘Die Oikeiosis’, in Grundfragen der stoischen Philosophie (Göttingen, 1940; New York, London, 1987); Laurens C. Winkel, ‘Die stoische οἰϰείωσις-Lehre und Ulpians Definition der Gerechtigkeit’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte. Romanistische Abteilung 105.1 (1988), 669-79; Troels Engberg-Pedersen, The Stoic Theory of Oikeiosis: Moral Development and Social Interaction in Early Stoic Philosophy (Aarhus, 1990); Chang-Uh Lee, Oikeiosis. Stoische Ethik in naturphilosophischer Perspektive (Munich, 2002); Gretchen ReydamsSchils, ‘Human Bonding and Oikeiôsis in Roman Stoicism’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 22 (2002), 221-51; Robert Bees, Die Oikeiosislehre der Stoa. I. Rekonstruktion ihres Inhalts (Würzburg, 2004); Ilaria Ramelli, ‘The Stoic Doctrine of Oikeiosis and its Transformation in Christian Platonism’, Apeiron 47 (2014), 116-40. 54 Aristotle, Politics I 1.1 (1252a1). 55 Of special relevance, in this context, is the influence of οἰκείωσις theory on Gregory of Nyssa: I. Ramelli, ‘Oikeiosis and its Transformation’ (2014), 129-35. 50

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Ramelli points out, οἰκείωσις is not a uniquely Stoic doctrine, though ‘Christian receptions focused most on the Stoic doctrine’).56 Briefly put, κοινωνία and οἰκείωσις are fundamental terms in the political lexicons of post-Platonic philosophy.57 By tracking briefly Nemesius’ introduction of terms which are closely related to κοινωνία and οἰκείωσις, therefore, we will not only supplement the philological work that has been done on this part of the Nat. Hom., but more significantly, we will begin to discern the cosmopolitan logic which structures the Nat. Hom. Returning for a moment to Nemesius’ fundamental given – the hierarchic pairing of the human soul and body – we must register the fact that he refers to it now as a sort of κοινωνία. The condition of possibility of human virtue, he says – and thus, we add, of human cities – is a ‘communion of soul and body’ (κοινωνίαν ψυχῆς καὶ σώματος) in which ‘the soul makes use of the body’.58 There is manifestly, then, a κοινωνία within the human person; and without this κοινωνία, there is no possibility of ἀρετή. That his choice of the term κοινωνία here is fundamental, should require no further demonstration. Yet Nemesius’ use of κοινωνία (and related terms) in Nat. Hom. 1 suggests that its reach for him is far more extensive. Consider the following. Nemesius begins his text with what he calls a ‘familiar’ (γνώριμον) observation, namely, that humankind ‘has a share in (κοινωνεῖ) lifeless things’.59 Why is this idea ‘familiar’ to Nemesius’ readership, we could ask? And to settle the question, we could glance at the sketch of an archaic ‘world city’ made by Sextus Empiricus in Adversus Physicos I: ‘Pythagoras and Empedocles and the rest of the Italian crowd say that we have some communion (κοινωνίαν) not only with other humans and with the gods, but also with the irrational creatures … [and] stones and … plants’.60 Whatever the sources of this ‘familiar’ worldpicture in Nemesius (he cites none), the bishop elaborates on it in a way that shows that this human ‘communion’ binds the cosmic elements to the human body – and the human soul to the heights of heaven. This is Nemesius: It is a familiar idea that humankind has a share in lifeless things, partakes in the life of irrational animals, and participates in the intelligence of rational beings. Humankind has a share in lifeless things on account of the body and the mixture of the four elements; [a share] in plants on account of the powers of nutrition and generation; [a share] in 56

I. Ramelli, ‘Oikeiosis and its Transformation’ (2014), 116-7. Katja Vogt quite recently notes, however, that the Stoic ‘theory of the cosmic city has, surprisingly, not … been interpreted as closely connected to the theory of oikeiôsis’, Katja M. Vogt, Law, Reason, and the Cosmic City: Political Philosophy in the Early Stoa (Oxford, 2008), 71. 58 Nemesius, Nat. Hom. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 5,20. 59 Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 2,13-4. 60 Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Physicos I 127, 130. The (modified) translation here is from Sextus Empiricus, Against the Physicists. Against the Ethicists (LCL), Greek with trans. Robert Gregg Bury (Cambridge, MA, 1936). 57

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irrational animals … on account of movement by impulse, on account of desire, spirit, and the powers of sensation and respiration – for these are all shared by humans and by irrational animals. But humankind is bound by rationality to the incorporeal and intellectual natures, in reasoning and comprehending and judging each matter, pursuing the virtues and embracing piety, the summit of the virtues.61

Other creatures, too, are perceived to be in communion with creatures outside of their phylum and kingdom. For instance, in Nemesius’ description of ‘corals resembling sensitive trees’ (mentioned above),62 he includes the stock observation that touch is ‘the sense shared (κοινήν) by all animals’, before he adds that liminal lifeforms such as coral ‘have a share in (κοινωνεῖν) plant life by having roots … and in animal life by the sense of touch’.63 However intriguing this scalariform doctrine of κοινωνία, it would of course be possible to doubt or to deny a specifically cosmopolitan obligation in Nemesius’ repeated use of related terms. A cosmopolitan signification is rendered more secure by the fact that a bit further into his proem, Nemesius returns to κοινωνία to formulate his definition of, precisely, the city (πόλις). Still in Nat. Hom. 1, he writes this: Because we have need of others, we assemble in numbers and hold in common with others what is useful for life in common dealings, and this assembling and uniting they [the world’s first city-dwellers] called ‘a city’.64

Simon Swain has noticed that the resemblance of this definition of the city to that found in Bryson’s Oeconomicus and Themistius’ Epistula de re publica gerenda is extremely close.65 And it is immediately after this – possibly echoing Politics I, in which κοινωνία figures so decisively – that Nemesius makes his assertion that humankind is ‘by nature … a political animal’ (φύσει … πολιτικὸν ζῷον).66 For our present purposes, Nemesius’ definition of the πόλις puts it out of doubt that to ‘hold in common with others’ (κοινωνοῦμεν ἀλλήλοις) is a conditio sine qua non of the political – and thus, by inference, of cosmopolitan obligations.67 This is not a negligible gain, but neither is it demonstrative. Nemesius has by no means stated that a cosmopolitan bond subsists between humankind and minerals because humankind ‘has a share in (κοινωνεῖ) lifeless things’,68 or that humankind 61

Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 2,13-21. Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 3,25-6. 63 Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 3,25-4,2. 64 Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 9,16-8. 65 Simon Swain, Economy, Family, and Society from Rome to Islam: A Critical Edition, English Translation, and Study of Bryson’s Management of the Estate (Cambridge, 2013), 436-7 (Bryson), and 140-3 (Themistius). 66 Nemesius, Nat. Hom. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 9,20. 67 Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 9,17. 68 Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 2,13-4. 62

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has a cosmopolitan obligation towards coral reefs, say, because they ‘have a share in (κοινωνεῖν) … the sense of touch’.69 To ‘hold in common with others’ is a conditio sine qua non of the political; but it does not follow from this that to ‘hold in common with others’ is necessarily political. The cosmopolitan signification of κοινωνία in Nemesius’ proem is rendered more certain once we have correlated his use of the Peripatetic language of sharing, communion and commonality (κοινωνία) with the Stoic-derived language of kinship, affinity and familiarization (οἰκείωσις). Note, first, that these disparate (but not unrelated) terms meet and virtually touch in Nemesius’ definition of the πόλις, quoted above. If one precondition of the city is that citizens must ‘hold in common’ (κοινωνοῦμεν) certain needs and desires, another is that they must ‘unite’ or ‘form a household’ (συνοικίαν).70 The last term, συνοικία, is polysemous. In classical Greek, it can denote a wedding and the founding of a city or a colony;71 and in patristic usage, it comes to include the covenanted life of monastics and the ecclesiastical ‘city’ which is inhabited by believers in Christ.72 In all these senses, συνοικία could be correlated to the Peripatetic – and in due course, the Christian – conception of κοινωνία. What is striking, however, is that Nemesius himself correlates the Peripatetic and Stoic-derived terminologies. We have already considered the long sentence in which Nemesius upholds the notion that humankind ‘has a share in’ (κοινωνέω) all forms of terrestrial life and the lifeless elements that sustain them.73 On the following page (in Morani’s edition), Nemesius glosses this κοινωνία in terms of οἰκείωσις. He writes this: The Demiurge appears to link the disparate natures by slight differences, so that the whole creation is one and akin, by which it is clearly manifest that the Demiurge of all things is one. For he not only unified each composite being, but he also fittingly related them to all the others. … So he did in each of the other types of created things, linking them by means of a slightly differentiated affinity.74

What does Nemesius mean, when he writes that ‘humankind has a share in (κοινωνεῖ) lifeless things … in plants … [and] in irrational animals?’75 He tells us here. He means that humankind is related (οἰκεῖος) to all created things.76 69

Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 3,25-4,2. Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 9,17-8. 71 Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, rev. Henry Stuart Jones with Roderick McKenzie, et al. (Oxford, 1996), 1721-2. 72 Geoffrey W.H. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford, 1961), 1335-6. See Claudia Rapp, ‘City and Citizenship as Christian Concepts of Community in Late Antiquity’, in Claudia Rapp and Hal A. Drake (eds), The City in the Classical and Post-Classical World: Changing Contexts of Power and Identity (Cambridge, 2014). 73 Nemesius, Nat. Hom. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 2,13-21. 74 Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 3,3-12. 75 Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 2,13-21. 76 Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 3,7. 70

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What is the real significance, for Nemesius, of the fact that there exist ‘nutritive’ stones (magnetite), ‘sensitive’ plants (coral), and ‘rational’ beasts (imitative birds)? The world consists of beings which can be tabulated in such a way that they display a finely graded scala naturae, because they share an ontological affinity (οἰκειότης).77 And what of the more intimate ‘communion (κοινωνίαν) of soul and body?’78 In Nat. Hom. 3, this κοινωνία will be described in terms of an affinity (οἰκειότης).79 In short, Nemesius systematically treats the κοινωνία of all created things to be the sign of a divine οἰκείωσις. And it is this interlinking of cosmopolitan terms and intuitions in Nat. Hom. 1 – this subtle but systematic correlation of κοινωνία and οἰκείωσις – which prepares Nemesius’ assertion in his proem’s last sentences that humankind is ‘the image of the whole creation’, i.e. a ‘microcosm’ (μικρὸς κόσμος).80 We will later return to this. Note, finally, the presence in this paragraph of a Christian term of art, κτίσις (‘creation’).81 It is highly suggestive that οἰκείωσις and κτίσις first appear in the Nat. Hom. interlinked in this way. Given this context, it is perhaps best not to consign κτίσις to the lexical and conceptual field determined by the Hexaemeron (although the creation narrative of Genesis 1-3 is of undeniable significance here). Rather, we could recall that κτίστης – from κτίζω, ‘to make habitable, to found cities’82 – was a Hellenic title which celebrated the founder of a political order (the Latin equivalent is conditor); and often, more specifically, the first legislator of a new city.83 What is more, the term κτίσις is used in 1Peter 2:13 to denote the basic legitimacy of ‘every human institution’ (πάσῃ ἀνθρωπίνῃ κτίσει), at least within the Roman ecumene.84 It could very well be that the political significance of κτίζω casts a cosmopolitan light on the first appearance of κτίσις in the Nat. Hom. After all, the Demiurge is clearly depicted here as a ‘founder’ (κτίστης), while the structure that he erects – the world – is a unity which Nemesius defines by its ‘affinity’ (οἰκειότης). Would we not be justified to infer from all this – or at least, to begin to conjecture – that Nemesius regards the world as a city which has been founded by God?

77

Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 3,12. Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 5,20. 79 Ibid. 3, ed. Morani (1987), 42,11-3: οἰκειότητα τῷ σώματι. 80 Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 15,5-6. 81 Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 3,5: ὥστε μίαν εἶναι καὶ συγγενῆ τὴν πᾶσαν κτίσιν; and 3,12: οὕτω καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς ἄλλης κατ’ εἶδος κτίσεως πεποίηκε. 82 Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon (1996), 1002-3. 83 Francis Dvornik, Early Christian and Byzantine Political Philosophy: Origins and Background (Washington, DC, 1966), II: 488-90. 84 1Peter 2:13-4: Ὑποτάγητε πάσῃ ἀνθρωπίνῃ κτίσει διὰ τὸν κύριον, εἴτε βασιλεῖ ὡς ὑπερέχοντι εἴτε ἡγεμόσιν ὡς δι’ αὐτοῦ πεμπομένοις εἰς ἐκδίκησιν κακοποιῶν, ἔπαινον δὲ ἀγαθοποιῶν. 78

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4. The Principle of Human Governance Human cities, like the world city, ultimately serve as an arena in which human virtue is cultivated and vice is punished. Nemesius makes this abundantly clear towards the end of the Nat. Hom. But if the promulgation of law and the infliction of punishment are intrinsically political acts, for Nemesius – so, too, is the assertion of rule. It is therefore a salient proof that Nemesius holds a ‘world city’ theory that he asserts, in the latter part of his proem, that humankind is ‘ruler’ or ‘governor’ (ἄρχων) of the earth. This should place it out of doubt that the philosopher-bishop posits a cosmopolitan bond between humankind and the rest of the terrestrial κοινωνία. Nemesius’ assertion of human governance marks the second occurrence of the term Ἑβραῖοι in the Nat. Hom., and has led Eliv Skard and others to conjecture that the term refers to Origen (and through him to Philo).85 But it is not Skard’s fixation on the term Ἑβραῖοι which proves to be illuminating. This is Nemesius: It is a doctrine of the Hebrews that all things came to be because of humankind – immediately for his sake such things as beasts of burden and oxen used for farming, and fodder for their sake. For of things that came to be, some did so for their own sake, some for the sake of others; for their own sake all rational beings, for the sake of others irrational creatures and lifeless things.86

The context of this passage suggests that the function of the term Ἑβραῖοι is not to encrypt Nemesius’ sources (Origen, Philo), but rather to introduce ideas which he believes to have originated with one of the sects in his ternary division of humankind – Hellenes, Jews, and Christians.87 The context suggests this, because his ‘doctrine of the Hebrews’ follows a half-page gloss on the quintessentially Hellenic definition of humankind as ‘rational animal’. Nemesius is allusive when he introduces this definition. ‘They define (ὁρίζονται) the human’, he writes, ‘as a rational animal, mortal, and receptive of intellect and knowledge’.88 In his apparatus fontium, Morani notes an exact antecedent to this definition in Pseudo-Galen’s Definitiones Medicae, and gestures towards ‘many other sources’ (aliique multi) in which it appears.89 Nemesius may very well have lifted this definition from PseudoGalen, but it is likely that he cites no source for it because he takes it to be emblematic of Hellenic anthropology. And similarly, it is likely that he takes his ‘doctrine of the Hebrews’ to be emblematic of a Judaic discourse concerning human nature. Nemesius is orienting his inquiry, here, to what he takes to 85 86 87 88 89

E. Skard, ‘Nemesiosstudien 1’ (1936), 32. Nemesius, Nat. Hom. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 11,15-9. Ibid. 42, ed. Morani (1987), 120,15-23. Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 11,3-4. Ed. Morani, Nat. Hom. (1987), 11 note.

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be authentic δόγματα of one of the ancient Mediterranean’s most prominent sects – ‘the Hebrews’. In any case, what Nemesius calls here the ‘servitude’ (δουλείαν) of irrational creatures implies a cosmopolitan bond,90 much as servitude implies a political bond for Aristotle in Politics I.91 Nemesius cautions that ‘much could be said’ on the ‘servitude’ of irrational creatures. It calls for ‘a separate treatise (συγγραφῆς)’, he says. The Nat. Hom., he then concedes, is less a treatise than a ‘conspectus’ or ‘brief’ (σύντομα).92 Nevertheless, Nemesius restates this cosmopolitan bond with great force, and now with reference to humankind. For the first time in the Nat. Hom., Nemesius’ sense of cosmopolitan obligation is given a sharp formulation. The principle of human governance that Nemesius posits manifestly binds humankind to all terrestrial life. Humans are obligated to behave towards other creatures in the world city like rulers towards the ruled in a late-antique GrecoRoman city – or, in Burgundio of Pisa’s medieval Latin rendering, like a latemedieval ‘prince’ (princeps) towards his people.93 This is Nemesius: Since, as we have demonstrated, it was for humankind [that irrational creatures have come to be], for that reason humankind was also set up as their ruler. But it is the office of the ruler to use the ruled according to the measure of need, not to insult and exploit them for pleasure without restraint, nor to behave towards the ruled with contemptuous disregard. Therefore those commit sin who mistreat irrational creatures, for they do not fulfil the office of a ruler.94

This formulation of global governance by humankind – which is thick with the terminology of political governance in the Hellenic tradition – establishes that Nemesius conceives of the vast κοινωνία of terrestrial life on the model of a city. The lightly drawn lines of divine οἰκείωσις which have run through his proem here take definition and converge into a sharp, formal, and unmistakable image of a Greco-Roman city. The principle of human governance demonstrates that Nemesius conceives and depicts the world, in the Nat. Hom., as a city. 5. Humankind in the World City It is Nemesius’ systematic correlation of κοινωνία and οἰκείωσις which prepares his assertion, at the close of his proem, that humankind is ‘the image 90

Nemesius, Nat. Hom. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 13,11-3. Aristotle, Politics I 2.12 (1254b10-3). 92 Nemesius, Nat. Hom. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 13,13-6. 93 It is worth consulting Burgundio of Pisa’s Latin translation of this passage, at Gérard Verbeke and Jose Rafael Moncho (eds), Némésius d’Émèse, De Natura Hominis. Traduction de Burgundio de Pise (Leiden, 1975), 17. 94 Nemesius, Nat. Hom. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 12,3-9. 91

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(εἰκόνα) of the whole creation’, which is to say, a ‘microcosm’ (μικρὸς κόσμος).95 It is because humankind must govern – and is free to govern – its own irrational urges, that it must govern – and is appointed to govern – other forms of life on earth. As Nemesius’ references to arrogance (ὕβρις) and selfindulgence (ἀκολασία) make clear in his principle of human governance (just quoted),96 when humans misgovern others it is because they are misgoverning themselves. Nemesius himself forges this link between his proem’s first pages and its last, in the transition which he begins to make towards his closing ‘panegyric’ (ἐγκώμιον). For having stated his principle of human governance, Nemesius then writes: If we should see things external to humankind reflected in human nature as in an image, we should be constructing our proofs from the very substance of the things under investigation.97 For we see in our soul the irrational and its parts (I am speaking of appetite and spirit) devoted to the service of the rational part – the latter ruling, the former ruled … and serving whatever needs reason indicates – when humans preserve their nature. If the rational part in us rules the irrational part in us, how is it not reasonable that it should also hold sway over the irrational things outside us? … For it is the natural role of the irrational to serve the rational, as we showed with regard to ourselves.98

The concluding phrase in this paragraph – ‘as we showed with regard to ourselves’99 – reminds us that in spite of the chaotic and perhaps, at places, ‘bizarre’ surface of Nemesius’ proem,100 its structure is coherent. This phrase also returns us, at once, to the beginning of the proem and of the present contribution. That ‘it is the natural (φύσει) role of the irrational to serve the rational’,101 is the principle with which Nemesius opens the Nat. Hom., because it is – on his telling – attested by ‘all humans’ that the human body serves the soul.102 This is the fundamental given in Nemesius’ proem (and whole text), and it at once confirms and conforms to the principle which he here articulates. From the first pages of his proem, Nemesius invites us to notice the ‘communion (κοινωνία) of soul and body’. This κοινωνία is not anarchic; it is constitutive of this microcosmic κοινωνία that ‘the soul makes use of the body’.103 Nemesius now informs us that the soul not only makes use of the body, but of the soul’s ‘irrational … parts’. To which parts of the soul is he referring? ‘I am 95

Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 15,5-6. Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 12,5-6: ἀκολάστως ἐξυβρίζειν. 97 This is a striking phrase at Nemesius, Nat. Hom. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 13,17-8. 98 Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 13,16-26. 99 Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 13,26. 100 William Telfer, Cyril of Jerusalem and Nemesius of Emesa (London, 1955), 248. 101 Nemesius, Nat. Hom. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 13,25-6. 102 Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 2,9-13. 103 Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 5,20. 96

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speaking’, he says in an aside, ‘of appetite and spirit (τὴν ὄρεξιν καὶ τὸν θυμόν)’.104 This aside not only illuminates Nemesius’ meaning here, it also signals that he is anticipating his crucial assertion in Nat. Hom. 33. ‘There is … commonality (κοινωνίαν) between humans and irrational animals’, he writes there, ‘with regards to desire and spirit (κατ’ ἐπιθυμίαν καὶ θυμόν)’.105 The ‘irrational creatures’ (τοῖς ἀλόγοις) that it is sinful to mistreat,106 according to Nemesius, occupy the wild places of the earth; but they also lure and drive us from within. Just as the human body is part mineral, and part plant – so the human soul is part beast. Indeed, the human soul’s κοινωνία with irrational creatures is extensive, when we recall – from the second page of the Nat. Hom. – that ‘desire and spirit (τὴν ὄρεξιν καὶ τὸν θυμόν), and the powers of sensation and respiration … are all shared (κοινά) by humans and by irrational animals’.107 The singular, contested breach in this κοινωνία of bodily powers is reason – ‘the soul’s hegemon’108 – and with it, choice. At the precise midpoint of Nemesius’ world is situated the human power of choice, a power which is united to a body – and as such, is exposed to elemental and physiological influences – but which is nevertheless so sublime that it, like Platonic virtue, can be said to ‘have no master’.109 Because ‘it is the natural role of the irrational to serve the rational’;110 because humankind occupies a boundary (μεθόριος) which divides ‘irrational and rational natures’;111 and because humankind constitutes the bond (σύνδεσμος) which ‘binds both of these natures together’;112 it follows that humankind is at once ruler and ruled. This is the final image which emerges – it is both a concept and an image – at the close of Nemesius’ proem. As ruler and ruled, humankind proves to be modelled on a city; and in this way, humankind provides a model for the world city. Humankind is ‘the image of the whole creation’, in the Nat. Hom., because humankind is the cosmopolitan entity par excellence.113 There is a heavy caveat here, however. This ‘image of creation’ is only preserved ‘when humans preserve their nature’ (ὅταν σῴζῃ τὸ κατὰ φύσιν ὁ ἄνθρωπος).114 Having glanced, in his proem, at humankind’s failure to preserve 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114

Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 13,20. Ibid. 33, ed. Morani (1987), 99,23-100,3. Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 12,7. Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 2,18-20. Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 1,14-5. Ibid. 38, ed. Morani (1987), 110,6: τὸ ἀδέσποτον εἶναι τὴν ἀρετήν. Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 13,25-6. Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 5,9: ἀλόγου καὶ λογικῆς φύσεως. Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 5,6: τὸ συνδέον ἀμφοτέρας τὰς φύσεις. Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 15,5-6. Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 13,22-3.

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its original nature (i.e. the Fall), Nemesius nevertheless concludes his proem with a hymn of praise for a creature that can only hope to preserve its nature by perfecting it. This is an intuition which is dense with echoes, yet Nemesius handles it in a singular – and in later centuries, highly influential – manner,115 by returning to the theme of human nobility which appears in the first sentence of Nat. Hom. After praising the semi-divine powers of ‘those who have chosen the noble life (τὸν ἄριστον … βίον)’,116 Nemesius goes on to express his wonder at the ‘dignity’ (ἄξιος) of the nature – namely, our own – that ‘binds together in itself mortal and immortal things, and links the rational and the irrational’.117 It is this binding and linking, he says, which justifies the idea of a ‘microcosm’ (μικρὸς κόσμος).118 This, and the principle of human governance – for Nemesius continues his panegyric in this way: Humankind is sovereign over the heavens … and surpasses all principalities and powers. Who could express the advantages of this living thing? Humankind crosses the seas, in contemplation enters into the heavens, recognizes the motions of the stars, their intervals and their dimensions, harvests the earth and the seas, thinks nothing of wild beasts and sea-creatures … communicates by writing with those beyond the horizon, unimpeded by the body … rules all things, controls all things … and commands the whole creation.119

Much of this encomium – that humankind ‘thinks nothing of wild beasts and sea-creatures’, and so on – inevitably feels less thrilling and less ennobling in this first century of the ‘Anthropocene’ than heretofore.120 Nemesius himself frets that he may be ‘writing a tasteless (ἀπειροκάλως) panegyric’.121 But however it may be perceived or judged, what requires no further proof is that Nemesius’ hymn – his highly rhetoricized, concluding depiction of humankind in Nat. Hom. 1 – is extravagantly cosmopolitan. Nemesius continues, briefly, in much the same vein. He urges us ‘not to dishonour our nature’,122 and not to forfeit the rights of high office – ‘power 115 Nemesius’ encomium contributed to the rise of a Renaissance discourse on the dignitas hominis: Eugenio Garin, ‘La ‘dignitas hominis’ e la letteratura patristica’, La Rinascita 1 (1938), 102-46; Eugene F. Rice, ‘The Humanist Idea of Christian Antiquity: Lefèvre d’Étaples and his Circle’, Studies in the Renaissance 9 (1962), 126-60. 116 Nemesius, Nat. Hom. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 14,22-15,1. 117 Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 15,3-5. 118 Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 15,5-6. 119 Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 15,9-18. 120 Erle C. Ellis, ‘Anthropogenic Transformation of the Terrestrial Biosphere’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 369 (2011), 1010-35, 1026-7: ‘From a philosophical point of view, nature is now human nature; there is no more wild nature to be found, just ecosystems in different states of human interaction, differing in wildness and humanness’. 121 Nemesius, Nat. Hom. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 15,20-2. Ἀπειρόκαλος is a rare term, and Christian Matthaei provides a rare gloss: Matthaei, Nemesius Emesenus (1802), 65 note. 122 Nemesius, Nat. Hom. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 16,1: μὴ καταισχύνωμεν τὴν φύσιν.

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and glory and serenity’.123 For we are ‘high born’ (εὐγενείας),124 he says – ‘a plant from heaven’125 (this image is of course derived from Plato’s Timaeus;126 Burgundio renders it beautifully: planta sumus caelestis).127 And then suddenly, the bishop concludes his proem in a flat tone, stating that he will return in Nat. Hom. 2 to his point of departure in Nat. Hom. 1 – namely, to the pairing of soul and body, of which, it is ‘commonly suggested that humankind consists’.128 He promises in the next chapters of the Nat. Hom. to analyze the human soul and body, and the union of soul and body, in a way that ‘the masses’ (τοῖς πολλοῖς) can comprehend.129 What even ‘the masses’ are meant to have taken from Nemesius’ proem – I claim – is what he calls, in his proem, a ‘familiar’ (γνώριμον) idea: namely, that the world is a divinely founded polity.130 Nemesius opens his De natura hominis with an elaborate description of divine creation as a form of divine οἰκείωσις – and his (unfinished) text ends with a closely reasoned defence of divine providence as a form of διοίκησις.131 The Platonic commentator Calcidius seems to have been a rough contemporary of Nemesius’ – and, conceivably, himself a Syrian. In the first pages of his monumental Timaeus commentary, Calcidius alludes to ‘the common city or republic (urbe ac re publica) … of this sensible world’.132 Nemesius never uses such precise terminology, but there is much evidence to suggest that he structures the Nat. Hom. with an eye to the archaic, yet philosophically sophisticated picture of the world as a city.

Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 16,2-3: ἐξουσίας καὶ δόξης καὶ μακαριότητος. Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 15,24. 125 Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 15,24-16,1. 126 Plato, Timaeus 90a. 127 Verbeke and Moncho, Nemesius d’Émèse (1975), 22. 128 Nemesius, Nat. Hom. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 16,7-8. 129 Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 16,8-10. 130 Ibid. 1, ed. Morani (1987), 2,13-4. 131 Nemesius’ editors and commentators have not noticed that after he treats the question of whether πρόνοια is, and what πρόνοια is (Nat. Hom. 42) – that is, once he turns to the question of what πρόνοια concerns (Nat. Hom. 43) – Nemesius introduces a new term to denote, precisely, the ‘governance’ of the world. This term is διοίκησις. My choice to translate as ‘governance’ is due to Nemesius’ frequent linkage of διοίκησις to terms denoting ‘rule’ and ‘command’. Compare (i) ibid., ed. Morani (1987), 85,7-8: ἀρχῶν τῶν διοικουσῶν; (ii) 91,26-7: ἀρχῶν … τῶν διοικουσῶν; (iii) 131,11: ἀρχῆς καὶ διοικήσεως; (iv) 132,8-12: ἀρχαῖς … καὶ ἡγεμονίαις διοικουμένων … τὰς τῶν νομοθετῶν καὶ τὰς τῶν ἀρχόντων ἐπιδεχομένη διοικήσεις καὶ ἐπιμελείας. 132 Calcidius, In Platonis Timaeum I 6. The (modified) translation here is from Calcidius, On Plato’s Timaeus (Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 41), Latin with trans. John Magee (Cambridge, MA, 2016). 123 124

The Manichaean Demoness Ăz and Yetzer Hara Susanna TOWERS, Cardiff

ABSTRACT This paper will offer a comparative hamartiological study of the Manichaean demoness Ăz of Eastern Manichaean texts and yetzer hara (evil inclination) of pre-rabbinic literature.1 Both construct sin as an inner proclivity of demonic origin intrinsic to humanity from its inception. Each reveals an increasing emphasis upon sin as excessive sexual desire. This article proposes that Jewish hamartiology of the first few centuries CE should be considered as a major influence upon Mani’s doctrine of sin. This is consistent with recent literature which points to the influence of a Judaeo-Christian sect which Mani knew in his youth upon his writing. This is significant to the formation of early Christian doctrine concerning the human relation to sin.

Introduction: The Manichaean Demoness Ăz and Yetzer Hara John Reeves’ extensive exploration of the Book of Giants tradition establishes the role of Jewish apocalyptic literature on Mani’s writings. Reeves argues for a developmental progression from the myth of the fallen angels in chapters 6-36 of The Book of Enoch (I Enoch) to its dualist expression in Manichaean creation mythology.2 This may reflect the influence of the religious culture of the Judaeo-Christian sect of Mani’s upbringing. This article proposes that the influence of Mani’s upbringing in the sect extends into the area of Manichaean hamartiology. This is indicated by significant parallels between the representation of the Manichaean demoness Ăz and the Jewish ‘evil inclination’ (yetzer hara).3 Yetzer hara first appears in the flood narratives of Genesis and undergoes considerable development in Second Temple Jewish literature to become a focal concept in rabbinic discourse and teachings concerning human sin. This article will consider parallels between yetzer hara in Second Temple and adjacent literature and the Manichaean demoness Ăz 1

Eastern texts include Middle Persian, Parthian and Sogdian texts. John C. Reeves, Jewish Lore in Manichaean Cosmogony: Studies in the Book of Giants Traditions (Cincinnati, 1992); Werner Sundermann, ‘Giants, The Book of’, Encyclopædia Iranica X/6 (2001), 592-4. 3 On issues of translation, see Ishay Rosen-Zvi, ‘Two rabbinical Inclinations? Rethinking a Scholarly Dogma’, JSJ 39 (2008), 1-27, 1-2. 2

Studia Patristica CII, 63-76. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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in two interconnected areas. Firstly, both yetzer hara and the Manichaean Ăz embody the human relation to sin as an inner propensity of independent origin intrinsic to humanity from its inception. Second Temple Jewish literature includes a developmental phase in which yetzer hara is classified as a demonic entity which requires expulsion from the body. In Manichaean literature, the demonization of sin is built into the characterisation of Ăz as a demonic entity resident in the human body, who binds sinful drives within the bodies of Adam and Eve at their creation. The second doctrinal parallel between yetzer hara and the demoness Ăz emerges in an increasing focus upon sin as excessive sexual desire. In Manichaean texts this is reflected by the introduction of sexual desire into the Manichaean mēnōgīh ī tan of greed, lust and wrath through the highly sexualized characterization of the demoness Ăz, who corrupts both demons and humans with her sexual urges and knowledge. This is mirrored in the Jewish tradition by texts which, as discussed by Ishay RosenZvi, attribute the male struggle with sexual desire to female temptation.4 In both traditions sexual desire is feminine-gendered through portraits of pernicious female sexuality and the construction of female sexual desire as a threat to male righteousness and cause of transgression. Narratives of female sexuality in both literary traditions encompass the female use of sorcery and magical incantations in order to seduce the male. The association of female sexuality with sorcery may originate in the Book of Watchers (chapters 6-36 of I Enoch), which recounts that angels descend to earth to fornicate with human women. The angels share forbidden knowledge with their human wives. A consequent feminine-gendering of sexual sin emerges in both literary traditions. Yetzer hara is central to rabbinic discussions and teachings on human sin. Commonly translated as ‘evil inclination’, it may be translated also as tendency, disposition, instinct or desire. 5 Deriving from the Hebrew root verb ytzr (to create or fashion) and adjective ra`a` (bad, evil, displeasing, sad or injurious), the term yetzer hara identifies a definite object (the evil inclination) as opposed to an indefinite object (an evil inclination).6 Ishay Rosen-Zvi notes that these translations lack this grammatical sense of a reified object which exists within the human body.7 For the purposes of this article, yetzer hara will be translated as the evil inclination. The concept of yetzer hara derives from four verses in Genesis. In Gen. 2:7 the verb ytzr is used to denote the divine formation of Adam. The verb delineates an act of formation or fashioning such as the work of a potter. This verb 4 Ishay Rosen-Zvi, ‘Bilhah the Temptress: The Testament of Reuben and ‘The Birth of Sexuality’,’ JQR 96 (2006), 64-95. 5 I. Rosen-Zvi, ‘Two rabbinical Inclinations’ (2008). 6 James Strong, Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (Peabody, MA, 2007), 1575, H7489. 7 I. Rosen-Zvi, ‘Two rabbinical inclinations’ (2008).

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is also used in Gen. 2:9 to denote the fashioning of birds and beasts. As a noun the yetzer is embedded in the flood narrative in two further verses in Genesis. In Gen. 6:5 yetzer hara emerges as justification for God’s decision to flood the earth. God regrets creating the human race because of the dominance of yetzer hara in the human heart (‘every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time’). In Gen. 8:21 God accepts this dominance (‘every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood’) and pledges never again to destroy living creatures. These two verses indicate that yetzer hara takes root early in life in the human heart, where it resides permanently. The early origin of yetzer hara is affirmed in the fifth century Genesis Rabbah, which debates whether yetzer hara emerges prior to or at the moment of birth: Antoninus asked our Teacher: ‘When is the evil urge placed in man?’ As soon as he is formed [in embryo] he replied. ‘If so’, he objected, ‘he would dig through the womb and emerge; rather is it when he emerges [from the womb]’. Rabbi agreed with him, because his view corresponds with that of Scripture, viz. For the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth. R. Judan said: This is written (from his awakening), which means, from when he awakes to the world.8

In these biblical verses, the evil inclination may be interpreted either as an innate human disposition or an entity living parasitically in the human heart. Second Temple Jewish literature develops the construction of yetzer hara as an entity of independent origin which lives parasitically in the human body with texts which describe a demonic entity requiring expulsion or exorcism from the human body. This is exemplified by surviving literature from Qumran. As discussed by Ida Fröhlich, the usage of the term yetzer hara in these texts reflects the dualist and demonological beliefs of the community at Qumran, commonly agreed to have been Essene in origin.9 This is exemplified by the sectarian liturgical adaptation of Psalm 51, the Plea for Deliverance (11Q5 XIX), which categories yetzer hara with demons and evil spirits: ‘Let not a satan rule over me, nor an unclean spirit; neither let pain nor evil inclination have power over my bones’.10 In the sectarian text Barkhi Nafshi (4Q434-8), Eibert Tigchelaar notes the appearance of the Hebrew verb gaar (to rebuke or drive with rebukes), which commonly denotes exorcism of spirits or demons. In this prayer, the supplicant describes release from the powers of yetzer hara: ‘The evil inclination [you] have driven with rebukes [from my innermost parts 8

Genesis Rabbah 34. For difficulties of dating the text see Emanouela Grypeou and Helen Spurling, The Book of Genesis in Late Antiquity: Encounters between Jewish and Christian Exegesis (Leiden, 2013), 18. 9 Ida Fröhlich, ‘Theology and Demonology in Qumran Texts’, Henoch 32 (2010), 101-29. 10 Plea for Deliverance (11Q5 XI), translated in Eibert J.C. Tigchelaar, ‘The evil inclination in the Dead Sea Scrolls, with a re-edition of 4Q468i (4QSectarian text?)’, in Alberdina Houtman, Albert de Jong and Magda van de Weg (eds), Empsychoi Logoi – Religious Innovations in Antiquity: Studies in Honour of Pieter Willem van der Horst (Leiden, 2008), 347-57, 350-1.

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and the spirit of ho]liness you have set in my heart’.11 These texts reveal that divine delivery is necessary to expel yetzer hara. Frank Porter draws attention to a verse in the Book of Jubilees, dated by James Vanderkam between 162-152 BCE, which also has a demonic model of yetzer hara.12 Jubilees 12 reads: ‘Deliver me from the hands of evil spirits who have dominion over the thoughts of men’s hearts, And let them not lead me astray from Thee, my God’.13 In this verse, the evil inclination lies in the power of evil spirits rather than under human control and thus requires divine delivery. The dualist structure of the Qumran literature is echoed in the Greek Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs (12TP). This dualism is reflected cosmically in the polarization of God by the demon Beliar, who also appears as a demonic force in texts from Qumran. In the Testament of Reuben (T. Reuben) yetzer hara is associated with Beliar and the seven ‘spirits of deceit’ in his service. Each of these spirits has power over a specific organ of the human body and hence the body is the locus of demonic control.14 According to the Testament of Asher (T. Asher), the evil inclination may be countered by the good inclination (yetzer hatov) which also resides in the human heart.15 The evil inclination should be routed from the heart by the good inclination.16 In contrast to the Qumran texts discussed above, 12TP indicates that the evil inclination is overcome by ascetic practice and self-restraint rather than divine delivery. However, the evil inclination remains of demonic origin. Second Temple literature thus reveals significant developments in the construction of yetzer hara as a demonological entity experienced as an intrapersonal force. Yetzer hara requires expulsion from the human heart, either by divine exorcism, yetzer hatov or Torah. Yetzer hara opposes and overpowers each of these. The representation of sin as an entity of demonic origin resident within the human body is mirrored consistently in the characterization of the demoness Ăz in texts attributed to Mani and in subsequent Manichaean literature. A collection of Middle Persian texts from Turfan edited by Friedrich Andreas and Walter Henning are collectively known as Mir. Man. I.17 These are now considered to have been composed by Mani, possibly comprising the cosmological content of his Šābuhragān.18 In Mir. Man I, the residence of the demoness Ăz 11

Ibid. 351. See James Vanderkam, Book of Jubilees (Sheffield, 2001). 13 Jubilees 12.20. 14 T. Reuben II.1-III.8,26-27. 15 T. Asher. 16 T. Asher. 17 Mir. Man I; Friedrich Karl Andreas and Walter Bruno Henning, Mitteliranische Manichaica aus Chinesisch-Turkestan I (Berlin, 1932), 175-222. 18 David Neil MacKenzie, ‘Mani’s “Šābuhragān”’, BSOAS 42 (1979), 500-34; id., ‘Mani’s “Šābuhragān” - II’, BSOAS 43 (1980), 288-310. 12

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in the first human man and woman is expressed through the metaphor of clothing: ‘I will make these two creatures (the first human beings), a male and the female one … so that they may be a garment and a covering for me’.19 The metaphor of clothing also appears in a Sogdian confessional text entitled Xw’stw’nyft S’nk. This text is included in M801, a collection of texts which dates between 600-900 CE and contains prayers, confessional texts and commandments for the Elect.20 The Xw’stw’nyft S’nk states that Ăz ‘has formed this body and is wrapped up in it’.21 The metaphor of clothing appears in a further discursive text in Mir. Man I. The Discourse on the Soul and the body explicates the relation between body and soul during gestation and at birth. After birth a child becomes ‘a garment for Ăz and a cover for sensual lust… It makes Ăz and lust glad, for it fulfils their wishes and instructions… Up to this point (birth) the child lives and exists unharmed; but then (after birth) it is afflicted by vengeance and sorrow’.22 This predicates the early corruption of the human infant by the invasive demonic forces of Ăz. In the Middle Persian Šābuhragān, written by Mani and dedicated to Shāpūr I, Ăz appears both microcosmically as an abstract inner propensity to sin and macrocosmically as a demonic force. As an inner propensity to sin, the Middle Persian noun az (greed) and adjectives ‘zg’m, ‘zygr and az-kamagih (greedy) are used. Greed is paired with āwarzōg (avarice). As a macrocosmic force, Ăz is paired repeatedly with the Zoroastrian chief evil spirit Ahrimen.23 This pairing is consistent with Zoroastrian eschatology as recounted in the Bundahišn, in which Ahramen and Ăz are the last two remaining demons at the Frašegird.24 Ăz and Lust bind the divine light in the fabric of the human body, where it is enmeshed with the demonic drives: ‘the light which Ăz and Lust bound in bone, sinew, flesh, vein (and) skin, and *seduced, smothered?] with lust, copulation and evil thought, speech and deed…’25 Microcosm and macrocosm 19 Mir. Man I, translated in Hans-Joachim Klimkeit, Gnosis on the Silk Road: Gnostic Texts from Central Asia (San Francisco, 1993), 232. 20 As discussed by Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst, translation of Manichaean Parthian texts into Sogdian appears to have commenced from 600 AD, which indicates this date as a terminus post quem. See Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst, ‘Aramaic in the Manichaean Texts’, in Maria Macuch, Mauro Maggi and Werner Sundermann (eds), Iranian Languages and Texts from Iran and Turan: Ronald E. Emmerick Memorial Volume (Wiesbaden, 2007), 59-74. 21 Xw’stw’nyft S’nk, translated in Jason BeDuhn, The Manichaean Body in Discipline and Ritual (Baltimore, 2000), 108. 22 Mir. Man I, 235. 23 E.g. D.N. Mackenzie, ‘Mani’s “Šābuhragān” - II’ (1980), 288-310 (296.45). 24 G. Bundahišn 30.29, translated in Edward William West (trans./ed.), The Bundahishn (Scotts Valley, CA, 2012), 86. 25 D.N. Mackenzie, ‘Mani’s “Šābuhragān” - II’ (1980), 301.28-30. This theme is repeated in the Middle Persian cosmological text M101, which recounts that Ăz ‘… bound [it in this corp]se, in bone, nerves, [flesh], veins and skin, and herself entered into it’. M101b. V. 1-10, translated in J. BeDuhn, The Manichaean Body (2000), 301.

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meet at the eschatological moment of Restoration, when those who have submitted to greed and lust share the punishment of their demonic originators: [when ? it] is the Restoration [then ? he will be] bound eternally in that prison with Ăz and Ahramen and the demons and witches, because [he was] materialistic and lustful (‘zygr) and he [followed] the false teaching of Ahramen, and he [did not perform] (the necessary religious) acts for his own soul.26

The dual conceptual framework in this text is consistent with Persian cosmology, which predicates two concurrent states of being expressed in the twin Persian concepts of gētīg (encompassing the material, visible, and tangible) and mēnōg (referring to the mental, invisible, and intangible).27 This model provides a suitable vehicle for the purveyance of Mani’s hamartiological doctrine which construes sin as an inner propensity of demonic origin and the human body as host to demonic forces. The activity of demonic powers within the human host are described in detail in Chapter seventy of the didactic Coptic Kephalaia. These powers are described variously as inhabitants, magnates and archons who battle each other within the body as they did originally in the Kingdom of Darkness: Understand that there exist many powers / in this body. They are the house-dwellers who are made the leade[rs] / in it. There are eight hundred and forty times ten thousand [ru]/lers made chiefs in the human b[o]dy! ... when all these rulers come creeping and [m]ov/[ing with] in the body, they will meet one another; and they shall / beset and destroy one another…28

The significant role played by the human senses as gateway between internal demons and external temptation is conveyed in a number of Manichaean texts. This doctrine appears to originate from Mani’s teaching, as attested by Middle Persian and Parthian versions of the historical text M2, which relate the experiences of Mār Addā and Pattiq/Pattek during the Manichaean mission to the Roman Empire. In M2, Mār Addā is instructed in a vision by Mani to recite the Collecting of the Gates from the Treasury of the Living when he encounters threat.29 The feminine gendering of the Manichaean Ăz is remarkable in light of the Zoroastrian demonology from which Ăz is absorbed. In contrast to the Zoroastrian Ăz, whose gender is assumed male, Jes Asmussen describes

26

D.N. Mackenzie, ‘Mani’s “Šābuhragān” - II’ (1980), 296.44-7. See Shaul Shaked, ‘The Notions mēnōg and gētīg in the Pahlavi Texts and their Relation to Eschatology’, Acta Orientalia 33 (1971), 59-107; id., ‘Gētīg and Mēnōg’, Encyclopædia Iranica X/6 (2001), 574-6. 28 1 Ke. 70.175.6-15, translated in Ian Gardner, The Kephalaia of the Teacher: The Edited Coptic Manichaean Texts in English Translation, with Commentary (Leiden, 2016), 184. 29 M2 I and II, translated in H.-J. Klimkeit, Gnosis on the Silkroad (1993), 203-4. 27

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the Manichaean Ăz as ‘unambiguously feminine’.30 The feminine gender of the Manichaean Ăz is demonstrable in a variety of Middle Persian and Sogdian texts, where it is entwined with an emergent sexualization in characterization, marking the entry of sexual desire into the Manichaean mēnōgīh ī tan of greed, lust and wrath. Through the characterization of Ăz as the embodiment of demonic sexuality and lasciviousness, sexual sin is gendered feminine. In order to appreciate the significance of this development in Manichaean doctrine, it is necessary to consider the origins of Ăz in Zoroastrian mythology. The primary source of Zoroastrian primordial mythology is the Pahlavi Greater Bundahišn (G. Bundahišn), meaning ‘Primal Creation’.31 In this text, the demon Ăz is but one of many demons who serve the evil spirit Ahramen. The gender of the demon Ăz is undetermined, due to absence of noun gender in Pahlavi. Jes Asmussen argues for masculine gender from the epithet daēvōdāta (demon-created.)32 However, Asmussen also suggests that the Zoroastrian Ăz may originally have been an hermaphrodite.33 What is clear is that there is no textual suggestion of feminine gender. G. Bundahišn narrates that the evil spirit Ahramen seeks to destroy the creations of the divinity Ohrmazd and launches multiple plagues upon the earth and humanity. Ăz (greed) is amongst these plagues, each of which may be experienced at an intrapsychic and cosmic level. This duality reflects the twin Persian concepts of gētīg and mēnōg discussed above. The Zoroastrian Ăz embodies the self-destructive nature of greed; having devoured everything Ăz swallow himself: The demon Ăz is he who swallows everything, and when, through destitution, nothing has come he eats himself; he is that fiendishness which, although the whole wealth of the world be given up to it, does not fill up and is not satisfied; as it says, that the eye of the covetous is a noose, and in the world it is naught.34

The demon Ăz is empowered by sexual excess only as a sub-element of greed: ‘… the power of the demon Ăz is owing to that person who, not content with his own wife, snatches away even those of others’.35 However, this does not constitute a condemnation of human sexuality; sexual insufficiency is equally the work of Ahramen. G. Bundahišn tells that after making sacrifice to the devs (demons), the first human couple subsequently lose their sexual desire, forgetting that human sexuality is divinely ordained and necessary for the continuation of Ohrmazd’s creation: 30 Jes Peter Asmussen, ‘Ăz’, Encyclopaedia Iranica . 31 G. Bundahišn, translated in E.W. West, The Bundahishn (2012). 32 J.P. Asmussen, ‘Ăz’. 33 Ibid. 34 G. Bundahišn 28.27, 76. 35 G. Bundahišn ch. 27, 36.

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Owing to them they both became so dry-backed that in fifty winters they had no desire for intercourse, and though they had had intercourse they would have had no children. And on the completion of fifty years the source of desire arose… Afterwards, it became their mutual wish that the satisfaction of their desires should be accomplished, as they reflected thus: ‘Our duty even for those fifty years was this’.36

Human sexuality is divinely sanctioned, but sexual excess and deficiency are equally contrary to Ohrmazd’s plan for his creation. In this text, Ăz plays a minor role as one of many demons and is associated with sexual desire only as a representation of unbalanced desire. The Manichaean Ăz diverges from this characterization in the three areas of importance, gender and sexualization, which are of necessity intertwined and inseparable. The sexualized characterization of the Manichaean Ăz is intermixed with the doctrine of the demonic origin of human sexuality, which is expounded in detail in the Middle Persian Mir. Man I and Excellent Verses of Salvation (S9 + S13). This latter text is considered to be a shorter, later rendition of Mir. Man I in which Ăz is elevated to the role of ‘evil mother of all demons’.37 In Mir. Man I, the demon Ăz plays a primary role as creator and corruptor of the first human couple. Ăz embodies the Manichaean mēnōgīh ī tan of greed, lust and wrath.38 However, this triad is broadened to encompass a strong sexual element through the characterization of Ăz as inculcator of sexual desire into demons and humans alike in order to further the imprisonment of the divine within the corporeal. Mir. Man. I commences with an account of the Manichaean myth known, following Franz Cumont, as the ‘seduction of the archons’, in which the twin images of the Third Messenger are revealed to the archons. In their ecstatic response to the seductive images, the demons eject the divine light captured in their bodies.39 Plant life is formed from the male archons’ seed and animal life from the miscarried foetuses of the female archons.40 Ăz invades fruit and trees which are ingested by animals, increasing their sexual urges and her powers. The surviving narrative of Mir. Man. I commences at this point:

36

Ibid. 17.19-21, 39. Ibid. 38 Werner Sundermann, ‘Manichaeism I. General Survey’, Encyclopædia Iranica, available online at [accessed 11/09/2018]. 39 Franz Cumont, Recherches sur le Manichéisme, vol. I: La Cosmogonie Manichéenne d’après Théodore bar Khoni (Brussels, 1908), 58. 40 ‘And like that lustful and phallophoric part Ăz fell from the sky… And she was together with all kinds of plants and monsters as her own Self’. Middle Persian text and translation in Mary Boyce, A Reader in Manichaean Middle Persian and Parthian (Leuven, 1978), 65 ft. 15. 37

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They devoured the fruits from the trees and grew bigger, more monstrous and more like archdemons. And from the fruits of the trees which they had devoured that Ăz … overcame them. And they were aroused by sensual lust and mated with each other.41

Ăz further corrupts the demons and their offspring with her sexual knowledge, teaching them how to copulate in the darkness of hell and upon earth: And just as Ăz herself, from the very beginning, had taught lasciviousness and mating to the demons and she-devils, the demons of wrath, monster demons, and archdemons in that Hell of Darkness, her own habitation, so she continued to teach lasciviousness and mating to the other male and female monster demons and archdemons that had fallen from the firmament to earth. (Her aim was) that they be excited and unite with intertwined bodies and bring forth dragon offspring which she (Ăz) would take away, devour and then form from them two (first human) beings, male and female.42

Ăz forms the first two humans from the filth and excrement of the demons as material copies of the divine images of the Third Messenger, polluting them with destructive propensities and drives: And in it (the body) she also sowed desire and lust, covetousness and (the urge to) mate, enmity and slander, envy and sinfulness, wrath and impurity, darkening (of the mind) and unconsciousness, hostility to religion and doubt (regarding the faith), (the urge) to steal and lie, to rob and to do evil deeds, obstinacy and falsehood, vengefulness and conceit (?), anxiety and grief, sorrow and pain, poverty and want, illness and the infirmity of old age, offensiveness and thievishness. [?].43

The Excellent Verses of Salvation (S9 + S13) repeat the narrative of the pollution and invasion of the human body by Ăz: ‘Ăz, [that] evil mother of all demons (mād čē dēwān) grew angry, and she stirred up great turmoil to aid her own soul. And from the impurity of the demons and from the filth of the she-demons she fashioned this body and entered into it herself’.44 Her role as mother of the demons is echoed in the Parthian text M183, which names her: ‘mother of the demons (mād čē dēwān), from whom every sin has come’.45 The feminization of Ăz is apparent in the Middle Persian abdecarian hymn M741, which preserves two episodes in the battle between the forces of darkness and light. In this text the Maiden of Light takes the name of the Avestan rain-goddess Sadwēs and pits herself against Pēsūs.46 Mary Boyce notes that Walter Henning identifies Pēsūs from several Sogdian and Parthian manuscripts as mate of the demon Saklon, ‘the great she-beast who bears Adam 41

Mir. Man. I, translated in J. Klimkeit, Gnosis on the Silkroad (1993), 229. Mir. Man. I, translated in J. Klimkeit, Gnosis on the Silkroad (1993), 232. 43 Mir. Man. I, translated in J. Klimkeit, Gnosis on the Silkroad (1993), 233. 44 S9 + S13 R ii 30, translated in J. Klimkeit, Gnosis on the Silkroad (1993), 38-9. 45 M183 in Werner Sundermann, Mittelpersische und parthische kosmogonische und Parabeltexte der Manichäer (Berlin, 1973), 63. 46 Mary Boyce, ‘Sadwēs and Pēsūs’, BSOAS 13 (1951), 908-91. 42

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and Eve’.47 The text describes the imprisonment of light within animal and plant life and elemental forces. Here Pēsūs fulfils the role of Ăz in Mir. Man. I: The sinful, dark Pēsūs runs hither and thither in brutishness, to the upper and the lower limbs she gives no peace at all. She seizes, she binds the Light in the six great bodies: in earth water and fire, wind plants and animals. She fashions it in many shapes, she moulds it in many figures; she fetters it in a prison, that it may not mount up on high.48

The sexualization of the Manichaean Ăz is consistent with a construction of the female as intrinsically more lascivious than the male found in Mir. Man. I, in which Eve is created more lascivious than Adam with the intention of his entrapment: ‘… she (the first woman) would become (even more) thievish and sinful, lascivious and covetous, and (so that) she (the woman) would deceive this man by lust’.49 This sexualized construction of Eve also emerges in an account of Manichaean mythology in the Fihrist of Ibn Al-Nadim, in which Eve is instructed by the demon Al-Sindid (lit. Captain) in the magical arts of seduction: Al-Sindid then taught Eve magical syllables in order that she might infatuate Adam. She proceeded to act (by) presenting him with a garland from a flowering tree, and when Adam saw her, he lustfully united with her, and she became pregnant and gave birth to a handsome male child of radiant appearance.50

The teaching of magical incantations to Eve by Al-Sindid may be interpreted as a development of the Book of Watchers narrative of the angels who teach forbidden knowledge including sorcery to their human wives. Here Al-Sindid takes the role of the angel as purveyor of forbidden knowledge. The entwinement of gender and sexualization in the characterization of the Manichaean Ăz is mirrored in a concurrent reconstruction of gender and sexual transgression in texts from the Second Temple era onwards. Described by Ishay Rosen-Zvi as a ‘new economy of gender’, male sexual transgression is attributed to the female, resulting in the feminine gendering of sexual temptation.51 As discussed by Rosen-Zvi, this is exemplified by the confession of Reuben to the rape of Bilhah, his father’s concubine, in the Testament of Reuben, in which Reuben attributes his transgression to the sight of Bilhah bathing: For had I not seen Bilhah bathing in a covered place, I had not fallen into this great iniquity. For my mind taking in the thought of the woman’s nakedness, suffered me 47

M. Boyce, ‘Sadwēs and Pēsūs’ (1951), 910. M. Boyce, ‘Sadwēs and Pēsūs’ (1951), 913. 49 Mir. Man. I, translated in J. Klimkeit, Gnosis on the Silkroad (1993), 234. 50 John Reeves, ‘Manichaica Aramaica? Adam and the Magical Deliverance of Seth’, JAOS 119 (1999), 432-9 (433). 51 I. Rosen-Zvi, ‘Bilhah the Temptress’ (2006). 48

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not to sleep until I had wrought the abominable thing… Bilhah became drunk and was asleep uncovered in her chamber. Having therefore gone in and beheld nakedness, I wrought the impiety without her perceiving it, and leaving her sleeping I departed.52

Here, references to Bilhah’s nudity and drunken unconsciousness reveal an undercurrent of victim blame embedded in the narrative. The focus of the text moves to the irrevocable rift between Reuben and his father Jacob until Jacob’s death and speaks no more of Bilhah’s fate. Reuben warns his sons that avoidance of female company is the best option: ‘Pay no heed to the face of a woman, nor associate with another man’s wife, nor meddle in affairs of womenkind’.53 In a woman’s most vulnerable moments, blame may be uncovered. The highly sexualized adulteress of Proverbs 7 offers an early paradigm of narratives which attribute blame to women for sexual temptation. At a literal level, the passage constitutes a warning from father to son against adultery. The threat posed by an adulterous relationship may be interpreted in terms of disruption to group cohesion and patrilineality. However, the imagery of entrapment and enticement conjured to achieve this reveals a commentary of the powers of female sexuality. This threat is expressed through imagery of hunting, snaring and death: her male victim is compared to ‘a bird darting into a snare’ and ‘an ox going to the slaughter’.54 The figure of the seductress is magnified to demonic levels in the Qumran text 4Q184. Here allegory and sectarian doctrine combine to produce a feminine-gendered threat to the righteous who seeks to lure to Sheol through sexual transgression. The theme of darkness pervades the text. This is exemplified by the darkness of her clothing, described as ‘shades of twilight’.55 As a liminal time between day and night, twilight signals transgression and danger. Further association with darkness emerges in her abode as ‘couches of darkness’ and her ‘dominions in the midst of the night’.56 Described by Scott Jones as ‘the darker progeny’ of the adulteress of Proverbs 7, this winged figure has been construed alternately as prostitute, witch, demon and specifically the demon Lilith.57 These suggestions hold in common a dark intermingling of female sexuality with sorcery. As discussed, this association between female sexuality and sorcery may have origins in the Enochic Book of Watchers (chapter 6-36 of I Enoch). In later renditions of the Enochic myth this knowledge is not restricted to women. The forbidden knowl52

Testament of Reuben III.10-15, 27. Ibid. 54 Proverbs 7:22-4. 55 4Q184. In Geza Vermès, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English, 7th ed. (London, 2011), 417.16. 56 Ibid. 417.20-1. 57 Scott C. Jones, ‘Wisdom’s Pedagogy: A comparison of Proverbs VII and 4Q184’, VT 53 (2003), 65-81. 53

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edge shared with human women is polarized by the heavenly secrets revealed to Enoch. Rebecca Lesses suggests that the text ‘sets up a gendered dichotomy between the watchers’ human wives and Enoch’.58 Lesses infers that this reflects a particular strain of thought in scribal sources which associates women with evil, as exemplified by Ben Sira.59 In a later addition to I Enoch dating to ca. 100-134 CE known as the Similitudes, the noxious influence of the fallen angels is retrojected to encompass Eve, whom the angel Gadreel ‘led astray’.60 This gendered reconfiguration of responsibility for sexual transgression develops further in rabbinic literature with a claim of the female constitutional lack of sexual control. According to BT Ketuboth 65a, a woman will publicly proposition a man or even an animal after a few glasses of wine: ‘One cup of wine is becoming to a woman, two cups are degrading and if she has three, she solicits publicly; but if she has four, she solicits even an ass in the street and cares not’.61 Bereshit Rabbah warns that an unaccompanied trip to the market may result in female sexual transgression: ‘A man restrains his wife so that she not go to the market, for every woman who goes out to the market is destined to fall’.62 Mishnah Sotah tells that women much prefer sex to material things: ‘A woman wants a qab (material substance) with sexual satisfaction more than nine qabs with abstinence’. The danger female sexuality causes for men is indicated by the ruling in BT Kiddushin, that men should avoid women in groups. Whilst a woman may be alone with two men, a man should not be alone with two or more women, although it is permitted for a woman to be in the presence of two men. The gemera is as follows: ‘What is the reason? – Tanna debe Eliyahu [states]: Because women are temperamentally lightheaded’.63 The reasoning behind this ruling appears to be that if a man is unable to restrain himself in the presence of a woman, another man will come to his aid. A group of women, however, represents the multiplication of unruly sexual desire. BT Ketuboth discusses whether a woman who has been raped is sexually forbidden to her husband. Here the rabbis imagine a case in which the rape becomes pleasurable to the woman:

58 Rebecca Lesses, ‘They Revealed Secrets to their Wives: The Transmission of Magical Knowledge in 1 Enoch’, in Daphna Arbel and Andrei A. Orlov (eds), With Letters of Light – Otiyot Shel Or: Studies in Early Jewish Apocalypticism and Mysticism in Honour of Rachel Elior (Berlin, 2010), 196-222, 196. 59 Ibid. 197. 60 Ibid. 61 BT Ketuboth 65a, translated in Isidore Epstein, The Babylonian Talmud, vol. 3/2 (Seder Nashim, Ketuboth) (London, 1952), 393. 62 Bereshit Rabba 8.12, translated in Julius Theodor and Chanoch Albeck, Midrash bereshit rabba: critical edition with notes and commentary (Jerusalem, 1965), 66. 63 BT tractate Kiddushin 80b, translated in Isidore Epstein, Hebrew-English Edition of the Babylonian Talmud, vol. 3/7 (Seder Nashim, Kiddushin) (London, 1966), 413.

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Raba laid down: Any woman, the outrage against whom began under compulsion, though it terminated with her consent, and even if she said, ‘Leave him alone’, and that if he had not made the attack upon her she would have hired him to do it, is permitted [to her husband]. What is the reason? – He plunged her into an uncontrollable passion.64

The text explains that a woman’s yetzer may ‘seize’ her, thus depriving her of control over her sexual behaviour. This male fantasy of a rape bringing pleasure to a woman indicates the belief of the strength of the female sexual drive. This construction of female sexuality finds parallels with the Manichaean teaching that the first female is created more lascivious than the male in Mir. Man. I. According to rabbinic texts, the susceptibility of men to be sexually aroused by female presence constitutes a struggle for the male with yetzer hara, requiring the practice of the masculine-gendered quality of self-restraint. As observed by Michael Satlow, rabbinic texts present women as a ‘particular threat to male sexual self-control, hence to their manhood’.65 BT Berakhot describes how female enticement is implied by the sight of a finger or the sound of a voice: To tell you that if one gazes at the little finger of a woman, it is as if he gazed at her secret place! … R. Hisda said: A woman’s leg is a sexual incitement, as it says. Uncover the leg, pass through the rivers, and it says afterwards, Thy nakedness shall be uncovered, yea, thy shame shall be seen. I Samuel said: A woman’s voice is a sexual incitement, as it says, For sweet is thy voice and thy countenance is comely. R. Shesheth said: A woman’s hair is a sexual incitement, as it says, Thy hair is as a flock of goats.66

Lack of female sexual control combines with the inflammatory powers of the female body to present a dual challenge to the male battle with yetzer hara.67 In these respects, yetzer hara is gendered feminine. Conclusions: The Manichaean Demoness Ăz and Yetzer Hara The characterization of the demoness Ăz in Mani’s creation mythology offers an obscure glimpse into the Manichaean construction of the origin, nature and human relation to evil. To conclude, thematic representations of 64 BT Ketuboth 51b, translated in Isidore Epstein, Hebrew-English Edition of the Babylonian Talmud, vol. 3/2 (Seder Nashim, Ketuboth) (London, 1960), 298. 65 Michael L. Satlow, ‘‘Try to Be a Man’: The Rabbinic Construction of Masculinity’, HTR 89 (1996), 19-40, 37. 66 BT tractate Berakhot 24a, translated in Isidore Epstein, Hebrew-English Edition of the Babylonian Talmud, vol. 1/1 (Seder Zer’aim I, Berakoth) (London, 1948), 145. 67 A woman’s yetzer hara can ‘seize’ her, making her unaccountable for her actions: see BT Ketuboth 51b, translated in Isidore Epstein, Hebrew-English Edition of the Babylonian Talmud, vol. 3/2 (Seder Nashim, Ketuboth) (London, 1960), 298.

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yetzer hara shared with the Manichaean characterization of the demoness Ăz will be summarised. Both yetzer hara and the Manichaean Ăz represent sin as an internal propensity intrinsic to humanity from its inception. In Genesis, the residence of yetzer hara in the human heart rationalises the divine destruction and purification of the earth by flood.68 Second Temple literature supports and develops this view of yetzer hara as an innate proclivity to sin, living parasitically in the human heart. Through his portrait of Ăz in Mir. Man. I, Mani mirrors this Jewish hamartiological construction of an entity of independent existence within the body which leans towards sin. In Mir. Man. I, sin is intentionally bound into the nerves and sinew of the human body at its formation by the demoness Ăz. Sin thus pervades the fabric of the human body. Its residence is expressed through the metaphor of the body as clothing for the demoness Ăz. In Manichaean doctrine, this parasitic entity is formed from greed, lust and wrath. In Second Temple Jewish literature, yetzer hara is classed as a spirit or demon requiring exorcism and expulsion. This is mirrored in Manichaean doctrine by the invasion and residence of the demoness Ăz in the human body. The demoness Ăz is both an inner proclivity to sin and an external demonic force of independent origin which becomes resident in the human body. The Persian conceptual dualism of mēnōg and gētīg supplies an appropriate vehicle for the expression of this duality. The second doctrinal parallel between yetzer hara and the demoness Ăz is an emergent emphasis upon sexual sin. The chaos caused by the rule of immoderate desire is evident in the Talmudic parable of the Sages who are afforded the opportunity to be rid of yetzer hara, but merely blind it in one eye and release it: desire is necessary to existence, but requires regulation and control. In both traditions sexual desire is gendered feminine through the representation of the female as instigator of sexual transgression and origin of temptation.

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PART II

CHRISTIANITY IN ITS CULTURAL CONTEXT FROM THE SECOND TO THE FOURTH CENTURY

Greek and Barbarian Paideia in Tatian’s Oratio ad Graecos Josef LÖSSL, Cardiff

ABSTRACT This chapter traces the motif of ‘the barbarian’ (βάρβαρος, βαρβαρικός) in Tatian’s Oratio ad Graecos and argues that Tatian uses this motif as a vehicle to distance himself from a traditional way of looking at Greek Paideia while outlining, albeit but vaguely, a new, Christian, way of pursuing Paideia.

Introduction In a recent monograph Stamenka Antonova explores ‘the charge of barbarism’ in early Christian apologetics.1 The reference to barbarism as a ‘charge’ presupposes negative connotation. Antonova argues that the concept was used in ancient rhetoric to denigrate opponents. ‘Barbarian’, originally ‘non-Greek’, was understood as inferior to Greek. Criteria for such inferiority included language use (e.g. a ‘foreign’-sounding dialect or accent, faulty grammar, or use of certain ‘foreign’ expressions), ethnicity, or religion. Antonova draws comparisons with concepts of ‘the other’ in various manifestations of contemporary post-colonial theory such as Said’s ‘oriental’, Bhabha’s ‘subaltern’, or Kristeva’s ‘abject’.2 The charge of barbarism was also used by ancient non-Christians to denigrate early Christians. This was in part because Christianity originated from a barbarian culture (Judaism) and in part because it retained certain countercultural traits even when it began to assimilate itself to Graeco-Roman culture. In the second century, Christian apologists defended themselves against the ‘charge of barbarism’ and protested their Greek credentials. Yet at the same time they also embraced their barbarian origins and showed awareness of another aspect of the barbarian discourse, namely Greek – albeit often reluctant – acknowledgement of barbarian superiority in certain areas of culture, e.g. 1 The expression ‘the charge of barbarism’ appears in the title of her study: Stamenka E. Antonova, Barbarian or Greek? The Charge of Barbarism and Early Christian Apologetics (Leiden, 2019). 2 S. Antonova, Barbarian (2019), 14-29 (ancient rhetoric), 29-42 (early Christian apologetic literature), 42-57 (post-colonial theory).

Studia Patristica CII, 79-102. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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superior age of certain barbarian cultures (Egypt, Babylonia), or superior cultural and scientific achievements by others (e.g. mathematics and astronomy by India, Persia and Babylonia, the alphabet by the Phoenicians etc.). In this respect the ancient discourse on barbarism differs significantly from presentday post-colonial discourse.3 Antonova’s approach falls short of doing justice to this aspect of the barbarian motif in Greek literature. She does not explore the origins of the discourse on barbarism (e.g. in Herodotus and the Hellenistic culture wars).4 Her focus on some later, Roman, Latin, examples of writing about the topic, by Caesar, Cicero, Tacitus and, especially, Seneca, is a distraction. It is of course true that these Latin authors may be relevant as potential sources for the Latin Christian apologists whom Antonova discusses, Minucius Felix, Tertullian, Arnobius and Lactantius, but it also distracts from a proper analysis of the Greek texts, where ‘barbarian’ is first and foremost perceived as a linguistic property (the inability to speak Greek like a Greek, correctly and without accent) and secondly, factually (not tendentiously), as ‘non-Greek’, i.e. not a ‘charge’, at least not originally and not always. This is what Antonova hardly considers. Rather than a charge, barbarism was for both Latin and Greek apologists – the latter influencing the former – above all also a shared identity, of which they could be proud. Tatian and Justin Martyr, for example, knew each other personally. One was from Syria, the other from Samaria. Clement of Alexandria read both, as did, probably, Tertullian, a Carthaginian. Tatian had his Syrian origin, his training as a sophist5 and his criticism of Greek education (paideia) in common with Lucian of Samosata, whom Antonova finds it difficult to categorize, especially in comparison with such members of the elites as Caesar, Tacitus, Seneca, Aelius Aristides, Dio Cassius and Philostratus, who are her other examples. But why not compare Lucian with the Christian Tatian? What we encounter here is in fact a fierce dialectic between, on the one hand, non-Greek (cultural, ethnic and, at least in part also, linguistic) background, and advanced education in Greek language and culture on the other. It is the tension between these two realities in the lives of such intellectuals as Lucian and Tatian that generates such an emphatic and accentuated ‘barbarian’ discourse as we know it at least from Tatian. Christianity is only one additional, complicating, factor here. It, too, has barbarian and Greek elements, for example in the way it relies on its Jewish heritage and in the way in which it rejects 3

Unsurprisingly, therefore, after an initial discussion (pp. 42-57) hardly any further references to post-colonial theory can be found in the main parts of Antonova’s study. 4 Also known as ‘wars of books’; see Josef Lössl, ‘Early Christian Historical Writing’, in Graeme R. Dunphy (ed.), Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle (Leiden, 2010), 553-63, 553. 5 Cf. Tatian, or. 1.5 (reference to former career as a sophist); 42.1 (reference to comprehensive Greek education and Syrian origin). The text of Tatian’s oration cited in this chapter is that contained in Heinz-Günther Nesselrath, Gegen falsche Götter und falsche Bildung. Tatian, Rede an die Griechen (Tübingen, 2016), 38-113.

