Studia Patristica - Papers Presented at the Eighteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 2019: From the Fifth Century ... Nachleben (27) (Studia Patristica, 130) 9789042947887, 9789042947894, 9042947888

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STUDIA PATRISTICA VOL. CXXX

Papers presented at the Eighteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 2019 Edited by MARKUS VINZENT Volume 27:

From the Fifth Century Onwards (Latin Writers) Female Power and its Propaganda (Edited by MATTIA CHIRIATTI)

Theologizing Performance in the Byzantine Tradition (Edited by DAMASKINOS OLKINUORA)

Nachleben

PEETERS LEUVEN – PARIS – BRISTOL, CT

2021

STUDIA PATRISTICA VOL. CXXX

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

Board of Directors (2019): Carol HARRISON, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford, UK Mark EDWARDS, Professor of Early Christian Studies, Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford, UK Neil MCLYNN, University Lecturer in Later Roman History, Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford, UK Philip BOOTH, A.G. Leventis Associate Professor in Eastern Christianity, Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford, UK Sophie LUNN-ROCKLIFFE, Lecturer in Patristics, Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge, UK Morwenna LUDLOW, Professor, Theology and Religion, University of Exeter, UK Ioannis PAPADOGIANNAKIS, Senior Lecturer in Patristics, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, King’s College London, UK Markus VINZENT, Professor of the History of Theology, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, King’s College London, UK Josef LÖSSL, Professor of Historical Theology and Intellectual History, School of History, Archaeology and Religion, Cardiff University, UK Lewis AYRES, Professor of Catholic and Historical Theology, Department of Theology and Religion, Durham University, UK John BEHR, Regius Chair in Humanity, The School of Divinity, History, Philosophy & Art History, University of Aberdeen, UK Anthony DUPONT, Research Professor in Christian Antiquity, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven, Belgium Patricia CINER (as president of AIEP), Professor, Universidad de San Juan-Universidad Católica de Cuyo, Argentina Clayton JEFFORD (as president of NAPS), Professor of Scripture, Seminary and School of Theology, Saint Meinrad, IN, USA

STUDIA PATRISTICA VOL. CXXX

Papers presented at the Eighteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 2019 Edited by MARKUS VINZENT Volume 27:

From the Fifth Century Onwards (Latin Writers) Female Power and its Propaganda (Edited by MATTIA CHIRIATTI)

Theologizing Performance in the Byzantine Tradition (Edited by DAMASKINOS OLKINUORA)

Nachleben

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/2021/0602/164 ISBN: 978-90-429-4788-7 eISBN: 978-90-429-4789-4 A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Printed in Belgium by Peeters, Leuven

Table of Contents

FROM THE FIFTH CENTURY ONWARDS (LATIN WRITERS) Francesco LUBIAN Between Miniaturized Epic and Typological Exegesis: The Role of Moses in Prudentius’ Dittochaeon ......................................................

3

Thomas TSARTSIDIS The Date, Unity and Reason behind the Two Books of Prudentius’ Contra orationem Symmachi ..............................................................

17

Mantė LENKAITYTĖ OSTERMANN Le De laude eremi d’Eucher de Lyon et la tradition contemplative médiévale (Pierre Damien, Guigues Ier, Pétrarque) ............................

31

Theresia HAINTHALER Christology in Avitus of Vienne .........................................................

41

Ilaria MORRESI The Division of Knowledge between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Diagrams on the divisio philosophiae in Cassiodorus’ Institutiones saeculares .......................................................................

53

James K. LEE Petrine Authority in the Ecclesiology of Leo the Great .....................

69

Juan Antonio JIMÉNEZ SÁNCHEZ Body and Spirit’s Health within the Thought of Caesarius of Arles and Gregory of Tours ..........................................................................

79

Maria DEL FIAT MIOLA The Female Monastery of Saint Caesarius of Arles: His Hidden Collaborators in the Christianization of Arles and Beyond .....................

87

Hector SCERRI Gregory the Great Warns against Simony in his Letters ...................

97

Brendan LUPTON Gregory the Great’s Contribution to the Tradition of Patience ......... 103 Pere MAYMÓ I CAPDEVILA Germanic Identities in the Gregorian Dialogues ................................ 113

VI

Table of Contents

Annemarie PILARSKI Blessed be the Sick? Eugenius of Toledo on Suffering, Sin, and Salvation (carm. 13 and 14)................................................................ 123 Joel VARELA RODRÍGUEZ La ordenación de la vida monástica según Tajón de Zaragoza (Sententiae 2, 45-9) .................................................................................... 135 Jan Dominik BOGATAJ Metamorphosis and Theosis: Andrew of Crete on the Transfiguration of the Lord and the Deification of the Human Nature ....................... 145 Thomas CATTOI Insubstantial Mystery: The Role of ἐνυπόστατος in the Christology of John Damascene.............................................................................. 159 Petros TSAGKAROPOULOS The Religious Other in the Homilies of John of Damascus: References to the Christian Confessions and Muslims of the Middle East .......... 171 Rūta ŠILEIKYTĖ ZUKIENĖ Divine Attributes and the Notion of Atemporal Eternity in the Old English Boethius .................................................................................. 183 FEMALE POWER AND ITS PROPAGANDA (edited by Mattia CHIRIATTI) Anja BUSCH Praise and Polemics. Theodosian Empresses and their Contemporaries 197 Mattia CHIRIATTI ‘Con toda certeza llegasteis a conocer a esta joven paloma, criada en el nido imperial’ (Pulcher., 462, 10-2): Pulqueria y su representación en el βασιλικὸς λόγος de Gregorio de Nisa .............................. 215 Silvia ACERBI ‘Invitado por el emperador y la Augusta, el santo se sentó a la mesa con ellos’ (Vida de Teodoro de Sykeon, 97): Brechas en la invisibilidad y reclusión de las emperatrices bizantinas (ss. IV-VII) ............ 231 Oriol DINARÈS CABRERIZO Pelagia, the Barbarian Wife of the Last of the Romans. Women, Politics, and Religion in the Fifth Century AD .................................. 251

Table of Contents

VII

Margarita VALLEJO GIRVÉS The Image of Empress Lupicina (Euphemia) in the Patristic Sources 263 Elisabet SEIJO IBÁÑEZ Matrimonio y conversión en las cortes merovingia y visigoda: Brunehilda e Ingunda .................................................................................... 279 Ernest MARCOS HIERRO The Contest of Beauty and Sainthood: The Empress Bride as the Mirror of Perfection ............................................................................ 295 Francisco LÓPEZ-SANTOS KORNBERGER Empress Aikaterine’s Role in John Skylitzes’ Continuation ............. 315

THEOLOGIZING PERFORMANCE IN THE BYZANTINE TRADITION (edited by Damaskinos OLKINUORA) Andrew MELLAS Performing the Symphony of Salvation: Liturgical Mysticism in a Hymn by Romanos the Melodist ........................................................ 335 Damaskinos (OLKINUORA) of Xenophontos Byzantine Liturgical Commentaries and the Notion of Performance 353 Vessela VALIAVITCHARSKA Logos prophorikos in Middle Byzantine Thought ............................. 371 Andreas ANDREOPOULOS Liturgical Dialogues: Clergy and Laity Concelebrating. An Analysis of the Christian Liturgy through Aristotle’s Poetics .......................... 385 Erik Z.D. ELLIS Performing Acclamation in Tenth-Century Byzantium: De Cerimoniis between Roman Practice and Christian Theory .......................... 403

NACHLEBEN Jeanette KREIJKES Grace or Joy? Chrysostom’s Contradictory Reception by Calvin in his Commentary on 2Cor. 1:15 and Phlm. 1:7 ........................................ 429

VIII

Table of Contents

Davide DAINESE Eusebius of Caesarea as a Source for Federico Borromeo ................ 435 Inês BOLINHAS The Patristic Sources of ‘Rigans montes’, of Saint Thomas Aquinas 449 Marie-Anne VANNIER Meister Eckhart Reading Augustine ................................................... 459 Silvia BARA BANCEL Wisdom in St Augustine and Meister Eckhart ................................... 477 Irene PETROU Knowledge and Reason versus Experience and Practice: Jonathan Edwards and the Patristic Doctrine of Deification ............................. 489 David KOMLINE Schleiermacher, Sabellius, and Inter-Trinitarian Equality.................. 503 Tommaso MANZON On the Patristic Roots of Reformed Theology: Herman Bavinck’s Reading of the Church Fathers on the Attributes of God .................. 511 Antoine PARIS From Wittgenstein to Clement and from Clement to Wittgenstein. A Few Thoughts for a Literary Comparison Including Patristic Literature .................................................................................................. 531 Aneke DORNBUSCH Hermann Dörries (1895-1977) – Patristics during the ‘Kirchenkampf’ 539 Margaret GUISE Engendering Difference: Resonance and Dissonance in Approaches to Gender within the Writings of the Two Gregorys and Luce Irigaray 549 Andrej JEFTIĆ Systematic and Historical Reading of the Fathers: The Case of Thomas F. Torrance........................................................................................... 563

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.

X 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

XI

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.

XII 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

XIII

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.

XIV 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

XV

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.

FROM THE FIFTH CENTURY ONWARDS (LATIN WRITERS)

Between Miniaturized Epic and Typological Exegesis: The Role of Moses in Prudentius’ Dittochaeon Francesco LUBIAN, Università degli Studi di Padova, Padua, Italy

ABSTRACT This article will investigate the role played by Moses in Prudentius’ Dittochaeon, a collection of 48 hexametrical tetrastichs describing some of the most relevant episodes from the Old and the New Testament. After having briefly outlined the peculiarities of the literary (sub-)genre of tituli historiarum, I will examine the seven tetrastichs having Moses as protagonist (Prud., ditt. VIII-XIV). Firstly I will devote some attention to the innovations of this ample section with respect to biblical relative chronology: far from depending from a (doubtful) iconographic model, Prudentius’ partial detachments from the Exodus narrative aim at creating two distinct narrative sub-sections within the Mosaic series: the first three tetrastichs (VIII-X) are thus dedicated to the patriarch’s personal relationship with God, while the following ones (XI-XIV) describe the miracles realised during the desert pilgrimage. These four tetrastichs are mainly based on the succession attested by the book of Numbers, and aptly culminate with the complex allegoric symbolism of the oasis at Elim (ditt. XIV). The second part of the article will provide a brief outline of the typological connotations of tetrastichs XI-XIII: the very structure of the poem, as well as some precise references to widespread allegorical trends, invite readers to interpret the miracles of the desert as staurological, ecclesiological and sacramental allegories; an in-depth analysis of typological foreshadowing of Prud., ditt. XIV will follow, where I will provide a new interpretation for the symbolism of the seventy palm trees of Elim. The concluding section will focus on the strategies adopted by Prudentius in his ‘epigrammatic epicization’ of Moses, and highlight two so far unnoticed reprises from the sixth book of Vergil’s Aeneid.

1. The so-called Dittochaeon,1 composed by the Iberian poet Aurelius Prudentius Clemens probably at the beginning of the 5 th century 1 As affirmed by Adolf Ebert, Allgemeine Geschichte der Literatur des Mittelalters im Abendlande, 3 vol. (Leipzig, 1874-1887), I 291: ‘das Fraglichste an diesem Werkchen ist ohne Zweifel sein Titel’: the readings of the manuscripts are in fact largely diverging (Joannes Bergman, De codicum Prudentianorum generibus et virtute, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Sitzungsberichte 157/5 [Wien, 1908], 34-7; id., De codicibus prudentianis [Holmiae, 1910], 83-9), and the indirect testimony of Gennadius’ biography (vir. ill. 13) irredeemably corrupt. For Renate Pillinger, Die Tituli historiarum oder das sogenannte Dittochaeon des Prudentius. Versuch eines philologisch-archäologischen Kommentars, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Denkschriften 142 (Wien, 1980), 9-10,

Studia Patristica CXXX, 3-15. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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AD,2 consists of a series of forty-eight3 hexametrical tetrastichs which describe a – real or, more probably, imagined – iconographic cycle composed by an equal number of Old (Prud., ditt. I-XXIV) and New Testament episodes (Prud., ditt. XXV-XLVIII). As I tried to demonstrate elsewhere, the Dittochaeon – the amplest cycle of tituli historiarum from the Latin Late Antiquity4 – deserves a specific attention not only as a case study for the strategies of verbal (re-)construction of a visual medium,5 but also as an example of abbreviated biblical epos;6 in this article I would like to further analyse the internal structure of the seven tetrastichs dedicated to Moses. 2. Decisive in studying the Dittochaeon is the appropriate evaluation of the interplays between two diverging instances, which I would define ‘diachronic tension’ and ‘miniaturising temptation’ respectively: this is the only way to correctly understand how its general narrative arrangement, based on a temporallinear dominant (the history of Salvation, from Adam and Eve to Christ’s second Coming), interacts with the features of self-standing ekphraseis,7 that is to say, isolated descriptions characterised by a spatial-synchronic dominant. Prudentius could not have conceived an almost incomprehensible inscriptio like Dittochaeon (or its variants), while Kurt Smolak, ‘Ut pictura poesis? Symmikta zum so genannten Dittochaeon des Prudentius’, in Victoria Zimmerl-Panagl and Dorothea Weber (eds), Text und Bild. Tagungsbeiträge, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Sitzungsberichte 813 (Wien, 2010), 167-94, 168; 188-90 defends the Greek title, a peculiarity of Prudentius’ writings, envisaging the possibility of a form like Ditrophaeum or Ditrophium. 2 R. Pillinger, Die Tituli Historiarum (1980), 18; not mentioned in Prudentius’ Praefatio (405 AD), the Dittochaeon might be later than this date. 3 An interpolated forty-third tetrastich entitled Sepulcrum Christi was published for the first time by Georg Fabricius (1564) and Victor Giselinus (15642), making its way through all Prudentian editions until the second half of the 19th century (R. Pillinger, Die Tituli historiarum [1980], 105-6). 4 Francesco Lubian, ‘The construction of a literary (sub-)genre: the case of the Late Antique tituli historiarum – with a commentary on Rusticus Helpidius’ Tristicha V and VI’, in János Nagyillés, Attila Hajdú, Gergő Gellérfi, Anne Horn Baroody and Sam Baroody (eds), Sapiens Ubique Civis. Proceedings of the International Conference on Classical Studies (Szeged, Hungary, 2013), Antiquitas – Byzantium – Renascentia XIII (Budapest, 2015), 359-88; id., ‘Tituli for the illiterates? The (sub-)genre of the tituli historiarum between ékphrasis, iconography and catechesis’, in Paola Francesca Moretti, Roberta Ricci and Isabella Torre (eds), Culture and Literature in Latin Late Antiquity. Continuities and Discontinuities, Studi e Testi Tardoantichi 13 (Turnhout, 2015), 53-68. 5 Francesco Lubian, ‘“Bildepigramme” classici e tituli historiarum tardoantichi: “notional ékphrasis” ed integrazione ermeneutica fra continuità e cambiamento’, Letras Clássicas 15 (2011), 38-50; id., ‘Il genere iconologico e i suoi rapporti con i Bildepigramme dell’Antichità’, in MarieFrance Gineste-Guipponi and Céline Urlacher-Becht (eds), La renaissance de l’épigramme dans la latinité tardive. Actes du colloque international de Mulhouse, 6-7 octobre 2011 (Paris, 2013), 21127. 6 Francesco Lubian, ‘I tituli historiarum tardoantichi come forma di ‘riscrittura biblica epigrammatica’ – con un commento a Prud. ditt. XXXIV’, Interférences 9 (2016) [https://interferences. revues.org/5848]. 7 Jaś Elsner, ‘Introduction: The Genres of Ekphrasis’, Ramus 31 (2002), 1-18.

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If we agree with Walther Ludwig in considering the Dittochaeon a “für sich stehende künstlerische Einheit”8, specific attention should be devoted to the internal structure of such an artistic unity. Renate Pillinger judged the order of the tetrastichs independent from the author’s will, and saw in the “achronologische Ordnung” of some tituli a proof of her belief that the Dittochaeon provides “eine Beschreibung fertiger Bilder”,9 whose internal arrangement was not ascribable to the poet; differently from her, I am inclined to believe that the epigrams’ order, attested without exceptions10 by all families and classes of manuscripts, could reflect the authorial disposition. By attributing the tetrastichs’ disposition to Prudentius, and not to external factors (a purely hypothetical pre-existing iconographic cycle, or alterations occurred at the very beginning of the textual transmission of the corpus), however, I am not taking position in favour of the alternative explanation, advanced in the 19th century by Augustin Rösler11 and later reprised by Caecilia Davis-Weyer,12 which postulates the existence of rigid typological correspondences between the two halves of the work. Such progressive, ‘one-to-one’ couplings between Old and New Testament tituli (I -XXV; II-XXVI, and so on), especially when not supported by biblical exegesis,13 presuppose and do not explain the attested succession; significantly enough, the solidity of Rösler’s binary architecture becomes feeble if, following all modern editors, we expunge the interpolated 43rd tetrastich.14 The problem of the Dittochaeon’s (limited) divergences from biblical chronology must therefore be tackled from another perspective, and might find a suitable explanation in the integrated and narrativized nature of the work. 8 Walther Ludwig, ‘Die christliche Dichtung des Prudentius und die Transformation der klassischen Gattungen’, in Manfred Fuhrmann (ed.), Christianisme et formes littéraires de l’Antiquité tardive en Occident (Vandœuvres-Genève, 23-28 août 1976), Entretiens sur l’Antiquité classique 23 (Vandœuvres, Genève, 1977), 303-72, 304. 9 R. Pillinger, Die Tituli historiarum (1980), 18. 10 J. Bergman, De codicibus (1910), 155 lists the few cases of transposition occurred in the tradition. 11 Augustin Rösler, Der katholische Dichter Prudentius. Ein Beitrag zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte des vierten und fünften Jahrhunderts (Freiburg, 1886), 135-40; for a discussion of Rösler’s typological pairings see F. Lubian, ‘Il genere iconologico e i suoi rapporti’ (2013), 225-6. 12 Caecilia Davis-Weyer, ‘Komposition und Szenenwahl im Dittochaeum des Prudentius’, in Friedrich Wilhelm Deichmann, Otto Feld and Urs Peschlow (eds), Studien zur spätantiken und byzantinischen Kunst F.W. Deichmann gewidmet, Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum Mainz, Forschungsinstitut für Vor- und Frühgeschichte, Monographien 10 (Bonn, 1986), I 19-29; see also F. Lubian, ‘Il genere iconologico e i suoi rapporti’ (2013), 226. 13 This lack of parallels has been attributed to the melding together, in the disposition of the scenes, of a chronological and a typological criterium (C. Davis-Weyer, Komposition [1986], 22: ‘Der Autor der Tituli übernahm eine ebenso ungewöhnliche wie komplizierte Aufgabe, als er sich entschloß, die chronologisch angeordneten Themen seiner Inschriften auch paarweise nach typologischen Gesichtspunkten miteinander zu verbinden’); but it remains difficult for me to believe that Prudentius allowed himself such an unprecedented typologic freedom. 14 See supra, n. 3.

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Let us consider the seven tetrastichs dedicated to Moses, the protagonist of the longest sequence of the Old Testament section (Prud., ditt. 29-56). According to the Exodus narrative, the tituli should follow the order: 1. Burning bush (Ex. 3:1-5 ~ Prud., ditt. VIII); 2. Crossing of the Red sea (Ex. 14:28-9 ~ Prud., ditt. IX); 3. Marah (Ex. 15:23-5 ~ Prud., ditt. XIII); 4. Elim (Ex. 15:27 ~ Prud., ditt. XIV); 5. Manna and quails (Ex. 16:13-5; 32 ~ Prud., ditt. XI) and 6. Giving of the Law (Ex. 31:18; 32:3-4 ~ Prud., ditt. X); the serpent of brass of tetrastich XII is only mentioned in the book of Numbers (21:4-9).15 Prudentius, instead, seems to have organised the seven tetrastichs in two distinct sequences,16 the first one describing the major steps in the establishing of a privileged relationship between Moses – and thus Israel – and God (VIII: Burning bush;17 IX: Crossing of the Red sea; X: Giving of the Law), whose relative chronology was indubitable and did not admit any variation, and the second one dedicated to a selection of miraculous events, gathered together after the Sinai episode. Moreover, the succession: XI. Manna and quails; XII. Serpent of brass; XIII. Marah; XIV. Elim – albeit diverging from the Exodus narrative (as well as from the order followed in Prud., cath. 5, 31-10418) – is not devoid of references to another book from the Pentateuch, the Numbers. Evident for tetrastich XII, Prudentius’ reliance on this book also emerges from tetrastich XI, since only in Num. 11:4-31 the quails come as a result of the Hebrews’ ungrateful request to eat meat19, and also involves the tituli dedicated 15

Jean-Louis Charlet, ‘Prudence et la Bible’, RecAug 18 (1983), 3-149, 50. See instead R. Pillinger, Die Tituli historiarum (1980), 39: ‘Damit (scil.: with the ordering of the seven tetrastichs) ist ein starker Beweis dafür gegeben, daß Prudentius eine Bilderfolge dieser – nämlich achronologischer – Art vorlag; denn sicher unrichtig wäre die Annahme, daß der Fehler dem Dichter zuzuschreiben ist, da jener wahrlich seine Bibel gut kannte und außerdem die Möglichkeit hatte nachzulesen’. 17 In Prud., ditt. 31-2 (ille capit iussus uirgam, fit uipera uirga, / soluit uincla pedum, properat Faraonis ad arcem), the succession of events diverges from the one attested in Ex. 3-4. Raffaele Garrucci, Storia dell’arte cristiana nei primi otto secoli della Chiesa, 6 vol. (Prato, 1873-1881), I 477 suggested therefore that the original order had to be the following: Soluit uincla pedum iussus, uipera fit uirga: / Ille capit uirgam, properat Pharaonis ad arcem; but R. Pillinger, Die Tituli historiarum (1980), 33-4 is surely right in rejecting this tampering of the transmitted sequence. For Arwed Arnulf, Versus ad picturas. Studien zur Titulusdichtung als Quellengattung der Kunstgeschichte von der Antike bis zum Hochmittelalter, Kunstwissenschaftliche Studien 72 (München, 1997), 89-91, Prudentius’ inversion was determined by «eine vorliegende bildliche Darstellung», similar to the one attested by one of the wooden panels of the doors of St Sabine on the Aventine; but – even apart from any consideration on the supposed pre-existing iconographic model of Prudentius’ tituli –, the inclusion of all the mentioned episodes in a monoscenic representation remains at least doubtful (K. Smolak, ‘Ut pictura poesis? Symmikta zum so genannten Dittochaeon des Prudentius’ [2010], 174), if not decidedly unrealistic. 18 Marion M. Van Assendelft, Sol ecce surgit igneus. A commentary on the morning and evening hymns of Prudentius (Cathemerinon 1,2,5 and 6) (Groningen, 1976), 142-70; Jean-Louis Charlet, La création poétique dans le Cathemerinon de Prudence (Paris, 1982), 169-77; id., ‘Prudence’ (1983), 49-57. 19 Nicola Grasso, ‘Prudenzio e la Bibbia’, Orpheus 19 (1972), 79-170, 99-100. 16

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to Marah and Elim, mentioned together in Num. 33:9 as the first two stops of the desert pilgrimage. The choice to mention Elim at the end of the Mosaic section does not seem casual: even if it did not represent the conclusion of the Hebrews’ wanderings, in fact, the oasis was considered by Origen a symbol of the pleasant rest granted by God to his people even before the end of their fatigues (Rufin., Orig. in Num. 27, 11): Vides, post amaritudines, post asperitates tentationum quam te amoena suscipiunt loca. Non uenisses ad palmas, nisi tentationum amaritudines pertulisses, nec uenisses ad dulcedinem fontium, nisi prius, quae tristia fuerant et aspera, superasses; non quo iam finis sit in his itineris et perfectio cunctorum; sed dispensator animarum Deus in ipso itinere interserit laboribus etiam quaedam refrigeria, quibus refota anima et reparata proptior redeat ad reliquos labores. […] Haec te ergo amoenitas post amaritudinem, haec te requies post laborem, haec te gratiam post tentamenta suscipiet.20

Inviting readers to what I would call a ‘typological rest’ after the desert narrative, the dense symbolism of the oasis may therefore represent an apt conclusion for a section whose internal ordo, far from constituting a mere chronological succession (historia), foreshadows a sacramental, staurological and ecclesiological mysterium.21 Prudentius’ rearrangement of the Exodus chronology, probably influenced by allegorical exegesis, seems therefore to imply a subtle form of exegesis, based on a widespread interpretation of Elim but at the same time adapted to the Dittochaeon’s narrative progression. 3. Prudentius was always well aware of Moses’ prominence in the history of Salvation, and regularly highlighted his role as author of the Pentateuch, as Israel’s lawgiver, and Christological typus.22 It is surely not by chance that his seven tetrastichs correspond to the ones dedicated to Christ’s miracles (Prud., ditt. XXXII-XXXVIII) as numbers 8-14 of the two halves of the work: Moses’ deeds are presented as Messianic foreshadowings, as it clearly emerges from the following brief analysis. XI. Panibus angelicis albent tentoria patrum. certa fides facti: tenet urceus aureus exim

20 Origenes Werke, Siebter Band. Homilien zum Hexateuch in Rufins Übersetzung, zweiter Teil, ed. W.A. Baehrens (Leipzig, 1921), 271. 21 See Rufin., Orig. in Ex. 7, 3 (GCS 29, 207-8): Putas non habet aliquid rationis quod non ante in Elim ducitur populus, […] ubi erat amoenitas plurima ex densitate palmarum, sed primo ductus est ad aquas salsas et amaras, quibus per lignum monstratum a Domino dulcibus effectis postea uenitur ad fontes? Si historiam solam sequamur, non multum nos aedificat scire, ad quem locum primo uenerint et ad quem secundo; si uero rimemur in his mysterium latens, inuenimus ordinem fidei. 22 On these three aspects see Francesco Lubian, ‘Christi figuram praeferens / Moses receptor ciuium: il ruolo di Mosè nell’opera di Prudenzio’, in S. Freund and D. De Gianni (eds), Das Alte Testament in der Dichtung der Antike (Stuttgart, in press).

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seruatum manna; ingratis uenit altera nubes atque auidos carnis saturat congesta coturnix.23

The Eucharistic connotation of manna is provided by the expression panibus angelicis of l. 41; already attested by Tertullian (ieiun. 5, 4), the iunctura is a poetisation – obtained by means of the substitution of the genitive with an adnominal adjective – of the biblical formula panis/cibus angelorum,24 the Western translation of ἄρτον ἀγγέλων of Ps. 77:25. Differently from the selfexegetical discourse of Sobrietas in Prudentius’ Psychomachia (374-6: angelicusne cibus prima in tentoria uestris / fluxit auis, quem nunc sero felicior aeuo / uespertinus edit populus de corpore Christi?25), where the forefathers eating manna are explicitly opposed to the «people in the evening»26 who receive the only food of Salvation, the body of Christ, our titulus leaves this reference to sacramental typology to the hermeneutical cooperation of the readers, who are invited by the very development of the Dittochaeon’s narrative to a comprehensive interpretation of the figurality of Israel’ journey. XII. Feruebat uia sicca heremi serpentibus atris, iamque uenenati per uulnera liuida morsus carpebant populum, sed prudens aere politum dux cruce suspendit, qui uirus temperet, anguem.27

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The bronze snake raised by Moses, called σημεῖον/signum in Num. 21:8-9, embodies a staurological symbolism – or a figura mystica, according to the glosses attributed to Iso of St Gall28 – already from John 3:14;29 our tetrastich mainly focuses on the act of elevation, enhanced by the semantic, phonic and syllabic consistence of the verb suspendere. Already interpreted by Philo of Alexandria (All. 2, 79-81; Agr. 95-98) as a positive counterpart to the Genesis 23

I. Bergman, Aurelii Prudentii Clementis Carmina (1926), 437. Christine Mohrmann, Études sur le latin des chrétiens, 4 vol. (Roma, 1958-1977), I 169-75; Goulven Madec, ‘Panis angelorum (selon les Pères de l’Église, surtout saint Augustin)’, in Forma Futuri. Studi in onore del Cardinale Michele Pellegrino (Torino, 1975), 818-29. 25 I. Bergman, Aurelii Prudentii Clementis Carmina (1926), 187. 26 Aaron Pelttari, The Psychomachia of Prudentius. Text, commentary, and glossary, Oklahoma Series in Classical Studies 58 (Norman, 2019), 151: ‘Vespertinus is apparently a reference to the celebrations of the eucharist in the evening, which was like the quail that the Israelites ate in the evening […]. In that case, auis (‘Ancestors’) in the line above puns on auis (‘bird’). More remotely, uespertinus can suggest that Christians are a people living in the end times’; for the latter interpretation see already the gloss attributed to John Scotus Eriugena (John Miller Burnam, Glossemata de Prudentio. Edited from the Paris and Vatican manuscripts, Cincinnati Studies in Classics II, 1 [Cincinnati, 1905], 62). 27 I. Bergman, Aurelii Prudentii Clementis Carmina (1926), 437. 28 Melchior Goldastus, Manuale biblicum, sive Enchiridion S. S. Scripturae, a catholicae apostolicae veteris ecclesiae patribus compendiatum, et nunc primum ex vetustis membranis MSS. collectum (Francofurti, 1610), 11. 29 Michèle Morgen, ‘Le Fils de l’Homme élevé en vue de la vie éternelle (Jn. 3, 14–15 éclairé par diverses traditions juives)’, RSR 58 (1994), 5-17. 24

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tempter, the snake of Num. 21:8 was generally considered a staurological figure by the Fathers: in the same way that Moses raised it to heal the Hebrews, so the Son of God will be raised on the cross to grant all people eternal life30, as already in Justin (dial. 91, 4; 112, 1) and the Epistle of Ps. Barnabas (12, 5-7), both relying on a pre-existing collection of biblical testimonia.31 Typical of Eastern Christianity,32 but widespread also in the West,33 this exegesis was particularly appreciated by Ambrose, one of Prudentius’ main exegetical sources;34 worth noting is that Prudentius’ snake is not suspended on a rod, but on a crux: such typological substitution stresses the traditional staurological symbolism with unprecedented vividness.35 XIII. Aspera gustatu populo sitiente lacuna tristificos latices stagnanti felle tenebat. Moyses sanctus ait: ‘lignum date, gurgitem in istum Conicite, in dulcem uertentur amara saporem’.36

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Placed at the center of the tetrastich and at the beginning of Moses’ speech, the lexeme lignum – taken from Ex. 15:25 – assumes here exceptional relevance. According to the common Scriptural37 substitution of a ‘Funktionalbezeichnung’ with a ‘Materialbezeichnung’, like its Greek equivalent ξύλον the term metonymically alludes to the instrument of Christ’s torture in a form which is intrinsically pregnant of biblical resonances,38 referring at the same time to the Genesis tree, the curse of Deut. 21:23, and the tree planted by waters of 30 Stefan Beyerle, ‘Die Eherne Schlange. Num 21, 4-9, synchron und diachron gelesen’, ZAW 111 (1999), 36-43. 31 Jean Daniélou, Théologie du judéo-christianisme, Histoire des doctrines chrétiennes avant Nicée 1 (Paris, 1958), 107; Enrico Norelli, ‘Due Testimonia attribuiti a Esdra’, AnnSE 1 (1984), 240-54. 32 Gregory T. Armstrong, ‘The Cross in the Old Testament, according to Athanasius, Cyril of Jerusalem and the Cappadocian Fathers’, in Carl Andersen and Günter Klein (eds), Theologia crucis, Signum crucis: Festschrift für Erich Dinkler zum 70. Geburtstag (Tübingen, 1979), 17-38; Hans Maneschg, Die Erzählung von der ehernen Schlange (Num. 21, 4-9) in der Auslegung der frühen jüdischen Literatur. Eine traditionsgeschichtliche Studie, Europäische Hochschulschriften – Theologie 157 (Frankfurt am Main, 1981), 446. 33 Jean-Mar Prieur, La croix chez les Pères: du IIe au debut du IVe siècle, Cahiers de Biblia Patristica 8 (Strasbourg, 2006), 164-6. 34 Ambr., apol. Dav. 1, 3, 11; in Luc. 9, 34; spir. sanct. 3, 8, 50. 35 Sabine Schrenk, Typos und Antitypos in der frühchristlichen Kunst, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum, Ergänzungsband 21 (Münster, 1995), 162 speaks of ‘ein klarer Hinweis auf den typologischen Charakter, den Prudentius dieser alttestamentlichen Geschichte zuweist’. 36 I. Bergman, Aurelii Prudentii Clementis Carmina (1926), 438. 37 See e.g. Act. 5:30: Iesum, quem uos interemistis suspendentes in ligno; 13:29: deponentes eum de ligno; Gal. 3:13: maledictus omnis qui pendet in ligno; 1Petr. 2:24: qui peccata nostra ipse pertulit in corpore suo super lignum. 38 See Prud., apoth. 5: duroque adfigere ligno; 493: chrismatis inscripto signaret tempora ligno; psych. 408: lignum uenerabile; perist. 1, 36: insigne lignum, quod draconem subdidit; 12, 12: pendere iussum praeminente ligno.

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Ps. 1:3.39 In the Fathers, the Marah episode constitutes a typical staurological foreshadowing:40 the wood thrown into water by Moses was interpreted by Justin as an allusion to the cross of the Lord (dial. 86, 1), while Gregory of Nyssa remarked the notoriety of such symbolism (vit. Moys. 2, 132: ξύλον δὲ ἀκούσας τὸν σταυρὸν πάντως ἐνόησας41). Prudentius knew this typology, as shown in cath. 5, 95-6 (lignum est, quo sapiunt aspera dulcius; / nam praefixa cruci spes hominum uiget42); differently from the hymn, our titulus does not provide an explicit staurological exegesis, but – as already observed for tetrastich XI – an interpretive orientation implicitly emerges from the typological arrangement of the tituli, which invite readers to activate the figural resonances of the wood. XIV. Deuenere uiri Moysi duce, sex ubi fontes et sex forte alii uitreo de rore rigabant septenas decies palmas, qui mysticus Aelim lucus apostolicum numerum libris quoque pinxit.43

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The typological foreshadowing of the oasis is made clear by the verb pinxit, used by Prudentius in a typological context also in cath. 12, 181-4 (Iure ergo se Iudae ducem / uidisse testantur magi, / cum facta priscorum ducum / Christi figuram pinxerint44); its precise meaning, however, has not won unanimity among scholars. Rejecting the specularly restrictive interpretations by Stephanus Chamillard45 and Girolama Mannelli,46 Roberto Palla rightly pointed the twofold nature of the oasis’ numerological symbolism;47 for him, the apostolicus 39

Teresa Piscitelli, ‘La croce nell’esegesi patristica del II e III secolo’, in Boris Ulianich (ed.), La Croce. Iconografia e interpretazione (secoli I-inizio XVI), Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi (Napoli, 6-11 dicembre 1999), 3 vol. (Roma, 2007), I 129-52. 40 G.T. Armstrong, ‘The Cross in the Old Testament’ (1979), 17-38. 41 Gregorio di Nissa, La vita di Mosè, ed. Manlio Simonetti (Roma, Milano, 1984), 134. 42 I. Bergman, Aurelii Prudentii Clementis Carmina (1926), 29. 43 Ibid. 438. 44 Ibid. 75. For Gustav Sixt, ‘Des Prudentius Buch Dittochaeon’, Korrespondenz-Blatt für die Gelehrten- und Realschulen Württenbergs 37 (1890), 425, the verb was one of the means by which ‘ein Tetrastich die Beziehung auf ein Bild direkt ausspricht’; doubts in R. Pillinger, Die Tituli historiarum (1980), 45. 45 For Stephanus Chamillard, Aurelii Prudentii Clementis opera (Parisiis, 1687), 678, the lucus Aelim only alludes to the seventy disciples of Luc. 10:1-24 (‘Possunt et ipsi discipuli Apostoli vocari, cum tum a Deo, tum ab Apostolis missi fuerint ad annuntiandum variis populis Christi Evangelium’). 46 For Girolama Mannelli, ‘La personalità prudenziana nel “Dittochaeon”’, Miscellanea di Studi di Letteratura Cristiana Antica 1 (1947), 79-126, 117 the oasis exclusively symbolizes the twelve apostles; so also the translation by Raffaele Argenio, ‘Il Dittocheo e l’Epilogo di Prudenzio’, Rivista di Studi Classici 15 (1967), 55. 47 Roberto Palla, ‘L’interpretazione figurale nelle opere di Prudenzio’, La Scuola Cattolica 106 (1978), 144: ‘Anche se lo stesso Prudenzio, nell’Apotheosis, fissa in 72, come vuole la tradizione più diffusa del testo biblico, il numero dei doctores mandati dal Cristo per il mondo, è abbastanza evidente che in questo caso egli ha visto nella descrizione dell’oasi di Elim una doppia

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numerus should indicate here at the same time the twelve apostles and the seventy disciples of Luc. 10:1-24, as it happens in the most common allegorical interpretation of the Elim account48, ultimately derived from Targumic exegesis49 and developed by Origen (Rufin., Orig. in Ex. 7, 3; Orig. in Num. 27, 11), Hilary of Poitiers (myst. 1, 37), Gregory of Nyssa (vit. Moys. 2, 134)50, but also attested in Cyril of Alexandria,51 Maximus of Turin52 and the pseudo-Ambrosian sermon de XLII mansionibus filiorum Israel.53 Two details, however, seem in contrast with this reading. Firstly, the expression apostolicus numerus cannot be easily referred to the seventy disciples: if it is true that apostles are frequently called discipuli in order to avoid a biblical Grecism, such synonymity is not reciprocal, that is to say, Luke’s disciples were called apostoli only exceptionally.54 Consequently, the periphrasis apostolicus numerus (l. 56) should univocally indicate the twelve apostles, as it regularly happens in the Fathers55 as well as in Prudentius.56 Secondly, in Prudentius’ Vorlage the discipuli of Luc. 10:1-24 where not seventy, but seventy-two,57 as demonstrated by Prud. apoth. 1004-5 (septenos decies conscendit Christus in ortus / et duo – nam totidem doctores misit in orbem).58 For Augustin Rösler, Prudentius was driven to such variation by his will to establish a typological prefigurazione: le dodici sorgenti per i dodici apostoli e le settanta palme per i settanta discepoli. L’espressione apostolicum numerum non esclude o pregiudica la seconda parte di questa interpretazione’. 48 Jean Daniélou, Sacramentum futuri. Étude sur les origines de la typologie biblique (Paris, 1950), 149. 49 R. Pillinger, Die Tituli historiarum (1980), 46. 50 Ibid. 51 Cyr. Alex., Glaph. in Ex. 2, 1 (PG 69, 448D): Δυοκαίδεκα δὲ αὗται τὸν τῶν ἁγίων ἀποστόλων ἡμῖν καταγράφουσι χορόν· περιτευξόμεθα δὲ καὶ τοῖς ἑβδομήκοντα στελέχεσι τῶν φοινίκων. 52 Max. Taur. serm. 68, 4 (CChr.SL 23, 286): Septuaginta autem palmas iuxta fontes apostolicos generatas septuaginta illos discipulos dixerim. 53 Ps. Ambr., de XLII mans. (PL 17, 18D-19A): Ideo duodecim fontes, et septuaginta palmae designant Christiani gregis ductores: nempe duodecim Apostolos […] et septuaginta discipulos quos sanctus Lucas alibi meminit. 54 Besides Tert., adv. Marc. 4, 24, 1 (see R. Palla, L’interpretazione figurale [1978], 144), this happens in Rufin., Orig. in Num. 27, 11 and Hier., epist. 69, 6. 55 See e.g. Ambr., Tob. 20, 73; in psalm. 40, 17, 2; 40, 32, 1; 47, 9, 2; epist. 16, 6; Rufin., hist. 1, 12, 3; 3, 39, 5; Orig., in Lev. 16, 7; Orig., in Rom. 5, 5; Aug., util. cred. 3, 7; c. Faust. 22, 63; c. Fel. 1, 4; cons. euang. 3, 25, 81; in psalm. 59, 2; 86, 4; 108, 1; serm. 149, 9; 203, 3; 267, 1; 268, 1; in euang. Ioh. 50, 10; 106, 2; adv. Don. 13, 17; civ. 15, 20; haer. 46, 168. 56 Prud., psych. 839: nomina apostolici fulgent bis sena senatus. 57 It is not necessary to suppose that Prudentius had in mind the Vulgate text of Luc. 10:1 when he spoke of seventy-two disciples; as J.-L. Charlet, ‘Prudence et la Bible’ (1983), 22 demonstrates, in fact, some Greek manuscripts added to the reading ἑβδομήκοντα the word δύο, and the same oscillation is attested in the Vetus Latina tradition. 58 I. Bergman, Aurelii Prudentii Clementis Carmina (1926), 121; see Reinhart Herzog, Die allegorische Dichtkunst des Prudentius, Zetemata 42 (München, 1966), 144.

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correspondence between palms and disciples;59 rightly pointing out that the poet could have hardly followed two different versions of Luc. 10:1-24 in his two works, Renate Pillinger tries to explain such divergence on the basis of Num. 11:26 and the corresponding Rabbinic exegesis.60 But a typological connection between palms and disciples – which, it has to be remembered, is not explicitly established neither in the Apotheosis nor in the Dittochaeon! – would work only by admitting that, in our tetrastich, seventy trees could represent seventy-two disciples, as explicitly – but implausibly – stated in one of the glosses attributed to Remigius of Auxerre.61 A more satisfying explanation may emerge from a different interpretation of the function of libris (l. 56). The complement has been unanimously considered as an ablative of ‘figurative place where’, as if the mystical oasis of Elim represented the apostolic number also in the Bible;62 however, libris could be also taken as a complement of union in simple ablative, as it usually happens in Prudentius.63 In this case, the twelve springs and the seventy palms would represent the apostolic number ‘also with (that of) the books (i.e. the Bible)’: this typology would respect the twofold symbolism of the mystical oasis, related at the same time to the number of springs and palms, and would also find a parallel in Cassiodorus’ exposition of the genera diuisionum of the Scripture.64 This is in fact how he illustrates the symbolism of the division according to the old, pre-Vulgate Bible, connected to the authority of Hilary of Poitiers,65 Rufinus of Aquileia, Epiphanius of Cyprus, and the Councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon (inst. 1, 14, 2): Tertia uero diuisio est inter alias in codice grandiore littera clariore conscripto, qui habet quaterniones nonaginta quinque, in quo Septuaginta interpretum translatio ueteris Testamenti in libris quadraginta quattuor continetur; cui subiuncti sunt noui Testamenti libri

59 A. Rösler, Der katholische Dichter Prudentius (1886), 324: ‘Des Typus wegen hat der Dichter die Zahl beschränkt’; see also J.-L. Charlet, ‘Prudence et la Bible’ (1983), 22. 60 R. Pillinger, Die Tituli historiarum (1980), 47. 61 John Miller Burnam, Commentaire anonyme sur Prudence d’après le manuscrit 413 de Valenciennes (Paris, 1910), 186: ‘LXX palmae septuaginta duos significant discipulos, quia lege arithmetica maior numerus minorem in se constringit’. 62 R. Garrucci, Storia dell’arte cristiana (1873-81), I 478 even suggested to correct libris in lymphis, ‘perché constasse che il numero degli apostoli e degli uomini apostolici fu figurato dalle dodici fonti e dalle settanta palme’. 63 Maurice Lavarenne, Étude sur la langue du poète Prudence (Paris, 1933), 145, with exemplification. 64 On the three divisions of Augustine, Jerome, and the Septuagint in Cassiodorus’ lost Codex Grandior see Paul Meyvaert, ‘Bede, Cassiodorus, and the Codex Amiatinus’, Speculum 71 (1996), 827-83. 65 In the Codex Amiatinus (fol. 7r), the division is attributed to pope Hilarus (461-468 AD): this is interpreted as a deliberate attempt of correction made in Northumbria by P. Meyvaert, ‘Bede, Cassiodorus’ (1996), 843-4.

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uiginti sex, fiuntque simul libri septuaginta, in illo palmarum numero fortasse praesagati, quas in mansione Helim inuenit populus Hebreorum.66

Just like Cassiodorus – considered ‘alone in his insistence on a symbolic meaning for the number of books in the Old and the New Testaments when taken together’67 –, then, Prudentius might have considered the palms of Elim as a mystical prefiguration of the books of the Bible. 4. Tetrastichs VIII-XIV are particularly rich of stylemes contributing to the epicization of Moses: – in his presentation at l. 30 (pecoris tunc forte magistrum), the adverb forte possesses a circumstantial, more than simply causal, meaning, acting as the opening marker of the narration;68 – at l. 32, the Pharaoh’s palace is called arx, a term not attested in the biblical source and typical in poetry to indicate the tyrant’s retreat;69 – the description of Moses’ path through the tormented Red sea of l. 33 (Tutus agit uir iustus iter uel per mare magnum) recalls the Lucretian model of the imperturbability of the sapiens;70 – at l. 37 (Fumat montis apex), the setting of the Giving of the Law (Ex. 19:18) alludes to poetic descriptions of volcanic eruptions and flaming peaks such as that of Etna by Lucan (5, 99-100) or of Vesuvius by Valerius Flaccus (4, 507-8) and Statius (silv. 3, 5, 72-3); – at ll. 48 and 53, Prudentius calls Moses with the military appellative dux;

66 Cassiodori senatoris Institutiones, ed. Roger A.B. Mynors (Oxford, 1937), 40. My interpretation finds a partial antecedent in Andreas Rivinus, De Christi Iesu beneficiis et laudibus eius, Aliquot Christianae reliquiae veterum poetarum Ecclesiasticorum (Lipsiae, 1652), 72, whose amendment libros, however, should not be accepted: In eodem et sequenti versu nescio quid adhuc latitat, quod non recte intelligi possit. Nam quod lucus ille mysticus per XII. fontes ‘apostolicum numerum pingat’, i.e. figuret, […] hoc captu facile est, at quod iidem fontes rigabant LXX. palmas, de hoc nullum sensum mysticum super addidit, si retineatur ‘libris quoque pinxit’, ceu omnes quidem hactenus edidere. Quare ad acumen epigrammatis complendum et absolvendum corrigo confidentissime: ‘Lucus Apostolicum numerum et libros quoque pinxit’; on the entity of the Biblical canon in Spain at the time of Prudentius see Maria Veronese, Dilibatio et massa. La Scriptura nella raccolta di Würzburg attribuita a Priscilliano (Bari, 2018), 27-30. 67 Karen Corsano, ‘The First Quire of the Codex Amiatinus and the Institutiones of Cassiodorus’, Scriptorium 41 (1987), 3-34, 22. 68 Giovanni Ravenna, ‘Note su una formula narrativa (forte + verbo finito)’, in Miscellanea di studi in memoria di Marino Barchiesi, Rivista di Cultura Classica e Medievale 18-20, 3 vol. (Roma, 1976-1980), III 1117-28; Girolama Mannelli, ‘La personalità prudenziana nel “Dittochaeon”’ (1947), 116. 69 Prud., apoth. 129: Babylonis ab arce tyrannus (with the commentary by Kurt Smolak, Exegetischer Kommentar zu Prudentius, Apotheosis (Hymnus, Praefatio, Apotheosis 1-216), Diss. [Wien, 1968]), 201-2); c. Symm. 2, 550: Babylonis ad arcem; cath. 5, 80: arcis iustitium triste tyrannicae (also referred to the Pharaoh’s palace). 70 F. Lubian, ‘Tituli for the illiterates?’ (2015), 59-60.

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– at l. 50, to the waters of Marah is applied the precious adjectival compound tristificos, coined by Cicero (carm. frg. 6, 48; progn. frg. 3, 4) and largely appreciated by Prudentius.71 Such epicizing effect is strengthened by two so far unnoticed reprises from the sixth book of the Aeneid. Moses’ return among the Israelites after the Giving of the Law (l. 39b: Ille suos suscepta lege reuisit) seems modelled upon the conclusion of the sixth book of the Aeneid, where Aeneas steps out of the Underworld through the ivory door and re-joins his companions (6, 899: ille uiam secat ad nauis sociosque reuisit72). The plausibility of such intertextual reprise appears justified not only by the exclusive employment of the incipitary ille (placed by Prudentius after the first dactylic foot) and of the verb reuisit in clausula, with suos functionally corresponding to socios, but also by the exceptional contextual similarity of the two scenes. Both Vergil and Prudentius, in fact, describe the return of their main hero to his fellows, after a moment of privileged intimacy with the supernatural sphere, constituted in both poems by the revelation of the laws ruling the universe and mankind (ll. 38-39a: Scripta decem uerbis saxorum pagina Mosi / traditur ~ Verg., Aen. 6, 723: suscipit Anchises atque ordine singula pandit73). Describing the arrival of the Jews to Elim (l. 53: Deuenere uiri Mosi duce sex ubi fontes), Prudentius replaces uenio (Ex. 15:27) by means of a uerbum compositum74; deuenere is also enhanced by an elegant double alliteration with the subject uiri. The third person plural perfect form ending in -ēre, a recognisable epicism,75 had been previously used in Latin poetry only three times, always in incipitary position, twice by Vergil (Aen. 1, 365-6; 6, 638-9), and once by Claudian, in an evident Vergilian reprise (rapt. Pros. 1, 237). Even if, in the Mantuan poet, the verb governs a so-called ‘Zielakkusativ’ without preposition, Prudentius seems again to have in mind the sixth book of the Aeneid, the famous description of Aeneas’ arrival to the Elysian fields (Verg., Aen. 6, 638-9: deuenere locos laetos et amoena uirecta / fortunatum nemorum sedesque beatas76), characterised by the flowing of the river Eridanus (Aen. 6, 658-9) and by shadowy woods and fresh-water meadows (Aen. 6, 673-5). The Vergilian borrowing marks the arrival of his protagonists, the uiri – another epicism – of God’s chosen people, to Elim, which is also described as a typical locus amoenus: Prudentius names in fact springs of water and greenery, adopting specific 71

M. Lavarenne, Étude sur la langue (1933), 431: see Prud., cath. 4, 76; c. Symm. 2, 574; and especially cath. 5, 93-4 (Instar fellis aqua tristifico in lacu / fit ligni uenia mel uelut Atticum). 72 Publius Vergilius Maro, Aeneis, ed. Gian Biagio Conte (Berlin, Boston, 2019), 175. 73 G.B. Conte, Publius Vergilius Maro (2019), 168. 74 Franz X. Schuster, Studien zu Prudentius (Freising, 1909), 64. 75 Antonius E. Kantecki, De Aurelii Prudenti Clementis genere dicendi quaestiones (Monasterii, 1874), 74. 76 G.B. Conte, Publius Vergilius Maro (2019), 165.