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this very legacy in favour of adopting certain Greek philosophical traits. ‘When it comes to [Greek] education (= Paideia)’, Peter Gemeinhardt recently wrote, ‘Tatian does not assume a clear stance, be it in favour or against’. He is a ‘wanderer between two worlds of education’.6 In the following two sections this quandary will be further explored. A first section will survey previous, including older, studies on the topic, a second section will focus on aspects of Tatian’s barbarian discourse including barbarians as inventors, the crisis and decline of Greek language and culture, the role of barbarians as reformers of Greek religion and the potential new role of Christianity, especially in conjunction with certain forms of Greek philosophy. The conclusion will show that Tatian had a rather complex notion of ‘the barbarian’, which contains elements of a traditional ethnic understanding as well as the notion of ‘barbarian’ as ‘biblical’, Jewish and/or Christian. 1. A Survey of Previous Research a) ‘Barbarian’ a religious category? Adolf Hilgenfeld vs. Richard Kukula This first section discusses the question whether ‘barbarian’ and ‘Greek’ denote only cultural and educational realities or whether they refer also to religious inclinations. At the beginning of the 20th century Adolf Hilgenfeld had argued against Richard Kukula that by ‘Greeks’ Tatian means only the ‘philosophically educated’, which makes the barbarians the uneducated.7 For example, in or. 35.3-4, thus Hilgenfeld, the expressions Ἕλληνες and φιλοσοφάντες are virtually interchangeably used in contrast to βαρβάρων δόγματα and in or. 19.1 to the Romans.8 Kukula responded that Tatian’s terminology 6

Peter Gemeinhardt, ‘Tatian und die antike Paideia. Ein Wanderer zwischen zwei (Bildungs-) Welten’, in H.-G. Nesselrath, Gegen falsche Götter (2016), 247-66, especially 247. See also Josef Lössl, ‘Bildung? Welche Bildung? Zur Bedeutung der Ausdrücke “Griechen” und “Barbaren” in Tatians Rede an die Griechen’, in Ferdinand Prostmeier (ed.), Frühchristentum und Kultur (Freiburg i. Br., 2007), 127-54. Several aspects of the latter article are revisited in the present chapter. 7 Adolf Hilgenfeld, Reviews of Richard Kukula, Tatians sogenannte Apologie, ZWTh 44 (1901), 490-1 and Richard Kukula, Altersbeweis und Künstlerkatalog, BPhWS 21 (1901), 68-9. 8 Tatian, or. 35.3 [Tatian addressing his Greek audience]: μὴ γὰρ δυσχεράνητε τὴν ἡμετέραν παιδείαν … λέγοντες· Τατιανὸς ὑπὲρ τοὺς Ἕλληνας ὑπὲρ τε τὸ ἄπειρον τῶν φιλοσοφησάντων πλῆθος καινοτομεῖ τὰ βαράρων δόγματα. – ‘Therefore, do not despise our [Barbarian] Paideia … by saying: Tatian trumps the Greeks and the infinite number of those who have studied philosophy by introducing the innovative doctrines of Barbarians’. Compare Tatian, or. 19.1: οἱ γὰρ παρ᾽ ὑμῖν φιλόσοφοι τοσοῦτον ἀποδέουσι τῆς ἀσκήσεως ὥστε παρὰ τοῦ Ῥωμαίων βασιλέως ἐτησίους χρυσοῦς ἑξακοσίους λαμβάνειν… – ‘Those who are philosophers among you [scil. Greeks] are so far removed from an ascetic way of life that they accept from the Roman emperor an annual salary of six hundred gold coins...’. Hilgenfeld compares this with a passage in Ps.-Clem., recogn. 1.7-9, where a Roman audience is addressed as o cives Romani. When part

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reflects New Testament usage and is likely ‘religiously’ rather than ‘philosophically’ motivated. He drew attention, among others, to Rom. 3:9 and 1Cor. 1:24, where Paul speaks of Ἰουδαίοι τε καὶ Ἕλληνες thereby differentiating not between educated and non-educated as between adherents of Classical polytheism (Ἕλληνες) and those embracing biblical monotheism (Ἰουδαίοι).9 Kukula’s criticism of Hilgenfeld was justified. Both in the case of Tatian’s oration in particular but also for second-century Greek culture in general it would be mistaken to understand the word Ἕλληνες as denoting the philosophically educated and βάρβαροι as the less educated. Hilgenfeld’s arguments (e.g. regarding the passages cited above under footnote 8) are not compelling. For example, in or. 35.3 Greeks and philosophers are clearly not treated as identical and the Greek philosophers mentioned in or. 19.1 are not compared with Romans but separated out as a group of highly privileged men who receive a salary from the emperor. Their distinct characteristic is not their education, or their race or religion, but their pay. However, Kukula’s alternative was not viable either. His translation of βάρβαροι as those professing the Jewish-Christian religion (‘Bekenner des Juden-Christentums’) in contrast to those professing ‘Greekness’ (‘Bekenner des Griechentums’) in the sense of ‘pagan’ Greek religion drew a dividing line between education and religion which does not exist in this form, at least not in Tatian’s oration. As we shall see in the following sections, Tatian does indeed draw a sharp rhetorical line between Greek and Barbarian education, religion and culture, but he does not speak of two entities situated alongside each other like two boxes, but of two dimensions of reality permeating each other and struggling with a view to which of the two will supersede. For example, when Tatian in or. 1.3-4 and 26.8 criticises the Greeks for the way in which they use their language – attacking ‘barbarians’ for not being able to speak it properly while themselves using fashionable ‘barbarisms’ – he does so using that very language himself, exceedingly competently at that, as someone highly educated in Greek Paideia.10 His aim was far from defending Greek Paideia. of this audience, who are referred to as hi qui sibi eruditi videbantur vel philosophi, turn out to be hostile to the speaker, they are addressed in retaliation as o omnis turba Graecorum. Similarly, in Ps.-Clem., hom. 4.11 a group of educated men including Egyptians is addressed as ὦ ἄνδρες Ἕλληνες. 9 Compare Richard Kukula, ‘Was bedeuten die Ausdrücke Ἕλληνες und Βάρβαροι in der altchristlichen Apologetik?’, in FS Theodor Gomperz (Vienna, 1902), 359-63; id., Tatians Rede an die Bekenner des Griechentums, BKV 12; Frühchristliche Apologeten und Märtyrerakten I (Munich, 1913), 175-257. It remains to be asked whether Kukula correctly interpreted Paul’s use of the word Ἕλληνες in Romans and 1Corinthians. As proof texts in Tatian Kukula refers to or. 21.1, 29.1-2, 30.3, 31.1, 33.1 and 35.1-2. In these passages, thus Kukula, Tatian compares Greek and barbarian attitudes to ‘religious’ stories (μῦθοι), scriptures (γραφαί), doctrines (δόγματα), ‘devices’ (ἐπιτηδεύματα) and practices (ἔθη). 10 Tatian, or. 1.3-4: ... στάσεως δὲ οὔσης τοσαύτης παρ᾽ οἷς οὐκ ἐχρῆν ἀπορῶ τίνα με δεῖ καλεῖν Ἕλληνα. Καὶ γὰρ τὸ πανατοπώτατον, τὰς μὴ συγγενεῖς ὑμῶν ἑρμηνείας τετιμήκατε,

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He intended to promote his barbarian wisdom. But he did so with and through the medium of the Greek language and its intellectual world. Even Tatian’s end-scenario is not that a Jewish or Christian religion will replace all ‘Greekness’ and all that is Greek will disappear. But rather, barbarian elements will transform the Greek cultural heritage into a new culture which will preserve much of the old (including language, philosophical wisdom, historical learning etc.). Hilgenfeld and Kukula thus both rightly identified the complexities of Tatian’s use of the expressions ‘Greek’ and ‘barbarian’. Their proposed solutions, however, although helpful in some respects, retained serious limitations and attracted further criticism by later scholars. b) ‘Barbarian’ as a cultural category: Martin Elze and Heinrich Dörrie One scholar who subjected especially Kukula’s translation of βάρβαροι as ‘Bekenner des Juden-Christentums’ to extensive criticism was Martin Elze.11 Yet Elze’s own interpretation of Tatian’s use of the expression βάρβαροι is problematic. In his view Tatian uses the term ‘barbarian’ in a ‘non-religious’ opposition of Greek Paideia and barbarian ‘purity’ from cultural contamination. In other words, for Tatian, as for the other early Christian apologists including Tatian’s teacher Justin, according to Elze, ‘Greek’ and ‘barbarian’ were merely stereotypes, deployed for the sole purpose of criticising Classical Greek culture. To give Elze his due, it is true that general characteristics of the Hellenistic topos of ‘the barbarian’ do also play a role in the works of Tatian and the other second century Greek apologists. Such ‘commonplaces’ include that barbarians are less ‘educated’ and therefore also less refined, corrupt and decadent than Greeks, that, nevertheless, the source of wisdom can be found among them and that due to the higher age of their cultures they ‘invented’ most of the cultural achievements which eventually were also adopted by the Greeks.12 But these βαρβαρικαῖς τε φωναῖς ἔσθ᾽ ὅτε καταχρώμενοι…; 26.8: τί γάρ, ἄνθρωπε, τῶν γραμμάτων ἐξαρτύεις τον πόλεμον; – ‘[Because of the four main dialects in Greek] there is disagreement among those who ought not to have any and I am at a loss about whom I can even call Greek. And what is craziest of all: You [Greeks] have begun to hold high foreign expressions and misuse barbarian language... Why, man, are you engaging in an arms race of letters...?’ Note the opposition of ‘Greek’ and ‘barbarian’ and the address of ἄνθρωπε, ‘man’, rather than ἄνδρες Ἕλληνες. For extensive discussion of these and related passages see Josef Lössl, ‘Sprachlich-ästhetische Darstellung und „Anwendung“ von Gewalt in Texten frühchristlicher Apologeten – das Beispiel der Rede Tatians an die Griechen’, Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft 20 (2012), 196-222, 218-9. 11 Martin Elze, Tatian und seine Theologie (Göttingen, 1960), 24-7. 12 Compare Tatian, or. 1.1-2 (barbarians as inventors); or. 12.10 (the Scythian Anacharsis as model of the unrefined and yet wise barbarian); or. 29.2 (simplicity and straightforwardness of barbarian writings as criteria for their truthfulness and wisdom); or. 31.1 (Moses as originator of barbarian wisdom). Many of these motifs were developed in Classical and Hellenistic Greek literature; for Anacharsis see, among others, Herodotus 4.76; Plato, rep. 10.600a6; Diog. Laert.

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motifs were always also closely intertwined with religion. The Scythian Anacharsis, for example, who is cited by Tatian (or. 12.10), was revered for his wisdom but also as a religious figure.13 Regarding the use of the barbarian motif in other apologists: Again, it is true that, as Elze points out,14 Justin, for example, does not use it to denote Christians, as, according to Kukula, Tatian does. But Justin does use the word ‘barbarian’ to refer to the Jews.15 Moreover, Elze’s focus is rather narrow on ‘barbarians’ as people. He overlooks the fact that Tatian uses ‘barbarian’ in junctures such as ‘barbarian wisdom’, ‘barbarian doctrines’, ‘barbarian philosophy’ etc., where the link between culture and religion is more obvious than when the word is used primarily in ethnic terms. Therefore, Justin’s reference to the Jews as ‘barbarians’ must also be understood at least partly in religious terms. Consequently, Kukula’s translation of ‘barbarian’ in Tatian as ‘JewishChristian’ is not that wide off the mark after all,16 although it does over-emphasize the religious aspect and neglect the cultural dimension. In an essay published in 1972 Heinrich Dörrie argued that while the high regard for barbarians among Greeks, or at least for some barbarians and aspects of their cultures, may not have originated with, let alone caused by Alexander the Great’s campaign, it was certainly amplified and re-inforced by the cultural encounters during its progress and in its wake.17 In Dörrie’s opinion there was clearly also a religious aspect to this: Greeks saw barbarians at least potentially 1.41.106; Diodorus, bibl. 9.6; Ephoros, FGrH iiA, 70.42 (on Anacharsis as one of the seven sages); Lucian, Anacharsis, for criticism of Greek culture; Cicero, Tusc. 5.90 for reception of the Anacharsis motif in Latin literature; also Claudia Ungefehr-Kortus, Anacharsis. Der Typus des edlen, weisen Barbaren (Frankfurt am Main, 1996) and Richard P. Martin, ‘The Scythian Accent: Anacharsis and the Cynics’, in Robert Bracht Branham and Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé (eds), The Cynics. The Cynic Movement in Antiquity and its Legacy (Berkeley, CA, 1996), 136-55; for numerous references on all aspects see Wolfgang Speyer and Ilona Opelt, ‘Barbar I.’, RAC Suppl. 1 (2001), 813-95, e.g. 826-9 on barbarian philosophy and barbarian wisdom. 13 This is clearly the case in or. 12.10 where Tatian compares himself with Anacharsis and asks his audience to be prepared to listen to him as they were prepared to listen to the barbarian Anacharsis. 14 M. Elze, Tatian (1960), 26. 15 Cf. Justin, 1 apol. 5.4; 7.3; 46.3; 60.11; dial. 119.4. 16 Note in this context also the lines that are drawn between Tatian and later Syrian Christianity, and even Manichaeism and Islam; see e.g. Emily J. Hunt, Christianity in the Second Century. The case of Tatian (London, 2003), 144-75; Andrea Bellettato, Greek and Syriac in Dialogue: Identity Construction in Tatian’s Oratio ad Graecos and in the Bardesanite Liber Legum Regionum (Diss. Padua, 2018). Also W. Speyer and I. Opelt, ‘Barbar’ (2001), 846-8 for Kukula’s qualified justification of comparing Tatian’s use of the motif with the New Testament usage. 17 See Heinrich Dörrie, ‘Die Wertung der Barbaren im Urteil der Griechen. Knechtsnaturen? Oder Bewahrer und Künder heilbringender Weisheit?’, in Antike und Universalgeschichte. FS Hans Erich Stier (Münster, 1972), 146-75, 173. Much of the origin of this change may even be attributed to the actions and to the later image of Alexander himself; for a more recent view on this see Angelos Chaniotis, Age of Conquests. The Greek World from Alexander to Hadrian (Cambridge, MA, 2018), ch. 1.

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as bearers of religious truth and salvation. The idea that barbarians were simply inferior to Greeks and not worth engaging with was no longer viable in the Hellenistic age. When Jews and then Christians referred to themselves as barbarians and to their teachings as barbarian philosophy and barbarian wisdom, they merely followed a trend that had already gained momentum within Greek culture by the time they joined the discourse.18 There was never a question that at some stage and in some form Greek culture would be fundamentally transformed through this process, the question was only when, in which form, and to what degree. In a monograph published in 1989 Arthur Droge demonstrated comprehensively how early Christians, including the second century apologists, and among them, especially, Tatian, were influentially involved in this discourse, especially through their argument for the superior age and ‘quality’ of ‘barbarian’ culture.19 For them, ‘barbarian’ meant above all ‘biblical’, including a biblical version of Ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern History, with Moses as pivotal founder figure, while the superior quality of that culture came to bear in the superior truth value of its theology and cosmology.20 c) Hellenism, Paideia and cultural and religious identity As already indicated, Kukula had a point in drawing attention to the religious aspect of the barbarian motif and to the similarities between Tatian’s use of that motif and New Testament usage. Authors of works included in the New Testament had similar views about the Hellenistic concept of ‘the barbarian’ as Tatian about a century later. What needs to be understood in this context is the phenomenon of ‘Hellenism’, the fact that across the entire sphere of influence opened up by Alexander’s conquests, non-Greeks, i.e. ‘barbarians’, were now educated not only in their own culture but also in the Greek Paideia while remaining culturally and also in terms of their religious identities tied to their own traditions. According to Dörrie the aim of such identities was ultimately ‘to fully acknowledge the cultural achievement of the barbarian tradition while 18

They thus joined a development that remained ‘mainstream’ until an onset of ‘Dehellenisation’ at the end of Antiquity; on the latter see Carsten Colpe, Griechen-Byzantiner-Semiten-Muslime. Hellenistische Religionen und west-östliche Enthellenisierung (Tübingen, 2006). 19 Arthur J. Droge, Homer or Moses? Early Christian Interpretations of the History of Culture (Tübingen, 1989), 82-96 (Tatian). Guy Stroumsa, Barbarian Philosophy: The Religious Revolution of Early Christianity (Tübingen, 1999) is leaning again more in Kukula’s direction (as discussed earlier) while Kendra Eshleman, The Social World of Intellectuals in the Roman Empire (Cambridge, 2012), 177-258 (195, 200, 210 and 219 on Tatian) has recently revisited the same material and interpreted it in terms of intellectual self-fashioning and the creation of succession narratives. 20 Tatian’s historical-chronological account in or. 31 and 36-41 is the first serious such engagement among early Christian authors; see for this Martin Wallraff, ‘The Beginnings of Christian Universal History. From Tatian to Julius Africanus’, ZAC 14 (2011), 540-55, 543-4.

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also bring to bear the contribution of Greek Paideia’.21 Often, the latter happened only implicitly, e.g. in a display of Greek rhetorical competence, a demonstration of Paideia, in which Greek culture was, however, explicitly attacked and rejected – as is the case in Tatian’s oration.22 There was a dynamic at work here. Sooner or later, depending on the region, Greek (the language and the culture) would recede and disappear. Latin, for example, would become dominant in the West, Syriac would rise in the East.23 Both traditions would still be modelled on Greek Paideia, but they would have cut the umbilical cord. For the moment, however, in Syrian Antioch in the mid-170s,24 the time and place in which Tatian’s oration was completed and began to circulate, Tatian expresses himself in Greek while promoting ‘barbarian’ Paideia including philosophy, wisdom, literature and doctrines.25 He defines his ‘barbarianism’ against his ‘Greekness’, yet by doing so he is not suppressing the latter but transforming it. In a way he is grafting his Greekness on to his barbarian identity. For example, he does not deliberately lower his rhetorical standards or restrict his ability to make sophisticated literary allusions or to be creative with his language.26 However, he enters a process in which he imports biblical content into his speech, at first alongside Classical elements, where they may sometimes sit uncomfortably, accentuating the ‘clash of cultures’; but gradually, one would have to expect, these Classical elements would recede more and more and the language as a whole would transform. ‘Barbarian’ content would increasingly replace what Tatian perceived as ‘decadent’, ‘perverse’ and ‘pagan’ and replace it with what would be, in his view, a ‘nobler’, ‘barbarian, wisdom and philosophy’. 21 H. Dörrie, ‘Zur Wertung der Barbaren im Urteil der Griechen’ (1972), 173: ‘… bei voller Anerkennung der kulturellen Leistung der Barbaren das, was hellenische παιδεῖα beigetragen hatte, zu angemessener Geltung zu bringen’. 22 Compare for this the ending of the oration, where Tatian says, or. 42.1: … γεννηθεὶς μὲν τῇ τῶν Ἀσσυρίων γῇ, παιδευθεὶς δὲ πρῶτον μὲν τὰ ὑμέτερα, δεύτερον δὲ ἅτινα νῦν κηρύττειν ἐπαγγέλομαι. – ‘Born in the land of the Assyrians I was first educated in your Paideia, then, however, in that [i.e. the barbarian one, Christianity] which to proclaim I now come to announce myself’. 23 For the latter see the seminal article by Han J.W. Drijvers, ‘Facts and Problems in Early Syriac-Speaking Christianity’, The Second Century 2 (1982), 157-75, 172-4 (on Tatian). 24 For the date and location of Tatian’s oration see Josef Lössl, ‘Date and Location of Tatian’s Oratio ad Graecos. Some old and new thoughts’, SP 74 (2016), 43-56. 25 Tatian, or. 1.1 (δόγματα); 31.1 (wisdom); 35.2 (philosophy); 42.1 (philosophy); see also W. Speyer and I. Opelt, ‘Barbar’ (2001), 851-4. 26 As examples of such features see e.g. or. 1.5 his expression of disparagement for Greek Paideia by referring to it as ἐπιφυλλίδες καὶ στωμύλματα, χελιδόνων μουσεῖα, λωβηταὶ τέχνης, ‘left-over grapes and gossip, swallow-twittering schools and destroyers of art’, expressions taken from Aristophanes, Ran. 92-93; word-plays such as φιλόψοφοι / φιλόσοφοι (‘noise-lovers / wisdom-lovers [philosophers]’) in or. 3.7, or entirely new word-creations such as γλωσσομανία (‘tongue madness’) in or. 3.6 for the way in which Cynics tended to distort language to trip up their opponents.

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Sometimes this process might take place almost imperceptibly, e.g. when a basic philosophical statement regarding God is cited from a biblical passage rather than a philosophical authority;27 or reasoning with biblical concepts is taking place while philosophical considerations (of a Stoic or Platonic nature) are also still expressed.28 The process is not necessarily always harmonious. There are signs of militancy that suggest a violent streak, e.g. when the audience is called upon to destroy sculptures representing mythical figures and themes.29 Can this be serious? After all, Tatian is speaking to ἄνδρες Ἕλληνες. In Late Antiquity the destruction of statues by Christians became more widespread. Now in the second century even the expression of the idea is exceptional and perhaps merely reflecting a wishful phantasy on the part of a wouldbe militant Christian.30 Still, it is disconcerting. Is Tatian turning out to be a barbarian in the modern sense, of a kind that destroys precious cultural heritage wholesale?31 E.g. Tatian, or. 4.3: … πνεῦμα ὁ θεός…; John 4:24. E.g. Tatian, or. 4.3 (and 4.4) the distinction between ‘hylic’ Pneuma and a Pneuma that exists beyond hylic reality, which resonates with contemporary views on Stoicism and Platonism; cf. e.g. Clement of Alexandria, protr. 66.3: The Stoics believe that ‘the divine’ (τὸ θεῖον) permeates matter entirely (διὰ πάσης ὕλης … διήκειν); Maximus of Tyre, or. 11.9d: The divine itself (τὸ θεῖον αὐτό) is invisible, ineffable and intangible (ἀόρατον … ἄρρητον … ἀναφές). 29 Tatian, or. 34.2: πῶς γὰρ … μὴ … συναπόλλυτε τῆς κακίας τὰ ὑπομνήματα; – ‘For how is it … that you do not … destroy the memorials of evil [scil. together with their creator, the sculptor Phythagoras]?’ This is about a sculpture representing the combat between Polyneikes and Eteokles, the sons of Oedipus, which Tatian perceives as a sick celebration of fratricide. In or. 35.1 Tatian claims to have himself seen this sculpture (and other sculptures mentioned in or.) in Rome. For a full list of the works of Pythagoras of Samos, 5th c. BCE, see Martin Weber, ‘Pythagoras I’, in Rainer Vollkommer (ed.), Künstlerlexikon der Antike. Über 3800 Künstler aus drei Jahrtausenden (Munich, 2001), 769-70. By ‘destroying’ the artist together with his creation Tatian may have meant Pythagoras’ memory, preserved in his work. Less likely he may have thought of a case in which a statue of the artist was displayed by (alongside) his work. In or. 35.1 Tatian claims to have seen (in Rome) the statues which he describes. 30 For a wider context of the passage see Peter Stewart, ‘The Destruction of Statues in Late Antiquity’, in Richard Miles (ed.), Constructing Identities in Late Antiquity (London, 1999), 15989, 172-81, especially 179 on the destruction of statues representing pagan gods as a wishful phantasy among Christians. Note, however, that the statue to which Tatian refers is not even a cultic statue of a deity. On the other hand, in the late 2nd or early 3rd c. the pagan philosopher Kelsos (frg. 8.41a) seems to refer to actual ‘attacks’ by Christians of pagan statues when he berates Christians for their cowardice in being disrespectful against statues of Dionysos and Herakles, who could not defend themselves; though he could just have referred to Christians refusing to worship statues; note for example or. 4.1 Tatian’s complaint about being hated for merely refusing to share some people’s customs (καὶ εἰ μὴ τοῖς τινων νομίμοις συγχρῆσθαι βούλομαι, … μεμίσημαι); there is no hint that Tatian actively disrupted those ‘customs’, he merely wanted to abstain; see Horacio E. Lona, Die wahre Lehre des Kelsos (Freiburg, 2005), 446-7; also J. Lössl, ‘Sprachlich-ästhetische Darstellung’ (2012), 214-6. 31 He is certainly occasionally seen as one. Kathy L. Gaca, ‘Driving Aphrodite from the World. Tatian’s Encratite Principles of Sexual Renunciation’, JTS 53 (2002), 28-52, for example, depicts Tatian as a rabid Encratite who singularly overthrew the treasured cultural heritage of Aphrodite worship in his time. Gaca probably overstates Tatian’s Encratite tendencies and readiness 27 28

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Paideia, education, also leads to formation, including the formation of identity, the development of self over against an ‘other’, barbarian vs. Greek, Christian vs. pagan. Tatian was the product of a world, the ‘world of the Second Sophistic’,32 in which it was possible for non-Greeks to acquire Greek Paideia and use it to promote their non-Greek causes thereby performing ‘multiple identities’.33 Tatian was, according to his own testimony, an Assyrian, trained in Greek Paideia, yet converted to the barbarian wisdom after reading barbarian writings, a tax-paying Roman, a travelling art-critic, a religious thrill-seeker dabbling in esoteric cults, and a teacher of philosophy.34 Thus research has come a long way since the beginning of the 20th century, when Adolf Hilgenfeld and Richard Kukula thought of an ‘educational’ and a ‘religious’ understanding of Tatian’s use of ‘barbarian’ as mutually exclusive. Martin Elze’s interpretation of the concept as a cultural stereotype, too, was superseded in recent decades by a more integrated approach that takes into account as many aspects as possible of the varied culture of the Hellenistic and early Post-Hellenistic period including religion, education, philosophy, history, sculpture and many others. After looking briefly at how Tatian’s use of ‘Greek’ and ‘barbarian’ has been studied in the past century we will now move on to explore a number of aspects of Tatian’s use of the word ‘barbarian’ in his oration including a) his understanding of barbarians as inventors of Greek culture, b) his warning to his audience that a loss of quality in the use of the Greek language will lead to a loss of cultural identity, c) his criticism of the Greek cultural-literary establishment, which in his view has failed to prevent social decline, d) his outline of a to engage in violent action as well as his influence on the culture of his day and even the popularity of the Aphrodite cult in his time. 32 For this expression see Barbara E. Borg (ed.), Paideia. The World of the Second Sophistic (Berlin, 2004); for further reflections and further literature on the Second Sophistic, Josef Lössl, ‘Religion in the Hellenistic and Early Post-Hellenistic Era’, in Josef Lössl and Nicholas BakerBrian (eds), A Companion to Religion in Late Antiquity (Hoboken, NJ, 2018), 33-59, especially 45-50. For the expression ‘Post-Hellenistic’, George R. Boys-Stones, Post-Hellenistic Philosophy (Oxford, 2001); for an argument to think of the period between Alexander the Great and the end of the age of the Antonines (ca. 180 CE) as one, Hellenistic, era, see now A. Chaniotis, Age of Conquests (2019), introduction. 33 Christopher Jones, ‘Multiple Identities in the Age of the Second Sophistic’, in B. Borg, Paideia (2004), 13-21; see also Marco Galli, ‘Paideia e religione nella Seconda Sophistica’, in B. Borg, Paideia (2004), 315-56; compare now also Emma Dench, ‘Ethnicity, Culture and Identity’, in Daniel S. Richter and William A. Johnson (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the Second Sophistic (Oxford, 2017), 99-114. 34 Tatian, or. 42.1 (Assyrian, trained in Greek Paideia); 29.2 (converted to barbarian philosophy after reading barbarian scriptures); 35.1 (widely travelled, trained as a Sophist, seen and studied by himself many Greek sculptures displayed in Rome); 29.1 (widely travelled, witnessed many different cultural practices, participated in mystery cults [μυστηρίων μεταλαβών], been able to investigate religious rites); 32.1 and 33.1 (teaches philosophy for free to rich and poor, old women and young men).

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new kind of Paideia inspired by ‘barbarian’ religion, e) his singling out of the Scythian Anacharsis as a model barbarian founder of religion, f) his ‘metaphysical’ underpinning of his vision and setting out a spiritual pathway for barbarian Paideia, and g) his overarching argument that the superior age and ethical ‘purity’ of the barbarian religion may provide the historical and cultural basis for the revitalisation and renewal of Greek Paideia and its provision with a new perspective. 2. ‘Greek’ and ‘Barbarian’ in the Text of Tatian’s Oratio ad Graecos a) Barbarians as inventors of Greek culture Tatian begins his oration with a plea (μὴ πάνυ φιλέχθρως διατίθεσθε – ‘please, do not be so overly hatefully disposed towards…’) to his Greek audience (ἄνδρες Ἕλληνες) not to hate the barbarians so much (πάνυ) and not to be so disparaging towards their doctrines (μηδὲ φθονήσητε τοῖς τοῦτων δόγμασιν) for the simple reason that many of the most impressive achievements of Greek culture are of barbarian origin.35 He then lists altogether nineteen inventions: divination with the help of dreams, stars, bird flight and intestines, astronomy, magic, geometry, writing, poetry, song, mysteries, sculpture, historiography, chronology, playing the aulos, the syrinx and the trumpet, metalwork and the writing of letters.36 Therefore, the Greeks, he concludes, have no reason to be overly haughty over against the barbarians, whom they have so much to thank for. At this point Tatian is using the concept of ‘the barbarian’ in a largely traditional, cultural and ethnic meaning. It will only be later in the oration that he will come up with a more narrow, biblical, and ultimately Christian meaning of the concept.37 As Martin Elze has noted,38 there is even a tension between the listing of ‘barbarians’ as inventors here in or. 1.1-2 and the emphasis on the superiority of the ‘barbarian’ (i.e. biblical, Jewish-Christian) culture in or. 31-41; for in or. 1.1-2 there is no mention of the Jews (or Hebrews), while some of the ethnicities listed are in fact Greeks, or close relatives of the Greeks.39 It seems that in or. 1.1-2 the later agenda of ‘the barbarian’ as ‘the biblical’, Jewish and/or Christian, does not yet play a role, at least not centrally. 35 Tatian, or. 1.1: … ποῖον γὰρ ἐπιτήδευμα παρ᾽ ὑμῖν τὴν σύστασιν οὐκ ἀπὸ βαρβάρων ἐκτήσατος; ‘for which of your cultural achievements/techniques has not originally been invented by barbarians?’ 36 Tatian, or. 1.1-2. 37 Especially in or. 29.2 (see above notes 12 and 34), where he professes to have converted to a form of ‘barbarian wisdom’ after reading ‘barbarian writings’. 38 Elze, Tatian (1960), 39. 39 See for these observations also Klaus Thraede, ‘Erfinder II’, RAC 5 (1962), 1191-278, 1251 and Johannes Geffcken, Zwei griechische Apologeten (Leipzig, 1907), 106-7.

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When we look at the list of ethnicities named in or. 1.1-2, we observe that they might have been arranged in geographical order: Telmessians, Carians, Phrygians, Isaurians, Cyprians, Babylonians, Persians, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Etruscans, Tyrrhenians and Cyclopes. The list begins at the west coast of Asia Minor, then goes east via Cyprus to Babylonia, Persia, Egypt, the land of the Phoenicians, which includes of course North Africa and southern Spain, and from there to Italy and Sicily (the putative home of the mythical Cyclopes), a clockwise trip around the Mediterranean. To what extent Tatian depends here on a literary Vorlage is not certain, although it is likely that he used such a list, or a combination of lists.40 It is not impossible that the geographical order of the list is deliberate on Tatian’s part,41 notwithstanding his scepticism regarding geography and its limitations;42 but the ordering of topographical items (places) along possible (or even real) travel routes was a very ancient device;43 and to the extent that Tatian himself had ‘travelled much of the earth’, as he claims in or. 35.1 (πολλὴν δὲ ἐπιφοιτήσας γῆν), he may well have had a relatively accurate spatial vision of the Mediterranean world – and especially of the area between Syria and Rome – and reasonably good knowledge of its historical (and mythical) geography.44 What may have been Tatian’s intention to present his ‘catalogue of inventors’ in this way? It has been observed that in it he did not too sharply separate between Greek and ‘barbarian’ inventors.45 Maybe that was precisely Tatian’s thinking. If the two concepts, ‘Greek’ and ‘barbarian’, include religious as well as cultural connotations, then perhaps they were not intended to be diametrically opposed. With the oration now widely seen as a protreptic46 it is imaginable 40

Compare the brief discussion in J. Lössl, ‘Bildung? Welche Bildung?’ (2007), 134 n. 26. None of the known possible sources contains the entire list as rendered by Tatian, but only individual items; see e.g. Pliny the Elder, nat. 7.203; 30.6; Herodotus 1.78.84; Cicero, diu. 1.91; Arrian, anab. 2.3.3. For the genre of ‘lists of inventions/inventors’ see Martin Kremmer, De catalogis heurematum (Leipzig, 1890). 41 Therefore it cannot be said that it is completely random; against K. Thraede, ‘Erfinder’ (1962), 1252. 42 Tatian, or. 20.5: Geographers, thus Tatian, were forced to speculate about those areas that were on the periphery of the known world, which could not be travelled (e.g. seas, deserts, arctic areas etc.). 43 See Wolfgang Kullmann, ‘Festgehaltene Kenntnisse im Schiffskatalog und im Troerkatalog der Ilias’, in Wolfgang Kullmann and Jochen Althoff (eds), Vermittlung und Tradierung von Wissen in der griechischen Kultur (Tübingen, 1993), 129-47. On ‘linear geography’ including ethnographic excursus see also Yuval Shahar, Josephus Geographicus: The Classical Context of Geography in Josephus (Tübingen, 2004), 39-48, 41. 44 See or. 35.1 for his claim to have travelled much of the earth. On the kind of geographical vision generally prevalent in his time Christian Hänger, Die Welt im Kopf. Raumbilder und Strategie im römischen Kaiserreich (Göttingen, 2001) and Scott F. Johnson, Literary Territories. Cartographical Thinking in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2016). 45 According to K. Thraede, ‘Erfinder’ (1962), 1252 the list would have been more effective if it had contained barbarian names only. But maybe Tatian’s vagueness was deliberate. 46 For an overview of literature on the genre of Tatian’s oration, see J. Lössl, ‘Bildung?’ (2007), 135 n. 30.

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that Tatian’s aim with his list of ‘barbarian’ inventors was not to antagonize his addressees but rather to point to the affinity between the two cultural strands and to invite the latter to stop hating the barbarians and their doctrines, as he says right at the beginning of his speech. Even if they were not inclined to change their ways directly as a result of his oration, he surmises in or. 1.3, they should at least take into consideration evidence provided by disinterested third party sources and not just rely on their own biased people.47 b) The decline of the Greek language and the loss of Greek identity The need for reliable parameters regarding reality and truth is another important point in Tatian’s argument. It comes especially to the fore in his discussions on language. Tatian regards the way in which Greeks currently use their language as problematic. It reflects, he argues, their inner strife (στάσις),48 i.e., ultimately, their lack of identity. In light of their many dialects it is even unclear, he bemoans, whom one can call a Greek (ἀπορῶ τίνα με δεῖ καλεῖν Ἕλληνα). What is ‘craziest of all’ (ἀτοπώτατον), especially since Greeks do not even acknowledge this, they love to ‘contaminate’ their language with ‘barbarisms’ (βαρβαρικαὶ φωναί). Since these create misunderstandings, the language runs a serious risk to deteriorate to an incomprehensible mishmash, he concludes.49 It might seem as if Tatian here takes a negative view of ‘the barbarian’. But it is not the barbarian element in the Greek language which he condemns but some Greeks’ attitude of using it surreptitiously instead of acknowledging openly the ‘barbarian’ contribution to Greek culture (on which he just elaborated in or. 1.1-3) and thus to develop a more reality-based attitude to their own culture and language. In a certain sense Tatian is sympathetic of Classical Greek culture and takes a conservative view: If, thus he seems to imply, ancient Greek culture had remained true to itself, then it might be justified to reject ‘barbarian’ culture. But since it has already been influenced by the latter, it would do better to take a realistic look at itself and to acknowledge its own inadequacy in its present form and its reliance upon renewal and reform with the help of ‘barbarian’ culture.

47 Tatian, or. 1.3: … οἵτινες ὑφ᾽ ὑμῶν αὐτῶν ἐπαινούμενοι συνηγόρους τοὺς οἴκοι κέκτησθε. χρὴ δὲ τὸν νοῦν ἔχοντα τὴν ἀφ᾽ ἑτέρων περιμένειν μαρτυρίαν… 48 See for this and what follows Tatian, or. 1.4. 49 Note that in or. 26.8 Tatian argues the exact opposite and observes many Greeks’ preference for the Attic dialect as the purest and most educated version of Greek; see for this also Lawrence Kim, ‘Atticism and Asianism’, in Daniel S. Richter and William A. Johnson (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the Second Sophistic (Oxford, 2017), 41-66. To write in praise or blame about language was a topos. Aelius Aristides, or. 1 wrote in praise of the Attic dialect, Lucian, Iud. voc. 6 wrote a polemic against the letter τ (again, in the context of the debate about Atticism).

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c) Failure of the Greek educational establishment to prevent cultural decline Tatian refers to his own biography to illustrate the problem as he sees it: He himself had once been quite excellent (πάνυ σεμνός) in Greek philosophy.50 But, he continues, he recognizes now that there is nothing ‘excellent’ (σεμνός) in what the famous Greek philosophers of the past represent.51 He does not hold back: Plato, he says, was too stupid to prove himself useful to the tyrant Dionysius of Syracuse, who consequently had him sold into slavery. Aristotle, stupid (ἀμαθῶς) as he was, introduced limits to divine providence, while his flattery of Alexander the Great, a man who locked up his friends in cages like animals and occasionally killed them in his drunken rages, showed a distinct lack of education (ἀπαιδεύτως). Heraclitus was proud of having taught himself (ἐμαυτὸν ἐδιδαξάμην). Is it possible that Tatian here deliberately misspelled the verb to suit his purpose? Elsewhere (in the dominant tradition) the fragment is transmitted as ἐμαυτὸν ἐδιζησάμεν, ‘I explored [or ‘sought’] myself’.52 It is obvious that here in his polemic against the Greek philosophers of old (or. 2.1-3.7) Tatian is amassing words related to teaching and learning. His aim is to highlight the stark contrast between the haughty claims made by figures of the establishment of Greek education and the poor, sometimes pathetic, reality. Usually, it was Christians who suffered accusations by pagan Greek writers for being uneducated.53 Here, Tatian is turning the tables. The ancient 50 Compare or. 2.1: … πάνυ σεμνός τις ἦν ἐν αὐτῇ, ‘one [= I, Tatian] was once quite outstanding in it [= Greek wisdom]’; and 42.1 (cited at n. 22). 51 Note that in or. 2.1 he uses the same word, σεμνός, to refer to these philosophers of old, but in an ironic way: τί γὰρ σεμνὸν φιλοσοφοῦντες ἐξηνένγκατε; similarly in or. 33,6: τί γὰρ ὑμῖν ἡ Γλαυκίππη σεμνὸν εἰσηγήσατο; and 34.1: πάνυ γοῦν σεμνὸς καὶ ὁ τύραννος Φάλαρις… 52 Heraclitus, frg. B 101 (DK). The source is Plutarch, c. Col. 1118C. Jaap Mansfeld, Die Vorsokratiker I (Stuttgart, 1983), 257 translates: ‘Ich beriet bei mir selbst’. Hermann Diels and Walther Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker I (Berlin, 1951), 173.10: ‘Ich durchforschte mich selbst’. Diels and Kranz continue that this is what Plutarch understood by γνῶθι σεαυτόν, B 116: ἀνθρώποισι πᾶσι μέτεστι γινώσκειν ἑαυτοὺς καὶ σωφρονεῖν, in contrast to A 1 §5 (Diog. Laert. 9.5): ἤκουσε τε οὐδενός, ἀλλ᾽ αὑτὸν ἔφη διζήσασθαι καὶ μαθεῖν πάντα… But note that even in this last passage, where διζήσασθαι seems to be understood in a similar sense as in Tatian, the word used is διζήσασθαι. It is thus just possible to assume that Tatian might have replaced δίζημαι with διδάσκομαι. On the other hand, Heraclitus’ autodidacticism (his claim to being αὐτοδίδακτον) and, owing to that, the ‘darkness’ of his philosophy as well as his arrogance were a widespread topos; see e.g. Diog. Laert. 9.3-5 on his death and his autodidacticism; also Gerard J.P. O’Daly, ‘Heraklit’, RAC 14 (1988), 583-602 at 593. Hermann Wiese, Heraklit bei Klemens von Alexandrien (Diss. Kiel, 1963), 115 points out that other philosophers, too, including Plato, were thought of as autodidacts, or as promoting autodidacticism. Further discussion in J. Lössl, ‘Bildung?’ (2007), 139 n. 42. Ironically, some modern scholars referred to Tatian himself as ‘dark’ in the sense of ‘obscure;’ e.g. J. Geffcken, Zwei griechische Apologeten (1907), 107. 53 Tatian may have formulated his polemics in direct response to such accusations of ἀμαθία, e.g. by Galen or Kelsos. For relevant passages in the work of the latter see H. Lona, Die wahre

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Greek philosophers were haughty and stupid. No more so is this underlined by Heraclitus’ end. Heraclitus’ death, self-inflicted because of his stubborn insistence on an unworkable cure for a disease from which he suffered, was a direct result of his arrogance and stupidity.54 d) A new kind of Paideia inspired by ‘barbarian’ religion Following his rant against the ancient Greek philosophers Tatian now turns to his own teachings, on God, Logos, creation (or. 5-7) and on how human beings have perverted these teachings into a cult to fate (εἱμαρμένη) by worshipping the ‘first-born angel’ as God and allowing his ‘host’ of demons (= the pagan gods) to rule the world (or. 8-11). From or. 12 onwards he outlines as an alternative to this cult of Heimarmene a path that could be called one of ‘barbarian Paideia’, ‘barbarian’ here now understood in the sense of ‘biblical’ as well as ‘spiritual’ (‘Pneumatic’).55 Tatian postulates two types of πνεύματα in the human being, a higher and a lower one, the higher being the divine Pneuma, the lower one the human soul (ψυχή);56 the human soul is mortal.57 Only when linked to the divine Pneuma, ‘God’s image and likeness’ (Gen. 1:26), the human being is immortal. Now the human being, thus Tatian, was created immortal, but s/he lost her immortality when turning away from God and worshipping the first demon. At that moment the divine Pneuma withdrew from the human being.58 However, a spark of its power (ἔναυσμά τι τῆς δυνάμεως αὐτοῦ) was retained and even re-lit in those souls who obey God’s wisdom.59 This prospect, thus Tatian, of achieving immortality by embarking on this philosophical journey of barbarian wisdom is open to the Greeks, too, courtesy of the barbarian tradition: ‘As worldly things are not hidden from us barbarians thus the divine will be revealed to you Greeks as well, namely when the power of God, who makes the souls immortal, will come over you’.60

Lehre (2005), 82, 96-7, 198-200, 215-8, 416. On Galen see now Rebecca Flemming, ‘Galen and the Christians: Texts and Authority in the Second Century AD’, in James Carleton Paget and Judith Lieu (eds), Christianity in the Second Century. Themes and Developments (Cambridge, 2017), 171-87. 54 Tatian, or. 3.2: τούτου μὲν οὖν τὴν ἀμαθίαν ὁ θάνατος συνήλεγξεν. 55 For a more elaborate discussion of these sections (or. 7-11) see J. Lössl, ‘Bildung?’ (2007), 139-41. 56 Tatian, or. 12.1. 57 Tatian, or. 13.1. 58 Tatian, or. 7.5. 59 Tatian, or. 13.4. 60 Tatian, or. 16.4: ἀλλ᾽ οὔτε ἡμᾶς τὰ ἐν κόσμῳ λέληθε, καὶ ὑμῖν εὐκατάληπτον ἔσται τὸ θεῖον, τῆς ἀπαθανατιζούσης τὰς ψυχὰς θεοῦ δυνάμεως ὑμῖν προσελθούσης. H.-B. Nesselrath, Gegen falsche Götter (2016), 68 postulates a lacuna between ψυχὰς and ὑμῖν. We have in this

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What Tatian refers to as ‘barbarian’ here, the biblical message, is open to the Greeks as well, as it builds on the same, human, foundations. Earlier on he had said that what distinguishes human beings from all other animals is articulate language.61 This is also the basis of the Greek concept of Paideia. But the divine Pneuma, which is transmitted through the barbarian (i.e. biblical) tradition, adds to this ‘God’s image and likeness’ and immortality. Tatian offers this to his Greek audience as Paideia with added value. The only obstacle for them is their pride. Concerned that his pagan readers or listeners might consider it below their dignity to be educated (παιδεύεσθαι) by adherents of a barbarian tradition he reminds them that their ancestors, too, had not considered it unworthy to listen to the teachings of the Scythian Anacharsis.62 If they did not chase him away, Tatian adds, could they not make use of the teachings of ‘our Paideia’ (τὰ τῆς ἡμέτερας παιδείας), too, even if only tentatively, as if they were some exciting new, exotic, such as Babylonian astrology, when in reality it was so much more than cosmic teaching? e) The traditional role of ‘the barbarian’ as a founder of Greek religion That Tatian at this point refers to the Scythian Anacharsis is interesting. To be sure, he only briefly alludes to him and the reference should therefore not be over-interpreted.63 However, even this brief allusion would have triggered associations among the educated in Tatian’s audience. The figure of the wise barbarian can also be found elsewhere in early Christian literature.64 Tertullian in particular expresses admiration for the noble Scythian who preferred the philosophical life to that of a king.65 Now Tatian in his brief allusion refers to a very specific aspect of the Anacharsis legend, Anacharsis’ role as an importer of a foreign religion to his homeland and his stance as a confessor and potentially even a martyr for that religion. According to the legend, Anacharsis, a Scythian of royal descent, visited Greece in the early 6th century BCE. As a foreigner he attracted not only admiration but also opprobrium because of his dress and manner. On the way back home he became attached to the cult of Cybele, which he tried to establish case followed other editors who suggested θεοῦ δυνάμεως, or at least δυνάμεως, as the most likely expressions that would have filled this gap. 61 Tatian, or. 15.5. 62 Tatian, or. 12.10: καὶ οἱ τὸν Σκύθην Ἀνάχαρσιν μὴ ἀποσκορακίζοντες καὶ νῦν μὴ ἀναξιοπαθήσητε παρὰ τοῖς βαρβαρικῇ νομοθεσίᾳ παρακολουθοῦσι παιδεύεσθαι. For further references and literature on this topic see above n. 12. 63 Thus J. Geffcken, Zwei griechische Apologeten (1907), 111-2. 64 See Clement of Alexandria, strom. 1.16.72.1; Claudius Mamertinus, stat. anim. 2.8; Theodoret, affect. 1.25; John Chrysostom, oppugn. 3 (PG 47, 367); cf. Jan Fredrik Kindstrand, Anacharsis. The Legend (Lund, 1981), 31-2. 65 Tertullian, pall. 5.1: an aliter mutavit Anacharsis, cum regno Scythiae philosophiam praevertit.

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in Scythia, against local resistance. As a result of his efforts he was supposedly murdered.66 It has been suggested that this legend might reflect a counter-factual memory of the introduction of the Cybele cult in Athens by a μητραγύρτης, a wandering and begging ascetic, who was also reported to have suffered persecution and perhaps even murder at the hands of unacommodating Athenians.67 Herodotus describes Anacharsis performing the rites of Cybele using drums and amulets, paraphernalia that were also associated with Scythian shamans.68 Despite its brevity Tatian’s reference is poignant in that it emphasizes that the Greeks did not ‘chase away’ Anacharsis, despite his barbarian looks, manners and religious attitudes. The strong expression, μὴ ἀποσκορακίζοντες (ἀποσκορακίζειν means ‘to wish someone far away’, ‘curse’ or ‘damn someone’), is in line with the many other references Tatian uses to refer to the rejection or even hate (μισεῖν) the Greeks frequently expressed against barbarians and their teachings.69 God (as worshipped by the barbarians, i.e. Jews and Christians), thus Tatian, will reveal himself to the Greeks, too, once his power (i.e. his spirit) has come over them.70 To be able to receive him the Greeks need to be prepared and educated. But judging by what Tatian says about Anacharsis in or. 12.10 this education will not be provided by enlightened teachers and philosophers but by people similar to Anacharsis, Scythian shamans and Babylonian diviners. It is to such people that Tatian compares himself here: If only, he wishes, the Greeks would make use of his barbarian teachings in the way they make use of Babylonian divination (χρῆσασθε τοῖς δόγμασιν ἡμῶν κἂν ὡς τῇ κατὰ Βαβυλωνίους προγνωστικῇ), then the influence of the demons (described in or. 8-11) could at last be pushed back.71 His point is not that his teachings is like that of the Babylonian diviners but that the Greeks’ interest in weird and 66

Herodotus 4.76. J.F. Kindstrand, Anacharsis (1981), 16. 68 Herodotus 4.76; compare also Clement of Alexandria, protr. 2.24.1; J.F. Kindstrand, Anacharsis (1981), 21-2. 69 See e.g. or. 1.1; 2.2; 3.7; 4.1; 9.7; 11.1; 25.5 and passim. 70 Tatian, or. 16.4: ἀλλ᾽ οὔτε ἡμᾶς τὰ ἐν κόσμῳ λέληθε, καὶ ὑμῖν εὐκατάληπτον ἔσται τὸ θεῖον, τῆς ἀπαθανατιζούσης τὰς ψυχὰς θεοῦ δυνάμεως ὑμῖν προσελθούσης, potentially alluding to 1Cor. 1:24: … Ἰουδαίοις τε καὶ Ἕλλησιν … θεοῦ δύναμιν… 71 Tatian, or. 12.10: καὶ οἱ τὸν Σκύθην Ἀνάχαρσιν μὴ ἀποσκορακίζοντες καὶ νῦν μὴ ἀναξιοπαθήσητε παρὰ τοῖς βαρβαρικῇ νομοθεσίᾳ παρακολουθοῦσι παιδεύεσθαι. Χρήσασθε τοῖς δόγμασιν ἡμῶν κἂν ὡς τῇ κατὰ Βαβυλωνίους προγνωστικῇ· κατακούσατε λεγόντων ἡμῶν κἂν ὡς δρυὸς μαντευομένης. καὶ τὰ μὲν προειρημένα παραφόρων δαιμόνων ἐστὶν ἀντισοφιστεύματα, τὰ δὲ τῆς ἡμετέρας παιδείας ἐστὶν ἀνωτέρω τῆς κοσμικῆς καταλήψεως. ‘And you, who did not chase away the Scythian Anacharsis, do not be upset now as if it was unworthy to receive Paideia from those who follow a barbarian way of life. Rather, use our teachings, if only as if they were some kind of Babylonian divination. Listen to our speech, if only as if to a talking oak. Such things as I just mentioned are sophistic deceptions caused by wayward demons. But what our [= barbarian] Paideia is about is beyond the comprehension of this world’. 67

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exotic religions could give him a chance to captivate them just enough to inspire them for what is actually worth pursuing.72 f) The ‘power of the Logos’ behind the barbarian educational programme At the moment, however, thus Tatian, ‘following the power of the Logos’,73 which is de facto his educational principle, is a maxim that is lost on the Greeks. Their culture and Paideia are in the process of disintegrating. Their philosophers are hypocrites, like the pederast Crescens, who attacked and betrayed Justin, that ‘herald of the truth’,74 and handed him over to be killed, him who had exposed him as lecherous and avaricious.75 Divination, thus Tatian, is a worthy technique for such a culture of decay, as is the craziness of ecstatic prophecy, very much in difference to biblical prophecy, which leads to faith and insight: ὁ πιστεύων ἐπιγνώσεται.76 Greek philosophy, thus Tatian, cannot offer such insight, as there is in fact no such thing as Greek philosophy, but only schools who contradict each other.77 No insight there. Worse still, in their envy the Greeks, thus Tatian, hate him because he follows God’s Logos. The educated Greeks give false witness against him (ψευδομάρτυρες οἱ πεπαιδευμένοι γεγόνατε).78 Their charge of cannibalism against the Christians falls back on them, whose myths are full of instances of cannibalism.79 72 Tatian several times refers to the need ‘to pursue that which is truly serious’, i.e. that which should ‘really’ be pursued: or. 3.6: ζητεῖν τὸ κατ᾽ ἀλήθειαν σπουδαῖον, or or. 29.2 (referring to his conversion): περινοοῦντι δε μοι τὰ σπουδαία (‘pondering what the things are that I ought to pursue’). Judging by the last phrases of or. 12.10 (and by or. 5-7) he means by this the philosophical study of a transcendent God and his relationship to the world and to humanity. 73 Tatian, or. 18.5: λόγου δυνάμει κατακολούθησον. 74 Cf. Tatian, or. 17.1-3; for further reflection on this important concept in Tatian’s oration (κῆρυξ τῆς ἀληθείας) see J. Lössl, ‘Bildung?’ (2007), 144 n. 71; also Josef Lössl, ‘Hermeneutics and Doctrine of God in Tatian’s Ad Graecos’, SP 45 (2010), 409-12. 75 Tatian, or. 19.2: … ὡς καὶ Ἰουστῖνον καθάπερ καὶ ἐμὲ … τῷ θανάτῳ περιβαλεῖν πραγματεύσασθαι, διότι κηρύττων τὴν ἀλήθειαν λίχνους τοὺς φιλοσόφους καὶ ἀπατεῶνας τοὺς φιλοσόφους συνήλεγχεν. – ‘… that he made an effort to have Justin as well as myself … killed … because Justin was a herald of truth and exposed the philosophers as gluttons and cheats’. On Justin’s death see now Jörg Ulrich, Justin. Apologien (Freiburg, 2019), 18-41, especially 27-8. 76 Tatian, or. 19.10. With this statement Tatian can be counted among those early Christian teachers who aimed to establish the study of theology as a quasi-academic pursuit; see for this Josef Lössl, ‘Theology as Academic Discourse in Greco-Roman Late Antiquity’, JLARC 10 (2016), 38-72, especially 52 n. 48. 77 Tatian, or. 25.3-4. 78 Tatian, or. 25.5. 79 Ibid. The charge of cannibalism was a topos of early anti-Christian polemic; for an overview see Andrew B. McGowan, ‘Eating People. Accusations of Cannibalism against Christians in the Second Century’, JECS 2 (1994), 413-42. For Tatian’s retort that the Greeks should look for it in their own tradition see also Albert Henrichs, ‘Pagan Ritual and the Alleged Crimes of the Early Christians’, in Patrick Granfield and Josef A. Jungmann (eds), Kyriakon. Festschrift Johannes Quasten (Münster, 1970), 18-35.

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Similarly, their use of language discussed in or. 26.1-8: In the name of waging a war against the barbarians the Greeks fight a war of pronunciation. ‘Tell me’, Tatian asks, ‘why, as a non-Athenian, you speak Attic? Why not Doric? Why does the latter appear more barbarian to you than the former…?’80 Also, why do the same people who cling to their Paideia and tolerate Diagoras’ atheism and Apion’s criticism of Egyptian religion persecute the barbarian religion of Tatian?81 Ultimately, however, Tatian’s plea is not for tolerance. For him the coexistence of clashing legal and ethical systems which are meant to be tolerated only leads to more confusion and conflict. What he would prefer is the unification of all human beings under one law and one ruler.82 g) Old age and health of barbarian religion as a basis for a renewal of Greek Paideia For Tatian, the main proof for the superiority of the barbarian tradition is its age. In or. 31 and 36-41 he sets out to demonstrate just how old it is in comparison with its Greek counterpart. His frame of reference is the age of Moses and Homer. Barbarian wisdom (βάρβαρος σοφία, or. 31.1), thus his initial assumption, is older than scriptural culture. It precedes the invention of writing. Regarding Homer the experts cannot agree on his age,83 but Tatian, it seems, believes that Homer already belongs to the age of writing.84 At this point (or. 33-4) Tatian interrupts his proof from antiquity and argues that the barbarian philosophy which he promotes is not only more ancient but also more humane than Greek Paideia because it teaches respect for God’s commandments. For example, it is not only accessible to the rich but also to the poor, even to old women and young men.85 The Greeks, thus Tatian, not only failed in this respect, they even mocked the Christians for this.86 In his opinion the Greek Tatian, or. 26.8: εἰ γὰρ Ἀττικίζεις οὐκ ὢν Ἀθηναῖος, λέγε μοι τοῦ μὴ Δωρίζειν τὴν αἰτίαν· πῶς τὸ μὲν εἶναι σοι δοκεῖ βαρβαρικώτερον, τὸ δὲ πρὸς τὴν ὁμιλίαν ἱλαρώτερον; 81 Tatian, or. 27.2-5. For the well-known story of the atheist poet and sophist Diagoras of Melos (ca. 475-415 BCE), who was condemned to death by the Athenians for desecrating the Eleusinian Mysteries but later escaped and remained a renowned author until Tatian’s days see the testimonies collected by Marek Winiarczyk, Diagorae Melii et Theodori Cyrenaei reliquiae (Leipzig, 1981) and the notes in H.-G. Nesselrath, Gegen falsche Götter (2016), 89 and 162 nn. 421-424. On Apion, ibid. 163 n. 427. 82 Tatian, or. 29.1-3, especially 29.2 on the principle of τῶν ὅλων τὸ μοναρχικόν; cf. also or. 28.1: … μίαν μὲν γὰρ ἐχρῆν εἶναι καὶ κοινὴν ἁπάντων τὴν πολιτείαν. ‘For there ought to be only one way of life that is common to all’. 83 Tatian, or. 31.6: καὶ περὶ μὲν τῶν χρόνων τοῦ … Ὁμήρου … στάσεώς τε … καὶ ἀσυμφωνίας… 84 Tatian, or. 31.1: … παλαίτατον … ποιητῶν καὶ ἱστορικῶν εἶναι… 85 Tatian, or. 32.2: … φιλοσοφοῦσί τε οὐ μόνον οἱ πλουτοῦντες ἀλλὰ καὶ οἱ πένητες προῖκα τῆς διδασκαλίας ἀπολαύουσιν … πρεσβύτιδες … μειράκια, πᾶσά τε … ἡλικία παρ᾽ ἡμῖν τυγχάνει τιμῆς… 86 Tatian, or. 33.1: οἱ γὰρ ἐν γυναιξὶ καὶ μειρακίοις παρθένοις τε καὶ πρεσβύταις φλυαρεῖν ὑμᾶς λέγοντες… And indeed, a pagan critic such as Kelsos (frg. 3.44) targeted the Christian 80

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view about women in society is inferior to that of the Christians: ‘Your Sappho’, he writes, ‘was but a sex-crazy prostitute, singing about her lust. “Our” women in contrast are all prudent. The girls are speaking about God-related utterances while sitting at the loom, in a more serious manner than “your girl”.’87 But Tatian does not only condemn what he perceives as forms of sexual excess and deviance in Greek culture, he also sees a tendency in that culture towards monstrosity and excess of any kind, as opposed to a ‘barbarian’ love of ‘the natural’, of ‘purity’, ‘clarity’, ‘straightness’ and ‘uprightness’. To illustrate this he lists a series of pagan works of art, mostly sculptures, who all represent (in his view) ‘monstrosities’ of one sort or another.88 We already mentioned (see above n. 29) the depiction of the fight between Polyneikes and Eteokles, sons of Oedipus, by Pythagoras of Samos, which Tatian saw as a sensationalist way of legitimising fratricide. Other themes of which he disapproved included the depiction of immoral women such as Sappho, or of tyrants such as Phalaris, who had entered folklore.89 It is true that representative art, especially sculpture, was a crucial element of the culture of the Second Sophistic.90 This included also, and especially, depictions of ‘monstrosities’ (mostly of mythological origin), sometimes in colossal formats and embedded in architecture and publicly accessible, e.g. in practice of teaching underprivileged persons, slaves, women, children, labourers of the lowest order; H. Lona, Die wahre Lehre (2005), 197. That pagan polemic was targeting certain groups of women and stereotyping them (poor women and their lack of education, old women and their superstition, young women and their naivety, simple women in connection with slaves and children) can also be found reflected in other apologies; e.g. Athenagoras, leg. 11.3; Minucius Felix, Oct. 8.4; 11.2; 13.5; see for this also Margaret Y. MacDonald, Early Christian Women and Pagan Opinion (Cambridge, 1996), 59-62. The polemic, therefore, is not against women generally but against women qua being members of specific social functions and ranks. It is, so to speak, a qualified, snobbish, form of misogyny. This is also reflected in the language. The pagan polemic does not speak neutrally, or respectfully, of ‘women’ (γυναίκες) and ‘children’ (παιδία) but of ‘lowlife women’ (γύναια) and ‘urchins’ (παιδάρια). Tatian counters this form of discrimination by deliberately using more chosen vocabulary, πρεσβύτιδες, μειράκια, πάρθενοι and γυναίκες. In a community context such labels could even be titles, especially πρεσβύτιδες and πάρθενοι, though in Tatian’s text this is not necessarily the case; see e.g. Ute Eisen, Amtsträgerinnen im frühen Christentum (Göttingen, 1996), 119-25 (on women presbyters). 87 Tatian, or. 33.5: … Σαπφὼ γύναιον πορνικὸν ἐρωτομανές, καὶ τὴν ἑαυτῆς ἀσέλγειαν ᾄδει· πᾶσαι δὲ αἱ παρ᾽ ἡμῖν σωφρονοῦσιν, καὶ περὶ τὰς ἠλακάτας αἱ παρθένοι τὰ κατὰ θεὸν λαλοῦσιν ἐκφωνήματα σπουδαιότερον τῆς παρ᾽ ὑμῖν παιδός. Clearly, Tatian too is stereotyping here. Interestingly, it was a woman to whom he alludes only in a hidden reference, in or. 3.6, the Cynic philosopher Hipparchia of Maroneia, who is supposed to have said that she would have considered her life wasted had she spent it, like other women, at the loom; cf. Diog. Laert. 6.98. For the context in Tatian’s oration, Josef Lössl, ‘Between Hipparchian Cynicism and Priscillian Montanism. Some notes on Tatian, or. 3.6’, VigChr 74 (2020), 84-107 at 93-106. 88 Tatian, or. 33.6-35.1. 89 On Phalaris see or. 34.1 and H.-G. Nesselrath, Gegen falsche Götter (2016), 175 n. 531. 90 See for this aspect Laura Nasrallah, Christian Responses to Art and Architecture. The Second Century Church amid the Spaces of Empire (Cambridge, 2010); and review by Josef Lössl, JTS 61 (2010), 771-3.

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fora, baths and libraries.91 Tatian, by the way, seems to share the underlying educational ideal, or seems to have used to share it in the past. In or. 35.1 he reports that he travelled much of the earth to practise Greek Sophistic (σοφιστεύσας τὰ ὑμέτερα) and that he saw the statues that he listed himself, in Rome. He thus wants to show that the knows how such works of art are usually critiqued and appreciated. He understands Sophistic. However, he does not agree with it. For him these images are not edifying, or a help to achieve his ideal of Paideia. On the contrary, they prevent him and those for whom he speaks of turning towards that which is truly serious (τὸ κατ᾽ ἀλήθειαν σπουδαίον, or. 34.9). This last expression reminds of or. 29.2, where Tatian described his own conversion by way of reading ‘barbarian writings’ as a discovery of what is really serious (τὰ σπουδαία). It is in the use of such texts (Scripture), to which he also refers in or. 32.1 and 33.5 (young and old men and women, children, listening to his lectures and young women talking about pronouncements regarding God while working the looms), that barbarian Paideia comes to its own. Hellenistic visual art in contrast, sculpture in particular, is no help. It merely helps to pervert and degrade its users by exposing them to monstrous, immoral sights, or it succeeds in causing – quite comprehensibly – outrage and offence among the audience and convincing them all the more of the need to adopt the barbarian model of Paideia. One might add here that in his criticism of Hellenistic art Tatian tends to apply the same stylistic means as those that are also familiar to his opponents. Thus he does not offer an alternative, ‘barbarian’, style, which would be more sober (and therefore also more boring) than that of his Greek counterparts. In his descriptions of the sculptures but also in his characterisations of persons he uses elements that are reminiscent of the Greek novel, of paradoxographic works such as Phlegon of Tralleis’ book of wonders, or of the satirical works of Lucian of Samosata.92 Yet again, other Christian apologists as well as later writers are known to have used a similar style.93 91 For examples see Ralf von den Hoff, ‘Horror and Amazement. Colossal mythological statue groups and the new rhetoric of images in late second and early third century Rome’, in B. Borg, Paideia (2004), 105-29. 92 Cf. Graham Anderson, The Second Sophistic. A Cultural Phenomenon in the Roman Empire (London, 1993), 157-70 (on the narrative style of the Second Sophistic); Simon Goldhill, ‘The Erotic Eye: Visual Stimulation and Cultural Conflict’, in id. (ed.), Being Greek Under Rome. Cultural Identity, the Second Sophistic and the Development of Empire (Cambridge, 2001), 184-93 (on Lucian); William Hansen, Phlegon of Tralles’ Book of Marvels (Exeter, 1996), 9-11 (on Phlegon); Massimo Fusillo, Heinz Hofmann and Albrecht Berger, ‘Novel’, in Brill’s New Pauly 9 (2006), especially on the heroic-virtuous depiction of women and on paradoxographic elements (e.g. magical realism), tendency towards the grotesk and graphic depictions of violence, including sexual violence, and illustration of inner moral conflicts and struggles. 93 References to sculptures and paintings depicting erotic and mythological scenes can be found in Clement of Alexandria, protr. 53.5; 57.3; 60.1-61.4; cf. Molly Myerowitz, ‘The Domestication of Desire. Ovid’s Parva Tabella and the Theater of Love’, in Amy Richlin (ed.), Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome (Oxford, 1992), 131-57; on Tertullian,

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It seems that Tatian inserted his catalogues of statues into his chronological proof from antiquity because he wanted to make sure to have drawn attention to his ethical concerns regarding Greek Paideia. This is also because he explained his conversion to the barbarian philosophy only rather late in the work (or. 29). In or. 35.1-2 he therefore explains himself again saying that he turned away from his life as a Sophist because he had had enough of the arrogance of the Romans and the nonsense of the Athenians.94 And in or. 35.4 he justifies himself again insisting that even the Sophists say that one can learn new things even in old age.95 He leaves no doubt that he regards the insertion of the lists of statues in or. 33-4 as a compositional necessity.96 Many modern scholars disagree, of course.97 Nevertheless, one has to see that these lists with their ultimately moralistic purpose are framed by a renewed personal statement, where Tatian justifies his own stance, i.e. why he turned away from Greek Sophistic and is now promoting barbarian Paideia. Then, from or. 36 to 41 Tatian returns for one final time to his proof from antiquity. Even if one assumed that Homer lived at the time of the Trojan war, he argues (which is, naturally, the earliest possible date), Moses lived much earlier, as can be shown from Babylonian, Phoenician and Egyptian historical sources.98 The argument is becoming a kind of inclusio to the opening of the oration. All known cultures (barbarian, of course), he continues, are far older than the Greek one, but Moses’ culture is by far the oldest. The Babylonians Berossus and Juba narrate events that were foretold by the biblical prophets. But this would have been long after Moses. The Phoenicians had records reaching back to the Trojan war. But they themselves were only co-temporaneous to Solomon. The records of the Egyptian did indeed reach back to the Exodus, Moses’ lifetime. But it turns out that this was twenty generations before the fall of Troy.99 Whatever happened among the Greeks in that time, they definitely spect. and virg. vel. see also S. Goldhill, Being Greek Under Rome (2001), 180-4. Later writers include Jerome and Prudentius; on them see e.g. M. Fusillo, H. Hoffmann and A. Berger, ‘Novel’ (on novel-like narratives in certain works of Jerome); on Prudentius Martha A. Malamud, A Poetics of Transformation. Prudentius and Classical Mythology (Ithaca, 1989). 94 Tatian, or. 35.2: … χαίρειν εἰπὼν καὶ τῇ Ῥωμαίων μεγαλαυχίᾳ καὶ τῇ Ἀθηναίων ψυχρολογία … τῆς καθ᾽ ἡμᾶς βαρβάρου φιλοσοφίας ἀντεποιησάμην. 95 Tatian, or. 35.4: τί δὲ ἄτοπον κατὰ τὸν οἰκεῖον ὑμῶν σοφιστὴν ‘γηράσκειν αἰεὶ διδασκόμενον’; 96 Tatian, or. 35.2: διὰ δὲ τὸ κατεπεῖγον τῆς ἐξηγήσεως ὑπερθέμενος. And see also or. 42.1, where he repeats once more that he had first been trained in Greek and latterly in barbarian Paideia. 97 For numerous negative verdicts on the composition of the oration and especially the chapters 30 to 40 see H.-G. Nesselrath, Gegen falsche Götter (2016), 9-11; e.g. Molly Whittaker, Tatian. Oratio ad Graecos (Oxford, 1982), xx: ‘The incoherence of the work … is on a par with his often confused … arguments and the obscurity of his style’; J. Geffcken, Zwei griechische Apologeten (1907), 107-10. For a contrasting view see Adolf Harnack, Tatians Rede an die Griechen übersetzt und eingeleitet (Gießen, 1884), 8 (Tatian’s oration by and large well structured). 98 Tatian, or. 36.1-2. 99 Tatian, or. 38.1-2.

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did not have any historiography then. Writing itself was introduced only much later, by Kadmos.100 Tatian then outlines some phases of Greek history, especially the origins of Greek historiography and mythology. In connection with the link between historiography and theology he claims to have written a work ‘against those who have expressed opinions on matters concerning God’ (πρὸς τοὺς ἀποφηναμένους τὰ περὶ θεοῦ).101 Tatian concludes his oration with a brief epilogue where he ‘recommends’ himself once more, so to speak, as a philosopher of the school of the barbarians. He had first been educated in Greek Paideia. Latterly, however, he had discovered the barbarian wisdom, which he now proclaims. The very last sentence is a summary of his stance: Having recognized who God is and what His creation is he is prepared to discuss with his audience his teachings, his ideas, but not the basics of his practical way of life.102 This ending echoes once more his recalcitrant statement in or. 4.2, where he had said that he would rather die than be forced to give up his loyal adherence to God, and the ominous reference in or. 19.2 to Crescens’, Justin’s enemy’s, efforts to bring about Justin’s as well as his, Tatian’s, death.103 In the end, Tatian’s name does not appear among those who are listed as Justin’s pupils in the Acts of Justin’s martyrdom.104 Nevertheless, it lives on in his extant literary work, the oration, which may not have survived, had Tatian decided on that day to share the fate of his teacher rather than survive and live another day. 3. Conclusion Let us briefly recapitulate the main points of this chapter. Since Richard Kukula the religious aspect of the epithets ‘Greek’ and ‘barbarian’ in Tatian’s oration has been seriously reflected upon (1b). Adolf Hilgenfeld criticized Kukula and argued for an understanding of ‘Greek’ as ‘educated’ (endowed with Paideia) and ‘barbarian’ as ‘uneducated’ (1a). But in the ongoing discussion it became increasingly clearer that religion and education were closely 100 Tatian, or. 39.2. Tatian imagines that at that time the Greeks led some kind of ‘wild’ Nomadic life. 101 Tatian, or. 40.3. 102 Tatian, or. 42.2: γινώσκων δὲ λοιπὸν τίς ὁ θεὸς καὶ τίς ἡ κατ᾽ αὐτὸν ποίησις, ἕτοιμον ἐμαυτὸν ὑμῖν πρὸς τὴν ἀνάκρισιν τῶν δογμάτων παρίστημι, μενούσης μοι τῆς κατὰ θεὸν πολιτείας ἀνεξαρνήτου. Note also or. 4.1 Tatian’s appeal to his Greek audience that they should not involve the group he belongs to in a brawl between different ways of life (πολιτείαι) as in a boxing match. Clearly, the Christian way of life caused offence to some and Tatian appeals for tolerance but is at the same also insisting that he himself is not open to compromise. 103 Tatian, or. 19.2: … καὶ Ἰουστῖνον καὶ ἐμὲ … τῷ θανάτῳ περιβαλεῖν πραγματεύσασθαι… 104 Martyrium Iustini (Herbert Musurillo, The Acts oft the Christian Martyrs [Oxford, 1972], 42-60).

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linked in Hellenistic culture and that, for example, Jewish apologists had already raised the issues for some time to what extent barbarian influence did not only not ‘spoil’ or ‘degrade’ Greek culture but had on the contrary an enriching, even founding effect (1c). More recent research has even identified a further development of this process through Late Antiquity and sometimes spoken of a process of ‘De-Hellenisation’, i.e. a completion of Hellenisation, when the Greek element is so absorbed in the ‘barbarian’ culture that it is no longer explicitly visible. This is the case, for example, in late-antique Syriac or Arabic culture. In this context Christianity defines itself as of barbarian origin but also as influenced by Greek heritage and thereby forms a new identity, which, however, includes also elements from the most ancient cultures. In Tatian’s oration the complexity of this process comes to bear in various ways. As early as in or. 1.1 Tatian speaks on the one hand of barbarians as non-Greek ethnicities, but on the other hand he also mentions barbarian doctrines (δόγματα), which the Greeks despise, a possible allusion to an understanding of ‘barbarian’ in a religious sense, i.e. as Christians, or adherents of a Jewish-Christian biblical tradition. In or. 42.1-2 Tatian strongly identifies as a barbarian in both senses, a Syrian and a Christian. In between he presents barbarians as inventors (2a), criticises Greek hypocrisy regarding the barbarian influences on the Greek language (2b) and bemoans the Greek attitude of not accepting that Greek culture alone is incapable of responding to the most pertinent challenges of the present time (2c). In response Tatian presents his monotheistic counter-philosophy with a new concept of Paideia as a spiritual way of life (2d). In the legendary figure of the Scythian Anacharsis Tatian finds a model barbarian who is already an integral part of Greek lore and can function as a model for the way in which Tatian would like his Greek audience to approach also his ‘sermon’: The Greeks had not rejected Anacharsis. Therefore, why would they reject him, Tatian (2e). But Tatian’s ultimate goal is not just to be accepted and tolerated by the Greeks. He aims to overcome the very pluralism of Greek culture and religion and to replace it by an order in which only the law issued by the one divine ruler reigns supreme (2f). At this stage, embedded in and interrupted by a renewed personal profession and moralistic discussion of Hellenistic sculpture, Tatian puts forward a proof from antiquity designed to demonstrate the superior age and validity of the barbarian doctrine that he promotes (2g). The epilogue then picks up once more the introductory theme and summarises the ethnic, theological and ethical content of Tatian’s concept of ‘barbarian philosophy’. Of special importance here is, finally, once more, Tatian’s thought, formulated in the way of a protreptic, that, born an Assyrian (i.e. a non-Greek barbarian), he had at first been educated in ‘your’, i.e. Greek, Paideia, and only later converted to the ‘barbarian’, i.e. Christian philosophy. Thus throughout the oration, from beginning to end, the concepts ‘Greek’ and ‘barbarian’ are constantly held in balance and constitute a central feature of the work, also creating a tension that ultimately cannot be resolved.

Revisiting Proba’s Confession: The Proem of the Vergilian Cento and the Reign of Julian the Apostate Nicholas J. BAKER-BRIAN, Cardiff

ABSTRACT This article reappraises the opening lines of the Vergilian Cento attributed to Faltonia Betitia Proba. It argues that the Cento’s proem was composed in order to challenge the memorialisation of the principal actors in the civil war of 350-353, namely the emperor Constantius II and his rival, the usurper Magnentius. The article argues that the correct historical context for Proba’s criticism is the short reign of Constantius’ cousin, Julian the Apostate (r. 361-363), where the denigration of Constantius’ military achievements was a central concern for Julian and his supporters. The article proposes that Proba’s proem was composed with this concern in mind, although she went beyond the prevailing criticisms of Constantius by taking aim at the role that the emperor’s victory in the civil war had played in the development of his imperial persona as a triumphal ruler.

The direction of virtually all recent scholarly research on the fourth century Vergilian Cento has gravitated towards clarifying the authorship of the text. While some notable exceptions have examined the social context and the theology of this poetic patchwork quilt,1 commentators have largely pursued a prosopographical approach to the work in an attempt to establish the identity of the female author responsible for this pioneering Latin Christian cento.2 In brief, the Cento narrates episodes from the Old and New Testaments in verses drawn from the writings of the Augustan-era poet. The words of the Cento’s author herself, 1 See Elizabeth A. Clark and Diane F. Hatch, The Golden Bough, the Oaken Cross: the Virgilian Cento of Faltonia Betitia Proba (Chico, CA, 1981); Elizabeth A. Clark and Diane F. Hatch, ‘Jesus as Hero in the Vergilian Cento of Faltonia Betitia Proba’, Vergilius 27 (1981), 133-51; Elizabeth A. Clark, ‘Faltonia Betitia Proba and Her Virgilian Poem: The Christian Matron as Artist’, in ead., Ascetic Piety and Women’s Faith. Essays on Late Ancient Christianity (Lewiston, 1986), 124-52; Karla Pollmann, ‘Sex and Salvation in the Vergilian Cento of the Fourth Century’, in Roger Rees (ed.), Romane Memento: Vergil in the Fourth Century (London, 2004), 79-96 (rept. in Karla Pollmann, Baptized Muse: Early Christian Poetry and Cultural Authority [Oxford, 2017], 101-19). Sigrid Schottenius Cullhed, Proba the Prophet. The Christian Virgilian Cento of Faltonia Betitia Proba (Leiden, 2015), 113-36. 2 Discussed by S. Schottenius Cullhed, Proba the Prophet (2015), 18-55. On the place of Vergilian centos in the late antique period, and their origin in the practices of rhetorical schools, see Scott McGill, Virgil Recomposed. The Mythological and Secular Centos in Antiquity (Oxford, 2005), xv-xxv.