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lexemes for the topothesia of reflecting pools and woodlands, like the adjective uitreus (l. 54) and the substantive lucus (l. 56), notably absent from the hypotexts of Ex. 15:27 and Num. 33:9. The intertextual reprise well suits the Exodus narration, and is also exegetically appropriate: as we have seen above,77 Origen already underlined the allegorical meaning of the rest at Elim, whose pleasantness was also emphasised by Gregory of Nyssa78 and Ambrose.79 The epicization of Moses, legitimized by the exceptional role played by the prophet in the Pentateuch, also contributes to the Dittochaeon’s re-narrativization of the Scriptural material, as well as to the structuring of its peculiar form of miniaturized biblical epos.

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See supra, n. 21. Greg. Nyss., vit. Moys. 1, 34 (M. Simonetti, Gregorio di Nissa, Vita di Mosè [1984], 32): Ἑβδομήκοντα δὲ ἦσαν οἱ φοίνικες ἀρκοῦντες καὶ ἐν ὀλίγῳ τῷ ἀριθμῷ πολὺ ποιῆσαι τοῖς ὁρῶσι τὸ θαῦμα τῷ ὑπεραίρειν κατὰ τό κάλλος τε καὶ μέγεθος. 79 Ambr., in psalm. 118 serm. 5, 5 (CSEL 622, 85): Inde uentum est in Helim, ubi fontes duodecim et septuaginta arbores palmarum; post amaritudinem, ne populus deficeret, debuerunt amoena et fecunda succedere; see also Ps. Ambr., XLII mans. (PL 17, 18C): Ecce filii Israel, post Pharaonis et Aegyptiorum saeuitias, post maris desertique discrimina, post triduanae sitis ardorem, et Marah amaritudines, uenerunt tandem ad palmas, uenerunt ad fontes. Per quod instruimur quod qui asperitatibus praegrauantur, eos tandem laeta et amoena loca suscipiunt. 78

The Date, Unity and Reason behind the Two Books of Prudentius’ Contra orationem Symmachi Thomas TSARTSIDIS, Munich, Germany

ABSTRACT In 384, Symmachus wrote his Third Relatio, a petition to emperor Valentinian II for the restoration of the altar of Victory to the senate house. Ambrose of Milan opposed Symmachus’ plea in his Letters 17 and 18. Some years later Prudentius also undertook the task of refuting Symmachus’ arguments in his two books of Contra orationem Symmachi. In this study, I shall revisit the vexed issue of the dating of Prudentius’ work. Then I will provide new insights about the unity between the two books and finally I will offer a plausible explanation about the reason behind its composition.

Augustus established the altar of Victory (Victoria) at the senate house in 29 BC. At this altar, senators would burn incense before senatorial meetings and there were occasions on which they would also take oaths before the altar. In 382 the altar was removed (not for the first time) by Gratian, who also removed public subsidies for state cults.1 In the same year, a delegation to protest about these measures was led by the distinguished orator and senator Symmachus but it was refused admittance. In 384 – the year after Gratian’s death (383) and while he was holding the office of the prefect of Rome – Symmachus makes a second attempt. He sends a petition to the imperial consistory, his famous third Relatio, addressed to the emperor Valentinian II. In this document, Symmachus not only pleads for the restoration of the altar of Victory as well as the subsidies and privileges of priests including the Vestal Virgins (7, 11-5, 17) but also emphasises that public cults are part and parcel of Roman tradition. Amongst others, he attributes Rome’s military success to the protection of the gods (3). When Ambrose heard about this, he also sent a letter to the imperial consistory opposing Symmachus (Letter 17). Although Ambrose claims not to have seen Symmachus’ Relatio and asks for a copy (17.13), it seems that he had a good 1 For the historical background surrounding the debate about the altar of Victory, see Neil B. McLynn, Ambrose of Milan: Church and Court in a Christian Capital (Berkeley, CA, 1994), 151-2; Hermann Tränkle, Prudentius, Contra Symmachum, übersetzt und eingeleitet von H. T. (Turnhout, 2008), 21-7; and Alan Cameron, The Last Pagans of Rome (New York, 2011), 33-51. It appears that only the altar and not the statue of Victory was removed from the senate. See ibid. 340-2; and Lydia Krollpfeifer, Rom bei Prudentius: Dichtung und Weltanschauung in ‚Contra orationem Symmachi‘ (Göttingen, 2017), 80 n. 191.

Studia Patristica CXXX, 17-30. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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idea about its content. Finally, Ambrose’s view prevails. Nonetheless, after Ambrose had certainly acquired a copy of Symmachus’ petition and read through it, he wrote Letter 18, where he refuted almost all of Symmachus’ arguments one by one. The two books of Prudentius’ Contra orationem Symmachi, as indicated by the title, appear to be a response to Symmachus’ third Relatio. However, a brief look at the structure and content of the books shows that the situation is not that straightforward. C. Symm. 1 is largely a mixture of sections containing a panegyric to Theodosius (1-41, 408-621) and an anti-pagan invective section (42-407). Symmachus does not appear until towards the end of the book, where the poet apostrophises him without naming him (622-57). C. Symm. 2 involves Christian apologetics, praise to Arcadius and Honorius and a refutation of Symmachus’ arguments. The emperors in the two books are not named, but the context leaves no doubt regarding their identities. In book 1, the Christianisation of the empire is attributed to Theodosius, whereas, in the second, due credit is given to Arcadius and Honorius (678-80). Book 1 contains no mention of Arcadius and Honorius. The two books are preceded by prefaces containing scenes from the lives of Paul (in asclepiads) and Peter (in glyconics) respectively. So, regardless of the title, only book 2 contains a refutation of Symmachus’ third Relatio. The same book has a reference to the battle of Pollentia, which took place on 6 April 402 (718-20) but not to the one in Verona, which happened soon afterwards,2 suggesting that it was published soon after the former. There are also verbal similarities with Claudian’s Bellum Geticum, presented in Rome after Pollentia in the same year, and to which in all probability Prudentius alludes in his C. Symm.3 The question emerging from this evidence and on which much ink has been spilt is whether the two books of C. Symm. were conceived and written as a unit in 402 or composed at different times and then coupled together for the publication of 402.4 Directly relevant to this question is the issue of the unity between the books, namely how two books treating at times seemingly different 2

For the battle of Verona, see n. 45. Alan Cameron, Claudian: Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius (Oxford, 1970), 469-73; Lukas Dorfbauer, ‘Claudian und Prudentius: Verbale Parallelen und Datierungsfragen’, Hermes 140 (2012), 45-70, 54, 56-8, 64-7, 69; and Christian Gnilka, Prudentius Contra orationem Symmachi: Eine kritische Revue (Münster, 2017), 348-9. 4 Symmachus travelled to the court at Milan as a senatorial legate in the winter of 402. Last thing we know about him is that he returned to Rome from that mission and that his health was ill (Ep. 5.86, 4.13). Given that we have no letters of Symmachus after that point, it is plausible that he died soon after that mission. See Cristiana Sogno, Q. Aurelius Symmachus: A Political Biography (Ann Arbor, 2006), 85. It is not clear whether Symmachus was indeed or, to Prudentius’ knowledge, alive when the poet wrote the sections in which he refers to him. The courtesy with which Prudentius treats him indicates, according to A. Cameron, The Last Pagans (2011), 340 n. 73, that he was still alive, whereas Danuta Shanzer, ‘The Date and Composition of Prudentius’ Contra orationem Symmachi libri’, Rivista di filologia classica 117 (1989), 442-62, 459-60 suggests that the 3

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themes can be harmonized or be read as a sequence and do justice to the title Against the speech of Symmachus. What could have prompted Prudentius to produce a work in so rushed a way without taking enough care to present the two books as a unified whole? Finally, why Prudentius would undertake such an attempt, given that Ambrose had already successfully refuted Symmachus’ Relatio?5 In this study, I will first revisit the question of the date. Then I will provide new insights about the unity between the two books and finally I will offer a plausible explanation about the reason behind the apparently hasty compilation of different material to produce this work. Some preliminary remarks In C. Symm., Prudentius restates the arguments of Symmachus but also reiterates and expands upon the arguments of Ambrose.6 So, there is no doubt that Prudentius had access to both the third Relatio and Ambrose’s Letters 17 and 18. The Relatio has come down to us through two transmission itineraries, that of the works of Symmachus and that of the works of Ambrose. It seems improbable that Prudentius could have gained access to a collection of Symmachus’ Relationes.7 On the contrary, it is much more plausible that Prudentius had access to Ambrose’s letter collection, which also reproduces the Relatio, or to a pamphlet that included both the Relatio and the two Ambrosian letters.8 I suggest that Prudentius gained access to these documents during his trip to Rome, generous observation about his opus implies that he was dead (inlaesus maneat liber excellensque volumen, C. Symm. 1.648). 5 For a recent and succinct overview of these issues together with bibliography, see L. Krollpfeifer, Rom bei Prudentius (2017), 38-41. 6 For an overview that represents the structure and lists the themes of Symmachus, Ambrose and Prudentius, see Giovanni Garuti, Prudentius Contra Symmachum. Testo, Traduzione e Commento (Rome, 1996), 19-21. 7 Evidence suggests that books 8-10 of Symmachus’ 10-book Letter collection as well as the Relationes (which with no solid basis have been considered as part of book 10) were published after the death of Symmachus and probably several decades later. For an overview of the main issues surrounding the textual transmission of Symmachus, see Gavin Kelly, ‘Pliny and Symmachus’, Arethusa 46 (2013), 261-87, 264-7 and Cristiana Sogno, ‘The Letter Collection of Quintus Aurelius Symmachus’, in Late Antique Letter Collections: A Critical Introduction and Reference Guide (Berkeley, Los Angeles, 2017), 175-89, 178-82. 8 Cf. Domenico Vera, Commento storico alle ‘Relationes’ di Quinto Aurelio Simmaco (Pisa, 1981), lxxxix. Between 395, the death of Theodosius, and 397, his death, Ambrose most likely published and organised himself his 10-book collection of letters, as it has come down to us in the manuscript tradition. See Wolf Liebeschuetz, Ambrose of Milan: Political Letters and Speeches (Liverpool, 2005), 28-9; and Gérard Nauroy, ‘The Letter Collection of Ambrose of Milan’, in Late Antique Letter Collections: A Critical Introduction and Reference Guide (Berkeley, Los Angeles, 2017), 146-60. The two Letters of Ambrose on the debate of the altar of Victory together with the Relatio of Symmachus are included in book 10.

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which in all probability took place between the spring of 401 and the summer of 402.9 It must have been during the same trip that Prudentius also attended Claudian’s recitation of Bellum Geticum (which took place soon after the battle of Pollentia) or received a copy of it.10 So, Prudentius, evidently engaging with both Symmachus and Ambrose, produces a new work. Thus, on the one hand, C. Symm. is in line with the paraphrastic methods that we see in the literature of Late Antiquity, especially in biblical epic.11 On the other hand, Prudentius varies upon his prose sources, adds original arguments (see below) and incorporates sections that go beyond the limited scope of the debate about the altar of Victory, giving expression to the literary, political and religious concerns of his time. In other words, C. Symm. is a very original work. The Date As mentioned above, for decades, there has been disagreement between scholars who argued that the two books of C. Symm. were written as a unity at the same time, and others who supported that they were coupled together in 402. Siding with one or the other view has divided scholars into unitarians and separatists.12 a) The unitarians The unitarians have not successfully explained some of the main issues that speak against their thesis.13 How is it possible that the work was composed as a unit when Prudentius does not refer at all to Honorius and Arcadius in book 1? This stands in contrast to the etiquette not only in imperial documentation 9 Altay Coşkun, ‘Zur Biographie des Prudentius’, Philologus 152 (2008), 294-319, 307-14 collects all the evidence and makes a good case for this timeframe. For more on this, see the section ‘The Reason behind C. Symm.’. 10 Ibid. 312-3. 11 See famously Michael Roberts, Biblical Epic and Rhetorical Paraphrase in Late Antiquity (Liverpool, 1985). 12 Among the unitarians, see Timothy D. Barnes, ‘The Historical Setting of Prudentius’ Contra Symmachum’, American Journal of Philology 97 (1976), 373-86 – pace Timothy D. Barnes and Richard W. Westall, ‘The Conversion of the Roman Aristocracy in Prudentius’ “Contra Symmachum”’, Phoenix 45 (1991), 50-61 –, Siegmar Döpp, ‘Prudentius’ Contra Symmachum Eine Einheit?’, Vigiliae Christianae 40 (1986), 66-82 and Michael Brown, Prudentius’ Contra Symmachum Book II: Introduction, Translation and Commentary, PhD thesis (University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 2003), 8-18; among the separatists, see J. Harries, ‘Prudentius and Theodosius’, Latomus 43 (1984), 69-84, D. Shanzer, ‘The Date and Composition’ (1989) and A. Cameron, The Last Pagans (2011), 337-49. 13 For a thorough refutation, see D. Shanzer, ‘The Date and Composition’ (1989), 444-7.

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– a faux pas that someone with long experience in imperial administration like Prudentius would not have committed –14 but also to contemporary poems that share a strong affinity with Prudentius’ such as the ones composed by Claudian. In these works, written after the death of Theodosius and while his sons are the ruling emperors, Theodosius appears in flash backs and dreams.15 But in C. Symm. 1, not only is Theodosius the sole emperor Prudentius refers to but also there is no evidence that he is not alive.16 If the two books of C. Symm. were composed at the same time and Prudentius intended to praise Honorius and Arcadius in the second book, it is unlikely that he would fail to mention Theodosius’ sons in the first, even in passing. Furthermore, there is no mention of the handing down of power from Theodosius over to his sons, that is, there is a chronological gap of seven years between the two books.17 Finally, the first book does not live up to the expectations created by the title. Symmachus is mentioned at the end (622-57) in a rather abrupt transition.18 While finishing the second section that resembles a panegyric to Theodosius (379-621), Prudentius says that Theodosius also bestows honours on pagans, thus creating an opportunity to refer to Symmachus and his famous Relatio. What is more, this is not the only abrupt transition in book 1. Such transitions are found in the points, where Prudentius moves from the first section that contains a panegyric to Theodosius to the contra paganos section (42-4) and then from the latter section to the second section containing a panegyric to Theodosius (408-11).19 So, the various sections of the first book are kept thematically distinct, suggesting that they were originally separate compositions written at different times and for different purposes. When were these sections originally composed, what prompted Prudentius to match them together to form book 1 and why he paired it with the second book, are some of the most important questions treated by the separatists. b) The separatists In C. Symm. 1.410, the emperor is described as twice victorious over tyrants (cum princeps gemini bis victor caede tyranni), a clear reference to Theodosius’ 14 15

For an overview of Prudentius’ life and career, see A. Coşkun, ‘Zur Biographie’ (2008). D. Shanzer, ‘The Date and Composition’ (1989), 447-50, A. Cameron, The Last Pagans (2011),

343. 16 The way Prudentius describes Theodosius in C. Symm. 1 does not necessarily indicate that he is dead, as S. Döpp, ‘Prudentius’ Contra Symmachum’ (1986), 69-70 argues. See the counterarguments of D. Shanzer, ‘The Date and Composition’ (1989), 445, 447-50 and A. Cameron, The Last Pagans (2011), 343-4. 17 J. Harries, ‘Prudentius and Theodosius’ (1984), 75, D. Shanzer, ‘The Date and Composition’ (1989), 444, A. Cameron, The Last Pagans (2011), 34-45. 18 J. Harries, ‘Prudentius and Theodosius’ (1984), 77, D. Shanzer, ‘The Date and Composition’ (1989), 444-5. 19 A. Cameron, The Last Pagans (2011), 344.

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victories over Maximus at Save in 388 and Eugenius at Frigidus in 394.20 J. Harries (1984) argues that the first book of C. Symm. was written when Theodosius was alive; hence we have a timeframe between the battle at Frigidus in September 394 and Theodosius’ death on 17 January 395.21 As for the coupling with the C. Symm. 2, she suggests a serial composition as with Claudian’s two books of In Rufinum and In Eutropium. D. Shanzer argues that for book 1 Prudentius worked on a panegyric to Theodosius while the latter was alive, but did not have time to publish it before the emperor’s death. Some of the passages, however, must have been written after 399, indicating that they were re-worked or added after this point (379407 and 501-5).22 Book 1, as it has been handed down to us, was not circulated before 402/3, when it was published together with C. Symm. 2. D. Shanzer suggests, based of the tone of C. Symm. and its apologetic character, that Symmachus’ last trip to Milan had to do with a new appeal for the restoration of the altar of Victory to which Prudentius reacts. As regards book 1, D. Shanzer discerns an anti-pagan invective section (42-378), which due to the commonplace of its subject is undatable, sandwiched between a panegyric to Theodosius. For the combined publication of the two books, Prudentius must have added a prologue (1-6) and an epilogue (622-57) related to Symmachus, as well as the two prefaces, thus creating a sense of unity between the two books. Shanzer’s arguments were further developed by A. Cameron.23 He proposes that the motivation for the C. Symm. 2 is that the victory at Pollentia now provided an answer to one of the arguments of Symmachus’ Relatio that had remained unanswered by Ambrose: namely, that the altar of victory gave Rome her military triumphs.24 That question must have become more and more pressing in the years following the defeat at Adrianople (378), given that there had been little unequivocally positive news on the military front since then. Victoria’s military patronage is the first argument of Symmachus (Relatio 3.3) that Prudentius refutes in lines 18-66 of book 2 (in a response put into the mouth of Honorius and Arcadius).25 According to Cameron, there is no valid reason to assume that the material of which the first book consists (a contra 20

Claudian uses the expression gemini tyranni to refer to Maximus and Eugenius three times (Prob. 108: Augusto geminisque fidem mentita tyrannis; IV Cons. 72: Per varium gemini scelus erupere tyranni; Get. 284: Nunc vero geminis clades repetita tyrannis). For the intertextual relationship between Prudentius’ and Claudian’s passages, see L. Dorfbauer, ‘Claudian und Prudentius’ (2012), 54, 66. 21 J. Harries, ‘Prudentius and Theodosius’ (1984). 22 D. Shanzer, ‘The Date and Composition’ (1989). 23 A. Cameron, The Last Pagans (2011), 337-49. 24 For Pollentia as an opportunity to prove that Christianity favours Rome, see also T.D. Barnes, ‘The Historical Setting’ (1976), 384, Siegmar Döpp, ‘Prudentius’ Gedicht gegen Symmachus. Anlass und Struktur’, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 23 (1980), 65-81, 75 and M. Brown, Prudentius (2003), 18. 25 Prudentius restates Symmachus’ argument in the previous lines (12-6).

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paganos section: 42-407, and a panegyric to Theodosius: 1-41, 408-621) remained unpublished before the combined publication, as Shanzer suggests. Cameron argues that, ‘it was when sorting and arranging his various poems for republication in the collected edition securely documented by the praefatio in 405 that Prudentius decided to gather his three anti-pagan hexameter works together into a single two-book poem. This would explain why he did so little rewriting’.26 Although the victory at Pollentia now provided a strong counter-argument against Victoria’s military patronage, I do not see why Prudentius had to wait until the collected edition for the coupling of the two books. He could very well have announced and inserted the two books into the omnibus edition as two separate works, a panegyric on Theodosius and C. Symm. 2 (which would then have been entitled simply C. Symm.). Therefore, it is more legitimate to assume that the two books formed two parts of the same work in 402. Victory at Pollentia now offered the opportunity to disprove efficiently one of Symmachus’ arguments left out by Ambrose. As mentioned above, Shanzer suggests that two passages appear to postdate 399. In one of these two (C. Symm. 1.501-5), Prudentius presents Theodosius to encourage the Romans to let the statues stand clean: marmora tabenti respergine tincta lavate, o proceres! liceat statuas consistere puras, artificum magnorum opera; haec pulcherrima nostrae ornamenta fuant patriae nec decolor usus in vitium versae monumenta coinquinet artis. Wash the marbles that are bespattered and stained with putrid blood, nobles. Let your statues, the works of great artists, be allowed to rest clean; be these our country’s fairest ornaments, and let no debased usage pollute the monuments of art and turn it into sin.27

Following Solmsen,28 the content of this passage has been considered an allusion to a law of 399 prohibiting the destruction of pagan works of art (CTh 16.10.15). This, however, as Cameron points out, is not Prudentius’ point here at all.29 The poet does not imply that the statues are in danger. Prudentius through Theodosius urges the Romans to appreciate temples and statues as works of art detached from any association with paganism. Another section that, according to Shanzer, must have been written after 399 is lines 379-407 on gladiatorial games. Shanzer mainly bases this on an allusion to Claudian’s Theod. 293 (Amphitheatrali faveat Latonia pompae) in 26

A. Cameron, The Last Pagans (2011), 346. Translation by Jeffrey H. Thomson, LCL (1949) with slight modifications. 28 Friedrich Solmsen, ‘The Conclusion of Theodosius’ Oration in Prudentius’ Contra Symmachum’, Philologus 109 (1965), 310-3. 29 A. Cameron, The Last Pagans (2011), 347-9. 27

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C. Symm. 1.385 (amphitheatralis spectacula tristia pompae?). She builds her argument as follows:30 Amphitheatralis was a rare word at the best of times (see TLL s.v. 1983, 77). It was first used in verse by Martial in epigr. 11,69,1 and 14,137,1. The first occurrence is the relevant one. Martial’s poem is an epitaph on a venatrix killed by a boar: Amphitheatrales inter nutrita magistros/ Venatrix, silvis aspera, blanda domi/ Lydia dicebar. The second occurrence is either in Prudentius or Claudian. Claudian worked from Martial and Prudentius from Claudian. We may be sure of this because Claudian used amphitheatralis in a context precisely reminiscent of its original one, namely the mention of a female huntsman, whereas Prudentius does not. Claudian could not have worked from Prudentius. Thus Prudentius wrote this section of Book 1 after 399.31

However, outside poetry the word amphitheatralis after Martial re-appears for the first time in Ammianus describing the noun spectaculum (14.2.1: in amphitheatrali spectaculo feris praedatricibus obiecti sunt praeter morem). In both Prudentius and Ammianus, amphitheatralis is used in the description of gladiatorial games, where men are fighting against wild animals. Other passages from Ammianus – which apart from Prudentius and Claudian are the only ones after Martial – where we come across amphitheatralis in the same or similar context, include: 26.3.2, 28.9.10, 29.1.17 and 31.10.19. In light of this, it is more plausible to assume that amphitheatralis is a word that after Martial met a brief revival in the literary circles of the late fourth century, and thus C. Symm. 1.385 does not necessarily presuppose an allusion to Claudian. To do more justice to Shanzer’s argument, I should clarify that it is not the allusion per se, which does seem convincing, that deters me from accepting it but the fact that her argument creates more questions than it resolves. It is hard to accept that Prudentius added 39 lines on gladiatorial games after 399 but not a single line to introduce Arcadius and Honorius in book 1.32 30

D. Shanzer, ‘The Date and Composition’ (1989), 456-7. L. Dorfbauer, ‘Claudian und Prudentius’ (2012), 54, 66-7 also supports Shanzer’s argument. 32 Another line that, according to D. Shanzer, ‘The Date and Composition’ (1989), 454, postdates Theodosius’ death is line 551 (Amniadum suboles et pignora clara Proborum). This line appears to refer to the consulship of Olybrius and Probinus, which started on 1 January 395. It also lexically approximates two passages from Claudian’s Cons. Olyb. et Prob. (9: Amniadae + 143: pignora clara Probi), a poem recited in Rome on that same day. Based on contextual, historical, and linguistic reasons, T.D. Barnes and R.W. Westall, ‘The Conversion of the Roman Aristocracy’ (1991) obelize this line, as does C. Gnilka, Prudentius (2017), 125. Although there are some important indications for considering line 551 as a later interpolation, I am not entirely convinced. Most importantly Prudentius could have known about this consulship as early as September 394 or have finished the work in January 395 but before the death of Theodosius (17 January 395). See also A. Cameron, The Last Pagans (2011), 349 n. 96, who transfers 551 between lines 560 and 561; and L. Dorfbauer, ‘Claudian und Prudentius’ (2012), 65-6, who considers the line as genuine but is adamant that Prudentius worked from Claudian and not vice versa. Whether genuine or interpolated, line 551 does not affect the timeframe of the original sections of book 1 (battle of Frigidus – death of Theodosius). 31

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Thus, the two books must have been composed at separate times, 394/395 and 402 respectively, and put together in 402.33 Other sections that must also have been added in that time include the apostrophe to Symmachus at the end of book 1 and the prefaces.34

The Unity of the Work Although I have tried to establish that the two books of C. Symm. were originally composed at different times and then coupled together in 402, the problem of the unity of the books remains to be explored. A look at the content of the two books suffices to indicate that each book has a different scope or, to put it in other words, the two books, if one removed the final section of C. Symm. 1 (622-57), could pass as standalone works. This has not gone unnoticed. There have even been some judgements, like that of Cameron, who avers that, excluding the prefaces, the ‘two books […] have very little else in common’.35 The truth is that there are various recurring themes between the books.36 The beginning of book 2, which looks back at book 1, also serves as a link (C. Symm. 2.1-4): Hactenus et veterum cunabula prima deorum et causas quibus error hebes conflatus in orbe est 33 Despite Zosimus’ testimony (4.59.1), it is doubtful that Theodosius paid a visit to Rome after Frigidus in 394. See A. Cameron, The Last Pagans (2011), 47 n. 58. 34 There are two further passages supporting this view, C. Symm. 1.656-57 and C. Symm. 2 Praef. 44-6. At the end of book 1, Prudentius says that he will stop at this point so that his book will not become long and tiring (sed iam tempus iter longi cohibere libelli,/ ne tractum sine fine ferat fastidia carmen, 656-7). In reality, the first book is almost half as long as the second book and much shorter compared to the rest of Prudentius’ hexametric works. So, this statement would make sense if Prudentius had already completed or was about to complete C. Symm. 2. See D. Shanzer, ‘The Date and Composition’ (1989), 460. In other words, if there was a second book containing a refutation to Symmachus’ Relatio, as advertised in the title, Prudentius’ statement of not wanting to prolong the present book and, hence, delay the reader further from engaging with his refutation, would make sense. In the Praef. to book 2, Prudentius proclaims that he is stepping out of his silence (sed me tuta silentia/ egressum dubiis loquax/ infert lingua periculis, 44-6). Although this statement could refer to Prudentius’ silence about Symmachus’ Relatio, Prudentius could not have said that if C. Symm. 1 existed as it has come down to us. See D. Shanzer, ‘The Date and Composition’ (1989), 445-6. Prudentius refers to Symmachus at the second half of the Praef. to book 1 (45-89) as well as at the end of the same book (622-57). These references could hardly qualify as silentia. So, both these passages, C. Symm. 1.656-7 and C. Symm. 2 Praef. 44-6, support the theory of the joint publication (but not joint composition of the two books) and suggest that the apostrophe to Symmachus at the end of book 1 and the prefaces were added for the joint publication. Cf. the next section. 35 A. Cameron, The Last Pagans (2011), 343. 36 For such themes, see H. Tränkle, Prudentius (2008), 31-3, 36; and L. Krollpfeifer, Rom bei Prudentius (2017), 78 esp. n. 185.