Studia Patristica CII, 103-118. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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‘I will declare that Vergil sang about the pious feats of Christ’ (Vergilium cecinisse loquar pia munera Christi),3 indicate that the enterprise was not simply a cultural one, but that a religious concern with proposing Vergil as a pagan witness to Christian truth also underlay the work.4 The ambiguity of the designation, ‘Proba the prophet’, in verse thirteen of the poem, where vatis could refer either attributively to Proba herself, or to Vergil as ‘the poet’, hints at a possible doublemeaning where both the Cento’s author and the poet were portrayed as united in a joint prophetic endeavour to magnify Christ’s achievements.5 The arguments developed by Danuta Shanzer6 and substantiated in part recently by Timothy Barnes,7 which proposed Anicia Faltonia Proba,8 the wellconnected Roman matron of the late fourth century married to the former praefectus praetorio Petronius Probus (d. ca. 388),9 as the author of the Christian Cento, have been challenged by a variety of counter arguments.10 These have sought, a) to uphold the integrity of the late antique and medieval authorial attestations of the work, and b) to defend the contemporary evidence that is suggestive of a compositional date between the 350s-370s and which indicate the Cento’s author is Faltonia Betitia Proba,11 the wife of Clodius Celsinus (nicknamed, Adelphius),12 a former praefectus urbi during the usurper Magnentius’ occupation of Rome in the early 350s (she was also the grandmother of Anicia Faltonia Proba). I do not propose to revisit these arguments in toto, which have lately been summarized and tackled in contributions by Roger Green13 and Alan Cameron in his The Last Pagans of Rome,14 although there 3 Ed. Alessia Fassina and Carlo M. Lucarini, Cento Vergilianus (Berlin, 2015), 7.23; trans. S. Schottenius Cullhed, Proba the Prophet (2015), 193. 4 See especially the analysis by K. Pollmann, ‘Sex and Salvation in the Vergilian Cento of the Fourth Century’ (2017), 112-3. 5 Cf. S. Schottenius Cullhed, Proba the Prophet (2015), 120. 6 Danuta Shanzer, ‘The Anonymous Carmen Contra Paganos and the Date and Identity of the Centonist Proba’, RÉAug 32 (1986), 232-48; ead., ‘The Date and Identity of the Centonist Proba’, RechAug 27 (1994), 75-96. 7 Timothy D. Barnes, ‘An Urban Prefect and His Wife’, CQ 56 (2006), 249-56. 8 PLRE 1: 732-733 (Proba 3). 9 PLRE 1: 736-740 (Probus 5). 10 See esp. John Matthews, ‘The Poetess Proba and Fourth-Century Rome: Questions of Interpretation’, in Institutions, société et vie politique dans l’Empire romain au IVe siècle ap. J.-C. (Rome, 1992), 277-304; Hagith Sivan, ‘Anician Women, the Cento of Proba, and Aristocratic Conversion in the Fourth Century’, VigChr 47 (1993), 140-57; R.P.H. Green, ‘Proba’s Cento: Its Date, Purpose, and Reception’, CQ 45 (1995), 551-63; R.P.H. Green, ‘Proba’s Introduction to Her Cento’, CQ 47 (1997), 548-59; R.P.H. Green, ‘Which Proba wrote the Cento?’, CQ 58 (2008), 264-76; Alan Cameron, The Last Pagans of Rome (Oxford, 2011), 327-37; S. Schottenius Cullhed, Proba the Prophet (2015), 18-55. 11 PLRE 1: 732 (Proba 2). 12 Urban Prefect from 7 June to 18 December 351: PLRE 1: 192-3 (Adelphius 6). See also, André Chastagnol, Les Fastes de la Préfecture de Rome au Bas-Empire (Paris, 1962), 131-4. 13 See esp. R.P.H. Green, ‘Which Proba wrote the Cento?’ (2008). 14 A. Cameron, The Last Pagans (2011), 327-37.

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remains much of value in rethinking critically about the attribution of the work to the earlier period (i.e. 350s-370s) pursued in the contributions of Shanzer. The purpose of this contribution is to clarify the historical circumstances underlying the subject of the Cento’s proem in which Proba outlines a work she had written previously. And, while the dating of the Cento is not really the main concern of this article, my argument involves working with a date for the composition of the Cento of the early 360s, specifically during the brief reign of the emperor Julian (r. 361-363) – although for reasons that are different from those proposed previously15 – and in doing so, I also subscribe to the position that the work was composed by Faltonia Betitia Proba. In the opening lines of the Cento, Proba presents a confession (confiteor: 8) in which she describes the subject matter of a poem she had written at some earlier, unspecified point in her literary career (1-8: here following the recent translation of Sigrid Schottenius Cullhed16). In days gone by, of leaders who transgressed sacred treatises of peace, Doomed men caught by a vicious lust for power, of numerous murders, of the cruel war of kings, of kindred battle lines and gleaming shields stained with patricidal blood, of trophies taken from no enemy, of bloody triumphs announced by their fame, of cities so often deprived of countless citizens, I confess, I wrote of these things. So much for recalling evils.17

In her article from 1986, Shanzer raised an objection regarding the role that a medieval ascription had played in identifying the subject matter of Proba’s earlier work as the civil war between Constantius II and Magnentius during the years 350-353. The medieval ascription in question derived from a now lost tenth-century manuscript from Polirone containing the carmina of Proba, in addition to works by Jerome and Cassiodorus. It was viewed by the Benedictine scholar Bernard de Montfaucon (d. 1741) who noted its features in his Diarium Italicum (p. 36), including the medieval annotation that contributed a biographical note about Proba in the following terms: ‘the wife of Adelphius, mother 15 The Cento has been viewed as a response to the emperor Julian’s constitution regarding the role of Christian teachers in public schools (Cod. Theod. 13.3.5; Julian, ep. 36 (Wilmer C. Wright, Julian. Volume 3 [Cambridge, Mass. 1923])). See S. Schottenius Cullhed, Proba the Prophet (2015), 52-3; also, R.P.H. Green, ‘Proba’s Cento: Its Date, Purpose, and Reception’ (1995), 55460. See the reappraisal of Julian’s law by Neil McLynn, ‘Julian and the Christian Professors’, in Carol Harrison, Carolyn Humfress and Isabella Sandwell (eds), Being Christian in Late Antiquity. A Festschrift for Gillian Clark (Oxford, 2014), 120-36. 16 S. Schottenius Cullhed, Proba the Prophet (2015), 193. 17 Iam dudum temerasse duces pia foedera pacis, regnandi miseros tenuit quos dira cupido, diversaque neces regum, crudelia bella cognatasque acies, pollutos caede parentum insignes clipeos nulloque ex hoste tropea, sanguine consperos tulerat quos fama triumphos, innumerius totiens viduatas civibus urbes, confiteor, scripsi: satis est meminisse malorum. Ed. A. Fassina and C.M. Lucarini, 2015: 5.1-6.8.

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of Olybrius and Alypius, wrote about the war of the emperor Constantius [corrected by Montfaucon from Constantine] against Magnentius, and also wrote this book’.18 Shanzer dismissed the historical value of the ascription’s evidence, suggesting that on the basis of the clear borrowings from Lucan’s Civil War in the proem (1, foedera pacis = Luc., Bell. Civ. 4.205; 365; 4, cognatasque acies = Luc., Bell. Civ. 1.4) the annotator had seen fit to add a ‘historicising’ comment about the civil war of Constantius II’s time. Thus, ‘there is … no evidence that the poem was not mythological in content’.19 Shanzer raised further objections, including the idea that the Lucanic allusions did not match the nature of the civil war of the 350s. In reply to Shanzer, John Matthews in an essay forming part of a volume dedicated to André Chastagnol demonstrated in fairly precise terms why the civil war between Constantius and Magnentius was the most likely historical topic of Proba’s earlier work by situating the role that Faltonia Betitia Proba’s husband played in the conflict.20 Matthews viewed the political machinations of the senatorial elite in Rome during the civil war as the primary historical factor behind Proba’s earlier work, specifically the role played by Proba’s husband, Adelphius, as a figure who had initially been complicit in the usurper’s government at the very senior level of Urban Prefect but who had soon fallen out of favour following an allegation made against him by another of Magnentius’ (less senior) officials in Rome, a certain Dorus.21 For Matthews, Proba’s earlier work was intended to facilitate the rehabilitation of her husband’s reputation before Constantius II, whereby its subject matter – the recent civil war – was meant to chime with the prevailing ideology of victory over Magnentius that had begun to dominate the portrayal of Constantius’ imperial persona during the mid-to-late 350s (culminating, as Matthews notes, with the emperor’s celebrated attendance in Rome in spring 357).22 Indeed, Matthews suggests that Proba’s civil war poem narrated the conflict ‘from a suitable point of view’ – a wonderfully aseptic description – and thus formed part of these celebrations, possibly in a similar fashion to the presentation of poetry composed by the formerly disgraced Optatian to Constantine I during his vicennalia celebrations in the capital in 326.23 18

Montfaucon, Diarium Italicum (Paris, 1702), 36: Codex eiusdem aetatis, Hieronymi de Scriptoribus Ecclesiasticis, in quo item quaedam Cassiodori, & in fine Probae Falconiae carmina. Ad calcem antem legitur: Proba uxor Adelph, mater Olibrii, & Aliepii (sic pro Alypii) cum Constantini (sic pro Constantii) Imperatoris bellum adversus Magentium conscripsisset, conscripsit & hunc librum. 19 D. Shanzer, ‘The Anonymous Carmen Contra Paganos and the Date and Identity of the Centonist Proba’ (1986), 232-3. 20 J. Matthews, ‘The Poetess Proba and Fourth-Century Rome’ (1992), 293-8. 21 PLRE 1: 270. Amm. Marc. 16.6.2-3. See Pieter de Jonge, Philological and Historical Commentary on Ammianus Marcellinus XVI (Groningen, 1972), 63-6. 22 J. Matthews, ‘The Poetess Proba and Fourth-Century Rome’ (1992), 297. 23 Ibid. On Optatian, see Johannes Wienand, ‘Publilius Optatianus Porfyrius: The Man and His Book’, in Michael Squire and Johannes Wienand (eds), Morphogrammata/The Lettered Art

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Neither Shanzer nor Matthews, however, have a great deal to say about the mismatch between a poem that supposedly commemorated Constantius’ victory in the civil war, and the incontestable air of gloom and condemnation that attends the Cento’s proem. The opening of the Cento indicates through poetic allusion (to Lucan and Vergil) and the tacit restating of convention, that civil war is a crime (1; 8: satis est meminisse malorum), that it is patricidal/fratricidal (5 = Romans should not be the enemies of one another), and that in light of these factors, the staging of a triumph following a civil war victory is in poor taste (6: sanguine conspersos tulerat quos fama triumphos; cf. Lucan, Bell. Civ. 1.12). The opening lines of the Cento are, therefore, very much in keeping with previous literary and poetic challenges that condemned civil war as a misguided response of the political class to domestic conflict, since by drawing attention to such themes as the desecration of peace (line 1), the abominable lust for power (line 2), the riving of families, the loss of human life, and the ruin of the cities as a result of these actions (lines 5 and 7), Proba was evoking the sense of discord that was central to the portrayal of civil war in authors like Lucan.24 If a Constantius-era context is the correct reading of these opening lines, the judgements of Proba in lines 5-7 represent a highly significant response to the prevailing imperial image of that emperor. In this regard, recent research has investigated the ways in which later Roman emperors either disregarded or disrupted the ‘semiotics’ of triumphs following civil wars by seemingly overturning the ‘conventional prohibition’25 on civil war triumphs articulated in sources from the late Republican and early imperial eras (e.g. Valerius Maximus’ Factorum ac dictorum memorabilium 2.8.7). The triumphal persona of Constantine I derived in the main from his defeat of the emperor Maxentius in 312; this, however, necessitated the deployment of obfuscatory terms (principally tyrannus) in the promotion of this persona to make more palatable the fact that it was his success in a civil rather than a foreign war that was being celebrated.26 Indeed, Constantine’s public persona was a symptom of the of Optatian. Figuring Cultural Transformations in the Age of Constantine (Paderborn, 2017), 121-63. 24 See esp. Elaine Fantham, ‘Discordia Fratrum: Aspects of Lucan’s Conception of Civil War’, in Brian W. Breed, Cynthia Damon and Andreola Rossi (eds), Citizens of Discord. Rome and Its Civil Wars (Oxford, 2010), 207-20. 25 Carsten H. Lange, ‘Triumph and Civil War in the Late Republic’, Papers of the British School at Rome 81 (2013), 67-90, 69-70. Also see Carsten H. Lange, Triumphs in the Age of Civil War. The Late Republic and the Adaptability of Triumphal Tradition (London, 2016). 26 See especially Johannes Wienand, Der Kaiser als Sieger. Metamorphosen triumphaler Herrschaft unter Constantin I. (Berlin, 2012); Carsten H. Lange, ‘Triumph and Civil War in the Late Republic’ (2013); id., ‘Constantine’s Civil War Triumph of AD 312 and the Adaptability of Triumphal Tradition’, Analecta Romana 37 (2012), 29-53; Johannes Wienand, ‘O tandem felix civili, Roma, victoria! Civil-War Triumphs from Honorius to Constantine and Back’, in id. (ed.), Contested Monarchy. Integrating the Roman Empire in the Fourth Century AD (Oxford, 2015), 169-97; Matthias Haake, ‘“Trophäen, die nicht vom äussern Feinde gewonnen wurden, Triumphe,

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empire’s geo-political reality of the early fourth century, where the landscape of war had shifted from a binary division between either outright success or outright failure against external enemies to one where victories against foreign nations (the Sasanians) or tribal confederacies (the Alamanni etc.) had become difficult to discern: as a result, success in civil conflict frequently offered the only opportunity for the celebration of a ‘clear cut’ victory.27 Yet such celebrations required coded language and images that othered the defeated Roman party. Constantius II and his coterie capitalised on his victory over Magnentius in 353 in similar ways to his father following his success against Maxentius by narrativizing in text and image his defeat of the former comes rei militaris of his brother, Constans. In a number of panegyrics delivered on or around the time of Constantius’ arrival in Rome, the emperor was characterised as having won a victory in a war that was referred to as ‘truly sacred’ in light of the fact that Constantius, by defeating Magnentius, had avenged the deaths of ‘countless citizens’ murdered by the usurper,28 and, furthermore, he was portrayed as having rescued the empire from ‘an avenging and implacable barbarian’,29 an especially crude attempt to defame Magnentius’ Frankish origins.30 Constantius’ civil war triumphalism of the late 350s also made a considerable impression on the civic landscape of Rome. The Senate dedicated a triumphal arch in Rome’s Forum Boarium to mark the occasion, to which seems to have been affixed an attic inscription that spoke of Constantius as ‘the disposer of the faction of the tyrant sovereign and avenger of the liberty of the Roman people against the enemies who savagely murdered with great cruelty the brother of die der Ruhm mit Blut befleckt davon trug…”: Der Sieg im imperialen Bürgerkrieg im ‘langen dritten Jahrhundert’ als ambivalentes Ereignis’, in Henning Börm, Marco Mattheis and Johannes Wienand (eds), Civil War in Ancient Greece and Rome. Contexts of Disintegration and Reintegration (Stuttgart, 2015), 237-301. 27 See especially J. Wienand, ‘O tandem felix civili, Roma, victoria! Civil War Triumphs from Honorius to Constantine and Back’ (2015). 28 Julian, Or. 1.33c-d. Trans. Wilmer C. Wright, Julian. Volume 1 (Cambridge, MA, 1913). On the circumstances of this oration, see Ignazio Tantillo, La Prima Orazione di Giuliano a Costanzo. Introduzione, Traduzione e Commento (Rome, 1997), 36-50. Also, Shaun Tougher, ‘Reading Between the Lines: Julian’s First Panegyric’, in Nicholas Baker-Brian and Shaun Tougher (eds), Emperor and Author. The Writings of Julian the Apostate (Swansea, 2012), 19-34. 29 Themistius, Or. 3.43a. Trans. Peter Heather and David Moncur, Politics, Philosophy and Empire in the Fourth Century. Select Orations of Themistius (Liverpool, 2001), 125-35. On this oration, see J. Vanderspoel, Themistius and the Imperial Court (Ann Arbor, 1995), 71-113; and John Vanderspoel, ‘A Tale of Two Cities: Themistius on Rome and Constantinople’, in Lucy Grig and Gavin Kelly (eds), Two Romes. Rome and Constantinople in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2012), 223-40. On the panegyrics of this period more generally, see Adrastos Omissi, Emperors and Usurpers in the Later Roman Empire. Civil War, Panegyric, and the Construction of Legitimacy (Oxford, 2018), 153-92. 30 See the discussion by John F. Drinkwater, ‘The Revolt and Ethnic Origin of the Usurper Magnentius (350-353), and the Rebellion of Vetranio (350)’, Chiron 30 (2000), 131-59; also, A. Omissi, Emperors and Usurpers in the Later Roman Empire (2018), 171-6.

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the August, Constans…’.31 Furthermore, the occasion was also used to fulfil a longstanding Constantinian-era project: the erection on the spina of the Circus Maximus of the largest single obelisk ever quarried in Egypt (now rehoused opposite the Lateran palace), from the time of the Eighteenth Dynasty (15501292 BC), planned by Constantine I but only realised by Constantius following his victory over Magnentius.32 A hexametric-verse inscription, now lost but recorded by the papal favourite Michel Mercati in the late sixteenth century, was commissioned for its pedestal base on which the feat of transporting and erecting the obelisk was narrated and portrayed as a fitting way to mark the ‘illustrious triumph’ of the emperor.33 All of this is a world away from the language of Proba’s proem. We are evidently dealing with a different type of response to Constantius’ civil war achievements than the stock language depicting the triumphal ruler. One of the few scholars to have given serious thought to the tone of the proem and its relationship to Proba’s lost work is Bruno Bleckmann. In an article examining the representation of the battle of Mursa in late antique and Byzantine historiography,34 Bleckmann proposes that the proem offers a glimpse of an epos or epic poem composed by Proba that was severely critical of Constantius and Magnentius since it called them both to account for a devastating civil war. For Bleckmann, the proem reflects the poem, and as such he argues that the revisionist force of the epos came from its mobilisation of prior, poetic criticisms of the civil wars of the Republican era and their projection onto the events of the early 350s, notably the depiction of the conflict between Pompey and Caesar that was the principal subject of Lucan’s unfinished epic narrative.35 In light of this, Bleckmann rules out (contra Matthews) the poem as having served in any sort of panegyrical capacity that may in turn have been delivered in order to facilitate the return of Proba’s disgraced husband to public life. Instead, Bleckmann argues that the lost poem was delivered only after the death of Constantius II and was intended to articulate long-standing resentments 31 The reading of the arch’s attic inscription proposed by Pedro Mateos, Antonio Pizzo and Ángel Ventura, ‘Arcus Divi Constantini: An Architectural Analysis and Chronological Proposal for the Arch of Janus in the Forum Boarium in Rome’, JRS 107 (2017), 237-74. 32 Amm. Marc. 17.4.1-23. See Gavin A.J. Kelly, ‘The New Rome and the Old: Ammianus Marcellinus’ Silences on Constantinople’, CQ 53 (2003), 588-607; also, Gavin Kelly, Ammianus Marcellinus. The Allusive Historian (Cambridge, 2008), 225-30. 33 ILS 736; see especially Paolo Liverani, ‘Costanzo II e l’obelisco del Circo Massimo a Roma’, in Annie Gasse, Frédéric Servajean and Christophe Thiers (eds), Et in Aegypto et ad Aegyptum. Recueil d’études dédiées à Jean-Claude Grenier (Montpellier, 2012), 471-87. Cf. Erik Iversen, Obelisks in Exile. Vol. 1. The Obelisks of Rome (Copenhagen, 1968), 57-8. 34 Bruno Bleckmann, ‘Die Schlacht von Mursa und die zeitgenössische Deutung eines spätantiken Bürgerkrieges’, in Hartwin Brandt (ed.), Gedeutete Realität. Krisen, Wirklichkeiten, Interpretationen (3.-6. Jh. n. Chr.) (Stuttgart, 1999), 47-101. 35 B. Bleckmann, ‘Die Schlacht von Mursa und die zeitgenössische Deutung eines spätantiken Bürgerkrieges’ (1999), 72-3.

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towards the emperor for the turmoil the war had caused to the aristocracy in Rome. According to this argument, therefore, Proba is transformed into a vehement critic of Constantius II, the mouthpiece of the capital’s disgruntled senatorial elite. Bleckmann does not engage with the parallel debate concerning the fate of Proba’s husband. However, reflecting awhile on his fate may help in assessing the role of the lost poem, and the Cento’s proem. What, then, actually happened to Adelphius? Barnes is in no doubt: following the charge of ‘aiming at a higher office’ (ut altiora coeptantem),36 i.e. engaging in treasonable activity, brought by Dorus, his subordinate, Adelphius was dismissed from office, tried and sentenced to death.37 Therefore, Adelphius was dead before the final defeat of Magnentius and the end of the civil war in the summer of 353. Barnes’ certainty about this episode is informed by the fact that as Ammianus Marcellinus relates, Adelphius’ accuser went on to implicate Flavius Arbitio, the ordinary consul for 355,38 in a plot to remove Constantius II during 356.39 Thus, ‘… Adelphius must have been convicted of the crime of which Dorus accused him. For, had Adelphius been acquitted, then Dorus would surely have been punished and probably executed for making a false accusation against his superior’.40 In reply to Barnes, Alan Cameron argues that rather than wait to face trial, Adelphius and Proba likely took advantage of the refuge offered to senators from Rome in Pannonia by Constantius in the aftermath of the battle of Mursa (following the evidence of Julian’s panegyrics, Matthews correctly identifies that Constantius presented at least two opportunities for amnesties to senators before and after Mursa41), and that Adelphius and Proba lived on to some (unspecified) old age, thereby ‘allowing her time to write a poem over the Magnentian war and her later Cento’.42 The concluding lines of the Cento (vs. 693: o dulcis coniunx) would seem to indicate that Adelphius was still alive at the time of the work’s composition. 36

Amm. Marc. 16.6.2; see the comments by A. Cameron, The Last Pagans of Rome (2011),

335. 37

T.D. Barnes, ‘An Urban Prefect and His Wife’ (2006), 251-2. PLRE 1: 94-4 (Arbitio 2). 39 Amm. Marc. 16.6.1-3. 40 T.D. Barnes, ‘An Urban Prefect and His Wife’ (2006), 252. 41 J. Matthews, ‘The Poetess Proba and Fourth-Century Rome: Questions of Interpretation’ (1992), 295-6. 42 A. Cameron, The Last Pagans of Rome (2011), 336. In so arguing, Cameron also rejects Barnes’ analysis of the Grabinschrift (CIL 6.1712) that would appear to indicate Proba having pre-deceased Adelphius. Barnes’ argument is that since Adelphius died ca. 351-352, executed following his trial for treason, both Proba and Adelphius were dead before the end of the civil war. Therefore, Proba could not have composed a poem about the war and she could not have written the Cento which refers in its opening line to the war. Barnes’ argument is a defence of Shanzer’s argument that Anicia Faltonia Proba rather than Faltonia Betitia Proba is the poet responsible for the Cento. 38

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The fact of the matter is that whatever happened to Adelphius will forever reside at the level of conjecture. His fate, however, is intimately tied to the question of who wrote the Cento. A possible solution to these concerns, however, is to reconsider the discordance between the presumed panegyrical nature of Proba’s lost poem and the Cento’s proem. Shanzer neatly summarises the apparent problem: ‘If Proba had helped to rehabilitate her husband by pleasing Constantius with a properly slanted account of Magnentius’ outrages, would she then have turned around at some date and described the conflict as one in which both “duces” violated “the sweet treaties of peace”? In which both were “wretches” helped by a “dire lust for power (regnandi)”? Neither phrase makes sense as applied to a usurpation’.43 This interpretation fails, however, to take account of the fact that political allegiances between senators and the imperial office holder did not stabilise for an indefinite period following the end of the civil war. There was another flashpoint waiting just around the corner: namely, the rise of Constantius’ cousin, Flavius Claudius Julianus. While Julian’s conflict with Constantius never resulted in open warfare, hostilities against Constantius were conducted by Julian in pamphleteering terms. In the summer of 361 while residing in the city of Naissus,44 Julian wrote a series of letters addressed to the Senate at Rome and a number of provincial councils (Athens, Corinth and Sparta) in which he detailed his objections to Constantius and his regime, in order to explain why in early spring of 360 he accepted the acclamation of his troops in Paris to become a rival Augustus to his cousin.45 Only Julian’s Letter to the Athenians has survived, although fragments of the letter to the Corinthians are reported by Libanius, and the context for the receipt of the letter to the Senate is related by Ammianus Marcellinus46 (on which, more later).47 Among Julian’s criticisms of Constantius in his Letter to the Athenians was the emperor’s management of military affairs in the northern regions of the empire prior to Julian’s appointment as Caesar in November 355. As described by Julian, Constantius is judged to have betrayed the security of Gaul because of his refusal to engage militarily the Rhineland Germani who, as a result, were left to sack at least forty-five settlements in the territory.48 Furthermore, Julian shows himself to be especially aggrieved at Constantius’ efforts to conciliate by diplomacy the barbarian aggressors rather than take 43 44

D. Shanzer, ‘The Date and Identity of the Centonist Proba’ (1994), 84-5. Cf. Walther E. Kaegi, ‘The Emperor Julian at Naissus’, L’antiquité classique 44 (1975), 161-

71. 45 Amm. Marc. 20.4.12-22; Zos. 9.1-7. See the analysis of the episode by Glen Bowersock, Julian the Apostate (London, 1978), 46-54. 46 Amm. Marc. 21.10.5-7. 47 See esp. Mark Humphries, ‘The Tyrant’s Mask? Images of Good and Bad Rule in Julian’s Letter to the Athenians’, in N. Baker-Brian and S. Tougher, Emperor and Author. The Writings of Julian the Apostate (2012), 75-90. 48 Julian, Ep. ad Ath. 279a-b.

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them on in battle; furthermore, Julian also highlighted Constantius’ efforts to turn the barbarians through bribery onto Julian himself, and thus keep the Caesar tied up tackling rebellions of attrition.49 Julian reports that resentment towards the emperor was running very high during his own time in the province, and that ‘someone wrote an anonymous letter to the town near where I was [Paris], addressed to the Petulantes and the Celts – those were the names of the legions – full of invectives against Constantius and of lamentations about his betrayal of the Gauls’.50 In the polemical context of the Letter, Constantius’ capitulation is the foil to Julian’s success, exemplified in the portrayal of his role in regaining key towns and cities including Cologne and Strasbourg following his appointment in 355.51 The force of Julian’s challenge to Constantius’ reputation derives, however, from the fact that, in a document composed and circulated while Constantius was still alive, Julian had sought to attack the Augustus’ military record, arguably the most explosive area of criticism given how important military success was to the emperor’s triumphal persona. Julian’s letter, therefore, reveals the fact that even before his death, Constantius’ record as a military leader was already subject to considerable criticism. The challenge to Constantius’ reputation in this area intensified after his death. A key source in this regard is the Speech of Thanks to Julian delivered by Claudius Mamertinus for the consulship of 362, delivered before the Senate of Constantinople on 1 January of that year.52 Mamertinus was one of Julian’s most trusted officials, a native of Gaul who served in Julian’s administration as the Praetorian Prefect for Italy, Africa and Illyricum.53 While the Speech builds on Julian’s presentation of events in Gaul from the Letter to the Athenians,54 Mamertinus’ panegyric develops the idea of Constantius’ neglect of the western provinces, including the city of Rome, and the charge regarding the emperor’s duplicity in turning the Germani against Julian in an effort to defeat him.55 In contrast to Constantius’ conduct, Mamertinus observes that Julian sought to 49

Julian, Ep. ad Ath. 280b; 286a-c. Julian, Ep. ad Ath. 283b. Trans. Wilmer C. Wright, Julian. Volume 2 (Cambridge, MA, 1913). 51 Julian, Ep. ad Ath. 279a-d. On relations with the Germani prior to Julian’s appointment in Gaul, see John Drinkwater, The Alamanni and Rome 213-496 (Caracalla to Clovis) (Oxford, 2007), 207-16. 52 Charles E.V. Nixon and Barbara S. Rodgers, In Praise of Later Roman Emperors. The Panegyrici Latini. Introduction, Translation, and Historical Commentary (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1994), 389. 53 PLRE 1: 540-1 (Mamertinus 2); C.E.V. Nixon and B.S. Rodgers, In Praise of Later Roman Emperors (1994), 386-9. 54 See Shaun Tougher, ‘Julian and Claudius Mamertinus: Panegyric and Polemic East and West’, in Adrastos Omissi and Alan J. Ross (eds), Imperial Panegyric from Diocletian to Honorius (Liverpool, 2020). Thanks to my Cardiff colleague for sharing a pre-publication version of his article with me. 55 Cl. Mamertinus, Speech of Thanks to Julian 6.1-2; for commentary, see C.E.V. Nixon and B.S. Rodgers, In Praise of Later Roman Emperors (1994), 401-2, n. 38. 50

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improve the lot of the western provinces as he travelled eastwards to meet Constantius, paying particular attention to the supply of grain to Rome: ‘The severe hunger and the State’s dangerously unhappy situation would have frightened off anyone else in the world. But with the tribute from the provinces and income from his own property he bought grain from everywhere and filled the starving city to the point of opulence and abundance’.56 Julian’s relief of Rome took place, according to Mamertinus, as he ‘arrived at the borders of Thrace’,57 which could very well refer to his month and a half long stay in Naissus in the diocese of Dacia.58 Thus, his civic intervention coincided with the dispatch of his letter to the city’s Senate from Naissus, and should be seen as part of a broader ‘charm offensive’ towards the ancient capital. With these examples, we can begin to identify the likely political context for the proem of the Cento. With its reference to the military failings of recent leaders leading to the ruin of cities and the suffering of citizens, the tenor would appear to match the emergent challenge to the military reputation of Constantius II that Julian himself and his coterie were responsible for disseminating in 361 and which continued after Constantius’ death. In a work that was intended to catch the attention of the reigning emperor, the author of the Cento was acutely aware of the need, based on past experiences, to broadcast a clear signal of conformity with the political position of the current government.59 A couple of questions nevertheless remain open. As we have noted, the proem’s central theme is the nefarious nature of civil war. However, there are no references or even allusions to Constantius’ conflict with Magnentius – the major civil conflict of the 350s – in either the Letter to the Athenians or the Speech of Thanks. There may, nevertheless, have been some good reasons for the absence of criticism of Magnentius during the early stages of Julian’s reign, especially in those writings that showed sympathy to the condition of Gaul following the civil war. Among the most important was the fact that during his time in Gaul, Julian had recruited troops who had previously served under Magnentius to his own army: according to Libanius, Julian offered these troops an amnesty from the crimes they had committed following the dissolution of Magnentius’ army, when some of his soldiers had had little choice but to become bandits.60 Indeed, the peculiar preservation of Magnentius’ memory by Julian is evident in his 56 Cl. Mamertinus, Speech of Thanks to Julian 14.2-3; trans. C.E.V. Nixon and B.S. Rodgers, In Praise of Later Roman Emperors (1994), 414. 57 Cl. Mamertinus, Speech of Thanks to Julian 14.1; trans. C.E.V. Nixon and B.S. Rodgers, In Praise of Later Roman Emperors (1994), 414. 58 Cf. W. Kaegi, ‘The Emperor Julian at Naissus’ (1975), 166-7; Timothy D. Barnes, Athanasius and Constantius. Theology and Politics in the Constantinian Empire (Cambridge, MA, 1993), 228. 59 See esp. the comments by R.P.H. Green, ‘Proba’s Cento: Its Date, Purpose, and Reception’ (1995), 558-9. 60 Libanius, Oration 18.105, composed after Julian’s death ca. 365.

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observation from his Caesars (composed late 362) that, although turned away by the gods from the banquet, Magnentius’ rejection was based on the principle that ‘he had never done anything really laudable, though much that he achieved had the appearance of merit’.61 Similarly, Mamertinus, in a passage about despotic rule that draws parallels between the failure of recent usurpations and the expulsion of Rome’s last kings, refers to the attempted usurpations of Nepotianus and Silvanus but not Magnentius as recent examples of ‘men mad with rage’,62 two figures whose impact on the Empire had been minimal in comparison to the seismic effect that Magnentius’ rebellion had on the continuity of Constantinian rule in the western empire. Indeed, Magnentius’ administration was likely highly proficient, and it was the war initiated by Constantius in an effort to reclaim the west that resulted in the decay of Gaul and other areas of strategic importance. There was unlikely to have been such long-term sensitivity to Magnentius’ memory in Rome, where beyond attempts to legitimise his occupation of the city and the rest of Italy through the appointment of civil servants sympathetic to his rebellion,63 Romans were minded to recall the bloody suppression of the counter-revolt of Nepotianus in the first year of Magnentius’ reign64 which resulted in Nepotianus’ death and the murder of his mother, Eutropia, the halfsister of Constantine I. Jerome indicates that senatorial support for Magnentius had been crucial in the final defeat of Nepotianus’ rebellion65 which was in all likelihood a ‘loyalist’ reaction to Magnentius’ usurpation. As the brief activity of the Rome mint under Nepotianus reveals, his coinage utilised conventional types associated with the city to such an extent that he has been judged – in the description of Kay Ehling – a ‘senatorial emperor’ in the mould of Maxentius.66 Yet, this was not enough to gain the support of the entire senatorial elite. Those 61

Julian, Caesars 315d-316a; trans. W. Wright, Julian. Volume 2 (1913). Cl. Mamertinus, Speech of Thanks to Julian 13.1-3; trans. C.E.V. Nixon and B.S. Rodgers, In Praise of Later Roman Emperors (1994), 412. 63 See Roland Delmaire, ‘Les usurpateurs du Bas-Empire et le recrutement des fonctionnaires (Essai de réflexion sur les assises du pouvoir et leurs limites)’, in François Paschoud and Joachim Szidat (eds), Usurpationen in der Spätantike (Stuttgart, 1997), 111-26. 64 Especially Aurelius Victor, De Caesaribus 42.6-9 (ed. Franz Pichlmayr and Roland Gruendel [Leipzig, 1966]); Eutropius, Breviarium 10.11.2 (ed. Bruno Bleckmann and Jonathan Gross [Paderborn, 2018]); Epitome de Caesaribus 42.3 (ed. F. Pichlmayr and R. Gruendel [1966]); also, Zosimus 2.43.2-4. For considerations of the date of Nepotianus’ reign, see Bruno Bleckmann, ‘Gallus, César de l’Orient?’, in François Chausson and Étienne Wolff (eds), Consuetudinis amor: Fragments d’histoire romaine (IIe-VIe siècles) offerts à Jean-Pierre Callu (Rome, 2003), 45-56. Cf. Muriel Moser, Emperors and Senators in the Reign of Constantius II. Maintaining Imperial Rule Between Rome and Constantinople in the Fourth Century (Cambridge, 2018), 173-4, who would appear to have misread Bleckmann’s re-dating of the episode by suggesting January 350 rather than January 351 (B. Bleckmann, ‘Gallus, César de l’Orient?’ [2003], 46, n. 7). 65 Jerome, Chron. s.a. 350, p. 238, 5-6 (ed. Rudolf Helm [Berlin, 1956]). 66 Kay Ehling, ‘Die Erhebung des Nepotianus in Rom im Juni 350 n. Chr. und sein Programm der urbs Roma Christiana’, Göttinger Forum für Altertumswissenschaft 4 (2001), 141-59. 62

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senators and their families who assisted in the overthrow of Nepotianus were likely also the ones who continued to reside in the city and who attempted to stabilise civil affairs, including of course Adelphius who served his term as Urban Prefect in the middle-to-latter half of 351. However, deep divisions split the loyalties of the senatorial class. We know that some senators took advantage of Constantius’ offer of refuge in Pannonia prior to Mursa, i.e. in early 351.67 Following Mursa, the offer of an amnesty was made once more, and it is to be suspected (following Cameron) that Adelphius and his family took advantage of this second chance to realign their interests and reputation with Constantius, in the light of their changed circumstances following the serious accusation of complicity brought by Dorus. Such expediency was intrinsic to the behaviour of the senatorial class, and the likelihood of opportunism was doubtlessly magnified during times of acute societal stress such as usurpation. Indeed, the difficult lessons experienced by the senatorial class following the death of Magnentius most certainly influenced reactions to subsequent usurpers.68 At the highpoint of Julian’s rebellion during which he wrote to Rome and the cities of the diocese of Macedonia from Naissus (see above), the Senate declared its support for Constantius II by rejecting the Caesar’s epistolary overture. Under the guidance of the Urban Prefect, Tertullus, the Senate rejected Julian’s invective against the emperor with a reminder to the Caesar of the need to honour the one who had elevated him in the first place: ‘We demand reverence for your own creator’ (auctori tuo reverentiam rogamus).69 With the re-emergence of Constantinian loyalism in the post-Magnentius landscape of Rome, it is then perfectly reasonable to believe that Proba composed an epos that lauded Constantius. Thus, in contrast to Bleckmann’s argument, there is no need to conflate the critical tone of the Cento’s proem with the actual contents of the lost poem. Nevertheless, Bleckmann’s proposal that Proba stands as a critic of Constantius remains valid: it is simply a case of (re-) situating Proba’s censure to the time of Julian’s reign when criticism of Constantius’ military achievements was a main plank of the new regime’s revisionist approach to recent times. Both Constantius and Magnentius stood equally condemned in Proba’s reassessment of her prior literary project. Proba’s dislike of the latter was unlikely to have been artificial, although her awareness of Julian’s caution around Magnentius’ memory may be evident in her description of both leaders as duces (line 1) and reges (line 3). As it stands, isolated from the lost epos, the proem of the Cento represents an acute literary response to 67 J. Matthews, ‘The Poetess Proba and Fourth-Century Rome: Questions of Interpretation’ (1992), 295-6. 68 See B. Bleckmann, ‘Die Schlacht von Mursa und die zeitgenössische Deutung eines spätantiken Bürgerkrieges’ (1999), 73-4. 69 Amm. Marc. 21.10.7; see the discussion of the passage by Jan den Boeft, Daniël den Hengst and Hans C. Teitler, Philological and Historical Commentary on Ammianus Marcellinus XXI (Groningen, 1991), 140-3.

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the discord and suffering caused by both leaders. It stands as an early example of the trenchant criticism of Constantius’ reign that was beginning to emerge in the second half of the fourth century, and its significance is further enhanced by recognising that Proba was among the first writers to challenge Constantius over the civil war against Magnentius. In her recent study of Proba, Schottenius Cullhed has argued that the opening lines of the Cento represent as a rhetorical recusatio whereby the poet rejects one type of literary genre for another, and in which the claim of having composed an earlier epic ‘is a fabrication pertaining to the poetic persona’.70 This may very well be a valid observation, although it does little to change either the status of Proba as a critic of Constantius (as a result of the proem), nor the Julianic date for the Cento. I would suggest, however, that in the context of the year 357 the narrativization of Constantius’ victory in the civil war of 350-353 in epic form would be very much in keeping with the spirit of triumph and monumentalism that characterised life in Rome at this point in time. The death of Constantius II in Mopsucrenae in November 361 hastened the legitimisation of Julian’s emperorship, and necessitated a shift in political allegiances once again. Looking back on her Constantius-era civil war epos under Julian, political expediency likely demanded Proba offer a retractatio of her previous work that brought its recollection into line with the prevailing criticisms of Constantius, specifically his failure as a military leader in safeguarding the security of the empire. However, the proem indicates that Proba had contributed something new to the act of undermining Constantius’ memory. The focus for the proem’s censure lies in its challenge to the idea that the Magnentian civil war was an episode suitable for celebration in the first place: rather, for Proba, it now stands condemned as a shameful event best forgotten in the history of the empire. When read in this light, her confession becomes a statement of regret at having been complicit in the promotion of the civil war during Constantius’ reign (line 8: ‘I confess, I wrote of these things. So much for recalling evils!’). As the Cento presented Christian sacred history through the poetry of Vergil, her criticism of recent history was made using other poetic voices from the early imperial period. The long-standing convention that prohibited the staging of triumphs following civil war was repeated using lines drawn from Lucan’s censorious work. This was not, however, some abstract literary exercise. As Bleckmann has argued, like other members of the urban senatorial elite, the experience of Proba and her family during the civil war was likely to have been deeply traumatic.71 Indeed, her condemnation of civil war extends beyond the Cento’s opening lines into the poem’s portrayal of the

70

S. Schottenius Cullhed, Proba the Prophet (2015), 117-8. B. Bleckmann, ‘Die Schlacht von Mursa und die zeitgenössische Deutung eines spätantiken Bürgerkrieges’ (1999), 74. 71

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biblical archetype of fraternal conflict represented by the murder of Abel by Cain (Gen. 4:3-15): Then, as the twin brothers burned sacrificial offerings with torches, one of them felt envy for the gift produced by the other – I shiver when relating it (horresco referens)! – his own kin by blood, he caught him off guard and butchered him at his father’s altar, befouling with blood the fires that he himself had dedicated.72

While Proba’s work lauding Constantius’ victory in 353 failed to survive, the impression left by her criticism of the same episode in the opening lines of her Cento on the historiography of Constantius II was long lasting. Less than a decade after the Cento, the magister memoriae under Valens, Eutropius, composed his Breviarium (ca. 369) in which he laid out the barest of details of Rome’s history of conflict in the east.73 Following his evaluation of the battle of Mursa, Eutropius opined: ‘Vast forces of the Roman empire were destroyed in that conflict, forces which were sufficient for any war and which might have provided many a triumph and much security’.74 One cannot help but sense here the influence of Proba’s critique, not least in the idea that the while the civil war may have brought its victor a triumph, it failed to bring security to the empire especially from the threat posed by its foreign enemies. In the period following Proba and before Eutropius, the disastrous Persian expedition of Julian had occurred followed in turn by the even more disastrous peace of Jovian.75 In the space of less than a month, a Roman emperor was dead, fatally wounded in a skirmish close to Ctesiphon,76 and his successor, in an effort to extricate his troops from their precarious position, had agreed to the terms of a peace settlement with the Sasanians that greatly reduced Rome’s influence in northern Mesopotamia and the Transtigritane regions (the ‘Armenian Marches’).77 These events prompted considerable reflection about Rome’s effectiveness as a military power, and the idea that the civil wars of recent times may have played a role in depleting the empire’s military might began to appear as an 72 Tum gemini fratres, adolent dum altaria taedis, alter in alterius praelato invidit honore (horresco referens): consanguinitate propinquum excipit incautum patriasque obtruncat ad aras sanguine foedantem, quos ipse sacraverat ignes. Ed. A. Fassina and C.M. Lucarini (2015), 25.28526.289. Trans. S. Schottenius Cullhed, Proba the Prophet (2015), 209. 73 See Noel Lenski, Failure of Empire. Valens and the Roman State in the Fourth Century A.D. (Berkeley, 2002), 185-96. 74 Eutropius, Breviarium 10.12.1-2. Trans. H.W. Bird (Liverpool, 1993), 67-8. 75 Amm. Marc. 25.7.9. Contemporary reactions to the peace are collected in Geoffrey Greatrex and Samuel N.C. Lieu, The Roman Eastern Frontier and the Persian Wars. Part 2, AD 363-630 (London, 2002), 1-19. 76 Amm. Marc. 25.3.1-23. 77 See Roger C. Blockley, ‘The Romano-Persian Peace Treaties of A.D. 299 and 363’, Florilegium 6 (1994), 28-49; also the remarks by Michał Marciak, Sophene, Gordyene, and Adiabene. Three Regna Minora of Northern Mesopotamia between East and West (Leiden, 2017), 188-94.

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explanation for the imperial retrenchment of the mid-to-late fourth century. Thus, the original challenge evident in the Cento to the civil war of ‘recent times’ was transformed into an explanation that was utilised to account for the grievous losses endured by Rome in the following decades. The most articulate continuator of Proba’s sentiments is Ammianus Marcellinus who connected the various threads of criticism about Constantius’ achievements to form his infamous evaluations of the emperor as a leader who only ever achieved success at the expense of his own citizens’ blood (16.10.1-2; 21.16.15).78 Thus, while Proba’s censure may have derived initially from the short-term goal of keeping herself and her family in imperial favour, it was the ethical dimension of her challenge to the civil war of 350-353 that was to have the most lasting impact on the memorialisation of Constantius II.

78

See P. de Jonge, Philological and Historical Commentary on Ammianus Marcellinus XVI (1972), 109-11; J. den Boeft, D. den Hengst, H.C. Teitler, Philological and Historical Commentary on Ammianus Marcellinus XXI (1991), 265-7.

Was Fortunatianus of Aquileia the Anti-Victorinus of Pettau? A Study in Inheritance, Convergence, Divergence and Regional Context Zac ESTERSON, Cardiff

ABSTRACT In composing his commentaries on the Gospels, fourth century Fortunatianus of Aquileia clearly inherited significant material directly from third century Victorinus of neighbouring Pettau. But other material suggests a hermeneutic very different in tradition and style, chiefly one more Origenistic and culturally Latinizing. Whereas Victorinus tended to innovate on his ante-Nicene predecessors only slightly, Fortunatianus seems to employ an Alexandrian technique more freely. Their greatest difference is perhaps in their treatment of Antichrist and the end-times, but here too there are continuities and anomalies which beg explanation. What, asides the legalization of Christianity, had changed? What was similar and divergent in the respective situations of third century Pannonia and forth century northern Italy? Both authors are concerned with similar penetrations of Jewish rites into the Church and see Jews as equivalently threatening to Christians, albeit in subtly different ways. But Fortunatianus, innovating upon Origen, perhaps unsurprisingly employs a sharper dichotomizing that, post-Constantine, arrogates categories of ‘non-Jewish/gentile’, Greek and Latin culture to that of ‘Church’ and ‘Christian’ and that of their antithesis to ‘Synagogue’ and ‘Jewish’, perhaps under impact of a newly perceived Judeo-pagan threat under Julian (its being unclear precisely when Fortunatianus died), the very incarnation of that prophesied by Victorinus and his predecessors, whose so-called ‘millenarianism’ is otherwise by then so unfashionable. How and why does Fortunatianus appear to address these, and what is one to make of the paradoxes in the so-called ‘Aquileian’ tradition, and do they play a part in the two authors’ respectively divergent fates?

Fortunatianus of Aquileia clearly drew from Victorinus of Pettau for his commentaries on Matthew, Luke and John.1 He also had sources in common 1 Agnès Bastit, ‘Le prologue aux commentarii sur les évangiles de Fortunatien’, in Lukas J. Dorfbauer (ed.), Fortunatianus redivivus, Bischof Fortunatian von Aquileia und sein Evangelienkommentar (Berlin, 2017), 1-7, 10-20, 38-41; Lukas J. Dorfbauer, ‘Der Codex Zürich, Zentralbibliothek C 64 und seine Bedeutung für die Überlieferung von Fortunatians Evangelienkommentar’, in L.J. Dorfbauer, Fortunatianus redivivus (2017), 168; Christophe Guignard, ‘Les généalogies évangéliques de Jésus dans le commentaire de Fortunatien’, in L.J. Dorfbauer, Fortunatianus redivivus (2017), 181-3, 200, 212-3, 216-8, 228-9; Hugh A.G. Houghton, ‘The Divisions and

Studia Patristica CII, 119-139. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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with Victorinus, chiefly Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Justin, Tertullian, Cyprian and Origen, whether in their Greek or Latin versions. 2 And, unsurprisingly, he sometimes uses the same material for different purposes, albeit often paradoxically related, perhaps none more so than that related to their understanding of the concepts of the promised land, Jerusalem, and Antichrist. From Victorinus he explicates, inter alia, some of the sacred tetrads, e.g. the four individual gospels which comprise the one eternal gospel, derived from the four rivers of Gen. 1, which flow from the one common source.3 Likewise sundry sacred septeniads, e.g. the seven churches and candelabra of Rev. 1-3 and the one, concomitant seven-fold spirit,4 borrowed from the Poetovian’s works on the Apocalypse and creation of the world.5 Like Victorinus,6 Fortunatianus had some inherited Hebrew, beyond the level that can be derived from the New Testament alone, chiefly the etymology of names,7 perhaps even derived from the Poetovian’s commentary on Matthew,8 which he had likely read, if not slavishly followed. Dulaey speculates that Jerome’s refutation of Helvidius’ assertion that Victorinus did not believe in Mary’s perpetual virginity comprises a quotation that Jesus’ brothers were related cognatione, ‘by kinship’, non natura, ‘not by birth’,9 and not merely his politically correct inference of nothing adducible the Poetovian actually says (he designates Victorinus an orthodox martyr elsewhere).10 If correct, this would support the idea that Fortunatianus at least partly bases his thesis on Victorinus, although, as Bastit suggests, this is essentially an argumentum ex Text of the Gospels in Fortunatianus’ Commentary on the Gospels’, in L.J. Dorfbauer, Fortunatianus redivivus (2017), 252-3; Alessio Peršič, ‘Fortunaziano: organico testimone della tradizione ‘aquileiese’?’, in L.J. Dorfbauer, Fortunatianus redivivus (2017), 325-6, 330-1, 336-8. 2 A. Bastit, ‘Le prologue aux commentarii sur les évangiles de Fortunatien’ (2017), 11-2, 15, 38-9; Chr. Guignard, ‘Les généalogies évangéliques de Jésus dans le commentaire de Fortunatien’ (2017), 178, 181; H.A.G. Houghton, ‘The Divisions and Text of the Gospels in Fortunatianus’ Commentary on the Gospels’ (2017), 250-1; Christina M. Kreinecker, ‘The Kingdom Parables in Fortunatianus’ Commentary on the Gospels’, in L.J. Dorfbauer, Fortunatianus redivivus (2017), 273; A. Peršič, ‘Fortunaziano’ (2017), 325-8. 3 Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 4.4 (SC 423, 68, l. 35-8); Fabr. 3 (SC 423, 140, l. 8-15). 4 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. VIII. (CSEL 103, 147, l. 812-9); M. LXXXI. (CSEL 103, 193, l. 1925-194, l. 1946). 5 Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 1.6-7; 8.2 (SC 423, 88, l. 5-8); Fabr. 7 (SC 423, 144, l. 8-9). 6 Likely bearing in mind the Hebrew meaning of the name Dan, ‘judge’: Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 4.5 (SC 423, 72, l. 30): Et ipse iudicabit populum. Cf. Gen. 49:16 (MT; p. 83 Elliger-Rudolph): ‫יָ ִדין ָדּן‬, yādiyn Dan, ‘Dan shall judge’. 7 L.J. Dorfbauer, introduction to Fortunatianus Aquileiensis Commentarii in evangelia (2017), 84-7. Fortunatianus, Comm. Ev. M. long. III. (CSEL 103, 128, l. 401): Bethlem ex Hebreo in Latinum ‘domus panis’; M. III. (CSEL 103, 143, l. 767-8). 8 Martine Dulaey, Victorin de Poetovio: premier exégète latin. Vol. 1 (Paris, 1993), 63-5. 9 Dulaey speculates that Jerome’s refutation of Helvidius comprises a quotation, that Jesus’ brothers were related cognatione, ‘by kinship’, non natura, ‘not by birth’: Jerome, Helv. 17 (PL 23, 199B). M. Dulaey, Victorin de Poetovio (1993), vol. 1, 63-5; vol. 2, I.4, n. 96, 34. 10 Hieronymus, Vir. Ill. 74 (p. 41, l. 2 Richardson).

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silentio. If Victorinus contained anything as specific as Fortunatianus does, surely Jerome would have explicitly quoted him? Without question, the Aquileian’s formula that Christ took his flesh from David via the virgin11 bears the imprint of the Pannonian.12 Did his complex explanation why Luke’s genealogy for Joseph differs from Matthew’s, namely that Jacob fathered Joseph on the wife of his deceased brother Heli, in accord with the law of Levirate marriage,13 also derive from Victorinus? His omitted verses from Matthew, and their earlier interpretations, raise other questions. Chromatius of Aquileia and Gregory of Elvira recount a traditional interpretation,14 which Dulaey judges likely to have appeared in Victorinus, of the three tents of Matt. 17:2. They represent, respectively, heaven, paradise and the earth, or the instruction of Moses (the Law), Elijah (the prophets) and Christ himself.15 Why Fortunatianus might have discounted the first is not hard to guess: the intermediate category of ‘paradise’, as somewhere between heaven and earth, smacked too much of millenarianism, vulnerable also by an attachment to the geographic Holy Land, elements quite antithetical to Fortunatianus’ agenda. Quite unlike Victorinus, he has some radically new Greco-Roman linguistic and cultural interpretations, in line with a gentilizing tendency, from which his predecessor generally shies, who preferred to define Christians as a ‘gens sancta’ or ‘holy people/nation’, rather, ‘of priests’.16 Like Victorinus, he is extremely hostile to Jews and Judaizing, albeit in ways both similar and dissimilar to his. The chief difference is his antipathy to literalist interpretations of Christian promises vis-à-vis the promised land, like Origen and the later Jerome, with a tendency to a very much Origenist allegorism, extending it even further into the culturally gentile, non- or anti-Jewish GrecoRoman sphere. Victorinus drew from Origen extensively,17 indeed may have depended on his library in Caesarea Maritima for most of the patristic material for his commentaries.18 He very much stresses the value of spiritual i.e. figurative interpretations of the Mosaic law for Christian purposes,19 and the blindness of Jews for still clinging to its letter.20 Some related traditional Christian 11 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. long. I. (CSEL 103, 119, l. 231-2): quia virgo Maria ex David, de qua dominus noster Christus carnem accepit. 12 Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 4.4 (SC 423, 66, l. 6-7): hominis Matheus enititur enuntiare nobis genus Mariae, unde carnem accepit Christus. Cf. Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 1.1 (SC 423, 46, l. 4-6). 13 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. long. I. (CSEL 103, 114, l. 138-48). 14 Chromatius, Hom. Matth. 54 A, 10 (CChr.SL 9A, 635, l. 283-301). Gregorius of Elvira, Arca 15-20 (CChr.SL 69, p. 151, 94-152, 32). 15 M. Dulaey, Victorin de Poetovio (1993), vol. 1, 64-5; vol. 2, I.4, n. 107, 35. 16 Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 1.0 (SC 423, 46, l. 15). 17 M. Dulaey, Victorin de Poetovio (1993), vol. 1, 295-9, inter alia. 18 M. Dulaey, Victorin de Poetovio (1993), vol. 1, 296. 19 Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 4.1 (SC 423, 64). 20 Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 5.2 (SC 423, 76, l. 9-13).

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motifs, e.g. the contrast between Leah and Rachel qua Church and Synagogue,21 Fortunatianus borrows.22 However, Victorinus does not theorize on these distinctions as extensively as does Origen, and consequently does not lay great stress on the respective virtues and vices of either kind of interpretation. Victorinus declares rather than theorizes. Thus, he implies, the mark of the beast in Revelation, for Christians, is itself circumcision,23 while for Fortunatianus Jews are intrinsically stamped on their foreheads with the sign of the devil,24 with a wickedness more intrinsic. The former lays stress on a praxis which may infect Christians, the latter more on a doxa which incarnates Jews as an evil principle apart. Indeed, in a vicious circle we will see iterated, Origen’s expounding the dark skin of the bride of Song 1:5-6 as indicating her prior, sinful state, perhaps echoing Philo’s original explication of Ethiopian blackness as wickedness,25 is further ethnicized in Fortunatianus. For him the name of the river ‘Geon’ (Gen. 2:13) derives from gē, land or earth, and which is ‘none other than the promised land which is given to the Jews’,26 while the blackness of Ethiopia, around which it flows, signifies the wickedness of the Jews in general.27 For although Origen had seen in the black skin of Ethiopia an aspect of formerly un-enlightened, pagan gentiles, that quality had long since been transferred to the souls of sinful Israel.28 But Origen had also said the wicked are resurrected in black bodies,29 as well as discussed at length the mystery of the prior reasons the ostensibly nobly descended Jew had been overtaken by the once baser-born gentile Christian.30 Moreover, Philo had understood ‘Ethiopia’ as a metaphor for ‘humiliation’ (ταπείνωσις) and ‘cowardice’ (δειλία), surrounded by the river Gē(h)on, derived from the Hebrew Giyħôn, ‫גיחון‬, springing forth, which designates ‘courage’ and what is ‘warlike’ (ἀνδρεία, πολέμιον).31 This, whether inherited directly or not, is ethno-territorialized by the African Fortunatianus in 21

Victorinus of Pettau’s commentary on Genesis as raccounted by Jerome: Jerome, Epist. 36.16 (CSEL 54, 283-5). 22 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. long. III. (CSEL 103, 136, l. 567-8); M. VII. (CSEL 103, 146, l. 805-6). 23 Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 13.3 (SC 423, 106, l. 12). 24 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. CXIV. (CSEL 103, 219, l. 2469-75). 25 Philo of Alexandria, QR 2.82. 26 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. praef. (CSEL 103, 110, l. 77-9): Geon autem terrae nomen est; quid aliud est nisi quia Iudeis non aliud quam terra repromissionis datur? 27 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. praef. (CSEL 103, l. 72-6): Iudei enim praecepta legis non observando Ethiopes designantur nigri, peccatis scilicet nimis contaminati, interficiendo prophetas et iustos; novissime etiam ad cumulum malorum suorum in ipsum dominum saevierunt ita, ut dicerent contradicente Pilato Sanguis huius super nos et super filios nostros et Nos non habemus regem nisi Caesarem. His igitur factis manifestissime [ea] Ethiopes accipiuntur. 28 Origen, Hom. Cant. I 6 (PG 13, 43C-44D). 29 Origen, Princ. II 10.8 (PG 11, 240B-C). 30 Origen, Philoc. 1.22 (l. 20-31 Robinson). Cf. Origen, Cels. IV 8 (SC 136, l. 18-29). 31 Philo, Leg. I 68 (p. 78, l. 22-79, l. 4 Cohn-Wendland).

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a similar-but-opposite way. It is perhaps appropriate that, by contrast, he derives ‘Geon’ from gē, land or earth, equating the river to the very promised land which is given to the Jews,32 for they are a people militarily humiliated for their sins, and reduced to the status of a cowardly and unwarlike ‘Ethiopia’. But he may also be countering Philo’s deduction of a quasi-sexual masculine principle, ‘springing forth’, since he elsewhere describes the Church as defended by the ‘towers’ of its virgins, whereas the Synagogue is defenseless without them.33 In any case, Fortunatianus has taken a more abstract kind of Origenistic principle, and given it flesh, as it were, losing much nuance and distinction in the process, beginning to incarnate respective virtues and vices in a fundamental, quasi-ethnic nature. But what is also curious is that, ostensibly, Fortunatianus says in the praefatio of his commentary that the Holy Land is that which is given to the Jews, on the grounds of its quintessential earthiness,34 and the Jews’ concomitant Ethiopic blackness,35 in contrast to what he will later describe as the heavenly promised land, given to Christians.36 Victorinus had of course said Christians would inherit a celestially enlarged and glorified, but nevertheless earthly, promised land.37 In another possible divergence from Victorinus, Fortunatianus stresses the perpetual virginity of Mary.38 In surviving material the Poetovian says nothing explicitly to this effect beyond the barely scriptural,39 asides to stress Christ’s true pre-existence owed nothing to Mary.40 Helvidius later presses Victorinus into service to precisely oppose the doctrine, though none of his citations survive,41 even if Dulaey speculates otherwise.42 Jerome, who had widely read Victorinus, vigorously declares contrariwise, but nor does he offer any extant quotation from Victorinus for his case, his argument being very much like Fortunatianus’. As the Aquileian argues, Mary must have remained a virgin, for how else could her exceeding virtues be explained43 (and similarly those of Christ,44

32

Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. praef. (CSEL 103, 110, l. 77-9). Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. LXXVII. (CSEL 103, 186, l. 1752-7). 34 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. praef. (CSEL 103, 110, l. 76-7). 35 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. praef. (CSEL 103, 110, l. 71-6). 36 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. praef. (CSEL 103, 110, l. 78): Terreno scilicet populo terrena, populo autem caelesti regnum promittitur caelorum. 37 Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 21.2 (SC 423, 118, l. 12). 38 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. long. I. (CSEL 103, 126, l. 354-63); M. LXL. (CSEL 103, 200, l. 2070-3). 39 Re Luke 1:35: Victorinus of Pettau, Fabr. 9 (SC 423, 146, l. 6). 40 Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 1.1 (SC 423, 146, l. 6). 41 Jerome, Helv. 17 (PL 23, 211B). 42 M. Dulaey, Victorin de Poetovio (1993), vol. I, 63-5; vol. 2, I.4, n. 96, 34. 43 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. LXL. (CSEL 103, 200, l. 2070-3). 44 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. CII. (CSEL 103, 210, l. 2290-1). 33

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Joseph45 and the virgins of the church).46 Thus the Stridonian appears merely to say the Poetovian must have figuratively intended ‘the brethren of the Lord’, because so had Catholic interpretation of the gospels always maintained.47 This argument from omission perhaps colonizes the interstices of Victorinus’ laconic commentating style, careful to speak almost wholly in borrowed testimoniae and traditional exegeses, and well-suiting a prophet for whom the wings of the spirit were often clipped by predecedent.48 Jerome’s explication of Victorinus’ millennium as signifying the hundredfold perfection of the Decalogue, and thus virginity,49 might owe as much to the tradition informing Fortunatianus50 as that originating in Victorinus. However, Victorinus clearly sets store by the literal virginity of the 144 000 male Jewish converts of Rev. 7:14,51 though he conspicuously makes no allegoresis of this to infer they include gentiles, as does, say, Origen.52 By contrast, Fortunatianus seems in many ways much freer, suggesting he had assimilated Victorinus’ principle of prophetic inspiration by the Johannine spirit,53 deducible from his considerable debt to Victorinus’ commentary on the Apocalypse,54 albeit tending towards an Alexandrian allegoresis thereby.55 But this may have had anomalous consequences. 45

Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. long. I. (CSEL 103, 125, l. 331-7). Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. LXXVII. (CSEL 103, 186, l. 1754-7); Comm. Ev. M. LXL. (CSEL 103, 200, l. 2070-3). 47 Jerome, Helv. 17 (PL 23, 211B). 48 Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 10.2 (SC 423, 90, l. 16-21). 49 Finale to Jerome’s recension of Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 20-21 (1 [SC 423, 126, l. 4-11]). 50 Expounding the parable of the sower (Matt. 13:1-23; Mark 4:1-9; Luke 8:4-8), Fortunatianus describes the ‘hundredfold’ as the perfection of faith in martyrdom, via the ‘sixtyfold’ of virginity and from the ‘thirtyfold’ of Christ’s age at the passion (Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. long. I. (CSEL 103, 119, l. 222-121, l. 266), which seems to mean something like the ‘baseline-humanity’ which needs be redeemed. 51 Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 12.4 (SC 423, 102, l. 1-5). 52 So rare are Jewish believers, writes Origen, that the Apocalypse could not possibly imply so many Jewish Christians, never mind virginal ones. Arguably implicit is a Jewish sexual proclivity: to be Jewish is to have (hetero-)sex: Origen, Comm. Jo. I 1.7 (SC 120, l. 1-10). 53 Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 4.1 (SC 423, 64, l. 16-21). 54 E.g. Victorinus’ formula of the ‘septiform spirit’, likely inferred from Origen’s ‘septuple grace of the holy spirit’: Origen, Hom. Lev. 3.5 (CB 29, 309, l. 17). Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 1.0 (SC 423, 46, l. 6-9). Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. LXXXI. (CSEL 103, 193, l. 1927-35); cf. M. CVI. (CSEL 103, 213, l. 2352-3). 55 ‘Die starke Präsenz der bis in die Gegenwart wirkmächtigen Metapher vom “Tisch des Wortes Gottes” und die Analogisierung von Wort und Sakrament zeigen, dass Gedankengut des Origenes schon vor seiner breiten Rezeption durch Hieronymus (in Aquileia zwischen 367 und 374), Rufinus (getauft ca. 371/372) und Ambrosius (getauft 374) in Norditalien bekannt war, auch wenn eine direkte literarische Abhängigkeit nicht festzustellen ist’: Harald Buchinger and Clemens Leonhard, ‘Der Codex Zürich, Zentralbibliothek C 64 und seine Bedeutung für die Überlieferung von Fortunatians Evangelienkommentar’, in L.J. Dorfbauer, Fortunatianus redivivus (2017), 116, n. 187. 46

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Like Origen and Jerome, Fortunatianus ostensibly left the literalist interpretations of the promised land to Jews,56 yet unlike either he perhaps did so to some extent with a more obvious sincerity. Asides his saying so from his non-Palestinian location, he apparently foregrounds that Jews should be left the literal promised land. It is possible to interpret this statement as similar ones found in Origen57 and Jerome,58 which cannot usually be taken at face value i.e. despite Origen and Jerome’s saying Jews should be left the out-moded literal promises, or perhaps more accurately, literal-ly interpreted promises, this contemptuous ‘generosity’ towards the Jews should not itself be interpreted over-literally either. As far as the literal promised land is concerned, there is no suggestion that Jews should materially receive anything but an earthly exile and dispossession therefrom.59 But, to play devil’s advocate, what might have made a Christian bishop of fourth century Italy contemplate the converse? A possible explanation is his convergence with the last days of Julian ‘the Apostate’, into which Fortunatianus may have just lived. It is only known for certain he died before 370,60 and Julian’s promise to restore Jews their temple cult in Jerusalem61 must have seemed to many Christians the incarnation of

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Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. Exc. dub. 1 (CSEL 103, 256, l. 1-8). E.g. Origen, Comm. Jo. X 42 (291; SC 157, l. 1-2). Sometimes Origen does not distinguish the treasure of the scriptures from the field wherein they are found (Matt. 13:44-5): Origen, Comm. Rom. II 14.13 (AGLB 16, 182, l. 133-8); nor Jerusalem from the Old Testament, nor its allegoresis from colonising its land e.g. Origen, Hom. Jer. 5.13.1-3 (SC 232, l. 1-71). But considering the Palestinian locale of his biblical studies, this is in itself highly ambiguous. 58 E.g. confounding his Jewish or literalist interlocutor, Jerome expounds Isa. 22:19-21, whereby Eliakim becomes the risen Christ, who takes the Jews’/Jewish priesthood’s place (Jerome, Comm. Isa. VII 22.15 [CChr.SL 73, l. 81-5]). What Jews possess in letter, Christ possesses in spirit (Jerome, Comm. Isa. VII 22.15 [CChr.SL 73, l. 85-7]). By this Jerome cannot mean that Jews possess the sites of the earthly Jerusalem, temple or Judaea, which, in his day, are primarily in the hands of the Christians. Likewise ambiguously, from his biblical research centre in Bethlehem, Jerome says Judaea comprises knowing the scriptures: Jerome, Comm. Isa. VII 19.16 (CChr.SL 73, l. 16-7). 59 E.g. Origen mocks those Jews who pray for its reversal: Origen, Comm. Rom. VIII 7 (AGLB 34, 678, l. 129-42). De Lange observes that, practically speaking, Origen’s argument is tantamount to an appeal to prophecy, which must be chiefly comprise Jewish statelessness and dispossession: Nicholas de Lange, Origen and the Jews: Studies in Jewish-Christian Relations in Third-Century Palestine (Cambridge, 1976), 71-2, 76. Likewise Jerome states e.g. how fundamentally ‘weak’ are Jewish interpretation and praxis because of the ruin of their Jerusalem and temple: Jerome, Comm. Gal. II 4.8-9 (PL 26, 401B). Jerome makes no distinction between Jews’ complete and utterly literal exile and their dying in the letter of their law (Jerome, Comm. Isa. VII 22.15 [CChr.SL 73, l. 72-5]). 60 Hanns Christof Brennecke, ‘Ingemuit totus orbis, et Arianum se esse miratus est... Fortunatian von Aquileia, Oberitalien und die Synode von Rimini (359)’, in L.J. Dorfbauer, Fortunatianus redivivus (2017), 67. 61 Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gest. 23.1.2-3. 57

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their worst fears of Antichrist.62 The oft-called ‘millenarians’, such as Victorinus of the neighbouring Pannonian diocese of Poetovio, had factored into their future histories a brief restoration of the Jews to Jerusalem, coinciding with Antichrist’s last great persecution of the faithful, sometimes with Jewish involvement.63 Indeed the so-called ‘mark of the beast’ (Rev. 13:17-8) would, on Christians, be nothing less than circumcision.64 What would propel a Christian who otherwise valued so highly certain subjectively gentile Greco-Roman aspects of his culture, and was so hostile to Jews and Judaism, perhaps in a manner more imperious and imperial than Victorinus, to apparently concede to Jews the literal promised land? Especially given Fortunatianus sometimes refers or alludes positively to the idea of empire, its association with (primarily Greco-Roman, surely?) gentiles and its mirroring of heavenly power;65 as well as its axiomatic destruction, literal and non-literal, of the state and status of the Jewish people;66 while Victorinus, strictly, does neither? While Fortunatianus apparently eschews such literalist millenarian ideas as a materially glorified Christian Jerusalem and Holy Land, very much present in Victorinus,67 and even though Fortunatianus borrows many of Victorinus’ non-literal interpretations thereof e.g. of the gates of the new Jerusalem, which both literally comprise the apostles68 as well as the pearly gates through which the nations import their riches,69 he otherwise appears no keener than Origen or Jerome to concede the mundanely literal things back to the Jewish people as a whole: they are a people deservedly in visible ruin, he says.70 However, there is the apparent oddity of his in some sense conceding to Jews the earthly land of Judah, as well as apparently acknowledging a contemporary temple sacrificial cult. Hugh Houghton dismisses this as merely an ill-informed anachronism,71 which may well be so. But Fortunatianus appears otherwise 62 Irenaeus, Haer. V 25.1 (SC 153, l. 1-25); V 25.2 (SC 153, l. 30-40); V 25.4 (SC 153, l. 83-7). Cf. Hippolytus, Antichr. 6 (PG 10, 733B-C); 25 (PG 10, 748A-B); V 63 (PG 10, 781D-784B); Comm. Dan. IV 49.5 (GCS 1.2, 312, l. 19). Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 13.4 (SC 423, 108, l. 12-9). 63 Irenaeus, Haer. V 25.4 (SC 153, l. 76-83). Cf. Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 13.3 (SC 423, 106, l. 11-12); and Jerome, Comm. Isa. V 16.3 (CChr.SL 73, l. 6-24). Cf. Fortunatianus, Comm. Ev. M. CVIII. (CSEL 103, 214, l. 2377-8). 64 Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 13.3 (SC 423, 106, l. 11-4). 65 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. XXXIII. (CSEL 103, 159, l. 1098-106). 66 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. XXXIII. (CSEL 103, 159, l. 1106-60, l. 1131); cf. M. CVIII. (CSEL 103, 214, l. 2380-2). 67 Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 21.1-3 (SC 423, 115, l. 1-116, l. 26). 68 Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 21.6 (SC 423, 122, l. 8-12). Fortunatianus, Comm. Ev. M. LXXVII. (CSEL 103, 186, l. 1757-8). 69 Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 21.2 (SC 423, 116, l. 1-5). 70 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. LXLVII. (CSEL 103, 207, l. 2221-6); M. C. (CSEL 103, 209, l. 2271-3). 71 Hugh A.G. Houghton, introduction to his translation of Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Commentary on the Gospels (CSEL (103), Extra Seriem), XXII.

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well-aware of an originally Jewish Jerusalem’s destruction, by Vespasian (albeit more precisely his son Titus), in the first century. Why would he acknowledge the effective existence of a temple he must have known formerly destroyed therein? An answer, most plausible to me, is that of simple expediency. According to Jerome, Fortunatianus had acted as the effective agent of Constantius in pressuring Liberius, exiled bishop of Rome, to compromise with Arianism.72 Thus the bishop of Aquileia had not only recognised the Pauline necessity of obeying the secular power (Rom. 13:4), he had to some extent participated in it. For Victorinus, by contrast, the empire would be destroyed on Christ’s return,73 nor has he anything positive to say of imperial institutions whatsoever, 74 unlikely his primary and both more-or-less millenarian sources, Irenaeus and Hippolytus.75 However, if Julian set the spectre of a restored Jewish Jerusalem and state in the realm of the possible, Fortunatianus may have felt his pastoral duty was to help Christians reconcile themselves to that unpleasant reality and, essentially, ignore it. The stress of this time, and its unusual constraints, may partly explain his commentary on Matthew’s truncated form.76 Fortunatianus would have been at the very end of his life, and a Jewish restoration would have signalled the threat of a complete reversal of Christian gains hitherto, the Jewish Erstwhile’s coming Last (Matt. 20:16; Mark 9:35), as he often stresses,77 now threatening to come no longer quite so last as erstwhile supposed. In such a looming crisis, on his virtual deathbed, Fortunatianus may have perhaps sought to bequeath to his flock an Origenian moral even yet more Alexandrian: the Church and concomitant faith are quintessentially non-Jewish, gentile or even

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Jerome, Vir. ill. 97 (PL 23, 697C-698C). Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 8.2 (SC 423, 88, l. 10-3). 74 His sole reference to the Roman state condemns it to destruction: Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 8.2 (SC 423, 88, l. 10-3). Unlike Origen, he assigns sole responsibility for persecuting Christians to the Senate, essentially absolving the imperial people: Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 14.2 (SC 423, 110, l. 4). Cf. Origen, Hom. Jes. Nav. 9.10 (PG 13, 879A). 75 After Rom. 13:4, Irenaeus at the very least ascribes to the empire the role of universal guardian of law and order: Irenaeus, Haer. V 24.2. Cf. Irenaeus, Haer. IV 30.3 (SC 100, l. 71-3). He also conflates the armies which ‘destroyed’ the Jews for slaying Christ with those of Christ himself: Irenaeus, Haer. IV 36.5 (SC 100, l. 175-87). As echoed by Origen, Hippolytus thinks Augustus’ empire happily facilitated the spread of the gospel throughout the nations, Hippolytus, Comm. Dan. IV 9.2 (SC 14, l. 1-6); albeit shadowed by a dark anti-empire, scarcely distinguishable from the devil’s, which ‘prepares Romans for war’: Hippolytus, Comm. Dan. IV 58.4 (SC 14, l. 6-9). 76 ‘The gaps between the passages selected for comment in the latter half of Matthew, and the reduced treatment of Luke and John, may be an indication of authorial fatigue’: H.A.G. Houghton, Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Commentary on the Gospels (2017), XVIII. 77 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. LXLIII., especially (CSEL 103, 203, l. 2142-204, l. 2147). 73

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comprise ‘all the nations’,78 in contrast with the Jews generally.79 Indeed, the Roman Procurator of Judaea, Pontius Pilate, is an archetype of the gentiles, who have come to belief, quite unlike the Jews, a quintessentially terrestrial people which, paradoxically, serve none but an earthly king, who is precisely Caesar (John 19:15)!80 (and is Antichrist in both Fortunatianus81 and Victorinus).82 Blessed are the gentiles, who escape the inherited blood-guiltiness of the Jews (and their mere earthly promised land),83 and inherit, by contrast, a heavenly kingdom.84 ‘Judaea’ is the ‘desert’ which comprises the Jews, wherein Antichrist will appear in the last days, in their very (reconstructed) ‘temple’.85 This language can of course be taken to be purely figurative. But there is something peculiarly monovalent about Fortunatianus’ use of terms such as ‘Judah/Judea’, ‘Jew’ and ‘Jewish’, which for authors such as Origen and Victorinus might have higher, Christian, significance. Likewise ‘desert’, which stands for both ‘Judea’ and ‘Jewish conduct’, whence all gentiles, in the figure of the Magi, must flee,86 and is contrasted absolutely as pejoratively terrestrial in comparison with all other lands of the gentiles beyond it. Thither they must return, and, by their conversion, their lands become no less than paradise.87 Thus, he seems to suggest, let the Jews have their miserable land and its accoutrements. Let Christians look outward, towards everywhere but the temple or tabernacle of the Jews, to which, not altogether logically, Fortunatianus has 78

Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. praef. (CSEL 103, 112, l. 111-113, l. 112). Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. long. III. (CSEL 103, 133, l. 481-4). 80 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. long. III. (CSEL 103, 133, l. 485-94). 81 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. LXLVI. (CSEL 103, 206, l. 2192-5). 82 Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 13.2 (SC 423, 106, l. 1-7). 83 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. praef. (CSEL 103, 110, l. 70-8): Est ergo imago fluminis Geon evangelium secundum Lucanum, quia iuxta legem scripsit. Iudei enim praecepta legis non observando Ethiopes designantur nigri, peccatis scilicet nimis contaminati, interficiendo prophetas et iustos; novissime etiam ad cumulum malorum suorum in ipsum dominum saevierunt ita, ut dicerent contradicente Pilato Sanguis huius super nos et super filios nostros et Nos non habemus regem nisi Caesarem. His igitur factis manifestissime [ea] Ethiopes accipiuntur. Geon autem terrae nomen est; quid aliud est nisi quia Iudeis non aliud quam terra repromissionis datur? Terreno scilicet populo terrena; cf. M. long. III. (CSEL 103, 133, l. 494-7): Qui et inultima necess(itat) e sua dixerunt: Sanguis huius super nos 495 et super filios nostros. Meritis suis dignam ipsi sententiam dederunt, ut sanguinis fili dei effusi tam diu rei habeantur, donec fuerint conversi. 84 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. long. III. (CSEL 103, 133, l. 497-9): Beatae igitur nationes, quae omnia de filio dei credentes etiam regnum caeleste[m] dignatione eius adipiscentur; praef. (CSEL 103, 110, l. 78): populo autem caelesti regnum promittitur caelorum. 85 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. CVIII. (CSEL 103, 214, l. 2377-91). 86 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. long. III. (CSEL 103, 132, l. 457-9): Gentes igitur omnes filium dei Christum non alibi quam in Iudea[m] requirunt. Inde ergo, id est a conversatione Iudaica, recesserunt et ad filium dei credulitate venerunt. 87 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. long. III. (CSEL 103, 134, l. 511-4): Ostendit credentes filio dei spreta[s] saeculari conversatione nequissima per aliam viam posse ad suam pervenire regione(m). Regio credentium filio dei paradisus est, de quo primus homo propter inobaudientiam pulsus est. 79

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the four calves, which bore the brazen sea of Solomon in a circle (1Kgs 7:23-6 and 2Chr 4:2-5), have their backs, even as their foreheads pointed to the four quarters of the winds, and the world, and so gentiles, in general.88 This summarizes nicely how millenarian and anti-millenarian ideas could converge temporarily in a post-Nicene world, even as they converged in such as Origen and Jerome, albeit in a contrary direction. All agreed that Jews were a bad lot. All agreed that they should be fundamentally dispossessed. All either agreed that Christians should, ultimately, be fundamentally possessed of Jerusalem and the Holy Land, or participated functionally in actually possessing them materially, even if not necessarily agreeing to the former proposition explicitly. In the case of Victorinus,89 and so-called millenarians like Irenaeus90 and Hippolytus,91 a future Jewish re-possession of Jerusalem was conceded, but on the understanding, as it were, it would be strictly temporary, and end with Jews’ third and final exile, to hell. Into which category precisely fell Fortunatianus? Fortunatianus enthuses in the Jews’ dispossession of temple and city and wider regions, which he terms their ruin. Like Jerome,92 he appears to award Vespasian an almost holy part in the Christian narrative for his key human agency in Jews’ downfall.93 After all, Irenaeus had at one point described those armies which destroyed Jerusalem as Christ’s very own.94 Thus millenarians and those often profoundly hostile to their conventional assumptions could agree on this one point. By contrast, Victorinus refers to Jews’ original Roman dispossession not at all, even if his restoration of them under Antichrist is premised upon it. It is not something in which he obviously glories, as what for the Poetovian evinces the Church’s rise is simply axiomatic of the Synagogue’s decline.95 While the Matthaean principle of the First’s coming Last, much explicated by Fortunatianus,96 as by Origen,97 does not directly appear in surviving 88 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. praef. (CSEL 103, 112, l. 108-12): Nam et in vitulis a Solomone sub mare aereo duodecim fabricatis, ternis (per quattuor partes) positis, dorsa ad templum, capita autem ad quattuor ventos, quattuor ostenduntur evangelia et, [p. 114: expositis invenies: Nam quod dicit dorsa ad templum, aversos a synagoga demonstrat apostolos potius ad gentes perrexisse] qua terni, trinitas perfecta, XII autem XII apostoli. Mare saeculum declarat, de quo (a) quattuor cardinibus mundi per praedicationem apostolicam omnes nationes ad credulitatem venerunt. 89 Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 2.2 (SC 423, 58, l. 2-8). 90 Irenaeus, Haer. V 25.4 (SC 153, l. 80-3). 91 Their restoration under Antichrist: Hippolytus, Antichr. 25 (GCS 1.2, l. 10-2); 6 (GCS 1.2, l. 11-7). Their exile and damnation: Hippolytus, Comm. Dan. IV 58.4 (SC 14, l. 8-14). 92 Jerome, Comm. Gal. III 6 (PL 26, 462B). 93 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. LXLVII. (CSEL 103, 207, l. 2221-6); M. C. (CSEL 103, 209, l. 2271-3). 94 Irenaeus, Haer. IV 36.5 (SC 100, l. 160-3). 95 Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 2.2 (SC 423, 58, l. 2-8). 96 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. LXLIII. (CSEL 103, 203-4, l. 2145-7). 97 Origen, Comm. Matt. XV 35 (p. 402 Lommatzsch 3). See Zachary Esterson, ‘Origen, Victorinus of Pettau and the Beginnings of the Latin Commentary Tradition’, in Alfons Fürst (ed.), Origenes und sein Erbe in Orient und Okzident (Münster, 2011), 149-78, 160-1.

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Victorinus material, it may be speculated it must have done in his commentary on Matthew, whence many not unreasonably suspect the Aquileian drew. It is surely central to his notion of recapitulation (Eph. 1:10),98 as inherited from Irenaeus99 and others.100 More demonstrably in common is Leah’s blindness in comparison with Rebecca’s 20/20 vision, the latter’s barrenness compared with the former’s newly-found fertility, all interpreted spiritually of the Church’s wisdom and universal extent when compared with the Synagogue’s alleged deficit in both.101 Victorinus’ quasi-military exposition of ecclesiastical discipline,102 doctrinal and ethical,103 surely part-derived from Tertullian104 and Cyprian (who originates the term ‘soldier of Christ’),105 is echoed in Fortunatianus’ discussion of rank, credal elements and the symbol.106 Both have an understanding of military structures surely derived from earthly ones. But the Aquileian goes much further, both in his discussion of heavenly realities through the prism of an earthly, surely Roman empire, and his centring of the figure of Cornelius the centurion in the birth of the gentile, non-Jewish Christian faith and community,107 a discussion which leads straight into his adducing earthly Jewish woes.108 Thus Christianity, the gentiles, empire and military are closely connected in Fortunatianus, whereas Victorinus definitely shies from embracing the concept of an earthly Roman empire, even as he holds its peoples as especially tolerant of the new faith, in contrast to state and senate, which authors its persecution (by contrast, Origen, far more imbued of a secular

98

Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 4.1 (SC 423, 64, l. 13-6). Also see Z. Esterson, ‘Origen, Victorinus of Pettau and the Beginnings’ (2011), 160-1. 99 Irenaeus, Haer. III 22.3 (SC 211, l. 43-9); IV 34.4 (SC 100, l. 104-15); III 22.3 (SC 211, l. 43-9); III 22.4 (SC 211, l. 78-9). Matthew C. Steenberg, Irenaeus on Creation: The Cosmic Christ and the Saga of Redemption (Leiden, 2008), 7, 49-53; Eric F. Osborn, Irenaeus of Lyons (Cambridge, 2006), xii, 138. 100 Irenaeus, Haer. IV 6.2 (SC 100, l. 27-35). Expounding Eph. 1:10: Pseudo-Hippolytus, Con. Ber. 2. (PG 10, 833B-C). 101 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. long. III. (CSEL 103, 136, l. 565-6); M. VII. (CSEL 103, 146, l. 805). Victorinus of Pettau’s commentary on Genesis, as raccounted by Jerome: Jerome, Epist. 36.16 (CSEL 54, 283-5). 102 Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 1.7 (SC 423, 52, 1. 1-5). 103 Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 1.4 (SC 423, 48, l. 1-50, l. 34). 104 E.g. Tertullian, Fug. 10 (CChr.SL 2, l. 4-7); Apol. 50 (CChr.SL 1, l. 1-3); Mart. 3 (CChr. SL 1, 5, l. 13-5); Exh. cast. 12 (CChr.SL 2, l. 8-9). Mathew Kuefler, ‘Soldiers of Christ: Christian Masculinity and Militarism in Late Antiquity’, in Björn Krondorfer (ed.), Men and Masculinities in Christianity and Judaism: A Critical Reader (London, 2009), 245-7. 105 Cyprian, Epist. 58.11 (CChr.SL 3C, l. 246-8). M. Kuefler, ‘Soldiers of Christ’ (2009), 247-9. 106 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. XXXIII. (CSEL 103, 159, l. 1098-160, l. 1131); M. LII. (CSEL 103, 171, l. 1410-7); cf. M. CVIII. (CSEL 103, 214, l. 2381-2). 107 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. XXXIII. (CSEL 103, 159-60, l. 1106-31). 108 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. XXXIII. (CSEL 103, 159, l. 1119-160, l. 1131).

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education and learning, considers its pagan peoples the more blood-guilty).109 Victorinus’ Church Militant is more responsive and oppositional to its earthly imperial counterpart (though perhaps not entirely, as I discuss elsewhere). Victorinus, from what we know, would never knowingly deduce a theological or doctrinal principle from a specifically Greek or Romano-Latin point of grammar or mathematics. He keeps his theological use of philology to his limited knowledge of Hebrew etymology,110 doubtless traditionally acquired, which Fortunatianus also evinces but exceeds in his spuriously explicating Greek or Latin transliterations of Hebrew words e.g. ‘Fison’, one of the four rivers of Gen. 2, via the Greek φύσα, ‘breathe’,111 or ‘Geon’ from γῆ, ‘earth’, ‘land’. True, Victorinus erroneously values the stater of Matt. 17:27 as two denarii,112 but his exegesis derives from the principle that the coin found in the fish’s mouth must necessarily serve for Jesus and Peter, and so must comprise a duality.113 After all, it was originally a shekel, which would suffice to pay for two adult Jewish males’ annual half-shekel obligations (Ex. 38:26). Thus Victorinus does not correctly note that Christ’s adduced stater should comprise four denarii, as did Origen,114 and so must signify, say, the divine tetrad, such as the four gospels comprise. That would be to intrude a secular Greco-Roman reality into a biblical one, and deny the obvious duality, which may then be inferred as the unity of the two testaments and so forth. Thus also Fortunatianus, who borrows this exegesis wholesale.115 But that is surely Fortunatianus’ direction of travel when he derives the trinity from the three raised dots or unciae on a Roman quadrans or teruncius,116 namely to sanctify in a Christian fashion the secular. Victorinus rather innovates on his received exegetical tradition only subtly, citing the need for a prophetic interpretation inspired by the spirit, but nevertheless constrained by the canon of his predecessors’ testimoniae.117 By contrast, surely related to his Christianizing of aspects of Greco-Romanitas, is Fortunatianus’ innovation upon his forebears more radical than Victorinus’, in an anti-Jewish manner. In this way, he treats Origen’s interpretation of the almond of Aaron’s staff. This was originally expounded by Philo, where the meat of the nut represented the psychic and allegorical sense of scripture, the 109

Origen, Hom. Jes. Nav. 9.10 (PG 13, 879A). E.g. explicating the name ‘Dan’, ‘judge’, from Gen. 49:16 (MT; p. 83 Elliger-Rudolph): ‫יָ ִדין ָדּן‬, yādiyn Dan, ‘Dan shall judge’, as its cognate verb: ‘iudicabit’: Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 4.5 (SC 423, 72, l. 30). 111 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. praef. (CSEL 103, 109, l. 65-6). 112 Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 1.4 (SC 423, 50, l. 19-20). 113 Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 1.4 (SC 423, 50, l. 25-7). 114 Origen, Comm. Matth. 13.20-23 (PG 13, 1128A). 115 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. LXXV. (CSEL 103, 184, l. 1703-6). 116 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. XXI. (CSEL 103, 154, l. 893-4). 117 Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 10.2 (SC 423, 90, l. 16-21). 110

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woody part the somatic and literal. In Origen, this duality becomes a trinity: the outer, bitter shell, the inner seed coat and the embryo, the fruit itself.118 The first is associated with the letter of the Law and the prophets, circumcision and the like, which literalness must be discarded. The second is the moral teaching of scripture, replete with that of self-control, a ‘rind’ that protects the third, the fruit, which constitutes the non-literally derived mysteries of the knowledge of God.119 This echoes how the body protects the soul, the former to be dissolved and remade in the resurrection, so as to present no further impediment to the latter.120 For Origen, these inner, nutty mysteries comprise the food of the Matthaean beatitudes.121 This is obviously analogous to how for Philo the literal observation of the law protected the search for its allegorical meaning, each integral to the other.122 But Origen has drawn a de facto ethno-cultural distinction between Christians and Jews, by eschewing the literally observed law, along with its bitter almond shell, and rather suborning Philo’s integral duality of the useful senses of scripture to the embryo and newly adduced seed coat. Fortunatianus takes this almond-shaped, rugby football and runs with it, inflating it rather into a walnut.123 Now the bitterness of its outer shell signifies the iniquity of the Jews and the gall they allegedly gave Christ to drink,124 clearly evolving what for Origen was the almond shell’s letter of the law.125 Yet the two conjoined parts of the shell signify the unity of the two testaments, while the quadriform of the fruit itself is the unitary flavour of the four-fold gospel revealed,126 whose woody protective coat is in turn the four-pointed cross,127 analogous perhaps to the self-mortification that Origen sees in the almond’s seed coat.128 Thus Fortunatianus has even further ‘ethnicized’ Origen’s original, turning the mere bitterness of the letter of the law into the bitter essence of the Jews themselves, admittedly a direction of travel well-lit by Origen and many Fathers before him, and almost unimaginably distant from Philo. But like these his predecessors, including Victorinus, the Aquileian has engaged in an exegesis by way of natural philosophy, which also tends towards an ingrafting of a non- or anti-Jewish gentile-ness, of which Victorinus, for all his considerable hostility 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128

Origen, Hom. Num. 7.4.3 (CB 30, 44, l. 17-22). Origen, Hom. Num. 7.4.3 (CB 30, 44, l. 17-22). Origen, Hom. Num. 7.4.3 (CB 30, 44, l. 17-22). Origen, Hom. Num. 7.4.3 (CB 30, 44, l. 17-22). Philo, Migr. 93 (p. 277, l. 31-278, l. 5 Cohn-Wendland). Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. praef. (CSEL 103, 114, l. 100-2). Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. praef. (CSEL 103, 114, l. 106-7). Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. praef. (CSEL 103, 114, l. 105-6). Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. praef. (CSEL 103, 114, l. 103-5). Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. praef. (CSEL 103, 114, l. 105). Origen, Hom. Num. 9.7.2-5 (PL 12, 632B-633C), especially 9.7.3 (PL 12, 632B-C).

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to Jews, is at some level wary. He prefers to think of Christians as a distinct gens sancta, including a significant Jewish minority in the end times.129 Of all the millenarians who were deemed orthodox, Victorinus has perhaps the least positive assessment of empire and its associated Greco-Roman culture. Victorinus employs a more universal (as we would understand it, largely) Hellenistic, natural philosophy wherewith to derive conventions such as the days of the week, hours of the day,130 months and seasons of the year,131 the four corners of the earth etc.,132 as employed by the Alexandrians before him. But he would never, so far as we know, make a doctrinal deduction on the grounds of an etymology from an extra-biblically contextual Greek term, let alone a specifically extra-biblical Greco-Roman cultural phenomenon. Fortunatianus does both e.g. in his expounding the Trinity from the three dots of a Roman quadrans or the Hebrew name Fison from the Greek phusān. When Victorinus expounds on a Judeo-Christian numerology, he mostly does so on a traditional basis, utilising interpretations often directly or indirectly derived from Hellenistic Jewish sources. This is not intended to chide or single-out Fortunatianus, except to show how the Aquileian was much more confident in his Christianizing of his ethno-geographical specificity, likely for very local, contemporary reasons. In the third century, Victorinus was probably also responding to a very culturally specific local situation, such as the large numbers of military personnel in the Danube as well as possibly unparalleled numbers of Jews in the military and civil imperial administration.133 This perhaps accounts for Victorinus’ clear concern about the penetration of Jewish rites into the Church, especially Sabbathobservance,134 according with known Pannonian synagogue-communities;135 as well as his certainty that the Antichrist would stage a Jewish restoration, and demand Christians do no more than circumcise, tantamount to adopting the mark of the beast in his commentary on the Apocalypse. Not only were perhaps most Pannonian Jews discovered so far in the military or civil service, a large number appear to have been Syrian in origin, perhaps with a cultural and ethnic

129

Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 20.1 (SC 423, 114, l. 9-13). Victorinus of Pettau, Fabr. 10 (SC 423, 148, l. 1-10). 131 Victorinus of Pettau, Fabr. 3 (SC 423, 140, l. 17-20). 132 Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 14.4 (SC 423, 112, l. 7-10). 133 ‘All in all, of the inscriptions left behind by Jews in Roman Pannonia, some two-thirds are those of soldiers, while the remaining one-third were executed at the behest of Jewish officials. All of them show a considerable degree of cultural and even religious assimilation to Roman civilization’: Raphael Patai, The Jews of Hungary: History, Culture, Psychology (Detroit, 1996), 22. Alexander (Sándor) Scheiber, Jewish Inscriptions in Hungary, from the 3rd Century to 1686 (Budapest, Leiden, 1983), 14. 134 Victorinus of Pettau, Fabr. 5 (SC 423, 142, l. 4-7). 135 Alexander (Sándor) Scheiber, ‘Jews at Intercisa in Pannonia’, JQR 45 (1955), 189-97. Philip A. Harland, ‘Familial Dimensions of Group Identity (II): “Mothers” and “Fathers”’, JSJ 38 (2007), 64, n. 22.l. 130

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link to the Holy Land and the tragic events therein.136 A number of Judaean coins, over-strikes deriving from the abortive Bar Kokhba revolt, have been found in Pannonia-Dacia, the largest outside Palestine.137 These could have constituted merely the bequest of soldiers, perhaps connected to the suppression of the revolt.138 Alternatively, Jewish imperial personnel may have kept them as signifying an aspiration, especially if they reconciled their Jewish identity and loyal imperial service with hope for an ultimate restoration of their temple, as other groups had done when Rome had destroyed theirs. This may partly account for the synthesis of imperial pagan and imagined Jewish power which Antichrist comprises in Victorinus. This assumption is inherited from his forebears, such as Irenaeus and Hippolytus, but is uniquely expressed in Victorinus who, unlike both the former, identifies the Antichrist as a Roman noble who converts to Judaism,139 rather than a slave,140 of the tribe of Dan,141 who somehow rises to imperial power. Perhaps Victorinus thought the former scenario the more plausible. Poetovio was an especial centre of Mithraism,142 a cult particularly associated with the Roman military. Even if there is no evidence of even apostate Jews participating therein, and the appearance of ‘D.M.’. on at least one Jewish tombstone more likely means ‘Diis Manibus’ rather than ‘Deo Mithras’,143 a culturally integrated Jewish presence in the imperial arm, combined with a sense of pagan encirclement, may have fed a troubled, local Christian imagination. A century later how different a situation faced Fortunatianus, albeit in neighbouring Aquileia. Christianity was now a religio licita, and an increasingly Christian imperial civil and military service now had paganism embattled. According to Jerome, Fortunatianus had enacted the virtual will of Constantius. But in the last years of the bishop’s life, all his faith’s successes may have seemed imperilled. It is unclear when he died, except that it must have been before 370. Thus he could have seen the rise of Julian in 361, and his attempts to revivify paganism and forge a de facto anti-Christian alliance with Judaism in Antioch. Fortunatianus may even have heard rumours of Julian’s plans to permit Jews to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem, and all that that implied in 136

A. Scheiber, Jewish inscriptions in Hungary (1983), 13-4. George T. Radan, ‘Comments on the History of Jews in Pannonia’, AAASH 25 (1973), 277. 137 Hannan Eshel, Boas Zissu and Gabriel Barkay, ‘Sixteen Bar Kokhba Coins from Roman Sites in Europe’, INJ 17 (2009-2010), 90-5. 138 Tibor Grüll, ‘Bar Kokhba Coins from Roman Sites in Europe: A Reappraisal’, 5. Cited 16 March 2019 https://www.academia.edu/26772950/Bar_Kokhba_Coins_from_Roman_Sites_in_ Europe_A_Reappraisal. 139 Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 13.3 (SC 423, 106, l. 11-2). 140 Irenaeus, Haer. V 25.1 (SC 153, l. 1-13): 141 Hippolytus, Antichr. 14-15 (GCS 1.2, l. 1-16). 142 Balduin Saria, ‘Noricum und Pannonien Balduin Saria Historia’, Historia 1.3 (1950), 447-8, 454-5, 465, 468, n. 127, 478, 480-2, n. 208, 483. 143 R. Patai, The Jews of Hungary (1996), 21.

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Christian fears, perhaps under influence of lobbying by the descendants of those very Jews Victorinus might have observed in the imperial service. Such Jews would have led an isolated existence, likely shunned by the majority of Israel under rabbinic strictures against their profession, maintaining a Jewish identity from generation to generation, under intense pressure by pagans or Christians to assimilate to theirs. In any case, the Aquileian need not have necessarily lived to 363 to suspect a radical reversal in Christianity’s fortunes, in its positioning between imperium, paganism, Judaism and the corresponding status of the land of the Israel. Unlike Victorinus, Fortunatianus is keen to state often that Israel of the flesh has experienced a temporal dispossession, of Jerusalem, that shades easily into a more spiritual and eternal one. And like his predecessors, especially Origen, he is able to state this while simultaneously affecting a nonchalance as to whether it is gentiles or Christians, as opposed to Jews, who are occupying or possessing the Holy Land in Jews’ stead. In Origen, of course, this is indeed somewhat affected, as even by his time Greek and Latin-speaking Christians are beginning to inhabit Aelia Capitolina and other Palestinian cities in the former Judaean heartlands.144 Indeed, it is these who comprise the considerable Palestinian Christian community encountered by Victorinus mere decades later,145 whence he took his precious ‘seed’ of earlier, especially eastern Fathers’ writings, to propagate in his own commentaries in the Latin west. Perhaps it is this visit, where he must have seen the still considerable Palestinian Jewish community, despite its theoretically total Christian-assumed exile, which prevents his explicitly referring to this last. But, once again, Fortunatianus appears to state at the very outset that the earthly promised land is that which is given to the Jews, a phenomenon he is keen to associate with the temporal world generally. He is hardly alone to do this, for Origen and others do something similar, as would Jerome, even as they dwelt in Palestine themselves. Like Fortunatianus, these say often that the true promised land of Christians is a heavenly one, though Fortunatianus says this while actually being outside the Holy Land, adjacent to where Victorinus is keen to show Palestine is an eschatological earthly Christian possession, even as he had likely seen it was an increasingly contemporary one. But Fortunatianus is keen also to stress that the gentiles’ predilection for Christ goes hand in hand with their very existing outside of Judaea, in their being both outside Judaism, metaphorically, and also its associated land and culture, literally.146 For instance, he expounds from the Magis’ return to ‘their own land’, ‘by a 144 Robert L. Wilken, The Land Called Holy: Palestine in Christian History and Thought (New Haven, 1992), 84-5. Leslie J. Hoppe, The Synagogues and Churches of Ancient Palestine (Collegeville, 1994), 68. 145 Victorinus of Pettau, Frag. (SC 423, 134, l. 1-4). 146 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. C. (CSEL 103, 133, l. 499-134, l. 503).

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way different/other [than the Jews’]’, to evade Herod and the Jews,147 as a kind of Christianity-prone gentility, a state of existence beyond Jewry which renders them a priori susceptible to faith in Christ.148 Conversely, ‘desert’, where it appears in scripture, such as during Christ’s temptation or mission, is synonymous with both Judaea and Jews generally,149 even as ‘earth’ comes to mean ‘land of the Jews’, whence Christ is rejected,150 and so even more anti-posed to a ‘heaven’ which comprises the very Church-lands to which gentiles increasingly resort.151 Origen clearly refers to an ‘intelligent people’ who inherit ‘the kingdom’ from the Jews (Matt. 21:43),152 both pre- and post-disposed to Christ by a culture and laws more universal,153 while shying from designating it with any linguistic, let alone ethno-specific, terms, such as preparation by a philosophy of the ‘Greeks’ with which he and his Alexandrian predecessor Clement have an ambiguous relationship.154 For instance, most pertinently for our thesis, Clement, possibly borrowing from the Philonic passage adduced above, had described the sifting of Greek philosophy for quasi-Christian/Christian-compatible truth as like finding a wholesome nut within an inedible shell155 (similarly expounding the parable of the wheat and the tares (Matt. 13:24-30), as the search for truth in philosophy).156 Indeed, he employs the Hellenistic Jewish expositor157 to evince his general thesis how any pagan philosophical truth was Hebrew-derived to begin with,158

147

Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. long. III. (CSEL 103, 132, l. 457-9). Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. long. III. (CSEL 103, 132, l. 474-133, l. 494). 149 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. long. VIIII. (CSEL 103, 147, l. 819-20). 150 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. J. V. (CSEL 103, 242, l. 2991-3). 151 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. long. III. (CSEL 103, 132, l. 457-9); M. long. III. (CSEL 103, 134, l. 511-4). 152 Origen, Comm. Matth. XI 17 (SC 162, l. 67-77). 153 E.g. Origen, Cels. VI 22 (GCS 3, 177, l. 20-9); VII 26 (GCS 3, 177, l. 1-8). 154 Both regard any truth found in Greek philosophy to be either incidental or derived directly or indirectly from ancient Israel. 155 Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 1.1.18.1 (GCS 15, 13, l. 1-5). Cf. how the ‘kingdom’ belongs to the ‘violent’ (Matt. 11:12) who reap the ‘fruit’ of philosophical-cum-biblical investigation: 6.17.149.5 (GCS 15, 509, l. 2-8); cf. 4.2.5.3 (GCS 15, 250, l. 10-3). 156 Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 4.2.6.1-4.2.7.4 (GCS 15, 250, l. 12-251, l. 8); 6.8.67.2 (GCS 15, 465, l. 24-6). 157 Whom he calls a ‘Pythagoraean’: Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 1.15.72.4 (GCS 15, 46, l. 17). Cf. David T. Runia,‘Why Does Clement of Alexandria Call Philo “The Pythagorean”?’, VigChr 49 (1995), 1-22. 158 Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 1.14.60.1 (GCS 15, 38, l. 10-2); 1.17.87.2. 17 (GCS 15, 56, l. 1-8); 1.21.101.1 (GCS 15, 64, l. 18-22); 1.22.150.4 (GCS 15, 93, l. 10-2); 2.1.429.1-2 (GCS 15, 113, l. 16); 2.5.439.1 (GCS 15, 123, l. 7-9); 2.18.78.1 (GCS 15, 153, l. 28-32); 5.14.89.1 (GCS 15, 384, l. 15-6); 5.14.92.1 (GCS 15, 386, l. 21-2); 6.8.62.4 (GCS 15, 463, l. 14-6); 6.11.88.2 (GCS 15, 475, l. 30-476, l. 2). Cf. how God dispenses philosophy to the Greeks via ‘inferior angels’: Strom. 7.6.298.4 (GCS 17, 6, l. 16-7); it is given to the Greeks in lieu of biblical law: Strom. 7.11.299.2 (GCS 17, 9, l. 14-20). 148

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Moses’ having been taught by (Jewish?) ‘Greeks’ in Egypt (!),159 and likewise seems to use Hellenistic Jewish authors to somewhat circularly demonstrate a parallel dynamic.160 Clement deems Philo a ‘Pythagoraean’ and Pythagoras ‘the chief of the Greeks’, who had learned his philosophy directly from Moses.161 This was, on its own terms, only acquired second-hand from non-Greek, ‘barbarian’ sources,162 its serving as schoolmaster (Gal. 3:24) and handmaiden (Gal. 4:21-31) to pre-Christian gentile Greek-speakers (Gal. 4:3),163 preparing them to receive the gospel.164 Rejecting ‘Hellenic culture’,165 Clement ingeniously both elides and distinguishes the grains of wisdom found in Greek philosophy with and from their apparent source.166 Thus he blurs any specifically ‘Greek’ (or any other ethnolinguistic) essence (except for one either coincidental or merely secondary and facilitative)167 with a kind of universal or natural philosophy,168 which is merely the pristine study of wisdom,169 and which, again, his Philo renders biblically compatible,170 and thus (re)assimilable into Christian discourse without contradiction, cultural or chronological. The Jewish Paul’s positive use of Greek

159

Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 1.23.158.2 (GCS 15, 95, l. 15-7). E.g. of the Exagōgē of Ezekiel the Tragedian: Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 1.23.155.1-7 (GCS 15, 6, l. 19-98, l. 7). 161 Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 5.11.67.3 (GCS 15, 371, l. 3-6). 162 Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 1.1.10.2 (GCS 15, 8, l. 5-8); Aristotle knew a Jew: Strom. 1.15.70.2 (GCS 15, 44, l. 10-1); Numa, as a Pythagorean, was acquainted with the Mosaic law; Strom. 1.15.71.1 (GCS 15, 45, l. 12-4); and so was all ancient philosophy derived: Strom. 1.15.71.3 (GCS 15, 45, l. 19-21); arriviste Greek philosophy’s ancient barbarian pedigree (somehow) evinces its elder Hebrew origin: Strom. 1.15.61.1 (GCS 15, 41, l. 22-6); Strom. 1.16.74.1 (GCS 15, 47, l. 21-2); Strom. 1.17.81.1-2 (GCS 15, 52, l. 24-53, l. 3). Strom. 4.1.1.2 (GCS 15, 248, l. 6-10); Pythagoras’ debt to the symbology of barbarian-cum-Mosaic philosophy: Strom. 5.5.27.130.1 (GCS 15, 344, l. 24-345, l. 14); Strom. 5.14.89.2 (GCS 15, 384, l. 15-7); Strom. 5.14.90.4 (GCS 15, 385, l. 23-5); Strom. 5.14.92.1 (GCS 15, 386, l. 21-2); as the ‘barbarian philosophy’ generally: Strom. 5.14.97.1 (GCS 15, 390, l. 23-4) et passim; the ‘peripatetic philosophy’ also derives from the Hebrew: Strom. 5.14.97.7 (GCS 15, 390, l. 14-8); Strom. 6.2.4.1-5.2 (GCS 15, 423, l. 30-424, l. 21); Strom. 6.3.28.1-3 (GCS 15, 444, l. 1-13); Strom. 6.7.55.2-4 (GCS 15, 459, l. 22-9). 163 Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 1.5.28.1-34.4 (GCS 15, 17, l. 21-23, l. 3). 164 Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 1.7.37.1 (GCS 15, 24, l. 8-11); 6.8.67.1 (GCS 15, 465, l. 18-24). 165 Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 1.5.29.6 (GCS 15, 18, l. 25-9). 166 Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 1.2.19.1-21.3 (GCS 15, 13, l. 14-14, l. 19); 1.17 (GCS 15, 18, l. 25-9). 167 Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 1.20.97.2-99.3 (GCS 15, 62, l. 14-63, l. 19). 168 Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 1.7.87.1-6 (GCS 15, 27, l. 8-25, l. 2); 1.13.57.1 (GCS 15, 36, l. 8-11); 1.19.93.4-5 (GCS 15, 60, l. 4-11); 4.7 (GCS 15, 267, l. 8-25, l. 2); including conventions such as the sacredness of the seventh day, Strom. 5.14.105.2-107.2 (GCS 15, 396, l. 25-397, l. 21). 169 Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 1.5.30.1 (GCS 15, 19, l. 13-6). 170 Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 1.5.31.1-4 (GCS 15, 20, l. 5-16). 160

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philosophical maxims (Acts 17:28; Titus 1:12) likewise ‘universalizes’ his sources,171 analogously to Clement’s Philo, perhaps. In a similarly ethno-‘bending’ fashion, Clement describes the biblical traditions as having been given to ‘the barbarians’, as though ancient Israel comprised all barbarians and vice versa, effectively gentilizing Israel, comparably to how philosophy was given to the Greeks, even as these respectively prepare both for the gospel.172 And, of course, since philosophy is derived from the barbarians, and ancient Israel, the former is compatible with the latter and contrariwise. Moreover, Clement asserts translating the Hebrew bible into Greek made it ‘as it were Greek prophecy’.173 In a sense, Fortunatianus ‘merely’ takes this principle to its logical conclusion, applying it to the non-philosophical secular Greco-Roman culture of his day. Having granted gentiles superior capacities of recognition,174 Fortunatianus goes even further, embracing the gentile qua Greek- and Latin-speaker, his secular culture, and his innate, if often unrealised, Christian nature, who thereby despoil the Jews of the K/kingdom, via the agency of Vespasian himself.175 Despite Fortunatianus’ Latin being better than his Greek (most unlike Victorinus,176 in at least one ancient’s opinion177) the Aquileian may be construed as taking a quasi-Hellenistic, Origenistic principle, and pursuing it so far it possibly contributed to his posthumous anathematisation, as happened to other followers of the school of Origen from the late fourth century, both within Palestine and without.178 Indeed, despite his apparently sincere rejection of the Holy Land as the promised land, also most unlike Victorinus, he may have gone too far in apparently consigning it to the Jews, even if only temporarily, both unlike and like Victorinus, who hardly consigned it to Israel because he thought it was intrinsically worthless, but did allow their temporary re-possession of it under Antichrist. Perhaps borrowing from Victorinus’ commentary on Matthew, Fortunatianus seems to allude to a comparable future history, when he describes Antichrist as the noose Jews await wherewith they will hang themselves,179 suggesting a flesh and blood individual, wherein real Jews will trust, to their further material, and eternal, destruction. Thus they iterate the hanging that was the fate of Judas (Matt. 27:5; Acts 1:18), Jews’ eponymous type, their implied treachery (presumably to their subjugated status 171

Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 1.14.59.1-4 (GCS 15, 37, l. 23-38, l. 6). Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 6.6.44.1 (GCS 15, 453, l. 16-8); 6.17.153.1 (GCS 15, 510, l. 21-4); 7.3.20.1-2 (GCS 17, 14, l. 19-22); 8.1.1.1-2.5 (GCS 17, 80, l. 1-81, l. 8). 173 Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 1.22.149.3 (GCS 15, 92, l. 21-6). 174 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. III. (CSEL 103, 145, l. 774-5). 175 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. C. (CSEL 103, 209, l. 2257-71). 176 Jerome, Vir. ill. 74 (p. 40, l. 25-7 Richardson). 177 H.A.G. Houghton, Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Commentary on the Gospels (2017), XVIII. 178 Stephan Rebenich, Jerome (London, 2002), 44. 179 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Comm. Ev. M. LXLVI. (CSEL 103, 206, l. 2192-5). 172

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and subjugating state, as well as to God) analogous to the ‘angel runaway’, angelus refuga, the very devil which installs itself in the temple (2Thess. 2:14) rebuilt by Antichrist in Victorinus.180 Such an Antichrist would make his closest historical approach in the person of Julian, perhaps at the very end of Fortunatianus’ life, whose threatened restoration of the Jews he counsels his flock to ignore, secure in the knowledge that, sooner or later, the Jews concerned will slip headlong and fall again, hoist with their own petard.

180

Victorinus of Pettau, Comm. Apoc. 13.4 (SC 423, 108, l. 7-11).

Subverting Subversion: An Ontological Reading of Gregory of Nyssa’s Refutation of Slavery in In Ecclesiasten Homiliae IV James F. WELLINGTON, Nottingham, UK

ABSTRACT In his work In Ecclesiasten Homiliae IV Gregory of Nyssa condemns both slavery and usury. His disavowal of usury is fully in line with conventional patristic polemic. However, his refutation of slavery goes well beyond the patristic consensus which, while condemning the maltreatment of slaves, stops short of denouncing the institution itself.

Modern scholarship has endeavoured to identify those drivers which propelled Gregory of Nyssa to offer such an unequivocal rejection and theological subversion of the social evil of slavery. One points to an anthropology which is rooted in the Imago Dei and also in the consubstantiality of all humanity. Another focuses on an eschatology which announces resurrection and liberation from bondage. Another links it more precisely to an ἀναγωγία which cannot tolerate the objectification of a human being who is destined for heaven. Such is the richness and variety of Gregory’s thought that each of these insights is to be affirmed and applauded. However, the purpose of this article is to argue that, alongside these drivers, there is a further concern which prompted his outrage against slavery, and this is to be found in Gregory’s ontology. This is an ontology which above all affirms the absolute distinction between creator and creature, and which therefore rages against any attempt or pretence on the part of the latter to usurp or subvert the sovereignty of the former. ‘No other ancient text still known to us – Christian, Jewish, or Pagan – contains so fierce, unequivocal, and indignant a condemnation of the institution of slavery’.1 David Bentley Hart’s testimony to the uniqueness of Gregory of Nyssa’s refutation of slavery in In Ecclesiasten Homiliae IV is, at the same time, an explanation for the abiding quest among scholars to identify the driver or drivers which compelled Gregory to adopt such a radical position vis-à-vis this ancient institution. Hart’s own preference is to understand Gregory’s refutation principally in terms of his eschatology and the 1 David Bentley Hart, ‘The “Whole Humanity”: Gregory of Nyssa’s Critique of Slavery in Light of His Eschatology’, Scottish Journal of Theology 54 (2001), 51.

Studia Patristica CII, 141-151. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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liberating power of Christ’s resurrection. He concludes his argument with this ringing declaration: And Gregory seems to have seen with a clarity rare not only for his time, but perhaps for every age of the church, the magnitude of this truth: we can never again deceive ourselves that we can call justly upon any power but that which sets others free if, in the resurrection of Christ ... the form of God and the form of humanity have both been given to us, completely, now and henceforth always, in the form of a slave.2

This has been supported recently by Ilaria Ramelli.3 She argues that Gregory’s refutation of slavery needs to be understood within the overall context of his ascetical theology, in which Egypt, the land of slavery, is depicted as the present world and its passions, while Pharoah is portrayed as the diabolical slave-owner from whose tyranny the resurrection of Christ sets us free: According to Gregory, God’s image in humans was blurred by the Fall, and human freedom was partially lost, but both can be recovered through freedom from passions (ἀπάθεια). Thus, he interpreted the exodus from Egypt, Pharoah’s land, as the liberation of the soul from the tyranny of evil. Origen, with whose exegesis Gregory was familiar, likewise interpreted Egypt as a symbol of this world and its passions and darkness. He understood Pharoah precisely as a symbol of the devil – whom Philo presented as ἀντίθεος, opposed to God – the ruler of this world’s darkness. Gregory’s assimilation of masters to Pharoah in his Paschal homily was not accidental.4

On the other hand, some scholars have focused more specifically on Gregory’s theological anthropology and its grounding in the Imago Dei. Trevor Dennis draws attention to Gregory’s argument in De hominis opificio in favour of the unity of the human race. He continues by making the link with In Ecclesiasten Homiliae IV: ‘And this provides a firm philosophical foundation for the homily’s own assertion of the unity of the species, and for its insistence that a master is no different from his slave, and that both share a common humanity’.5 Daniel F. Stramara, Jr. echoes this appeal to Gregory’s affirmation of the Imago Dei and the unity of the human race when he writes: ‘For theological reasons, grounded in the equality and dignity of personhood reflecting the image of God, Gregory sounds the clarion call for the overthrow of such an unjust and denigrating system’.6 2

Ibid. 68-9. Ilaria Ramelli, Social Justice and the Legitimacy of Slavery (Oxford, 2016), 172-211. 4 Ibid. 174. 5 Trevor Dennis, ‘Man beyond Price: Gregory of Nyssa and Slavery’, in Andrew Linzey and Peter J. Wexler (eds), Heaven and Earth: Essex Essays in Theology and Ethics (Worthing, 1986), 140; id., ‘The Relationship between Gregory of Nyssa’s Attack on Slavery in His Fourth Homily on Ecclesiastes and His Treatise De hominis opificio’, SP 17 (1982), 1065-72. 6 Daniel F. Stramara, Jr., ‘Gregory of Nyssa: An Ardent Abolitionist?’, St Vladimir Theological Quarterly 41 (1997), 37-69, 50. 3

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Then again, for Hans Boersma, Gregory’s ‘objections to slavery fit squarely within the overall anagogical drive of his theology’. He adds: Slavery, for Gregory, treats a fellow human being – made in God’s image and meant for resurrection freedom – as a mere object to be counted among one’s possessions. Gregory’s anthropology and eschatology cannot tolerate such objectification of the human body. In sanctum Pascha makes clear that by freeing his slaves, the owner gives them a foretaste of the eschaton’s ultimate Easter redemption.7

While this concentration on the overlapping eschatological, anthropological and anagogical motivations behind Gregory’s repudiation of slavery is both impressive and welcome, there is a danger of overlooking another aspect of Gregory’s thought which has something vital to contribute to a proper understanding of his argument in this homily. Indeed, due consideration of his ontology and its bearing on this issue is imperative. Modern scholarship has drawn attention to an important divergence in the ontology of Gregory from that of Platonism. Whereas, for the latter, the fundamental ontological distinction is held to be that between spirit and matter, for Gregory it is that between creator and creature. Thus, Jean Daniélou, speaking of Gregory’s approach to the word γνόφος, concludes: Therefore, this is no longer the presence of the carnal element which makes a screen between God and the soul. Even for the angel, God remains darkness. What appears here is the absolute transcendence of God in comparison to every creature and it is there where the soul who seeks him in the visions of ecstasy is plunged.8

Again, Hans Urs von Balthasar states: ‘Every time he undertakes a development of the fundamentals of his metaphysics, Gregory begins from the irreducible opposition between God and creature’.9 Similar attestations are made by Endre von Ivánka,10 David Balàs,11 Andrew Louth,12 and Hans Boersma.13

7 Hans Boersma, Embodiment and Virtue in Gregory of Nyssa: An Anagogical Approach (Oxford, 2013), 163. 8 J. Daniélou, Platonisme et théologie mystique: Doctrine spirituelle de Saint Grégoire de Nysse, revised edition, Théologie 2 (Paris, 1944), 8-9. 9 H.U. von Balthasar, Présence et Pensée: Essai sur la Philosophie Religieuse de Grégoire de Nysse (Paris, 1988), 1; English translation by M. Sebanc, Presence and Thought: An Essay on the Religious Philosophy of Gregory of Nyssa (San Francisco, 1995), 27. 10 E. von Ivánka, Plato christianus: Übernahme und Umgestaltung des Platonismus durch die Väter (Einsiedeln, 1964), 149-85. 11 D. Balàs, Metousia Theou: Man’s Participation in God’s Perfections according to St Gregory of Nyssa (Rome, 1966), Chapter 1. 12 Andrew Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: from Plato to Denys, Second Edition (Oxford, 2006), 78-9. 13 See the references to ‘creator-creature distinction’ in the General Index of Boersma, Embodiment and Virtue in Gregory of Nyssa (2013).

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The importance of the creator-creature distinction to Gregory’s thought can be seen in its recurrence in a range of texts. Of these, three passages from De hominis opificio are among the most substantial. First of all, Gregory describes the ontological distinction between the uncreated and the created in terms of the relationship between image and archetype: Now as the image bears in all points the semblance of the archetypal excellence (τοῦ πρωτοτύπου κάλλους), if it had not a difference in some respect, being absolutely without divergence it would no longer be a likeness (ὁμοίωμα), but will in that case manifestly be absolutely identical with the Prototype. What difference then do we discern between the Divine and that which has been made like to the Divine? We find that it is in the fact that the former is uncreate, while the latter has its being from creation (Ἐν τῷ, τὸ μὲν ἀκτίστως εἴναι, τὸ δὲ διὰ κτίσεως ὑποστῆναι): and this distinction of property brings with it a train of other properties; for it is very certainly acknowledged that the uncreated nature is always immutable, and always remains the same, while the created nature cannot exist without change; for its very passage from non-existence to existence is a certain motion and change of the non-existent transmuted by the Divine purpose into being.14

Secondly, he then proceeds to reinforce this description by appealing to Jesus’ teaching in his dispute with his enemies in Matt. 22:15-22, Mark 12:13-7 and Luke 20:20-6: As the Gospel calls the stamp upon the coin ‘the image of Caesar’, whereby we learn that in that which was fashioned to resemble Caesar there was resemblance as to outward look, but difference as to material, so also in the present saying, when we consider the attributes contemplated both in the Divine and human nature, in which the likeness consists, to be in the place of the features, we find in what underlies them the difference which we behold in the uncreated and in the created nature (ἥτις ἐν τῷ ἀκτίστῳ καὶ τῷ κτιστῷ καθορᾶται).15

Thirdly, he upholds the fundamental ontological distinction between creator and creature in his rejection of the eternity of matter: For in that case too, argumentative men might by plausible reasoning upset our faith, so that we should not think that statement true which Holy Scripture delivers concerning the material creation, when it asserts that all existing things have their beginning of being from God (πάντων τῶν ὄντων ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ εἴναι διαβεβαιουμένη τὴν γένεσιν). For those who abide by the contrary view maintain that matter is co-eternal with God, and employ in support of their own doctrine some such arguments as these. If God is in his nature simple and immaterial, without quantity, or size, or combination, and removed from the idea of circumscription by way of figure, while all matter is 14 PG 44, 184CD; H.A. Wilson (trans.), Selected Writings and Letters of Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, NPNF, Second Series, Vol. V, edited by Ph. Schaff and H. Wace (Buffalo, NY, 1893), 405. 15 PG 44, 184D; H.A. Wilson, Selected Writings and Letters of Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa (1893), 405-6.

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apprehended in extension measured by intervals, and does not escape the apprehension of our senses, but becomes known to us in colour, and figure, and bulk, and size, and resistance, and the other attributes belonging to it, none of which it is possible to conceive in the Divine nature, – what method is there for the production of matter from the immaterial (τίς μηχανὴ ἐκ τοῦ ἀΰλου τὴν ὕλην ἀποτεχθῆναι), or of the nature that has dimensions from that which is unextended? For if these things are believed to have their existence from that source, they clearly come into existence after being in Him in some mysterious way; but if material existence was in Him, how can He be immaterial while including matter in Himself? and similarly with all the other marks by which the material nature is differentiated; if quantity exists in God, how is God without quantity? if the compound nature exists in Him, how is He simple, without parts and without combination? so that the argument forces us to think either that He is material, because matter has its existence from Him as a source; or, if one avoids this, it is necessary to suppose that matter was imported by Him ab extra for the making of the universe.16

A further substantial text relating to Gregory’s assertion of the importance of the ontological divide between the uncreated and the created is located in De anima et resurrectione. Here we find Gregory being reprimanded by Macrina, his sister, for suggesting that the human mind might be identical with the divine nature: ‘And so in consequence of this’, I said, ‘from one absurdity we deduce another absurdity. For our discussion leads us to conclude that our mind is the same as the divine nature (ὁ λόγος ἡμῖν εἰς τὸ ταὐτὸν οἴεσθαι τῇ θείᾳ φύσει), if we know each by removing that which is found by sense-perception’. ‘Don’t say “same”’, my teacher said. ‘This is another impious argument. Say, as you were taught by the inspired voice, that the one is like (ὅμοιoν) the other. That which is made in the image (κατ᾿ εἰκόνα) of something else must keep in every respect a similarity to its archetype (πρὸς τὸ ἀρχέτυπον ὁμοιότητα). The likeness of the intellectual is intellectual. The likeness of the bodiless is bodiless, freed from all weight and escaping all dimensional measurement like its archetype, but different from it according to the particular property of its nature. For it would not be an image if it were the same as its original in all respects. But whatever appears in the uncreated nature, the same appears in the created nature... We suppose that its essence is intelligible, since it is an image of an intelligible essence, yet we do not say that the image is the same as the archetype’ (μὴ μέντοι τὴν αὐτὴν τῷ ἀρχετύπω τὴν εἰκόνα λέγειν).17

Here again we witness both the importance to Gregory of the division between the uncreated and the created natures, and also his appeal to the imagearchetype relationship in order to explain that division. By way of a footnote, 16 PG 44, 209C-212A; H.A. Wilson, Selected Writings and Letters of Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa (1893), 413. 17 PG 46, 41B-44A; C.P. Roth (trans.), St Gregory of Nyssa: On the Soul and the Resurrection (New York, 1993), 44-5.

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it is also worth recording that Gregory appears to endorse the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo in In Ecclesiasten Homiliae I. This is a further indication of the chasm which he envisages between creator and creation: Let no one suppose that the words are an indictment of creation. For surely the charge would also implicate (διαβαίνοι) him who has made all things, if the one who constructed all things from nothing were manifested to us as creator of all things of this kind, if indeed all things were futility (ἧ γὰρ ἄν εἰς τὸν πεποιηκότα τὰ πάντα διαβαίνοι τὸ ἔγκλημα, εἰ τοιούτων ἡμῖν δημιουργὸς ἀναφανείη ὁ συστησάμενος ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων τὰ πάντα, εἴ περ ματαιότης εἰη τὰ πάντα).18

If the text of In Ecclesiasten Homiliae IV were to be read in the light of this fundamental ontological distinction, which is promoted by Gregory elsewhere in his works, and indeed elsewhere in this particular collection of homilies, it would reveal, beyond the eschatological, anthropological and anagogical arguments, a burning desire on the part of the author to uphold a Christianized as opposed to a Platonic ontology, and to protest vehemently against the attempt by the creature to trespass into the territory of the creator. Early on in the homily, commenting on Ecclesiastes 2.7, Gregory denounces Solomon’s boast that he owns ‘slaves and slave-girls’. He says: This kind of language is raised up as a challenge (ἀντεπαίρεται) to God. For we hear from prophecy that all things are the slaves of the power that transcends all. So, when someone turns the property of God into his own property and arrogates dominion to his own kind, so as to think himself the owner of men and women, what is he doing but overstepping his own nature through pride (διαβαίνει τῇ ὑπερηφανίᾳ τὴν φύσιν), regarding himself as something different from his subordinates?19

The ‘something different’, in this context, is, of course, God himself. The main thrust of what Gregory is saying to the slave-owners is, ‘You are not God!’ If this passage is the key to understanding the driving force behind Gregory’s refutation of slavery, then the word ‘overstepping’ (διαβαίνει) is the key to understanding this passage. The verb διαβαίνω is used frequently in the Septuagint and just three times in the New Testament. In most of these usages it conveys the sense of crossing a boundary. Sometimes the crossing of the boundary is merely a literal description of motion. However, at other times it embodies a deeper theological significance. In such passages we find Jacob crossing the Jabbok, moving into a place where he will encounter God at a deeper level.20 We read of the Israelites being 18 GNO V, 283,19-21; Stuart G. Hall (ed.), Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on Ecclesiastes. An English Version with Supporting Studies. Proceedings of the Seventh International Colloquium on Gregory of Nyssa (St Andrews, 5-10 September, 1990) (Berlin, New York, 1993), 36. 19 GNO V, 334,17-335,4; St.G. Hall, Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on Ecclesiastes (1993), 73. 20 Gen. 32:22.

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commanded to cross the Jordan, and hence to enter the promised land.21 We find the people crossing the Red Sea, and thus being liberated from bondage.22 In their different ways, each of these passages speak of advancement, and hence transcendence. In other passages featuring διαβαίνω the crossing, or attempted crossing, speaks of limitation and impossibility, and hence attempted trespass. Thus, Job bewails the fact that he cannot escape from the enclosure God has imposed upon him.23 Similarly, in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, the dead cannot cross over from hell to heaven.24 Gregory’s frequent use of διαβαίνω throughout his corpus reflects this biblical ambiguity. Indeed, the variation of his usage is dependent on the nature of the particular work in question. In those works of an ascetical or mystical nature he uses διαβαίνω to convey the sense of spiritual progress, of passing through one stage of the life in God into a higher one. This is characteristic of his employment of the word in In canticum canticorum, where, for example, he writes of the soul which advances from childhood to adulthood in the things of God: For such people are not touched by the invisible Beauty, but only a soul of the sort that has passed through the condition of childhood (μόνη δὲ ἡ τοιαύτη ψυχὴ ἡ διαβᾶσα μὲν τὴν νηπιώδη κατάστασιν) and has arrived at the height of spiritual maturity without receiving any ‘spot or wrinkle or any such thing’ – the soul that is neither imperceptive by reason of youth nor weakened by old age.25

Similarly, in De vita Moysis he uses the verb with reference to spiritual progress, this time invoking the story of the Exodus: ‘For to the one who has left behind the Egyptian pleasures which he served before crossing the sea (πρὶν διαβῆναι τὴν θάλασσαν), life removed from these pleasures seems at first difficult and disagreeable’.26 Once more, in De virginitate he uses the Exodus story as the background for describing the soul’s passage from the slavery of this world to the freedom of God: ‘Nor will the one who has not left Egypt be delivered from the slavery of the Egyptians. I refer not to a crossing of the Red Sea (καὶ διαβὰς οὐχὶ τὴν Ἐυθρὰν ἐκείνην), but to his crossing of the black and gloomy sea of life’.27 21

Num. 33:51; Deut. 9:1. Heb. 11:29. 23 Job 19:8. 24 Lk. 16:27. 25 GNO VI, 38,15-8; Richard A. Norris, Jr. (trans.), Gregory of Nyssa: Homilies on the Song of Songs (Atlanta, 2012), 41. See also GNO VI, 205,1 and 453,9. 26 GNO VII.1, 75,1-3; Abraham J. Malherbe and Everett Ferguson (trans.), Gregory of Nyssa: The Life of Moses (New York, 1978), 86. See also GNO VII.1, 9,14, 76,24, 78,20, 103,13, 118,15 and 123,17. 27 GNO VIII.1, 274,8-11; Virginia Woods Callahan, St Gregory of Nyssa: Ascetical Works, FC 58 (Washington, DC, 2017), 25-6. See also GNO I, 310,1. 22

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On the other hand, in other works, such as Contra Eunomium, Gregory is content to utilize both senses of the word. Thus, in some passages, he uses it to refer to personal transcendence. For example, he describes the deep contemplative who has ‘traversed the ages’: But the being which is above creation, being separate from all concept of intervening period, is free from all temporal sequence; it has no such starting point, no end, no manner which involves order as it sets out and ceases. When someone has traversed the ages (τῷ γὰρ διαβάντι τοὺς αἰῶνας) and all that happens in them, the contemplation of the divine nature displays to his mind a sort of boundless sea, and it will give no sign to indicate any beginning for itself if he tries to extend his conceptual grasp to what lies beyond.28

He also reckons that the boundaries of temporality are crossed by the one who ‘considers the divine life’: But with the preeternal begetting these periods of time, because they have nothing to do with that nature, do not apply for sane thinkers. ‘Once’ and ‘after’ and ‘before’, and the other terms which refer to this temporal extension, are transcended by the one who considers the divine life (διαβὰς ὁ τὴν θείαν ζωὴν λογιζόμενος ὑψηλῶς τὰ ὑψηλὰ κατασκέψεται).29

In other passages of Contra Eunomium, however, he employs διαβαίνω to highlight the limitations of human thought. For example, he accuses Eunomius and those who support him of crossing the boundary between right doctrine and heresy: When therefore we have passed through the begetting of the Son (οὐκοῦν ἐπειδὰν τὴν τοῦ υἱοῦ γέννησιν διαβάντες), as the logic of the heresy leads us to suppose, and go back to the intervening interval, which the empty notion of those who teach this suggests is something thought of as between the Son and the Father, and if we reach that earliest point by which they measure the interval between, there we find that the life of the God of all ceases at its earliest, so that the conclusion necessarily follows that previously even the everlasting God is not believed to exist.30

It is unsurprising that in In Ecclesiasten Homiliae, a work commenting on the alleged vanity or futility of human existence, Gregory’s use of διαβαίνω should focus on the more negative connotation of the word, whereby boundaries either

28

GNO I, 134,13-22; Stuart G. Hall (trans.), ‘Gregory of Nyssa: A Refutation of the First Book of the Two Published by Eunomius after the Decease of Holy Basil’, in Lucas F. MateoSeco and Juan L. Bastero (eds), El ‘Contra Eunomium I’ en la Produccion Literaria de Gregorio de Nisa: VI Coloquio Internacional sobre Gregorio de Nisa (Pamplona, 1988), 88. 29 GNO I, 206,13-21; St.G. Hall, ‘Gregory of Nyssa: A Refutation’ (1988), 125. See also GNO I, 192,2-8, and 252,24-6. 30 GNO I, 130,15-23; St.G. Hall, ‘Gregory of Nyssa: A Refutation’ (1988), 86. See also GNO I, 196,2-4.

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cannot or should not be crossed. Thus, in the first homily of this work he employs the verb in connection with the limitations of human reasoning: Sight did not produce the interpretation of the visible world which develops in the soul through the eyes, but, although we are constantly using our eyes, we receive a visual impression as those who have seen nothing and are still in ignorance. For sight is not able to go beyond the surface (διαβῆναι γὰρ τὸ χρῶμα ἡ ὄψις οὐ δύναται), but has as a limit to its proper function what is displayed to it by the outward appearance of what is there.31

He does so again in the second half of the fourth homily, where he spells out the restrictions placed on the sensible nature: I looked at all my doings, which my hands did, and on all my labour, which I had laboured to do, and behold, all is futility and choice of spirit, and there is no advantage under the sun. For all power and activity of the senses has life under the sun as its limit, and the sensual nature cannot reach what is beyond it and comprehend the good things which lie above (τὸ δὲ ἐπέκεινα διαβῆναι καὶ τῶν ὑπερκειμένων ἀγαθῶν ἐν περινοίᾳ γενέσθαι ἡ αἰσθητικὴ φύσις οὐ δύναται).32

Yet again, in the sixth homily, he stresses the supremacy of the incorporeal over the corporeal, and the incapacity of the sensible to penetrate the intelligible: Of these, the non-bodily part is superior to the sensory perception, as we shall discover when we strip off our senses; but sense, which has the capacity to apprehend the material nature, cannot naturally pass beyond the heavenly sphere, and penetrate to what is beyond the visible (διαβῆναι τὸ οὐράνιον σῶμα καὶ εἰς τὰ ἐπέκεινα τῶν φαινομένων διαδῦναι φύσιν οὐκ ἔχει).33

The negative use of the verb throughout In Ecclesiasten Homiliae is in keeping with his indictment of those who claim to own slaves. However, the force and the pointedness of the accusation of the slave-owner in ‘overstepping his own nature’ would appear to be the only place in the corpus where Gregory uses διαβαίνω to refer to crossing the boundary of the creatorcreature divide. Nevertheless, it is clear, both from In Ecclesiasten Homiliae IV and from other texts, that Gregory understands the sin of human pride as an attempt to blur what for him is the fundamental ontological distinction, and that he regards such an attempt as the subversion of the divine ordering of creation. Following on from his ‘overstepping’ accusation against the slave-owner, he exclaims: You condemn man to slavery, when his nature is free and possesses free will, and you legislate in competition with God, overturning his law for the human species. The one made on specific terms that he should be the owner of the earth and appointed 31 32 33

GNO V, 294,5-11; St.G. Hall, Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on Ecclesiastes (1993), 44. GNO V, 352,4-11; St.G. Hall, Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on Ecclesiastes (1993), 83-4. GNO V, 374,1-6; St.G. Hall, Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on Ecclesiastes (1993), 100.

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to government by the Creator – him you bring under the yoke of slavery, as though defying and fighting against the divine decree. You have forgotten the limits of your authority (ἐπιλέλησαι τῶν τῆς ἐξουσίας ὅρων), and that your rule is confined to control over things without reason.34

He continues this polemic, making use of the Imago Dei theme, but concluding his thrust with the same substance and force of the original accusation of ‘overstepping’: If [the slave] is in the likeness of God, and rules the whole earth, and has been granted authority over everything on earth from God, who is his buyer, tell me? Who is his seller? To God alone belongs this power; or rather, not even to God himself. For his gracious gifts, it says, are irrevocable. God would not therefore reduce the human race to slavery, since he himself, when we had been enslaved to sin, spontaneously recalled us to freedom. But if God does not enslave what is free, who is he that sets his own power above God’s (τίς ὁ ὑπερτιθεὶς τοῦ θεοῦ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ δυναστείαν)?35

Elsewhere in his corpus we find Gregory making similar blistering attacks against what he conceives to be the usurpation or the denial of God’s sovereignty on the part of insurgent creatures. For example, in De beatitudinibus he denounces the subversion of those called to high office: Yet those whose office causes them to parade on the stage of life consider neither the past nor the future, but are blown up by conceit like bubbles. So the loud voice of the herald causes them to swell; they mould themselves another kind of face, changing completely the features of their natural face into something grim and awe-inspiring. They adopt a harsher voice which is transposed into a fiercer key to frighten their hearers. They remain no longer within human limits, but intrude themselves into the authority of Divine power (οὐκέτι ἐν τοῖς ἀνθρωπίνοις μένουσιν ὅροις ἀλλ᾽ εἰς τὴν θείαν δύναμίν τε καὶ ἐξουσίαν ἑαυτοὺς εἰσποιοῦσιν). For they imagine themselves master over life and death.36

And similarly, in his tirade against the presumptuousness of the proud in De oratione dominica, Gregory screams: How obedient and blameless are you before such a Lord? Have you not revolted against His sovereignty (οὐκ ἀπέστης τῆς δεσποτείας)? Have you not run away to sin and exchanged it for the sovereignty of evil? Have you not as far as you were concerned left desolate the house of the Lord and run away from the place where you were appointed to work and keep guard?37

34

GNO V, 335,5-13; St.G. Hall, Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on Ecclesiastes (1993), 73. GNO V, 336,11-20; St.G. Hall, Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on Ecclesiastes (1993), 73-4. 36 GNO VII.2, 87,23-88,2; Hilda C. Graef, St Gregory of Nyssa: The Lord’s Prayer, The Beatitudes, ACW 18 (Mahwah, NJ, 1954), 94. 37 GNO VII.2, 71,18-23; H.C. Graef, St Gregory of Nyssa: The Lord’s Prayer, The Beatitudes (1954), 82. 35

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In his examination of De vita Moysis Ronald E. Heine argues that much of Gregory’s writing is concerned with either refuting heresy or correcting the inaccuracies to be found in the thought of Origen, from whom Gregory nonetheless draws much inspiration.38 Among other things, Heine cites Gregory’s doctrine of ἐπέκτασις and its basis in Phil. 3:1-13 as an example of how Gregory overrides Origen’s concept of the satiety (κόρος) of souls.39 He concludes his final appendix with this observation: Gregory’s use of Philippians 3:1-13, in my opinion, has its main source in the usage of the verse in Origen. We know that he knew Origen’s writings well and carried on a running debate with him in his own writings. In the connections in which we have seen Gregory allude to the verse in using it to overcome the ‘satiety’ problem in Origen’s system we have him then using what he learned from Origen to correct what he saw as the flaw in Origen’s system.40

Gregory’s invective in In Ecclesiasten IV should be seen within the context of this ‘running debate’ with Origen. It is clear that in his refutation of slavery, in his vehement denunciation of the slave-owner’s attempt to cross the boundary between creature and creator, we have an example of Gregory correcting his mentor’s defective Platonic ontology, and thereby subverting an institution which in itself is a subversion of divine sovereignty. Indeed, it may be that it is this passionate determination, to subvert subversion, which accounts for Gregory’s unique place among the writers of antiquity in providing us with a work which contains so fierce, unequivocal, and indignant a condemnation of the institution of slavery.

38 Ronald E. Heine, Perfection in the Virtuous Life: A Study in the Relationship between Edification and Polemic Theology (Cambridge, MA, 1975). 39 Ibid. 76-8. 40 Ibid. 247.

Constantinople 360 and Constantinople 381: A Tale of Two Councils Sara PARVIS, Edinburgh

ABSTRACT The Councils of Constantinople of 360 and 381 shed important light not only on each other’s aims and procedures, but also on the contrasting political skills of the emperors who summoned them. Both councils had two main aims: to install a new Bishop of Constantinople, and to enshrine a Christian statement of faith in law by which bishops could be judged to be in accord or not with imperial theological policy. Both had not dissimilar procedural problems: an unruly group of bishops, suddenly established as judges over long-standing theological debates, preferred their own personal animosities and rivalries over good procedural order and intelligent peace-making with those with whom they were not in significant theological disagreement. Constantius, in 360 proved unequal either during or after the Council to promoting in either West or East the ecclesiastical unity and stability implied by the new Creed the Council was imposing. The ecclesiastical policies of Julian, Jovian and Valens were dominated by attempts to mitigate the structural problems the Council of 360 had caused. Theodosius, in his legal treatment of the Council of 381, avoided creating a similar structural disunity by refusing to allow the Council to depart from its instructions by deposing or creating bishops outside Constantinople (particularly in Antioch), or by promulgating the new Creed they had composed, simply re-instating in law the Creed of Nicaea 325. However, Theodosius’ legal creation of an ecclesiastical equivalent of the Prefectures would cause significant new structural weaknesses of its own.

On the face of it, few councils later deemed to be ecumenical have achieved as little as the Council of Constantinople of 381.1 This, at any rate, would seem to be the verdict of the surviving ecclesiastical historians of the first fifty years after the Council. Neither Rufinus nor Philostorgius ever actually mentions the 1

The best and most comprehensive work published on the Council to date is still Adolf Martin Ritter, Das Konzil von Konstantinopel und sein Symbol: Studien zur Geschichte und Theologie des II. Ökumenischen Konzils, Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte 15 (Göttingen, 1965), which offers thorough discussion of all the documents, the historiographical problems, and particularly of the problem of the Creed. For the Council’s documents, see Athanasius Werke III 6, Die Synoden von Konstantinopel (381) und Aquileia (381), ed. Annette von Stockhausen and Christian Müller (Tübingen, forthcoming). See also Sara Parvis, Constantinople 381: the Emergence of an Ecumenical Council (Cambridge, 2017).

Studia Patristica CII, 153-171. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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Council of 381, although Rufinus covers most of its significant actions separately. Jerome stops his Chronicon short with the death of Valens in 378, and never goes back to tell us what happened next. We must wait for Socrates and Sozomen in the 330s and 340s for an explicit historiographical discussion of the Council of 381, and even then, both treat it simply as one more acrimonious fourth-century council, with no greater status (or, if anything, rather less) than the Council of Constantinople of 383 which follows it.2 It is only when we get to the ecclesiastical history of Theodoret, written shortly before Chalcedon, that the Council of 381 begins to appear in a starring role.3 The Council of Constantinople of 360 looms much larger in the early historiography than the Council of 381. The Council of 360 seems to have been the centrepiece of Philostorgius’ work in particular.4 Socrates devotes three modern chapters to Constantinople 360, and it is also extensively covered by Sozomen and Theodoret.5 We shall return to the question of the sources on which Socrates and Sozomen are drawing, and the reasons for their balance in favour of 360 over 381. But for the time being, let us simply acknowledge the priority of Constantinople 360 over Constantinople 381 in the pre-Chalcedonian historiography in general. I shall argue in this article that the reason Constantinople 360 was so important in the historiography was not because of its strengths, but because of its weaknesses. After the death late in 361 of Constantius II, the emperor who sanctioned the Council and enforced its acts, the ecclesiastical policies of the next four emperors in the East – Julian, Jovian, Valens and Theodosius – were all in their different ways an attempt to reverse and then avoid repeating Constantius’ mistakes. I will argue that the genius of Theodosius, or at any rate his advisors, was to learn from the traps into which Constantius II fell in 360, and avoid all of them, despite the best efforts of the pro-Nicene bishops at Constantinople 381 to repeat all the mistakes of their anti-Nicene antecedents of 360. The published acts of Constantinople 381 were so brilliantly anodyne that Jerome, Rufinus, and even Philostorgius himself, could only assent to their implicit murmur of ‘Nothing to see here’. The only attempt to argue otherwise came from the homoiousian/Macedonianist historian Sabinus of Heraclea, and his account, though extensively referred to by Socrates, was otherwise lost with 2 Socrates, Historia Ecclesiastica V 8-9 (Sokrates, Kirchengeschichte, ed. Günther Christian Hansen with Manja Širinjsn, GCS N.F. 1 [Berlin, 1995]); Sozomen, Historia Ecclesiastica VII 7.1-9.5 (Sozomenus, Kirchengeschichte, ed. Joseph Bidez and Günther Christian Hansen, 2nd ed., GCS N.F. 4 [Berlin, 1995]). 3 Theodoret, Historia Ecclesiastica V 7.4-8.10 (Theodoret, Kirchengeschichte, ed. Léon Parmentier and Günther Christian Hansen, 3rd ed., GCS N.F. 5 [Berlin, 1998]). 4 Philostorgius, Historia Ecclesiastica IV 12-V 3 (Philostorgius, Kirchengeschichte, mit dem Leben des Lucian von Antiochien und den Fragmenten eines arianischen Historiographen, ed. Joseph Bidez, 3rd ed. Friedhelm Winkelmann, GCS 21 [Berlin, 1981]). 5 Soc., HE II 41-3; Soz., HE IV 24-5; Theod., HE II 28.3-30.2.

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the disappearance of the homoiousian Macedonianists themselves, in the wake of Theodosius’ longer-than-expected reign and the general consolidation of political and theological support for the Creed of Nicaea by 395.6 Constantinople 360 Let us begin, then, by quickly rehearsing the events of Constantinople 360, before discussing them at greater length. It was an odd council, or rather (in Constantius’ usual fashion) series of conciliar and quasi-conciliar gatherings, which took place in the wake of two much bigger councils, the Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia of the previous year. It included two set-piece liturgical events, the consecration of Eudoxius, formerly bishop of first Germanicia and then Antioch, as the new Bishop of Constantinople on 27 January 360, and the consecration of the new Constantinopolitan Church of Hagia Sophia on 14th February.7 Before, between and after these two consecrations, bishops assembled in groups of different sizes for various purposes. An initial group accepted the Creed of Nike and arraigned Aetius; some of its members then invited more bishops and deposed the sitting Bishop of Constantinople, Macedonius, on existing charges, together with Basil of Ancyra. The same group, now about fifty in number, then elected Eudoxius as his replacement, who was consecrated towards the end of the month by seventy-two bishops. Part of this group then condemned Aetius for Anomoianism, and deposed, probably in several stages, an enormous number of other bishops besides. At some point, whether before or after the consecration of Hagia Sophia, a smaller group, led by Eudoxius and Acacius of Caesarea, then elected replacements for at least some of the bishops they had deposed.8 Acacius of Caesarea, according to Philostorgius, returned home and continued deposing bishops and appointing replacements (presumably all within the Diocese of Oriens) after the Council had finished.9 Constantius II seems to have given his legal seal to all of this, but it is difficult to be sure in exactly what form. It has been argued that the unhappiness the Council of Constantinople caused in Gaul in particular was a significant factor in Julian’s self-promotion to Augustus and assumption of political and military control there that same spring.10 6 In my view, Franz Geppert, Die Quellen des Kirchenhistorikers Socrates Scholasticus, Studien zur Geschichte der Theologie und der Kirche III 4 (Leipzig, 1898), 102-7 must be correct that the Macedonianist material in chapters V 8-9 in Socrates derives from Sabinus. 7 Chronicon Paschale 543-4 (citation is by the pages of Ludwig August Dindorf [ed.], Chronicon Paschale, Corpus scriptorum historiae Byzantinae 16-17, 2 vol. [Bonn, 1832]); Soc., HE II 43. 8 Soz., HE IV 23.3-25.6. 9 Philost., HE V 1. 10 Timothy D. Barnes, Athanasius and Constantius: Theology and Politics in the Constantinian Empire (Cambridge, MA, 1993), 153-4.