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diximus, et nostro Romam iam credere Christo; nunc obiecta legam, nunc dictis dicta refellam. So far I have spoken of the first origins of the old gods and the causes which gave rise to witless superstition in the world, and how Rome now trusts in our Christ. Now I shall review our opponent’s case and rebut argument with argument.37

Prudentius briefly refers to the content of book 1 and, then, announces the purpose of the present book, which is to refute Symmachus ‘argument with argument’ (dictis dicta). The first origins of the old gods (veterum cunabula prima deorum) point to the anti-pagan invective section of book 1 (42-407). However, why Prudentius does do that before embarking on a refutation of Symmachus’ Relatio and how is that linked to the second book? An indication comes from Ambrose (Letter 18.39): Respondi lacessentibus tamquam non lacessitus; refellendae etenim relationis, non exponendae superstitionis mihi studium fuit. I have answered those who have provoked me, as if I had not suffered provocation. For it has been my aim to refute their report, not to expose their superstition.38

At the end of Letter 18, Ambrose professes that he restricts himself to refuting the Relatio, not offering an exposition of pagan worship. This is a clever praeteritio that saves Ambrose from much trouble, that is, the trouble of offering a systematic attack on pagan worship, while at the same time acknowledging that there is a much bigger issue at stake than the actuality of the events. The restoration of the altar of Victory and the subsidies for public cults are part and parcel of pagan worship. A decisive refutation of the arguments of Symmachus would involve a systematic attack on it as well. The altar and the subsidies are two constituents of a bigger problem that Ambrose has not the time or space to address here. However, although Ambrose admits the he is not undertaking a studium exponendae superstitionis, that is what Prudentius does emphatically in the first book of C. Symm. The central and bigger bulk of this book (42-407) is a systematic attack on pagan religion from its very genesis that goes back to Saturn until the time of Theodosius. So, Prudentius in a way undertakes a task that was acknowledged but left out by Ambrose. This explains the presence of this large contra paganos section and links the first with the second book, in which the anti-pagan invective, though not concentrated in a specific place, also features prominently.39 Prudentius responds to Ambrose, by making use of the material he had already composed. The Christian poet’s studium exponendae superstitionis (as well as his reference to the battle of Pollentia as 37 38 39

14.

Translation by Jeffrey H. Thomson, LCL (1953). Translation by W. Liebeschuetz, Ambrose (2005) with slight modifications. See esp. C. Symm. 2.39-56, 216-26, 236-40, 294-302, 349-577, 684-9, 855-72, 965-72, 1005-

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a proof that Christianity favours the military triumphs of Rome) complements Ambrose’s refutation. And there are other cues we can glean from Ambrose that justify Prudentius’ choices. Scholars have often compared the content of and unity between the two books of C. Symm. to the two-book works of Claudian In Rufinum and In Eutropium.40 This is reasonable, given that these works are also serial compositions in hexameter written by a contemporary poet. Yet, both these works have the same subject matter throughout, Rufinus and Eutropius respectively. On the contrary, in C. Symm. 1, there is no mention of Symmachus and his Relatio until towards the end. Although the different scope of each C. Symm. book creates difficulties in reading the work as a serial composition, a comparison with the content of Ambrose’s Letters 17 and 18 can give us some important clues for understanding the two books as a unit. As mentioned above, in Letter 17, Ambrose who has heard about but claims not to have seen the third Relatio, offers a more generic response.41 However, only in Letter 18 does Ambrose embark on an argument by argument refutation of the Relatio. Similarly, Prudentius is less specific in book 1 of C. Symm., and it is not until the second book that he includes an argument by argument refutation. One can argue that the two books of C. Symm. mirror the two letters of Ambrose that Prudentius certainly had at his disposal. Having in mind a parallel with the Letters of Ambrose, Prudentius found the opportunity to use pre-existing material for book 1. In this light, we can see Prudentius getting the opportunity years after the debate about the altar of Victory was settled in favour of the Christians to produce a new refutation in which he incorporated two tasks left out by Ambrose: i) to prove that Christianity actually favours Rome, as it becomes obvious from the battle at Pollentia; and ii) to provide a general attack on pagan religion. These reflections can show us the direction Prudentius was heading, that is, to create a poetic response that mirrors and expands upon Ambrose’s Letters. Nevertheless, in Ambrose Letter 17 there is no doubt about the context in which he is writing, whereas in C. Symm. 1 there is no reference to Symmachus until line 622. Prudentius was prevented from elaborating on rounding off the two books as a coherent unit. There must have been a pressing reason why he was in such a hurry, which we will now turn to exploring.

40 S. Döpp, ‘Prudentius’ Gedicht gegen Symmachus’ (1980), 79, ‘Prudentius’ Contra Symmachum’ (1986), 77, D. Shanzer, ‘The Date and Composition’ (1989), 460-1, M. Brown, Prudentius (2003), 15. 41 In this Letter, the bishop asks Valentinian II not to accept the plea of Symmachus, suggesting that the use of the altar will impel senators to take part in pagan rites (9), and does not even refrain from threatening the emperor if he decides to reply positively to Symmachus’ requests (13-4).

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The Reason behind C. Symm.42 Although the two tasks left out by Ambrose can explain to a certain degree why Prudentius included these particular sections, and especially the large amount of anti-pagan invective in the first book, it does not account for the little care he took in harmonizing the two books as a unit. Yet another plea on behalf of Symmachus after at least six unsuccessful attempts since 382 does not seem very realistic,43 especially since, as the evidence suggests, Symmachus’ trip to the court at Milan as a senatorial legate in the winter of 401/2 was related to Alaric’s invasion and not to another plea for the altar.44 Furthermore, Ambrose wrote Letter 18, an argument by argument refutation, after his view had already prevailed. Could Prudentius not spend some more time and put more effort into presenting his C. Symm. as a unified whole, especially given that the debate about the restoration of the altar and the subsidies had long been settled in favour of the Christians? Cameron’s argument (see above) that Prudentius compiled earlier material for his 404/5 edition that is advertised in his Praefatio actually does not explain why he did so ‘little rewriting’. Prudentius could still have elaborated more or at least referred briefly to Honorius and Arcadius in the first book before including the work for the 404/5 publication. Had he done so, his work would fit in nicely with the trend of his time, as we know from the works of Claudian. So, there must be another reason why Prudentius was in a big hurry, and I suggest that this reason is the battle of Verona, which took place a few months after Pollentia, in the summer of 402 (VI Cons. 215: … accensos aestivo pulvere soles).45 42 Relevant to the Schreibanlass of C. Symm., but not particularly revealing, is the first section that contains a panegyric to Theodosius in the first book (1-41). Here Prudentius states that, although he thought that Theodosius’ medicine (medicina, 3) had cured sick Rome, a new plague (renovata lues, 5) has appeared, which again necessitates the emperor’s remedy (medella, 6). He, then, talks about the tyranni, who failed to take serious measures that would apply not only to the present but also to the future, letting Rome plunge headlong into idolatry (22-7). Although medicina must refer to Theodosius’ anti-pagan legislation, scholars have speculated a lot about the renovata lues. Their views about its meaning range among others from ‘a revival of paganism’, as in J. Harries, ‘Prudentius and Theodosius’ (1984), 79, to ‘die Demarche des Symmachus im Jahr 384’, as in C. Gnilka, Prudentius (2017), 31, and in conjunction with lines 25-7 to ‘the implication […] that neither [of the tyranni, i.e. Maximus and Eugenius] took their responsibilities as Christian emperors seriously and allowed (siverunt) Rome to wallow in paganism’, as in A. Cameron, The Last Pagans (2011), 123. See L. Krollpfeifer, Rom bei Prudentius (2017), 65 n. 128 with further bibliography. However, even though renovata lues remains elusive, it does not affect the timeframe (September 394 - January 395) of the original sections of the first book, that is, book 1 excluding the Praefatio and the apostrophe to Symmachus at the end of the book. 43 A. Cameron, The Last Pagans (2011), 338-9. 44 See Michael Dewar, Claudian. Panegyricus de sexto consulatu Honorii Augusti (Oxford, 1996), xxxii-iii; and C. Sogno, Q. Aurelius Symmachus (2006), 84-5. 45 Although it has been suggested that this battle took place in the summer of 403 – see T.D. Barnes, ‘The Historical Setting’ (1976), 374-6, A. Coşkun, ‘Zur Biographie’ (2008), 310-2 explores both

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All we know about the battle of Verona comes from a brief description in Claudian VI Cons. 201-37. Notwithstanding the fact that his description is replete with hyperbole and poetic devices,46 there are some telling passages indicating that the battle of Verona had to do with a breach of pact or agreement between Stilicho and Alaric that must have followed the battle of Pollentia (204: dum pacta movet; 210: violato foedere). Whether the breach of this agreement was down to Stilicho, Alaric or his troops is subject to speculation.47 What is important is that a breaking point must have been reached after which a new battle surely seemed inevitable. Prudentius knew about this imminent battle, the outcome of which could not be easily predicted. It could be a defeat for Rome.48 Therefore, Prudentius had little time before the new battle in which to disprove the only argument of Symmachus that Ambrose did not manage to refute. He had to do it before the new battle, before a potential defeat. That explains why he did so little rewriting. Prudentius decided to use pre-existing material, which had probably remained unpublished, and combine it with new material to produce the C. Symm. However, his priority was to do so as soon as possible rather than to elaborate or work on harmonising the old and new material.49 Conclusion C. Symm. 1 consists of an anti-pagan invective section (42-407, undatable) sandwiched between a panegyric to Theodosius with emphasis on his antipagan legislation (1-41, 408-621). It is uncertain whether the sections that later formed C. Symm. 1 were coupled together for the joint publication of the two books or at some earlier stage. Nothing in C. Symm. 1 needs to be later than possibilities –, the evidence rather point to a date in the summer of 402, see A. Cameron, Claudian (1970), 184, Maria Cesa and Hagith Sivan, ‘Alarico in Italia: Pollenza e Verona’, Historia 39 (1990), 361-74 – pace John B. Hall, ‘Pollentia, Verona, and the Chronology of Alaric’s First Invasion of Italy’, Philologus 132 (1988), 245-57 –, Peter J. Heather, Goths and Romans, 332-489 (Oxford, 1991), 209, and M. Dewar, Claudian (1996), xlii-viv. Such a date, as I suggest, fits in nicely with Prudentius’ time pressure, which had as a result his so ‘little rewriting’. 46 M. Dewar, Claudian (1996), xli. 47 For hypotheses regarding the breach of the pacta, see A. Cameron, Claudian (1970), 185, M. Dewar, Claudian (1996), xxxv, xl-xli; and A. Coşkun, ‘Zur Biographie’ (2008), 311. 48 Even though both Prudentius in C. Symm. and Claudian in Get. (580-647) exult the Roman victory at Pollentia, it transpires that the outcome of the battle was not conclusive. Stilicho must have checked Alaric’s forces for the time being, but the latter remained a serious threat, as it becomes obvious from the fact that the Goths challenged the Romans a few months later at Verona. See M. Dewar, Claudian (1996), xxxiv-v. If Prudentius knew or suspected that, he had all the more reason to hasten to finish C. Symm. before the new battle. 49 Prudentius must have left Rome after the battle of Pollentia and before that of Verona, at some point in the summer of 402. See also A. Coşkun, ‘Zur Biographie’ (2008), 313-4.

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395. C. Symm. 2 must have been composed in 402, soon after the battle of Pollentia and before the battle of Verona, which took place in the summer of the same year. That is when Prudentius coupled the two books of C. Symm. by having them preceded by two prefaces on Paul and Peter respectively and adding an apostrophe to Symmachus at the end of book 1 (622-57). Prudentius had now the opportunity to address issues left out by Ambrose such as to reply to the question of why Rome was doing so poorly on the battlefield and to provide an exposition of pagan worship. In doing so, Prudentius could use material he had already composed. Although problems regarding the unity of the two books have been pointed out, a comparison with the Letters 17 and 18 of Ambrose can explain some of the choices that Prudentius made in terms of themes and structure. Prudentius would surely have paid more attention in harmonizing the content of the two books, if any elation following the victory at Pollentia had not proved to be short-lived. A breach of a pact between Stilicho and Alaric and a new imminent battle now gave Prudentius a very pressing deadline. Thus, Prudentius chose to do what he could within the short time available.*

* I would like to thank Gavin Kelly for reading and offering constructive feedback on earlier versions of this article.

Le De laude eremi d’Eucher de Lyon et la tradition contemplative médiévale (Pierre Damien, Guigues Ier, Pétrarque) Mantė LENKAITYTĖ OSTERMANN, Université de Fribourg, Suisse

ABSTRACT It is known that De laude eremi by Eucherius of Lyon, written in 427/428, stands at the beginning of a literary tradition that is linked to the circle of Lerinian monks of the 5th to 7th c., but its reception amongst medieval authors has received little research. An attentive reading of some writings, dedicated to the praise of solitary life during the 11th to 14th c. (Letter 28 by Peter Damian, the Consuetudines Cartusiae by Guigo I and the De vita solitaria by Petrarca) show the presence of the topic and the arguments used by Eucherius within the medieval contemplative tradition. The overview of the manuscript tradition supports the knowledge of De laude eremi by Eucherius amongst the Carthusians and the Cistercians.

On a toujours reconnu l’importance des écrits ascétiques de Jean Cassien pour la spiritualité occidentale. La réception des œuvres ascétiques d’Eucher de Lyon, le contemporain de Cassien et un des dédicataires de ses Conférences, a été beaucoup moins étudiée. Dans son petit traité composé en 427/428 et intitulé Éloge du désert (De laude eremi)1, ce moine de Lérins et futur évêque de Lyon († après 449) élabore une théologie du désert monastique qui emploie une typologique biblique et intériorise la notion du désert à travers les images allégoriques. Il s’inscrit ainsi dans la tradition de l’ancienne littérature monastique qui, depuis la Vie d’Antoine d’Athanase d’Alexandrie, tendait à spiritualiser et idéaliser la notion du désert. Eucher est toutefois original en ce qu’il entreprend de consacrer l’écrit entier, et non pas quelques phrases, à l’éloge de la vie solitaire2. On a certes remarqué que l’imagerie d’Eucher était à l’origine d’une tradition littéraire liée au cercle des moines lériniens au Ve-VIIe siècle3. On ne s’est toutefois 1

Ed. : Salvatore Pricoco, Eucherio. Elogio dell’eremo. Introduzione, testo, traduzione e commento, BPat 51 (Bologne, 2014) ; trad. fr. par Christophe Carraud et Mantė Lenkaitytė Ostermann, L’île des saints. Eucher de Lyon & Vincent de Lérins, Les Pères dans la foi 105 (Paris, 2018), 23-44. 2 Le premier à employer ce genre était Jérôme qui a consacré la fin de sa lettre à Héliodore (Ep. 14,10) aux louanges de la solitude. 3 Voir Marc Heijmans et Luce Pietri, ‘Le « lobby » lérinien : le rayonnement du monastère insulaire du Ve siècle au début du VIIe siècle’, dans Yann Codou et Michel Lauwers (éd.), Lérins,

Studia Patristica CXXX, 31-39. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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pas interrogé sur l’héritage de la pensée d’Eucher parmi les auteurs du moyen âge4. Or à partir du XIe-XIIe siècle on constate un grand renouveau de l’idéal spirituel, caractérisé entre autre par une nouvelle éclosion du mouvement érémitique et l’intérêt de reproduire les modèles monastiques de l’Église primitive5. Il est donc intéressant de voir si le texte d’Eucher, dédié à l’exaltation de la vie solitaire, aurait laissé des traces dans la production littéraire issue de ce mouvement. On en trouve quelques éléments, notés par les éditeurs mais jamais discutés plus amplement, chez trois auteurs, deux contemplatifs du XIe et du XIIe siècle Pierre Damien et le chartreux Guigues Ier, et Pétrarque qui se situe au seuil de l’époque humaniste, écrivant au milieu du XIVe siècle6. Dans ce qui suit, il ne s’agira pas de la signification du « désert » dans le monachisme occidental ni de la spiritualité du désert des médiévaux. J’essaierai plutôt de tracer quelques parallèles thématiques et littéraires entre l’écrit d’Eucher et ceux de ces successeurs tout en m’interrogeant si le texte d’Eucher pouvait être connu par ces auteurs. Pour cela, la transmission du De laude eremi sera également évoquée. 1. Le traité Dominus vobiscum (Lettre 28 = Op. 11) de Pierre Damien7 Au milieu du XIe siècle (entre 1048 et 1055), Pierre Damien, « ermite et homme d’Église »8, ajoute à la fin de son opuscule sur le mystère de l’Église Dominus vobiscum un vibrant éloge de la vie solitaire et de l’ermitage9. Dans un style lyrique, il fait suivre les métaphores qui s’appliquent à ce genre de vie : elle est « l’école où s’enseigne les doctrines du ciel », « un paradis de délices », « l’arène des combats spirituels », « le port tranquille », « le miroir de l’âme ». une île sainte de l’antiquité au moyen âge, Coll. d’études médiévales de Nice 9 (Turnhout, 2009), 35-61, 53-60 ; S. Pricoco, Eucherio. Elogio dell’eremo (2014), 98-103. 4 Hormis le renvoi à Pierre Damien par Ilona Opelt, ‘Zur literarischen Eigenart von Eucherius’ Schrift De laude eremi’, VigChr 22 (1968), 198-208, 206-7. 5 Voir Pierre Doyère, Art. ‘Erémitisme’, DSp 4 (1960), 936-82, 960-70 ; les contributions dans L’Eremitismo in Occidente nei Secoli XI e XII. Atti della seconda Settimana internazionale di studio. Mendola, 30 agosto - 6 settembre 1962, Miscellanea del Centro di studi medioevali 4 (Milano, 1965) ; Giles Constable, The Reformation of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 1996), 160-2. 6 Il existe bien d’autres textes appartenant à la même tradition érémitique, chez les chartreux et les cisterciens, qui exaltent la vie solitaire. Mais par une orientation soit plus pratique (manuels d’ascétisme) soit plus contemplative (traités de vie mystique), ils s’éloignent de ceux présentés ici. 7 Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, éd. Kurt Reindel, MGH. Die Briefe der deutschen Kaiserzeit IV/1 (München, 1983), 248-78; trad. fr. par Louis-A. Lassus: Pierre Damien, Du désert à l’action, Les pères dans la foi 48 (Paris, 1992), 13-46 ; étude : Lorenzo Saraceno, ‘Il “mito” della cella come luogo privilegiato della contemplazione. Una lettura della Laus heremi nella lettera 28 (Dominus vobiscum) di Pier Damiani’, dans Guido Innocenzo Gargano et Lorenzo Saraceno, La “grammatica di Cristo” di Pier Damiani. Un maestro per il nostro tempo (S. Pietro in Cariano, 2009), 184-219. 8 D’après le titre de Jean Leclercq, Saint Pierre Damien. Ermite et homme d’Église, Uomini et dottrine 8 (Rome, 1960). 9 Cet éloge a également connu une large diffusion sous le nom de Basile de Césarée, voir Benoît Gain, ‘L’opuscule « De laude uitae solitariae » de s. Pierre Damien attribué à s. Basile de Césarée. Le témoignage du chartreux Guillaume d’Ivrée (1313)’, Benedictina 51 (2004), 437-62.

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Dans ce texte, nous ne trouvons certes pas de citations littéraires tirées d’Eucher, et les citations bibliques, pourtant très nombreuses chez les deux auteurs, ne sont jamais identiques. Plusieurs éléments et la teneur même du texte de Pierre Damien rappellent toutefois l’Éloge du désert de l’auteur lérinien. La deuxième partie du texte d’Eucher (Laud. 27-43) est en effet exclusivement dédiée à la description du désert spirituel en de termes allégoriques. Tant de thèmes identiques se retrouvent ainsi chez les deux auteurs monastiques : le désert (ou la solitude, la cellule) comme paradis, comme un pré fleuri, comme le lieu où se trouvent de pierres précieuses10 ; la contemplation qui élève l’esprit jusqu’aux réalités célestes, malgré le fait que le corps touche la terre11 ; le silence qui n’est interrompu que par Dieu qui s’entretient avec l’homme, celui-ci répondant par les hymnes et la psalmodie12 ; l’Ennemi qui frémit en vain pour faire peur aux habitants du désert, ceux-ci étant protégés par le Seigneur13 ; les anges qui visitent les solitaires en descendant l’échelle de Jacob14 ; le désert (ou l’ermitage) comme le port tranquille qui protège les naufragés du siècle et qui propose le repos rafraîchissant15, comme le lieu où les péchés sont purifiés, où la pureté originelle est possible16, où l’homme doit se rendre car le Seigneur lui-même, pourtant exempt du péché, y a séjourné pendant quarante jours17, où l’on constate l’absence des vices et l’abondance des vertus18 ; celui qui habite dans le désert devient la demeure de Dieu19. Comme Eucher, Pierre Damien recourt également à des figures bibliques pour appuyer ses propos (Moïse, Élie, Élisée et David parmi les saints de l’Ancienne Alliance, puis Jean Baptiste et « le Sauveur du monde lui-même »), quoique l’ermite italien ne le fait pas d’une façon aussi systématique que son prédécesseur. À part ces thèmes qui se retrouvent chez nos deux auteurs, ils se rapprochent également par certaines ressemblances de leur vocabulaire20, de même que par 10

Euch., Laud. 39-40; Petr. Dam., Ep. 28, p. 272.12-6 ; p. 275.15-6. Euch., Laud. 27 ; Petr. Dam., Ep. 28, p. 275.27-31 (l’homme se transcende lui-même). 12 Euch., Laud. 37,2-4 ; Petr. Dam., Ep. 28, p. 274.23-9. 13 Euch., Laud. 38,1-2 ; Petr. Dam., Ep. 28, p. 274.3-7. 14 Euch., Laud. 38,3 ; Petr. Dam., Ep. 28, p. 274.17-9. Edoardo Ferrarini, ‘Gli angeli et gli eremiti’, Micrologus 23 (2015), 231-48, 247, a souligné la différence entre l’exégèse allégoricoascétique (comme échelle des vertus) de Gn 28:12 dans la tradition bénédictine et celle, minoritaire, qui se trouve chez Eucher et Pierre Damien et qui exprime la présence mystique de Dieu. 15 Euch., Laud. 42,1 ; Petr. Dam., Ep. 28, p. 275.20-1 ; p. 277.3-4. 16 Euch., Laud. 31,2 ; Petr. Dam., Ep. 28, p. 273.4 ; p. 274.21-2. 17 Euch., Laud. 22,1-6 ; Petr. Dam., Ep. 28, p. 277.8-14. 18 Euch., Laud. 41,2 ; Petr. Dam., Ep. 28, p. 274.9. 19 Euch., Laud. 41,4 ; Petr. Dam., Ep. 28, p. 278.7-8. 20 Euch., Laud. 44,3 : tu nunc verior Israhel, qui corde deum conspicaris, Petr. Dam., Ep. 28, p. 273.22-3 : tu das, ut homo mundo Deum corde conspiciat ; Euch., Laud. 38,1 : fremit frustra tunc circuiens adversarius…, hostes suos submovet, Petr. Dam., Ep. 28, p. 274.3-7 : fremat hostium circumfusa barbaries…, de hostium suorum certa iam deiectione triumphant ; Euch., Laud. 37,2 : nullus interstrepens illic sonus, nulla nisi forte cum deo vox est, Petr. Dam., Ep. 28, p. 274.27 : sine vocis strepitu  ; Euch., Laud. 41,4 : ipse qui habitat, domino habitatore laetatur, Petr. Dam., Ep. 28, p. 278.7-8 : ipse quidem habitator est tuus, sed eius inhabitator est Deus. 11