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As for much of the reign of Constantius, by the first of January 360, when Constantius assumed the consulship once again with great ceremony, there were a good number of bishops at court.11 These included two sets of delegates from the Council of Seleucia: ten from the majority party, led by Eleusius of Cyzicus and Silvanus of Tarsus, and possibly as many as eighteen from Acacius of Caesarea’s minority group of 43 dissenting bishops.12 Since Constantius had asked for ten delegates from both Ariminum and Seleucia to come and report to him, it is probable that Acacius had intended his group to be only ten, led by himself, George of Alexandria, Uranius of Tyre and Paul of Emesa, but that a group of Libyan bishops who were strong supporters of Aetius had accompanied or followed Acacius from Seleucia as well, since condemnation of the lower-class Aetius (if not his upper-class pupil Eunomius) was looking a likely bargaining chip in the debates over a new Creed to replace Nicaea.13 Four of them, Serras of Paraetonium, Stephen of Ptolemais, Heliodorus of Sozusa and Theophilus the Libyan, are mentioned by name as having refused to condemn him in the session of the synod devoted to his trial.14 The trial of Aetius was a complex affair: it began as a disputation, supposedly simply for academic purposes, but ended in his eventual condemnation, though at exactly what stage is not clear.15 Aetius seems to have been tricked into defending a theological proposition before the Emperor which he himself did not actually hold, the proposition that the Son was exactly like the Father. Although Eudoxius was professedly keen to distance himself from Aetius’ theology, it is likely that Acacius was responsible for the ruse. Philostorgius tells us that Acacius wrote all of the synodal letters from Constantinople, ‘of which there were many’ – one of them, given by Theodoret, offers a defence to George of Alexandria of the Council’s decision to condemn his deacon, arguing that it was not contrary to the ecclesiastical canons.16 The Libyan bishops had clearly complained to George, because the letter notes that the synod did not condemn them outright, but gave them six months to condemn Aetius or be deposed. It is very likely that George and Eudoxius counted on being able to reverse the 11

Soz., HE IV 23.8. I have calculated this number by matching the names of bishops mentioned in the Chronicon Paschale 543-4 (Dindorf) with the names of those who signed Acacius’ creed given in Epiphanius, Panarion 73.25 (Epiphanius, Ancoratus und Panarion, vol. 3, Panarion haer. 65-80; De Fide, ed. Karl Holl, 2nd ed. Jürgen Dummer, GCS 37 [Berlin, 1985]); as sees are not given in the Chronicon Paschale, one or two identifications may be misplaced, but the overlap is striking. Four of the Libyan bishops are mentioned in the letter to George of Alexandria included in Theod., HE II 29.3. 13 On the trial of Aetius, which began in late 359 in the presence of Basil of Ancyra and the majority delegates of Seleucia but was confirmed by Eudoxius after the deposition of Basil, see Richard Paul Vaggione, Eunomius of Cyzicus and the Nicene Revolution (Oxford, 2000), 224-6. 14 Theod., HE II 29.3. 15 Philost., HE IV 12. 16 Philost., HE IV 12; Theod., HE II 29. 12

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sentence against Aetius under these circumstances, as they would promise Eunomius.17 We are told by Sozomen that the group of bishops who had come to Constantinople with Acacius invited the bishops of Bithynia, led by Maris of Chalcedon, to join them for a council, and that together with a few others, including Ulfila the Goth, they made an initial Council of fifty members.18 Constantius had in the middle of the night of 31st December 359 persuaded the last of the majority delegates from Seleucia to sign the new version of the socalled ‘homoian’ Creed which had been agreed at Nike in Thrace, so they could take part in the ceremonies the next day, but thereafter they would become targets rather than members of the assembling Council.19 The bishops from Bithynia would themselves no doubt still have been feeling extremely chastened at this point in time. The Eastern Council which had met in Seleucia the previous year had been originally intended to meet at Nicomedia in Bithynia, but Nicomedia had been almost wiped out by a terrible earthquake and fire there on 24th August 358, which had killed its bishop Cecropius.20 This lent itself to interpretation as divine punishment, but it was not obvious exactly who or what was to be considered to have incurred the divine disapproval for blasphemy, since Cecropius was a homoiousian, the party which was most keen to hold to Scripture and avoid theological extremes of all kinds. In deposing all the homoiousians, but also condemning Aetius, and furthermore banning both the Dedication Creed of 341 and the Creed of Nicaea, as we shall see, Constantinople 360 can be considered to have impressively hedged its theological bets. Clearly it was only bishops such as Acacius and Eudoxius who were thoroughly inconsistent in their theology who could safely be considered not to count as divine targets for punishment. A word should now be said about the Creed of Constantinople 360.21 This profession of faith, known in the West as the Creed of Ariminum and in the East as the Creed of Constantinople, confessed the ‘only-begotten Son of God, begotten from God before all ages and every origin, One from the One Father (μόνον ἐκ μόνου τοῦ πατροῦ), like the Father who begot him according to the Scriptures, whose begetting no one knows except the Father only who begot him’. The Holy Spirit was confessed as the one whom ‘the only-begotten Son of God, the Christ, our Lord and God, promised to send to the human race as 17

Philost., HE V 3. Soz., HE IV 24.1. 19 Soz., HE IV 23.8. 20 Ammianus Marcellinus, Rerum Gestarum Qui Supersunt XVII 7; Soz., HE IV 16.5; T.D. Barnes, Constantius (1993), 140. 21 For a critical text with translation, see Wolfram Kinzig (ed.), Faith in Formulae: A Collection of Early Christian Creeds and Creed-related Texts, 4 vol. (Oxford, 2017). On the history of the theological problems it was pretending to address, see, for example, Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford, 2004). 18

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a comforter, as is written “the Spirit of Truth”, which he sent to them when he ascended into the heavens’. There followed a note that ‘We recognise that the term “ousia”, which was set down by the Fathers rather naively (ἁπλούστερον), caused scandal to the people, because the Scriptures do not contain it, so all mention of it whatsoever is to be set aside, because the divine Scriptures make absolutely no mention of ousia of Father and Son. Neither should the term “hypostasis” be used concerning Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But we say the Son is “like the Father as the divine Scriptures say and teach”’. This creed and the statement which followed it are a classic example of the sort of ‘too clever by half’ solution which looks brilliant to its own creators, but quickly unravels. It was attempting to sideline two earlier imperially-sponsored creeds which still had considerable support: the Creed of Nicaea of 325 (initially championed by the Council of Ariminum of the previous year), and the ‘Dedication Creed’ of Antioch 341 (championed by its Eastern twin the Council of Seleucia). In doing so, it noted that it was setting aside the decision of ‘the Fathers’ to use the term ‘ousia’, without specifying whether it was referring to the bishops who met at Nicaea in 325, at Antioch in 341, or both. This would allow those who did not believe the bishops at Nicaea were their ‘Fathers’ at all to attribute the term instead to those at Antioch, and vice versa (‘Hypostasis’, also used by both Nicaea and the Dedication Council, was also set aside, this time with no reason given, since the term is in fact Scriptural). The problem, however, which was already very clear in the discussions at Seleucia, was that the new document thus implicitly insulted the decisions of both Nicaea and Antioch, as well as the martyrs and confessors who had signed their creeds, in favour of those of the small cabal who had drawn the new document up.22 It made no attempt to engage with recent tradition, and wasted no words in ascribing good intentions to previous councils, even while designating those who had drawn them up ‘Fathers’. It simply declared the intention to wipe the theological slate clean and begin again, banning all discussion of the key terms. The Creed of 360, for all its attempt at universality, was therefore only attractive to those without particular reverence either for Nicaea or for the Dedication Creed. In 359, those who revered neither of these were a clear minority among the politically-active bishops of the East.23 This was one reason why so many leading bishops had to be replaced at the 22

Soc., HE II 39-40. On the politics of the twin councils of Ariminum and Seleucia, see T.D. Barnes, Constantius (1993), chapter 16, and Soc, HE II 39-40. The proceedings of the Council of Seleucia are better documented than those of any other fourth-century council, and give a good flavour of the general discussion. Of the 160 bishops who attended the Council of Seleucia, Hilary of Poitiers, Against Constantius 12 (Hilaire de Poitiers, Contre Constance, ed. and tr. André Rocher, SC 334 [Paris, 1987]) tells us that 105 supported the theology of the Homoiousian party, which was in favour of the Dedication Creed, while the Egyptian bishops mainly supported homoousios (presumably in the form of the Nicene Creed). Forty-three supported Acacius of Caesarea’s ousia-free creed 23

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Council of Constantinople of 360: they were too theologically literate to accept a tabula rasa. The intended consecration of the new church on 14th February forced the question of who should preside over it as Bishop of Constantinople. Macedonius, whom Constantius had officially recognised as its bishop from the final exile of his rival Paul in 349, had already been accused since before the Council of Seleucia of violence of various kinds, and, as Gilbert Dagron has argued, Constantius had probably been keen for some time to be rid of him. 24 Macedonius had taken the see as part of a long-running and bloody struggle with Paul, which had caused many riots and the death of one of Constantius’ generals. The accusations against him in 360 included causing still more deaths, and also receiving back into the Church of Constantinople a deacon who was found guilty of adultery. Zonaras also notes that Constantius was angry with him for moving the body of Constantine, and so it was easy for Macedonius’ enemies to exploit that anger and have him deposed.25 Once that was done, Eudoxius replaced him in the see, thus single-handedly demoting the see of Antioch to a status below the see of Constantinople, as Socrates points out.26 It is not unlikely that this decision was in fact Constantius’. He had seen Eudoxius in action on the imperial stage at the time of his advent to Rome with Eudoxius in his entourage, and seems to have been impressed.27 Eudoxius was clearly a consummate performer and an impeccable judge of his audiences, imperial and otherwise.28 The Chronicon Paschale tells us that seventy-two bishops were present at the consecration of Eudoxius, and lists fifty-five of them.29 Besides those already mentioned, we might add another five who are probably to be identified amongst the party of Acacius condemned by the majority party at Seleucia: Eusebius of Seleucia in Syria, Basilicus, Phœbus of Polychalandus, Eutychius of Eleutheropolis, and Eustathius of Epiphaneia. Perhaps surprisingly, there is no sign of most of the bishops from the minority party of the Western Council of Ariminum the previous year, whose leaders were Ursacius of Singidunum, Valens of Mursa and Germinius of Sirmium. The only one of them who can be identified in this list of names is Demophilus of Beroia in Thrace, who would succeed Eudoxius as Bishop of Constantinople ten years later. Presumably the others had returned to their long-suffering dioceses for the winter. (Epiph., Pan. 73.26; for the text, see W. Kinzig, Faith in Formulae [2017], I 416-7). There was no support at all expressed for the initial version of the ‘homoian’ creed. 24 Gilbert Dagron, Naissance d’une capitale: Constantinople et ses institutions de 330 à 451, nd 2 ed. (Paris, 1984), 440-1. 25 Zonaras, Epitome XIII 11.25-6 (Ioannis Zonarae Epitomae Historiarum, Vol. 3, Libri XIIIXVIII, ed. Theodor Büttner-Wobst, Corpus scriptorum historiae byzantinae 33 [Bonn, 1897]). 26 Soc., HE II 43. 27 T.D. Barnes, Constantius (1993). 28 For example. Philost., HE VI 1. 29 Chronicon Paschale 543-4 (Dindorf).

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We now turn to the rest of the impressive list of bishops who were deposed at some point during the Council of Constantinople of 360, and those who replaced them. Besides Macedonius, whom Eudoxius replaced, there were Eleusius of Cyzicus (replaced by Eunomius), Basil of Ancyra, Eustathius of Sebasteia, Dracontius of Pergamon, Neonas of Seleucia, Heortasius of Sardis, Silvanus of Tarsus (replaced by another Acacius), Sophronius of Pompeiopolis in Paphlagonia, Elpidius of Satala in Macedonia, and Cyril of Jerusalem. Philostorgius claims that Acacius appointed most of the replacements, replacing the dead Cecropius with Onesimus as Bishop of the heavily damaged Nicomedia; Basil of Ancyra with a certain Athanasius; Silvanus of Tarsus with another Acacius; and Eudoxius with Meletius. Most of the replacement bishops mentioned by Philostorgius can be found making common cause with Acacius in 363 during the reign of Jovian and signing up to the Creed of Nicaea. So let us summarise the achievements of the Council of Constantinople of 360, a Council of fifty to seventy-two bishops, which overturned the acts of Seleucia, a Council of 160 bishops. It deposed the Bishop of Constantinople and replaced him with the Bishop of Antioch. It deposed the metropolitan bishops of nearly half the provinces of the East. It side-lined two previous imperially-sponsored creeds, one or the other of which the vast majority of bishops of both East and West had espoused the previous year. It produced a new creed, a version of which the vast majority of bishops across the whole empire had already rejected the previous year. It condemned a deacon for heresy while promoting his pupil, a rather more aristocratic deacon who professed exactly the same theology, to a metropolitan see. It arrogated to itself the right while it was in session to adjudicate any clerical case anywhere in the Eastern empire and not only depose any bishop or deacon at will, but also to appoint his replacement from anywhere in the Eastern empire. It encouraged the Emperor to condemn and banish clerics of any degree on his own initiative, having heard merely a few words of a disputation. After it was over, the emperor enshrined endorsement of its creed across the empire in law, although it was not long before his theological writ in much of the West ceased to run.30 Constantius has had a long-standing reputation as a persecuting, ‘Arian’ emperor, which has led to an understandable scholarly desire to rehabilitate him. It is only fair to allow that he was indeed no theological fanatic; he was too doctrinally vacillating for that. Nonetheless, it is also important to recognise with Ammianus Marcellinus and Julian, as well as Athanasius and Hilary of Poitiers, and no doubt also Eleusius of Cyzicus and Eustathius of Sebasteia, how incompetent and damaging to both Church and empire his ecclesiastical policy actually was by the end of his life. He seems to have had no idea either what the Church was for on its own terms, or how it might contribute to the 30 For appeals to the Creed of Ariminum/Constantinople in law, see, for example, Valentinian II in 385.

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stability of the empire, let alone what its norms of government were supposed to be. He arbitrarily based his entire policy on the views of first one and then another ambitious middle-ranking prelate, before abandoning him for a new favourite, often within a few months of one another. He threw money and favours at bishops, but encouraged them to hang about the court rather than use it to contribute to local well-being. He sponsored endless councils and quasiconciliar gatherings without clear structures or purpose, constantly changing his plans for them and clogging up the imperial post, and then let them descend into chaos, without regard for how disruptive their decisions were, or how they were to be carried out or policed. So luminously bad were his policies that his four immediate successors in the East, whatever their own faults, were able to make some easy capital simply by avoiding or reversing them.

Julian, Jovian and Valens Let us now turn to the next three emperors of the East, Julian, Jovian and Valens. Julian is, of course, well known as a devotee of the old gods, who rejected the claims of Christianity once he entered Constantinople as sole Augustus on December 11, 361. This is not the place to canvass the precise nature of Julian’s theological beliefs. But it is worth noting how many of Julian’s initial ecclesiastical moves make sense even on purely pragmatic grounds as ways of mitigating if not reversing some of Constantius II’s mistakes.31 When Julian approached Constantinople, he was doubtless petitioned by Macedonius, the city’s deposed bishop, probably with the aid of Eleusius of Cyzicus (a former civil servant), Basil of Ancyra and other leading bishops who had been deposed at Constantinople 360, to overturn the acts of that Council. We know, at least, that this group so petitioned the next two emperors, Jovian and Valens.32 Julian had no reason to love the leading bishops from Constantius’ court, who had effectively been his jailors in his younger days. But simply overturning the acts of Constantinople 360 would have created immediate chaos in the capital. Constantinople had suffered from riots caused by ecclesiastical struggles throughout the 340s, and Macedonius was a man with a history of violence against his enemies. His response probably did more to improve the accountability of episcopal governance to the Christian people than any other imperial ecclesiastical policy since the end of the Great Persecution. He decreed that all the banished bishops could return, but without offering them any support, legal or otherwise, to retake the churches they had been banished

31

Timothy Barnes (Constantius [1993], 153-4) notes that Julian made moves to conciliate the bishops of Gaul, in particular, fairly quickly after the Council of Constantinople. 32 Soc., HE III 25; Soz., HE VI 7.

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from.33 He removed all imperial backing, financial, logistic and military, from bishops in general, treated their churches as the private property of a private organisation, and decreed that any property of others which they had destroyed (particularly temples dedicated to non-Christian deities) they had to rebuild at their own expense.34 The implications of this are often not fully recognised. Open local ecclesiastical competition immediately became possible. Multiple bishops of each city were suddenly in evidence, as they had not been since before Constantine’s accession in the East in 324. Control of each of the city church buildings, in the increasingly interfering hands of the state since then, now returned to the local church (at least initially); alternative ecclesiastical buildings could also now be designated or established. We have a good indication of what the results were from a law passed by Valens in May 365 decreeing that ‘bishops who had been deposed and expelled from their churches under Constantius, but who had retaken their bishoprics in the time of Julian’s reign, should once again be expelled from their churches’.35 Among bishops we know of, this touched Eleusius of Cyzicus, Eustathius of Sebasteia, Silvanus of Tarsus, Meletius of Antioch, Cyril of Jerusalem and Athanasius of Alexandria, who all seem to have repossessed their churches under Julian. Others, such as Marcellus of Ancyra and some of the other Old Nicenes, seem quietly to have set up private communities in their own city, without contesting the public church buildings; in consequence, as being no risk to the public peace, and having no pretensions to imperially-recognised positions (as well as being mostly of a certain age), they were left alone by both Valens and Theodosius. How were the public churches retaken by previous incumbents? The evidence suggests that many of the Constantinople 360 bishops (Eudoxius’ and Acacius of Caesarea’s appointments) won little local support, but they were also in some cases (Eunomius and Meletius in particular) singularly lacking in pastoral commitment in times of hardship.36 Episcopacy was now a job only for those prepared to risk legal, financial and possibly physical harassment, and with strong enough local support to hold onto the key property. In the case of Eustathius, his replacement Meletius had gone on to greater things, but the people of Sebasteia do not ever seem to have accepted him in any case, suggesting that Eustathius would have had no local rival to prevent his swift

33

Historia acephala 3.2 (Annik Martin and Micheline Albert [eds], Histoire ‘acéphale’ et Index syriaque des Lettres festales d’Athanase d’Alexandrie, SC 317 [Paris, 1985], 150). 34 Theod., HE III 6.5; Soz., HE V 15.5. 35 Historia acephala 5.1-7; Noel Lenski, Failure of Empire: Valens and the Roman State in the Fourth Century A.D. (Berkeley, 2002), 247. 36 Athanasius of Ancyra is the only Constantinople 360 appointment who can clearly be shown to have remained in the see he was appointed to throughout the reigns of Julian and Jovian, and to have continued there until his death under Valens.

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return under Julian.37 Eleusius was likewise far more committed to Cyzicus than Eunomius ever was.38 The cases of Cyril and Silvanus, both of longstanding local prestige, seem to have been similar.39 The lynching of George of Alexandria shortly after the death of Constantius was an extreme example of what local intolerance of an externally-imposed bishop might prove capable of.40 Bishops under Julian also became liable for rebuilding temples they or their predecessors had destroyed: Eunomius may have vacated the see of Cyzicus in favour of Eleusius for precisely this reason.41 The Nicene community in Antioch, meanwhile, had been meeting discreetly on private property for thirtyfive years, but they were now able to take the opportunity to have a bishop of their own, Paulinus, consecrated for the first time by the exiled Nicene-supporting Bishop of Cagliari on his return journey to the West.42 At the same time, the clergy of the Old Church in Antioch declared their allegiance to the deposed Meletius, not yet a public Nicene, who had been bishop briefly the previous year. Euzoius continued in the main church, but it was closed by Julian at the time of his own advent to the city, ostensibly because of the danger of riots. Julian had no interest in policing Christian doctrine. Bishops in these circumstances could have subscribed to any creed or none. We do not positively know that he banned synods, but with no enforcement mechanism and no free travel, their attraction in any case waned considerably. If he had lived, the synodal tradition would probably have been privately revived on a smaller scale than previously, but as it happens there was no opportunity for this sort of development. Jovian’s short reign consolidated Julian’s policy of allowing multiple bishops to remain in the same city, but otherwise his policy was, for obvious reasons, a consolidation of the apparent status quo, though open (presumably through ignorance or more pressing concerns) to inventive views as to what the Christian status quo actually was. He allowed Athanasius publicly to repossess the churches of Alexandria, from which Julian had removed him, but he turned down a petition from Basil of Ancyra, Silvanus of Tarsus and Theophilus of Castabala to overturn the decisions of Constantinople 360, indicating that it would not make for peace.43 The fact that neither Eustathius of Sebasteia nor 37

Theod., HE II 32.3. See the discussion of the pastoral aims of the Eunomians in R.P. Vaggione, Eunomius (2000), 275-80. 39 Cyril’s ongoing rivalry with Acacius and the importance of his see saw him replaced with three different men between 361 and 381, but he was always successfully able to displace them. Silvanus is back in harness in Tarsus by the time of the projected 367 council (Soz., HE VI 12.4). 40 Historia acephala 2.8-10. 41 R.P. Vaggione, Eunomius (2000), 275. 42 For the politics of this, see Johannes Zachhuber, ‘The Antiochene Synod of AD 363 and the Beginnings of Neo-Nicenism’, ZAC 4 (2000), 83-101. 43 Soc., HE III 24-5. 38

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Eleusius of Cyzicus signed this petition confirms that they had both repossessed the main churches of their cities by this point. It is likely that Jovian made one very significant ecclesiastical move, however, which would have lasting consequences: he probably recognised Meletius rather than Euzoius as the rightful Bishop of Antioch.44 Acacius of Caesarea and Meletius of Antioch held a Council in Antioch during his reign, with representatives of twenty-five other sees (including Eusebius of Samosata, Pelagius of Laodicea and Athanasius of Ancyra) and wrote to the emperor formally confessing the Nicene Creed and presenting themselves as peace-makers.45 Acacius thus disowned Euzoius as Bishop of Antioch, who would have found it hard to organise anything like a similar level of support in time, given that his main theological ally was Eudoxius in Constantinople, and the main public church in Antioch had been closed and was in the hands of the state. If Jovian really intended to restore the Nicene Creed, as Acacius and Meletius believed, Euzoius could easily have been represented as a figure too anti-Nicene for Jovian to work with, because he had been exiled at the Council of Nicaea alongside Arius. What Jovian would have done if he had ever got to Constantinople, we do not know: he would have found it much harder to ignore Eudoxius than Euzoius, and it seems that Macedonius was dead by this time. His ecclesiastical policy may simply have been a function of geography: he approached the empire from south of Antioch rather than north of Constantinople, and so his approach was controlled by the politics of Antioch. But we do know that he was at least at the early stages inclined to allow a certain theological and ecclesiological diversity, since he seems to have confirmed Athanasius, Meletius and Eudoxius as bishops of the three great Eastern sees, none of whom was in communion with the others, and also seems to have left all the various Christian communities in Antioch (at least four at this stage) to continue worshipping in peace. Since he had refused to overturn the acts of Constantinople 360 as such, he would presumably also have allowed a multiplicity of creeds, at least for a while. Even if he had lived, it would have been a long time before Jovian’s regime would have had the spare money or military capacity to police the elections and activities of Christian bishops, and it is not clear that he would have wanted to do so. Valens, on the other hand, began his reign in Constantinople, which meant that he began it by confirming Eudoxius as Bishop of Constantinople, and orienting everything else to that decision.46 Eleusius of Cyzicus and the other 44 On Jovian’s probable recognition of Meletius and the council of 363 in general, see Zachhuber, ‘The Antiochene Synod of 363’ (2000). 45 For the conciliar letter, see Soc., HE III 25.6-18. 46 On the reign of Valens generally, see N. Lenski, Failure of Empire (2002). I have largely espoused his view of Valens’ religious policy, which changed dramatically (Soz., HE VI 7) on Athanasius’ death in 373.

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victims of Constantinople 360 held a two-month synod at Lampsachus, but he angrily turned down their familiar petition to reverse the acts of the Council, and bade them make peace with Eudoxius.47 His ecclesiastical policy by the end of his reign would prove nearly as brutal as Constantius’, if not quite as brutal as some other aspects of his policy. But it is still important to note the ways in which his ecclesiastical policy avoided the mistakes of Constantinople 360 and its aftermath. Firstly, he did not police the Creed of 360 by making new bishops subscribe to it. Although he seems to have frowned on profession of the Nicene Creed, particularly after the death of Athanasius, and to have insisted on imposing Lucius on Egypt without scruple after that point, he allowed the card-carrying pro-Nicene bishop Basil of Caesarea to remain in office. Those he exiled, such as the Egyptian bishops after 373, or Eusebius of Samosata after 374, were punished for specific disciplinary offenses, not simply for professing the Nicene Creed. Secondly, except in cases where they were a clear political threat, or when he was himself visiting their city, Valens allowed a compromise to rival bishops, letting them remain in the vicinity of their city as long as they held their worship outside the city walls. This was the case with Eleusius of Cyzicus, Paulinus of Antioch, the Macedonianist community in Constantinople, and probably also Eustathius of Sebasteia and Cyril of Jerusalem. Meletius spent most of Valens’ reign on his own estates in Armenia, but that may have been largely his own choice once he was no longer the officially-recognised bishop of Antioch. The Nicene community in Constantinople worshipped with the Macedonianists in the building outside the city walls until the latter formally renounced the Creed of Nicaea in 375, leaving the Nicenes with no building until the advent of Gregory Nazianzen to the Church of the Anastasis in 379. Thirdly, after his failed attempt in 365 to re-depose Athanasius, along with the other bishops whom Constantius had exiled who returned to their sees under Julian, he allowed Athanasius to remain bishop of Alexandria for the rest of his natural life, even though he was not in communion with Valens’ chosen bishops of Antioch or Constantinople. However, he did follow Constantius in granting himself the right to establish or depose bishops at will, although he largely restricted himself to the three great sees. Eudoxius’ successor in the see of Constantinople, Demophilus, until then Bishop of Beroia in Thrace, was chosen by Valens himself. He exiled the alternative local choice, Evagrius. He took Athanasius’ chosen successor for the see of Alexandria, Peter, into custody, although he allowed him to escape to Rome, probably deliberately. And he did exercise considerable violence in given cases. On the other hand, he called no councils, and did not encourage large numbers of bishops to hang around court. He backed his chosen bishops of 47

Soz., HE VI 7.

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Constantinople and Antioch, but he did not encourage them to fill all the other sees with like-minded individuals. Nor did he lavish money on bishops, although he did restore some of the pre-Julian ecclesiastical tax breaks. Much, though by no means all, of his ecclesiastical policy can be considered pragmatic. His ‘church outside the walls’ policy represented an interesting compromise between Constantius’ ecclesiastical policy and Julian’s, and he also seems to have learned from Jovian that having bishops of the major sees who were not in communion with one another might not be an insurmountable problem in the short term, though he supported appointments which would bring the sees back into communion when the opportunity arose. Constantinople 381 Theodosius’ policy represents an interesting mix between the policies of his various predecessors. He is often considered an absolutist, closer to Constantius than to his successors, in that he demanded a return to acceptance of a specific Creed, the Nicene Creed, and deposed the sitting Bishop of Constantinople, Demophilus, on his own initiative for refusing to subscribe to it.48 We may also point to the fact that he re-introduced large councils as a means of making ecclesiastical policy. But when we look at the Council of 381, I will now argue, we see the work of a very much more skilful operator than Constantius, whether that operator is Theodosius himself or one of his ecclesiastical advisors. The aims of the Council of 381 were very similar to the aims of the Council of 360, mutatis mutandis: to elect a new Bishop of Constantinople, and to re-establish the Nicene Creed.49 Constantius wanted rid of Macedonius; Theodosius wanted rid of Demophilus. Constantius wanted to sideline the Nicene Creed; Theodosius wanted to restore it. But the means he took to achieve his ends were very different. We first of all need to acknowledge that the Council of 381 was, if not quite so unrepresentative as the Council at 360, given that it was three times as large, at least not as representative as it might have been.50 150 bishops signed up to 48 See, for example, Stephen Williams and Gerard Friell, Theodosius: The Empire at Bay (Abingdon, 1994), chapter on religious policy. 49 Ἐπὶ τῷ κρατύναι τὴν ἐν Νικαίᾳ πίστιν καὶ χειροτονῆσαι τῇ Κωνσταντινουπόλει ἐπίσκοπον (Soc., HE V 8.1-7); this is probably the exact wording used in the official convocation. Sozomen (VII 7.1) has paraphrased it, as is his wont. 50 For the list of the bishops who signed at Constantinople 381, see Cuthbert Hamilton Turner, ‘Canons Attributed to the Council of Constantinople, A.D. 381, together with the Names of the Bishops from Two Patmos MSS ΡΟΒ′ and ΡΟΓ′’, JTS 15 (1913-1914), 161-78; Hubert Kaufhold, ‘Griechische-syrische Väterlisten der frühen griechischen Synoden’, Oriens Christianus 77 (1993), 1-96, 72-8; and Noel Quinton King, ‘The 150 Holy Fathers of the Council of Constantinople 381 A.D.: Some Notes on the Bishop-lists’, SP 1 (1957), 635-41; see also S. Parvis, ‘The bishops of Constantinople 381’, forthcoming.

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Constantinople 381, but a quick glance at the areas they come from reveals that their representation was very patchy, particularly in Asia Minor.51 Some Anatolian provinces, such as Lycaonia, Pisidia, Isauria and Lycia, were well represented, others very sparsely, and others, such as Galatia and Paphlagonia, were not represented at all. In particular, the areas around Constantinople itself are very sparsely represented. This gets us to the heart of one of the Council’s greatest problems. The invitations for the Council of 381 were based on a Council of 153 bishops which took place in Antioch in 379.52 This Council constituted a triumph for the Meletian party, the New Nicenes: it established Meletius as the Nicene bishop of Antioch and recruited or replaced key bishops across the East in favour of the pro-Nicene party, at the expense of the other four episcopal parties with pretensions to them. Its actions had been meticulously planned and prepared by Eusebius of Samosata and Basil of Caesarea, neither of whom lived to see the Council of 381. Among its many carefully laid plans, the Council of Antioch of 379 had lined Gregory Nazianzen up as their prospective New Nicene Bishop of Constantinople and sent him to preside over the Nicene liturgy in a private church there, the Church of the Anastasis.53 Peter of Alexandria had meanwhile lined up Maximus the Cynic for the same job on behalf of the Old Nicenes, with the aid of two Old Nicene presbyters, probably Evagrius of Antioch and Jerome. Though they all worshipped together in the same Church, the Old Nicenes attempted a traditional Alexandrian pre-emptive ordination while Theodosius was still in Thessalonica, no doubt feeling that this was warranted by Theodosius’ edict of the previous February to the Constantinopolitans, Cunctos Populos, which decreed that their bishop must be in communion with the bishops of Rome and Alexandria, who were of course both Old Nicenes.54 Maximus then headed off quickly to Thessalonica to try and obtain Theodosius’ confirmation. Theodosius refused to confirm the election. Meletius also made his way 51 See the map in Noel Quinton King, The Emperor Theodosius and the Establishment of Christianity (London, 1961). 52 See the discussion of this council in Gustave Bardy, ‘Le concile d’Antioche (379)’, RBén 45 (1933), 196-213. The conciliar letter of Constantinople 382 implies that it was largely the same group of bishops who attended the Council of Antioch in 379 and the Councils of Constantinople of 381 and 382 (Theod., HE V 9.13). 53 See Gregory of Nazianzen’s poem On His Life (especially line 596: Gregory of Nazianzus, Autobiographical Poems, ed. and tr. Caroline White [Cambridge, 1996]), and the discussion in John A. McGuckin, St. Gregory of Nazianzus: An Intellectual Biography [New York, 2001]). Gregory presents himself in that poem as having been sent to Constantinople by ‘the invitation of many shepherds and their flocks’, but he also believed himself to have been sent by Basil of Caesarea (Oration 43.2). 54 See Codex Theodosianus XVI 5.17 (Codex Théodosien. Livre XVI, ed. Theodor Mommsen, tr. Jean Rougé, with Roland Delmaire and François Richard, SC 497 [Paris, 2005]); Greg. Naz., On His Life.

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to Constantinople, ostensibly to support Gregory, although it no doubt crossed his mind that a bishop had moved from Antioch to Constantinople in the recent past.55 Theodosius, when he formally entered Constantinople in December 380, began by asking Demophilus if he would simply accept the Creed of Nicaea and remain as bishop, which would have made for an interesting time for all concerned, but fortunately for the Meletians, Demophilus turned him down and went into exile.56 Theodosius, though he clearly had his doubts about Gregory, installed him as Bishop of Constantinople with a considerable military presence to prevent rioting. Gregory’s legitimacy was at this point paper-thin, as he himself was well aware, since the Creed of 360 setting aside Nicaea was the last piece of imperially-backed conciliar theology to which Constantinople was signed up, and so Theodosius scheduled a Council to re-instate the Creed of Nicaea and formally elect a bishop for Constantinople, then expected to be Gregory, prior to proceeding to Aquileia for an ecumenical council with bishops of the West, which would formally restore communion across the whole empire on the basis of the Nicene Creed. The Council of Antioch of 379 clearly provided the basis for the list of invitations, but the problem was that that had been a council of the Diocese of Oriens, and very few of the bishops associated with it were from the regions adjacent to Constantinople.57 The ghosts at the feast were the Homoiousians/ Macedonianists/Pneumomachians, who represented probably a majority of the sees around Constantinople, especially now that Thrace had been overrun by Goths. This party were in a rather awkward position, because they had signed up to the Creed of Nicaea in 365 but repudiated it in 375 in order to be accepted back into the imperially-recognised episcopal fold, with rather unfortunate timing, since they threw away fifteen years of the moral high ground for what turned out to be a mere three years in power. Most of the Homoiousian group who had represented the majority at Seleucia and had been deposed at Constantinople 360 were now dead, including Macedonius, Marathonius, Basil of Ancyra, Silvanus of Tarsus, Sophronius of Epiphaneia and most recently Eustathius of Sebasteia. Others, such as Cyril of Jerusalem and his nephew Gelasius of Caesarea, had jumped ship to the Meletians, but Eleusius of Cyzicus was still leading the party with the help of Marcian of Lampsachus, and they clearly made their claims heard by Theodosius, because they were invited to the Council of 381. The fact that the Council of Antioch of 379 had carefully targeted all the sees of their deceased leading members, so that Meletius’ presbyter Diodore was now Bishop of Tarsus in place of Silvanus, and first Gregory of Nyssa and then his younger brother Peter had targeted Sebasteia immediately 55 56 57

Soc., HE V 5. Soc., HE V 7.4-9. Cf. Theodoret’s Letter of the Council of 382.

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after Eustathius’ death, did not make for an amicable discussion. But Theodosius was conscious of the reasonableness of their claims to have a say in the election of a new Bishop of Constantinople, and at least 34 of them were invited to the Council. They no doubt had a candidate of their own for the See of Constantinople in mind. The Council of Constantinople was long – at over two months, longer than the Council of 360, although that of course had been the end point of a much longer process – and acrimonious, as Gregory Nazianzen’s poem On his Life amply testifies. We know that it drew up a new creed at some point, which would be dusted off and canonised at the Council of Chalcedon, and that it probably also attempted to promulgate a long list of canons of earlier Councils, the Antioch collection, with the addition of some canons of Basil of Caesarea. Most importantly, when Meletius of Antioch died in the middle of the Council, many among its members wanted to elect a new Bishop of Antioch, Flavian, then and there, despite the existence of an earlier pact not to elect a new bishop until Paulinus was dead. The thirty-four Homoiousians walked out at a certain point – when is disputed, though my own view is that it was only after Gregory resigned and Nectarius was elected the fourth Bishop of Constantinople in a year. All the ingredients of Seleucia and Constantinople 360 were there – a new and self-confident group of bishops feeling they were now coming into their kingdom, a controversial new Creed, grandstanding on the necessity or unorthodoxy of previous creeds, mass recriminations, mutual denunciations and anathematisations, bad blood with the Western churches, one party being replaced en masse as the official bishops of the leading sees by another, new bishops being invited from further afield in the middle to give the Council more legitimacy, personal enmities breaking out into the open. But despite the fact that Constantinople 381 went on for two months, discussed a large number of different agenda items and included a great deal of drama, a death, a resignation and a mass walk-out, the only official documents issued at the time by the Council were a short note to Theodosius, the ‘Logos Prosphonetikos’, asking him to ratify their proceedings, and a synodikon of a few lines which would later be divided into four canons, noting that the Creed of Nicaea is not to be set aside but is to remain valid, setting out a list of post-Nicene heretics, stating that elections and judicial proceedings are to happen within the boundaries of their civil dioceses only, setting Constantinople above Alexandria and Antioch in ecclesiastical precedence, and stating that Maximus the Cynic is not Bishop of Constantinople and his ordinations are invalid. Even this much would be too much for the Council of Rome meeting the following year, which condemned the idea that Constantinople should be placed above the two older sees, and the political reasoning on the basis of which this was done. But we should pause to note just how much potential and actual episcopal activity Theodosius had quashed in insisting that the Council hold to the original terms of its summons, and simply elect a Bishop of Constantinople,

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re-confirm the Nicene Creed, and issue a few neutral notes on canonical jurisdiction. The Council did not elect a Bishop of Antioch, despite the claims of some scholars – Theodosius introduced a long slow funeral march back to Antioch with Meletius’ body and a period of mourning, which meant that the election would have to be held in the diocese of Oriens by the bishops of that diocese. Although the bishops of Oriens did go ahead with electing Flavian to replace Meletius instead of recognising Paulinus, that meant that despite the complaints of Ambrose and Damasus, their beef was with one single diocese and not with the whole of the Eastern Church – the Council of Rome of 382 contented itself with formally breaking off communion merely with Flavian’s two consecrators rather than with a larger group, and of course continuing to recognise Paulinus as Bishop of Antioch for the two more years he was alive. The Council did not formally depose anyone, other than declaring that Maximus was not Bishop of Constantinople, which Damasus of Rome was happy to accept, because he deemed Maximus to be an Apollinarian. It did not elect anyone other than the Bishop of Constantinople, even if it tacitly recognised a lot of elections in the diocese of Oriens which were probably in practice quite questionable. It did not issue a new creed, despite drawing one up, and it did not insist that anyone formally subscribe to the Nicene Creed, despite decreeing that the Creed of Nicaea was not to be set aside. It did not issue a collection of canons whose provenance the Westerners might have disputed. There was as big a theological sea-change after Constantinople 381 as there had been after Constantinople 360, and probably as many sees changed hands, but it was all done with much, much more subtlety. Even the list of heretics was pared down in Theodosius’ post-synodal legislation – only Arians and Eunomians are legislated against. Theodosius I only after 383 began to legislate against the Macedonians, and never legislated against the followers of Marcellus of Ancyra. Nonetheless, Theodosius’ post-conciliar legislation was not without bite. By establishing ‘touchstone’ bishops with whom all other bishops in a diocese had to agree theologically, he handed as much power to his named individuals as Constantius had ever handed to his own theological favourites. In particular, he handed the diocese of Oriens over to the complete theological control of Diodore of Tarsus for the remaining ten years of his life, which would have serious long-term consequences for Eastern Christianity. But the Council of 381, while changing the theological scene completely, left no real purchase for anyone to start or renew a theological fight, or to demand a judicial review. The Creed of Nicaea had been introduced by Constantine – the Council of 381 was merely reaffirming its validity. A bishop of Constantinople needed legitimacy – this one was elected by 150 bishops. Over 50 years of wrangling was brought to an end, therefore, by this Council which did almost nothing, backed up by a lot of astute politics in its aftermath. Was it a far, far better thing Theodosius did in managing Constantinople 381 than ever a Christian emperor had done? That depends on one’s opinion of the

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relative theological worth of the Creeds of Nicaea and Constantinople 360. And in allowing the Goths to go on worshiping in the custom and language of their ancestors, Constantinople 381 did store up theological problems for the future. But I think it is worth taking the time to compare the two councils side by side. One is often tempted – I am myself – to see Constantinople 381 as the weakest of the early ecumenical councils, and be frustrated that it did not promulgate a clearer theology of the consubstantiality of the Holy Spirit with the other two persons of the Trinity. But sometimes theological strength is best seen in weakness – and Constantinople 381 might well be one of those times.

PART III

AUGUSTINE AND

HIS

AGE

Figurabat Ecclesiam: Figuration, Friendship and the Unity of the Church in Augustine’s Sixth Tractate on John Phillip J. BROWN, Nottingham, UK

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to demonstrate how Augustine’s theology of ecclesial friendship is presented within the sixth Tractate on John. This notion of friendship as ecclesial binding is born out of his sermonic engagement with the North African schism known as Donatism. In applying his training as a Rhetor and drawing upon the Christian inheritance of figuration, Augustine is able to imbed and display his vision of intimate unity as a sacred binding within Christ’s body, the Ecclesia. Augustine’s emotional appeal accommodates what he sees as the Christian calling, to become friends with God, amici dei. Augustine’s theology of friendship is predicated upon the notion of the Church as Christ’s body being the exclusive place of salvific unitive love, the summit of Christian caritas – amicitia Christi. The incarnation being that which draws humanity upwards into the divine embrace of friendship through the totus Christus. We see Augustine stretching out this understanding outwards towards those who find themselves, believing – yet estranged from the Church, the vessel of salvific friendship. Primarily, Augustine deploys his ecclesial vision of friendship through the figures of John the Baptist and Donatus. Augustine presents the two contrasting images, one who truly represents the Church (figurabat ecclesiam) and one who does not. Augustine invites his ‘listeners’ to become like John, who is simply the ‘amicus sponsi’, which he juxtaposes with the figure of Donatus who represents ‘Donatists’ who are separated from the body, and are contrasted as being ‘non amici sponsi’. Augustine knows intimately the value of genuine friendship. To the antique ear, it was a cherished and valued institution. For Augustine there is only one way to achieve friendship with God; one had to be a friend of Christ. This required belonging to His body – the exclusive place of triune unitive love, the vessel of true Christian friendship, the Church.

Introduction The scholarship concerning Augustine and friendship is well known and has a large and varied body of literature.1 Yet it is seldom investigated or mined 1

See for general overviews Marie Aquinas McNamara, Augustine, Friends and Friendship (Fribourg, 1958); Joseph T. Lienhard, ‘Friendship, Friends’, in Allan D. Fitzgerald (ed.), Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia (Grand Rapids, 1999), 372-3; Carolinne White, Christian

Studia Patristica CII, 175-189. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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for fresh insights and is generally commented upon in a rather narrow and piecemeal manner. One of the facets of Augustine’s theology of friendship which is less well-known is the ecclesial dimension to his more developed thoughts on friends and friendships. It is often asserted yet without demonstration. For example, Carolinne White touches briefly upon Augustine’s theology of ecclesial friendship within his broader and dynamic thoughts on friendship. She states: ‘As Augustine explained to Felicia in Epistula 208, it is common membership in the body of Christ which brings Christian friends so close together’.2 However, the problem arises when probing further, in that it does not mention friendship. Therefore, the evidence is generally vague and the argument rather unsupported.3 Through Augustine’s In Iohannis euangelium tractatus,4 this veiled assertion becomes clearly visible. Through Io. eu. tr. 6 Friendship in the Fourth Century (Cambridge, 1992), 127-40. More focused works include John J. Gavigan, ‘St. Augustine’s Friend Nebridius’, CHR 32 (1946), 47-58; Adele M. Fiske, R.S.C.J, ‘St. Augustine and Friendship’, Monastic Studies (1962), 127-35; John F. Monagle, ‘Friendship in St. Augustine’s Biography’, AugStud 2 (1971), 81-92; James McEvoy, ‘Anima una et cor unum: Friendship and Spiritual Unity in Augustine’, RTAM (1986), 40-92; Tarcisius J. van Bavel, ‘The influence of Cicero’s ideal of friendship on Augustine’, Augustiniana Traiectina (1987), 59-72; Joseph T. Lienhard, ‘Friendship in Paulinus of Nola and Augustine’, Aug. (L) 40 (1990), 279-96; Gerald W. Schlabach, ‘Friendship as Adultery: Social Reality and Sexual Metaphor in Augustine’s Doctrine of original Sin’, AugStud 23 (1992), 125-47; Eoin Cassidy, ‘The Recovery of the Classical Ideal of Friendship in Augustine’s Portrayal of Caritas’, in Thomas Finan and Vincent Twomey (eds), The Relationship Between Neoplatonism and Christianity (Dublin, 1992), 127-40; Gillian Clark, ‘The Bright Frontier of Friendship: Augustine and the Christian Body as Frontier’, in Ralph Mathisen and Hagit Sivan (eds), Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity (Aldershot, 1996), 217-26; Michael Sherwin, ‘“The friend of the Bridegroom stands and listens”: An analysis of the term amicus sponsi in Augustine’s account of Divine friendship and the ministry of Bishops’, Aug. 38 (1998), 197-214; Stefan Rebenich, ‘Augustine on Friendship and Orthodoxy’, in Mark Vessey (ed.), A Companion to Augustine (Chichester, 2012), 365-74; Samuel Kimbriel, Friendship as Sacred Knowing: Overcoming Isolation (Oxford, 2014); Tamer M. Nawar, ‘Augustine on the dangers of Friendship’, CQ 65 (2015), 836-51. 2 C. White, Christian Friendship (1992), 208. See also, M.A. McNamara, Augustine, Friends (1958), 232. 3 White’s assertion without sufficient demonstration is not the only example of this. J.F. Monagle, ‘Friendship’ (1971), 86 states that ‘all true friendships … must be rooted in Christ’ and that ‘It is Christ, “the Way, the Truth, and Life” who purifies the whole man and cleanses friendship’. In the final part of the article (p. 92) he relates friendship to the mystical body, the totus Christus (see below) citing ciu. 13.23, which contains this theme: ut cum illis sit unus Christus, uelut caput et corpus, and relates it to Augustine, In epistulam Iohannis ad Parthos tractatus, which cements the notion of universal ‘holy fellowship’ (10.3). What is notably missing from these citations from Augustine, for both White and Monagle, is that the cited texts underpin the notion of belonging to the totus Christus, but how it is related to friendship is not substantiated within those texts. What this article, and later publications will explore, is how Augustine displays his notion of the ‘Mystical Body’ as a place of salvific friendship and how the gap between friendship and the Mystical Body is demonstrably bridged and displayed. 4 The literature on Augustine’s In Iohannis euangelium tractatus (referred to hereinafter as Io. eu. tr. – cf. Augustinus-Lexikon) is steadily growing and gaining pace. See Douglas Milewski, ‘Augustine’s 124 Tractates on the Gospel of John: The Status Quaestionis and the State of

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we shall see this veil becomes lifted to expose more demonstrably the ecclesial dimension of his matured vision of friendship through his engagement with the Donatist schism.5 Beginning initially with Augustine as an ‘orator’, rooted in the rhetorical tradition of fourth century of liberal arts educated elites, we trace the roots of his rhetorical strategy of delivering his persuasive polemic through which he displays his matured theology of ecclesial friendship. Coupled with a long and fruitful history of allegorical hermeneutics, the use of figurative, or representational speech in the form of tropes provides Augustine with a proven strategy for his hermeneutic of friendship. Through his sermonising, Augustine, in presenting his vision of ecclesial friendship builds upon common biblical images familiar to both Catholics and Donatists alike. He then moves from the familiar images of the Church within the North African context, that of ‘ark’ and ‘dove’, towards fresh and intimate personified representatives of what a Neglect’, AugStud 33 (2002), 61-77; Allan Fitzgerald’s ‘Introduction’ to Homilies on the Gospel of John 1-40, trans., Edmund Hill, WSA I/12 (Hyde Park, 2009), 27-33. Fitzgerald deals with several issue relating to the Io. eu. tr. including the issue of neglect. On the issue of dating, Fitzgerald places the date of Io. eu. tr. 6 on the date of January 13th 407 AD. Yet he does stress that the dating of the Io. eu. tr. ‘remains indicative rather than securely fixed in every detail’. For a more contemporary assessment on the dating of the Io. eu. tr., particularly in reference to Io. eu. tr. 1-16 see Adam Ployd, Augustine, the Trinity and the Church: A Reading of the Anti-Donatist Sermons (Oxford, 2014), 2. See also, D. Milewski, ‘Augustine’s 124 Tractates’ (2002), 65-9. For the text Augustine was using see Hugh Houghton, Augustine’s Text on John: Patristic Citations and Latin Gospel Manuscripts (Oxford, 2008). 5 The Donatist Church, which Augustine refers to as a party (pars), was born out of the persecution of the Church prior to the act of toleration by Constantine (313 AD). The context of North African Christianity is quite distinct within the western Roman world. It had its own language (Punic) and culture and in general saw itself as both separate and superior. In terms of its Christianity, it valued the scriptures and its saints with great intensity and fervour. The veneration of its martyrs captures this intensity, as to give up one’s life for the faith in response to persecution seems to have been expected. It thrived on the stories of the martyred saints such as Felicity and Perpetua – of which none was more elevated than the great Cyprian the martyred bishop of Carthage (258 AD). In 311 AD Caecilian was elected to be the bishop of Carthage, the ecclesiastical capital of north west Africa. His election was contested due to allegations he had been consecrated by a traditor. Those who had conspired with the Roman persecution of Christians or had handed over church property, particularly the scriptures and sacramental vessels were labelled traditors, those who had ‘handed over’. For Donatists this act of betrayal rendered one’s faith invalid and rendered oneself dispossessed of the gift of the Holy Spirit, rendering one’s ability, particularly bishops, unable to impart the Spirit. For this reason, Caecilian was rejected and Majorinus was elected as an acceptable replacement. This unfortunate episode represents the epicentre of the split; Catholics remained faithful to Caecilian’s election, the remainder with Majorinus. The second bishop elected to head the now schismatic movement was Donatus Casae Nigrae, after which the schism was named. The secondary literature is longstanding and well established. See William H.C. Frend, The Donatist Church: A Movement of Protest in Roman North Africa (Oxford, 1985); Maureen Tilley, The Bible in Christian North Africa: The Donatist World (Minneapolis, 1997); ead., ‘Redefining Donatism: Moving Forward’, AugStud 42 (2011), 21-32; ead., Donatist Martyr Stories: The Church in Conflict in Roman North Africa (Liverpool, 1996); Brent D. Shaw, Sacred Violence: African Christians and Sectarian Hatred in the Age of Augustine (Cambridge, 2011); id., The Donatist Schism (Liverpool, 2016).

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true friendship with Christ is and is not. Through the figurative tropes of John the Baptist and Donatus, Augustine presents and juxtaposes these two figures that personify unity and dis-unity; what a friend of Christ is and is not. Augustine’s call was to unity; that friendship with God was only possible with friendship with Christ. Since the body of Christ is not divided, unity within the life of the Trinity came through belonging to His body on earth, the totus Christus,6 the exclusive vessel of salvific love – friendship, the only meaningful place where faith gains currency, where friendships are secured and where love truly rests. Bishops as Sacred Orators By the time Io. eu. tr. 6 was delivered, Augustine found himself in the midst of a schism that had persisted for almost a century. In terms of the state losing patience with the Donatists, two events framed Augustine’s emotional appeal to the separatists by belonging and becoming friends. These two events, the first being the Edict of Unity (405 AD)7 and the second, the Council of Carthage (411 AD),8 provided the political context of the gathering pace of the imperative in bringing this intractable issue to an end. Augustine as the spearhead of the Catholic cause against the Donatists, mustered all of his talents in order to supplement the pressure beginning to fall upon their heads and facilitate the intended transition of the Donatists as frictionless as possible. Augustine was marshalled into the fray as the Catholic’s official ‘ecclesiastical orator’, that is an authorised interpreter on the issues surrounding the Christian faith in North Africa. This is not an insignificant factor in the context of his debate with the Donatists, who themselves had profited enormously from classically educated men. From the time of Constantine, Imperial office holders of the state began to bleed into the hierarchy of the Church at an increasing and substantial rate. Yet even before the normalising of relations between Church and Empire (312 AD), the world into which Augustine was thrust had already gained significantly from the educational class and the Roman rhetorical schools. Augustine found himself surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses in this regard; those schooled in the liberal arts. Tertullian, Cyprian, (possibly Optatus) and Ambrose are good examples of the forerunners for Augustine. The fact that Augustine himself was nervous about being set upon and made a Bishop after his return to 6 For some of Augustine’s use of the term and related terms see, Io. eu. tr. 3.4, 28.1; en. Ps. 17.2, 30.2,1,3; 54.3; 56.1; Catholic members (CSEL 52, 238). For secondary sources see Stanislaus Grabowski, ‘The Role of Charity in the Mystical Body of Christ according to Saint Augustine’, RÉAug 3 (1957), 29-63. Michael Cameron, ‘Totus Christus and the Psychagogy of Augustine’s Sermons’, AugStud 36 (2005), 59-70. 7 See Erika Hermanowicz, Possidius of Calama (Oxford, 2008), 150-3. 8  Ibid. 188-220; B. Shaw, Sacred Violence (2011), 532-86.

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Africa adds considerable weight to the notion that professional Orators as well as those trained in the liberal arts had become marked men for high ecclesial offices.9 Bishops seem to have become religious mirrors of their secular counterparts. After the Theodosian reforms,10 with its formalising of its Catholicity, the realms of the sacred and secular office holders of the Imperial court become ever more aligned and integrated. The main role of these office holders, authorised interpreters, was their ability and licence to make known the voluntas (will) of the scriptura (texts). As Cicero had said, it was the art of applying ‘the dead letter to a living tradition of justice’.11 Roman rhetoric taught various strategies for advocating interpretations that sided either with a strict reading of the ‘letter’ or with a general one based on ‘intent’. When discrepancies made literal meanings difficult to pin down, the principle of ‘equity’ (aequitas) or ‘accommodation’ was made so that the dead letter would continue to live by a living tradition of justice. Cicero, following Aristotle, even imagined a dead author coming back to life to speak on behalf of the judgment invoked by equity. Equity ‘fitted’ or ‘accommodated’ the generalities of the law to particular cases. Authorized professional interpreters were utilised to give licence, to make adaptive corrections to a written law.12 As Bishop, Augustine simply becomes the ecclesiastical and thus the Imperial ‘authorised interpreter’, making known the will of God afresh to the people in certain matters. In the case of the North African schism, his mandate was to provide the spiritual pressure which complemented and capitalised upon the secular pressure. What both Church and state required was an end to this intractable issue for the sake of unity and peace. The state offered a stick; Augustine friendship with Christ. Augustine’s focus here was appealing too in the debate from an emotional angle in order to present a firm message of welcome and acceptance to those 9 See Carol Harrison, The Art of Listening in the Early Church (Oxford, 2013), 47-9. See also, Averil Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire (Berkeley, 1991), 120-54 (‘power over the past’). 10 After a brief interruption by Julian the Apostate (361-363 AD), the ‘Constantinian revolution’ is significantly consolidated by Theodosius, who embraces ‘Pro-Nicene’ Christianity with vigour. He pushes on to bring to fruition the establishment of the Catholic Church as the means by which the Empire became Christ’s. This created an atmosphere in which the Church became imperialised not just in its structure but also in its outlook. Robert Markus observes that Augustine shared in the ‘elation’ of the triumph of the Catholic Church and states: ‘The Theodosian era set the seal on the “Christian times” and gave this cast of minds a firm hold’. See Robert Markus, Christianity in the Roman World (New York, 1974), 121-42. A good example of this is the Edict of Thessalonica issues in 380 AD (C.Th. 16.1.2), which effectively cemented the Catholic Church as the official religion of the Empire. See also, id., ‘Catholic Ascendancy’, in Stephen Williams and Gerard Friell (eds), Theodosius: the empire at bay (New Haven, 1995), 47-60. 11 Cicero, De oratore I.31.140; II.26.110. 12 Michael Cameron, ‘“She Arranges All Things Pleasingly” (Wis. 8:1): The Rhetorical Base of Augustine’s Hermeneutic’, AugStud 41 (2010), 55-67, 58-9.

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Donatists seeking a theological premise for re-unification. Augustine’s aim involved undermining the theological foundations of the divide in order to broker the peace and re-integration of the divided. It is through this approach that Augustine displays his most matured vision of friendship; rooted in belonging to Christ’s body, the Church. It is within Io. eu. tr. 6 (as well as most of the first sixteen) Augustine displays most fully his ecclesiological vision of friendship. Friendship that is centred upon the Trinity into whose life we enter via the vessel of salvation, the Church; His body on earth. It is through Augustine’s preaching, particularly his figurative method, that we most clearly see his unfolding theology of ecclesial friendship. Figuration The notion of ‘representational’ speech is not new either to Christian hermeneutics or to classical Rhetorical strategies in the age of Augustine. Figurative, or ‘representative’ approaches, particularly in the form of tropes, indeed seem to have been a way in which texts were brought to life or normalised in order to be understood, a way in which the scriptures lived; afresh through the artful hermeneutical strategies of the Orator. Augustine stands at a point in time in which many of the fundamental strands of hermeneutical developmental praxis converge and coalesce into a rich and vibrant spectrum of interpretative tools, firmly rooted within the spiritual life of the Church. From the time of Philo, the scriptures presented themselves as alluringly simple and pregnant with new hidden treasures. Figurative approaches to scripture yielded fresh and powerful insights into what had often appeared to be obscure, illusive and impenetrable. As Philo insists, the mind, like the scriptures themselves, have an immediate as well as a hidden nature: ‘We must make up our minds that all such language is figurative and involves deeper meanings’.13 Augustine is also not the first to glean from the Scriptures representational images of friendship. Philo, commenting upon Genesis, even interprets the places as drenched in meaning: Now ‘Hebron’, a ‘coupling’ and ‘comradeship’, is a figurative (συμβολικῶς) title for our body, because it is ‘coupled’ with a soul, and has established a friendship (φιλίαν) and ‘comradeship’ with it. As ‘vales’ it has organs of sense, great receivers of all objects of sense outside it. These pump over the understanding the countless qualities of things, and pour them in upon it through the receivers, flooding it and totally submerging it.14

By the time of Augustine not only has the Christian tradition forged new and ‘normalising’ ways of understanding the scriptures but it has also, like Philo’s 13 14

Philo, That the Worse is Wont to Attack the Better, LCL 227, 167 (312-3). Ibid. 212-3.

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philosophical foundation, become the recipient of many of the classical norms of rhetorical strategies. Figurative interpretations help to paint before the eyes of the listeners a vision of a deep and abiding image often through tropes. Figuration, being a fundamental feature of hermeneutical strategies, drew on these methods. Augustine finds himself the inheritor of those who have pioneered the paths of dynamic approaches to scripture as well as profiting from his own secular training.15 Yet even to the faithful, the scriptures had often presented themselves as torturous to mine for fresh and life-giving nourishment.16 From Philo onwards, there has remained a tension between that which is immediately discoverable and that which is hidden. It was this inability to penetrate to its ‘inwardness’17 that eventually led Augustine to conceive of the scriptures as a work of divine rhetoric itself, in that: ‘The authority of the Bible seemed the more to be venerated and worthier of a holy faith on the grounds that it was open to everyone to read, while keeping the dignity of its secret meaning for a profounder interpretation’.18 Augustine’s previous disdain of the scriptures being ‘unworthy’ comes from his inability of being able to enter into them. Indeed, as a Manichean, Augustine understood well the attitudes to the biblical corpus that had a longstanding tradition of its own.19 In large part this has its roots in classical understandings of texts. It is clear that his own rhetorical training proved invaluable to breaking into the world of the Christian scriptures. Indeed, it was figurative or spiritualising approaches to the scriptures that enabled Augustine to see the scriptures as a whole; as a work of divine rhetoric.20 It seems that figurative exegesis was a primary way in which the 15 See C. Harrison, The Art of Listening (2013), chapter 2, ‘Rhetoric and the Art of Listening’. For the general context see M. Tilley, The Bible in Christian North Africa (1997), 18-41; Pamela Bright (ed.), Augustine and the Bible (Notre Dame, IN, 1986). For the influence of his secular training upon his presentation of scripture see Michael Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere: Augustine’s Early Figurative Exegesis (Oxford, 2012). 16 Nathan Lefler, ‘Saint Augustine’s Hermeneutics of Friendship: A consideration of De Utilitate Credendi 10-13, with special Reference to Confessions, Book 13’, AugStud 42 (2010), 423-34 persuasively argues that not only does hermeneutics serve a functionary means of understand texts, as the very object of investigation, but that the act of doing it, also has a ‘practice function’ as a strategic method of evangelisation. It is a means by which he brings earthly friends into the fold of heavenly friends in Christ. The root of Lefler’s argument is developed by drawing out Honoratus, a Manichean, as an example of how polarising opinions were concerning the understanding and authority of the scriptures, particularly the Old Testament. 17 Conf. 3.9. 18 Conf. 4.8. 19 Manichaeans rejected the Old Testament and were suspicious of the New Testament, believing they had ‘been tampered with by persons unknown, who wanted to insert the Jews’ law into the Christian faith’, conf. 5.21. See Roland J. Teske, ‘Augustine, the Manichees and the Bible’, in P. Bright (ed.), Augustine and the Bible (1986), 208-21. Johannes van Oort, ‘Augustine and the Books of the Manicheans’, in M. Vessey (ed.), A Companion to Augustine (2012), 188-99. 20 See Michael Cameron, ‘The Christological Substructure of Augustine’s Figurative Exegesis’, in P. Bright (ed.), Augustine and the Bible (1986), 74-103; id., ‘Figures of Speech and

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classical mind and confused Christians alike could become accommodated to the strangeness of sacred as well as secular writings. In the confessions he writes: ‘I was not interested in learning what he (Ambrose) was talking about. My ears were only for his rhetorical technique … together with the words which I was enjoying, the subject matter, in which I was unconcerned, came to make an entry into my mind. I could not separate them’.21 Gerald Bruns drew attention to this standardising, or normalising process of spiritualising the text through tropes and images. It was the focus on ‘representative’ or ‘figurative’ accommodative processes that enabled the listeners of scripture to penetrate through the surface into a mode of meaningful understanding. To the ancient ear, as Bruns states, ‘the Holy Scriptures constituted an eminent but profoundly abnormal text. Against the textual norms of Hellenic and Roman culture, the Scriptures make their appearance as a practically unreadable book – a barbarous text’.22 Kathy Eden’s book, Hermeneutics and the Rhetorical Tradition has been instrumental in this new focus of inquiry upon Augustine’s method of the interpretatio scripti. She outlines the central nub of the Ciceronian rhetorical method of aequitas ‘equity’, the notion of ‘fitted-ness’ or ‘accommodation’.23 For Eden, ‘equity’s accommodative power – that is, its responsiveness to particular circumstances – renders it a formidable tool of rhetorical argument, insofar as rhetoric itself is first and foremost the art of accommodation’.24 Figuration is a normalising tool of accommodation which Augustine’s applies to scripture. Indeed, the praxis of interpretation is as ‘reading well as a journey home’, in which even the poetic imagery of the Aeneid finds fresh internal telos. In other words, the art of Oratory is to provide direction to the argument in which your audience may sail towards a fresh understanding which one can characterise as a new ‘homeland’. Eden argues that the idea of a ‘journey’ is a transferable accommodative power which Augustine deploys within a Christological substratum. We see this in his figurative displays within the Io. eu. tr. (see below) of which Io. eu. tr. 6 is a prime example, particularly of his notion of the Church as a vessel of divine friendship. This ‘vessel’ of friendship forms the central persuasive power in his call towards unitive love within the body of Christ – the Ecclesia. Augustine displays Knowledge of God in Augustine’s Early Biblical Interpretation’, AugStud 38 (2007), 61-85, particularly at 65-7. 21 Conf. 5.24. Catherine Conybeare, ‘Augustine’s Rhetoric in Theory and Practice’, in Michael J. MacDonald (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Rhetorical Studies (Oxford, 2017), 301-12, 303 makes the salient observation that with the verba the res being joined together, the words (verba) acting as the saline solution for the substance of the thing (res) behind its meaning. This is also a good example of Augustine’s view that words did things, as a Rhetor this is what we expect to see. 22 Gerald L. Bruns, ‘The Problem of Figuration in Antiquity’, in Gary Shapiro and Alan Sica (eds), Hermeneutics: Questions and Prospects (Amherst, 1984), 147-64, 147-8. 23 Kathy Eden, Hermeneutics and the Rhetorical tradition (New Haven, CT, 1997), 7-40. 24 Ibid. 14.

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Christ as the author of this accommodative act, as embodying the truth that God in Christ accommodates himself for our journey home, being both the Way and homeland. Augustine deploys his figurative hermeneutic to cement the vision that the Body of Christ, ‘the Church’, is the exclusive spiritual vessel of unitive love – friendship. It is the exclusive place of divine befriending. For friendship in his polemic within the Io. eu. tr., is linked to the Spirit who is unifying love. He draws this out in subsequent tractates: ‘For, if charity (the spirit) is so great that it makes your soul and your friend’s soul into one soul here below (si enim hic tanta caritas est, ut animam tuam et animam amici tui unam animam faciat)’.25 Within Io. eu. tr. 6 Augustine deploys his figurative, or representational accommodative powers to scripture in order to rhetorically move his ‘literate listeners’26 through the crust of scripture into a new and authoritative meaning of holy writ. He does this to move his listeners to see the weight of authority resting upon his words as displaying the will (voluntas) of Christ and to call to the separated to belong within the body, the Church. The trope of biblical figures deployed is designed to entice, move and persuade his listeners by accommodating the narrative of John’s gospel to the context of the North African ecclesial schism. He does this by appealing to their emotional sensitivity towards the power of unitive love in the form of friendship. However, this is bound up with what it is to participate – to belong to the body of the Son the Ecclesia Catholica. In Iohannis Euangelium Tractatus 627 The Io. eu. tr. of which there are one hundred and twenty-four Homilies were written over a period of approximately twelve years and is Antiquity’s sole 25 Augustine, Io. eu. tr. 14.9, Homilies on the Gospel of John 1-40, WSA I/12 (Hyde Park, 2009); id., In Iohannis euangelium tractatus (CChr.SL 36, 147). All further translations from Augustine’s Io. eu. tr. are from WSA. All Latin texts of the Io. eu. tr. are taken from the CChr. SL edition. 26 See C. Harrison, The Art of Listening (2013), 60. 27 Augustine’s Io. eu. tr. falls into different phases of writing over roughly a thirteen-year period. Io. eu. tr. 6 falls into the first phase which consists of the first sixteen which are primarily immersed within an anti-Donatist polemic along with his en. Ps. 12-134 (in modern usage) as well as his sermons in ep. Io. tr. Therefore, the first sixteen tractates on John’s gospel fall within a broader set of sermons focused upon the intractable and bitter dispute between Catholics and Donatism in North Africa. I have chosen this tractate as it encapsulates Augustine’s notion of ecclesial friendship within this set of anti-Donatist sermons. It is by no means the only tractate to illustrate this but perhaps the clearest. I am very much indebted to Adam Ployd’s article, ‘The Unity of the Dove: The Sixth Homily on the Gospel of John and Augustine’s Trinitarian Solution to the Donatist Schism’, AugStud 41 (2011), 57-77, who demonstrates the notion of Augustine’s theology of the Church being enveloped within the life of the Trinity as a basis for de-valuing the

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commentary on the Gospel of John in Latin literature. As it has been noted (see above) this work has largely been ignored. The Io. eu. tr. sit within two halves (1-54 & 55-124), of which the first sixteen are recorded via stenographers28 within the context of Augustine’s engagement with the Donatist controversy.29 It would be a mistake to think of the text of John’s Gospel as relatively unknown to the general ‘listener’ as biblical material seems to have been quite readily available and well known.30 We are told that ‘the libraries are full of books; there is nothing lacking to the church; the divine call sounds everywhere through each locality; the mouths of readers are not silent; the hands of all are full of codices’.31 As H. Houghton states: ‘Even allowing for exaggeration in Christian polemic, biblical books appear to have enjoyed a wide readership in this period’.32 Here in Io. eu. tr. 6 Augustine in in full flow with his engagement. In Io. eu. tr. 6 Augustine begins with figurative displays that build upon the local context of hermeneutical six figures in the form of tropes, found in Scripture, that describe the historical and prophetic reality of the Church. These common ‘figurative’ tropes are well established and accepted exegetical tools deployed by both Catholics and Donatists who share in these common ecclesiastical images. We may refer to these as ‘traditional tropes’ found within North African literature, such as the image of the Church as an ‘ark’ and also of the Church as a ‘dove’.33 Augustine begins his polemic by expounding upon the nature of the Church itself, rooting his polemic within these established descriptive norms. The Church as the body of Christ, in which he stresses the nature of being ‘living stones’, by which he imbeds the reference to 1Pet. 2:5, of the church made up exclusively of participating members. The participating members are the very fabric of Christ’s body that journeys within the world, moving forward to eternal life: We find this in scripture; the ark was constructed of timbers that would not rot. The seasoned timbers that will not rot are the saints, the believers who belong to Christ. For just as, in the temple, the faithful are said to be the living stones (lapides) of which the Donatist claim to salvific validity via purity. However, Ployd does not make the link between this and friendship. This article is the first in a planned series of publications on Augustine’s vision of friendship within the Io. eu. tr. 28 H. Houghton, Augustine’s Text on John (2008), 28. Augustine, ep. 23A. 29 See S. Milewski, ‘Augustine’s 124 Tractates’ (2002), 61-77. 30 Addressing the accusation of those handing over books being traditors Optatus states: ‘Though handing over books they did not hand over their hearts and minds, in which God wrote his Law, just as he had promised to write it. Where, brother Parmenianus, is that statement of yours that the Law was completely burnt up by collaborators? See, it has not been completely burnt up or entirely removed, when it remains in the hearts of believers and thousands of books are recited everywhere’. Against the Donatists (THS), trans. Mark Edwards (Liverpool, 1997), 132. 31 Optatus, Against the Donatists, 134. 32 H. Houghton, Augustine’s Text on John (2008), 24-43. 33 A. Ployd, ‘The Unity of the Dove’ (2011), 57-77.

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temple is being built, in the same way those who persevere in the faith are seasoned timbers that will not rot. So then in the ark itself there were such seasoned timbers. The ark, you see, is the Church; that is where the dove baptizes.34

Here both images of ‘ark’ and ‘dove’ are brought together as representing the unity of the Church. Augustine underlines the fact that what constitutes the Church ultimately is the Trinity, for the Church is the body of Christ, and therefore the Church is brought into the bosom of the Father (Jn 1:18), with the Son who dwell together in the unity of the Spirit. As Adam Ployd notes, ‘Augustine will redefine the trope of the dove as indicative of the Spirit and the Spirit’s work in the church. Ultimately, it is in the Son’s giving of the Spirit in baptism – a truly Trinitarian work for Augustine – that unity through love is established in the church, even when that church must sojourn in this world pining for its homeland’.35 Augustine deploys the comparison of those who dwell in the dove and those who do not. He sees the Church as ‘ark’ and the dwelling activity as that of ‘dove’. Augustine juxtaposes those in the Spirit where the church is and those beyond its bounds. However, he begins by highlighting those who are themselves doves of the Dove and those who are not. The ark for Augustine contains both crow and dove, why is it that only the dove remains he rhetorically asks? How fitting it was that when the crow was sent out from the ark it did not return, while when the dove was sent out it did come back – those are the two birds that Noah sent out! He had a crow with him there, he also had a dove; the ark contained each kind of bird; and if the ark was representing the Church (figurabat ecclesiam), you can of course see how it must be that, in these unsettled times, the Church has both sorts both the crow and the dove. Who are the crows? Those who look after their own interests. Who the doves? Those who look after Christ’s interests.36

This term, figurabat ecclesiam, becomes the hermeneutical key which unlocks the figurative pattern of Augustine’s rhetorical accommodative argument. Beginning with what is familiar, ark, crow, dove, Augustine builds upon the figurative display of biblical images, whereby the tropes, crow, dove, ascend towards the summit of unity and disunity in the figures John the Baptist37 and Donatus, who embody and accommodate the two groups, the Ecclesia 34

Io. eu. tr. 6.19. A. Ployd, ‘The Unity of the Dove’ (2011), 58. 36 Io. eu. tr. 6.2. 37 See M. Sherwin, ‘The friend of the Bridegroom stands and listens’ (1998), fn. 1. This illuminating article teases out much of the meaning behind the figure of John the Baptist as the amicus sponsi in showing that for Augustine John represents an image of an ‘ideal’ faithful Catholic bishop. Though Sherwin rightly sees the focus of this approach in employing John as the ideal Catholic bishop, he largely ignores the inference to those who ‘stand and listen’ as the main object of this imagery. The general ‘listener’, Augustine’s congregants, are also the focus of being another amicus sponsi. Thus, the tropes of Augustine have both a ‘narrow’ and a ‘broader’ application that goes beyond those who minister as bishops and teachers. Also, the 35

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Catholica and the pars Donati. The crows, like Donatists, represent those who having belonged to the Church seek their own agendas and leave the Church never to return. Doves, on the other hand, dwell in the one dove who baptises them in the one ark and like John seek Christ’s agenda pointing others to follow him not themselves.38 Here Augustine displays what Adam Ployd states as the ‘possession of the Holy Spirit is that which makes for the true columbine church through the bishop’s ability to impart the purifying Spirit at baptism’.39 This is amplified through his notion of John who represents the Church and more specifically its authorised Orator, the Bishop (see below). Augustine holds the position that the qualifying character of the sacraments is that every single event is a trinitarian act. It is not an act of the past by which God hands over the vault of grace which flows through the faithful. The Bishop (the usual minister of baptism) is not a factor of validity. Rather, it is in belonging to the body of Christ in which the Spirit is imputed to the participating believers. Belief is not what constitutes union, it merely leads to its fulfilment as belonging. Thus, it is only in participating within the body of Christ that one enters the peace of the Spirit that unites its members in the economy of salvation. The groaning of the dove is contrasted with the noisiness of the crow, who draws attention to itself unlike the dove who groans within the true columbine Church, yearning for its homeland. For the doves, within the one Dove, feed on fruit unlike the crows, who feed on flesh. Augustine here is juxtaposing the aims of the Donatists who complain about their treatment in this world and seek worldly recognition, as compared to the true Church who yearn for that which lies beyond the horizon. In short, Augustine presents the Donatists as yearning for the love of this world’s end and, Catholics who are columbine, for the love of God who within the true Church carries them home: ‘Who are the crows?’ Augustine asks the crowd: ‘Those who look after their own interests. Who are the doves? Those who look after Christ’s’. This comparative view is designed firstly to both undermine the claims of the Donatists to be the true Church, as the true Church is constituted by the Trinity not by human agency and secondly, to affirm that the members of the true Church seek the will of Christ. He calls out to the Donatists to become doves within the one Dove, to live out their baptism as participating members of Christ’s body. This point subverts the claim that Bishops validate baptism by stressing the point that it is given by the Spirit is given by Christ to his own body. Augustine reminds his audience: ‘So not everyone, then, who says, image of John falls within a matrix of other biblical tropes which interlock with each other. The image of John therefore sits amongst these and as I have argued embodies most fully the image of unitive love for all who are called to be ‘seasoned timbers’, friends of Christ. 38 Io. eu. tr. 4.1, ‘And so the prophets before him were allowed to foretell future events in relation to Christ, but John had the honor of pointing him out with his finger’. See also, Io. eu. tr. 5.6. For further parallel statements see, Io. eu. tr. 4.8;10. Also, c. litt. Pet. 2.37;87. 39 A. Ployd, ‘The Unity of the Dove’ (2011), 58.

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“Peace be with you”, is to be listened to as a dove’. The view of validity is further cemented by Augustine that it is John’s claim that Christ is ‘the one who baptises (Jn 1:33)’, that the bishop is only a minster of God’s graces not an inheritor. Augustine establishes John as the archetype of being an authentic Christian, one who dwells within the love of God: ‘The dove teaches us the answer. For she replies from above the head of the Lord, saying, “Yes, you have baptism, but you do not have the charity with which I groan”.’40 Thus, they believe in the Trinity, but they do not participate in the triune economy of love that unites all in all. Those who dwell beyond the bonds have valid sacraments that are ineffective; or even harmful as they bring not salvation but judgment, having that which does not belong to them. Salvation lies only in those who dwell within the body of the Church found everywhere and of every tongue (see Io. eu. tr. 6.15). That is what the Holy Spirit – divided in tongues, united in the dove – signified. On the one hand the tongues are divided, on the other the dove unites. The languages of the nations have come together; has the one tongue of Africa separated? What could be clearer, my brothers and sisters? Unity in the dove; community in the tongues of the nations.41

Augustine appeals to the Donatists to bear fruit, share in the unity of the Spirit, belong to the Church, dwell in the, ‘bowels of the Dove’ and become bound within the one true universal Ark. Building his argument further in Io. eu. tr. 6.20 Augustine points out that the possession of acts is not enough: ‘Without having charity, all I would hear would be booming bronze and clanging cymbals’42 (1Cor. 13:1). Augustine calls into question all acts of presumed merit as lacking authenticity, for to dwell outside of the Catholic Church the Dove (Spirit) is not in them and so all understanding, acts of kindness and even martyrdom is without merit. Thus, ‘it is for the sake of Donatus, not for the sake of Christ’. Through the trope of John the Baptist as the representational Christian, Catholic Christians simply become amici sponsi. Those who are Catholics are John, they like him are signs of Christ’s unity with his body and are other ‘friends of the bridegroom’. Those outside the Church are like those wearing the wrong clothes at the wedding banquet; they do not belong to the bridegroom; they do not share in His body. It is the place where human beings are bound in friendship with the bridegroom as well as with each other: Look at how you suffer, because if you suffer for Donatus, you are suffering for a proud man; you are not in the Dove if you are suffering for Donatus. That man was no friend 40 41 42

Io. eu. tr. 6.14. Io. eu. tr. 6.10. Io. eu. tr. 6.20.