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l’utilisation de pareils procédés et figures rhétoriques21 : questions rhétoriques qui aident à structurer le texte22, anaphores23, exclamations24 et adresses personnifiées au désert ou à la cellule25, ces deux dernières figures étant particulièrement présentes dans l’opuscule de Pierre Damien. Pierre Damien avait une ample connaissance de l’ancienne littérature monastique. Pour son éloge de la vie solitaire, il a pu s’inspirer de multiples auteurs. Peut-on penser que le traité d’Eucher de Lyon était parmi ses modèles ? Il est certes vrai que les deux traités diffèrent quant à leur structure et aux accents thématiques26. En plus, le nom d’Eucher n’apparaît ni dans les œuvres de Pierre Damien27 ni dans le catalogue de la bibliothèque qui nous est parvenu de Fonte Avellana, monastère où il était prieur28. Mais d’après ses œuvres on sait qu’il connaissait d’autres ouvrages que l’on ne trouve pas non plus dans ce catalogue29. Pierre Damien excellait d’ailleurs dans l’accoutumance de la pensée des anciens, tout en gardant son propre style et en évitant les citations littérales30. Les thèmes qui se répètent, les mêmes procédés rhétoriques, les ressemblances dans le vocabulaire et surtout l’idée même de consacrer un éloge à la vie solitaire pourraient témoigner à mon avis du fait que l’ermite italien a pu trouver son inspiration dans le texte de l’auteur lérinien. 2. Les Coutumes de Chartreuse de Guigues Ier Quelques générations plus tard, entre 1121 et 1128, un autre amoureux de la vie solitaire, Guigues Ier (1083-1136), le cinquième prieur de la Grande-Chartreuse, compose un petit éloge de la vie solitaire comme le dernier chapitre de ses Coutumes de Chartreuse31. 21 Pour Eucher, voir Carsten Scherliess, Literatur und conversio. Literarische Formen im monastischen Umkreis des Klosters von Lérins, EHS XV/82 (Frankfurt am Main, 2000), 76-80. 22 Euch., Laud. 8,1 ; 9 ; 13,1 etc. ; Petr. Dam., Ep. 28, p. 272.19 ; p. 277.8. 23 Euch., Laud. 3,4 ; 21,2 etc. ; Petr. Dam., Ep. 28, p. 277.23-4 etc. 24 Euch., Laud. 23,3 ; 37,1 etc. ; Petr. Dam., Ep. 28, p. 272.21-273.1 etc. 25 Euch., Laud. 41 ; Petr. Dam., Ep. 28, p. 273.1 et passim. 26 I. Opelt, ‘Zur literarischen Eigenart’ (1968), 207 ; L. Saraceno, ‘Il “mito” della cella’ (2009). 27 L’opuscule 28 de Pierre Damien où l’on trouve la référence à l’abrégé des œuvres de Jean Cassien par Eucher (PL 145, 515A) n’est plus considéré comme authentique aujourd’hui, voir K. Reindel, Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, 1 (1983), 296, n. 18. 28 Voir Guido Vitaletti, ‘Un inventario di codici del secolo XIII e le vicende della Biblioteca, dell’Archivio e del Tesoro di Fonte Avellana (Continuazione)’, La Bibliofilia 20 (1919), 297-315, 300-2. 29 Voir Owen J. Blum, St. Peter Damian. His Teaching on the Spiritual Life (Washington, DC, 1947), 61 ; Fridolin Dressler, Petrus Damiani. Leben und Werk, StAns 34 (Rome, 1954), 62-3 ; Christian Lohmer, Heremi conversatio. Studien zu den monastischen Vorschriften des Petrus Damiani, BGAM 39 (Münster, 1991), 112-23. 30 Voir André Cantin, Les sciences séculières et la foi. Les deux voies de la science au jugement de S. Pierre Damien (1007-1072), Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo 5 (Spoleto, 1975), 346-54. 31 Consuetudines cartusiae, ch. 80 = De commendatione solitariae vitae, éd. par un chartreux, SC 313 (Paris, 1984), 286-94.

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Ici, il n’y a pas la même ferveur rhétorique que dans le texte de Pierre Damien. Guigues reconnaît « la profusion de louanges » que « beaucoup de saints et de sages » ont déjà décernée à la vie solitaire32. Il se limite donc au parcours à travers quelques « serviteurs de Dieu » pour montrer que les révélations divines leur ont été données « non point dans le tumulte des foules, mais quand ils se trouvaient seuls »33. Parmi les huit figures bibliques mentionnées par Guigues, il y en a cinq qui apparaissent également chez Eucher, mais qui sont aussi connues dans la tradition monastique plus ancienne : Moïse, Élie, Élisée, Jean Baptiste et Jésus34. L’évocation de leurs mérites de vie solitaire s’inscrit donc pleinement dans la tradition qui remonte aux origines mêmes de la littérature monastique. On peut tout de même relever quelques éléments qui rappellent plus particulièrement, par le vocabulaire même utilisé, le texte d’Eucher : les visitations divines que reçoivent Moïse, Élie et Élisée dans la solitude35 ; la présentation de Jean Baptiste par la citation de Mt 11:11 (celui dont « parmi les enfants des femmes, il n’en a pas surgi de plus grand »), celle-ci introduite par le pronom quo absent du texte mathéen36 ; l’accent mis sur le baptême que Jean Baptiste procure à Jésus, celui-ci n’ayant pas besoin d’être lavé37. Le catalogue des serviteurs de Dieu bibliques est terminé par Guigues avec une mention des premiers moines qui ont habité dans le désert, « Paul, Antoine, Hilarion, Benoît »38. Cette brève évocation des « Pères saints et vénérables » trouve aussi son parallèle dans l’Éloge d’Eucher : les deux auteurs se contentent de mentionner quelques noms parmi « tant d’autres » auxquels la solitude a aidé d’atteindre les hauteurs de la vie spirituelle39. Si l’éloge de Pierre Damien a montré plus de parallèles avec la deuxième partie du texte d’Eucher (l’évocation du désert en de termes métaphoriques), celui de Guigues correspondrait mieux à la première partie de l’écrit du Lérinien (Laud. 5-26) dans laquelle celui-ci présente les personnages bibliques ayant séjourné au désert. Comme si la lecture d’Eucher aurait laissé des empreintes différentes chez les deux ermites médiévaux : Pierre Damien aurait retenu le

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Cons. 80,3. Cons. 80,4. 34 Les trois autres figures évoquées par Guigues sont Isaac, Jacob et Jérémie. 35 Cons. 80,3 : Moyses quoque, Helias atque Heliseus … a deo cum soli sunt visitentur ; Euch., Laud. 3,4-5 : in deserto quippe Moyses…, in deserto Helias … [deus] peculiarius visitationem dignatur eremi. 36 Cons. 80,9 : Iohannes quoque baptista quo inter natos mulierum iuxta salvatoris praeconium maior nemo surrexit ; Euch., Laud. 21,1 : ille, quo maior inter mulierum natos non surrexit… 37 Cons. 80,9 ; Euch., Laud. 21-22. Cet aspect baptismal de l’activité de Jean Baptiste est quasiment absent des autres textes monastiques antiques et médiévaux, voir Gregorio Penco, ‘S. Giovanni Battista nel ricordo del monachesimo medievale’, StMon 3 (1961), 7-32. 38 Cons. 80,11. 39 Cons. 80,11 : et coeteri nobis innumerabiles ; Euch., Laud. 27,1 : Iohannem Macariumque … aliosque quam plures. 33

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langage lyrique, tandis que Guigues aurait repris l’idée d’un catalogue de figures exemplaires. On peut discuter si ces quelques rapprochements sont suffisants pour prouver que Guigues a connu le texte d’Eucher, d’autant plus qu’il a certainement eu une large connaissance d’autres écrits monastiques40. Il y a toutefois un autre indice qui pourrait le laisser supposer. Parmi les plus anciens manuscrits du De laude eremi d’Eucher, ceux du XIIe siècle, il y en un qui appartenait à la Chartreuse de Portes41. Or, c’était la première maison fondée par la Grande Chartreuse en 1115, et son prieur Bernard était parmi ceux qui avaient demandé Guigues de mettre par écrit les coutumes de la maison mère42. La bibliothèque de Portes était constituée avec l’aide probable de la Grande-Chartreuse43. Il est donc bien possible qu’au temps du priorat de Guigues Ier la maison-mère des chartreux possédait également un manuscrit avec les œuvres d’Eucher, et que son nom pourrait être compté parmi ceux qui se sont distingués par la « profusion de louanges » dédiées à la vie solitaire (Const. 80,3). Qu’en est-il du reste de la tradition manuscrite du De laude eremi d’Eucher ? Elle est certes assez restreinte et tardive44, mais elle témoigne de la circulation de ce texte dans les milieux monastiques et du fait d’être associé aux écrits d’auteurs contemplatifs. L’éditeur S. Pricoco ne recense que onze manuscrits dont cinq les plus anciens datent du XIIe-XIIIe siècle. Parmi ceux-ci, quatre proviennent de la France. Deux de ces manuscrits français appartenaient aux chartreux, le Grat. 306 (262) mentionné ci-dessus, et le Par. 2883 écrit en 40 Le « Sommaire des sources et des lieux parallèles » dans SC 313, 77-84, se limite malheureusement à « une liste très sèche » avec des lieux parallèles dans une quantité de textes, dont Eucher et Pierre Damien, sans toutefois proposer une étude des sources. Ainsi, aucun des parallèles indiqués avec la lettre 28 de Pierre Damien ne s’avère convainquant. Voir aussi la critique par Jacques Dubois, ‘Les institutions monastiques au XIIe siècle. À propos des Coutumes de Chartreuse rédigées par Guigues et éditées par un chartreux’, RHEF 72, no 189 (1986), 209-44, 225. 41 C’est le manuscrit Gratianopolitanus 306 (262) qui contient également les œuvres exégétiques d’Eucher. Il est conservé aujourd’hui dans la Bibliothèque municipale de Grenoble, voir Catalogue général des manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques de France. Départements, t. 7 (Paris, 1889), 98-9 (notice par Paul Fournier). 42 Cons. prol. 1. 43 ‘Il est probable qu’un exemplaire de chaque manuscrit offert aux nouvelles fondations, devait se trouver sur les rayons de la bibliothèque de la maison donatrice’, Dominique Mielle de Becdelièvre, ‘La tradition de la lecture et la première bibliothèque cartusienne (fin XIe – début XIIe siècle)’, dans James Hogg, Alain Girard et Daniel Le Blévec (éd.), Saint Bruno et sa postérité spirituelle. Actes du colloque international des 8 et 9 octobre 2001 à l’Institut catholique de Paris, ACar 189 (Salzburg, 2003), 219-26, 222. Voir aussi Raymond Étaix, ‘Les manuscrits de la Grande-Chartreuse et de la Chartreuse de Portes. Étude préliminaire’, Scriptorium 42 (1988), 49-75, 72. 44 Une des raisons pourquoi Hans Bayer, ‘Vita in deserto. Kassians Askese der Einöde und die mittelalterliche Frauenmystik’, ZKG 98 (1987), 1-27, a émis l’hypothèse selon laquelle l’écrit d’Eucher serait un faux du XIIe siècle, ‘ein propagandistisches Pamphlet’ composé dans les milieux des mystiques rhénans.

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partie au XIIe et en partie au XIIIe siècle et provenant de la chartreuse de MontDieu45, celle-ci appartenant également à la première génération des fondations cartusiennes (fondée en 1134). Le Par. 2182 du début du XIIIe siècle, qui comme le Grat. 306 (262) contient les œuvres d’Eucher, appartient à la même famille (désigné avec β par S. Pricoco) que les deux manuscrits précédents et provient peut-être aussi du milieu cartusien. Dans deux autres manuscrits du XIIe siècle (famille α), le Reginensis latinus 708 conservé au Vatican et le Genevievensis (Sainte-Geneviève) 76, le traité d’Eucher se trouve en compagnie de Bède le Vénérable et Aimoin de Fleury, un historien bénédictin du Xe siècle. Parmi les quatre manuscrits du XVe-XVIe siècle (famille γ), le De laude eremi apparaît soit avec d’autres textes liés à Lérins (le Chigianus C V 146 et le Parisinus 2990), soit il se retrouve de nouveau en compagnie des contemplatifs : les auteurs cartusiens dans l’Avenioniensis 348 (197) qui provient du couvent des célestins d’Avignon, et, entre autres, Pierre Damien dans le Arsenalensis 397 (590 T.L.). Dans les deux derniers manuscrits qui proviennent des régions allemandes et ne contiennent que les extraits du De laude eremi (le Clm 16065 du XIIIe siècle et le Zwettlensis 224 du XVe siècle), ces extraits apparaissent aux côtés des écrits de Bernard de Clairvaux et du De vita solitaria de Pierre Damien46. On peut donc constater que la présence du traité d’Eucher est attestée dans le milieu cartusien du XIIe-XIIIe siècle et que dans la tradition manuscrite il peut également être associé à d’autres écrits de tradition contemplative (le De vita solitaria de Pierre Damien, les écrits de Bernard de Clairvaux).

3. De vita solitaria de Pétrarque Il y a presque deux siècles qui séparent les Coutumes de Guigues Ier du De vita solitaria de Pétrarque, composé entre 1346 et 136647. Contrairement aux textes précédents qui se limitaient à quelques pages, Pétrarque élabore un véritable traité en deux livres. Même s’il ne reconnaît expressément sa dette qu’envers Pierre Damien48, il puise aussi bien chez les maîtres antiques que dans le fond 45 Jean Porcher, Catalogue général des manuscrits latins, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, t. 3 (Paris, 1952), 199-200. Le codex contient quatre manuscrits réunis au XVe siècle. Le De laude eremi d’Eucher se trouve dans le quatrième manuscrit, du XIIe siècle, ensemble avec la Vita s. Hugonis de Guigues Ier. 46 Dans les deux manuscrits, l’opuscule de Pierre Damien est transmis sous le nom de Basile, voir B. Gain, ‘L’opuscule « De laude uitae solitariae » de s. Pierre Damien’ (2004), 442, 445. 47 Francesco Petrarca, De vita solitaria, Buch I, éd. Karl A.E. Enenkel, Publications romanes de l’Université de Leyde 24 (Leiden, New York, 1990) ; trad. fr. par Christophe Carraud : Pétrarque, De vita solitaria / La vie solitaire, 1346-1366 (Grenoble, 1999). 48 Vit. solit. I,1,4. Voir Stephan Freund, Studien zur literarischen Wirksamkeit des Petrus Damiani, MGH Studien und Texte 13 (Hannover, 1995), 161-7.

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chrétien pour exalter « la solitude, seule condition favorable à la vie spirituelle et à la liberté de l’homme de culture »49. La solitude que désire cet humaniste est une sorte d’otium d’un intellectuel antique, mais les méditations de Pétrarque sont aussi profondément enracinées dans la tradition religieuse chrétienne50. Ainsi, le motif que Dieu est tout particulièrement présent dans la solitude, lieu de silence et de contemplation, qu’ici il nous écoute et nous parle mieux51, même s’il apparaît aussi chez Eucher, peut probablement être attribué à une tradition littéraire vieille d’un millénaire. Cela vaut également pour beaucoup d’autres thèmes52, de même que pour l’idée de dresser un catalogue des saints amateurs de la solitude, suivis par les exemples tirés de l’Antiquité, auquel Pétrarque consacre l’entier de son deuxième livre. Plus proche d’Eucher à mon avis seraient la mention détaillée que fait Pétrarque des moments passés dans la solitude par Moïse, Élie, Élisée et Jésus53, mais là encore nous ne trouvons pas de signe décisif que Pétrarque se serait inspiré directement d’Eucher. Il est d’autant plus intéressant de trouver la mention d’Eucher parmi la foule de ces ermites célèbres que Pétrarque énumère dans son deuxième livre54. Mais l’histoire que rapporte l’humaniste de la grotte où aurait vécu Eucher en solitaire avant de devenir évêque de Lyon provient d’une vie légendaire tardive55 et ne permet pas d’affirmer que Pétrarque aurait eu connaissance des œuvres du moine lérinien. Parmi de multiples auteurs que Pétrarque évoque le long de son traité le nom d’Eucher n’est jamais mentionné, et il n’apparaît pas non plus dans le reste de ses ouvrages56. Il n’en reste pas moins que le monde spirituel de Pétrarque était très marqué par la pensée monastique du XIe-XIIe siècle et il se sentait particulièrement attiré par l’ordre des chartreux que son propre frère avait joint en 134357. Ainsi, quoique indirectement, nous retrouvons associé chez Pétrarque l’héritage d’Eucher, de Pierre Damien et de Guigues. * * * 49 Armand Strubel, Art. ‘Pétrarque’, dans Claude Gauvard, Alain de Libera et Michel Zink (dir.), Dictionnaire du Moyen Âge (Paris, 2002), 1078-9, 1079. 50 Voir Giles Constable, ‘Petrarch and monasticism’, dans Aldo S. Bernardo (éd.), Francesco Petrarca citizen of the world. Proceedings of the World Petrarch Congress, Washington, D.C., April 6-13 1974, Studi sul Petrarca 8 (Padova, 1980), 53-99, 62-5. 51 Vit. solit. I,5,16-7. 52 L’éditeur du texte de Pétrarque K.A.E. Enenkel renvoie souvent au De laude eremi d’Eucher dans son commentaire, sans toutefois jamais le mentionner dans l’appareil des sources. 53 Vit. solit. II,3,1-3 ; 10,3 ; Euch., Laud. 18-26. Dans Vit. solit. II,9,10, Jean Baptiste est introduit par l’allusion à Mt 11:11, cité également par Eucher et Guigues (voir n. 36 ci-dessus). 54 Vit. solit. II,7,10. 55 Vita Consortiae (BHL 1925), Act. SS. Iun. IV, 250-3 ; 3e éd. V, 214-7. Selon cette Vie légendaire du VIe siècle, Consortia aurait été une des filles d’Eucher. 56 Pietro Paolo Gerosa, Umanesimo cristiano del Petrarca. Influenza agostiniana, attinenze medievali (Torino, 1966), 156-79. 57 G. Constable, ‘Petrarch and monasticism’ (1980), 86-99.

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Dans un article consacré aux caractéristiques de l’ancienne littérature monastique le bénédictin Gregorio Penco avait observé que l’Éloge du désert d’Eucher de Lyon, dédié à une exaltation générale de la vie érémitique, prouvait qu’au Ve siècle la tradition anachorétique été déjà bien établie et pouvait être traitée indépendamment de ses représentants les plus insignes58. Je pense que le texte d’Eucher peut également être considéré comme étant à l’origine d’une nouvelle tradition, un genre en soi-même, le louange de la vie solitaire. Malgré le fait que cette enquête n’a pas permis d’établir avec certitude de liens directs entre le texte d’Eucher et ceux des trois autres auteurs, elle a néanmoins révélé la présence de ce type de discours et de la thématique, employés pour la première fois par l’auteur lérinien, dans la tradition médiévale contemplative. L’aperçu de la tradition manuscrite du De laude eremi a montré que l’écrit était effectivement présent dans ces milieux monastiques. Eucher de Lyon s’inscrit ainsi, tout en l’enrichissant, dans l’histoire de la littérature contemplative, que ce soit directement ou à travers de multiples maillons connus et inconnus par nous.

58 G. Penco, ‘Osservazioni preliminari sui caratteri dell’antica letteratura monastica’, Aevum 35 (1961), 220-46, 239.

Christology in Avitus of Vienne Theresia HAINTHALER, Philosophisch-Theologische Hochschule Sankt Georgen, Frankfurt, Germany

ABSTRACT Christological statements in the work of Avitus of Vienne († 518), a leading bishop of Burgundy and also known for his Biblical poetry, one of the few ecclesiastics in the West with contacts to the Christian East, like Constantinople, Jerusalem, are here gathered and analyzed. This adds to a profile of the Christology in the Latin West.

Introduction In order to get the Christological profile of the Church in Gaul in the fifth and sixth century, Avitus of Vienne is one of the more prolific authors which have to be studied; others would include Faustus of Riez 1 (before 500), Gennadius of Marseille († 496), Ruricius of Limoges († after 507), Mamertus Claudianus (ca. † 474), Apollinaris Sidonius (ca. 430-479), Iulianus Pomerius († beginning 6th c.), and Caesarius of Arles (470-542). In the last two to three decades, quite some efforts have been made in editing and analyzing the literature in Gaul, also on Avitus. Here the edition of his history of salvation and the English translation of letters and selected prose have to be mentioned.2 His Christology was – if I am right – not in the focus of studies, even not in the monograph of Uta Heil;3 the analysis of Simonetti4 in 1978 often remained unnoticed in the studies on Avitus, as it is hidden in an 1 Theresia Hainthaler, ‘Faustus, abbot of Lérins and bishop of Riez, and his Christology’, in Pier Franco Beatrice and Bernard Pouderon (eds), Pascha Nostrum Christus. Essays in Honour of Raniero Cantalamessa, ThH 123 (Paris, 2016), 263-75. 2 Danuta Shanzer and Ian Wood, Avitus of Vienne. Letters and Selected Prose, TTH 38 (Liverpool, 2002); Nicole Hecquet-Noti, Avit de Vienne. Histoire spirituelle, tome I (chants I-III), SC 444 (Paris, 1999), tome II (chants IV-V), SC 492 (Paris, 2005); ead., Avit de Vienne. Éloge consolatoire de la chasteté, SC 546 (Paris, 2011). Also Manfred Hoffmann, Alcimus Ecidicius Avitus. De spiritalis historiae gestis Buch 3. Einleitung, Übersetzung, Kommentar (München, Leipzig, 2005). – Groundbreaking was the edition of Max Burckhardt, Die Briefsammlung des Bischofs Avitus von Vienne († 518), Abh. zur Mittleren und Neueren Geschichte 81 (Berlin, 1938). 3 Uta Heil, Avitus von Vienne und die homöische Kirche der Burgunder, PTS 66 (Berlin, 2011), who did not analyze the Christological question (‘christologische Frage’), p. XVII, and n. 82 on p. 69. 4 Manlio Simonetti, ‘Letteratura antimonofisita d’Occidente’, Aug 18 (1978), 487-532, 522-31.

Studia Patristica CXXX, 41-52. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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article on anti-Monophysite literature in the West, dealing with Arnobius the Younger in Italy and Vigilius of Thapsus in North Africa, besides Avitus. Simonetti, in some way, took up an article of Bardy in 19545 and deepened it with his analyses. In general, there was a limited number of Latin authors who dealt with so-called Eutychianism; besides the three authors studied by Simonetti, we could refer in Italy to Gelasius I, Boethius, Rusticus diaconus, Pelagius I and Gregory I, in North Africa to Facundus of Hermiane, Verecundus of Junca, Liberatus, if we include also the writings on the Three Chapters Controversy, and in Gaul only Gennadius of Marseille (but his writings in this respect are lost). The West at this time was occupied with the controversies on (what is called) Pelagianism, Manichaeism and so-called Arianism.6 The very crude misunderstanding of Avitus, when in some of his writings (ep. 2 and 3) he ascribed a doctrine to Eutyches which is normally inferred to Nestorius, underlines also the misinformation of the West in this regard. 1. His life Avitus of Vienne became bishop before 4947 and died after the synod of Epaon (September 517), probably in February 518.8 He came from a noble senatorial family with a strong Roman tradition and active in the Catholic Church. His father Hesychius (Isicius) succeeded Bishop Mamertus of Vienne (after the birth of his fourth child). Apollinaris, the brother of Avitus, was Bishop of Valence, his sister Fuscina early chose religious life, another sister died young. His correspondence with King Gundobad of Burgundy (473/4-516) was mainly about theological questions, but Gundobad remained Arian – or better: homoean –, even when his son Sigismund became Catholic. The good relationship of Gundobad with (East) Rome – he was made a magister militum per Gallias and 5 Gustave Bardy, ‘La répercussion des controverses christologiques en Occident entre le concile de Chalcédoine et la mort de l’empereur Anastase (451-518)’, in Alois Grillmeier and Heinrich Bacht (eds), Das Konzil von Chalkedon II (Würzburg, 1954, 19795), 781-8. 6 Theodor Schnitzler, ‘Chalkedon und die westliche Liturgie’, in A. Grillmeier and H. Bacht (eds), Chalkedon II (1954), 753: ‘Der Westen hatte in den Jahrzehnten, da der Osten von den christologischen Kontroversen aufs tiefste erschüttert wurde, andere Probleme. Ihn beschäftigten der Pelagianismus und Semipelagianismus. Ihn beunruhigten die letzten Ausläufer des Manichäismus. Ihn hielt vor allem in Atem der Kampf mit dem germanischen Arianismus. Gerade dieser Kampf war entscheidend für die geistige Entwicklung des Westens’. – Cf. Theresia Hainthaler, ‘Lateinische Christologie nach Chalcedon. Eine Skizze’, in ead., Dirk Ansorge and Ansgar Wucherpfennig (eds), Jesus der Christus im Glauben der einen Kirche. Christologie – Kirchen des Ostens – Ökumenische Dialoge (Freiburg i.B., 2019), 271-301. 7 According to the Vita Aviti, MGH.AA VI,2, p. 177.7-9, at the time of emperor Zeno († 9 April 491). Following Ennodius, V. Epiphani 173, MGH.AA VII, p. 106, Avitus was one of the bishops of Gaul, in 494, when he bought back prisoners. 8 See ‘Alcimus Ecdicius Avitus 2’, in Luce Piétri (ed.), Prosopographie chrétienne du BasEmpire, 4. La Gaule chrétienne, vol. 1 (Paris, 2013), 242-63.

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patricius in 472,9 a position which his son Sigismund later also received –, led to special contacts with the East also for Avitus to Constantinople and Jerusalem. He wrote letters for Sigismund to the Byzantine Emperor Anastasius I (491-518). Thus, Avitus lived during the Acacian schism under an Emperor, who in Christology followed the Henoticon (482) of emperor Zeno and lent his ear to anti-Chalcedonians. After the death of Gundobad in 516, Avitus convened, under King Sigismund, together with the Metropolitan Viventiolus of Lyons the Council of Epaon (6-15 September 517), which above all regulated the order and church discipline in the Catholic Church of Burgundy. At this council, Avitus presided, and it seems that he ‘completely dominated the Council through his personality’.10 Avitus took a stand on behalf of the Gallic bishops to support Pope Symmachus when he was condemned by a Roman Synod in 501. In the struggle for precedence in the Gallic Church finally Arles won, when Caesarius received the pallium in 513, and Vienne was defeated. As a bishop, Avitus was also particularly active in ransoming prisoners. Avitus appears as the one who prepared and created the Burgundian ‘national church’. Burckhardt characterizes him as a ‘somewhat speculative mind … in theological matters’ and mentions ‘the tortuous style of the letters, which often only lets one guess the actual meaning of many sentences’.11 His poetic works (above all the Carmina de spiritalis historiae gestis) are held in high esteem. Avitus is regarded by Manfred Fuhrmann as ‘the real creator of European Biblical poetry’ (and he believes that the Biblical poems in five books of Avitus ‘is one of the few poetic works of late antiquity’ ‘which, if accessible in an adequate translation, could directly appeal to the contemporary reader’12). The theme treated by Avitus has, according to Uwe Kühneweg 2004,13 ‘found its perfect, unsurpassed design in Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’’. Direct echoes and similarities to Avitus in Milton have been noted, but whether Milton knew the work of Avitus directly is possible, given the broad dissemination of the poems of Avitus, yet not proven. His whole oeuvre was edited already in 1883 in the Monumenta Germaniae by Rudolf Peiper; based on this edition also the Clavis Patrum ordered Avitus’ 9 U. Heil, Avitus von Vienne und die homöische Kirche der Burgunder (2011), 14, n. 73. On the relationship with the East: M. Burckhardt, Die Briefsammlung des Bischofs Avitus von Vienne († 518) (1938), 95-101. 10 Odette Pontal, Die Synoden im Merowingerreich (Paderborn a.o., 1986), 40. 11 M. Burckhardt, Die Briefsammlung des Bischofs Avitus von Vienne († 518) (1938), 36 resp. p. 1. 12 Manfred Fuhrmann, Rom in der Spätantike. Porträt einer Epoche (München, Zürich, 19952), 302-3, 303. 13 U. Kühneweg, ‘Alcimus Ecdicius Avitus von Vienne, Kirchenpolitiker und Bibeldichter’, in Peter Gemeinhardt and Uwe Kühneweg (eds), Patristica et Oecumenica. Festschrift für Wolfgang A. Bienert zum 65. Geburtstag, Marburger Theologische Studien 85 (Marburg, 2004), 123-45, esp. 134-44, 134.

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works: the fragments of the so-called libri contra Arrianos or Dialogi cum Gundobado rege (CPL 990), the two books Contra Eutychianam haeresim (CPL 991), as well as his collection of letters (CPL 993) and the letters to Gundobad (CPL 992), but also the homilies (CPL 994). 2. His Christology In the just mentioned Biblical poetry some Christological statements can be found: at the end of book IV on the Deluge the true salvation in Christ is indicated, who is the giver of life and in two natures (geminata substantia, twofold substance), from the earth through the flesh received from the Virgin and the paternal semen, the mediator.14 These characteristics, the two natures and the mediator, are certainly present in his other works, which have to be consulted in order to analyze his Christology. In the poem De consolatoria castitatis laude (CPL 996) the Christocentric spirituality of virginity comes to the fore.15 2.1. The Libri contra Arrianos16 Deacon Florus of Lyons († ca. 860) composed a Collectio ex dictis XII patrum, a florilegium from 12 fathers on Pauline letters; these 12 fathers include Cyprian of Carthage, Hilary of Poitiers, Ambrose of Milan, Pacian of Barcelona († ca. 390), Theophilus of Alexandria, Gregory Nazianzen, Ephrem the Syrian, Leo Magnus, Cyril of Alexandria, Fulgentius of Ruspe, Paulinus of Nola and Avitus of Vienne.17 This collection is the main source for the compilation under 14 IV 641-7, SC 492 (Paris, 2005), 112: Nunc quicumque cupis ueram seruare salutem, illud suspicies signum, quod signa figurant. Namque dator uitae praemisit talia Christus et geminata dedit substantia saluatorem. In terris sumptae nitida de uirgine carni naturalis inest patrio de germine fulgor: et medius quidam mediator in aethere celso munere multimodo uarius, sed fulgidus omni, uitalem monstrat sacrati pigneris arcum. – See also De spiritalis historiae gestis I 9, 161, 169; II 28, 34; III 362. 15 Carmina de consolatoria castitatis laude (CPL 996), De virginitate 1, 18, 25, 66, 158, 217, 226, 250, 262, 273, 426, 452, 504, 627, 643, 649, 662. 16 Dialogi cum Gundobado rege uel librorum contra Arrianos reliquiae (CPL 990), critical edition by Rudolf Peiper, Alcimi Ecdici Aviti Viennensis episcopi opera quae supersunt, MGH Auctorum antiquissimorum VI/2 (Berlin, 1883), 3-15. Cf. PL 59, 300-22; 384-6 (arranged according to Pauline passages). – Here we quote according to the arrangement of Peiper. On text criticism see also M. Burckhardt, Die Briefsammlung des Bischofs Avitus von Vienne († 518) (1938), 64-5; Shanzer/Wood made corrections to Peiper’s edition: Appendix 2, Textual changes to Peiper’s edition, 407-15. The siglum for Dialogi c. Gundobado rege in Shanzer/Wood is ‘CA’; instead we use CArr. in order to avoid confusion with the Collectio Avellana. 17 Edited by P.-I. Fransen, B. Coppieters ’t Wallant and R. Demeulenaere, CChr.CM 193B (Turnhout, 2007), with 65 fragments from Avitus, p. 349-94. This edition was not yet available to Shanzer/Wood, but Uta Heil used it and often offers fragments of this edition in Latin with German translation.

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the title Dialogi cum Gundobado rege uel librorum contra Arrianos reliquiae (CPL 990) in Peiper’s edition in MGH.AA.18 The fragments always deal with the mutual relationship of the three persons of the Trinity. With regard to the second person, Avitus states that one and the same Son of God is God who could not die, but raised the dead man, and restored the temple, which was dissolved by hands of enemies, to the unity of the person after having joined the flesh, which he had assumed, with the divinity again.19 Concerning the death of Christ, there might be the question whether Avitus understands it as a separation from the Logos. But he did not address this topic, as he also did not speak of the soul of Christ. It was only the assumed body which felt the passion:20 ‘The Lord of majesty is presented as crucified, because, if you consider the peculiarity (proprietas) of the alternate substance (Shanzer/Wood: both of), only the humble body he assumed has felt the passion, while the divine highness was excluded from all shame imposed by the cross’. Then Avitus addresses the communication of idioms: ‘For after God, reconciling the world to himself in Christ, was joined to the creature whom he had taken up (adsumpsit), “man” is often signified by “God” and “God” by “man”’.21 – Follow some Biblical passages, like Matt. 25:31 (‘when the son of man shall come in his glory’), as an illustration. The inseparability of Christ’s person (personae inseparabilitas) is substantiated with Gal. 4:4, arguing that ‘the one whom God sent as his Son is the same as the one who was born of the woman’.22 The mediator can be called heavenly: ‘The first man is earthly from the earth, the second heavenly from heaven, for one and the same is mediator, God of heaven, man of the earth: before he ascended to heaven, the one who came out of the womb of the virgin is correctly called heavenly because he was made Lord of the heavens, mingled with the sublimity of the celestial substance’.23 Here the communication of idioms comes to the fore: The one who ascended 18 MGH.AA VI, 2, p. 1-15. See U. Heil, Avitus von Vienne und die homöische Kirche der Burgunder (2011), 68-72, esp. n. 79. 19 C. Arr. VII 4,36-8: Idem ergo filius dei deus, qui mori non potuit, defunctum hominem suscitavit et templum inimicis manibus dissolutum in unitatem personae solidata rursus divinitati, quam adsumpserat, carne restituit. 20 VIII 5,1-3: Dominus maiestatis crucifixus exponitur, cum, si alternae substantiae respicias proprietatem, divina celsitudine ab omnibus crucis contumeliis sequestrata sola suscepti corporis humilitas senserit passionis. – My trans. 21 VIII 5,3-4: Nam postquam deus in Christo mundum reconcilians sibi creaturae, quam adsumpsit, unitus est, significatur plerumque homo per deum deusque per hominem… Follow three Biblical proofs: Matt. 25:31; Ps. 71:19; Mal. 3:6 (?). 22 XVII 7,16-7: Apostolus Paulus ad Galatas personae inseparabilitatem designans ipsum dicit natum de muliere, quem misit deus filium suum… – My trans.; cf. Shanzer/Wood, 174. 23 XVII 7,17-21: Primus, inquit, homo de terra terrenus, secundus de caelo caelestis; cum unus idemque mediator, de caelo deus, homo de terra sit: qui de utero virginis editus, antequam

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to heaven, is the same who descended, the mediator between God and man, a double substance, but one person. One cannot separate this whole (from God and man) without destroying the function of being mediator. No one returns except to a place where he has been [before]. But when Christ ascended, the Son of Man, who had previously been in heaven, returned to heaven. … And although everywhere in his [sc. Paul’s] speech he preaches that a god came, but concludes that a man returned, here however he says that the very same ascended who had come down. Because in Christ [are] both God and Man; not another, but himself; not two [beings] from different [sources], but one mediator out of both: the substance is double, but the person one (una persona). If anyone should presume to split this solidity, the first [point] is that he is speaking out in contradiction to the words of the apostle, who says, (1Tim. 2:5) ‘One mediator between God and men, Christ Jesus’. Then it is necessary to choose between two, namely the divine and the human, which he wants to take for the nature of mediation for the mystery. If God alone is the mediator, there is no one else for him to intercede with. If it is man alone, then there is no one strong enough to reconcile. Join them together so that God may be in Christ and he is reconciling the world to himself.24

In order to explain the unity in the Trinity, Avitus refers to the marriage and the unanimity of the faithful – how much more does equality exist naturally in the Trinity.25 The equality of the Son of God was not diminished when the son of man was obedient.26 For how could he not obey the Father, he, who was subject to the mother? – Here, it is obvious how Avitus is using the identity of the person, and not reflecting how the manner of unity in Christ could be explained. Christ is a twofold nature (duplex natura): one, in which he is the creator of everything according to the divinity, and the other, in which he was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, using Rom. 1:1-3.27 caelos ascenderet, caelestis congrue dictus est, quia celsitudini substantiae caelestis immixtus caeli dominus factus est. – Cf. differently Shanzer/Wood, 174. 24 XX.XXI 8,32-9,7: Nemo porro recurrit nisi quo fuit: sed ascendente Christo filius hominis recurrit in caelum, qui erat prius in caelo. … (Eph. 4:8.10) Cumque per omnem eloquii sui locum deum venisse praedicet hominem redisse concludens, hic tamen ipsum dicit ascendere, qui descendit: quia in Christo deus et homo, non alter, sed ipse, non duo ex diversis, sed idem ex utroque mediator; gemina quidem substantia, sed una persona est. Quam soliditatem si quis scindere dualitate praesumat, primum est, quod publice contra apostoli sententiam profitetur dicentem: Vnus mediator dei et hominum Christus Iesus. Deinde eligat necesse est de duobus, id est divina humanaque, quam naturam mediationis huius velit mysteria suscepisse. Si solus deus mediator, non est alius, apud quem intercedat; si solus homo, non est, qui reconciliare praevaleat. Iunge porro, ut sit deus in Christo, et est mundum reconcilians sibi. – English: Shanzer/Wood, 176-7, revised. 25 XXII 9,10-20. After quoting Acts 4:32: ‘Unanimity made their individual hearts one, just as equality unifies and solidifies the individual persons in the Trinity’. English: Shanzer/Wood, 177. 26 XXIII 9,21-5: Non per hoc minuit aequalitatem filii dei, quod filius hominis oboedivit. Quomodo enim non oboediret patri, qui subditus erat matri? (Lk. 2:51; Phil. 2:8; Matt. 26:38). 27 XXVIII 11,20-36: Adseruit duplicem plena descriptione naturam: unam, in qua secundum divinitatem factor est omnium, et alteram, in qua factus est ex semine David secundum carnem.

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With the hymn to the Philippians (Phil. 2:6-10) Avitus points out that Christ was true God and true man. It was the man who was sent, who became obedient unto death, and he was exalted, not the one Begotten from the Father. And he (the man) was exalted so that not only men, but angels would bow their knees before the name of Jesus.28 2.2. In Contra Eutychianam haeresim At the request of King Gundobad to write against Eutychianism, to portray the character of the heresy and to refute their errors, Avitus composed two letters to King Gundobad (Ep. 2 and 3), called also Contra Eutychianam haeresim I-II. They can be structured (with Burckhardt) as follows: Introduction (to Gundobad): 15,9-16,4. Part I: About Eutyches 1. His historical role: 16,5-18 2. Examination of his heresy: 16,19-21,31. Part II: Contemporary Events (Effects of Eutychian Heresy) 1. Historical Introduction: 22,2-23,10 2. Dogmatic part: 23,10-29,22. The work can be dated to 512/3.29 Here one comes across very crude ideas about Eutyches and then also in Part II 1 on the controversy on the Trisagion. Avitus ascribed Eutyches the heresy: to deny that the Son of God could enter the maternal womb, and to divide the person of Christ (I 16,21; 16,28), to call Mary Christotokos (16,25ss), but not Theotokos. Eutyches is said not to believe that God and man in Christ are one single (person) (I 20,1), therefore, he divides the united mediator (20,31). Such opinions are opposite to those of the historical Eutyches and have been ascribed to Nestorius (though not correctly) from the first half of the fifth century onwards. The so-called Theopaschite addition to the Trisagion (‘who was crucified for us’) was introduced by monks in Constantinople under Philoxenus and later Severus. Avitus claimed instead that Eutychian monks opposed the addition, and called the addition orthodox. Early on,30 the ‘radically deformed representation 28 XXVIIII 12,1-15: Verus deus est, qui dignatur inclinari; verus homo est, qui potuit mori … Hoc nomen donavit … non ei quem genuit, sed illi quem misit, qui factus est oboediens usque ad mortem. … Propter quod exaltatus est, ut in nomine Iesu omne, id est non solum hominis, verum etiam angeli genu flectatur. 29 M. Burckhardt, Die Briefsammlung des Bischofs Avitus von Vienne († 518) (1938), 67 (structure), ibid. n. 1 (date). – We quote C. Eutych. I-II following Peiper’s edition in MGH.AA VI, 2, 15-29. 30 On the errors of Avitus in the historical paragraph on Eutyches resp. on the Trisagion controversy see M. Burckhardt, Die Briefsammlung des Bischofs Avitus von Vienne († 518) (1938), 68-70; G. Bardy, ‘La répercussion’ (1954), 783-4; M. Simonetti, ‘Letteratura antimonofisita’

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of the facts’ was attributed to a lack of information; there is some evidence31 that Avitus was informed by the magister officiorum Celer at the court of Constantinople (with whom Avitus was in contact, see ep. 48) and this in a very inadequate way. The second section of Part II is very Biblical and essentially offers evidence that Christ was not a phantasm. Apart from these statements, one can recognize the following Christological statements in Part I. Christological statements (in Part I 2.): It is the sure middle way to distinguish two substances of the Redeemer, but not to separate them (Eutyches did not follow this path). Avitus explains some Biblical passages convincing us of the incarnation of the Word with the man according to the divinity32 (Jn. 1:1,14; Isa. 9:6; Gal. 4:4). ‘The father sent the one whom the mother gave birth … God did not want to hide whom he determined: the world may notice the signs of the coming of the Lord, whom the father begat without a mother, and the mother conceived without a father, son of God as well as son of man’33. According to 2Cor. 5:19, God was in Christ for our salvation. This statement is misused by the cunning opponent (callidus contradictor) in order to say that God is in Christ, but by grace, not by nature, as he is in the heart of the saints.34 Against that, who then will reconcile the world with God? Neither God alone, nor man alone. But: ‘God and man, therefore, are one, who himself commends the world to himself, and who as son of the mother begs himself as the Son the Father for the life of the world’.35 – The concept that the son of man addresses the Son of God, so to say Christ in himself, is found first with Claudianus (1978), 522-31, who listed the erroneous statements of Avitus: with regard to Eutyches (523-4), with regard to the Trisagion (524-5). Ibid. 525: the lacunas and imprecisions in the information on the factual historical and theological terms give rise to suppose that Avitus had access only to oral sources. But, so Simonetti, it should have been not difficult for Avitus to get documents from Rome. With other words: he is so little and badly informed because he took his information for sufficient to present and refute the heresy – which does not speak in favor for his theological sensibility (‘cià non depone a favore della sua sensibilità teologica’). Shanzer/Wood, 11: ‘totally to misunderstand the nature of the conflict between monophysites and orthodox, and indeed to confuse the two parties’ ‘illustrating the confusion and misinformation’. 31 See Shanzer/Wood, 89-92, 91. 32 C. Eutych. I 17,6: ut nobis incarnationem verbi cum hominis divinitate persuadeant. 33 17,27-30: Quod mater peperit, pater misit … Noluit deus latere, quem destinat: capiat mundus dominici adventus indicia. Quem pater sine matre genuit, genetrix sine patre concepit, aeque dei filius ut hominis erit. 34 18,3-6: Sed callidus forsitan contradictor sic apostolici sermonis huius testimonio volet abuti, ut adquiescat deum esse in Christo, sed gratia, non natura: sicut est in corde sanctorum, quorum mentes a peccato liberas habitatio divinitatis illustrat. 35 18,8-14: Eligat hic doctor adversus, quis mundum … sibimet ipsi in saeculorum fine conciliet. Si solus deus, quid excuset sibimet, quod sufficit remisisse? Si autem solus homo, quo effectu sibi mortalis reconciliat, quod divinitas non relaxat? Vnus est ergo deus et homo, qui sibi mundum ipse commendet, qui pro saeculi vita sibi patris filio supplicet filius matris. English: Shanzer/Wood, 99.

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Mamertus.36 In addition, however, in Hesychius’ of Jerusalem Commentarius brevis to the Pss, the kyriakos anthropos addresses his own deity in (Ps. LXVIII [69], 7a: ‘whoever hopes for you, Lord, shall not fail by me’. Grillmeier37 speaks of a ‘dialogical partnership between the humanity of Christ and his divinity’, similar to a liturgical prayer in the anaphora of Theodore of Mopsuestia. Avitus explained the activity of the mediator in two directions: a) he solves the guilt of the human race through some intercession, takes on the bundle of common parental guilt through the promissory note. b) He stands in the middle, accepted from the lowest, inclined to the highest, negotiates between two.38 The coming together of so much inequality (divine fullness and human nature, lowliness of the slave and majesty of the Lord, power of the creator and bondage of the creature) in one person is an offence for the humanly minded spirits. But he who marvels at the mystery of the incarnation can also marvel at the redemption by the one who alone could transform the fallen state of man who made him out of clay.39 The inseparability of God and man is expressed with reference to John 3:13: the Son was with the Father before the beginning of the flesh. ‘Look at what cohesiveness he had in the past, whose unity is proclaimed to be so great in the future’.40 And with reference to Eph. 4:8,9, Avitus stated: ‘It is no great thing for him [apostle Paul] to say that God came down to earth, unless he confirms also that, because of the unity of the person he assumed he also descended into hell’.41 Man is called to participate in heavenly sovereignty, the members are part in the exaltation of their head Christ.42 36

Claudianus Mamertus, De statu animae I 3: CSEL 11, 36-7. Alois Grillmeier, Jesus der Christus im Glauben der Kirche 2/3, ed. Theresia Hainthaler (Freiburg, 2002), 58, n. 38; id., Christ in Christian Tradition 2/3 (Oxford, 2013), 56-7, n. 38. 38 C. Eutych. I 18,16-23: non solum obnoxietatem humani generis nulla intercessione dissolveret, sed et ipse communis debiti sarcinam parentali cirographo sustineret. Hoc ergo remedium idem apostolus dicit dispositum esse per angelos in manu mediatoris. Et ostendens causam, qua medium se praebuerit, assumptus ab infimis, inclinatus a summis, mediator, inquit, unius non est: deus autem unus est. Quae cum ita sint, sicut, nisi inter duos agat, incongrue mediatio nominatur: ita ipse, quem mediatorem dicimus, si solam quam velis ex duabus substantiam reciperet, ad subeundum mediationis officium ipse medium nil haberet. 39 See C. Eutych. I 18,35-19,5: Offendit quidem mentes carnalitate depressas et coniecturis humanae consuetudinis hebetatas tantae disparilitatis in unum coacta proprietas: ut scilicet divina plenitudo et humana condicio, ut servi humilitas dominique maiestas, ut creatoris virtus et servitus creaturae unam ex his omnibus videantur reddidisse personam. Sed nec ratio soliditatis istius a sapientum soliditate longinqua est, quae videtur maximus tenere in heredibus, quod ille solus hominis statum potuit reformare de perdito, qui formavit e caeno. 40 19,14-6: videte, utrumnam deus sit, cum conscendit post resurrectionis triumphum, si cum patre filius fuisse dicitur ante carnis exordium: aut quanta facta sit soliditas in praeteritis, cuius unitas tanta praedicatur in futuris. English : Shanzer/Wood, 101. 41 19,20-2. English : Shanzer/Wood, 101. 42 See C. Eutych. I 20,4-7: Vocat te ad participationem sui superna maiestas: cur offerentem renuis? cur despicis ingerentem? excole pro adipiscenda similitudine veritatem, dilige pro sectanda 37

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The impassibility of God and his participation in suffering: The impassible divinity could not endure bodily suffering and not feel death. God, however, shared the pain without the bitterness of suffering, and was not absent in the glorious battle for our salvation.43 Heresy does not allow Christ to be stained by real torture.44 Nevertheless, in the deity, in whom no bodily depression can be found, the affection of clemency (pietatis) is sometimes shown, cf. Jdg. 10:16 (pain); Eph. 4:30 (sad). But this is more the kindness of mercy than the necessity of nature.45 Comment: These explanations (compatiens, 16, 36; pietatis reperiatur affectio, 16, 39-40), are reminiscent of the opinion of Faustus von Riez.46 Avitus offers here other Biblical evidence than Faustus. It seems to me that Faustus is even more aware that this is an anthropomorphic way of speaking, while Avitus still compares the bonitas misericordiae with the necessitas naturae. Avitus knew (and appreciated) works of Faustus.47 The writing of Claudianus Mamertus De statu animae might well be familiar to him. The brother of Claudianus Mamertus, Bishop Mamertus, baptized him and was the predecessor of his father.48 2.3. Letters to Gundobad 49 Among the letters, only Ep. 30 (60-62,5) is of interest with regard to Christology. Gundobad asks for (scriptural) authority showing that the Son of God had the substance of the divinity before taking on (human) nature in the incarnation.50 As argument (ratio), Avitus points out: Whoever says that the imitatione doctrinam. Si caput nostrum est Christus, in sublimatione sument quantulaecumque sublimitatis consortium membra de vertice. 43 C. Eutych. I 16,32-6: ut inviolabilis divinitas dolores corporeos perpessa … Vnde sicut et ipsa caro nostra resurrectionis dono impassibilis futura post mortem est: sic deus, qui sentire obitum non potest, suscepto corpori, cui unitus adhaeserat, sine patiendi acerbitate compatiens nec defuit in salutis nostrae glorioso agone nec doluit. 44 C. Eutych. I 16,37-8: Contra huius distinctionis sensum haeresis adversa se se subrigens veris cruciatibus nec Christum patitur inquinari. 45 C. Eutych. I 17,3: bonitas potius misericordiae quam necessitas est naturae. 46 Faustus of Riez, Ep. 3, CSEL 21, 171-3: nihil sensit patientis sensu, sed sensit conpatientis affectu. See also the refutation in Claudianus Mamertus, De statu animae I 3, CSEL 11, 26-37. 47 See letter to king Gundobad, Ep. 4, de subitanea paenitentia, ed. Peiper, 29,34-30,2: Fausti … quem etiam gloria vestra noverat, ortu Britannum habitaculo Regiensem, where he ascribed Ep. 5 of Faustus to another Faustus, and thus practically tried to protect the reputation of Faustus of Riez. 48 See ed. Peiper, 110,20-1: Praedecessor namque meus et spiritalis mihi a baptismo pater Mamertus sacerdos. See also M. Burckhardt, Die Briefsammlung des Bischofs Avitus von Vienne († 518) (1938), 28. 49 Epistulae ad Gundobadum (CPL 992). – We give page numbers from Peiper’s edition, MGH.AA VI,2. English: Shanzer/Wood, 204-7. 50 See Ep. 30, 60,9-10: Iubetis igitur ostendi vobis rationem vel potius auctoritatem, qua pateat dei filium habuisse in divinitate substantiam, priusquam sumeret de incarnatione naturam.