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of the bridegroom, because if he had been, he would have sought the bridegroom’s honour, not his own. Notice the friend of the bridegroom saying, this is the one who baptizes. That man was no friend of the bridegroom, the one for whose sake you are suffering. You do not have a wedding garment on; even if you have come to the banquet, you have to be thrown outside. Or rather, it is because you have been thrown outside that you are in a wretched state. Come back finally – and stop boasting.43

Augustine throughout Io. eu. tr. 6 journeys with the audience through the passage of scripture in which he accommodates the local and historical context of the day within his exegetical polemic. Augustine as ecclesial orator demonstrates that it is the sovereignty of God that underpins the life and efficacy of the Church through which the ‘seasoned timbers’, the saints who make up the body, its members, ‘doves’ of the one Dove, participate within the economy of salvation within the body of Christ, the totus Christus. For it is Christ who bestows upon its members through the gift of the Spirit, ‘he is the one who baptises’ love as unity. Yet through the figure of the amicus sponsi Augustine deploys his notion of friendship as the summit of unitive love, belonging to his body. In the ancient world there is no greater love than the love between friends. For Augustine was well aware that in John’s account of the gospel to lay down one’s life for one’s friends was how the Church is forged and that participation was fundamental in life and praxis (Jn 15:13). This is the call to unity, to be friends of the bridegroom. Thus, for Augustine to become a friend of God is to dwell within His body – the Ecclesia, the ‘Unity in the dove; community in the tongues of the nations’, are bound together in the spirit who unites all in all. By deploying John and accommodating the title of amicus sponsi to all Catholics, and that of non amicus sponsi to those who belong to Donatus, and thus all Donatists, Augustine is linking friendship with belonging to the Ecclesia Catholica. For him, one can only be a friend of Christ within His own body as a participating member for there is no sainthood without the seasoning of the Spirit. By appealing to his audience (which may have consisted of Donatists) Augustine is simply offering them the opportunity to become friends of Christ; no other demand is made other than this, which is contrasted by the demand of the Donatists.44 Augustine utilising the theme of friendship offered a prize beyond measure. What he was offering was what he had found himself, the true telos not only of his rhetorical training but of his desire for authentic love and the true bond of friendship. Augustine had once said: ‘Can we hope for any higher office in the palace than to be Friends of the Emperor?’45 In the age of Augustine, friendship, like society, was highly stratified. He offers no other qualifying condition to his 43

Io. eu. tr. 6.23. I am grateful for this observation to Dr. Sara Parvis. 45 Conf. 8.15: maiorne esse poterit spes nostra in palatio, quam ut amici imperatoris simus? (CChr.SL 27, 122-3). 44

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audience other than come in and belonging, be friends of the Church and you will have friendship with God (amici Dei). In begging the question about what the highest form of friendship is, here there is none other than with God, who accommodated himself for our journey home to bring us to himself in the vessel of his Son, the Church. Augustine’s call was to come and bear fruit, come and belong, come and be friends. Conclusion What has been set out is how Augustine displays his vision of friendship as an ecclesial binding through belonging to the mystical body of Christ – the Church. What this article has sought to demonstrate is how through his engagement with the Donatist schism, in which he deploys his skills as an orator, his developed understanding of friendship is displayed. In Io. eu. tr. 6 we can see how through the use of biblical tropes his notion of belonging is central to salvation and what it means to be a amicus Christi. Through the central figures of John the Baptist (amicus sponsi) and Donatus (non amicus sponsi) Augustine compares and contrasts them displaying what a friend of Christ is and is not. Augustine, as the authorised orator for Church and state, seeks to offer an emotionally intelligent appeal towards those who begin to feel the pressure mounting upon ecclesiastical dissent. In mustering his rhetorical skills, Augustine offers the arm of friendship, focusing upon the futility of merited salvation beyond the boundaries of the universal Church. Without the bond of love (the Spirit) nothing can be gained from faith or works. They are simply, ‘clanging gongs’ (1Cor. 13:1). Only through the Church can one participate in the inner life of the Trinity of which the Church, being Christ’s body, rests within the divine bosom. Augustine builds his case in presenting the Church as the vessel of the Trinitarian matrix of lifegiving love. This becomes the central nub of his theology of ecclesial unity which he deploys as divine friendship. Friendships therefore become transfigured within Augustine’s thought as being held together in God, founded upon the eternal love of God who befriends the world in Christ through the Spirit within His body the Church.

‘In the Synagogue of Gods’: Augustine’s Notion of Deification in Sermon 23B (Mainz 13) Georgiana HUIAN, Bern, Switzerland

ABSTRACT In the recently discovered Sermon 23B (Dolbeau 6, Mainz 13), dated to the winter of 403-404 and probably preached in Carthage, we find interesting considerations on the deification of the human being. Commenting on Ps. 81(82):1: ‘God has stood up in the synagogue of gods’, Augustine highlights that human vocation is, despite our mortality and infirmity, to tend to divinity, and that deification is a possibility opened with the Incarnation of the Son of God (S. 23B.1). Augustine explores here new ways of naming God according to his deifying power: ‘deifying God’, ‘god-making God’, ‘God not made making gods’ (S. 23B.2) and uses a refined vocabulary in relation to deification (deificator, deificus). In order to reveal the original aspects of this sermon, articulating Augustine’s mastery in both Biblical exegesis and preaching, I compare it with other writings where Augustine speaks of deification by transfiguration into what one loves (Ep. Io. Tr. 2.14), by becoming children of God (En. Ps. 49.2; 94.6), by seeing God (En. Ps. 49.2), by progressing into the loving knowledge of God (De Trinitate 9.11.16), or by achieving the eschatological perfection of the image of God in man (De Trinitate 14.19.25). In particular, I examine the image of ‘the synagogue of gods’ in connection to becoming god by participation or by grace (S. 23B.6, compared to En. Ps. 49.2; 94.6). I revisit the topic of idolatry as enhancing the likeness to senseless idols, as eclipsing the inner senses, and ruining the image of God in man (S. 23B.5). I also contextualize and interpret the metaphors of the goldsmith’s furnace (S. 23B.12) and oil press (S. 23B.15) as images related to the inner shaping of a true Christian and to the ‘time of discernment’.

1. Introduction a. Sermon 23B Augustine wrote around one hundred treatises, over eight hundred sermons, and around three hundred letters. Within this impressive corpus of theological and philosophical reflection, the recently discovered Sermon 23B (Dolbeau 6, Mainz 13) may be regarded as a gem offering an interesting synthesis of Augustine’s view on deification, with certain specific hues and tones, that are not particularly underlined in other writings. Considering the history of its discovery, the text of Sermon 23B belongs to a manuscript dated to 1470-1475

Studia Patristica CII, 191-204. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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and containing a collection of sermons used by the Carthusians of Mainz.1 Resituated in its original context, this sermon was probably preached in Carthage in the winter of 403-404,2 with the whole authority of a bishop,3 and shows mastery in the articulation of preaching intentions with Biblical exegetical developments and dogmatic reflections. It is likely that issues with relevance for the African religious context of the time are implicitly addressed in this sermon but identifying them does not fall within the scope of the present investigation. I concentrate here on Augustine’s considerations on the deification of the human being,4 aiming to enquire which concepts, arguments and images ‘embody’ and carry along a dense dogmatic and exegetic content related to theological anthropology. b. Deification in Augustine Augustine’s treatment of deification should not be confined to the – almost insignificant – number of occurrences of the verb deificare, which is mentioned only eighteen times in the huge Augustinian corpus,5 counting around five million words. On the contrary, the topic is present through a wide range of images and terms, connecting directly to Augustine’s understanding and interpretation of biblical passages. Systematically speaking, the question of deification is related to the view of the human as a deformed, tarnished or restored image of God.6 It has a soteriological horizon and, of course, ethical implications. Achieved through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the human soul, deification has certainly a 1 François Dolbeau, ‘Introduction’, St. Augustine, Sermons. Newly Discovered Sermons, translation and notes Edmund Hill, ed. John E. Rotelle, The Works of Saint Augustine. A Translation for the 21st Century (abbreviated as WSA) III.11 (New York, 1997), 13. For an evaluation of the collection of Mainz see also François Dolbeau, Augustin et la prédication en Afrique. Recherches sur divers sermons authentiques, apocryphes ou anonymes (Paris, 2005), especially 3-21: ‘Les sermons de Saint Augustin découverts à Mayence. Un premier bilan’, and 23-8: ‘Le sermonnaire augustinien de Mayance (Mainz, Stadtbibliothek I 9). Analyse et histoire’ for the codicological description, the origin of the manuscript and its intellectual contextualisation. 2 François Dolbeau, ‘De Psalmo LXXXI’, Augustin d’Hiponne, Vingt-six sermons au peuple d’Afrique, édités par François Dolbeau, 2e éd. (Paris, 2009), 450-8, 454. 3 Augustine was already bishop of Hippo since 395. 4 Augustine’s view of deification in this particular sermon was previously studied by Augustine Casiday, ‘St Augustine on deification: his homily on Psalm 81’, Sobornost 23 (2001), 23-44. 5 David V. Meconi, The One Christ: St. Augustine’s Theology of Deification (Washington, DC, 2013), xv. 6 For the topic of the image of God in Augustine, see Isabelle Bochet, ‘imago’ and especially ‘imago Dei’ in AugLex 3 (Basel, 2004-2010), 507-19; Isabelle Bochet, ‘Le statut de l’image dans la pensée augustinienne’, ArchPhilos 72 (2009), 249-69; Gerald P. Boersma, Augustine’s Early Theology of Image (Oxford, 2016); for a comparison with Neoplatonism Isabelle Koch, ‘Image plotinienne, image augustinienne’, Philosophiques 25 (1998), 73-90; for a systematic theological perspective Matthew Drever, ‘Redeeming Creation: Creatio ex nihilo and the Imago Dei in Augustine’, IJST 15 (2013), 135-53.

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pneumatological dimension. But primarily it is derived from, and deeply connected to christology: it supposes the union of Christ and humanity in ‘the whole Christ’ (totus Christus), an expression by which Augustine indicates the unity between the Church as body of Christ and Christ himself as head of his Church. Consequently, enjoying a divine life is possible within an ecclesial framework, and deification is thus related ‘to the unifying power of the church and of the sacraments celebrated therein’.7 Since deification of the human is eschatologically achieved,8 after the resurrection, it belongs to a space of mystery and silence9 because it cannot be grasped and conceptualised in its future perfection.10 It has therefore a necessary apophatic dimension, and is situated at the borders of the incomprehensible and unsayable, requiring to embrace the methods of the via negativa concerning both knowledge and speech. This apophatic dimension could be the reason why Augustine does not privilege fixing the concept in a technical term such as deificare, but prefers the reference to biblical passages, visual images and eventually the language of ‘sonship’, ‘contemplation’, ‘image’ and ‘likeness’ in order to illustrate the centrality of deification as ‘supreme image of Christian salvation’.11 Connected to the Platonic and Patristic tradition of contemplation,12 deification is achieved as perfect likeness to God in the vision of God (En. Ps. 49.2). Seeing God is transformed in a superlative experience of the inner senses which are opened, cleansed and lifted to full receptivity through divinising illumination.13 Deification does not lift the human being in likeness to God as to reach ‘equality’ with God. While likeness is achieved through seeing, more precisely through knowing God, our seeing and our knowledge can never comprehend and fully encompass or encapsulate the whole divinity. Therefore

7 D.V. Meconi, The One Christ (2013), 236. The strong connection between the incarnational and the sacramental understanding of deification in Augustine is also stated by Norman Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition (Oxford, 2004), 331. 8 Augustine’s concept of deification has been explored in relationship to eschatology by Ron Haflidson, ‘“We Shall Be That Seventh Day”. Deification in Augustine’, in Jared Ortiz (ed.), Deification in the Latin Patristic Tradition (Washington, DC, 2019), 169-89. 9 For the role of silence in Augustine’s thought and writing in relation to words, signs, rhetoric and allegorical interpretation see Joseph A. Mazzeo, ‘St. Augustine’s Rhetoric of Silence’, JHI 23 (1962), 175-96. 10 See Jonathan D. Teubner, ‘Review: D.V. Meconi, The One Christ (2013)’, Reviews in Religion and Theology 21 (2014), 242-56, 245. 11 D.V. Meconi, The One Christ (2013), 236. 12 See Mark Edwards and Elena Ene D-Vasilescu (eds), Visions of God and Ideas on Deification in Patristic Thought (London, 2017). 13 ‘He made us into gods because he shed his light upon our inner eyes’ (En. Ps. 94.6, WSA III.18, 415). Translations from Enarrationes are cited, indicating volume and page number, from St Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, introduction by Michael Fiedrowicz, translation and notes by Maria Boulding, eds. Joseph E. Rotelle and Boniface Ramsey, WSA III.15-20 (New York, 20002004).

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the notion of deification as likeness without equality is rooted in a necessary apophatic approach to the incomprehensible God. ‘It follows that insofar as we know God we are like him, but never like him to the point of equality, since we never know him as much as he himself is’ (De Trinitate 9.11.16, WSA I.5, 279).14 In this sense, deification is compatible with a paradoxical approach of the knowable and still incomprehensible God, in a refined version of what is traditionally called ‘negative theology’.15 It becomes an important aspect of the ‘negative anthropology’ which is rooted in and derived from the ‘negative theology’.16 Without touching the ineffable core of the divine, but granting accessibility to experience and knowledge of the divine through seeing God and while growing in likeness to God, deification leaves intact the ontological divide between the Creator and created being(s).17 Through its renewal in love, the human being can participate in the divine life, more precisely in the modality of being of the divine persons in communion,18 without coming to acquire the divine nature. Deification actually corresponds to the fulfilment of the human nature,19 whose aim and calling is to accomplish the perfection of likeness in the image of God imprinted in its deepest interiority.20

14 St. Augustine, The Trinity, introduction, translation and notes Edmund Hill, ed. Joseph E. Rotelle, WSA I.5 (New York, 1990). Further citations from this translation refer to volume (WSA I.5) and page number. 15 Paul van Geest, The Incomprehensibility of God: Augustine as a Negative Theologian (Leuven, 2011); Deirdre Carabine, The Unknown God: Negative Theology in the Platonic Tradition: Plato to Eriugena (Leuven, 1995), Chapter 9: ‘Saint Augustine. A Negative Theology?’, 266-8; Vladimir Lossky, ‘Les éléments de théologie négative dans la pensée de saint Augustin’, in Augustinus Magister, Communications I (Paris, 1954), 576; William Franke (ed.), On What Cannot be Said. Apophatic Discourses in Philosophy, Religion, Literature and the Arts (Notre Dame, IN, 2007) I 153, for a commentary on Book I of De doctrina christiana. See also Deirdre Carabine, ‘Negative Theology in the Thought of Saint Augustine’, RTAM 59 (1992), 5-22. In connection to the tradition of the names of God, see Jean-Luc Marion, ‘Idipsum: The Name of God according to Augustine’, in Aristotle Papanikolaou and George E. Demacopoulos (eds), Orthodox Readings of Augustine (Crestwood, NY, 2008), 167-90. 16 For the relationship between divine and human apophaticism, see Willemien Otten, ‘In The Shadow of The Divine: Negative Theology and Negative Anthropology in Augustine, PseudoDionysius and Eriugena’, Heythrop Journal 40 (1999), 438-56. The relationship between human incomprehensibility and divine incomprehensibility is considered one occurring by derivation, according to Jean-Luc Marion, ‘Mihi magna quaestio factus sum: The Privilege of Unknowing’, JR 85 (2005), 1-24, 17; id., ‘Resting, Moving, Loving: The Access to the Self according to Saint Augustine’, JR 91 (2011), 24-42, 31. 17 Gerald Bonner, ‘Deificare’, AugLex 2 (Basel, 1996-2002), 265-7, 266. 18 Paul McPartlan, ‘Sainteté’ (c. ‘Déification’), in Jean-Yves Lacoste (ed.), Dictionnaire critique de théologie (Paris, 1998), 1043-7, 1046. 19 Ibid. 20 The image is perfected through the vision of God, which confers to human being’s likeness to God (e.g. De Trinitate 15.11.20; 15.11.21).

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2. The One God and the synagogue of gods In Sermon 23B, Augustine’s discourse gravitates around the first verse from Ps. 81(82): ‘God has stood up in the synagogue of gods’. Is Augustine merely interpreting a verse? How is he able to articulate the image of the synagogue with anthropological, christological and trinitarian reflections? Is the synagogue of gods a spatial-communitarian metaphor or does it become an ecclesiological motif with deep anthropological implications? Augustine’s introductory remarks underline the contrast between the mortality and infirmity of the human being and its calling, its hope for ‘divinity’: ‘Gerimus mortalitatem, toleramus infirmitatem, exspectamus diuinitatem’.21 – ‘We carry mortality about with us, we endure infirmity, we look forward to divinity’ (S. 23B.1, WSA III.11, 37). This hope represents nothing less than what God has planned for the human being: ‘Vult enim deus non solum uiuificare, sed etiam deificare nos’. – ‘For God wishes not only to vivify us, but also to deify us’. (S. 23B.1, WSA III.11, 37). God did not only promise divinity, he also took on our infirmity, our ‘mortal reality’, our fragile condition, explains Augustine. The discourse becomes strongly incarnational. In order to argue that infirmity can be raised to divinity, Augustine first concentrates on claiming that divinity could be hidden under human fragility; that God took on the form of weak, vulnerable humanity. So Augustine reverses the terms of the puzzle of deification (infirmity aspiring to divinity) to obtain the terms of the mystery of Incarnation (divinity descending into human fragility). If it seems hard to explain that human beings might become gods, should it not be a fortiori more difficult to imagine that God himself becomes a human being? And yet the latter has happened to make the first possible: ‘The Son of God became a son of man in order to make sons of men into sons of God’ (S. 23B.1, WSA III.11, 37). Augustine is therefore ‘echoing’ the Athanasian description of deification22 while interweaving the concept of ‘sonship’. He also explains that the Creator himself assumes the condition of the creature in order to raise the creature to taste the life of the Uncreated: ‘homo enim factus est hominis factor, ut homo fieret dei perceptor’. – ‘For the maker of man was made man, so that man might be made a receiver of God’ (S. 23B.1, WSA III.11, 37). In the incarnated Son of God, a new form of human receptivity and human hospitality is opened: man can become a receiver of God, he can host God. Two christological presuppositions are here involved: 1. The Incarnation is possible because Christ 21 Latin citations from Sermo 23B follow the edition of the text ‘De Psalmo LXXXI: Deus stetit in synagoga deorum’, published in Augustin d’Hiponne, Vingt-six sermons au peuple d’Afrique, édités par François Dolbeau, 2e éd. (Paris, 2009), 459-68. 22 See also S. 119.1.1 as another place where Augustine ‘consciously or unconsciously, echoes Athanasius’ – as notes Gerald Bonner, ‘Deification, Divinisation’, in Allan D. Fitzgerald (ed.), Augustine through the Ages. An Encyclopedia (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, UK, 1999), 265-6, 266.

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is the Son of God the Father, and he preserves the quality of ‘son’ while assuming the condition of humanity, becoming ‘son of man’. 2. The incarnated God is the Creator Himself, the ‘maker of man’ and implicitly also the one who created the entire world at the beginning. Augustine has to accommodate the expression synagoga deorum in this Christological context and implicitly tends to extend his exegetical development to anthropological, ecclesiological and eschatological implications. He explains the term ‘synagogue’ as being the Greek equivalent to congregatio in Latin, ‘congregation’ in English (S. 23B.2, WSA III.11, 37). The image of God standing up in the congregation of gods is linked with the need to discern between gods or types of gods. Discernment, however, has its ultimate source in God, and Augustine relies on the verse of the same Psalm: ‘In the midst to discern the gods’. The need to introduce solid theological explanations regarding the coexistence of the one God with multiplicity of gods brings here other conceptual distinctions which clarify Augustine’s notion of deification. In fact, claims Augustine, only one true God (‘deus uerus, deus unus’) stood in the synagogue of gods, who in their multiplicity are ‘gods not by nature but by adoption, by grace’ (‘non natura deorum, sed adoptione, sed gratia’ – S. 23B.2, WSA III.11, 38). The bishop of Hippo draws the line between being God by nature and being god by grace. This opens the possibility to name God in several ways according to his deifying power: the one God ‘who is always God’ and ‘true God’ (‘deum semper deum, uerum deum’) is a ‘deifying God’ (‘deificatorem deum’), ‘god-making God’ (‘deificum deum’), ‘God not made making gods’ (‘deum non factum deos facientem’) (S. 23B.2, WSA III.11, 38). His divinity is uncreated and He is the only source of the process or activity that can make humans into gods by adoption. On the contrary, all the other gods, the many gods that have been made from human beings by deification, are ‘gods who are made, but not by a craftsman’ (‘deos qui fiunt, sed non a fabro’) (ibid.). In drawing this distinction between God by nature, or by ‘substance’ (S. 23B.1, WSA III.11, 37), on the one hand, and god by grace or by adoption, on the other hand, Augustine uses several expressions which refer to deification from the perspective of divine agency: the first two (deificator, deificus) seem synonyms,23 the third introduces a paraphrase (deos faciens). He also 23 See note 7, WSA III.11, 46. Edmund Hill explains that deificator seems an invention of Augustine, proposed probably due to the cautious use of the second term, deificus, which might have raised connections to the customs and rituals of deifying emperors. The occurrence of deificator in this passage is considered to be ‘the first and single use known in ancient Latin’ by Goulven Madec, ‘Deus’, AugLex 2 (Basel, 1996-2002), 313-65, 319, note 17. See also Dolbeau’s remark in the introduction to ‘De Psalmo LXXXI’ (2009), 458. The term deificus is found in different forms in earlier writings, for example, in Cyprian of Carthage, De zelo et liuore 15, and four times in his epistles. For extensive considerations on deification in Cyprian (and his five uses of deificus) see Benjamin Safranski, ‘After the Fashion of God: Deification in Cyprian’, in Jared Ortiz (ed.), Deification in the Latin Patristic Tradition (Washington, DC, 2019), 75-93.

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names this transformation from the point of view of human receptivity and engagement (‘deos qui fiunt’). The transfiguration implied in this process of ‘making gods’ is far from being comparable to creating an ‘idol’ (simulacrum) by the art of a craftsman. Deification is therefore something distinct from human representations on ‘making’ and supersedes any form of craftwork where the agent and the object pertain equally to the created order. Before turning to the contrast between deification and idolatry, which has been alluded to in the last cited phrase, I consider important to compare Augustine’s developments on the ‘synagogue of gods’ with other passages from his Expositions of the Psalms touching on the topic of deification. This will show that the ideas advanced in Sermon 23B are to be found also in other works, with slight variations. First of all, Augustine says many times that deification keeps the distinction between the ‘maker’, the creator, and the ones that are made into gods – the created humans. The attribution of the name ‘gods’ to human beings does not imply possessing the nature or substance of God; nevertheless, it refers to deification made possible by the grace of God. The action of grace turns humans into children of God, which again calls the image of adoption, while holding on the distinction between begetting (from one’s substance) and adopting (by grace): It is quite obvious that God called human beings ‘gods’ in the sense that they were deified by his grace, not because they were born of his own substance. (…) If we have been made children of God, we have been made into gods; but we are such by the grace of him who adopts us, not because we are of the same nature as the one who begets (En. Ps. 49.2, WSA III.16, 381).

Secondly, in order to underline the distance from the language of substance (essence) or nature, Augustine advances not only the vocabulary of adoption, but also the well-known Platonic topos of participation,24 converted to serve the purposes of Christian anthropology. ‘He calls them gods in virtue of participation, not nature; they are gods by the grace through which he willed to deify them. How great must our God be, if he makes us gods?’ (En. Ps. 94.6, WSA III.18, 414). A deifying participation in God is granted by the only one God who has Godhead of himself and not by participation (En. Ps. 49.2).25 Thirdly, deification is related to sonship and can be named through the terminology of ‘becoming sons of God’ or even more general ‘becoming children 24 A depiction of Augustine’s view on salvation in terms of participation in Platonic (Neoplatonic) hues occurs in Étienne Gilson, Philosophie et Incarnation selon saint Augustin (Geneva, 1999), 27. 25 More on ‘participation’ as technical term and on Augustine’s tendency to avoid the language of participation and quoting 2Peter 1:4, because of the Pelagian use of the passage, in David V. Meconi, ‘Augustine’s Doctrine of Deification’, in David V. Meconi and Eleonore Stump (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Augustine (Cambridge, 2014), 208-27, 225 and 227.

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of God’. Both En. Ps. 49.2 and En. Ps. 94.6 mention that human beings are given the ‘power to become children of God’.26 Fourthly, the notion of deification is constructed on a christological basis and is enabled only by the Incarnation of the Son of God: ‘This is what God brings about. He transforms children of men into children of God, because he made the Son of God become the Son of Man’ (En. Ps. 52.4.6, WSA III.17, 36). We should note here the striking similarity with the argument from Sermon 23B, expressed in almost the same phraseological turns. Transformation or becoming can be expressed as participation, as ‘sharing in…’. Christ participates in the human condition – and more precisely, in its mortality – in order to make it possible for the human to participate in divinity. ‘The Son of God was made a sharer in our mortal nature so that mortals might become sharers in his godhead’ (En. Ps. 52.4.6, WSA III.17, 36-7).27 The contrast between the domains of the two participations is constructed not between humanity (humanitas) and divinity (diuinitas), but between mortality (mortalitas) and divinity (diuinitas).28 In such passages, the stress on Christ’s participation in mortality is even stronger than in Sermon 23B, which mentions at the beginning the human mortality and infirmity, and states that Christ took on human infirmitas. According to En. Ps. 66, God’s sharing in mortalitas is the proof and the climax of his assuming human fragility. On the other hand, human ‘sharing in’ Christ’s divinity is a consequence of Christ becoming the Mediator between God and man (De ciuitate Dei 9.15), but also of his sharing in our infirmity, as ‘Teacher of humility’ (En. Ps. 58.1.7).29 26

‘Moreover he who justifies is the same as he who deifies, because by justifying us he made us sons and daughters of God: he gave them power to become children of God (John 1:12)’ (En. Ps. 49.2, WSA III.16, 381). And: ‘The true God makes gods of those who believe in Him, for he has given them power to become children of God’ (En. Ps. 94.6, WSA III.18, 415). 27 En. Ps. 52.4.6: ‘This is what God brings about. He transforms children of men into children of God, because he made the Son of God become the Son of Man. Look what our participation in Him means: we have been promised a share in His divinity, but he would be deceiving us if he had not first become a sharer in our mortality. The Son of God was made a sharer in our mortal nature so that mortals might become sharers in his godhead. Having promised to communicate his goodness to you, he first communicated to you in your badness; he who promised you divinity first showed you charity. Therefore if you take away people’s status as children of God, all that is left is that they are children of men, and then there is not one who will act rightly, not a single one’ (WSA III.17, 36-7). 28 En. Ps. 66.9: ‘Fecit eum participem prius mortalitatem nostrae, ut crederemus nos esse posse participes diuinitatis eius’. See Isabelle Bochet, Saint Augustin et le désir de Dieu (Paris, 1983), 386. 29 The language of sharing in Christ’s divinity, as incarnational foundation of deification, is very important especially in the context of pastoral care. Despite its rather discreet use in Augustine’s dogmatic writings, it constitutes ‘an authentically Augustinian notion’, remarks Stan P. Rosenberg, ‘Not so alien after all. The role of Deification in Augustine’s Sermons’, in Mark Edwards and Elena Ene D-Vasilescu (eds), Visions of God and Ideas on Deification in Patristic Thought (2017), 89-117, 109. This language proves that participation in the divine life is a central motif in Augustine’s anthropological and soteriological conception (Henry Chadwick, ‘Note sur la

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Finally, the same Psalm reading serves to similar developments on deification, which shows that Augustine is consistent in his exegetical method: ‘Now who are these gods, of whom he, the true God, is God, and where are they? Another Psalm tells us: God has taken his stand in the synagogue of the gods, to make a distinction among them (Ps. 81[82]:1)’. (En. Ps. 49.2, WSA III.16, 381). In his further commentary, Augustine links sonship, justification and deification altogether; he explains how they all occur by grace, not by nature, and adds the idea of heritage30 as another way of hinting to deification: ‘So intense is the Heir’s charity that he wanted to have co-heirs’ (ibid.). 3. ‘Making gods’ in its double meaning We have seen that Augustine mobilises various semantic resources, as well as exegetical and dogmatic arguments in order to clarify the distinction between the One God and the ‘synagogue of gods’, between being God by nature or by substance, and being (made) gods by grace or adoption. Thereafter, he draws in Sermon 23B a second distinction, clarifying the ambiguity of ‘making gods’, facere deos: on the one hand, the expression names God deifying humans; on the other hand, it refers to humans producing objects of idolatry (‘gods’ as idols) through human craft. The authentic meaning of facere deos is the first one: ‘You worship the God who makes you into gods’ – ‘Vos adoratis deum, qui uos facit deos’ (S. 23B.3, WSA III.11, 38). In contrast, the human action and intention to encapsulate divinity in manmade objects endangers salvation, as it leads to worshiping false gods, or their images shaped as simulacra. Augustine touches here on the issue of idolatry and complains about people being more interested in ‘making false gods’ than in becoming themselves gods by the power of the true God. ‘So what do people want? To become gods or to make gods? They indeed consider it a greater show of power if they make gods than if they become gods’ (S. 23B.3, WSA III.11, 38). Out of their greed or misunderstanding of power, humans miss the true meaning of ‘making gods’. Furthermore, they do not realize that the objects they produce are only labelled with the name ‘god’; that these objects are not and cannot be essentially divinity, as they remain materially wood or stone or gold. In conclusion, the human being, striving foolishly to ‘create’ a god, will fashion only a ‘caricature’ (simulacrum) of a god, and ‘slap a name on it’ (S. 23B.3, WSA III.11, 38). divinisation chez Saint Augustin’, RSR 76 [2002], 246-48, 247). Citing De ciuitate Dei 14.13, Gerald Bonner elevates participation to express the core of the deification doctrine: ‘the essence of Augustine’s doctrine of deification is, then, man’s participation in God through the humanity of Christ without any change in man’s creaturely status’ (‘Deificare’ [1996-2002], 266). 30 Deification understood as co-heritage with the Son of God shows that this transformation or transfiguration of the human is an accomplishment (not an ‘abolishment’) of the ‘human agency’. See D.V. Meconi, ‘Augustine’s Doctrine of Deification’ (2014), 255.

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Serious as this deceit may seem, it is unfortunately not the last consequence of human pride turned into love of making idols. The anthropological impact of idolatry has still to be named. To this purpose, Augustine makes use of the principle of what we might call doxological likeness or likeness through worship: this principle states that one becomes alike with what one worships (S. 23B.5, WSA III.11, 39). Therefore, the human being who worships the true God will become like God and eventually turn into a ‘god’. By contrast, the human being who worships something inferior, a fashioned idol, made out of stone or gold, insensible, blind and deaf, will become like this object in his inner self. He will slowly become like the ‘caricature’ (simulacrum, idol) he created and will lose the inner senses of seeing, hearing, tasting etc.31 Moreover, he risks more than losing the senses of the inner self which are receptive to divine realities: he risks ‘destroying’ in himself the image of his Creator which he was actually called to cleanse and make perfect. According to this likeness which we are suggesting, if the inner self becomes somehow or other insensitive, stupid, he becomes in a certain matter like an idol, and having ruined in himself the image of the one by whom he has been made, he wishes to take on the image of the one which he has made (S. 23B.5, WSA III.11, 40).

Instead of becoming spirit by worshiping God who is Spirit, the human being risks to become like a stone, losing the powers of inner receptivity, intelligence and affectivity which opened him/her to an experience of the divine life and would have made it possible to restore in himself/herself the divine image. 4. The discernment of gods and the gift of the Spirit Who has then the discernment between true gods and false gods, between those who are the image of the true God and those who are becoming like insensible idols? Augustine states that discernment belongs to God. He is the only one who is able to pass judgement on those who are grateful for his gifts 31 The topic of the inner senses links interestingly to both deification and idolatry, as the first grants full openness, and the latter obstructs all inner receptivity to the divine. Some examples of studies that tackle the sensible receptivity and particularly the spiritual senses in Augustine: Paul van Geest, ‘Sensory Perceptions as a Mandatory Requirement for the via negativa towards God. The Skilful Paradox of Augustine as Mystagogue’, SP 49 (2010), 51-8; Matthew R. Lootens, ‘Chapter 3. Augustine’, in Paul L. Gavrilyuk and Sarah Coakley (eds), The Spiritual Senses: Perceiving God in Western Christianity (Cambridge, 2012), 56-70; Margaret Miles, ‘Vision: The Eye of the Body and the Eye of the Mind in Saint Augustine’s De Trinitate and Confessions’, The Journal of Religion 63 (1983), 125-42; Jean Pépin, ‘Augustin et Origène sur les sensus interiores’, in Massio L. Bianchi (ed.), Sensus-Sensatio. VIII Colloquio Internationale, Roma, 6-8 gennaio 1995 (Firenze, 1996), 11-23; I. Bochet, Saint Augustin et le désir de Dieu (1983), 265-7, Marie-François Berrouard, ‘Note complémentaire 14. Les sens du cœur’, in Saint Augustin, Homélies sur l’évangile de saint Jean. Tractatus in Iohannis evangelium XVII-XXXIII, Bibliothèque Augustinienne (BA) 72 (Paris, 1988), 736-8.

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and on those who are ungrateful. He is the only one possessing the capacity to distinguish between those who are perfecting the image of God in their inner self and those who are not. But the power to pass judgement, to discriminate is also given to humans, ‘not in virtue of their nature, not by any merit of theirs, but by his grace and gift’ (S. 23B.6, WSA III.11, 40). Human beings receive therefore from the Holy Spirit the power to distinguish between ‘gods’ and ‘idols’. This ability is obtained by the gift of God – and here Augustine introduces another important concept, the concept of gift, which opens to the pneumatological aspect of the discussion on deification. Those who fall into idolatry, considers Augustine, are deprived of discernment. Moreover, they are not only becoming like the constructed artefacts, ‘the soulless, senseless, lifeless’ idols (S. 23B.5, WSA III.11, 42), but worse than that, they associate themselves with the beings ‘represented’ by those objects, the numina of the idols, which Augustine considers not to be the gods of the pagans, but simply ‘demons’. In the first sense, the idol is nothing (1Cor. 8:4), in the second sense, the idol behind the material idol is a ‘demon’ (1Cor. 10:20). How is it possible that somebody loses to such an extent his power of discernment so as to come to worship stone idols and associate himself with the spirits behind the idols, namely the demons? Augustine formulates the question in a sharp way: ‘How do people come to seek the society of demons?’ He offers a simple answer, based on Sir. 2:14: ‘by losing endurance’. Before coming to discuss how to regain endurance and, through endurance, the discrimination powers that are connected to human openness to deification, let us step outside the frame of Sermon 23B for a short comparative excursus. If Sermon 23B is concerned with deification in terms of association and assimilation through likeness, of receiving the grace and gift of the Spirit, of sharpening the capacity of discrimination in turning from idolatry to participation in true divinity, in other writings Augustine speaks of other ways of deification. The language of love takes the foreground in relation to Johannine passages: becoming god is possible by transfiguration into what one loves (Ep. Io. Tr. 2.14). Otherwise, the notions of knowledge, illumination and vision may be privileged, alongside with the theme of imago Dei: men become like God by progressing into the loving knowledge of God (De Trinitate 9.11.16), and by achieving the eschatological perfection of the image of God in man (De Trinitate 14.19.25). Relating deification to vision and illumination, Augustine distinguishes between likeness through seeing and likeness though equality. He explains that deification does not imply equality with God, as equality is reserved to qualify the inter-trinitarian relations: The only-begotten Son is like him by being born of him; we become like him by seeing him. We are not like God in the same way as the Son is, for he is of one nature with the Father from whom he is born. We are like God, but not equal to him, the only Son is like him because equal to him (En. Ps. 49.2, WSA III.16, 381).

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Similarly, knowing God brings the transfiguration of the human being, especially if it is associated with spiritual delight and love. Nevertheless, this transfiguration through knowledge does not bring a confusion or a melting between the created and the uncreated nature: By the same token when we know God we are indeed made better ourselves than we were before we knew him, especially when we like this knowledge and appropriately love it and it becomes a word and a kind of likeness to God; yet it remains inferior to God because it is an inferior nature, our consciousness being a creature, but God the creator (De Trinitate 9.11.16, WSA I.5, 280).

Building a comparison on those examples, we might ask why Sermon 23B has no mention of illumination or knowledge as ways of deification and insists instead on discernment. A possible answer could be that the speech is shaped in concepts closer to the sensibility of his audience from Carthage; consequently, the bishop choses to exemplify the gift of the spirit in ethical concepts rather than in epistemological terms, with resonance in the Platonic tradition of noetic contemplation. Therefore discernment is related not to seeing or knowing, but to ‘endurance’, an ethical category.

5. The goldsmith’s furnace and the oil press Two images bring forth what Augustine considered that his audience should understand by endurance. The first one compares the world with a huge craftsman’s furnace, in which there is straw and gold, and the only possibility to discern between what was straw and what was gold is brought about by fire. In the fire of trials and temptations, the unbeliever proves to be ‘consumed’ like straw, and the believer is ‘refined’ like gold. If the world is full of scandals, iniquities, corruption, oppression and blaming of ‘Christian times’, it is because it functions as a trial to put everybody’s faith to a test. The believer should not be astonished by the ‘brilliance of the straw as it burns’ (S. 23B.12, WSA III.11, 43), but rather concentrate on his own purification through the fire of tribulations. ‘O gold, keep quiet and let yourself be refined. The straw is burning in its blasphemies; you be refined from your dross’ (S. 23B.12, WSA III.11, 44). The second image is that of the oil press (torcular, S. 23B.15, WSA III.11, 45). Let us suppose that an olive tree in its freer branches is shaken for a certain time by different winds, but then comes a time of the need of separation, since ‘in the olives hanging from the tree both oil and dregs are crammed in together’ (S. 23B.15, WSA III.11, 45). Separation or discernment would be in this case related to pressure. In Augustine’s interpretation, the olive tree represents the mankind, who experienced in the past times a free mixture of all kinds of people, and who reached finally the time of discernment. But the discernment of different types of human beings requires ‘certain crushings, certain pressures’.

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As a result of the pressure introduced by the oil press, iniquities may seem to be multiplying, but also the virtues of Christians come to shine in their splendour, as the ‘oil being filtered into the jars’ (ibid.). To remain (as they were) the oil that is separated from the dregs and remains inside the good jars Christians should call for God in tribulations and pain (Ps. 116:3-4), or at other times they should find it good to be ‘humbled’ by God and to learn about God’s justification (Ps. 119:71). Under oppression some people may be blaspheming, others may give thanks to God. Transparency and shining will be given only to the second group. Augustine considers that the time of the oil press is imminent and announces in an eschatological tone that ‘the one who is coming to press, is coming to discern’ (S. 23B.15, WSA III.11, 46). The oil press functions as an image for a necessary process of putting to trial in order to show human’s striving for the truth in a ‘time of discernment’. The goldsmith’s furnace and the oil press represent peculiar and powerful images, which call for courage in face of the strong actions of the purifying fire or the huge wooden press crushing the olives. These images seem far from the luminous embracing of the language of love in the Homilies on the First Epistle of John; they also seem to redirect the public’s attention from the dogmatic reflections on deification to a certain interpretation of the contemporary historical reality, regarded in its moral profile. However, these images have an interesting contribution in articulating the inner struggles and outer trials associated with the path of ‘becoming god’ by grace. In both cases, Augustine insists on purification as a necessary process preparing for deification; the aim is to reach through one’s life the shine of gold and the limpidity of good oil. Eventually, a clear eschatological tone guides the construction of these images, where the divine action implies discernment, judgement and separation of the mankind in order to let those who have followed the truth, and endured in the name of the truth, shine in the Kingdom of God. 6. Concluding remarks In Sermon 23B, a seemingly rich use of terms relating to deification (deificator, deificus, deificare) proves that Augustine is in search of an appropriate and precise vocabulary for a conception that is of crucial importance for his theology.32 His developments on deification find a biblical basis in Psalm 81(82), and his exegetical account of the images contained in the psalm fuels at the same time a dense dogmatic reflection. His arguments for deification are underpinned by christological considerations, in particular by the presentation of the 32

Augustine occupies a special place in the Latin tradition due to the fact that he ‘refers more frequently than any other Latin Father to the doctrine of deification’, according to N. Russell, The Doctrine of Deification (2004), 329.

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implications of Incarnation of the Son of God. Conceptual distinctions such as the one between God by nature or by substance, and god by grace, adoption or participation are mastered with both philosophical rigour and care for general comprehensibility. Furthermore, Augustine addresses the ambiguity of the phrase ‘making gods’ and criticises human interest for constructing simulacra (idols). According to the principle of likeness through veneration, idolatry makes human beings lose the inner senses. It also compromises human capacity to reach the perfect likeness to God. Deification, by contrast, opens the way for recovering the beauty of the image of God in man. Finally, the textual images chosen to convey the unimaginable dynamic of deification (the synagogue of gods, the goldsmith’s furnace and the oil press) are related to enhancing discernment as a spiritual virtue. If the first one has an ecclesiological aspect, the last two embody an eschatological tension, being used by Augustine to show how men should face tribulation and pressure in ‘times of discernment’ in order to confess the truth on earth and be worthy of becoming gods in Heaven.

Augustine in the Underworld: An Example of Intertextuality in Saint Augustine’s Confessions Math OSSEFORTH

ABSTRACT Saint Augustine’s Confessions might at first read like a straightforward autobiography, but upon closer look it would appear that the young Augustine’s life story, including his eventual conversion and baptism, are supposed to be exemplary; the reader ought to learn from the young protagonist’s mistakes, take his decisions to heart, and follow up on them in his own life. To enhance acceptance of the story and to make it easier for the addressee to identify with the young man, it is essential that the addressee should see the young Augustine as a man living an ordinary life in a world that is for all that matters familiar to the addressee’s own world. In order to create that familiar world Augustine the author makes use of quotations and images from, as well as references to classical pagan sources profusely. In this article I will point out and analyse a number of examples of this intertextuality, all relating to Vergil’s Aeneid – a color Vergilianus – starting with the passage about memory in book 10 of the Confessions, which, as I will show, is an allusion to the underworld passage in book 6 of the Aeneid, and as such a crucial element within the narrative framework of the Confessions. Analysing this color Vergilianus, I hope to contribute to our understanding of the scope and function of Augustine’s use of intertextuality in the Confessions in general.

Augustine was ‘like a colossus bestriding two worlds’. That is how Albert Outler, in the introduction to his translation of the Confessions describes him.1 Augustine was a child of his time, born on the outskirts of the empire, raised in the time-honoured traditions of classical Roman society, ambitiously aiming for and excelling in a splendid career at the imperial court, while the world around him was rapidly changing; Christianity was finally evolving into an organization with a set of well-defined dogmas. Augustine’s world was a world in transit, a world in which he would see Christianity supplanting the gods of the Olympian pantheon once and for all.2 But he was not a mere witness to all 1

Albert Outler, Confessions and Enchiridion (Philadelphia, 1955), 1. For the historical context of the late fourth century AD see e.g. Alan Cameron, The Last Pagans of Rome (Oxford, 2011). For Augustine’s personal background and position see Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo, a biography (Berkeley, 1967, repr. 2000) and James J. O’Donnell, 2

Studia Patristica CII, 205-215. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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this; once he had travelled his own road to conversion, he spent the rest of his life to help those around him to take the step he took, to bridge the gap between the two worlds. And he did that not by brutally demolishing the old, but by taking it apart, and reassembling it into something new. To see how Augustine achieved this, I will show how in his Confessions he did just that by redefining the context of one of antiquity’s greatest works of literature, and thus making it suit a new and Christian purpose: Vergil’s Aeneid.3 Reading the Confessions one notices that references to classical, secular literature are almost without exception to be found in the first nine books, which seems to agree with the picture Augustine the bishop tries to present there of his younger self as a boy and man struggling with worldly temptations and complying to society’s needs and expectations.4 The only real exception to this is book 10 (10.8.12-10.26.37), where Augustine’s ‘treatise on memory’ shows strong resemblances to the underworld as depicted in book 6 of the Aeneid. Wolfgang Hübner already sensed a strong color Vergilianus in this passage, which he called ‘a Christian imitation of the Roman epic’.5 As he rightly pointed out, Augustine’s vocabulary as well as his descriptions in the passage on memory allude to Aeneas’ visit to the underworld. Let us take a closer look at what Augustine is really trying to tell us. The young Augustine reaches the fields and palaces of memory (campos et lata praetoria memoriae: 10.8.12), where he finds the treasuries of innumerable images (thesauri innumerabilium imaginum: ibid.). The imagines might be taken for the statues that fill the palace halls. Still, as Augustine goes on to describe how he summons these imagines, a specific scene comes to mind of an altogether different aspect of ‘treasure’, in the realm of the God Plouto/Pluto, who counts his wealth in the number of souls. Some of Augustine’s imagines eagerly comply, Augustine, a new biography (New York, 2006); Robin Lane Fox, Augustine: Conversion to Confessions (London, 2015). 3 For the Vergilian presence in Augustine’s writings see also Jan den Boeft, ‘Zilver en goud in Egypte. Augustinus’ omgang met de klassieken’, Lampas 43 (2010), 295-308: Of all the classical references in Augustine’s oeuvre 18% point to Vergil. Jacques Fontaine, ‘Sens et valeur des images dans les “Confessions”’, Augustinus magister (Paris, 1955), 117-26, 119: ‘À sa longue impregnation par Virgile, la sensibilité littéraire d’Augustin doit le ton recueilli de beaucoup de ses images’. Michael McCarthy, ‘Augustine’s mixed feelings: Vergil’s Aeneid and the Psalms of David in the Confessions’, HTR 102 (2009), 453-79, 459: ‘At key moments in the Confessions we hear echoes of the Aeneid’; also Karl Schelkle, Virgil in der Deutung Augustins (Tübingen, 1938); Harald Hagendahl, Augustine and the Latin Classics, 2 vols. (Gothenburg, 1967); Wolfgang Hübner, ‘Die praetoria memoriae im zehnten Buch der Confessiones’, REAug 27 (1981), 245-61. 4 See also Math Osseforth, Friendship in Saint Augustine’s Confessions, between social convention and Christian morals (Amsterdam, 2017), 145-6 and 189-90: [the] ‘effect of pagan literary references ([illustrating] the wrong way [to conversion]) as opposed to Scriptural references ([illustrating] the right way)’. 5 W. Hübner, ‘Die praetoria memoriae’ (1981), 263. He also links the description of the imagines to Vergil’s bees in the Georgica, but primarily sees an allusion to the Aeneid’s underworld.

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others need to be sought after, while yet others come forth in hosts or present themselves of their own accord, hoping that he might want them. He drives them away with his hand until the one he seeks stands forth clearly from the darkening mists, although some may never come forth, absorbed by and ‘buried’, as he puts it, in oblivion. One might be inclined to pick up some echoes of Odysseus as well, calling forth the spirit of Teiresias from the depths of the underworld. Waiting for Teiresias to come forth, a host of others approaches Odysseus, spontaneously, for by acknowledging them he grants them a few moments of life. He waves them away with his sword, while still some approach him that he was not prepared for (Elpenor and a plethora of others, some well, some hardly, some better known). A reference to Homer, however, in this rather crucial passage, would be quite exceptional, since there are hardly any traces of Homer to be found in Augustine’s writings. Although I think that Pierre Courcelle’s verdict is too harsh: ‘Il (sc. Augustin) n’a donc des poèmes homériques ni une connaissance directe, ni une impression d’ensemble’.6 I see a clear Homeric allusion, for example, in the second adventure of Alypius in book 6, where Augustine’s best friend visits the gladiatorial games in a scene that strongly echoes Odysseus’ adventure with the Sirens.7 Still, considering Augustine’s self-confessed hatred of Greek (1.13.20 litteras Graecas oderam) – he even qualifies Homer as amarus (1.14.23) – and his subsequent rather shaky grasp of the language, which would at best have given him a second-hand understanding of the text, I think it’s safe to interpret this allusion as Vergilian rather than Homeric. In Augustine’s description there is an element of neatness and of order.8 This is very much reminiscent of the underworld as it presents itself to Aeneas, where every soul is apportioned its own place according to its cause of death (Aen. 6.426-627). Aeneas is faced by a host of supplicant, unburied imagines, as well. Some fearful apparitions even make him reach for his sword in defence. And there are those he does not expect (Palinurus). He passes the halls of the divine palace until eventually he gets to the fields (campos) where the bright sun has dispelled all darkness. The partial description of Augustine’s palaces of memory almost ‘as we go along’ is very much alike to Vergil’s way of describing the underworld, something Wolfgang Hübner calls ‘die Technik der “progressiven Landschaftsskizze”.’9 Finally, in the realm of memory as Augustine describes it, one can see what is yet to happen; memories of things past lead to prospects and logical conclusions of what lays ahead. Just as Aeneas 6

Pierre Courcelle, Les lettres grecques en Occident de Macrobe à Cassiodore (Paris, 1948),

154. 7 Other than Odysseus, Alypius keeps his eyes shut, but can still hear the sounds from the arena: 6.8.13: clausis foribus oculorum interdixit animo, ne in tanta mala procederet. atque utinam et aures obturavisset! 8 10.8.13: ibi sunt omnia distincte generatimque servata, quae suo quaeque aditu ingesta sunt. 9 W. Hübner, ‘Die praetoria memoriae’ (1981), 260.

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sees the shades of those dead as well as of those not yet born. And the vision that unfolds before him instils fear into Augustine’s heart just as it did into the heart of Aeneas.10 The Vergilian allusion implies the ephemeral state of imagines and shows the limits of anyone’s mastery over them; they do not heed every beck and call, they can act spontaneously, obtrusively, but they can also hide away in shadowy nooks and crannies, or choose not to react at all (cf. Dido’s silent treatment of Aeneas). Describing the realms of memory by alluding to Vergil’s underworld, we should also take into account that in that underworld Aeneas came upon the river Lethe, the river of oblivion. The souls of the dead that were destined to be reborn would drink of its waters and start a new life without any memory of what went before. Augustine’s description of memory in this context and at this point, right after his own baptism in book 9, might point to his own subsequent rebirth in Christ, as he puts it. A rebirth, or new life as will be illustrated by books 11 to 13, which may be contrasted by book 9, characterized by its procession of 4 illustrious deaths: Verecundus, Nebridius, Adeodatus, and Monnica. Augustine’s Lethe had made his uncertainty disappear, but oblivion had not set in; it was precisely that memory of his ‘former life’ that was the basis of his confession. How could it be otherwise, since his eventual salvation from the manifold errores of his younger days was a perfect manifestation of God’s own charity?11 Apart from the comparison between the underworld and memory as such, as well as the illustration of the latter by the former, it is the position of this classical allusion that seems to warrant special attention. In the Aeneid the underworld passage divides the main story into two different parts: the hero’s ‘journey’ (Aen.1.1: virum) and the ‘war’ he has to wage (ibid.: arma). In book one Augustine already likened Aeneas’ wanderings to his own mistakes playing on the double meaning of errores (1.13.20). The allusion to the underworld in book 10 (10.8.12-10.26.37) plays the same dividing role in the Confessions. After Augustine’s explicit and repeated statements that from this point on he will tell who he is right now, what he is inside,12 this passage serves, as in the Aeneid, to bring the narratee to the second part of the story. The classical motif of the hero visiting the underworld and to rebirth ‘translated’, as it were, into Augustine’s baptism in book 9 and into the abstraction of the palace of memory in book 10, thus initiates Augustine’s progress to a new life.13 10

10.17.26: magna vis est memoriae, nescio quid horrendum. 6.7.12: et ut aperte tibi tribueretur eius correctio, per me quidem illam, sed nescientem, operatus es. 12 10.3.4: quis ego sim (...) quid ipse intus sim. 13 On the underworld allusion as an integral part of the narrative, cf. Suzanne Adema, ‘No bounds in space or time. Rome and the Underworld in the Aeneid. A text-linguistic and narratological analysis of Vergil, Aeneid 6.264-901’, in Jo Heirman and Jacqueline Klooster (eds), The Ideologies 11

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This new life, far from being easy and untroubled, will bring renewed ‘war’ instead, just like it was for Aeneas, albeit in Augustine’s case, on a different level. Completion, the final realization of all his goals, has not been achieved as yet (10.4.5). As Wolfgang Hübner puts it: ‘Für Aeneas beginnen die harten Kämpfe um die neue Heimat, für Augustin das geistige Ringen um das Verständnis der neuen Glaubenslehre’.14 Thus, we might divide the Confessions into two parts, hinging on the underworld passage. Table I Books 1-10: virum

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Books 10-3: arma

Calling books 10 to 13 the second part of the Confessions might seem to be an exaggeration, since to some these final four books feel like hardly more than an appendix to the elaborate narrative of Augustine’s life. I think one should realize that the first part, books 1 to 9, and the second part, books 10 to 13, are in actual fact almost equal in size; 134/246 to 144/207 chapters. The fallacious feeling that the first part is the more substantial is caused, I think, by the greater emotional impact of the narrative of the sinner’s way to salvation.15 The underworld passage, however, is not the only allusion to Aeneas that we encounter in the Confessions. The color Vergilianus goes much further than that. Michael McCarthy already sensed echoes of the Aeneid at key moments in the Confessions.16 I shall point out six instances where I sense these echoes. First, there is a reference at the very opening of book 1. The opening does not conform to classical convention; there is no dedication or formal introduction. Still, the direct address of God echoes the opening lines of the Aeneid. God is not asked to tell the story; only in the ninth line he is asked to assist in Augustine’s quest for knowledge (da mihi, domine, scire et intellegere utrum sit prius invocare te an laudare), just as the muse is asked in the Aeneid’s ninth line to of Lived Space in Literary Texts, Ancient and Modern (Ghent, 2013): ‘Underworld descriptions in the Aeneid are no static, separate units in which the story comes to a halt, but they are an integral part of the story telling’. 14 W. Hübner, ‘Die praetoria memoriae’ (1981), 262. Cf. Ineke Sluiter, ‘Aanstekelijke verhalen: de bekering van Augustinus’, Lampas 43 (2010), 308-27, 308: [the scene in the garden in Milan is not] ‘het einde aan de momenten van twijfel en onzekerheid (the end to moments of doubt and uncertainty)’; J.J. O’Donnell, Augustine (2006), 78: ‘The life of the Christian is not imminent happiness, but intensified promise’. 15 For the macrostructure of the Confessions, see, e.g., James J. O’Donnell, Augustine: Confessions (Oxford, 1992), Prolegomena; for a narratological-linguistic analysis of the macrostructure of the Confessions, see M. Osseforth, Friendship (2017). 16 M. McCarthy, ‘Augustine’s mixed feelings’ (2009), 457-8: ‘He [Augustine] models portions of his own narrative [Confessions] on it [Aeneid]... The whole structure of the Confessions may be understood as resembling the great Roman epic’.

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refresh Vergil’s memory (Musa, mihi causas memora). It is quite clear in both instances that Vergil and Augustine are going to tell the story and nobody else. A second instance of the color Vergilianus is Augustine’s stealing away from Monnica in book 5, leaving her behind in Carthage, while sailing for Rome (5.8.15). This is of course an allusion to Aeneas’ slipping away from Dido. We see both heroes leaving the woman behind, while their acts are guided by divine consent. Like Dido, Monnica prays for Augustine staying with her. She, however, instead of cursing Augustine, then prays for his well-being. Rome and eventually Milan will bring fulfilment, just as Italy did for Aeneas.17 Augustine’s part in that scene differs from Aeneas’ actions; Augustine leaves while he is conscious only of selfish reasons. At that point he does not discern God’s will at work, nor would he have acknowledged it if he had. So he leaves while lying to his mother, even introducing a fictional friend. There is a rather oblique reference in book 6, where Augustine describes Alypius’ situation in Carthage, referring to Aeneas’ encounter with Charybdis.18 Although directly related to Alypius, this description of the situation in Carthage equally applies to Augustine, considering their apparent aequalitas; it was that same city and that same period Augustine had been describing in books 4 and 6 when talking about his own miserable situation. Bearing this Carthage episode in mind and Monnica as a real life Dido, I see a fourth instance in book 9 when Augustine describes the place where he shares his moment of ecstasy with his mother as illic apud Ostia Tiberina (9.10.23) as an echo of Vergil’s famous opening lines Karthago, Italiam contra Tiberinaque longe ostia (1.13-4), emphasizing the allusion, I think, by presenting it as an inversion, a so-called chiasm: Ostia Tiberina – Tiberina ostia. In the same sentence Augustine says that they had reached Ostia after a long and strenuous journey (post longi itineris laborem), a further reminder of the words of Anchises that Aeneas remembers once he reclines on the banks at the mouth of the Tiber: tum sperare domos defessus (7.126). There is another allusion in this mother and son encounter in Ostia, an allusion to the meeting of Anchises and Aeneas (Verg. Aen. 6.703-751), as Michael McCarthy has rightfully pointed out.19 The parallels would be obvious, the parent and the child go on a journey (‘physically’ in the Aeneid, mentally in the Confessions), view the promises the future holds (Rome’s greatness, the 17 See on this allusion J.J. O’Donnell, Augustine: Confessions (1992), 5.8.15; Danuta Shanzer, ‘Latent Narrative Patterns, Allegorical Choices, and Literary Unity in Augustine’s Confessions’, VigChr 46 (1992), 40-56, 41; Eric J. Ziolkowski, ‘St. Augustine: Aeneas’ antitype, Monnica’s boy’, Literature & Theology 9 (1995), 1-23, 6 and 8-13: ‘Monica as a combined Christian version of the hero’s mother (the goddess Venus) and his beloved (the Carthaginian queen Dido)’; contra Gerhard Anselm Müller, Formen und Funktionen der Vergilzitate bei Augustin von Hippo (Paderborn, 2003), 183-4. 18 6.7.11: gurges morum (...) absorbuerat – Verg. Aen. 3.420-3: ter gurgite vastos sorbet in abruptum fluctus. 19 M. McCarthy, ‘Augustine’s mixed feelings’ (2009), 460.

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understanding of God’s essence),20 the final parting (Aeneas returns to the world of the living, while his father’s shade remains in the underworld, Monnica says that her life is complete now, and dies shortly after). A last significant instance of the color Vergilianus concerns the one quality that defines Aeneas: pietas. Monnica calls Augustine pium (9.12.30). These are her last recorded words in the Confessions. Right before and after this chapter Augustine’s son Adeodatus is crying uncontrollably for the loss of his grandmother. It is Augustine who calms him. At the end of book 9, at the end of the story of Augustine’s ‘journey’, on the very brink of his new life as a ‘born again Christian’, his mother assigns him the epithet that brings his old, secular, and new, Christian, selves together; now he is pater pius Augustinus, as was Aeneas. In the description of Augustine comforting his son after the death of his mother Monnica there might be an echo of Aeneas and his son Ascanius, whom Aeneas raises by himself after his father Anchises dies. The secular and highly classical Vergilian pietas takes on a new form in Augustine, as was possibly already hinted at when Monnica at Cassiciacum was said to have demonstrated christiana pietas (9.4.8). In all six of these instances we see how Augustine takes the classical element and reinterprets it, adding a new meaning to the original: in book 1 God is asked to help him understand, while the Muse merely reminds Vergil; in book 5 Monnica follows Augustine across the sea, while Dido’s imago will not even deign to answer Aeneas in the underworld, and while Aeneas obeys the divine command, Augustine just longs for personal gain; in book 6 Charybdis stands for the sins and enticements of Carthage; in book 9 Ostia becomes the port from which Augustine sets out leaving his old sinful life behind, Monnica accompanies him on a platonic journey holding all the promises of a glorious future, while Augustine himself on the very brink of his new life, at the end of his errores, finally merges with Aeneas’ persona, and is awarded the classical hero’s defining characteristic: pietas. For Augustine pietas comes from caritas, while Aeneas, as the true Roman he is, earns the epithet through his unrelenting and unquestioning sense of duty. Thus we see how this handling of the source material fits in with the analysis I presented of Augustine’s use of the Vergilian underworld in book 10. These Vergilian references further illustrate the previously suggested division of the Confessions (table I). Table II Books 1-10: virum

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Praefatio Dido Charybdis Ostia Ostia Pater Pius 1.1.1-1.6.6 5.8.14-5 6.7.11 9.10.23 9.10.23-6 9.12.30

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All this brings out the far-reaching presence of a color Vergilianus, which accentuates the macrostructure of the Confessions. I must therefore disagree with Jan den Boeft21 who voiced a widely accepted belief that references to poets are sparse in the Confessions and that these references do not add any content to their contexts, as well as with Gerhard Müller who concluded that ‘zwischen der Aeneis und den Confessiones sind nur punktuelle Berührungen die nicht verallgemeinert werden dürfen’.22 Eric Ziolkowski noticed a, what he called, structural and thematic transposition of the text of the Aeneid in the text of the Confessions.23 I think, it is Augustine’s masterful and unobtrusive way of reworking the classical theme in the dramatic narration of his life’s story which leads to such a divergence in the scientific community as to recognizing the existence and impact of that theme. To see what exactly the color Vergilianus actually adds to its context, we should first ask ourselves what made Augustine explicitly choose Vergil in the first place, rather than, for example, a biblical theme. Of course one might argue that Augustine, not only in the Confessions, loves to use and reuse themes from classical literature and to add a new meaning to the whole by imitatio and aemulatio.24 Like he did, for example, with allusions to Sallust in the story about the pear theft or to Seneca in the adventures of Alypius in book 6.25 But one should not forget that by the end of the fourth century A.D. Vergil had long ceased to be just one of the classical authors; by the time Augustine wrote his Confessions, he had evolved into ‘The Poet’, a hallmark of Romanitas and the one classical author who still dominated the literary landscape.26 He was considered to be an authority on all branches of knowledge, from everyday life to language as such. This ‘universality’ had turned him into a virtual pagan counterpart to Scripture.27 21

J. den Boeft, ‘Zilver en goud in Egypte’ (2010). G.A. Müller, Formen und Funktionen (2003), 185. 23 E.J. Ziolkowski, ‘St. Augustine’ (1995), 6. See also M. McCarthy, ‘Augustine’s mixed feelings’ (2009), 457-58 (as n. 16). On the occurrence of other references to classical poets see M. Osseforth, Friendship (2017), 155, on Plautus in 6.9.14-5, and 189-90, on Catullus in 8.11.25-6. 24 See also J. den Boeft, ‘Zilver en goud in Egypte’ (2010), who calls this ‘adaptive usurpation’; K. Schelkle, Virgil (1938), 4: interpretatio christiana. 25 For the allusion to Sallust see J.J. O’Donnell, Augustine: Confessions (1992), 2.4.9; Gillian Clark, Augustine, Confessions, Books I–IV (Cambridge, 1995, repr. 2001), 126; G.A. Müller, Formen und Funktionen (2003); I. Sluiter, ‘Aanstekelijke verhalen’ (2010). For the allusion to Seneca Ep. VII 1-3 see the anecdote about Alypius visiting the gladiatorial games (6.8.13-6.9.14): et non erat iam ille, qui venerat, sed unus de turba, ad quam venerat, and its analysis by M. Osseforth, Friendship (2017), 145. 26 M. McCarthy, ‘Augustine’s mixed feelings’ (2009), 454; A. Cameron, The last pagans (2011), 567-8: ‘The writings, prose as well as verse, of all educated people, Christians no less than pagans, were steeped in Vergilian echoes and quotations’. 27 M. McCarthy, ‘Augustine’s mixed feelings’ (2017), 456: ‘cultural scripture’. A. Cameron, The last pagans (2011), 608: a ‘Roman bible’ as opposed to Homer’s work as a ‘Greek bible’. Augustine’s mention of people looking for answers to their problems in the pages of poetae 22

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His commentator Servius, among others, even interpreted Vergil’s scenes in an allegorical way, a path Ambrose and Augustine had chosen for Scripture as well.28 Since the time of Constantine, Vergil’s fourth Eclogue, with its announcement of the coming of the messianic child, had been interpreted by a growing number of Christians as an example of proto-Christian prophecy. As a child of his time Augustine held Vergil in great respect.29 His attitude towards Vergil, however, would change through the years. As Sabine McCormack puts it, ‘it was as though Vergil kept Augustine company in the process of aging’.30 As a young man Augustine would cherish the poet for his emotional content, while as the aging bishop he would confront Vergil on the grounds of their opposing visions towards mortality and the soul. Thus, in the Confessions the emphasis on Vergilian references lies on the errores of the wandering hero, while in De civitate Dei, the ageing bishop presents Vergil as the opposing embodiment of the pagan, secular world, whom he explicitly addresses as such. For his Confessions Augustine took this greatest of the pagan authorities and reused the building blocks of his pagan bible to give them new meaning. And to suit his own purpose. I think this practice is a good example of what Ineke Sluiter has quite recently identified as anchoring innovation:31 the way the most successful innovations are embedded in and attached to what is older, traditional, known, which results in a feeling of familiarity that makes the new acceptable.32 Augustine’s approach to Vergil was not unique; already Proba, a contemporary of Augustine’s, had retold the biblical story of creation up until Christ’s ascension almost completely by using quotations from Vergil.33 Although heavily criticized for this by Jerome, her effort, as an example of popular devotion, does illustrate the appeal the pagan Vergil had to early Christians. This Christianization of classical motifs was also present in the works of cuiuspiam (4.3.5) might be a reference, in the oblique way he frequently employs when referring to secular literature, to the sortes Vergilianae, which were practiced in the fourth century. Cf. Pieter van der Horst, ‘Sortes: sacred books as instant oracles in late antiquity’, The Use of Sacred Books in the Ancient World (Leuven, 1998), 143-73; on this theme of books as oracles see also Wilhelm Thimme, Augustinus Bekenntnisse (Stuttgart, 2004), 747; M. McCarthy, ‘Augustine’s mixed feelings’ (2009), 459. 28 6.4.6: dicentem Ambrosium laetus audiebam ‘littera occidit, spiritus autem vivificat (...) cum ea (...) remoto mystico velamento spiritaliter aperiret. 29 Cf. Augustine’s own references: Civ. Dei 5.12: poeta insignis; 15.9: nobilissimus poeta; C. acad. 3.9: poeta noster. 30 Sabine MacCormack, Shadows of Poetry. Vergil in the Mind of Augustine (London, 1998), 226. 31 Ineke Sluiter, Anchoring Innovation. Proceedings of the Vilnius Conference Horizons for the Social Sciences and the Humanities (Vilnius, 2013). 32 Cf. S. MacCormack, Shadows of Poetry (1998), 229: [To Augustine] ‘the new could not be thought of without reference to the old...; the old was enshrined in the new, or even the new in the old, in such a way that the two were inseparable’. See also A. Outler, Confessions and Enchiridion (1955), 1, who remarks on Augustine’s (re)use of ‘the old’: ‘Augustine regarded himself as much less an innovator than a summator’. 33 S. MacCormack, Shadows of Poetry (1998), 27-8; J.J. O’Donnell, Augustine (2006), 90.

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Ambrose. His De officiis ministrorum Neil McLynn has rightfully described as a ‘Ciceronian variation’.34 McLynn adds a motif Ambrose might have had for doing that: ‘The best-known of Ambrose’s writings can also be construed as a signpost, a more complex exercise designed at once to make the church intelligible to the saeculum and to annex the latter’s traditional territory’.35 In the light of all the above I think this is an observation we might also apply to Augustine’s use of classical sources. But in the Confessions Augustine took this anchoring innovation one step further than his contemporaries; by choosing Vergil and specifically the Aeneid in telling and structuring the narration of his life’s story, Augustine associated himself with the persona of Aeneas,36 presenting himself as a Christianized hero associated with the most classical and well known of all myths,37 culminating in the explicit appropriation of Aeneas’ pietas, the pagan, Roman characteristic par excellence. The implicit message would be obvious and credible to any classical reader: this man would be sorely tested and tempted, the hero would struggle and would have to count his losses, but in the end he would prevail. For whatever happened to him, he was never alone; divine love would guide him. As Danuta Shanzer puts it: ‘Augustine ... uses figures ... from classical literature as images of himself...; he intends us ... to decode his literary shorthand – he depicts himself as someone else’.38 In doing this Augustine consciously addressed and tried to appeal to those he was trying to make see reason.39 For the Confessions, his supposed autobiography, was not about historical accuracy, it was a means to a rather obvious end: to make the narratee follow in his footsteps. It is what Annemaré Kotzé, among others, has 34 Neil McLynn, Ambrose of Milan (Berkeley, CA, 1994), 255. See also Wolfgang Liebeschuetz, Ambrose of Milan. Political Letters and Speeches (Liverpool, 2005), 42: [Ambrose’s letters] ‘are an aspect of the recasting of the Roman literary tradition [i.c. Pliny] in the service of Christianity’. 35 See also A. Cameron, The last pagans (2011), 372, who argues that the use of allusions to classical, secular literature in Symmachus’ correspondence with Christians would also serve to show ‘the more aggressive Christians’ that classical culture was not a ‘pagan reserve’, but something that ‘distinguished Christians valued and even emulated’. 36 Cf. S. MacCormack, Shadows of Poetry (1998), 20, for Tacitus’ identification of Germanicus with Aeneas; D. Shanzer, ‘Latent Narrative Patterns’ (1992), 41. 37 See also E.J. Ziolkowski, ‘St. Augustine’ (1995), 4: ‘… an Aeneid of the soul, presenting Augustine as a spiritual antitype of Virgil’s Hero … Augustine seems to have linked the Neoplatonic Christian theory of the soul’s peregrination with the Vergilian theme of Aeneas’ wanderings, to which he compares the past condition of his own soul’. 38 D. Shanzer, ‘Latent Narrative Patterns’ (1992), 41. See also P. Brown, Augustine of Hippo (2000), 161: ‘Augustine allows his past self to grow to the dimensions of a “classic” hero’. 39 Cf. G.A. Müller, Formen und Funktionen (2003), 452-3: ‘Der Gebrauch von Vergilzitaten [ist] eine willentliche Entscheidung Augustins ... von der er sich Überzeugungskraft in Hinblick auf ein weites Publikum erwartete’. See also D. Shanzer, ‘Latent Narrative Patterns’ (1992), 42: ‘Cynics might insinuate that he [Augustine] lends grandeur to his life by donning Biblical or epic cothurni, that these images are signs of vanity. The less cynical discern a way of teaching with exempla’.

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dubbed the protreptic character of the Confessions: to change both the world view and the conduct of the narratee.40 To achieve this it is absolutely necessary for the narratee to be able to identify with the narrator. Therefore Augustine presents his younger self as a man living an ordinary life in a world that is for all that matters familiar to the addressee’s own world. And he does that speaking the narratee’s ‘language’, using the imagery that was part of the narratee’s cultural, and in a way, religious background, turning it around and inside out. But the Confessions would be widely read, by pagans, but also by devout Christians. And to some of these such a pronounced reference to and seeming association with the most famous pagan hero might be just too much to bear. Ambrose was likewise criticized by Palladius, the bishop of Ratiaria, and admonished to ‘desist from these monstrous comparisons ... to show off his knowledge of literature’.41 Instead Ambrose should ‘search the divine Scriptures’.42 Jerome heavily criticized writers of books with titles such as De avaritia, De fide, De virginitate, for mixing Scriptural quotations with, as he called it, eloquentia saecularis.43 Perhaps it was criticisms such as these Augustine had had in mind, worried brethren he tried to appease, when he explicitly stated in book 10, right before he descended into the underworld, that the real fruit of his confessions was to be found in books 10 to 13, where classical references, as part of his sinful younger days, completely cease. To further mark this transition from all things pagan to the devout life, there is an elaborate and emotional allusion to the Eucharist in the final chapter in book 10.44 Augustine emerging from the underworld will now finally show himself to the narratee as the bishop at work, devoutly contemplating Scripture.45 The juxtaposition and the transformation I have pointed out in the macrostructure and the microstructure of the Confessions of the classical, to illustrate Augustine’s past, and the Christian, to illustrate his present and future, hinging on a rebirth through the cleansing waters of the underworld, would serve to placate his Christian readers, and likewise convince all others, by masterfully combining the best of both worlds in one colossal stroke. Augustine’s world was a world in transit; his Confessions showed whoever were willing to listen how to make that final transition. 40 Annemaré Kotzé, Augustine’s Confessions: Communicative Purpose and Audience (Leiden, 2004). 41 N. McLynn, Ambrose of Milan (1994), 114. 42 Ibid. 114. Cf. P. Brown, Augustine of Hippo (2000), 74: ‘Nor did he [Ambrose] have any scruples about borrowing from the pagans: he gloried in being able to parade his spoils from the pulpit – this “gold of the Egyptians” was fair prize’. 43 Ibid. 290. 44 See J.J. O’Donnell, Augustine: Confessions (1992), Prolegomena: ‘[the passage is] of such dense eucharistic imagery that it may best be thought of as perhaps the only place in our literature where a Christian receives the eucharist in the literary text itself’. 45 Ibid. 11.3.5: ‘We see how the mind of the exegete works’.

How to Survive the End of the World? A Study of Latin Christian Letters of the 4th and 5th Century1 Marcin WYSOCKI, Lublin, Poland

ABSTRACT Man is continuously faced with the end of certain realities. One of the most mysterious and incomprehensible of these is the end of the reality in which humans are and live in – in the micro and macro sense. Christian theology attempts to help man in answering his dilemmas and hopes. Special witnesses of such dilemmas and questions about the end of the world in which the early-Christian writers were living in the late 4th and early 5th, facing the disintegration of their contemporary world and in due course of things that they could have been expecting for the eschatological end of the universe as well. They presented their questions, doubts and answers in their treatises, but also in the letters that constituted always a special kind of exchange of ideas and testimonies of the development of the Christian doctrine. They were often carriers of feelings and values that were as if speaking from heart to heart. In the letters of Jerome, Paulinus of Nola and Augustine, we often find references to the end of the world though comprehended in many diverse ways. In Jerome’s writing – as the end of the civil and classical world; in Paulinus’ – as the end of the world of material cares and powers; in Augustine’s deepest theological view – as the end of the reality and the world he knew. How can one survive such an end of the world, or one’s reality? The present article, on the basis of the selected letters of early-Christian writers, attempts to find an answer to this question.

Introduction Our everyday experiences teach us the simplest of lessons: namely that we are constantly faced with the fleetingness of certain realities that we live in. One of the most mysterious and incomprehensible thing for us humans is the end of the reality in which we exist, which we live in, our world in the very wide sense of that word: my personal world, the world of my dreams and expectations, the world of my culture, the world of my civilization, the world of the state, the world itself and so on. The same thoughts, fears and expectations were part of the daily existence of the people who lived years and centuries before us, 1 The article presents the results of the research project No. 2014/15/B/HS1/03851 funded by the National Science Centre (Poland).

Studia Patristica CII, 217-227. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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and as we are focused on the patristic time, of the people of that time as well. The slow decline of the existing state of Imperium Romanum and of the social order familiar to its inhabitants, as well as the threat of barbarians, or the theological disputes sometimes destroying one’s worldviews and faith, could in fact be beneficial for us contributing to a positive impact on understanding the Christian hope and garnering interest in it. Contemplation on such issues of a fleeting world or reality may be found in the works of the most prominent individuals of this period in the western part of the Empire: St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Jerome and St. Paulinus of Nola. It seems that it is their correspondence that reflects the most these hopes and dilemmas of the contemporary people. I think it possible, with reference to the concepts contained in the treatises of these writers, to reconstruct, in statu nascendi, some fundamental ideas and principles as can also be found in other works of the Church Fathers. Also, the specific ways in which philosophical and theological concepts are objectified in letters reveals different and often deeper aspects of the relevant issue than a mere treatise. Due to the letter form – so unlike that of a homily or treatise, more personally marked with subjectivism – diverse aspects of these hopes and qualms can be more clearly discerned. We have to remember that each of these Fathers is a unique and distinct personality, though they all lived and worked at the same time and they were writing their letters as members of the same Christian tradition. Ambrose was undoubtedly a triumphal author, Jerome – an ascetic using abundantly invective, Augustine – a devotional and theological writer, Paulinus – a poet and man of his time ready for sacrifices. Nevertheless, there was something else that made them special: They were part of the long ancient tradition of letter writing, which in Tom Standage’s2 recent publication is deemed as effective and relevant as today’s social media, taking into account their public character and the relative speed of impact on public opinion. People with such authority and power of influence as the early Christian Church Fathers could have expected and in fact did expect that their letters would be copied, written off in fragments, publicly read, and thus could play an important role in shaping the opinion of the inhabitants of the Roman Empire. This was no different in the case of eschatological views and the realities of interest to us in this article. Their letters are full of references to the end of the world, to the coming of the eschatological realities, to the necessity of being prepared for the coming end of the world and the coming of the Messiah, but as well for the end of their country, their culture, and their hopes. Each of them, however, presents his views and comments in his own unique manner. I have decided to select out of over 600 of possible passages the three in my view upmost characteristic letters written by Augustine, Jerome and Paulinus. Through them I would like to present, by their example, suggested ways how to live through the end of the world – or at least – how to escape from it victoriously, depending whether it is the end of the world on a micro or macro scale. 2

See Tom Standage, Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years (London, 2013).