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Son has a beginning, will also start the fatherhood of God with the Son. How can redemption be thought of, unless God did not become the ransom of his creature? Man alone is not capable.51 Then follows Biblical evidence (auctoritas) with a brief explanation: Isa. 9:6; Bar. 3:36-8; Rom. 9:5; John 20:28 (Thomas); John 8:57,58 (‘before Abraham was born, I am’); John 17:5; Ps. 2:7; Prov. 30:4; Gal. 4:4 (‘the one who was sent was before he was sent. If he had not been before Mary, then adoption, not nature,52 would have made him son of God, like all the others’); John 3:16 (Not chosen by the indelible Father, but begotten, as God and true man, in each of the two natures faithful to his own, remaining in the divinity from the Father, beginning in the womb of Mary). Concluding remarks We find in Avitus a Christology of two natures, common to the Chalcedonian West – though he never mentions Chalcedon. Thus, Avitus clearly advocated two natures (or substances) in Christ, which cannot be separated. He underlined the unity of God and man in Christ as well as the reality of each of the two natures. But there is no reflection in Avitus about the way, how divinity and humanity come together in Christ. There are some formulations indicating communication of idioms.53 His use of the soteriological argument to justify unity is no surprise, especially given his poems on salvation history. Avitus does not speak at any point of the soul of Christ – if I have seen correctly. He does not reflect about the Logos/word in the moment of Christ’s death and descent. In particular, he markedly emphasized Christ as mediator (1Tim. 2:5) – which I did not find in authors like Gennadius of Marseilles, nor Faustus of Riez or Claudianus Mamertus. The idea that man is called to participate in the divine majesty, too, cannot be found, to my knowledge, with other Gallic writers, such as Faustus or Gennadius. Avitus ascribes to the divinity a certain emotional compassion, with Biblical reference, underlining that God cannot feel bodily suffering in any way. He never uses the body-soul analogy. His reflections are rooted in the controversy with Arianism and have been formulated in response to theological questions of King Gundobad, who remained 51 Ep. 30, 60,17-20: Sed nescio in quem effectum redemptio nostra surrexit, si non creaturae suae pretium deus extitit. Nec enim redimere homo solus hominem poterat, qui in supernis, si deus non est, eguit redemptione. 52 Ep. 30, 61,28-9: Enimvero qui mittitur, erat antequam mitteretur. Qui si ante Mariam non fuisset, hunc similem ceteris adoptio fecerat dei filium, non natura. 53 C. Arr. 5,3-10; 7,17-21; C. Eutych. I 19,20-2.

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an ‘Arian’. The abundance of scriptural quotations adduced by Avitus is in line with Gundobad’s demand to provide ‘waves’ of scriptural evidence.54 Despite the various relations with Eastern Rome (letters to the emperor and the patriarchs of Constantinople, Jerusalem), Avitus’ knowledge of the Christological disputes in the East is largely inaccurate or even wrong.

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See C. Eutych. I 15,11-4; Ep. 30, 60,9.

The Division of Knowledge between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Diagrams on the divisio philosophiae in Cassiodorus’ Institutiones saeculares Ilaria MORRESI, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Italy

ABSTRACT At the beginning of the De dialectica chapter of his Institutiones saeculares, Cassiodorus places a diagram illustrating the traditional Aristotelian division of Philosophy into inspectiua and actualis, probably following a Greek source from the Alexandrian School. The same scheme is adopted by Isidore in his Etymologiae; Isidore, however, also combines it with the ‘Platonic’ divisio of the same discipline into physica, ethica and logica. It is, therefore, primarily from Cassiodorus and Isidore that the Carolingian Renaissance received the opposition between these ‘Platonic’ and ‘Aristotelian’ schemes, which became so relevant in subsequent centuries for the classification of the Liberal Arts. This article discusses the additions to Cassiodorus’ divisio philosophiae in the second interpolated recension of the Institutiones (Δ), that is, the textual form in which this work enjoyed its greatest popularity between the ninth and the eleventh centuries. Interpolations in Δ manuscripts are affected by textual mistakes and at times obscure, as a result of the attempt to balance the various branches of ‘Platonic’ and ‘Aristotelian’ schemes, but they also show traces of possibly ancient Greek material. A careful analysis of this material will therefore allow us to consider copyists’ and readers’ competences on the classification of knowledge during the Early Middle Ages.

1. Introduction: The De dialectica chapter in Cassiodorus’ Institutiones As is well known, the second book of Cassiodorus’ Institutiones aims to provide an introduction to the study of the Liberal Arts. It is divided into seven chapters, respectively devoted to grammatica, rhetorica, dialectica (that is, the Trivium) and to arithmetica, musica, geometria, astronomia (that is, the Quadrivium). The purpose of this article is to investigate in depth a specific section that is placed at the beginning of the third chapter of the book, the one dedicated to dialectics. Here, after giving the definition of dialectics and briefly discussing its connection to rhetoric (§§ 1-2), Cassiodorus dedicates a fairly long excursus to the explanation of the divisio philosophiae, introduced by the following words (§ 3): But before we speak of syllogisms, which display all the usefulness and excellence of dialectic, we must discuss briefly its starting points […]. Now it is the custom of teachers

Studia Patristica CXXX, 53-67. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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of philosophy, before they begin to comment on the Isagoge, to touch briefly on the branches of philosophy. We will also maintain these divisions and believe that they should be mentioned at this point.1

As it is always the case in the Institutiones, the analytic discussion of the divisio philosophiae (§§ 5-7 of the De dialectica chapter) is preceded by the representation through a diagram – in the form of an arbor or tree – of the general divisions and subdivisions of the subject (§ 4). Cassiodorus’ diagram survives in the oldest and more relevant manuscript of the Institutiones, cod. Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Patr. 61, in the following form:2









 

 












 








 



 








 


 





The diagram is followed by a list of three definitions of philosophy (§ 5) and then by a concise discussion of each branch of the diagram: philosophia inspectiva (naturalis, doctrinalis, divinalis) and actualis (moralis, dispensativa, civilis) (§§ 6-7): [5.] Philosophy is the demonstrable (insofar as it is humanly possible) knowledge of divine and human matters. Alternatively, philosophy is the art of arts and discipline of disciplines. Or again, philosophy is a preparation for dying, which is better fitted to Christians who trample down the lusts of this world and live a life of principle in a likeness of the homeland to come […]. [6.] Theoretical (inspectiva) philosophy is that by which we go beyond the visible world to contemplate something of the divine and heavenly, and which we see only 1

Cassiodorus. Institutions of Divine and Secular Learning and On the Soul 2, 3, 3, tr. James W. Halporn, intr. Mark Vessey, Translated Texts for Historians 42 (Liverpool, 2004), 189. 2 Cassiodori Senatoris Institutiones 2, 3, 4, ed. Roger A.B. Mynors (Oxford, 1937), 110.9-14; see infra the Appendix (image nr. 1), for the relevant passage of ms. Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Patr. 61. This manuscript, probably copied in Montecassino in the second half of the 8th century, is the most relevant witness to the ‘authentic’ recension Ω of the Institutiones saeculares. On the mutual relationship between the various textual forms of this work (Ω, Φ and Δ) and the nature of each of them, see infra.

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with the mind, since we have gone beyond corporeal sight. Natural (naturalis) philosophy is the investigation of the nature of each thing. Without the cooperation of nature nothing comes into being, but each thing is destined to those uses for which the creator limited it, unless perhaps by God’s will some miracle is shown to occur. The science that deals with quantity in the abstract is called mathematical (doctrinalis). An abstract quantity is that which we deal with by calculation alone by mentally separating these quantities from matter or other accidents, for instance, equals, unequals, and other things of this sort. Philosophy is called divine (divinalis) when we discuss the ineffable nature of God or spiritual creations partaking in some degree of a most profound distinguishing quality. Arithmetic is the study of quantity that can be counted in itself. Music is the study that discusses numbers that have a relationship to those things that are found in sounds. Geometry is the study of stationary magnitudes and shapes. Astronomy is the study of the movements of the stars in heaven. It considers and investigates by reason all configurations and movements of the stars in relation to one another and to the earth. [7.] Practical (actualis) philosophy attempts to explain matters under consideration on the basis of their effects. Ethical (moralis) philosophy is that through which a proper way of living is sought and principles aiming at virtue are prepared. Economic (dispensativa) philosophy is the theory of the wisely ordered disposition of private affairs. Political (civilis) philosophy is the theory for the effective governance of the entire state3.

Scholars agree in recognizing as the main source for this Cassiodorean passage the Commentary to Porphyry’s Isagoge written by Ammonius of Alexandria (ca. 435/445-517/526)4. However, our text also shows strong parallels with the Commentaries written by Elias and David, two disciples of Ammonius who were still active in Alexandria in the second half of the 6th century and whose work probably reflects the content of a ‘standard’ Neoplatonic lecture on the subject – that is, the teaching to which Cassiodorus might have been 3

Cassiodorus. Institutions 2, 3, 5-7, tr. J.W. Halporn (2004), 190-1. See Ammonii In Porphyrii Isagogen sive V voces, ed. Adolf Busse, CAG 4.3 (Berlin, 1891), 11.6-7 and 22-3; 13.10-1; 15.2-3 for the division of philosophy and ibid., 3.1-2; 6.27; 4.15-6 for its definitions. The identification of Ammonius as Cassiodorus’ source for this passage (as well as at the end of the De dialectica chapter, with reference to the distinction between ars and disciplina) was already proposed by Mynors in his apparatus to Cassiodorus, Institutiones 2, 3, 4-5 and 2, 3, 20. The Commentary to Porphyry’s Isagoge written by Boethius, although set on a similar scheme for the divisio philosophiae (see Boethius, In Isagogen Porphyrii commenta [editio prima] 1, 3) displays obvious terminological differences in comparison to the Institutiones and cannot, therefore, have been the intermediary between the Greek source and Cassiodorus. On this point see Pierre Courcelle, Les lettres grecques en Occident: de Macrobe à Cassiodore, Bibliothèque des Écoles Françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 159 (Paris, 1948), 323-5 and, more recently, Michel Ferré, ‘L’influence de Boèce sur le second livre des Institutions de Cassiodore’, Cassiodorus 6-7 (2000-2001), 231-47, 233-4. For a careful analysis of the Institutiones passage see also Giulio D’Onofrio, Fons scientiae: la dialettica nell’Occidente tardoantico (Napoli, 1984), 57-65, and Jean-Pierre Schneider, ‘Les définitions de la philosophie dans l’Antiquité tardive. Ammonios, Commentaire sur l’Isagoge de Porphyre, 9, 25 – 16, 20 (Busse)’, RThPh 63 (2013), 1-38, 17-8. 4

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exposed during his stay in Constantinople, between ca. 540 and 554.5 It seems therefore wiser to generically connect Cassiodorus’ treatment of the divisio philosophiae to the Alexandrian commentary tradition to Porphyry’s Isagoge, without trying to lead it back to one source in particular.6 Both Cassiodorus’ Institutiones and their Alexandrian sources posit at the very foundation of their divisiones a dichotomy between theoretical (inspectiva) and practical (actualis) philosophy. In doing this, they follow a long tradition which had its ultimate roots in Aristotle’s Metaphysics and was therefore currently regarded as ‘Aristotelic’ in Late Antiquity. However, as shown by John Mair in 1975, in De dialectica §§ 6-7 this Aristotelian source has been enriched by Cassiodorus with some remarks (definitions of philosophia inspectiva, naturalis, moralis) taken from Origen’s Homelies to the Song of Songs, quoted in their Latin translation by Rufinus.7 On the division of knowledge the latter followed 5 For the division of philosophy see Eliae In Porphyrii Isagogen et Aristotelis Categorias Commentaria 10-2, ed. A. Busse, CAG 18.1 (Berlin, 1900), 26.7; 27.35-6; 29.7-8; 31.28-9, and Davidis Prologemena et in Porphyrii Isagogen Commentaria 18-23, ed. A. Busse, CAG 18.2 (Berlin, 1904), 55.17; 57.26-7; 60.23-4; 74.12-3, but also Olympiodori Prolegomena et in Categorias commentarium, ed. A. Busse, CAG 12.1 (Berlin, 1902), 7.28-31 and 34-5, and Pseudo-Elias (Pseudo-David), Lectures on Porphyry’s Isagoge 22, 27, ed. Leendert G. Westerink (Amsterdam, 1967), 46. For definitions see Elias, In Porphyrii Isagogen 4, ed. A. Busse (1900), 8.9-12; David, In Porphyrii Isagogen 7, ed. A. Busse (1904), 20.28-30; Ps. Elias., In Porphyrii Isagogen 10, 10-12, ed. L.G. Westerink (1967), 9. 6 One possibility is, for example, the lost work of Olympiodorus, also active in Alexandria in the first half of the sixth century, on which see the almost identical divisio philosophiae (with the only omission of the Quadrivium) displayed by Olympiodorus, Prolegomena, ed. A. Busse (1902), 7.28-35. The commentary of the Ps. Elias or Ps. David, which also shows some possible contacts with the classification provided by the Institutiones, was almost certainly written at a later date (late 6th-early 7th century). The proximity of the Cassiodorean text to the Commentaries by Elias and David has already been noticed by Ilsetraut Hadot, Arts libéraux et philosophie dans la pensée antique. Contribution à l’histoire de l’éducation et de la culture dans l’Antiquité, 2nd ed. (Paris, 2005), 200, according to whom Elias’ and David’s loyalty to the scheme by Ammonius ‘laisse bien supposer qu’il s’agissait d’une tradition solidement établie, à laquelle Ammonius luimême était fidèle’. On the Alexandrian School see esp. Ilsetraut Hadot, Simplicius. Commentaire sur les Catégories, I: Introduction, Première partie (p. 1-9, 3 Kalbfleisch), Philosophia antiqua 50 (Leiden, New York, København, Köln, 1990), 21-47; David Blank, ‘Ammonius Hermeiou and his school’, in Lloyd P. Gerson (ed.), The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity, 2 vol. (Cambridge, 2010), II 654-66; Jan Opsomer, ‘Olympiodorus’, in ibid. 697-710; Michael Griffin, ‘Ammonius and the Alexandrian School’, in Andrea Falcon (ed.), Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Aristotle in Antiquity, Brill’s Companions to Classical Reception 7 (Leiden, Boston, 2016), 394-418; Leendert G. Westerink, ‘The Alexandrian commentators and the introductions to their commentaries’, in Richard Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle Transformed: The Ancient Commentators and their Influence, 2nd ed. (New York, 2016), 325-48, 325-41 (who places David’s activity in a later period, end of the 6th-beginning of the 7th century); Sebastian Gertz (tr.), Elias and David, Introductions to Philosophy; Olympiodorus, Introduction to Logic, Ancient Commentators on Aristotle (London, 2018), as well as the entries devoted to Ammonius, Olympiodorus, Elias and David in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (https://plato.stanford.edu/index.html). 7 See John R.S. Mair, ‘A note on Cassiodorus and the seven liberal arts’, JThS 26 (1975), 41921, with reference to Origenes, Commentarium in Canticum Canticorum secundum translationem

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a different scheme, being based on a tripartite distinction – as we will see, of Platonic’s ancestry – between Ethics, Physics and Epoptics.8 As a result, Cassiodorus’ De dialectica chapter provides a peculiar fusion between the two models for the divisio philosophiae that, being respectively attributed to Aristotle and Plato, were commonly used for lecturing on this subject in Late Antiquity. This contamination is however implicit, for it is not discussed in the text nor there is any effort of combination of the two schemes into a new and coherent system.9 Cassiodorus’ treatment of the parts of philosophy enjoyed great popularity in the Early Middle Ages thanks to Isidore’s extensive use of it in his Etymologiae. Here, a well-known passage of the second book (chapter 24) offers an instance of juxtaposition of different sources that is somehow similar to the one made by Cassiodorus in his De dialectica, although being more systematic and explicit. Isidore’s chapter consists of two parts: the first one illustrates a tripartite division of philosophy (explicitly attributed to Plato) into physica – ethica – logica, that he clearly derived from St Augustine’s De civitate Dei 8, 10; the second part of the chapter consists of a long quotation from §§ 4-7 of Cassiodorus’ De dialectica, exposing the (opposite) ‘Aristotelian’ bipartition of philosophy into inspectiva – actualis.10 quam fecit Rufinus, Prol. 3, 3, and to Cassianus, Conlationes 1, 1 and 21, 34 (for the Latin translation of πρακτική with actualis). Mair also highlighted the presence of both Rufinus’ and Cassianus’ works in the library at Vivarium (see Cassiodorus, Institutiones 1, 1, 7 and 1, 5, 4), therefore putting in doubt the Institutiones’ dependence from Ammonius. It seems more convincing, however, to consider Cassiodorus’ Greek and Latin sources as not mutually exclusive, but rather reflecting an attempt at contamination between different schemes of the divisio philosophiae: on this point see Umberto Pizzani, ‘Cassiodoro e le discipline del quadrivio’, in Sandro Leanza (ed.), Flavio Magno Aurelio Cassiodoro. Atti della settimana di studi, Cosenza-Squillace, 19-24 settembre 1983 (Catanzaro, 1986), 49-71; id., ‘Retorica e dialettica nel secondo libro delle Institutiones di Cassiodoro’, Cassiodorus 6-7 (2000-2001), 95-114, 110-2; Michel Ferré, ‘La genèse du second livre des Institutions de Cassiodore’, Latomus 61 (2002), 152-62; I. Hadot, Arts libéraux (2005), 199-203, 299-301. 8 The divisio philosophiae scheme followed by Origen (in Greek: ἠθική – φυσική – ἐποπτική) represents a variant, developed in the first century AD, of the more common ‘Platonic’ tripartition into physics, ethics and logic (on which see infra): see Pierre Hadot, ‘Les divisions des parties de la philosophie dans l’Antiquité’, MH 36 (1979), 201-23 [repr. in id., Études de philosophie ancienne (Paris, 1998), 125-58, and id., ‘Die Einteilung der Philosophie im Altertum’, ZPhF 36 (1982), 422-44], 218-9; I. Hadot, Simplicius (1990), 40-2; J.-P. Schneider, ‘Les définitions’ (2013), 7-8. 9 See U. Pizzani, ‘Cassiodoro e le discipline del quadrivio’ (1986), 55, who also finds consonances with Ammonius, In Porphyrii Isagogen, ed. A. Busse (1891), 15.3-6, regarding the definitions of philosophia dispensativa and civilis. 10 For the analysis of this passage and its sources see Jacques Fontaine, Isidore de Séville et la culture classique dans l’Espagne wisigothique, Collection des Études augustiniennes, Série Antiquité, 7-8, 2 vol. (Paris, 1959), 604-12; Isidori Hispalensis Etymologiae II. De rhetorica, ed. Peter K. Marshall (Paris, 1983), 102-5; I. Hadot, Arts libéraux (2005), 210-2. Another well-known passage of Isidore’s work devoted to the divisio philosophiae is Differentiae II, 38-40, where the author

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2. ‘Aristotelian’ and ‘Platonic’ schemes on the divisio philosophiae in the Early Middle Ages This brief review of Cassiodorus’ and Isidore’s treatments of the division of philosophy is illustrative of what the Early Middle Ages inherited from Late Antiquity on this subject. A first instance of classification – commonly attributed to Plato and well-known for its employment within Stoicism, but probably introduced by the Old Academy11 – is divided into three branches (physica, ethica, logica) and embraces both the Quadrivium and the Trivium in its lower levels. The second scheme, ultimately going back to the fifth book of Aristotle’s Metaphysics (E’, 1025 b3 – 1026 a32), proposes a dichotomy between theoretica – practica and only considers the Quadrivium. We can represent these two schemata in the following way:12 










  



 


 


 

  








 
  


  
  


 
  













  
  





 


Scholars from the Early Middle Ages proposed different combinations of these two models (similarly to Cassiodorus and Isidore) sometimes simply comparing them (à la Isidore), but more often blending them (as indirectly done by – starting from the already known ‘Platonic’ division of philosophy into physics, ethics and logic – presents a significantly different division of the Quadrivium into seven disciplines (arithmetica, geometrica, musica, astronomia, astrologia, mechanica, medicina). This second and more in-depth Isidorean excerpt on the division of philosophy also enjoyed great popularity in the Middle Ages, especially within the Irish environment: for a first outline of its fortune see esp. Bernhard Bischoff, ‘Eine verschollene Einteilung der Wissenschaften’, in id., Mittelalterliche Studien. Ausgewählte Aufsätze zur Schriftkunde und Literaturgeschichte, 3 vol. (Stuttgart, 1966-1981), I 273-88. 11 The scheme is attributed to Plato by Cicero, Academica posteriora 1, 5, 19; Apuleius, De Platone, 1, 3, 187-8; Diogenes Laertius, Vitae philosophorum 3, 56; Hippolythus of Rome, Refutatio omnium heresium 1, 18 (= Doxographi Graeci, ed. Hermann Diels [Berlin, 1879], 567.4-6); Atticus in Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 11, 2, 1-6; Augustinus, Contra Academicos 3, 17, 37; De civitate Dei 8, 4 and 11, 25, and to Xenophanes by Sextus Empiricus, Adversus mathematicos 7, 16: see esp. P. Hadot, ‘Les divisions’ (1979), 206-8 and 211-2, and J.-P. Schneider, ‘Les définitions’ (2013), 3-6. 12 For a general overview of the ancient schemes on the divisio philosophiae see P. Hadot, ‘Les divisions’ (1979), passim; J.-P. Schneider, ‘Les définitions’ (2013), 1-19. On the representation of these schemes in the form of diagrams see also John E. Murdoch, Album of Science: Antiquity and the Middle Ages (New York, 1984), 38-42.

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Cassiodorus) into fuller, but also obscure and very complex, new schemata. An interesting example of this phenomenon is provided by the Δ recension of the Institutiones saeculares, the most successful textual form of Cassiodorus’ work during the Carolingian Renaissance, which we will now examine in detail. 3. Diagrams and additions to the divisio philosophiae section within the manuscript tradition of Cassiodorus’ Institutiones The second book of Cassiodorus’ Institutiones is preserved by three different recensions: Ω, Φ and Δ. Τhe first, Ω (what we have considered until now) reflects the author’s final version, and is therefore regarded as ‘authentic’. The others, Φ and Δ, contain additions by later interpolators who strove to create more complete manuals on the Liberal Arts. These latter recensions, whose critical edition I am currently preparing, are usually attributed to two monks operating in the monastery of Vivarium shortly after the death of Cassiodorus. However, some recent studies suggested that at least some of these ΦΔ interpolations should be placed in an early Carolingian setting, an hypothesis that points to the active use and study of the Institutiones throughout the 8th century.13 In this article I will only consider the case of Δ, the collection characterized by the most complex combination of interpolated materials – but also by the presence of the rarest and more interesting additions. Among them there are Graeca and, more generically, scholastic references to Late-Antique culture, that are inserted as marginalia (both in the form of short texts and diagrams) to the text. Some of these additions appear to be of Late-Antique origin, while others seem to have been added in Carolingian times. Hence the difficulty in proposing a date and place of origin for the most problematic materials, about whose genesis 13 On the manuscript tradition of Cassiodorus’ Institutiones saeculares see the introduction to Mynors’ edition (Cassiodori Senatoris Institutiones, ed. Roger A.B. Mynors [Oxford, 1937], xviii-xxxix), followed only some years later by Pierre Courcelle, ‘Histoire d’un brouillon cassiodorien’, REA 44 (1942), 65-86 and André Van de Vyver, ‘Les Institutiones de Cassiodore et sa fondation à Vivarium’, RBen 53 (1941), 59-88. Among the most relevant studies on the subject we can also quote Louis Holtz, ‘Quelques aspects de la tradition et de la diffusion des Institutions’, in S. Leanza, Flavio Magno Aurelio Cassiodoro (1986), 281-312 and Fabio Troncarelli, Vivarium: i libri, il destino, Instrumenta Patristica 33 (Turnhout, Steenbrugge, 1998). From the most recent years also date Oronzo Pecere, ‘Cassiodoro e la protostoria di un corpus di scritti di Boezio’, Segno e Testo 12 (2014), 149-221; Patrizia Stoppacci, ‘A proposito di una recente edizione digitale: la redazione Δ delle Institutiones di Cassiodoro. Stratigrafia di un manuale’, Scriptorium 69 (2015), 236-71, and ead., ‘Composizione, genesi e fortuna della redazione Φ delle Institutiones di Cassiodoro’, Latomus 76 (2017), 409-43. A complete and extensive treatment of the Institutiones’ manuscript tradition can be found in ead., Cassiodorus Senator, 6. Institutiones, in Paolo Chiesa and Lucia Castaldi (eds), TE.TRA 4. La trasmissione dei testi latini del Medioevo. Medieval Latin Texts and their Transmission, Millennio medievale 94 (Firenze, 2012), 114-29. The nature and characteristics of the ΦΔ critical edition currently in preparation are described in Ilaria Morresi, ‘Le redazioni ΦΔ delle Institutiones di Cassiodoro: considerazioni preliminari all’edizione critica’, Filologia mediolatina 25 (2018), 63-86.