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1. Paulinus of Nola Let us commence with the most personal comprehension of the end of the world – as the time when life ends in the world that we know and when the private world changes. A good example can be found in the letter written by Paulinus of Nola,3 a man who was born near Bordeaux into a very wealthy, well-known and highly aristocratic family of the later Roman Empire. Paulinus entered his adult life as a typical representative of his class by following the usual steps of the cursus honorum. But soon, when he served as consular governor in Campania (380-381), he started to convert to Christianity and subsequently devoted his life more and more to his new faith. He married the dedicated Christian Therasia, was baptized by Delphinus of Bordeaux, withdrew to Spain (ca. 389), became an ascetic, sold his and his wife’s enormous properties in Gaul, Italy and Spain (after 393), was ordained a priest (394), and moved finally to Nola (395), where he was elected bishop (408-431). In this function he served until his death (431). Even the earliest testimonial to Paulinus’ conversion reveals the paradigmatic allure of his story. In a letter written soon after the news of Paulinus’ renunciation had reached him at Milan, Ambrose staged a preemptive strike against those Roman aristocrats who would, he assumed, greet Paulinus’ rejection of his rank and patrimony with incredulity and animosity. ‘What will the nobles say when they have heard these things?’ – he prodded his correspondent, Sabinus, and immediately offered his own answer: ‘It is unthinkable that a man of such family, such background, such genius, gifted with such eloquence, should retire from the Senate and that the succession of so noble a family should be broken’.4 Probably in early 396, Augustine, bishop of Hippo,5 with an equal show of confidence and even less desire to particularize, also exploited the exemplary force of Paulinus’ story. Writing to Licentius, son of his longtime patron, Romanianus, Augustine offered the lesson of Paulinus’ conversion to a young man he deemed still too much in love with the world: Go into Campania, learn how Paulinus, a noble and holy servant of God, has unhesitatingly shaken off the yoke of great worldly pomp, with a generosity only equaled by his humility, in order to subject his neck to the yoke of Christ, as he has done; and now, 3 Generally about Paulinus and his theology and epistolography see Andrea Ruggiero, San Paolino maestro di fede e di vita (Napoli, Roma, 1994); Arturo D’Onofrio, S. Paolino da Nola. Eroe della carità (Napoli, Roma, 19953); Dennis E. Trout, ‘History, Biography, and Exemplary Life of Paulinus of Nola’, SP 32 (1997), 462-7; Dennis E. Trout, Paulinus of Nola: Life, Letters and Poems (Berkeley, 1999). 4 Ambrose, Epistula 28 (6) 3, Saint Ambrose. Letters, The Fathers of the Church. The New Translation 26, trans. Mary M. Beyenka (New York, 1954), 144. 5 About Augustine’s correspondence with Paulinus see Albert Pieter Muys, De briefwisseling van Paulinus van Nola en Augustinus (Hilversum, 1941); Pierre Courcelle, ‘Les lacunes de la correspondance entre saint Augustin et Paulin de Nole’, REA 53 (1951), 253-300; Christine McCann, ‘You know better than I do. The dynamics of transformative knowledge in the relationship of Augustine of Hippo and Paulinus of Nola’, SP 43 (2006), 191-4.

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with Him for guide, he goes his way with quiet and modest joy. Go, learn with what wealth of genius he offers the sacrifice of praise, returning to Him whatever good he has received, lest he lose all if he did not return all to its source.6

To a young man who had recently expressed in tortured verses the difficulty of following the ‘secret path’ plotted by Varro through the thickets of the liberal arts, Augustine proposed instead the tranquillity and ease of the iter Paulini.7 There was then something extraordinary in Paulinus’ decision, something that made the entire world admire him, that made the mighty of his time come to him to learn humility and how to distance oneself from the world, and to follow the iter Paulini. There were also those who recommended their friends to Paulinus to teach them his iter. So it was with Crispianus, who was proposed to Paulinus by Victor, who was his former army comrade. This is the way in which the two letters to Crispianus (25 and 25bis) were written, intended to persuade him to abandon the military service and to devote himself solely to the service of God.8 There are many similar letters to these two in Paulinus’ preserved correspondence, numbering 52 items. However I opted for these two, because the eschatological dimension is clearly observable in them.9 At the very beginning of his letter, Paulinus writes to Crispianus, who at that time is still unknown to him, about the question whether marriage was condemned by St. Paul; and he explains: ‘He [St. Paul] asserts that it is good for the present necessity for a man so to be as he was […] in other words, to think of nothing but God and our salvation. A wife and children, though they too are dear ones sent by God, are nonetheless most grievous burdens and anxieties’.10 And he immediately adds what this thinking about God means: There is nothing, my blessed son, which can or ought to be preferred to Him who is the true Lord, the true Father, the eternal Commander. To whom is it right to devote our lives more than to Him from whom we received them, and for whom we must preserve them to the end, because we live by His kindness? If we have been a soldier for Him in this world, we shall then deserve to pass over to Him. But if we love this

6 Augustine, Epistula 26.5, Saint Augustine. Letters. Volume I (1-82), The Fathers of the Church. The New Translation 30, trans. W. Parsons (Washington, DC, 1951), 85-6. 7 See Augustine, Epistula 26; Danuta Shanzer, ‘Arcanum Varronis iter: Licentius’s Verse Epistle to Augustine’, REAug 37 (1991), 110-43. About Licentius and his relation to Augustine see Gustave Bardy, ‘Un élève de saint Augustin: Licentius’, Anthropos 14 (1954), 55-79; Phillip Cary, ‘What Licentius Learned: A Narrative Reading of the Cassiciacum Dialogues’, AugStud 29 (1998), 141-63. 8 About Paulinus’ influence on the Western monasticism see Joseph T. Lienhard, Paulinus of Nola and early western monasticism with a study of the chronology of his works and an annotated bibliography 1879-1979 (Bonn, 1977). 9 About eschatological hope in St. Paulinus’ letters and poetry see Salvatore Feola, ‘La Speranza in San Paolino di Nola’, Teologia e Vita 2 (2009), 119-34. 10 Paulinus, Epistula 25.1, Letters of St. Paulinus of Nola, trans. Patrick Gerard Walsh, Ancient Christian Writers. The Works of the Fathers in Translation 36, vol. II (New York, 1967), 73.

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world more and prefer to be a soldier for Caesar rather than for Christ, we shall be transported not to Christ but to hell, where the cause of the princes of this world rests.11

The world of Caesar, the world of secular power, ends, it falls, and there is no future laying ahead, there is only the ‘temporal state’, and the time is short.12 Earthly and material attachments kill us, they are like dung.13 ‘Therefore, do not any longer love this world or its military service … whoever is a friend of this world is an enemy of God’,14 he explains to Crispianus. With the world finding itself in a constant state of war, with a constant threat to life, particularly during the invasion of the barbarians, only a soldier of Christ who wears armour for Him is never unarmed.15 He can therefore feel safe, because not only has he gained an exceptional Commander and Defender here on earth, but he will also gain ‘the glory of eternal life, the distinction of the heavenly kingdom, the riches of His inheritance, and an everlasting share in the knowledge of God’.16 Therefore, at the end of the letter, Paulinus addresses Crispianus in a very personal way: Listen, then, my son, and give me your ear. Break off all ties which bind you and entangle you in this world. Change your secular military service into something better – start being a soldier for the eternal King. I hear that you now help and protect civilians; I pray that you may become the count of Christ. Again, you in secular military service are wont to pray for advancement to the rank of protector, but if you prove yourself before God, you will begin to have Him as your Protector. See to what kind of military service I invite you as comrade, for God will be to you what you hope to be to a man.17

2. Jerome of Stridon The second written correspondence of interest to us will be St. Jerome’s letter 123 to the widow Ageruchia, a highborn lady of Gaul. In this letter Jerome appeals to her not to marry again. I think we all know very well that Jerome spent time of his life in a grotto in Bethlehem, translating his Vulgate and fighting against Origen and Rufinus, not all of the time being well at all, sometimes weak and tired. But between all this, Jerome has in him an unrestrained desire 11

Paulinus, Epistula 25.1 (1967), 73. Paulinus, Epistula 25.7 (1967), 76. 13 Paulinus, Epistula 25bis.1 (1967), 80. See Domenico Sorrentino, ‘Il Vangelo della povertà in Paolino di Nola. Un approccio di “Teologia del vissuto”’, in Ciro Sarnataro (ed.), Annuncio del Vangelo e percorsi di Chiesa. Le vie della povertà, dell’alterità e della bellezza di Chiesa (Naples, 2005), 65-97. 14 Paulinus, Epistula 25.3 (1967), 74. 15 Paulinus, Epistula 25.4 (1967), 75. 16 Ibid. 17 Paulinus, Epistula 25.8 (1967), 78. 12

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to infect everyone with a monastic or celibate way of life, completely devoted to God. At the same time he is down-to-earth in the sense he is conscious of the fact that his world, the world of ancient literature, classical ideas and virtues, is almost done, passed away. For the old and complaining Jerome the only way to save himself and others from an end of the world thus understood is to give himself totally to God and His new world and new culture. So he begins his letter with an eschatological argumentation: ‘I must look for a new track on the old road and devise a natural treatment, the same yet not the same, for a hackneyed and well-worn theme. It is true that there is but one road; yet one can often reach one’s goal by striking across country’.18 Of course, the primary goal that Jerome mentions is purity, but ultimately the goal is the crown of purity in heaven. And this perspective will be present in Jerome’s entire letter. Although he does not condemn the institution of marriage, he points out that among the rewards at the end of time there are none for a re-marriage, but only a reward for virginity.19 And the last one is the smallest one – only thirtyfold. What measure would be for re-marriage? Jerome recalls and draws examples from the past that show the rejection of the second marriage, but, in addition, he also refers to the present situation – which is obviously important and understandable in our discussion – i.e. the fall and the peculiar end of the contemporary world. He writes as follows: I shall now say a few words of our present miseries. A few of us have hitherto survived them, but this is due not to anything we have done ourselves but to the mercy of the Lord. Savage tribes in countless numbers have overrun all parts of Gaul. The whole country between the Alps and the Pyrenees, between the Rhine and the Ocean, has been laid waste by hordes of Quadi, Vandals, Sarmatians, Alans, Gepids, Herules, Saxons, Burgundians, Allemanni and – alas! For the commonweal! – even Pannonians. For ‘Assur also is joined with them’. The once noble city of Moguntiacum has been captured and destroyed. In its church many thousands have been massacred. The people of Vangium after standing a long siege have been extirpated. The powerful city of Rheims, the Ambiani, the Altrebatæ, the Belgians on the skirts of the world, Tournay, Spires, and Strasburg have fallen to Germany: while the provinces of Aquitaine and of the Nine Nations, of Lyons and of Narbonne are with the exception of a few cities one universal scene of desolation. And those which the sword spares without, famine ravages within. I cannot speak without tears of Toulouse which has been kept from falling hitherto by the merits of its reverend bishop Exuperius. Even the Spains are on the brink of ruin and tremble daily as they recall the invasion of the Cymry; and, while others suffer misfortunes once in actual fact, they suffer them continually in anticipation.20

18 Jerome, Epistula 123.1; Jerome: The Principal Works of St. Jerome, trans. William Henry Fremantle, George Lewis, William Gibson Martley, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 6, eds. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Buffalo, 1893), 555. 19 See Jerome, Epistula 123.8. 20 Jerome, Epistula 123.16 (1893), 568-9.

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However, before he presented this terrible vision of the end of the world at that time, he had added some important words which for us are of a great importance: But what am I doing? Whilst I talk about the cargo, the vessel itself founders. He that lets is taken out of the way, and yet we do not realize that Antichrist is near. Yes, Antichrist is near whom the Lord Jesus Christ ‘shall consume with the spirit of his mouth’ (2Thess. 2:7-8) ‘Woe unto them’, he cries, ‘that are with a child, and to them that give suck in those days’ (Matt. 24:19) Now these things are both the fruits of marriage.21

So now we better understand why Jerome so fiercely argued against Ageruchia’s plan to re-marry. Wars, barbarians and destruction, the collapse of the Churches and the visible end of the Roman Empire, the only one they knew, are the signs of the coming Antichrist, the end of the world. There is no need for a marriage that gives birth to children and feeds them. In the face of the end, something other is necessary – giving oneself completely to Christ, who will destroy Antichrist, giving oneself to Him through purity. Elsewhere in his letter, Jerome writes: If these instances are to justify us let us neigh after every woman that we meet (Jer. 5:8) like the people of Sodom and Gomorrah let us be found by the last day buying and selling, marrying and giving in marriage (Lk. 17:27-9) and let us only end our marrying with the close of our lives. And if both before and after the deluge the maxim held good: ‘Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth’: what has that to do with us upon whom the ends of the ages have come, unto whom it is said, ‘the time is short’ (1Cor. 7:29) and ‘now the axe is laid unto the root of the trees’; that is to say, the forests of marriage and of the law must be cut down by the chastity of the gospel. There is ‘a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing’ (Eccl. 3:5).22

Jerome admonishes also to get rid of the covetousness and lust of the goods of this world, because we become dependent on them in our life on earth and see only in them a chance to extend it: ‘… we do not believe the Lord’s words. When we attain the age which all desire we forget the nearness of that death which as human beings we owe to nature and with futile hope promise to ourselves a long length of years. No old man is so weak and decrepit as to suppose that he will not live for one year more’.23 However, all this relates to marriage as a place of fulfilment of these lusts. Therefore, in the face of threats of the end of the world, threatening dangers, the impossibility of ensuring the extension of life and of guaranteeing life in this world, in the sense of granting it safety, prosperity and quality, Jerome addresses the young widow:

21 22 23

Jerome, Epistula 123.16 (1893), 568. Jerome, Epistula 123.13 (1893), 564. Jerome, Epistula 123.15 (1893), 568.

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Dearest daughter in Christ, answer me this question: will you marry amid such scenes as these? Tell me, what kind of husband will you take? One that will run or one that will fight? In either case you know what the result will be. Instead of the Fescennine song, the hoarse blare of the terrible trumpet will deafen your ears and your very brideswomen may be turned into mourners. In what pleasures can you hope to revel now that you have lost the proceeds of all your possessions, now that you see your small retinue under close blockade and a prey to the inroads of pestilence and famine?24

It seems that in the face of such problems and such a reality, the only way for Ageruchia to save herself in this soon-ending world is to remain a widow and to devote herself to Christ. 3. Augustine of Hippo St. Augustine’s Letter 199 to a certain bishop Hesychius of Salona in Dalmatia is another example of the process of creating the kind of doctrine which I mentioned above. This letter is the last of three amongst the correspondence of Augustine with this bishop (Letters 197-199). They were all written in the years 419-420 in response to questions of Hesychius’ about the signs of the end of the world. Letter 199, which is in fact a short eschatological treatise, became the basis of and was developed by Augustine in his mature eschatological considerations in De civitate Dei. In fact in Book 20 of The City of God there is an explicit reference to his analysis in the letter De fine saeculi to Hesychius.25 While the first letter (197) is a short answer to Hesychius’ request for interpretation of the week from the prophet Daniel and the meaning of Christ’s words: ‘Nobody knows the day or the hour’ (Matt. 24:36, Mark 13:32), the next is an answer to Bishop Hesychius, who states that he disagrees with some interpretations made by Augustine and Jerome. It is in response to this letter, that Augustine wrote Letter 199, the subject of our interest. St. Augustine in this letter presents himself primarily as a theologian and orthodox interpreter of the book of Revelation. He approaches questions asked by Hesychius in a scientific way and focuses primarily on the doctrinal side of the issue. Nevertheless, in between intricate interpretations regarding time and the signs of the end of the world, the good shepherd shines through, who cares for his sheep and wants them to have eternal life, and have it in abundance. Assuming the role of this shepherd Augustine supplements his eschatological considerations with moral advice. From the very beginning he points to the moral dimension of spending time waiting for the coming of the Saviour, as he writes:

24 25

Jerome, Epistula 123.17 (1893), 570. See Augustine, De civitate Dei XX.5.

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We live as uprightly as he [Apostle Paul – MW] and we pass through this world as pilgrims while our heart constantly expands with this love, and whether He comes sooner or later than He is expected, His coming is loved with faithful charity and longed for with pious affection.26

Thus, the fundamental element of Augustine’s eschatology – the awaiting time – is presented and outlined. However Augustine emphasizes that in this attitude of anticipation time itself is not the most vital element, and that the question ‘how much time is left to the Lord’s coming’ is not a crucial question. Therefore, he states that ‘not to know the times is something different from decay of morals and love of vice’.27 Citing St. Paul, he points out that in measuring time and waiting for the coming of the Saviour ‘his desire that they should not listen to false rumours about the imminent approach of the last day was consistent with his wish that they should await the coming of their Lord fully prepared, with their loins girt and lamps burning’.28 Following this way of thinking, Augustine repeatedly emphasizes moral life as the way to survive the end of the world thus understood. The course of the letter shows however, that Augustine somehow reprimands and guides Bishop Hesychius, who wanted above all only to get from him an explanation of the enigmatic time reference and the matter of the signs, and Augustine is still returning to this moral dimension. He indicates that ‘everyone ought to fear the last day of his life on earth. In whatever state his own last day finds each one, in that state the last day of the world will overtake him; such as he is on the day of his death, such each one will be judged on that last day’.29 Augustine thus shows the whole human life as a constant preparation for this final day, or in fact for two days – the day of death and the day of the Last Judgment. For Augustine, eschatology is something done ‘already’ and ‘not yet’. The moment of death will be the encounter of this ‘now’ with ‘not yet’. To make it possible, Augustine points to the necessity of faith in Jesus Christ and his first coming, because ‘whoever does not recognize the first coming of the Lord cannot prepare himself for the second by believing in Him and watching faithfully lest that day overtake him in darkness as a thief, whether He comes later or sooner than He is expected’.30 To circumvent being overtaken in a state of darkness, according to Augustine, we must be ‘children of light and watch with well-prepared hearts’.31 In his understanding being prepared means as much as constantly awaiting for a meeting with the coming Lord, being in the attitude of loving His coming, and 26 Augustine, Epistula 199.1, Saint Augustine. Letters. Volume IV (165-203), The Fathers of the Church. The New Translation 30, trans. Wilfrid Parsons (New York, 1955), 357. 27 Augustine, Epistula 199.2 (1955), 358. 28 Ibid. 29 Augustine, Epistula 199.2 (1955), 358-9. 30 Augustine, Epistula 199.6 (1955), 362. 31 Augustine, Epistula 199.9 (1955), 363.

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thus, waiting for the Lord ‘with sincere faith, firm hope and ardent love’.32 In all of this Augustine is of course faithful to the Christian doctrine and he expresses the general opinion of what it means to wait for the coming of the end of the world. But what if this end is already visible? What if there are signs of the coming end? Although Augustine from the beginning of the letter clearly stresses that it is not our thing to know the time and place, in the second part of his response to Bishop Hesychius he refers to the present events, which can be treated as fulfilment of the announcements about the end of the world. He points to such processes when he writes: ‘All of us who believe see that those times are indeed the last by the appearance of many signs in nature which we read that the Lord foretold’.33 He mentions the time of the heretics that has come and that they ‘seem to be a warning of the end of the world’,34 he describes spoilt people who are the ‘lovers of themselves, lovers of money, haughty, proud, blasphemous, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, wicked, irreligious, without affection, slanderers, incontinent, unmerciful, without kindness, traitors, stubborn, blind, lovers of pleasures more than of God, having an appearance of godliness but denying the power thereof’.35 It is also a sign of the end of time. So what can be done? How to survive annihilation by the hands of widespread heretics or otherwise morally bad people? How to avoid such fate and to prepare oneself for the final end? Recalling Christ’s words about the end of time, Augustine states: In regard to the saying, ‘He that is on the house-top, let him not come down to take anything out of his house, and he that is in the field, let him not go back to take his coat’, it can be suitably taken in a spiritual sense, namely, that in all our trials each one must take care not to be overcome or to come down from a spiritual height to a carnal life; or that he who had progressed should not look back by turning toward the past or failing to reach out to the future.36

It is therefore necessary to live a true, full spiritual life, to live by the truth of Christ and His commandments, and above all to become part of His state, His kingdom, His Church.37 In her, Christ comes every day to judge and to strengthen those who belong to Him, and He will take them with her to His glory.

32 33 34 35 36 37

Augustine, Augustine, Augustine, Augustine, Augustine, Augustine,

Epistula Epistula Epistula Epistula Epistula Epistula

199.15 199.17 199.22 199.22 199.32 199.35

(1955), 367. (1955), 368. (1955), 373. (1955), 373. See 2Tm 3:1-6. (1955), 381-382. (1955), 384.

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Conclusion Thus, here we have three propositions from the Fathers of the Church on how to survive the end of the world, in other words, how to attain eternal life, but also how to save and to improve, at least for a moment, this earthly life. So a choice was put in front of the correspondences of Augustine, Jerome and Paulinus, the choice that also appears to us as the interpreters and transmitters of the thoughts of the Church Fathers in more and more the final times.

PART IV

THE END OF ANTIQUITY

AND

BEYOND

Identical Foundations of Opposite Christologies: Nestorius of Constantinople and Severus of Antioch. The Critique of St. Maximus the Confessor Georgios SISKOS, Thessaloniki, Greece

ABSTRACT Maximus the Confessor’s engagement with the monothelite controversy produced a series of arguments which revealed Nestorianism and Severan monophysitism as the foundations of monotheletism. At first sight it seems difficult to see how two opposite Christological interpretations serve as the common ground for a theological construct. Still, Saint Maximus, inheriting the critical legacy of postchalcedonian orthodox tradition towards Nestorianism and Severan monophysitism, reveals the identical presuppositions that underlie their Christological expressions. The article explores the Nestorian and Severan textual sources on which Saint Maximus draws his critique. Focal points are: first, the notions of hypostasis, nature, terms used in both Christological interpretations and signifying identical content, yet, bearing two opposite interpretational results: two natures, hypostases, prosopa versus one nature, hypostasis, prosopon. Second, where Nestorius formulates the third prosopon of union in Christ in order to establish the two hypostases and two natural prosopa in Christ, Severus of Antioch formulates the fictional notion of epinoia of the two hypostases in order to eliminate the duality of hypostases in Christ. Third, whereas Nestorius uses gnomi in order to unite the two hypostases by keeping them intact and divided, Severus uses the difference in natural qualities to exclude the possibility of a second hypostasis which leads according to him to the division between God the Word and His humanity. The formulations of gnomi and natural qualities serves the ultimate axiom, common to both, that every nature is necessarily self-subsistent. The result is either union as division (Nestorius) or union as confusion (Severus).

Introduction St. Maximus the Confessor, criticizing the hermeneutical approach of Nestorius of Constantinople and Severus of Antioch regarding the mode of union of the divinity and humanity in Christ, finds that Nestorius and Severus, therefore, have one aim in their ungodliness, even if the mode is different. For the one, afraid of confusion, flees from the hypostatic union and makes the essential difference a personal division. The other, afraid of division, denies the essential difference and turns the hypostatic union into a natural confusion. It is necessary to

Studia Patristica CII, 231-246. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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confess neither confusion in Christ, nor division, but the union of those that are essentially different, and the difference of those that are hypostatically united, in order that the principle of the essences and the mode of the union might be reverently proclaimed. But they break asunder both of these: Nestorius only confirms a union of gnomic qualities, Severus only confirms the difference of natural qualities after the union, and both of them have missed the truth of things. The one recklessly ascribes division to the mystery, the other confusion.1

I A. Two natures, hypostases, prosopa in Christ in Nestorius For a nature to exist and to be real means to be hypostatic.2 Therefore, since Christ is God and man, necessarily Christ is two natures and two hypostases and two prosopa.3 Nestorius defines living things as hypostases. Hypostasis is the concrete subject, of which the underlying reality is called nature. Nature never exists without a concrete subject, which is the hypostasis. Nature is so tightly bound up with its concretization as hypostasis, that it is impossible for one nature not to exist as one hypostasis. To be at all means to be hypostatic. That is the reason why many times in the Nestorian texts the terms nature and hypostasis are used interchangeably. Furthermore, and most importantly, nature cannot exist in reality as general signification of a genus. For example, humanity does not exist as a being. Only specific human beings exist, which means that specific hypostases exist, not human nature as such. Christ is God the Word who has a natural and hypostatic prosopon and the man Jesus who also has a natural and hypostatic prosopon.4 The divinity exists as the hypostasis of God, the Word, whereas the humanity exists as the hypostasis of Jesus.5 Apart from the prosopa of the two natural hypostases of Christ, there is the third prosopon of their union as the manifestation of their mutual 1 Andrew Louth, Maximus the Confessor (London, 1996), Opuscule 3, 196 (e-book version). Greek text in St. Maximus Confessor, Theologica et Polemica, PG 91, 56CD. 2 Godfrey R. Driver and Leonard Hodgson, Nestorius – The Bazaar of Heracleides (Oxford, 1925), 11: ‘For nothing is done of God through deception, but everything in truth and in nature; for he is the creator and the creator does nothing in schema and in illusion but in nature and in truth. But those things which were not in the nature of the creator are rightly said to be fiction and illusion since they cannot be seen in [virtue of] their nature’ (Bazaar I i.17). 3 Ibid. 218: ‘Neither of them is known without prosopon and without hypostasis in the diversities of the natures’ (Bazaar II i.303-4). 4 Ibid. 216: ‘He is not making the human nature nor the divine without prosopon and without hypostasis’ (Bazaar II i.301-2). 5 Nestorius writes referring to the prayer of Gethsemane: ‘But with him who [was] visible God the Word was not strengthened by the voice of an angel at the season of the suffering’; ibid. 396. Ibid.: ‘If he said: “Who was born of Mary?” I in return answer unto him at once: “The man who

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conjunction.6 It seems that the external countenance of the hypostasis is called prosopon. Many times Nestorius uses the terms hypostasis and nature interchangeably. Prosopon is the manifestation of hypostasis and nature. Since hypostasis and nature were defined as a numerical unit, it follows that every hypostasis and every nature has a prosopon. Nestorius calls it most of the time natural prosopon, but also hypostatic prosopon. In a parallel way, in real life many times hypostases of things do appear in a combination, in a conjunction, or in a mutual coexistence. In that case their natural prosopa manifest a common image of their coexistence, which Nestorius calls the prosopon of their union. For example, the prosopon of mankind means the collective and unified appearance of the natural prosopa of each man. Applied Christologically there are the two natural prosopa of humanity and divinity and the common prosopon of the union of the two natural prosopa. It is impossible for Christ to be one hypostasis since in Christ there are two realities, namely, that of humanity and that of divinity. The union of the two hypostases is a volitional union,7 otherwise it would demolish the freedom of God, the Word, to consent to the man Jesus.8 Union has to exist as a certain division between the two hypostases in order to establish the freedom of both hypostases to exist in a conjunction. For Nestorius distinction of the natural hypostases in Christ means division because there is no other way of saving their freedom. The third prosopon of union in Christ confirms the freedom of the natural hypostases of humanity and divinity to consent freely to a union of conjunction.9 Union and distinction in Christ equals union and division. This union cannot be compared with the union of body and soul because the latter union is not volitional. It is a compulsory union which brings the two things simultaneously into being and forces the attributes of both things to be as one entity. adheres to God, the man who is honoured above all men on account of God who adheres to him”’ (Bazaar, frg. XXV). 6 Ibid. 160: ‘From the two natures there come into being the natural prosopa’; ibid. 85-6 (Bazaar II i.233-5; I i.125-7). See Friedrich Loofs, Nestorius and his Place in the History of Christian Doctrine (Cambridge, 1914), 76-9. G.R. Driver and L. Hodgson, Nestorius (1925), 218-9: ‘The natures subsist in their prosopa and in their natures and in the prosopon of the union’ (Bazaar II i.303-6). These notions have already existed on a Christological level with a very precise terminology in the texts of Theodore of Mopsuestia: ‘When we distinguish the natures, we say that the nature of the God Word is complete and that the prosopon is complete – for one cannot speak of a hypostasis [qnoma] without a prosopon; and also that the nature of the man is complete, and his prosopon likewise. But when we consider the conjunction, then we speak of one prosopon’, De incarnatione, in John Behr, The Case Against Diodore and Theodore, Texts and their Contexts (Oxford, 2011), 207-9. 7 G.R. Driver and L. Hodgson, Nestorius (1925), 181: ‘A voluntary union in prosopon / and not in nature’ (Bazaar II i.264-5). 8 Ibid. 179: ‘The union of God the Word with these is neither hypostatic nor natural but voluntary, as consisting in a property of the will and not of the nature. For the things which are united by the natural hypostasis have a natural and not a voluntary quality’ (Bazaar II i.263). 9 Ibid. 158 (Bazaar II i.230-3).

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B. One nature, one hypostasis, one prosopon in Severus of Antioch With exactly the same fundamental premises that Nestorius posited, Severus regarding himself as a follower of St. Cyril puts forward the one nature, one hypostasis, one prosopon of the Incarnated Word. For something to be real it has to be hypostatic. Since two natures inevitably lead to two hypostases in Christ, the solution of one nature, one hypostasis, one prosopon is the only real solution.10 Immediately the question arises of how humanity and divinity can be clearly expressed in one nature and hypostasis. Severus introduces the notion of a composite hypostasis, which derives from two different natures, but after the union the natures do not exist as self-subsistent natures.11 Nor, in the composite hypostasis, do the natures exist as generalities – as the common substance of a class of individuals, because that would mean that the whole Trinity was incarnated in the whole human race.12 Roberta Chesnut introduced a theory that became locus classicus in modern research. She claimed that Severus distinguished between self-subsistent hypostases and non-self-subsistent hypostases. Accordingly, in Chesnut’s interpretation of Severus ‘Christ is one self-subsistent hypostasis with a non-self-subsistent hypostasis, the product of a union of a simple self-subsistent hypostasis with a non-self-subsistent hypostasis’.13 The three passages cited by Chesnut (referring 10 Eustathius the Monk, To Timotheus the Scholastic, PG 86, 908AB: ‘How do the impudent dare to speak about two natures but not two hypostases and prosopa? … It is impossible for two natures and hypostases not to manifest themselves in two prosopa’; Ibid. PG 86, 920D: ‘When we say that Emmanuel is from two natures, we do not mean the natures as ousiai, which signify community and include many hypostases. We mean the one hypostasis of God, the Word, and the one flesh with a rational soul from which without being changed one [hypostasis] is composed’. 11 Contra Impium Grammaticum 2.22, CSCO 111, Syr. 58, 185; trans. in Pauline Allen and Charles Thomas Robert Hayward, Severus of Antioch (London, New York, 2004), 68: ‘How can those things which subsist individually and separately, and exist in duality, be combined in one hypostasis? Now that which subsists as one entity as a result of being compounded without change from things differing from each other in kind and in substance – such as a reality of the sort that a human being represents, of soul and body – exists indeed in one hypostasis, but by means of reason alone allows those who make distinctions to perceive that he is assembled out of two natures, while he does not subsist in two natures or hypostases. For it is not possible to see each entity as it subsists in its own particular subsistence, but only what arises out of the composition of the individual entities, which is perfectly formed as one hypostasis’. 12 Contra Impium Grammaticum 2.17, CSCO 111, Syr. 58, 152; trans. in P. Allen and C.T.R. Hayward, Severus (2004), 83: ‘For they shall not advance to this madness, so as to declare that they are using the terms ‘natures’ instead of generic signification – I mean signification of substance. For if, as is acknowledged henceforward, the holy Trinity is one nature, and the whole humanity is one nature, then (to say something that is more than ridiculous) the holy Trinity will to be found to have assumed as human nature the whole of humanity, that is to say the whole human race!’ See also Contra Impium Grammaticum 2.22, CSCO 111, Syr. 58, 187-8; trans. in P. Allen and C.T.R. Hayward, Severus (2004), 87. 13 Roberta C. Chesnut, Three Monophysite Christologies: Severus of Antioch, Philoxenus of Mabbug and Jacob of Sarug (Oxford, 1976), 9-10. In the same year Nikolai A. Zabolotsky, ‘The

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only to page numbers) are 1) ‘For those hypostases or natures, being in composition without diminution, and not existing separately and in individual existence, make up one person of one Lord and Christ and Son, and one incarnate nature and hypostasis of the Word’. 2) ‘The peculiarity of the natural union is that the hypostases are in composition and are perfect without diminution but refuse to continue an individual existence so as to be numbered as two, and to have its own person impressed upon each of them, which a conjunction in honour cannot possibly do’,14 3) ‘From the composition out of two elements, the Godhead and the manhood, Emmanuel should be made up, who in one hypostasis is ineffably composite; not simple, but composite: as the soul of a man like us, which by nature is bodiless and rational, which is naturally intertwined with the body, remains in its supra-sensual and bodiless nature, but by reason of the composition with the body makes up one composite animal, man. Accordingly, the assumption of the body makes no addition to the essence of the soul, but makes up the composite animal, as it is reasonable to understand with regard to the theory of Emmanuel also’.15 As the reader can notice, the three passages simply define the composite hypostasis, which is made up of two elements. These two elements ‘refuse to continue an individual existence so as to be numbered as two, and to have its own person impressed upon each of them’.16 Nowhere is it said that a composite nature subsists from a self-subsistent hypostasis and a non-self-subsistent hypostasis. The only thing stated is that in a composite hypostasis the elements do not exist as self-subsistent hypostases, as would be the case in Nestorius’ union of conjunction. The Severan context therefore is clearly anti-Nestorian. Severus would have never accepted the existence of a non-self-subsistent hypostasis next to a self-subsistent one as modern scholars claim. What the anti-Chalcedonian scholar Vilakuvel Cherian Samuel says about the enhypostasy theory is illuminating in this regard: ‘According to the Antiochenes, Christ’s human nature was a human hypostasis. For the non-Chalcedonians also the human nature in the phrase “of two natures” was a hypostasis… The Grammarian and Leontius, on the contrary, took the human nature as human ousia but not human hypostasis. The theory of enhypostasia was, in that context, Christology of Severus of Antioch’, Ekklesiasiastikos Pharos 58 (1976), 357-86 made the same assumption without citing a single passage from Severus’ works. Ian R. Torrance, Christology after Chalcedon: Severus of Antioch and Sergius the Monophysite (Norwich, 1988), 115, using a Severian passage already used by Chesnut, claimed that ‘the humanity that is assumed is not independent, but it is nevertheless real and concrete. It is a hypostasis, but it is non-prosopic. Severus has found a way of expressing that the humanity is both concrete and yet not independent… This concept is very similar to that of enhypostatos which was later formally developed by Leontius of Byzantium’. 14 Ernest Walter Brooks, A Collection of Letters of Severus of Antioch from Numerous Syriac Manuscripts (Turnhout, 1973), XV, To Thomas his syncellus, 210. 15 Ibid. XXV, To the Emesenes, 229-30. 16 R.C. Chesnut, Three Monophysite Christologies (1976), 15.

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indispensable to express the fact that Jesus Christ lived as a man of flesh and blood in a world of concrete existence. However, Leontius achieved this goal by reducing the hypostatic nature of the manhood to a secondary level of importance. It is most certain, therefore, that, had Theodoret and other Antiochenes been given an exclusive choice between the Christology of Severus and that of Leontius, they would definitely have cast their lot with the former and not with the latter’.17 Severus refuses to signify nature as generality because nature can only exist as self-subsistent hypostasis or as the sum of hypostases of the genus.18 Two natures having as their agent one hypostasis for him is a deception.19 He rejects this because in his view two natures necessarily mean two hypostases, not one.20 In order to avoid the division which for him inevitably comes with the two hypostases, he remains faithful to the confession of one composite hypostasis.21 Nestorius rejected the same thing – a definition of one hypostasis in two natures – with the same objection in order to establish the two natures and hypostases. For Nestorius nature as a generality is a fictional abstraction which leads to the denial of incarnation. The second absurdity is that the whole Trinity, that is, the sum of the hypostases of the divine essence became incarnated. For a generality to be real, this can only mean the sum of the individuals of the genus. For a hypostasis to be the agent of two generalities is an absurdity: ‘In accepting a question absurd for religion, thou hast therefrom in the next place come to the 17 Vilakuvel Cherian Samuel, The Council of Chalcedon and the Christology of Severus of Antioch, PhD Thesis, Yale University 1957, 445-6. See also id., The Council of Chalcedon ReExamined (No place, 2005), Oriental Orthodox Library II, 294. 18 E.W. Brooks, A Collection (1973), VI, To Maron, 196-7: ‘But the name “nature” is sometimes taken in place of “essence”, sometimes in place of hypostasis. For even the whole of mankind we call comprehensively “nature” … and again we speak of one nature in reference to a single man, Paul for example or Peter, or maybe James. When therefore we name all mankind one nature, we use the name “nature” generically in place of “essence”; but, where we say that there is one nature of Paul, the name “nature” is employed in place of “individual hypostasis”. So also we call the Holy Trinity one nature, employing the term “nature” in place of the general designation “essence”’. 19 Ad Nephalium II, CSCO 119, Syr. 64, 19; trans. in P. Allen and C.T.R. Hayward, Severus (2004), 64: ‘Thus it is clear that those who were at Chalcedon, when they promoted the dogma that Christ is in two natures, threw in for us the term “one hypostasis” to lead to deception. For if there is one hypostasis, there is, in short, also one nature… For the God-inspired voice of the Fathers clearly affirmed neither two natures nor two hypostases for the one Son, regardless of whether anyone should say that the natures were either united or separated’. 20 E.W. Brooks, A Collection (1973), X, To Eleusinius, 201: ‘But if we speak of two natures after the union, which necessarily exist in singleness and separately, as if divided into duality, but united by a conjunction or brotherhood (if we ought to call such a thing unity), the notion of difference reaches to the extent of division’. 21 E.W. Brooks, A Collection (1973), II, To Oecumenius, 189: ‘Accordingly the natural union was not of generalities, but of hypostases of which Emmanuel was composed. And do not think that hypostases in all cases have a distinct person assigned to them, so that we should be thought, like the impious Nestorius, to speak of a union of persons’.

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impiety of confessing either that God, the Word, the Son of God, was not made man or that the Father and the Spirit also were made man’.22 Nestorius unifies the two separate natures and hypostases in the third prosopon of union,23 whereas Severus avoids the necessity of division of the two natures and hypostases by putting forward the one composite nature and hypostasis. Common ground for both is the reality of existent things only through self-subsistent hypostases. II A. The self-subsistency of divinity and humanity in Christ in Nestorius For a nature to be real it has to be hypostatic. This excludes any possibility of treating nature as a generality or as signifying a genus. Christ is not one hypostasis – the hypostasis of the eternal Word – as one agent of the divinity and of humanity. To be real, the humanity and divinity have to exist as specific, self-subsistent hypostases. If someone says that Christ is one hypostasis as the agent of two generalities, namely humanity and divinity, then the inevitable result is to say that the whole Trinity was incarnated in the whole humanity. For Nestorius, humanity and divinity as generalities exist only as the sum of the hypostases of each generality, because for something to exist it has to be self-subsistent.24 That is the reason why, if someone says that Christ is one hypostasis, an agent of divinity and humanity, he inevitable reaches the result of the incarnation of the Trinity in the whole human race.25 B. The self-subsistency of divinity and humanity in Christ in Severus Severus rejects that humanity and divinity exist as self-subsistent hypostases in the one composite hypostasis, but also that humanity and divinity could be 22

G.R. Driver and L. Hodgson, Nestorius (1925), 140 (Bazaar II i.206). Ibid. 144: ‘Christ therefore is the prosopon of the union, whereas God, the Word, is not of the union but in his own nature, and it is not the same thing to say and to understand [the one for the other]’ (Bazaar II i.211). 24 Luise Abramowski and Alan E. Goodman, A Nestorian Collection of Christological Texts, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1972), II 125, 4-23: ‘And see, Mary did not bear the common nature without hypostasis, nor many hypostases, but she bore one hypostasis, the man Jesus … the fathers … were discerning accurately that it is not possible for prosopon to be the same as the common nature, because it (the common nature) encloses all the hypostases that are in it. But as we say two natures from the testimonies of the scriptures, so also, two hypostases from the same natures have we learnt, as we have shown above’ (Babai the Great, On the Union X). 25 G.R. Driver and L. Hodgson, Nestorius (1925), 140: ‘In accepting a question absurd for religion, thou hast therefrom in the next place come to the impiety of confessing … that the Father and the Spirit also were made man’ (Bazaar II i.206-9). 23

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generalities, i.e. the common substance of a class of individuals. He writes against the Chalcedonian Christological interpretation of John of Caesarea: You are caught out merging the hypostases by saying ‘in Christ are the whole Godhead and the whole of manhood’; and thus drawing the blasphemous inference that Christ is in two substances in the common meaning, with the consequence that in this way, as a result of this subtle confusion of yours, the whole substance of the Godhead i.e. the Holy Trinity, will be found to be incarnate in the whole substance of manhood and the whole human race. For this is the common meaning of ‘substances’: being a substance comprehending many hypostases, and not a single hypostasis participating with fellow hypostases of the same genus in the same substance, in the way that so-and-so participates in manhood.26

The fundamental premise that the only real thing is the self-subsistent hypostasis results in Christ either having two separate hypostases or in including the arithmetical sum of all the hypostases of the human genus. The concept of one composite nature and hypostasis does not explain how humanity and divinity exist in reality without being either self-subsistent or a generality. Severus avoids the pressing question in two ways. First, by using the example of body and soul, which are two different natures but one entity and hypostasis.27 Secondly, by introducing the notion of epinoia, which is the separation of hypostatic natures only in theory. Severus says that it is only in theory that there are two self-subsistent hypostases but once someone thinks of the union in a composite hypostasis, then the two self-subsistent hypostases exist no more.28 This means that theory is equivalent to fictional fantasy, since once the union appears the hypostases disappear.29 Long before Severus’ elaboration of the division of hypostatic 26 Rifaat Y. Ebied, ‘Quotations from the Works of St. Severus of Antioch in Peter of Callinicus’ magnum opus “Contra Damianum”’, in John D’Alton and Youhanna Youssef (eds), Severus of Antioch: His Life and Times, Texts and Studies in Eastern Christianity 7 (Leiden, 2016), 65-123, 89-90. 27 E.W. Brooks, A Collection (1973), XXV, To the Emesenes, 229-30. Homily 58, PO 8, p. 19; trans. in Aloys Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, vol. 2: From the Council of Chalcedon (451) to Gregory the Great (590-604), Part 2: The Church of Constantinople in the Sixth Century, (London, 1995), 134. Homily 44, PO 36, 96-8; trans. in A. Grillmeier, Christ (1995), 134. 28 Contra Impium Grammaticum 2.22, CSCO 111, Syr. 58, 187; trans. in P. Allen and C.T.R. Hayward, Severus (2004), 86-7: ‘If one considers those things out of which Christ exists … [one] sees the natural essence of the two natures and hypostases; and when at the same time, he is enlightened by the power of the union and finds that those particular subsistencies do not even subsist in composition, but perfectly fοrm one hypostasis and one nature of the Word incarnate, he cannot affirm that those things which are seen in contemplation are two in hypostasis. For the reckoning of the union turns aside and restrains the power of the separateness, such that the two may no longer be two, but one entity in an expressible manner is perfectly formed in composition through the two of them. And the natures, indeed the hypostases, out of which he is assembled appear no less and without change in the union; but it is not possible to recognize either one of them as a person because they do not subsist separately either in the particularity of their subsistence or in duality’. 29 Contra Impium Grammaticum 2.22, CSCO 111, Syr. 58, 184-5; trans. in P. Allen and C.T.R. Hayward, Severus (2004), 86: ‘Now when we affirm that he exists out of two natures or

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natures only in theory, Nestorius had criticized as fictional fantasy the way in which St. Cyril spoke about distinction in theory between Christ’s two natures.30 That was because it was impossible for Nestorius, when he heard about two natures, not to take as meaning two hypostases also. St. Cyril, contrary to Severus and without positing the axiom of self-subsistent hypostasis as the only real thing, said that the human intellect draws the distinction between humanity and divinity in theory alone, but never separates them. Importantly, Nestorius also understood St. Cyril as speaking only of one nature when he distinguishes the natures only in theory. That was because for Nestorius as well as for Severus, for a nature to exist it has to be self-subsistent, i.e. to have its own hypostasis. Nestorius attacks St. Cyril by saying: Yet thou sayest that there is only one nature, [Cyril.] But when the manner of the Incarnation is investigated, the human intelligence sees inevitably two things which [are united] ineffably and inconfusedly in one union; yet it distinguishes not entirely what has been united but believes that of two there is [formed] one, both God and Son and Lord and Christ. Wherein sayest thou ‘one’? That they have been united in the prosopon of the union of the natures? Thus, then the human intelligence sees those things which are united without confusion; but they are without confusion in their own natures and in their own ousia and thus they remain and are conceived.31

For St. Cyril Christ is one, namely, God, the Word, from two natures. Severus intensified St. Cyril’s thesis, and through the axiom of self-subsistent hypostases, separating as it were by thought alone those things from which he exists or is assembled by nature, we mean this: for it is not as if first of all there existed a duality of hypostases which was thus gathered together into one hypostasis, for this is both ignorant and impossible. For how can those things which subsist individually and separately, and exist in duality, be combined into one hypostasis? Now that which subsists as one entity as a result of being compounded … by means of reason alone allows those who make distinctions to perceive that he is assembled out of two natures, while he does not subsist in two natures or hypostases. For it is not possible to see each entity as it subsists in its own particular subsistence, but only what arises out of the composition of the individual entities, which is perfectly formed as one hypostasis’. 30 The Formula of Reunion (433) states: ‘But as regards the sayings of the Gospels and of the Apostles spoken concerning one Lord, we know that certain theologians make [some] of the things which are common relative to one prosopon but divide [others] of them as between two natures; those which are suitable unto God they attribute unto the divinity of Christ and [others] of them, and those them that are contemptible, unto the humanity’. G.R. Driver and L. Hodgson, Nestorius (1925), 318. Nestorius criticizes the theological position of St. Cyril because it is fictional fantasy to distinguish between the scriptural sayings which belong to the divinity and the humanity without also attributing a respective nature and hypostasis also: ‘Thee, who dividest the natures not in their ousiai, but in respect to the sayings which subsisted only in the imagination as saying, which indicate no [real] definition and no [real] nature’. Ibid. 321. A modern supporter of Nestorius, James F. Bethune-Baker, Nestorius and his Teaching. A Fresh Examination of the Evidence (Cambridge, 1908), 169-70, also understands St. Cyril’s mental distinction of natures as fantasy. 31 G.R. Driver and L. Hodgson, Nestorius (1925), 310. For Nestorius ‘one’ can denote only the prosopon of union which unites the natural hypostatic prosopa of divinity and humanity. The passage of St. Cyril is from the letter to Acacius of Melitene, Lionel R. Wickham, Cyril of Alexandria. Select Letters (Oxford, 1983), 51.

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hypostasis, he presented the two hypostatic natures after the union as existing only in fantasy. For St. Cyril, theory is a mental distinction between things that the senses cannot access, such as humanity and divinity in one Christ. Proof of this is that he embraced, in the Formula of Reunion of 433, the Antiochian division between the scriptural sayings that belong to the humanity and those that belong to the divinity, without being afraid that this would lead to a division into two hypostases.32 Severus on the other hand, by putting forward the axiom of the self-subsistent hypostasis, turned theory into fictional fantasy, since two hypostases can never be one, and simultaneously the only real thing is a hypostatic nature. Both Severus and Nestorius understood theory in terms of fantasy. III A. Nestorius: Two can never be one in any way with regard to the natures and hypostases in Christ Real existence means self-subsistent being. If Christ is God and man then it is impossible for Christ to be one hypostasis. One hypostasis in Christ means either elimination of humanity or of divinity, or two incomplete natures.33 Christ is one according to external appearance, that is, according to the prosopon of the union, which is the volitional conjunction of the hypostatic will of God, the Word, and the hypostatic will of the man Jesus.34 It is therefore difficult to agree with Aubrey Russell Vine, who writes: How could there be voluntary union from two sides without two personalities? Only by positing one personality experiencing two sets of urges, and positing a personality dividing. Nestorius, unfortunately, never clarified his thought beyond emphasizing his postulates – true God, true man, true unity – and emphasizing none the less the reality of temptation in the manhood. But the logical development of his thoughts leads to the concepts of enhypostasia.35 32

L.R. Wickham, Cyril (1983), 222. St. Cyril interpreting the Formula of Reunion 433 to Acacius of Melitene says that ‘The Antiochene brethren … they do not mean that some of these apply to a Son in isolation, the Word of God, some again to a different woman-born son, but instead that some apply to his Godhead some to his manhood (for the same Son is God and man)’. L.R. Wickham, Cyril (1983); To Acacius of Melitene, 53. 33 G.R. Driver and L. Hodgson, Nestorius (1925), 303-4 (Bazaar II i.418). 34 Ibid. 173: ‘The conduct also and the death and the resurrection are those of one who controls and who is controlled... They both in fact were attracted and torn apart by one another, by the nature and by the will’ (Bazaar II i.254). Roberta C. Chesnut, ‘The Two Prosopa In Nestorius’ Bazaar of Heracleides’, JTS NS 29 (1978), 392-409, 405-6; see Leonard Hodgson, ‘The Metaphysics of Nestorius’, JTS OS 19 (1917), 46-55, 48. 35 Aubrey Russell Vine, An Approach to Christology: An interpretation and development of some elements in the metaphysic and Christology of Nestorius as a way of approach to an orthodox Christology compatible with modern thought (London, 1948), 163.

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Exactly his emphasizing postulates, about a perfect humanity as a hypostatic nature with a natural hypostatic prosopon and a natural hypostatic will, led Nestorius to the denial of God the Word both as God and as man. Nestorius never embraced an approach of one hypostasis in two natures. Consequently, a concept of enhypostasia for Nestorius would have been a fictional fantasy. Nestorius would have abolished in the most explicit way Vine’s approach for Nestorius himself that Jesus was man… As he did not yield, the centre of consciousness and will remained in Him who was giving it, God the Word. Jesus Christ was one, because there was never any centre of consciousness and will other than God the Word, who experienced in two natures, that of His own divine ousia and that of the ousia of humanity which He Himself completed.36

The man Jesus exercised the will of God, so in Nestorian terms he was the prosopon of God. For Nestorius the man Jesus cannot be literally the consciousness of God the Word, because that would have meant that the humanity was changed into divinity. The number One cannot be used for anything that refers to Christ’s reality as such.37 It can only be used regarding Christ’s unity of external appearance in humanity and divinity.38 For humanity and divinity of Christ to have as agent one hypostasis means necessarily confusion of the two in a tertium quid, which is neither man nor God. Furthermore, to say that Christ is the hypostasis of God, the Word, bearing the nature of His divinity and of His humanity is an illusion which results in a Manichaean disappearance of human nature.39 Two ousiai are mutually exclusive for one subject. Literally speaking the Word is either God or man. He cannot be two things essentially.40 To be two things is essentially against the fundamental premise of Nestorius that one hypostasis derives from one nature. Scholars supportive of Nestorius’ theology (such as Friedrich Loofs) repeat the same objections with him against St. Cyril: As I said, his theory is not conceivable. For what is a nature which has no real existence of its own? Is then the Logos not thought of as suffering and dying, in spite of Cyril’s protest? or can one speak of sufferings and death where there is no suffering or dying subject, but only an impersonal nature? And is it still possible to say that Christ was a man as we are, if the human nature existed in him only as assumed in the ὑπόστασις of the Logos and as having become his human nature?41 36

Ibid. 195. F. Loofs, Nestorius (1914), 80-1. 38 G.R. Driver and L. Hodgson, Nestorius (1925), 218. Ibid. 218-9 (Bazaar II i.303-6). Nestorius always underlines the reality of the common third prosopon, which is Christ and not God the Word or the man Jesus. God the Word and the man Jesus unite their natural prosopa in the third common prosopon of Christ. 39 Ibid. 16 and 18 (Bazaar I i.22-26). 40 Ibid. 210, 230 (Bazaar II i.293.319-20). 41 F. Loofs, Nestorius (1914), 73. 37

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It is difficult to see how Loofs does not contradict himself when after such a comment he states that ‘Hence as long as we apply no other standard than the Chalcedonian definition, the statement of Professor Bethune-Baker, that Nestorius was orthodox, is not to be held a false one. It was a tragic feature in the fortune of Nestorius, that he had already been condemned, when the council, whose creed he could have accepted, was held’.42 The Chalcedonian Definition clearly identifies prosopon with hypostasis which is the Hypostasis of God the Word the Only-begotten. The pronoun ‘One and the same’ in Greek refers to God the Word;43 Nestorius most certainly would have never accepted the hypostasis of God the Word in two natures as his text showed. Similarly, Chai Yong Choo in his PhD thesis on the Christology of Nestorius identifies the prosopon of the Chalcedonian Definition with the Nestorian prosopon of union which derives from the natural prosopa of humanity and divinity. The former though is identified with the hypostasis of God the Word, whereas the prosopon of union in Nestorius is the product of volitional conjunction of the natural hypostatic prosopa of God the Word and the man Jesus. The Nestorian prosopon of union is named the prosopon of Christ. On the contrary, in the Chalcedonian Definition the hypostasis and the prosopon of Christ is the hypostasis and the prosopon of God the Word.44 And Milton V. Anastos writes: ‘He envisaged this union in impeccably orthodox fashion. What he says is that the human Jesus ‘received his prosopon as something created, in such wise as not originally to be man but at the same time Man-God by the incarnation [ἐνανθρώπησις] of God...’.45 This is an extremely subtle description of the oneness of Jesus Christ and shows that Nestorius conceived the Man-God to have been the divine Logos, plus what would have become the separate individual man Jesus, if the Logos had not been united with him from the moment of conception. For the child born of the Virgin was at no time, Nestorius states, a separate man but ‘at the same time Man-God’. Obviously, such an opinion comes in sharp contrast with what Nestorius himself said (e.g. in the passage cited above under footnote 34). Also, Nestorius’ basic train of thought was the denial of the two births of God the Word, a fact that Anastos seems to bypass. B. Severus of Antioch: Duality as division in every way Severus is in total agreement with Nestorius in affirming that duality can only mean division and result in two hypostatic natures.46 By embracing this 42

Ibid. 101. Thomas Herbert Bindley, The Oecumenical Documents of The Faith (London, 1899), 297. 44 Chai Yong Choo, The Christology of Nestorius: A study of the Person of Christ according to Nestorius, Phd thesis, McGill University Montreal Canada 1974, 332. 45 Milton V. Anastos, ‘Nestorius Was Orthodox’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 16 (1962), 117-40, 128. 46 E.W. Brooks, A Collection (1973), XVIII, To the monks at Tufa, 212, ‘duality is a dissolver of unity, although it is obscured by countless devices. For he who has been united is fixedly one 43

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Nestorian axiom, Severus refuses in every way to assign the properties of divinity and humanity in Christ to their respective natures, because this would automatically mean division into two self-subsistent hypostases.47 This is a major difference between Severus and St. Cyril, as it was shown in the Formula of Reunion of 433. Instead of attributing natural activities to each nature, divinity and humanity,48 Severus assigns every activity of Christ to his one composite hypostatic nature.49

IV A. Two natural hypostatic prosopa and the one prosopon of union in Christ in Nestorius In Christ there is a unity of appearance through a third prosopon, which is the prosopon of union. The prosopon of union contrasts with the natural hypostatic prosopa of humanity and divinity. These latter prosopa manifest exclusively their respective hypostatic natures, whereas the prosopon of union manifests both of them in a mutual volitional simultaneity. The prosopon of union in Christ is the product of the free consent of hypostatic natures to come into a conjunction. The union of prosopa has a voluntary quality and not a natural one, which would inevitably mean necessity.50 For Nestorius it is impossible for an exchange of natural idioms – of divinity and humanity – to take place in the hypostasis of God, the Word, as incarnated. It is impossible for an existent thing not to act. Therefore, each nature and hypostasis has a corresponding activity. The activity is necessarily consubstantial with its corresponding nature and hypostasis. Therefore, activity is called a natural activity. In a similar way the attributes of a thing necessarily derive and does not become again two. For Christ is not divided, but is one person, one hypostasis, one incarnate nature of God the Word’. 47 ‘We therefore anathematize not those who confess the properties of the natures of which the one Christ consists, but those who separate the properties, and apportion them to each nature apart. When the one Christ has once been divided (and he is divided by the fact that they speak of two natures after the union), with the natures which have been cut asunder into a duality and separated into a distinct diversity go the operations and properties which are the offspring of this division’. Ibid. I, To Oecumenius, 179-80. 48 Sergius the Grammarian, a monophysite disciple of Severus, put forward the common axiom of Christian Tradition that every nature has a consubstantial activity. Sergius posed the problem as follows: ‘But every propriety belongs to an underlying nature, and if we speak of two proprieties we are obliged also to speak of two natures’. Letter I of Sergius; I.R. Torrance, Christology (1988), 144. 49 Ibid. Letter I of Severus, 155. 50 G.R. Driver and L. Hodgson, Nestorius (1925), 179: ‘The union of God the Word with these is neither hypostatic nor natural but voluntary, as consisting in a property of the will and not of the nature’ (Bazaar II i.263).

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from its nature. Reference to the example of man shows the mental attributes belonging to the nature and hypostasis of the soul whereas the physical attributes belonging to the nature and hypostasis of the body. Now, since man is one entity, one existent thing as a whole, the prosopon of union is called human and the properties – mental and physical – are called human because of the prosopon of the union. Strictly speaking mental and physical properties belong to their self-subsistent hypostasis, whereas metaphorically a mutual exchange of prosopa comes about due to their union. That means the attributes of the one hypostasis receive the name, but not the substance of the other hypostasis due to their conjunction as one living entity. This would have meant that the Word is God and the Word is man. But the Word cannot be both.51 Christ is the name for the prosopon of union or the name which manifests both natural hypostases – God the Word and the man Jesus – and their respective natural properties.52 Christ is a name denoting a whole which can take the names of its parts. Christ is named God and man.53 Duality of natural hypostatic prosopa is the initial basis for the end result, which is the prosopon of union. There is a mutual exchange of prosopa in Christ, namely, of external appearances, due to the prosopon of union.54 God the Word appears as the man Jesus, whereas Jesus appears as God, the Word, due to the prosopon of Christ. This has the immediate result of attributing the sum of names – of divinity and humanity – to one prosopon, namely the prosopon of union, the prosopon of Christ. This is markedly different from attributing the natural idioms of humanity and divinity to God, the Word.55 51

Attacking St. Cyril, Nestorius writes: ‘Is God the Word two ousiai in nature, or dost thou imagine that man is in his nature two ousiai, of divinity and of humanity?’ Ibid. 212 (Bazaar II i.295). 52 Ibid. 214: ‘Destroy not therefore the pattern of the Incarnation but concede the properties of the divinity and concede the properties of the humanity and concede one prosopon of the union’ (Bazaar II i.298). Ibid. 246: ‘Hast thou not been informed that the Fathers confess one prosopon of two natures, and that the diversities of the natures, either of the divinity or of the humanity, have not been made void by reason of the union, because they are thereby combined in one prosopon which belongs to the natures and to the prosopa?’ (Bazaar II i.340-1). 53 Ibid. 53-4: ‘The flesh, which is flesh by nature, is also Son by the union and the adoption of the prosopon; although he exists in both of them, yet he is called one Son and one flesh. And consequently the only begotten Son of God and the Son of man, the same [formed] of both of them, is predicated in both of them, because he has made the things of their prosopa his own prosopon and is therefore acknowledged as his own prosopon by the one as by the other’ (Bazaar I i.78). 54 Ibid. 58: ‘He made use of the prosopon of him who died and was crucified as his own prosopon, and in his own prosopon he made use of the things which appertained unto him who died and was crucified and was exalted. And therefore [this] is said as of the one prosopon of Christ, and the former things and the latter are each thus different, in nature, as the divine nature is different from the nature of man… there is one prosopon of the two natures … for the names of the natural prosopa are common in the condescension and in the exaltation’ (Bazaar I i.84-7). 55 Ibid. 166: ‘The properties of the two natures befit also one prosopon, not [that] of the ousia of God the Word. And the prosopon is not in the ousia, for it is not in the ousia of God the Word, nor is it the prosopon of the union of the natures which have been united in such wise as to make

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To sum up, there is an exchange of the names of the natural, hypostatic prosopa in the prosopon of Christ due to the unified appearance of the hypostatic natures, which constitutes the third prosopon of union.56 There is not an exchange of natural idioms in the hypostasis of God, the Word, as the Chalcedonians professed. Exchange of natural idioms between different natures in one hypostasis means either a) annihilation of one nature,57 or b) mixture of the natures in some kind of tertium quid,58 or c) change of one ousia into another.59 B. Difference in natural quality in Severus For Nestorius, if both Christ’s divinity and humanity were real, there had to be a duality of hypostatic natures. That was the only solution. Division equals distinction, and unity comes about by the volitional consent of the two. For Severus the pressing question was how the difference of humanity and divinity exists at all, since the only reality is the self-subsistent hypostasis, and after the union humanity and divinity cease to exist as self-subsistent entities. Severus exploits the Cyrillian notion of natural quality in order to provide an answer to the existence of divinity and humanity in the one composite hypostatic nature of Christ. He confesses that the difference of humanity and divinity lies in natural quality, but all qualities are assigned to the one composite nature and hypostasis. As with the activities of humanity and divinity, Severus refuses to distinguish natural qualities according to their respective natures.60 two ousiai befit the one prosopon / of God the Word, for he is not both of them in ousia’ (Bazaar II i.242-4). Anastos, ‘Nestorius Was Orthodox’, 131, equates the Nestorian exchange of natural prosopa in the prosopon of union with the exchange of natural idioms in the one hypostasis of the God the Word. Still, from the passages above it is clear that the exchange of prosopa has to do only with exchange of names in a third whole – the prosopon of union. Exchange of natural properties in one subject, namely the hypostasis of God the Word would have meant confusion, alteration, or change of the hypostatic natures. In Nestorius’s case the subject is never one. It is always two. 56 G.R. Driver and L. Hodgson, Nestorius (1925), 252: ‘In the prosopa of the union, the one in the other, neither by diminution nor by suppression nor by confusion is this ‘one’ conceived, but by taking and by giving, and by the use of the union of the one with the other, the prosopa take and give one another but not the ousiai. The one we conceive as the other and the other as the one, while the one and the other abide’ (Bazaar II i.348-50). 57 Ibid. 26 (Bazaar I i.38-40). 58 Ibid. 36 (Bazaar I i.52-6). 59 Ibid. 43 (Bazaar I i.63-4). 60 I.R. Torrance, Christology (1988), Letter I of Severus, 149, ‘we see that the difference of those things which have come together to be one, (the difference that is) which lies in natural quality, has not been suppressed, because there is no confusion of the union; but the division has been removed, because those things which were different in natural quality do not exist independently, but complete one hypostasis from two’.

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For him this would mean two separate natures and hypostases.61 The formula ‘from two but after the union one’ is being repeated.62 St. Maximus spells out the inevitable logical implications of the Nestorian–Severan paradigm: Severus in a bad way says that nature and hypostasis is the same thing in order to establish confusion (of natures in Christ). He avoids that criticism by saying that by nature he means hypostasis. Again he introduces division by confessing union from a hypostasis and wrongly says that the natures should be understood as hypostases. When Severus is criticized about the annihilation of natures due to their mere difference, he resorts to the apology that it is a mere difference in natural quality. In the same way that Nestorius, by confessing the mere union of natures, he truly introduced division, Severus, by confessing a mere natural difference, truly introduced confusion’.63

61 E.W. Brooks, A Collection (1973), I, To Oecumenius, 179-80, ‘We therefore anathematize not those who confess the properties of the natures of which the one Christ consists, but those who separate the properties, and apportion them to each nature apart. When the one Christ has once been divided (and he is divided by the fact that they speak of two natures after the union), with the natures which have been cut asunder into a duality and separated into a distinct diversity go the operations and properties which are the offspring of this division, as the words of Leo’s impious letter state’. 62 E.W. Brooks, A Collection (1973), Χ, To Eleusinius, 202-3. 63 St. Maximus Confessor, Opuscula Theologica et Polemica, PG 91, 40AB.

The Second Dionysian Text in Manuscript ‘Vat. Sir. 123’ (An excerpt of epistle VIII1 of the Corpus Dionysiacum following the ‘Epistola ad s. Timotheum de passione apostolorum Petri et Pauli’ attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite) Michael MUTHREICH, Göttingen

ABSTRACT In an old Syriac manuscript from the Vatican Library (Vat. Sir. 123) we find a fragment resp. a short text which Assemani, in his catalogue of Syriac manuscripts in the Vatican Library, calls ‘De Sacerdotio’, immediately following on the ‘Epistola ad s. Timotheum de passione apostolorum Petri et Pauli’ (CPG 6631)2 and both texts are ascribed to S. Dionysius. Gribomont in his otherwise well-grounded article on this manuscript, strangely enough, ignores this little text. ‘De Sacerdotio’ is actually an excerpt of the eighth letter to Demophilos (CPG 6611)3 belonging to the Corpus Dionysiacum. Comparing the excerpt ‘De Sacerdotio’ to Syriac translations of the letter to Demophilos, it can be assumed that its translation goes back to Sergius of Reshaina, the first translator of the Corpus Dionysiacum into Syriac. It closely corresponds to the fragment of letter VIII given in manuscript Sinaiticus Syriacus 52 (S1) usually seen as the translation of Sergius. In this article I will show the main features of the manuscript and give a short description of the excerpt from letter VIII to Demophilos in the Vatican manuscript (Vat. Sir. 123) including text and translation.

A. Introductory Remarks In the year 931 or 932 a Syriac abbot returned from a long journey to his original monastery in the Scetis bringing with him around 250 manuscripts. This abbot, Moses of Nisibis, made his way from the Wadi El Natrun (Nitrian Desert) to the capital of the Abbasid Empire Baghdad five years earlier primarily for political reasons, trying to get a tax release for the Egyptian monasteries. It is reported that he eventually succeeded in his mission. During his long stay in Mesopotamia he visited several Syriac monasteries in search of manuscripts 1

Corpus Dionysiacum 1092, 1 B-C. CPG: Clavis Patrum Graecorum. See Maurice Geerard, Clavis Patrum Graecorum 3: A Cyrillo Alexandrino ad Iohannem Damascenum (Turnhout, 1979), 275. 3 See ibid. 272. 2

Studia Patristica CII, 247-258. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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not extant in Dayr as-Suryān (also called the monastery of Maria Deipara) where he came from. Returning from his successful journey loaded with books he made his monastery one of the learning centres in Egypt.4 Nowadays the majority of manuscripts before located at Dayr as-Suryān are spread all over main libraries in Europe many of them being treasured in the British Library. One of the manuscripts Moses of Nisibis brought from Mesopotamia to the Scetis is now preserved in the Vatican Library. Its shelf mark is Vat. Sir. 123 and it is currently accessible to the public thanks to the efforts made at the Vatican Library in digitizing its stock. The manuscript (Vat. Sir. 123) seems to have been incomplete or in great parts damaged when arriving the Scetis because it was restored soon after its arrival according to Gribomonts hypothesis.5 The manuscript originally dates back to the sixth century whereas the restored part is of a later hand going back to the ninth or as Gribomont – according to his hypothesis – suggests to the tenth century. This is obvious from the writing, the writing material and the binding which differ immensely between these two parts. I will give my own view on this phenomenon later in this article. Both Dionysian texts are to be found in the restored later section i.e. the first part of the codex. Nevertheless Gribomont has shown that the restored text was complemented on the basis of what was originally written on the lost or – at that time – at least damaged part. He was able to show that the re-established text is mainly of the same recension as the still extant part from the sixth century.6 If what seems to be an addition of the tenth century to the text of the sixth century is actually a restoration of the original manuscript the Dionysian texts are quite old, i.e. they date back to the sixth century. What goes against this assumption is that Yuhanon Naqar, whose opuscules are also to be found in the text written by the later hand, is generally supposed to have lived in the ninth century. Nevertheless there is a Syriac authority who, based on extracts of texts he found in an ancient manuscript going back to that earlier period, places him in the eighth or even the sixth century.7 If the Dionysian texts in fact go back to such an early date they could be contemporary to the first translation of the Corpus Dionysiacum into Syriac by Sergius of Reshaina (died 523).8 Anyway 4 See Sebastian P. Brock et alii (eds), Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage (Piscataway, NJ, 2011), 301-2 (‘Mushe of Nisibis’, Luc Van Rompay). 5 Jean Gribomont, ‘Le vieux corpus monastique du Vatican Syr. 123’, Le Muséon 100 (1987), 140. 6 Here, to a great extent, Gribomont relies on Draguet. 7 See Herman G.B. Teule, ‘Jean Nāqar, auteur ascétique syro-occidental’, Parole de l’Orient 23 (1998), 64. Mar Ignatius Aphram I Barsaum lists Yuhannon Naqar among the authors of the sixth century, see Mar Ignatius Aphram I Barsaum, Histoire des Sciences et de la Littérature Syriaque (Glane, 1987), 282-3, 527. 8 See Beate Regina Suchla, Corpus Dionysiacum I, De Divinis Nominibus (Berlin, New York, 1990), 57-9.

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the excerpt of letter VIII is most probably taken from the translation of Sergius of Reshaina.9 In the year 1715 J.S. Assemani travelled to the monastery of Maria Deipara where he acquired manuscripts. On his way back to Rome the box containing the manuscripts fell into the Nile causing damage of folios in various manuscripts. Manuscript Vat. Sir. 123 shows traces of this accident and is therefore partly difficult to read resp. illegible. In Rome the folios in disorder after their fall into the Nile were rebound according to the numeration given by Assemani shortly after the accident to preserve their original sequence.10 As far as the arrangement of folios is concerned,11 the manuscript was therefore put together according to its original order, as Gribomont was able to show. B. Description of the Manuscript For a full and detailed description of the manuscript (Vat. Sir. 123) I would like to refer to the article of Gribomont who gave an exhaustive report on the manuscript.12 At this point I am going to limit myself to some main information. The manuscript (Vat. Sir. 123) is made of parchment,13 consisting of 303 folia measuring 220 × 140 mm. The first part, called A by Gribomont, is bound in quinions, the second and older one (parts B and C by Gribomont) is bound in quaternions. On each first and last page of a quire fairly regularly the numbers of the quires are given. They are to be found at the inner edge of the page close to the binding of the quires. The manuscript is written in Estrangelo and was given no. 19 among the codices of Dayr as-Suryān.14 The content is given thus by Gribomont (supplemented by Assemani, Draguet and myself)15: Part A (ff. 1-208 + 214, one column): ff. 1-115v: Grigorios of Cyprus (the monk), Mimre 3-8 (acephalic). 9 It corresponds to the fragments of epistle VIII given by Fiori who attributes them to the translation of Sergius of Reshaina. See Emiliano Fiori, Dionigi Areopagita Nomi divini, Teologia mistica, Epistole – La versione siriaca di Sergio di Rēš‘aynā, CSCO 656, Syr. 252 (Leuven, 2014), 119-20. 10 See J. Gribomont, ‘Le vieux corpus’ (1987), 132. 11 See ibid. 132, 139-40. 12 Ibid., see also René Draguet, Les cinq recensions de l’Ascéticon Syriaque d’Abba Isaïe, CSCO 289, Syr. 120 (Leuven, 1968), 30*-33*. 13 See Assemani, Stephanus Evodius et Joseph Simonius, Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticanae codicum manuscriptorum Catalogus in tres partes distributus, partis primae tomus tertius complectens reliquos codices chaldaicos sive syriacos (Rome, 1759), 139. 14 See ibid. 15 For a detailed description of the manuscript’s content it is still advisable to consult Assemanis catalogue (1759).

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f. 1r Grigorios of Cyprus from Mīmrā 3: Sermon to peregrine brothers who live in cells. f. 15r of the same from Mīmrā 4. f. 17v of the same from Mīmrā 5. f. 26v of the same from Mīmrā 6: Sermon about the brothers who preside over convents and monasteries. f. 33v of the same from Mīmrā 7: About the holy vision. f. 66v of the same from a Mīmrā about exercising moral virtues with questions and answers (directed to ‘Theodor’ and Aba Epiphanius). f. 93r of the same from a Mīmrā about practising the monkish life. ff. 115v-144r: John the Solitary of Apamea (Yoḥanan Iḥidaya), About the new world. f. 115v Yoḥanan Iḥidaya ‘second treatise about the world to come’.16 ff. 144r-172v: John the Solitary of Apamea (Yoḥanan Iḥidaya), Dialogues 2 and 3 about the passions (partly). f. 144r of the same ‘second Mīmrā on the explanation of the passions of the soul and on the reason of its movement to Eusebius and Eutropius’.17 f. 159r of the same ‘third Mīmrā about the passions of the soul and the body’ (incomplete).18 ff. 172v-184v: Abraham of Nephtar (resp. Nathpar or Nephrath), Exhortations 1-5 (in fact ending on f. 185r).19 f. 172v Abraham of Nephtar a Mīmrā for admonition. f. 176r of the same a Mīmrā about exhortation and prayer. f. 179v of the same a Mīmrā about exhortation. f. 181v of the same about the same. f. 184r of the same about the same. ff. 185r-198v: Liber Graduum, Mīmrē 20, 2 and 14. f. 185r Liber Graduum, Mīmrā 20 ‘About the difficult ascends on the way (to the city of our Lord)’.20 f. 193r Liber Graduum, Mīmrā 2 ‘About those who want to be perfect’.21 f. 196v Liber Graduum, Mīmrā 14 ‘About the Just and the Perfect’.22 ff. 198v-204v: Dionysius the Areopagite, Epistola ad s. Timotheum de passione apostolorum Petri et Pauli. 16

Werner Strothmann, Johannes von Apamea (Berlin, New York, 1972), 18. Sven Dedering, Johannes von Lykopolis – Ein Dialog über die Seele und die Affekte des Menschen (Leiden, 1936), 28-54. 18 S. Dedering, Johannes von Lykopolis (1936), 55-7417. 19 About Yuhannon Naqar in this manuscript see H.G.B. Teule, ‘Jean Nāqar’ (1998), 61-78. 20 Michael Kmosko, Liber Graduum, Patrologia Syriaca pars I, tom. III (1926), 527-82. 21 M. Kmosko, Liber Graduum (1926), 25-44. 22 Ibid. 323-34. 17

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ff. 204v-205r: Dionysius the Areopagite, Epistle VIII, 2 (extract, not mentioned by Gribomont).23 ff. 205r-208r: Yuḥanon Naqar (= Yoḥanan Iḥidaya?),24 four opuscules.25 f. 205r Useful words of Yuḥanon Naqar, Instruction for peregrine brothers. f. 206r of the same about living in the cell. f. 206v of the same about how charity is to be exhibited. f. 207r of the same about poverty. f. 207v Saying of Anthony (Apophthegmata Patrum).26 f. 208r: Isaiah of Scetis (resp. of Gaza) advices for those who want to leave the world and become monks. f. 208v last page written by scribe A (according to Gribomont). Part B (ff. 209-213 + 215-294, two columns)27 ff. 208r-256v: Isaiah of Scetis (resp. of Gaza):28 Letter of Anthony, Apophthegms. f. 209v first page written by scribe B (according to Gribomont): Doctrine of the fathers (starts at the end of column two). f. 210v about understanding and discerning the work of thoughts. f. 214r a folio written by scribe A (completion of the text written by scribe B?): Also of him, Aba Isaiah.29 f. 215r continuation of the text by scribe B: From the words of Anthony (starts at the end of column one). f. 216r about the firmness of the brothers who are rooted in godliness or those who want to live in a monastery or on their own. f. 218v about those who want to live together with brothers. f. 220v about understanding and discernment. f. 227r sermon of an elder. f. 231v seven words which Aba Moses spoke with Aba Poimen, who remembers them is able to live freely and jauntily wherever he wants, may it be in a monastery or in the desert or among people. f. 233r Words of Aba Poimen. f. 234r Apophtegmata. f. 238r discussions of the Egyptian fathers. f. 239r questions and words of the Egyptian fathers about thoughts of fornication. 23 Assemani describes this fragment in his Catalogue as ‘Dionysii de Sacerdotio’. See Assemani (1759), 141. 24 Assemani identifies Yuḥannon Naqar as Yuḥannon Iḥidaya. See Assemani (1759), 141. 25 About Yuhanon Naqar see H.G.B. Teule, ‘Jean Nāqar’ (1998), 61-78. 26 See Assemani (1759), 141-142, i.e. Saying 33 of Anthony (PG 65, 85) as R. Draguet, Le cinq recensions (1968) 31* (annotation 3) indicates. 27 See J. Gribomont, ‘Le vieux corpus’ (1987), 135-9. 28 See R. Draguet, Les cinq recensions (1968), 31*-33*. 29 See ibid. 32*: Logos XIII, 12-9 and 21 (180-6).

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f. 241v Letter of Mor Anthony which he wrote to brothers. f. 246r from the holy teachings of the Egyptian fathers and the believers in God. 255r inquiry of the brothers: What rank a person has to have to receive godly inspirations (visions). ff. 256v-294v: Palladius of Heliopolis, Lausiac History (extracts). 256v narration of the habits of life of the Egyptian fathers. Part C (ff. 295-303, one column) ff. 295r-303v: John the Solitary of Apamea (Yoḥanan Iḥidaya), the same as ff. 156v-163r (without proper ending).30 f. 295r first page written by a new scribe (scribe C, according to Gribomont): Yoḥanan Iḥidaya, De animi affectibus.31 f. 300r Yoḥanan Iḥidaya: ‘End of (Mīmrā) four: About the passions of the soul’32, ending on f. 303v end of the whole manuscript due to a loss of folios (a proper end is missing). Looking at the content of the manuscript it is obvious that it was intended for monastic use i.e. for edification, exhortation and the teaching of monks. Teule calls it an ascetical florilegium.33 It is however arranged in a quite sophisticated way especially when we look at part A and focus on the texts selected from the Liber Graduum. It starts with Mīmrā 20 ‘About the difficult ascends on the way (to the city of our Lord)’ commences with Mīmrā 2 ‘About those who want to be perfect’ and ends with Mīmrā 14 ‘About the Just and the Perfect’. It leads – so to speak – onto the path of perfection starting with broaching the issue of the difficulty of the way, proceeding to admonitions and exhortations for persons who are willing to follow that path and finally giving the characteristics of those who accomplished perfection. Following the chapter about the Just and Perfect the ‘Epistola ad s. Timotheum de passione apostolorum Petri et Pauli’ ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite is given as if it were the ultimate example of the perfection of the Just. If this was the intention of the scribe or editor the Dionysian ‘Epistola ad s. Timotheum de passione apostolorum Petri et Pauli’ seems to be the culminating point of the whole manuscript. After the ‘Epistola ad s. Timotheum de passione apostolorum Petri et Pauli’ (and before it) there are various texts dealing with similar subjects confirming the general intention in edifying and teaching the monkish readers none of them decidedly dealing with the holy apostles.

30 31 32 33

See See See See

S. Dedering, Johannes von Lykopolis (1936), 4610-6111. ibid. 4610-54. ibid. 55-6111. H.G.B. Teule, ‘Jean Nāqar’ (1998), 64.

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To conclude the description of the manuscript some additional words may be said about its age especially concerning the younger part and also about the scribe. Gribomont, as already mentioned above, dates parts B and C to the sixth century.34 He chiefly follows Draguet and van Lantschoot and this early dating seems reasonable enough. A problem occurs with part A which is dated to the ninth century by Draguet and Sauget35 but set into the tenth century by Gribomont because he supposes that the manuscript was restored at the Dayr as-Suryān shortly after it was brought there by Moses of Nisibis in 932. Gribomont says: ‘Où situer cette restauration du manuscrit, en mauvais état, du VIe s., sinon à NotreDame-des-Syriens de Scété, où l’abbé Moïse avait accumulé les manuscrits trouvés en Mésopotamie? Cela obligerait à situer la main A peu après 932, époque de l’expédition du moine bibliophile. Draguet avait propose de situer A au IXe s., mais ce n’était, de sa part, qu’une estimation’.36

Gribomont is right to assume that part A was written in the Scetis and he was certainly also right concerning the date if we assume that the mentioned restoration included a newly written copy of missing or damaged parts of the manuscript. On the other hand it may well be that the original manuscript brought to the Scetis by Moses of Nisibis – i.e. parts B and C – was repaired, rearranged or even cleansed of maybe Nestorian content and supplemented with folios from another – maybe also damaged – later Jacobite manuscript containing similar texts. We have to bear in mind that the manuscript’s original location was in the East. What is more Gribomont says: ‘On peut pourtant noter l’origine plutôt «nestorienne» d’un bon nombre des pièces qui ne sont pas communes dans les bibliothèques jacobites’.37 I personally tend towards the second possibility assuming a rearrangement or perhaps a cleansing of parts of texts from ‘heretical’ i.e. Nestorian ideas turning the manuscript into a proper Monophysite text. A strong argument for this view is the hand of scribe A and it’s intriguing similarity to the hand of a certain Joseph who was a scribe at Dayr as-Suryān living in the ninth century coming from Harran.38 Hatch in his ‘Album of Dated Syriac Manuscripts’ gives another example of a Syriac manuscript (British Museum Add. MS. 17130, fol. 56v) written in the Scetis for the Dayr as-Suryān dating back to the ninth century, 34

See J. Gribomont, ‘Le vieux corpus’ (1987), 133. See ibid. 36 Ibid. 140. 37 Ibid. 38 See William H.P. Hatch, An Album of Dated Syriac Manuscripts (Boston, 1946), p. 162 (Plate CXI). Plate CXI shows folio 46 of manuscript Add. 14668 in the British Museum (= British Library). Draguet ingeniously uses Hatch’s catalogue already for dating manuscript Vat. Sir. 123. He mentions the same manuscript but another folio (40v, i.e. Plate CIII) to date part A of it. See R. Draguet, Les cinq recensions (1968), 30* (annotation 1). 35

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whose scribe is not identified in the manuscript but whose hand is very similar to hand A of our manuscript as well.39 It may well have been written by the same scribe, Joseph of Harran (or both scribes may have belonged to the same school). If so it is impossible to assume that part A ought to be placed in the tenth century i.e. after Moses of Nisibis’ return to the Dayr as-Suryān in 932. Strangely enough the bindings of part A and B (and C) are different as has already been pointed out. Part A is bound in quinions and part B (and C) in quaternions. This fact is perhaps easier to explain if we suppose two originally different manuscripts bound together to make a new one. Especially if we notice that the scribe (or the person who arranged the manuscript to be more precise) did not try to connect text parts properly. Draguet for example says: ‘Entre les folios estranghelo 213 et 215, s’insère un folio serto (214), dont le texte ne se relie ni à la fin de 213 ni au début de 215, et qui comprend deux extraits isaïens aussi, mais d’(une autre)40 recension…’.41 Gribomont says: ‘… on constate une lacune non définie après B et après C’.42 Furthermore a restorer would at least in some way have tried to imitate the hand or the style of the scribe of the writing to be restored. This is however not at all the case in the manuscript at hand, even the number of columns differs. On the other hand the ‘Epistola ad s. Timotheum de passione apostolorum Petri et Pauli’ ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite was not known43 or in any case not popularly known or widely spread at this early date in the Syrian Church of the East, the Nestorian church. This makes it doubtful as to whether the Dionysian epistola originally belonged to the manuscript brought to the Scetis by Moses of Nisibis, assuming its Nestorian origin. As has been said above, the translation of letter VIII of the Corpus Dionysiacum was made most likely by Sergius of Reshaina. Sergius in fact was a monophysite who is said to have changed to the Chalcedonian side later in his life.44 Even if Sergius himself had close or at least some relationship to Nestorian Christians, he was not considered a Nestorian; and in manuscripts originating from the Church of the East one does in fact not expect to find texts or translations of ‘monophysite’ provenance especially in a corpus supposed to contain writings of unquestionably ‘orthodox’ authors. Even if the last argument is not convincing on its own taking all the given reasons into account I guess the 39

See W.H.P. Hatch, An Album of Dated Syriac Manuscripts (1946), 158 (Plate CVIII). The insertion in brackets is by me. 41 R. Draguet, Les cinq recensions (1968), 32*. 42 See J. Gribomont, ‘Le vieux corpus’ (1987), 133. 43 See Anton Baumstark, Die Petrus- und Paulusakten in der literarischen Überlieferung der syrischen Kirche (Leipzig, 1902), 36. Baumstark says: ‘Von einer Bekanntschaft der Nestorianer mit diesem Briefe fehlt dagegen jede Spur’. 44 See for example Lexikon der antiken christlichen Literatur, 3rd ed. (Freiburg, Basel, Wien, 2002), 633. 40

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Dionysian epistle on the death of Paul and Peter as well as letter VIII of the Corpus Dionysiacum encroached on the manuscript as a result of the suggested rearrangement. C. The Eighth Epistle of the Corpus Dionysiacum in Syriac a) General remarks Letter VIII to Demophilus the monk is the longest among the ten letters of the Corpus Dionysiacum. It deals with the hierarchy inside the church admonishing a certain Demophilus to honour or at least to respect the right hierarchical order. Stang writes: Dionysius’ letter 8 is addressed to a certain monk Demophilos – a ‘crowd pleaser’ – who deigned to break the order of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. This monk apparently objected to the fact that his superior welcomed a penitent back into communion and so thrust his way into the inner sanctuary to steal away with the ‘sacred things’. Dionysius chastises this monk and defends the order of the hierarchy, alluding to Paul’s advice to the Corinthians: ‘[E]ach must keep to himself, and not meditate things too high and too deep for him, but contemplate alone things prescribed for him according to order’.45

It deals with the Good insofar as Demophilus is exhorted to be humble and merciful as Christ was. He was rude, we are told, towards a sinner who wanted to repent his sins and towards a priest accepting his repentance or going to do so. Demophilus a simple monk stood against the hierarchical order of the church assuming to defend the will of God. In doing so however he violated charity and mercy and thereby offended Christian belief. The excerpt of the text given in the manuscript46 reproaches the person for claiming the honour of priesthood without being consecrated as priest or boasting to be enlightened by God without having part in the godly light. In the Corpus Dionysiacum letter VIII follows an epistle to a certain bishop Polycarp telling, among others, Dionysius’ alleged stay in Heliopolis where he experienced the solar eclipse resp. the darkness reported to have taken place at the crucifixion of Christ.47 This seventh letter was quite important for another small text running under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite, namely the ‘Narratio de vita sua’ (CPG 6633).48 Why the excerpt of the eighth letter was inserted after the ‘Epistola ad s. Timotheum de passione apostolorum Petri et 45

Charles M. Stang, Apophasis and Pseudonymity in Dionysius the Areopagite (Oxford, 2012),

83-4. 46 47 48

See footnote 1. Matt. 27:45; Mark 15:33; Lk. 23:44-5. See M. Geerard, Clavis (1979), 276.

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Pauli’ is quite difficult to say. Of course it is a text ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite but it has no connection to the martyrdom of the apostles. However, since the eighth letter deals with the hierarchical order (τάξις) and Dionysius alludes to the apostle Paul several times in the letter,49 which the reader of the excerpt was surely familiar with, he may as well still have had the praising and confirmative words in his mind which he read in the ‘Epistola ad s. Timotheum de passione apostolorum Petri et Pauli’ saying: Ÿ ûêòsx¿çùÎÐ{ÍàüÝxs .ÀĀúÙĀðÂÁüù¿ćàj†{¾ćäÚÓÛÐs Ÿ èãxÀĀáãâÝÍÙĀÙs¿æÎçùÎàxüãs¿ćà{k†ÎàÎòèãx¿æÎçù{ ÀÍà¾ćàÿÚÃà†ÎÅÎà{s{zÀ{zËúòüÚÅ¿çÝz .ÁüãsĀãÀÍàs œ ? .¿ÂĀÞÂèÙüù… {{z¿ćà¿çúþóãÀËðÂĀÙs¿ćà…sxk†ÎàÎò ‘My brother Timothy, do not read the Old Testament. Remember that decree and canon which was given by Paul. And do not say that not every word spoken by God is canon. Thus commanded Paul the theologian who put on God: “If there is no interpreter in the church you shall not read the scriptures”!’50

The excerpt can no doubt serve to exhort monks thereby correspond to the overall purpose of the manuscript. It seems to have been read as well in the Arabic tradition of Dionysian texts.51 It was after all quite popular in (for the most part monophysite) Syriac Christianity. The translation of the text corresponds to the fragment of letter VIII in manuscript Sinaiticus Syriacus 52 (S1) which comprises the Syriac translation of the Corpus Dionysiacum usually attributed to Sergius of Reshaina. In his edition of the ‘Divine names’ in Syriac Fiori says: ‘Inauguriamo qui il lavore di edizione, traduzione e commento di quella versione siriaca del Corpus dionysiacum che nel 1952 Polycarp Sherwood propose corretamente di attribuire a Sergio di Rēš‘ayna’.52 Even if this manuscript is the only witness of this particular translation53 of Dionysian texts into Syriac – due to its fragmentary state the name of the translator is not given – one should assume Sergius of Reshaina to be the translator. This is because it was preserved in a monophysite surrounding. It is a quite free 49

Ch. M. Stang, Apophasis and Pseudonymity (2012), 84. The English translation was done by me. The Syriac text is an excerpt of the forthcoming edition of the ‘Epistola de Morte Apostolorum Petri et Pauli’ currently being prepared by the Patristic Commission of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities. For an existing Syriac edition of this letter see Jean Baptiste Pitra, Analecta sacra spicilegio solesmensi parata, Tom. IV (Patres Antenicaeni) (Paris, 1883), 241-9 (Syriac text), 261-71 (Latin translation of the Syriac text with the proper Latin version). 51 See Georg Graf, Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur, Erster Band: Die Übersetzungen (Vatican City, 1944), 371. 52 E. Fiori, Dionigi Areopagita (2014), XIII. 53 Ibid. 50

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translation54 and it does not correspond to resp. depend upon the translation made by Phocas bar Sergius55 the later translator of Dionysian writings whose translation had been widely accepted finally replacing the older one of Sergius of Reshaina. b) The Syriac text of the excerpt of Epistle VIII (1092 1, B-C)56: ÀÎæÍÝâïxÀĀÙÎЏ†ÎÚéÎççÙx¿þÙËùxÍáÙxu{ Ÿ üÙĀÙ 57[ÀÍàsèãÄÙüù{z¿çÚÝ{]ÀÍàsÎàÄÙüùxüÚÅ¿êÞÓâÝ ÎàĀÙ¾ÙĀÙsèÚÃÙüùxèÚáÙs…{ÍáÝ{ .ÍçãèÚúÚЍxÀÍà¾ćà…Îæzèã ßÙsÀ{z¿ćà{ .èٍÍçãĀÙ¾æËÑÝsèÙüÙÍæüÙĀÙÁüÙüýÁzÎæ Ÿ ¿ćàskÁxzßÙsxÀÎÃÙüúàÍÚáÝĀ鏄ËãÀĀÝ{ËÂ{sÁ¾Âx ÀÍàsx¿çáÃúãÀ{ÍæxÒþÐx¿ćáÚÑÂ. Ÿ ? ¿ÝÎþÑÂxèÚà¾ćàÍçãx{z€z{ĀÙs¿æ ÍÝx¿êÞÓxâÚÝz{Íæs ¿êÞÓèã{¿ćáÚÐèãâÚóæĀÙsüÚäÅx€z¿ÚáÅ .…{ÍÙĀÙsÀÎÚðÓx Ÿ èãâÚóæèÙxĀÙsüÙĀÙ .¿æÍçã€z{ĀÙs¿ćàx¿çÙs{zkÀÎæÍÝx Ÿ uüùĀãĀÙ¾ÐüãxÛàÁüÂĀêã{ .üÙÍæ¿ćàÍãÎçù{zx¿çÙs{z .¿æz Ÿ ¿ćà{xĀêã¿ćà{ .€z{ĀÙs¿çÝzx¿çÙs{zkÀÎæÍÝx¿çÑàÎóà Ÿ ? {zkÀÍàsåÞпćàxüÃêã{ .¿ýxÎùĀ‰x¿êÞÓèãüÃàxÍ Ÿ ÁüùĀãĀÙ¾ćáÅxx{ÍàÍà¿ðÔãxÍàüÃé{ .ÍþóæâïˆËÙ{zx¿ćã ? zÎà‹üãs¿ćàxâÔãk€zÎòxÎÅüã¾ćäà¿ðé{¿ÂsÍçã ? ? ? €z{ĀÙsâÚÝz¿ćà .¿ÙÍàsÀ| x¿ýxÎù„Ëùk¿ÑÚþãx¿Úã{Ë ¿çÞÑÆã{¿ćáÚÞæ{¿ÃÂËáð€z{ĀÙs¿ćàs .€z{ĀÙs¿ćà¿æÍÝ¿æz åáý .Áüãsx¿Þþä¿ćäï„ËùèÙÏãx¿Âsx{ÍþóçÂÁËÓøãx .†ÎÚéÎççÙx

c) The English translation:58 ‘Also (written) by him (i.e.) the holy Dionysius: Statement about priesthood Each rank though which is close to God, its nature is closer to God than those (are) to God which are farer away from him. And everything which is 54 The translation is free i.e. it shortens the original and obscures its meaning ‘by the use of unusual and difficult compounds’ as far as Phocas according to Sherwood says. This anyway holds true if we assume the original to be the text given by John of Scythopolis. See Polycarp Sherwood, ‘Sergius of Reshaina and the Syriac Versions of Pseudo-Denis’, Sacris Erudiri IV (1952), (9-10) 182-3. In the translation of the excerpt of letter VIII however the opposite is the case. Sergius expands the original to some extent in order to make it clearer to the reader. 55 See P. Sherwood, ‘Sergius of Reshaina’ (1952), (6) 179. 56 The text was established by me utilizing Fiori’s overall reliable edition. See E. Fiori, Dionigi Areopagita (2014), 119-20. 57 The words in square brackets are reconstructed by me because they are almost illegible in the manuscript. They may therefore not exactly correspond to the original text. 58 The translation was done by me with frequent reference to the translation of Parker. See John Parker, The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite, Part I: Divine Names, Mystic Theology, Letters etc. (London, 1897), 157-8.

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essentially nearer to the true light is more luminous and at the same time more illuminating, and this (i.e. being nearer) does not apply according to space or location; you should consider nearness only as power that makes susceptible to receive God. So if the rank of priests is the one that illuminates those who are in the darkness of error, it is clear that someone who does not illuminate (others) completely has fallen away from the authority and rank of priesthood; (and how) much more the one who is not enlightened himself. It seems to me that someone who is like him approaches the office of priesthood with hubris. He is not terrified and not ashamed to long – beyond the rank (i.e. outside his rank) – after consecrations. Moreover he thinks that God is not aware of what he knows about himself and thinks to deceive the One he falsely calls father. He boldly utters his blasphemies, because he does not speak his prayers like Christ, in the presence of the consecrations of the godly sacraments. This one is no priest though, he is nothing else but an enemy and a deceived mocker – because he mocks himself – and a wolf wearing a sheepskin in front of the people.59 Dionysius ends’.

59

Literally: ‘who supplies himself with a sheepskin in front of the people’.

A Natural Source of Spiritual Healing Lost in Translation: On Chapter II 45 of the 300 Kephalaia by Nikitas Stithatos1 Hellen DAYTON, Dubai Silicon Oasis, U.A.E.

ABSTRACT Whether the tears of katanuxis (roughly translated ‘compunction’) are ‘naturally’/ ‘physically’ implanted in us, as Nikitas Stithatos wrote in his 300 Kephalaia (PG 120, 920D-921A) in Byzantine Patristic Greek, or they are unnatural to us, as the English translation of Philokalia (4, 119) presents it, is significant. An inaccuracy in the translation of chapter II 45 turns the explanation of the essential healing process of conscience into a kind of esoterically peculiar intellectual operation, an abasement of intellect and shuttering of the heart – an actual deprivation of the natural source of healing for the soul and body. The text in Byzantine Patristic Greek describes the heart not as shuttered but as worn-out, and the intellect not as humbled but as become humbleminded, which from the standpoint of Eastern Orthodox spirituality is not a crushing tragedy but rather clears the way for a revival, opening a new and better pathway for the soul, and it does so naturally.

Nicetas Pectoratus (ca. 1005-ca. 1090) in Latin, or Saint Nikitas Stithatos (Νικήτας Στηθάτος2) in Greek, was a Byzantine monastic priest and the closest disciple of Symeon the New Theologian. He was a mystic and theologian and 1

Nicetas Pectoratus, Ch. II 45, ‘Physicorum capitum centuria secunda de purgatione animi’, ‘Capitum Practicorum Centurias Tres’, Patrologiæ cursus completus: seu, Bibliotheca universalis, integra, uniformis, commoda, oeconomica omnium SS. patrum, doctorum, scriptorumque ecclesiasticorum. Series græca, Volume 120 (Paris, 1864), 920D-921A. (Hereafter cited as Patrologia Graeca 120 in the text or PG 120 in the references). 2 Nikitas received his sobriquet Στηθάτος (which is translated as ‘the Courageous’) because he convicted Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos of having a mistress, according to the version presented in ‘Introductory Note’ to his writings in: G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, Kallistos Ware (eds), The Philokalia. Vol. 4. The Complete Text; Compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain & St. Macarius of Corinth (London, 1998), 76-7. However, there is no precise reference for the source of this story in the ‘Introductory Note’. This interpretation of his name is not the only one. Paissy Velichkovsky translated the sobriquet as ‘the Humble’ in his Church Slavonic translation of the Philokalia: Dobrotoljubie. Part Four (Moscow, 1793), 40f.rev. It is difficult to say what this word means exactly but this nickname is formed from the Greek root στηθ-, which is translated as ‘breast’ in H.G. Liddell & R. Scott, Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford, 1996), 1642-3. This lexicon explains the usage of breast as ‘the seat of feeling and thought as we use heart’ (ibid.). Therefore, one can guess that this sobriquet may have appeared because of his practicing contemplation in a certain position, but this is only a guess – we cannot be sure of it.

Studia Patristica CII, 259-268. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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became the editor of Symeon the New Theologian’s writings. The Greek language of Nikitas, who was the presbyter of the Constantinopolitan Stoudios Monastery that served the needs of Imperial Court members, is very advanced and antiquated and is not only stylistically reminiscent of Classical Greek but also employs its concepts.3 He entered the Stoudios Monastery when he was 14 years old, grew up there and eventually became a respected resident. It is unclear whether or not Stithatos became the superior of the Stoudios Monastery. Patrologia Graeca mentions him only as a presbyter,4 while one of the newer studies describes him as an abbot.5 Whether Nikitas was an abbot does not matter for the purposes of this article; in any case he was well-respected within the Church. In supporting the Patriarch of Constantinople Michael I Cerularius, Nikitas Stithatos was actually at the root of the Great Schism of the Eastern and Western Churches. This engagement in Church politics was not a work that Nikitas Stithatos would ordinarily have undertaken, but it was only a temporary responsibility. His daily work was mainly the practice of spiritual direction and preaching, in which he was quite skilled, judging from the polysemantics of his writings which address a wide spectrum of diverse readers, so that all are able to understand the words of Nikitas at their own level. Stithatos had to write, re-think and re-write manuscripts numerous times over decades in order to impart such quality and depth to his works. Thus his 300 Kephalaia pose great difficulty for translators, and those who have rendered his writings into English are no exception, as I found out almost as soon as I began to verify the English translations of Nikitas’ texts within The Philokalia.6 I understood that the only honest approach is to translate Stithatos’ passages from Byzantine Greek thoroughly again in order to make theological sense of his writings. I did so in my doctoral dissertation in English, an extract of which with all these translations has been published by the Pontifical Oriental Institute (Vatican).7 During my work on this thesis, I found many translation mismatches in regard to the text versions of the Venetian edition of the Φιλοκαλία by Bortoli (Venice, 1782), in Patrologia Graeca 120 (Paris, 1864), and in the English version of Philokalia. They affect the meaning of what Nikitas wrote, and sometimes these are not possible variations of translation but are impossible to 3 My thanks to Prof. Thomas O’Loughlin for pointing out these concepts after listening to my presentation. 4 PG 120, 851-2. 5 Michael Angold, Church and Society in Byzantium under the Comneni, 1081-1261 (Cambridge, 2000), 269. 6 The Philokalia Vol. 4: The Complete Text Compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St. Makarios of Corinth (London, Boston, 1998), 79-173. Hereafter abbreviated as The Philokalia. 7 Hellen Dayton, Katanuxis as the Way of Healing in Symeon the New Theologian and Nicetas Stethatos and in their Medieval Church Slavonic Translations (in STSL). Excerpta ex Dissertatione ad Doctoratum (Rome, 2014).

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reconcile with the original text. Quite possibly at that time Archimandrite Kallistos (Timothy Richard) Ware and the late Dr Philip Sherrard introduced these changes while ‘checking against the Greek text for consistency in interpretation’.8 This article is about one such apparent difference, thanks to which the ‘natural’ source of spiritual healing according to Nikitas Stithatos was lost in the translation into English. * * * Whether the tears of κατάνυξις (very roughly translated as Latin compunctio)9 are ‘naturally’10 ‘implanted’11 in us, as Nikitas Stithatos wrote in his 300 Kephalaia12 or they are not natural to us, as the English translation of The Philokalia, The Complete Text, Volume Four explains it,13 is a significant question. It is important to translate chapter 54 of the Second Hundred Chapters properly because otherwise it leads to deprivation of a natural source of healing of the soul and body, which can be beneficially used in spiritual direction or during confessions even now. 8 G.E.H. Palmer, Ph. Sherrard, K. Ware, ‘Introduction’, The Philokalia, Vol. 1: The Complete Text Compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St. Makarios of Corinth (London, Boston, 1995), 17. On page 11 of this volume and in the introduction the translators identify the edition which they used: ‘A third edition, in five volumes, was also published at Athens during the years 1957-1963 by the Astir Publishing Company. It is on the Astir edition that our English translation is based’. 9 Latin compunctio is not to be equated with English ‘compunction’ but includes at least all the spectrum of English definitions of this Latin word. See the published extract of my doctoral dissertation for a more detailed explanation of the meanings of this term by different patristic writers: H. Dayton, Katanuxis (2014). 10 ‘φυσικῶς’ (PG 120, II 45, 921A) – ‘by nature’, ‘naturally’, of second nature, naturally as a matter of, ‘in fact’, ‘truly’, ‘essentially’, ‘physically’, ‘outwardly’ (G.W.H. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon [Oxford, New York, 2004], 1495). The Lexicon is hereafter abbreviated as Lampe. Nikitas used this adverb in regard to physical tears in relation to an incorporal human soul. 11 ‘ἐμπεϕύκασι’ (PG, ibid.) – 3rd person plural perfect; the vocabulary form is ἐμφύω – ‘implant’, ‘to be rooted’, H.G. Liddell and R. Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon (1966), 551. Hereafter the Lexicon is abbreviated as Liddell & Scott. 12 PG 120, II 45, 920D-921A. Τοῦ Ὁσίου Πατρὸς ἡμῶν Νικίτα Δευτέρα κεφαλαίον ἑκατοντάϛ, Φιλοκαλία. II 45.84, col. 2. 13 ‘Those who have not tasted the sweetness of the tears of compunction and are ignorant of its grace and of how it operates, think that such tears differ in no way from those shed for the dead; and they invent all manner of specious reasons and pretexts for thinking this, such as might naturally occur to us. But when what was haughty in our intellect inclines towards humility, and when the soul has closed its eyes to the deceitfulness of visible things and aspires solely to the contemplation of the immaterial, primal light, repudiating all that derives from sense perception and receiving the grace bestowed by the Spirit, then as water from a spring tears at once gush from it and sweeten its senses, filling the mind with all manner of joy and divine light. More than this, they shatter the heart and make the intellect humble in its contemplation of the higher world. These things cannot happen to those who lament and mourn in another way’. The Philokalia, Volume VI, 2.45, 119.

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Nevertheless, in order to translate it properly14 and make use of it, one definitely should not forget that we are dealing with a Byzantine monastic written source. The expression πρòς ταπείνωσιν15 κλίνῃ16 means ‘inclines to humility’17 and in the phrase τὸ ἀγέρωχον18 ἄρτι19 τοῦ νοός is its subject and means ‘unruliness of the intellect’. Nikitas Stithatos, the elder, writes here about obedience as a virtue within the monastic environment, and the obedience which particularly is highly valued in monasticism even now. The monastic face of the mystic Nikitas definitely reveals itself even more distinctly in the next phrase here: τὰς ὁράσεις20 αὑτῆς ἀπὸ τῆς ἀπάτῆς21 τῶν ὁρωμένων;22 this roughly means ‘visions of deceptions’.23 To be more precise, ἀπάτη means ‘pleasantness that involves one in sin’,24 and ὅρασις25 means generally both ‘appearance’26 14 I give thanks to my former Pontificio Istituto Orientale professor in Byzantine History and the Vatican expert in Greek manuscripts Luke Pieralli, who was the first to verify my translation of this passage from Byzantine Greek. It gave me the confidence in carrying out the re-translation of the Byzantine Greek text while I was a doctoral student, and to reveal many new and interesting things related to my research in Byzantine Spirituality. I am also very thankful to the first reader of my doctoral dissertation Prof. Philippe Luisier SJ because this article grew from the fragment of my doctoral dissertation. But most of all I am deeply thankful to my husband Prof. John Dayton, for proofreading and correcting my translations, publications, and all kinds of support. 15 ‘ταπείνωσις’ – ‘humility’ or ‘humiliation’ (Lampe, 1375). 16 ‘κλίνω’ – ‘bend’, ‘incline’, ‘bow’, ‘kneel’, ‘turn’. Ibid. 758. 17 My translation. All the translations in this article, unless otherwise indicated, are mine. 18 ‘τὸ ἀγέρωχον’ – неукротимость’, ‘непреклонность’ (I. Kh. Dvoretzky, Grechesko-Russkij Slovar’ [Moscow, 1958], I 19) – indomitability, inexorability (my translation). (Further the dictionary is abbreviated as Dvoretzky.) I use the Russian Dictionary, mostly created before the Soviet times (but was edited by S.N. Sobolevsky and published in the USSR period) because Russian Orthodoxy grew up from Byzantine and I. Dvoretzky adjusted his dictionary more for the translation of Greek Orthodox patristic sources. In this dictionary many words are explained, the definitions of which are absent from Western European dictionaries. 19 ‘ἄρτι’ – ‘только что’, ‘совсем недавно’ (Ibid. 241) – ‘just’, ‘a little while since’ (my translation). 20 ‘ἡ ὅρασις’ – ‘ви̒дение’, ‘узрение’ (Ibid. II 1186-7) – ‘sight’, ‘vision’, ‘apparition’ (my translation), and Lampe translate it or ‘seeing’, ‘act of sight’, explaining ‘the act of physical sight, likened to spiritual vision as one of the spiritual senses’ or further he explains ‘of apocalyptic visions’, ‘in dreams’, ‘in visions of saints’, ‘manifestation’, ‘appearance’ (Lampe, 968). As one can see, the visionary action is primarily definition here. 21 ‘ἡ ἀπάτη’ – ‘обман’, ‘ложь’, ‘хитрый замысел’, ‘хитрость’, ‘несбывшаяся надежда’, ‘времяпрепровождение’, ‘развлечение’ (Ibid. I 188) – ‘deception’, ‘delusion’, ‘lies’, ‘sly design’, ‘disappointed hope’, ‘pastime’, ‘fling’, ‘entertainment’. 22 ‘τῶν ὁρωμένων’ – middle or passive voice of the participle in genitive plural, formed from verb ‘ὁράω’, which means ‘show oneself’, ‘appear’, ‘be perceived’ in the passive voice, and in the middle voice Lampe interprets this verb as ‘see’ or ‘provide’ (Lampe, 968). Dvoretzky adds to it ‘воспринимать’, ‘понимать’, which means ‘conceive’, ‘assimilate’, ‘apprehend’, ‘interpret’, ‘understand’, ‘comprehend’ (Dvoretzky, II 1187). 23 PG 120, ibid. 24 Walter Bauer and Frederick W. Danker, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature (Chicago, London, 2000), 99 (hereafter Bauer & Danker). 25 PG 120, ibid. 26 Bauer & Danker, 718-9.

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and ‘vision in a transcended mode’,27 while τῶν ὁρωμένων can mean both ‘of the seen things’ / ‘appearing things’ and ‘of the things experienced in visions’, or ‘experienced things’, and moreover ‘things spiritually or mentally perceived’. In Byzantine Greek these two words supplement each other in meaning, exposing the illusiveness of what is experienced by the eyes of the soul. On the one hand, elder Nikitas distinguishes the differences between diverse kinds of visionary experiences, and on the other hand, this spiritual father or director wrote about appearances emerging because of self-delusion, and craving for pleasure that involves one in sin. The phrase of Nikitas can have an even more concrete and less evasive meaning: ‘the seeing of might-have-been hopes’ or ‘slynesses’. Indeed, Nikitas wraps his sayings about everyday human faults in mysterious and often beautifully sweet terms in order to encourage readers to take this bitter pill and be healed. Especially beautiful in this respect is the passage on the eyes of the soul, which Nikitas almost compares to flying birds or butterflies. Nikitas uses after this ταύτας ἐκπετάσῃ, which means basically ‘opens (‘unfold’ / ‘spread out’, if translated literally) them [I mean in this text: the ‘eyes of the soul’]’, which is logical to use, if speaking about the diverse kinds of visionary experience, or while speaking of a person’s soul seeing what this soul is willing to see forcibly. According to Nikitas, the action of ‘folding out’ ought to happen immediately. The subjects of seeing or aspiration also require attention. Nikitas wrote that ‘the eyes of the soul unfold’, πρός μόνην τήν θεωρίαν τοῦ ἀύλου καί πρώτου φωτός,28 which refers to the ‘vision of immaterial and first light’. In fact, the Greek noun θεωρία29 means both ‘beholding’30 and ‘vision’,31 and plus ‘contemplation’,32 ‘perception’,33 as well as ‘spiritual contemplation’,34 and a ‘spectacle’.35 Nikitas understands that he deals not with light or Light itself but with its vision, which he recognizes quite frankly as a spectacle. As a wellversed spiritual director, Nikitas seemingly counts the senses of the human being as a reality, but what they may comprehend may be not reality at all, and he is very careful with the souls of those who read his text, while writing about it as a spiritual father. Next, Nikitas writes: πᾶσαν ἀποσεισαμένη τοῦ κόσμου τήν αἴσθησι, καί τύχῃ τῆς ᾄνωθεν τοῦ πνεύματος παρακλήσεως,36 which roughly means ‘shaking 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

Ibid. PG 120, II 45, 921A. PG 120, ibid. Lampe, 648. Ibid. 649. Ibid. Ibid. 648. Ibid. Bauer & Danker, 454-5. PG 120, II 45, 921A.

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off all of the perception of the world, and obtains the comfort of the Spirit’, where the word αἴσθησις37 means ‘perception’,38 not only in the Aristotelian sense,39 ‘as a basis of faith’40 as well as of ‘understanding’41 or ‘capability to understand, discernment’,42 but also as worldly ‘quick-wittedness’43 and ‘docility’.44 It also may mean even more pejorative things in the literary sense, such as an ‘animal footprint’ or even more frankly ‘savage footstep’,45 which means ‘violent teaching’.46 In this text the soul repels, repulses, disgusts all that αἴσθησις in a negative sense may mean. Nikitas connects it in one sentence to καί τύχῃ τῆς ᾄνωθεν τοῦ πνεύματος παρακλήσεως, ‘and obtained comfort of the Spirit from above’. Nikitas may mean here that ‘the perception of the world’47 or ‘worldly perception’48 is not only ‘dusty’49 but also ‘disturbing, kindling passions’. Only after ridding itself of this perception may the soul itself obtain παράκλησις50 (the ‘comfort’ or ‘exhortation’ or at least ‘encouragement’)51 of the Spirit but not grace, as the English interpretation states.52 There is no word meaning ‘grace’ in the Medieval Greek text. Another so-called original perception exists for Nikitas, but even though it is ‘dim’ and ‘dusty’ in the metaphorical sense, nobody has deprived the soul of this original perception. Only activity of the soul in cleaning its perception is needed, and after this, the soul may receive the comfort or encouragement of the Spirit. Stithatos urges the souls to be active, and even the ‘jetting’53 spring of tears of κατάνυξις related to the soul is active, according to Nikitas. He dedicates all this chapter to the active role of this spring of tears. What do these tears actually accomplish? Nikitas wrote in Greek that tears of κατάνυξις ‘sweeten’54 αἰσθητήρια,55 which means the ‘organs or seat of 37

Ibid. Lampe, 52. 39 Dvoretzky, 55. 40 Lampe, 52. 41 Ibid. 42 Bauer & Danker, 29. 43 сообразительность – ‘quick-wittedness’ (Dvoretzky, I 56). 44 понятливость – ‘docility’ (Ibid.). 45 Ibid. 46 My interpretation. 47 τοῦ κόσμου τήν αἴσθησιν – allows this translation. 48 τοῦ κόσμου τήν αἴσθησιν – allows also this translation. 49 Nicetas uses the characteristic verb form ἀποσεισαμένη formed from ἀποσείω, which means ‘shake off’ (metaphorically: ‘refuse’, ‘repel’, ‘repudiate’ – Lampe, 207), and alludes to the New Testament passage Matt. 10:14: ‘Shake off the dust of your feet’. 50 Lampe, 1018. 51 Ibid. 52 The Philokalia, ibid. 53 ἐκβλύσουσιν – 3rd person plural future of verb ἐκβλύζω – ‘gush out’ (Lampe, 425). 54 καταγλυκαίνουσι – 3rd plural present of verb καταγλυκαίνω, which means ‘to sweeten’ (Liddell & Scott, 887). 55 PG 120, ibid. αἰσθητήριον. 38

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sensations’56 (sometimes opposed to διάνοια as in Aristotle)57 or ‘capacities for the discernment’,58 ‘faculties’59 ‘enabling man especially to distinguish between good and evil’,60 or ‘ability’61 or – in a mystical sense – ‘spiritual organs of the soul, … implying an advanced state of Christian life’.62 What is implied by τὰ αἰσθητήρια ταύτης καταγλυκαίνουσι?63 What is salty, tastes sharp, so implying irritability in αἰσθητήρια? If ‘salty’ means something irritated, then making αἰσθητήρια non-salty again, means to make them to be purified of being irritated and being irritating for others. The question is what Nikitas implies precisely under the noun αἰσθητήρια. On the one hand, he definitely speaks in this text from the Second Hundred Kephalaia on advanced Christian life, but on the other hand, there could be an imprint of Aristotelian philosophy because he pairs αἰσθητήρια with διάνοια in the same text. Probably, the meaning of διάνοια can shed some light on the meaning of the noun αἰσθητήρια in this passage; but in this case, the question also is what διάνοια in Chapter 45 in the following phrase means: πάσιϛ εὐφροσύνης ἐμπιπλῶντα αὐτῆς τὴν διάνοιαν καὶ θείου ϕωτός? The interpretation of the noun διάνοια possesses difficulties of different kinds here. Firstly, there is the problem with the vocabulary definitions of the noun. This word does not appear in A Patristic Greek Lexicon64 by G.W.H. Lampe. A Greek English Lexicon of The New Testament and Other Christian Literature by W. Bayer and F.W. Danker covers only the much earlier period. The definition cannot be complete because of the fact that this Lexicon is made for translations of Patristic literature, which was developed several hundred years earlier, and any language has undergone changes after such a period. A Greek-English Lexicon by H.J. Liddell and R. Scott is created for reading even much earlier texts. There is no suitable entry for the definition of this word in current GreekEnglish lexicons. Secondly, in practice, every Medieval Greek mystic implies his own particular meaning or a spectrum of meanings under such words as διάνοια, distinct from other writers of his time and in the sphere of his relationships. In reality, it would be too strained an interpretation to try to find uniformity among the vocabulary of such Byzantine mystics, and I completely agree with J. Chryssavgis on this point.65 It is necessary to look at all possible uses in the whole 56

Liddell & Scott, 42. Ibid. 58 Bauer & Danker, 29. 59 Ibid. 60 Lampe, 52-3. 61 Dvoretzky, I 56. 62 Lampe, 53. 63 PG 120, ibid. 64 Lampe, 357. 65 John Chryssavgis, John Climacus. From the Egyptian Desert to the Sinaite Mountain (Burlington, 2004), 132. 57

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text of Nikitas’ Three Hundred Chapters. In trying to resolve the issue in this way, one inevitably faces the polysemy of each phrase and each word, which characterizes the texts of Stithatos, as a sophisticated spiritual director and presbyter of the Constantinopolitan Stoudios Monastery. The translator(s) into Latin had already tried to undertake this task.66 Even the general parallel Latin translation gives different Latin renditions of this Greek word in different places of the same text of Three Hundred Chapters. Most often the Latin of PG translates διάνοια in these texts as mens, 67 which basically means ‘conscience’,68 ‘mind’ 69 or ‘thought’.70 Other definitions of this Greek noun in the same translation of the text include animus,71 sensus,72 cor,73 intellectus,74 cognition (in plural),75 perception (in plural).76 A Latin translator seemingly allows himself quite free interpretations or re-interpretations of Nikitas’ term and/ or partly understood that Nikitas used διάνοια in different meanings. If perceptio can be translated into English as ‘perception, comprehension’,77 cognitio can be translated as ‘knowledge as the consequence of perception’,78 or as ‘the general power of the perception and thought’.79 These words are not synonyms, but one is the consequence of another, or one is the means of another; nevertheless at least one can possibly relate them to ‘intellect’. Sensus can be treated as a synonym of perceptio as English ‘perception’ but ‘in corporeal sense’,80 or of mens, as ‘thought’ but as a ‘thought expressed in words’81 already. To translate the διάνοια of the nous, which Nikitas uses as a set expression, where νοῦς

66 I have to admit that, from the scholarly point of view, one should be very careful with such Latin translations from Patrologia Graeca and not attempt to replace the Medieval Greek texts by such Latin translations from the PG because it considers the Greek texts as the ‘Catholic Tradition’. I have discovered that many times the translations change the meaning of and re-interpret Greek passages quite freely, probably to please the official opinion of the Catholic Church in theological questions. Even my former Catholic professors from Vatican universities, who are experts in Greek, honestly and frankly admitted it. I do not accept the Latin translations uncritically but consult them only for comparison. 67 PG 120, 922A, 856AB, 986B. 68 Ch.T. Lewis, A Latin Dictionary (New York, 1998), 1132. (Hereafter this Lexicon is referred as Lewis.) 69 Ibid. 70 Ibid. 71 PG 120, 931B. 72 Ibid. 950B. 73 Ibid. 950A. 74 Ibid. 903B. 75 Ibid. 856C. 76 Ibid. 856C. 77 Lewis, 1334. 78 Ibid. 361. 79 Ibid. 123. 80 Ibid. 1670. 81 Ibid. 1671.

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(‘intellect’)82 as διάνοια is the Latin intellectus (‘intellect’),83 seems redundant by contemporary philological standards (but perhaps not to Oriental psalmodica standards). However, it may approximate the meaning of intellectus, which is synonymous with perceptio, i.e. ‘perception’.84 It would be difficult for contemporary readers to relate cor, as basically ‘the heart’,85 to the meaning of διάνοια unless one knows that to the ancients the heart was ‘the seat of wisdom, understanding’,86 and therefore is related to mens as ‘mind’. How can one put together such different facets of meaning, which the Latin translator comes up with, into the one crystal of the Greek word in the writings of a Byzantine elder? The translator seemingly intuitively ‘circuits’ around the meaning ‘perception’ but the ‘perception’ is a special kind of non-superficial and not indifferent outsider’s perception. This kind of perception is probably related to the ability to comprehend ex toto corde because Eastern Christians, as many peoples of the Orient, usually are not inclined to divide the activity of the senses/feelings from intellectual activity to the extent that Western Christians often do.87 The meaning of διάνοια that could be fitting here is related to the term of ‘being conscious’ of something. Exactly, being conscious of something can be disturbing for the soul, and it needs ‘to be sweetened’ figuratively in order to stop being disturbing. This text of Chapter 45 is all about spiritual healing, and even the last idea by Nikitas here deals with this theme. After speaking of joy and divine light, Nikitas seemingly wrote about quite destructive things according to common opinion: ἀλλὰ γὰρ καὶ συντρίβουσι τὴν καρδίαν, καὶ τὸν νοῦν ταπεινόφρονα ἐν ὀπτασίᾳ τοῦ κρείττονος ἀπεργαζονται…88 This means: ‘Not only this but they also break the heart and make the intellect humble-minded in the vision of the better…’ These things are definitely not negative from the Byzantine Christian monastic standpoint – on the contrary, they contribute to the healing of the soul’s faculties. The chapter has a ring structure, which means that the beginning meets the end in its subject and meaning: the tears of ϰατάνυξις are different from those which are shed over a corpse, which are a completely different story. It is impossible for the desired result to occur, concludes Nikitas, if one laments and mourns in any other way, thereby proving the idea of the first sentence of this chapter. I would like to bring to mind the famous phrase from Matt. 11:12: ‘The Kingdom of God is taken by force’. What is a matter of contemplation

82 83 84 85 86 87 88

Bauer & Danker, 680. Ibid. 974. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. 468. They are more inclined to synthesis. PG 120, ibid.

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for contemporary secular translators, for Nikitas is the everyday work of a spiritual director exhorting human souls to heal themselves. Afterword No wonder that it was not easy to translate Nikitas’ Stithatos 300 Kephalaia for the English translators of The Philokalia. The Complete Text – Gerard Eustace Howell Palmer (1904-1984), Philip Owen Arnould Sherrard (1922-1995), and Kallistos Ware (born Timothy Richard Ware in 1934). The ‘Introduction to Philokalia Volume 1’ in this English edition of The Philokalia states: ‘The third edition in five volumes, was also published in Athens during the years 1957-1963 by the Astir Publishing Company. It is on the Astir edition that our English translation is based’. The question here arises: what could be the reason for such a change? Scholars like to seek out fundamental differences and peculiarities in the original authors’ writings. Hopefully, such a scholarly edition will eventually appear in English, translated carefully from Early Christian, Medieval and Byzantine Greek texts with all necessary references, alternative versions, indices and apparatus.

Human Will and Divine Grace – Damascene’s Teaching on Theosis and its Echo in Aquinas Andrej KUTARŇA, České Budějovice, Czech Republic

ABSTRACT St. John of Damascus is one of the most frequently cited authors in Aquinas’ Summa theologiae. In Damascene’s writings we find a well developed if somewhat un-systematic teaching on deification which in turn finds its echo in the works of the Angelic Doctor. John touches upon this topic while writing about the Orthodox Faith, defending the Holy Images or arguing against the heresies. Man participates in God (to a certain degree) firstly because he is a created being and secondly because he is a rational being – according to John this is the meaning of man being created in the Image of God. He also recognizes further ‘degrees’ of deification, where both human free will – and virtues which are ‘fruit’ of the free will and attaining them means attaining the Likeness of God – as well as the Grace of God (and its operation through the Sacraments) come to play according to John and without both the free consent of man and divine grace poured onto the same theosis would be unattainable after the Fall. The aim of this article will be to unravel Damascene’s understanding of the relation between the human will and divine grace in the process of deification or attaining the likeness of God and furthermore to look how this notion of ‘likeness’ as expression of the image and its perfection by virtue (ST I, q. 93, a. 9) was received and developed by Aquinas.

St. John of Damascus is usually regarded as one of the great systematisers of both philosophical and theological thought of his age. This notion is supported not only by his proclaimed intentions to ‘add nothing of his own’1 (even though some scholars have recently challenged this claim2) but partly also by his style. John adopted the genre well-loved by his contemporary monastic authors of collecting the sayings and teachings of earlier fathers – sometimes called the florilegia – and more specifically the form of ‘centuries’ (in Greek hekatontas).3 1 Frederic H. Chase (trans.), Saint John of Damascus, Writings (Washington, DC, 1958), Preface, 6. 2 See, for example, Scott Ables, ‘Did John of Damascus Modify His Sources in the Expositio fidei?’, SP 68 (2011), 355-61. 3 A collection of (usually) 100 chapters and indeed this is the number of chapters found both in John’s treatise On heresies as well as On the Orthodox Faith. See Andrew Louth, St. John Damascene – Tradition and Originality in Byzantine Theology (Oxford, 2009), 36.

Studia Patristica CII, 269-279. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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In a certain sense we might think of Aquinas as being an heir to this ‘methodological’ tradition, especially when we look at his earlier collections of patristic material in his Catenae (even in his later writings and especially in the Summa theologiae the patristic sources were indispensable to him). Looking at the works of the Damascene, we realise that he does not offer what might be considered a systematic explanation of theosis, nor does he – compared to some other authors – use an overly specific language of deification.4 In the whole Expositio fidei we encounter the term theosis used only a handful of times.5 However, when looking deeper we find that the motif of the deification of man winds itself like a thread through a large part of his work. Somewhat similarly, in Aquinas’s Summa theologiae deification is not a separate topic in itself, but again the motif could be found in various places, as indeed several recent studies have shown6 (even though some of these might have been rather optimistic and reading into Aquinas something that is not really there7). Aquinas uses the term deificatio but not as an equivalent of the Greek theosis in the same way as the Greek tradition would. He also uses terms such as deiformitas,8 however, the term that would seem to encapsulate most of the meaning of theosis would indeed be beatitudo. I will attempt here to trace the teaching on deification as presented by John of Damascus – and while doing so I will also try to point out some of the places in Aquinas’s Summa theologiae which in my opinion could be considered either an echo of Damascene – either directly or sometimes maybe in a contesting way of referring to it – or of the teaching of earlier Greek Fathers that Thomas may have acquired through John’s Expositio Fidei (in the translation of Burgundio of Pisa). Two main ideas in Damascene constitute the framework of his thinking on deification. The first of these ‘conditions’ for the deification of man – or indeed, as some have argued,9 as a first stage or level of deification – is the fact of the 4

A. Louth, St. John Damascene (2009), 178. Norman Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition (Oxford, 2009), 341. 6 For example, Daria Spezzano, The Glory of God’s Grace: Deification According to St. Thomas Aquinas (Ave Maria, 2015); Anna Ngaire Williams, The Ground of Union: Deification in Aquinas and Palamas (Oxford, 1999). 7 For a recent summary of these discussions see Richard Cross, ‘Deification in Aquinas: Created or Uncreated?’, JTS 69 (2018), 106-32. 8 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 12, a. 5, ad 3. For the Latin text of the Summa the Leonine Edition available at Corpus Thomisticum [online]: http://corpusthomisticum.org (7.1.2019) is used. If not indicated otherwise, English translation used Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae. (Lander, WY, 2012). Aquinas here argues that vision of the light of glory by a rational creature would make the creature godlike (deiformis). 9 Maurice Fred Himmerich, Deification in John of Damascus (thesis) (Milwaukee, WI, 1985), 69-70. 5

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creation, or createdness of human beings (and in some way of Creation as a whole). The second key idea is the Incarnation which, as we shall see, Damascene understands both as a cause and an exemplary model of the deification of man. In John we find firmly established the idea of the goodness of Creation. He describes as the reason for Creation God’s desire to share his abundance of goodness. Thus, God created all things to ‘enjoy His benefits and share in His goodness (μεθέξοντα τῆς αὐτοῦ ἀγαθότητος)’.10 John stresses the basic principle that all that is participates in the Creator. ‘All things, therefore, which he made, share (κοινωνοῦσι) in His goodness in respect of their existence. For He Himself is existence to all, since all things that are, are in Him’.11 It should be noted here that we find a very similar formulation in Aquinas’ discussion on Creation: ‘All things other than God are not their own esse, but instead participate in esse’.12 John goes further by saying that ‘all things long after [the divine nature] and have their existence in it’.13 To put it into scholastic language, we can see here the idea of God not only as the first, or efficient cause of all beings, but at the same time as the final cause as well. For Damascene even inanimate material substances participate in God, although to a minimal extent: he considers matter essentially good not only for the reason of its createdness by a good Creator but also for the reason of the Incarnation in which matter was ‘united to God in the humanity he assumed’ and thus became ‘not something to be despised, but something holy ... filled with divine energy and grace (θείας ἐνεργείας καὶ χάριτος ἐμπλέων)’.14 Man, according to Damascene, was created as a composite being, consisting of body (‘formed of earth’) and a reasoning and thinking soul. In this context John also explains what is meant by the biblical formula that man was created ‘in the image and likeness of God’.15 In the image, κατ’ εἰκόνα, according to John, refers to man being both rational and endowed with free will. After the likeness, καθ’ ὁμοίωσιν, ‘means such likeness in virtue as is possible’.16 It is clear that Aquinas knew this formula, for he quotes it in full.17 However, the aspect of ‘process’ in the verb ὁμοίωσις remains hidden in Burgundio’s translation secundum similitudinem and Damascene’s differentiation between 10 John Damascene, Expositio fidei 16,4; ed. Bonifatius Kotter, Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos. Vol. 2 (Berlin, 1973), 45. 11 Expos. 86,7; B. Kotter, Die Schriften 2 (1973), 191. 12 ST I, q. 44, a. 1 (translation A.J. Freddoso). 13 Expos. 14,23; B. Kotter, Die Schriften 2 (1973), 42. 14 Contra imaginum calumniatores orationes tres I. 16, 17, cit. in A. Louth, St. John Damascene (2009), 202. 15 Gen. 1:26. 16 Expos. 26,16-21; B. Kotter, Die Schriften 2 (1973), 76. 17 ST I, q. 93, a. 9, corp.

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the image and likeness and the whole argument of ‘recovering the lost likeness’ seems to be lost in Aquinas. For Aquinas, the image of God in man is also connected with the intellectual nature of man18 – somewhat similar to Damascene, but he further elaborates on the idea and explains three ways of how the image is found in man. The first he connects with the very nature of the mind – hence he sees it related to creation and found in all men. The second consists in love for God (caritas) – albeit still imperfect – and is associated with conformity with grace. Thomas speaks of it as an image of re-creation and he finds this image in the justified (in iustis). The third way (mode) means a perfect understanding of and perfect love for God – he speaks of it as the ‘image according to likeness of glory’ (imago secundum similitudinem gloriae) and this is found only in the beatis in heaven.19 John describes the original state of humankind in a passage drawn from one of the orations of Gregory Nazianzen20 as free of evil and upright, free from pain and care, glorified with every virtue (n.b., John uses the same words for describing the state according to the likeness of God, as mentioned earlier).21 Man is here seen as a mediator ‘between the earthly and heavenly’, ‘between greatness and lowliness’, as a kind of micro-cosmos. Damascene concludes the description with the goal of humankind, the intention God has for all his creation: in the age to come, to become ‘deified by merely inclining himself towards God’ – by participation in the divine glory and not by being transformed into the divine being.22 18

ST I, q. 93, a. 4. ‘In the first way, a man has a natural capacity to understand and to love God, and this capacity resides in the very nature of the mind (consistit in ipsa natura mentis), which is common to all men. In the second way, a man actually or habitually understands and loves God, but still imperfectly; and this is the image associated with the conformity of grace (imago per conformitatem gratiae). In the third way, a man has actual and perfect understanding of and love for God, and the image so taken is associated with the likeness of glory (imago secundum similitudinem gloriae)’. ST I, q. 93, a. 4. 20 Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 45.7, see A. Louth, St. John Damascene (2009), note 119. 21 ‘God then made man without evil, upright, virtuous, free from pain and care, glorified with every virtue, adorned with all that is good, like a sort of second microcosm within the great world, another angel capable of worship, compound, surveying the visible creation and initiated into the mysteries of the realm of thought, king over the things of earth, but subject to a higher king, of the earth and of the heaven, temporal and eternal, belonging to the realm of sight and to the realm of thought, midway between greatness and lowliness, spirit and flesh: for he is spirit by grace, but flesh by overweening pride: spirit that he may abide and glorify his Benefactor, and flesh that he may suffer, and suffering may be admonished and disciplined when he prides himself in his greatness: here, that is, in the present life, his life is ordered as an animal’s, but elsewhere, that is, in the age to come, he is changed and – to complete the mystery – becomes deified by merely inclining himself towards God; becoming deified, in the way of participating in the divine glory and not in that of a change into the divine being’. Expositio fidei 26,24-36. Trans. Philip Schaff (ed.), NPNF, Series II, Vol. 9, 615-6. 22 Ibid. John again confirms this in the chapter on Divine Providence when he states – quoting apostle Paul – that God’s original wish was that all should be saved and come to His Kingdom. 19

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Damascene describes the original state of man in very similar terms as the final state of deification: in Paradise Adam was ‘adorned with every virtue’23 and had but to sing praises to the Creator as the angels and ‘to delight in contemplation of Him’.24 And elsewhere we read how the Creator has ‘imparted His own divine grace to him, thus putting him in communion with Himself’.25 Describing Paradise he says: ‘in the paradise which was both of the mind and of the senses … while in his body [Adam] lived on earth in the world of sense, in his spirit he dwelt among the angels, cultivating thoughts of God and being nurtured on these’ and thus ‘rejoiced and took delight’ in the contemplation of the Creator.26 It would seem from what was mentioned earlier that deification as described in the writings of the Damascene could be understood in a certain way as a return to the original state of man before his Fall. Aquinas would certainly not agree with such a view. He clearly explains that the original state of Adam was different from one of deification or beatitude. He does admit that in paradise man had a ‘happy life’, but it was not perfect beatitude which according to him consists in the vision of God’s essence. Neither did Adam have ‘so great a participation in the divine essence as the angels have’.27 Thomas’ argument might seem as if a step ahead when he says that if Adam did live in a state of beatitude, there would be no Fall: ‘But it is clear that no man can voluntarily (per voluntatem) turn away from beatitude, since he naturally and necessarily wills beatitude and flees from unhappiness. Hence, no one who sees God through His essence can voluntarily turn away from God, i.e., sin’.28 According to Damascene, Adam was not by nature incapable of sin (John says that only in God sin could find no place), for he sees sin as ‘the result of the free volition he enjoys rather than an integral part of his nature’.29 In Damascene’s view Free Will is one of the key aspects that define man and it was precisely through the use – or rather mis-use – of his free will that Adam lost his original (blessed) state. John explains that man did have (and still has) the power to persevere in goodness by cooperating with divine grace (Θεία συνεργούμενον χάριτι)30 but he has also the power to turn away from God and take a different path towards evil. Free will is for John very closely connected with rationality: irrational creatures do not have free will – they act according to their natural appetites, but man (and in a way similarly the angels), being a rational creature, ‘leads [his] 23

Expos. 26,25; B. Kotter, Die Schriften 2 (1973), 76. Expos. 25,43; B. Kotter, Die Schriften 2 (1973), 73. 25 Expos. 44,21-2; B. Kotter, Die Schriften 2 (1973), 104. Trans. F.H. Chase, Saint John of Damascus (1958), 264. 26 Expos. 44,34-8; B. Kotter, Die Schriften 2 (1973), 104-5. 27 ST I, q. 94, a. 1, ad 1. 28 Ibid. 29 Expos. 26,39-40; B. Kotter, Die Schriften 2 (1973), 77. 30 Ibid. 24

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nature rather than nature him’.31 The connection of free will with rationality is also seen when John then describes the necessity of Adam’s testing: the Creator’s commandment regarding the tree of knowledge, the promise of eternal life and everlasting bliss ‘should he let reason prevail’ against the snares of the Devil. ‘Man, then, was thus snared by the assault of the arch-fiend, and broke his Creator’s command, and was stripped of grace and put off his confidence with God, and covered himself with the asperities of a toilsome life…; and was clothed about with death, that is, mortality and the grossness of flesh…; and was banished from Paradise by God’s just judgment, and condemned to death, and made subject to corruption’. 32 These words from the beginning of the chapter on the divine oikonomia bring us to the second keystone of Damascene’s thinking on theosis – his teaching about the Incarnation.33 In John’s writings about the Incarnation we can detect two equally important aspects. The first is the necessity of the redemption of the ‘enslaved man’, for his return to the blessed existence.34 In his Fall, man lost the likeness of the Creator, even though the image of God remained intact.35 The aim of the Incarnation is therefore to restore the likeness of God in man. Reading John’s works, however, one might get the impression as if the redemptive action was ‘not sufficient’ for the loving kindness of the Creator. He says, ‘it was further necessary for human nature to be strengthened and renewed, to be taught by experience, and to learn the way of virtue which turns back from destruction and leads to eternal life’.36 One of the key moments in John’s discussion of the deification of man is the deification of Christ’s human nature in the event of Incarnation. He devotes several paragraphs of the Expositio Fidei to explain (in a very precise and considered manner) how the whole man – body and soul, with all the faculties – the mind and free will – was assumed by God the Logos. Thus, as the Christ’s 31

Expos. 41,16; B. Kotter, Die Schriften 2 (1973), 98. Expos. 45,3-10; B. Kotter, Die Schriften 2 (1973), 106. 33 It would seem clear not only from the number of chapters devoted to the topic in the Expositio fidei itself but also when looking at John’s polemical writings, that the Incarnation was a key topic for him. We shall not here concern ourselves with the full depth of his writings on this topic or the quality of his well-forged wordings trying to encapsulate the all the details of true teaching and avoid any (or as many) possibilities of ‘un-orthodox’ readings. It will be sufficient for us at this point to try to understand his view of the divine oikonomia. 34 Expos. 45,15ff; B. Kotter, Die Schriften 2 (1973), 107. 35 N. Russell, The Doctrine (2009), 299. 36 Expos. 45,22-24; B. Kotter, Die Schriften 2 (1973), 107; see also F.H. Chase, Saint John of Damascus (1958), 268. Right after describing the state of mankind after the fall and the divine plan in the salvation history John explains the necessary qualities and conditions for redeeming the ill effects of sin – first of all that the redeemer would have to possess a complete human nature but at the same time be sinless. This draws of course from the traditional formula ‘that which was not assumed was not healed’ by St. Gregory of Nazianzus. 32

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human nature has been ‘saved, renewed and strengthened’ then also the nature of other men could become the same.37 For John the deification of Christ’s human nature is also an important argument in his writings in defence of the icons. In his First Apology against those who attack the divine images it serves as a keystone for further arguments: ‘I do not adore the creation rather than the Creator, but I adore the one who became a creature, who was formed as I was, who clothed Himself in creation without weakening or departing from his divinity, that He might raise our nature in glory and make us partakers of His divine nature’.38 He borrows another argument from the Catechetical Discourse of St. Gregory of Nyssa to explain how the Incarnation came to pass: ‘Since the enemy had caught man with the bait of the hope of divinity, he himself [the enemy] was taken with the bait of the barrier of the flesh [of Christ]’.39 Not only did God desire to ‘take up the struggle of his creation’, but in his justice he did so with a sense of what we today might call fairness. According to John, one of the reasons why God became man was that ‘that which had been conquered might conquer’.40 John clearly understands that the omnipotent God could have delivered man from the tyranny of death by his power and might, but ‘the compassionate and loving God wished to make the victor him who had fallen’, to give the deceiver no grounds for complaint and to restore ‘like by like’.41 It is nevertheless important to note here, that the Incarnation is for John only a ‘beginning of events’, the summit and fulfilment of which will be the Cross ‘where Christ offered Himself as a sacrifice for us’42 and His victory in the Resurrection. It was by the death of Christ on the Cross that death ‘has been brought low, the sin of our first parent destroyed ... the power given to us to despise the things of this world ... the road back to the former blessedness made smooth, the gates of paradise opened, our nature seated at the right hand of God and we made children and heirs of God’.43 Among the fruits of the Incarnation John mentions the fact that we can regard Christ as a mediator between God and mankind,44 since he is united with both – by His divinity to the Father and Spirit, and at the same time he shares 37 Expos. 62,15n; B. Kotter, Die Schriften 2 (1973), 157; see also M.F. Himmerich, Deification (1985), 117. 38 Imag. I, 4,54n; Kotter, Die Schriften 2 (1973), 77; see also M.F. Himmerich, Deification (1985), 126-7. N.b. also the allusion to 2Pt. 1:4. 39 Expos. 45,25-9; B. Kotter, Die Schriften 2 (1973), 107. Trans. F.H. Chase, Saint John of Damascus (1958), 268. 40 Expos. 62,3-10; B. Kotter, Die Schriften 2 (1973), 157. 41 Ibid. 42 Expos. 84,49-50; B. Kotter, Die Schriften 2 (1973), 188. 43 Expos. 84,23-9; B. Kotter, Die Schriften 2 (1973), 187. 44 Expos. 45; see also M.F. Himmerich, Deification (1985), 122.

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his humanity with his Mother and with all men.45 We are here reminded of John’s account of the creation of man whom he describes as a ‘sort of bond between the visible and invisible natures’.46 Here he presents Christ – albeit without saying so explicitly – as the new Adam, ‘a real bond between the divine and the human’. Besides these descriptions of efficacious actions of the Incarnate Logos which enable man’s deification, we find in John’s writings also the practical aspect of looking at Christ as an example, a model – particularly of obedience – which the monk John describes as ordering the will according to nature to perseverance in the good so that by this choice man can be unceasingly united to God.47 ‘He [Christ] became obedient to the Father and healed our disobedience by that which is ours and from us, and became an example to us of that obedience, without which there is no salvation’.48 Apart from explaining the conditions and causes of deification, John also hints at the manner how this deification is to be achieved by his fellow men: ‘by participation in the divine illumination’. He does not, however, give a full explanation of what this ‘illumination’ means. Elsewhere he uses this word when referring to baptism,49 as was common in his day.50 Nevertheless, it is necessary to stress that according to John in this process of illumination, man as an individual is not and cannot be passive. On the contrary, since he by nature has the possession of his own free will, his free assent with the deifying action of the Redeemer, his free choosing of cooperation with divine grace is indispensable. This voluntary act of choosing to cooperate with the divine grace John calls faith.51 And it is precisely this faith that is ‘capable of making us to be adopted through the Spirit and brought to our former state of blessedness’.52 45 Imag. I, 18,9; B. Kotter, Die Schriften 2 (1973), 115; see also M.F. Himmerich, Deification (1985), 122. 46 F.H. Chase, Saint John of Damascus (1958), 234 quoting St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Sermon 38.11. 47 See Expos. 86. 48 Expos. 45,51-3; B. Kotter, Die Schriften 2 (1973), 108. 49 M.F. Himmerich, Deification (1985), 126. 50 As has been pointed out, John must have known the Oration on Holy Baptism of St. Gregory Nazianzus, since he quotes from it several times. In the beginning of that Oration we find a rich description, where it shows what this illumination – in the sense of the sacrament of Baptism – means: ‘Illumination is the splendour of souls, the conversion of the life, the question put to the Godward conscience. It is the aid to our weakness, the renunciation of the flesh, the following of the Spirit, the fellowship of the Word, the improvement of the creature, the overwhelming of sin, the participation of light, the dissolution of darkness. It is the carriage to God, the dying with Christ, the perfecting of the mind, the bulwark of Faith, the key of the Kingdom of heaven, the change of life, the removal of slavery, the loosing of chains, the remodelling of the whole man’. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 40.3, trans. NPNF, Series II, Vol. 7. 51 M.F. Himmerich, Deification (1985), 135. 52 Expos. 82,50-2; B. Kotter, Die Schriften 2 (1973), 183; see also F.H. Chase, Saint John of Damascus (1958), 346.

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‘By baptism, then, remission of sins is granted to all alike, but the grace of the Spirit is granted in proportion to the faith’.53 Aquinas of course discusses the virtue of faith in his Summa, but when it comes achieving the end of man – beatitudo – it would seem that even more important than Faith is for him Charity. In one of the early questions about the vision of God (which might be understood as one of the ways how Aquinas speaks about deification) he argues that some intellects will see God more perfectly than others. That man is able to see God at all is for him possible only through ‘the light of glory’ (In lumine tuo videbimus lumen – Ps. 36:9). But he recognises that men would achieve this in various degrees, so he makes a distinction between men stating that ‘the one who will have a greater share in the light of glory is the one who has greater charity. For where there is greater charity, there is greater desire, and it is the desire that in some sense makes the one who desires disposed and prepared to receive that which is desired. Hence, it is the one who has greater charity who will see God more perfectly and be more beatified’.54 For both John of Damascus as well as Aquinas, an important part of the discussion about deification are the sacraments. They are, according to John, the proper way of man’s return to the original state, that is, to the state similar to (if not identical with) deification. The first of these is Baptism. In his discussion on baptism John uses several images from the whole history of salvation in both the Old and the New Testament, while always stressing the necessity of faith. He considers the sacrament of baptism to be excellently adapted to the composite nature of man – the complementarity of water and the Spirit mirroring the complementarity of body and soul in man. The water ‘indicates cleansing and destruction of what is opposed to God, while the Spirit is the pledge of life’.55 It would seem that for John ‘everything which was accomplished for human beings because of the Incarnation of Christ, is applied to human beings through baptism’.56 In a way of analogy, when we look upon the death and Resurrection of Christ as a fulfilment of his Incarnation, from reading John of Damascus we may come to the conclusion that the Eucharist is for him, in a way, a ‘summit’ or ‘fulfilment’ of all that was promised in baptism – especially with regard to deification. Indeed, it might be said that for Damascene the purpose of the Eucharist is the deification of man. We find a similar idea in Aquinas as well: ‘Baptism57 is the beginning of the spiritual life, and the door of the sacraments; whereas the Eucharist is, as it 53

Ibid. ST I, q. 12, corp. 55 A. Louth, St. John Damascene (2009), 180-1. 56 M.F. Himmerich, Deification (1985), 151. 57 When St. Thomas discusses the Transfiguration of Christ, he also writes about adoption of men as the sons of God (1John 3:2) – which happens through ‘a certain conformity of image to the natural Son of God’. This conformity takes place by grace which is acquired by baptism – however, it is an imperfect conformity, and the full conformity is brought about by glory. 54

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were, the consummation of the spiritual life, and the end of all the sacraments, … by the hallowings of all the sacraments preparation is made for receiving or consecrating the Eucharist. Consequently, the reception of Baptism is necessary for starting the spiritual life, while the receiving of the Eucharist is requisite for its consummation’.58 In the chapter devoted to the eucharistic mystery John recapitulates the whole story: the exceedingly good Creator who was not content to remain without sharing his Goodness with others and so created first the spiritual and then the visible world and finally he made man. Man, however, did not persevere in the good, was disobedient, and became subject to death and corruption. And the Maker and Creator ‘likened Himself to us and became man’, by his obedience the Word healed our disobedience, and now he participates in our weak nature so as to ‘make us once more participators in His divinity’.59 John continues that God the Logos by His Incarnation, His Baptism, His Passion and Resurrection freed our nature from death and corruption, and – according to John – he himself became the ‘first-fruit’ of the Resurrection – as well as an example for us to follow. So that ‘we may become by adoption, as he is by nature, sons and heirs of God and joint heirs together with him’60 he instituted a second birth – so that we may me born anew and be likened to Him – and a spiritual food, the Eucharist. We have already mentioned some of the effects of the Eucharist, but it is important to note that John after again stressing the importance of man’s desire and willing – through faith – links our reception of the Eucharist not only with the ‘remission of sins and eternal life’ but also directly with deification: ‘Let us approach it with burning desire, and ... let us receive the body of the Crucified ... Let us receive the divine burning coal, so that the fire of the coal may be added to the desire within us to consume our sins and enlighten our hearts, and so that by this communion of the divine fire we may be set afire and deified’.61 According to John, the relationship, which he calls perichoresis,62 is also to be found in the Eucharist – not only in the material elements of the Eucharist and the divine grace that comes upon them, but also as a state in each man who allows by his free will the nature of God to penetrate his own nature:63 ‘It is Christ’s body and blood entering into the composition of our soul and body without being consumed, without being corrupted ... into our substance for our sustenance, a bulwark against every sort of harm and a purifier from all

58

ST III, q. 73, a. 3. Expos. 86,24-5; B. Kotter, Die Schriften 2 (1973), 192. 60 Expos. 86,33-5; B. Kotter, Die Schriften 2 (1973), 192. 61 Expos. 86,124-9; B. Kotter, Die Schriften 2 (1973), 196. 62 In-dwelling, without mixing – John uses this term in both the trinitarian context as well as in explaining the hypostatical union. 63 See also M.F. Himmerich, Deification (1985), 160. 59

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uncleanliness… When we are purified by it, we become one with the body of the Lord and with His spirit, and we become the body of Christ’.64 Aquinas cites Damascene several times in his discussion on the Eucharist. For example, when he discusses various names of the sacrament of the Eucharist he cites Damascene on Communion, saying that ‘it is called Communion because we communicate with Christ through it, both because we partake of His flesh and Godhead (divinity), and because we communicate with and are united to one another through it’.65 In the same passage under another reference to Damascene he says that by the Eucharist we assume the divinity of the Son (per hoc filii deitatem assumimus).66 To conclude what we have discussed so far, I would argue that in Damascene’s view of the deification of man, both the Free Will and Divine Grace need to cooperate – neither can bring about man’s deification of its own accord. God cannot deify us without our assent: ‘for that which is done by force is not an act of virtue’.67 But even in the case when man’s actions are good and he perseveres in the good, he depends on the cooperation of God. This cooperation, in terms of virtues, is moved forward by faith and the sacraments. Aquinas uses a different ‘language of deification’. We have noted the importance of Charity and (the light of) Glory – which may be taken as one of the synonyms for Grace. However, I think that in a certain sense he would agree with the basic ‘formula’ of John – but he would stress even more than Damascene that without grace the free will cannot persevere in the good and the way towards beatitude is paved – ‘both by the merit that derives from the actions of man’s own graced free will and by the unmerited gifts of conversion and perseverance – brought about by prevenient grace of God’.68 It is in this light that we should understand what Aquinas says himself that ‘man is made a member of Christ through grace alone’.69

64 65 66 67 68 69

Expos. 86,144-54; B. Kotter, Die Schriften 2 (1973), 196-7. ST III, q. 73, a. 4, corp. Ibid. Expos. 26,43; B. Kotter, Die Schriften 2 (1985), 77. D. Spezzano, The Glory (2015), note 94. ST III, q. 62, a. 1.

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