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we have very scarce knowledge. In general terms, it seems possible to consider the Δ recension as a stratified collection, progressively assembled between the end of the 6th and the beginning of the 9th century; an example, therefore, of the active employment of Cassiodorus’ Institutiones as a vehicle of scholastic knowledge from the monastery of Vivarium to the Carolingian Renaissance. Let us turn now to the divisio philosophiae paragraphs as they appear in Δ manuscripts. As mentioned at the beginning of this paper, Cassiodorus’ original exposition on the subject primarily consisted of a bipartite diagram based on the ‘Aristotelian’ model for the division of knowledge; then, of a textual section including also the (supposedly) ‘Platonic’ definitions of the various branches of philosophy, which Cassiodorus took from Origen. When considering instead the beginning of the De dialectica chapter as it appears in Δ manuscripts,14 the text appears sensibly altered and inclusive of an obscure set of new diagrams; additions of terms (and even lines) in Greek; extended marginal interpolations clearly intended as an enlargement of the original text. This set of additions proves to be very difficult to interpret as a whole. What is sure is that the interpolations deliberately go beyond the original plan of the chapter, since the new diagrams do not address exclusively the ‘Aristotelian’ division of philosophy, but also display new ‘Platonic’ elements, which are combined and mixed to the original ones by Cassiodorus so as to create a fuller and more comprehensive system. Here is an outline of the divisio philosophiae diagrams within the Δ recension, in the form which can be attributed to the Δ archetype:    


 
 





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14 See infra the Appendix (image nr. 2) for the reproduction of the divisio philosophiae diagram in ms. Valenciennes, Bibl. mun. 172 (ι, probably copied in the monastery of St Amand during the 9th century), one of the most complete and relevant witnesses of the Δ recension. For the whole list and descriptions of Δ manuscripts see Cassiodori Institutiones, ed. R.A.B. Mynors (1937), xxxixxxiv, and P. Stoppacci, ‘La redazione Δ’ (2015), 238-41.

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If compared to the original diagram by Cassiodorus witnessed by Ω Φ manuscripts (represented supra, p. 54), the scheme provided by Δ clearly displays a relevant and articulated set of additions. For the sake of analysis, we can break it down in the following sequence of minor interventions: – The original title Philosophia dividitur has been enlarged by the words secundum Aristotelem. Platoni vero non conveniunt. – The dicothomy inspectiva – actualis has been provided with the corresponding Greek terms θεωρητική – πρακτική. Next to θεωρητική inspectiva the words secundum Aristotelem are repeated. – Two new diagrams, entirely written in Greek, feature right to the original scheme. The first, entitled APTIC [sic] in manuscripts, articulates the Aristotelian division of practical philosophy into ἠθική – οἰκονομική – πολιτική (the reading of the last word as πρακτική, provided by all Δ manuscripts, does not make sense in this context, and should be regarded as a textual corruption induced by the original dichotomy θεωρητική – πρακτική). The second diagram, entitled ΠΑΑΤ [sic] in manuscripts, represents the correspondent Platonist division into νομοθετικόν – δικαστικόν, ultimately deriving from Plato’s Gorgias (464 b-c). The two titles have been persuasively interpreted by Patrizia Stoppacci as textual corruptions of the names ΑΡΙCΤΟΤΕΛHC and ΠΛΑΤΩΝ, in their abbreviated forms ΑΡΙCΤ and ΠΛΑΤ.15 In other words, the interpolator put at the top of the two diagrams the name of the philosopher who was traditionally regarded as the inventor of the division. His source was probably another Commentary to Porphyry’s Isagoge from the Alexandrian School (whose influence on Cassiodorus we have considered earlier on in this paper), for within the School’s tradition we find very similar comparisons of the Aristotelian and Platonist divisions of πρακτικὴ φιλοσοφία.16 – A third diagram has been added, still on the right of the original one, under the title Definitio philosophiae (not entirely pertinent to the actual content of the diagram). This third scheme shows on its first level the ‘Aristotelian’ division of philosophy into θεωρητική and πρακτική, and on the second See P. Stoppacci, ‘La redazione Δ’ (2015), 258-61. See Ammonius, In Porphyrii Isagogen, ed. A. Busse (1891), 15.2-3 and 11-2. Extremely similar passages can also be found in Elias, In Porphyrii Isagogen 12, ed. A. Busse (1900), 31.28-9 and 32.27-8; David, In Porphyrii Isagogen 23-4, ed. A. Busse (1904), 74.12-3 and 75.34; Ps. Elias, In Porphyrii Isagogen 22, 26-7, ed. L.G. Westerink (1967), 45-6. Anyway, while the ‘Aristotelic’ tripartition is more or less reflected in the same way by all of these Commentaries, a clear opposition between this and the ‘Platonic’ division of φιλοσοφία πρακτική into νομοθετικόν – δικαστικόν is only showed by Elias, David and Ps. Elias. It is also noteworthy that at least in two witnesses of Ammonius’ Commentary to the Isagoge – mss. München, Bayerische Staatsbibl., graec. 222, f. 3r (second half of the 13th century) and Firenze, Bibl. Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 71.03, f. 1r (15th century) – a diairetic scheme further divides each one of the three entries of πρακτική φιλοσοφία (ἠθική, οἰκονομική, πολιτική) into νομοθετικόν – δικαστικόν. 15 16

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level the ‘Platonic’ division into φυσική – λογική – ἠθική; in the latter, natural philosophy (φυσική) is presented as stemming from θεωρητική, whereas logic and ethics are subdivisions of πρακτική. Depending on our opinion of the interpolator’s competences and culture, this third diagram can be interpreted in two different ways: as a (mistaken and very obscure) effort of harmonization between the ‘Aristotelian’ and ‘Platonic’ systems;17 or, as the result of the erroneous reunion (already accomplished by copyists at the level of the Δ archetype) of two originally separated diagrams. Other Δ additions to the original text by Cassiodorus are to be found in §§ 5-7 of the De dialectica chapter, devoted to the definitions of philosophy and to a further explanation of its subdivisions: – The textual section immediately following the diagrams (§ 5) displays a list of three definitions of philosophy, as they were traditionally formulated by the Alexandrian school.18 Here, Δ manuscripts add a fourth definition (both in Greek and in its Latin translation): Φιλοσοφία ὁμοίωσις θεῷ κατὰ τὸ δυνατὸν ἀνθρώπῳ19 […] philosophia est adsimilari Deo secundum quod possibile est homini.20 Since this fourth definition is also attested in Commentaries 17 See Massimiliano Vitiello, Il principe, il filosofo, il guerriero: lineamenti di pensiero politico nell’Italia ostrogota, Hermes Einzelschriften 97 (Stuttgart, 2006), 90-100, already quoted by P. Stoppacci, ‘La redazione Δ’ (2015), 258-61. However, such a classification of knowledge – simply ranking physics under theorical philosophy and ethics-logic under practical philosophy – appears to be somewhat unclear and problematic. For a (much more comprehensible) middlePlatonic attempt to harmonize different models of the divisio philosophiae see Alcinous, Introductio in Platonem 3, in Platonis Opera VI, ed. Karl F. Hermann (Leipzig, 1880), 152-4, where φιλοσοφία is divided into θεωρητική (θεολογικόν – φυσικόν – μαθηματικόν) – πρακτική (ἠθικόν – οἰκονομικόν – πολιτικόν) – διαλεκτικη [διαιρετικόν – ὁριστικόν – ἀναλυτικόν – ἐπαγωγικόν – συλλογιστικόν (ἀποδεικτικόν – ἐπιχειρηματικόν – ῥητορικόν – σοφίσματα)]. For a careful analysis of this passage see I. Hadot, Arts libéraux (2005), 73-80, and J.-P. Schneider, ‘Les définitions’ (2013), 8-9. 18 The six definitions commonly listed by the Alexandrian School, later to become canonical in Byzantine philosophical texts (see Katerina Ierodiakonou and George Zografidis, ‘Early Byzantine Philosophy’, in L.P. Gerson [ed.], Cambridge History of Philosophy [2019], II 843-68, 846-8) are: 1) φιλοσοφία ἐστὶ γνῶσις τῶν ὄντων ᾗ ὄντα ἐστί; 2) φιλοσοφία ἐστὶ γνῶσις θείων τε καὶ ἀνθρωπίνων πραγμάτων; 3) φιλοσοφία ἐστὶ μελέτη θανάτου; 4) φιλοσοφία ἐστὶ ὁμοίωσις θεῷ κατὰ τὸ δυνατὸν ἀνθρώπῳ; 5) φιλοσοφία ἐστὶ τέχνη τεχνῶν καὶ ἐπιστήμη ἐπιστημῶν; 6) φιλοσοφία ἐστὶ φιλία σοφίας. For an accurate analysis of this list see Jean-Pierre Schneider, ‘Les définitions de la philosophie dans l’Antiquité tardive. Ammonios, Commentaire sur l’Isagoge de Porphyre, 1, 11 – 9, 24 (Busse)’, RThPh 62 (2012), 1-27, 1-9. 19 ΑΝΩΙ in manuscripts, probably due to the erroneous reading of the Greek abbreviation form for ἀν(θρώπ)ῳ. 20 In Δ manuscripts, the Greek and Latin texts for this definition are actually separated and respectively placed at the beginning and at the end of § 5. This is probably due to the difficulties experienced by copyists in coherently reading the very complex and articulated set of additions provided by the interpolator, which led both to textual errors (as the ones considered before) and to this transposition.

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to Porphyry’s Isagoge from the Alexandrian School, it is probably derived from their same source. – The last interpolation in Δ manuscripts is placed below in the text, as an addition to the philosophia actualis paragraph (§ 7 of the De dialectica chapter): Naturalis autem est ΦΥCΙΚΗ ea pars in qua de naturae inquisitione tractatur. Rationalis autem est ΛΟΓΙΚΗ in qua quaeritur quonam modo veritas percipi possit. Moralis autem est ΗΘΙΚΗ in qua de moribus agitur bonorumque finibus appetendis malorumque vitandis. Haec secundum Platonem est divisio philosophiae. ‘Natural’ philosophy, i.e. φυσική, is the division concerned with the investigation of nature. ‘Rational’ philosophy, i.e. λογική, is that through which we seek to understand the means by which the truth can be understood. ‘Moral’ philosophy, i.e. ἠθική, is the one discussing behavior, the good ends to be pursued and the evil ends to be avoided. This, according to Plato, is the division of philosophy. The addition clearly illustrates the Platonic tripartition of philosophy and essentially consists of a long quote from St. Augustine’s De civitate Dei 8, 10 – that is, the same source used by Isidore for his already mentioned division in Etym. 2, 24.21 Thus, all of the interpolations added in Δ manuscripts to §§ 4-7 of Cassiodorus’ De dialectica chapter appear to focus on the opposition between the ‘Aristotelian’ and the ‘Platonic’ classifications of philosophy, possibly pursuing their harmonization. The interpolator’s sources can be identified with St. Augustine’s De civitate Dei and, primarily, with a Commentary to Porphyry’s Isagoge from the Alexandrian school – that is, the same model that Cassiodorus had already used in his original chapter. Since a text like the commentary to Porphyry would be extremely difficult to find in a Carolingian setting, this strengthens the hypothesis that at least part of the material added in Δ originated in Vivarium (and therefore was copied, at the latest, at the beginning of the 7th century). It is also important to note, however, that similar efforts of combining the ‘Aristotelian’ and the ‘Platonic’ models in more complex and obscure – sometimes, even nonsensical – systems are not at all isolated in the 8th and 9th centuries. On the contrary, the Carolingian Renaissance proved to be extremely 21 Augustinus, De civitate Dei 8, 10: Nec, si litteras eorum Christianus ignorans verbis, quae non didicit, in disputatione non utitur, ut vel naturalem Latine vel physicam Graece appellet eam partem, in qua de naturae inquisitione tractatur, et rationalem sive logicam, in qua quaeritur quonam modo veritas percipi possit, et moralem vel ethicam, in qua de moribus agitur bonorumque finibus appetendis malorumque vitandis, ideo nescit ab uno vero Deo atque optimo et naturam nobis esse, qua facti ad eius imaginem sumus, et doctrinam, qua eum nosque noverimus, et gratiam, qua illi cohaerendo beati simus.

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keen on what Late Antiquity had transmitted on Classical philosophical systems. A first sign of this interest can be recognized in the wide circulation of the Δ recension itself, whose diffusion between the ninth and the eleventh centuries at the expenses of Ω Φ (13 Δ manuscripts out of 25 complete witnesses of Cassiodorus’ Institutiones saeculares) is clearly representative of the specific concerns of copyists and schools during the Carolingian Era. Their curiosity on this subject is also reflected by several original treatises assembled in the same period, which clearly point to an active study of the divisio philosophiae systems from the 8th century onwards. A first picture of the extremely complex texts and diagrams that widely circulated in these centuries has been provided by Bernhard Bischoff in a well-known article written in 1958; but much is still to be done in giving critical texts and coherent readings of them.22 Conclusions Interpolations and diagrams – and the new texts that originated from them – are neither commentaries nor glosses, for their first aim is not to be ‘in the service’ of the authorial text but to improve on it, making it available to new employments. Since these interventions cannot be led back to a precise literary genre or commentary form, they have no fixed layout nor hierarchical structure, 22 See B. Bischoff, ‘Einteilung der Wissenschaften’ (1966-1981), passim. A good example of the Carolingians’ interest for the ‘Platonic’ and ‘Aristotelic’ schemes of the divisio philosophiae is provided by the treatise De partibus philosophiae (incipit Philosophia tripharie primo diuiditur). It is a short exposition consisting in both a textual section and a sequence of diagrams, which achieved a remarkable popularity and is witnessed by more than 20 manuscripts copied from the 9th to the 14th centuries: see the lists in B. Bischoff, ‘Einteilung der Wissenschaften’ (1966-1981), 273-4; Michael Evans, ‘The Ysagoge in Theologiam and the Commentaries Attributed to Bernard Silvestris’, JWI 54 (1991), 1-42, 7-8; Irene O’Daly, ‘Diagrams of Knowledge and Rhetoric in manuscripts of Cicero’s De inventione’, in Erik Kwakkel (ed.), Manuscripts of the Latin Classics 800-1200, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Book Culture (Leiden, 2015), 77-105, 92-5. The same treatise also flowed into the introduction to Ps. Dinamius Ars grammatica, probably assembled between the end of the 7th-beginning of the 8th century; on this point, see esp. Luigi Munzi, ‘Dinamio grammatico cristiano?’, in ΜΟΥΣΑ: Scritti in onore di Giuseppe Morelli, Edizioni e saggi universitari di filologia classica 5 (Bologna, 1997), 393-432, 402-5. The divisio philosophiae proposed by this treatise clearly mixes the ‘Platonic’ and the ‘Aristotelic’ schemes, in order to embrace in its divisions both the Trivium and the Quadrivium, in the following form: theoretica: [theologica – physica – mathematica: (geometrica – arithmetica – astronomica – musica)] – pratica: (ethica – economica – politica) – logica: (dialectica – epidictica – sophistica). Both in the manuscripts of the Ps. Dinamius and in cod. Bamberg, Staatsbibl. Phil. 1, f. 51rv (10th century), moreover, the names of the various subdivisions of Philosophy have been written in Greek characters, thus displaying significant points of contact with the interpolations in Δ manuscripts. On the same treatise De partibus philosophiae see also Martin Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture: «Grammatica» and Literary Theory, 350-1100, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 19 (Cambridge, 1994), 282, and Excerpta Isagogarum et Categoriarum, ed. Giulio D’Onofrio, CChr.CM 120 (Turnhout, 1995), xxi-xxii.

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and they are developed more on the basis of association than of logical reasoning. Therefore, they constitute an extremely fluid category, which truly puts the editor to the test while trying to reconstruct the original intentions of their author. In the specific case of the Δ interpolated recension of Cassiodorus’ Institutiones, a difficult task is also that of distinguishing conceptual mistakes made by the interpolator himself from any other error that might have originated within the manuscript tradition – possibly, in the delicate moment of the transposition of what was originally conceived as a sum of independent and extemporaneous notes into a linear text and/or diagram. If my reading of Δ is correct, the ‘erroneous’ form it witnesses should not, however, be traced back to the interpolator’s original text; instead, it should represent the result of the copying process, as a reaction to the complex layout of the interpolator’s set of notes. These very mistaken readings allow us, therefore, to reconstruct two different stages in the first history of the Institutiones saeculares: a first step in which active readers still had at their disposal Cassiodorus’ Alexandrian sources, and were able to coherently employ them; a subsequent stage (represented by the archetype of the Δ manuscript tradition), clearly separated from the first one, in which copyists were not anymore able to accurately read and interpret as a whole what they had inherited from Vivarium.

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Ms. Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Patr. 61, f. 43v

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Petrine Authority in the Ecclesiology of Leo the Great James K. LEE, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, USA

ABSTRACT This article examines Leo the Great’s doctrine of Petrine authority by analyzing his developing ecclesiology. It argues that Leo builds upon the Latin tradition in order to strengthen the authority of the bishop of Rome. Leo’s development of the papacy goes beyond previous figures like Cyprian and Augustine by positing the church not merely as a parallel society, but as a divinely instituted spiritual imperium. Leo draws upon Roman imperial law and Scripture in order to establish papal primacy. Peter, having been the first to confess Jesus as Christ, is entrusted with the governance of the church in terms of doctrine, discipline, and jurisdiction. This Petrine authority is passed on to each successor. While church and empire contribute to the well-being of the other, the Roman see maintains spiritual authority as head of the entire world. This study argues that Leo favors a doctrine of papal primacy based upon a kind of mediation that is not in competition with Christ, but is a participation in Christ’s headship and in the dispensation of grace. Leo’s formulation of papal primacy is a crucial feature of Western patristic ecclesiology following Augustine. Leo’s contribution to the doctrine of Petrine authority is demonstrated by exploring his Letters and Sermons.

Introduction Among Pope Leo the Great’s (ca. 400-461 AD) lasting contributions to Western Christianity was his strengthening of papal primacy.1 Drawing upon imperial law and biblical theology, Leo went beyond Latin theologians such as Cyprian and Augustine to posit the authority of the bishop of Rome not only in terms of doctrinal unity but also with regard to jurisdiction.2 Leo’s claim for Petrine authority was based upon Christ’s naming of Peter as ‘rock’ in Matthew 16. According to Leo, Christ gave Peter a share in the administration of grace from the head to the members of the body, the church. The bishop of Rome, as the successor of Peter, shared in Peter’s distinctive power as spiritual head of the church throughout the world. This study examines Leo’s view of papal primacy in the context of his ecclesiology while considering its significance for patristic ecclesiology in the West. 1 Hubertus R. Drobner, The Fathers of the Church: A Comprehensive Introduction, trans. Siegfried S. Schatzmann (Peabody, 2007), 479; Bronwen Neil, Leo the Great (New York, 2009), 39. 2 George E. Demacopoulos, The Invention of Peter: Apostolic Discourse and Papal Authority in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia, 2013), 50-1.

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Leo became bishop of Rome in 440 AD during a time of political instability and ecclesial controversy. The lack of effective imperial leadership during the fifth century allowed the bishop of Rome to play an increasingly important role in civic affairs,3 as evident in the case of Leo’s negotiations with Attila in Venetia.4 In terms of ecclesial administration, Leo expanded the reach of papal jurisdiction by exercising disciplinary measures and regulations for provinces in places such as North Africa with the aim of providing a unified set of legal guidelines for bishops to resolve issues. Leo also intervened in conflicts among Eastern communities, perhaps most famously with his Tome of 449. Although Leo asserted victory with the affirmation of his teaching by the Council of Chalcedon, his claims for primacy were not always well-received. In addition, Leo extended his jurisdiction to areas such as Gaul so that by the end of his pontificate, Rome played a central role in settling disputes among bishops.5 Along with internal challenges, Leo faced external pressures. Following the deaths of the emperors Valentinian and Maximus, the city of Rome was captured by the Vandals in 455, and Leo was forced to pay ransom to barbarian invaders by melting down 600 pounds of silver.6 The church in Rome was burdened by economic struggles for the rest of Leo’s reign, and he died in 461 without having resolved these issues. Nevertheless, he managed to elevate the social and ecclesial significance of the papacy according to his view of Petrine authority.

Ecclesiology and Petrine Authority Before turning to Peter, let us look at the ecclesiological foundations for Leo’s understanding of papal primacy. Like Latin fathers such as Cyprian and Augustine, Leo’s ecclesiology was built upon an incarnational Christology. Christ took on human flesh and soul in the womb of the virgin mother, not thereby decreasing the divine but rather increasing the human by the divine.7 Because of the mystery of the incarnation, Christ the head and the members of his body, the church, could be united as one flesh (Gen. 2:24) and one body from the union of bridegroom and bride. The union of the divine and human natures form one Christ, and this was the mystery that enabled human beings 3

B. Neil, Leo the Great (2009), 6. B. Neil, Leo the Great (2009), 8-9; Susan Wessel, Leo the Great and the Spiritual Rebuilding of a Universal Rome (Leiden, 2008), 46-7. 5 Leo, Ep. 10.2; G. Demacopoulos, The Invention of Peter (2013), 54-9. 6 B. Neil, Leo the Great (2009), 13. 7 Leo, Ep. 59.3. 4

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to be joined to Christ’s human nature in order to be united to the Godhead.8 When the Word took on our flesh, our nature was united to his unchangeable substance, that is, his divinity.9 The complete union of the divine and human in the womb of the virgin made possible the church’s participation in the divine. The whole church could receive the fullness of the Godhead bodily, as the body clinging to the head whose flesh was real.10 Eutyches made the error of denying the real human flesh of Jesus in his faulty Christology (even if Eutyches did not think so himself), which rendered void the mystery of salvation.11 Those who denied the doctrine of God’s church placed themselves outside of the one body of Christ.12 The church as the body of Christ was born from his side on the cross, signified by the blood and water that flowed from Christ’s side as symbols of the sacraments.13 Christ was the true head of the church, yet he bestowed upon Peter a particular role as the rock upon which the church was built (Matt. 16:16-9). To be sure, all of the Latin fathers acknowledged Peter’s unique place among the apostles but in distinct ways. According to Cyprian of Carthage (ca. 200-258), when Christ gave the Holy Spirit to Peter and the apostles in John 20:22-3, Peter was a symbol of the unity of the apostolic college. The Holy Spirit bestowed upon Peter and the apostles the power to forgive sins as a united body. The bishops, as successors of the apostles, were offered participation in this unity.14 Only by sharing in episcopal unity could a bishop sanctify and celebrate the sacraments. Those who cut themselves off from this unity were no longer able to sanctify, for they could not give what they had not received. Peter served as a model of unity and humility by representing the union of the bishops, who received the power to effect the sacraments from the Holy Spirit.15 The bishops mediated the sanctifying work of the Spirit by remaining in union with the worldwide episcopal college. Augustine rejected Cyprian’s understanding of episcopal unity as the basis for the validity of the sacraments. Like Tertullian, Augustine held that the Holy Spirit belonged to the whole church as the body of Christ. When Christ conferred the power of the Spirit upon Peter and the apostles in John 20, he granted it to the entire communion of saints united in charity.16 The bishops did not have 8

Leo, Ep. 59.5; Ep. 31.2. Leo, Ep. 88.1. 10 Leo, Serm. 30.7, citing Col. 2:8-10. 11 Leo, Ep. 88.2. 12 Leo, Ep. 139.4; Ep. 35.1. 13 Leo, Ep. 59.4; Serm. 35.4. 14 Cyprian, Unit. eccl. 4-7; Ep. 33.1.1-2; J. Patout Burns et al., Christianity in Roman Africa: The Development of Its Practices and Beliefs (Grand Rapids, 2014), 327. 15 Unlike Tertullian and Augustine, Cyprian did not make explicit mention of a provision for baptism by lay Christians in case of emergency; Cyprian, Ep. 18.1.2, 2.2. 16 Augustine, Bapt. 3.18.23. 9

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special possession of the Spirit by virtue of their union with the episcopal college. They administered the sacraments, but the power and efficacy of the sacraments came from Christ and the Spirit.17 Anyone who had been ordained validly received the ability to celebrate the sacraments. In Augustine’s view, Cyprian and the Donatists were both wrong to attribute sacramental validity to the state of the minister, but Cyprian prized unity in charity over division, so he could be pardoned for his theological shortcomings. Augustine interpreted Peter as a visible sign of the unity of the whole Christ, head and members. The power given to Peter in Matt. 16:19 was a symbol of the unity of the one perfect dove (Cant. 6:8).18 In this case, the dove referred to the saints of the church.19 Christ’s gift of the Holy Spirit to the apostles (John 20:22-3) was a gift to the entire church, for the apostles represented the person of the church.20 As the rock named by Christ, Peter signified the unity of all of the faithful, not merely the apostolic college.21 Apostolic succession was necessary to maintain the unity of the whole church personified by Peter. ‘If, after all, we must consider the order of bishops in succession, how much more certainly and in a way truly conducive to salvation would we begin from Peter himself, who symbolized the whole Church and to whom the Lord said, Upon this rock I shall build my church, and the gates of hell will not conquer it’.22 In his humility, Peter represented the church built up by charity rather than puffed up with pride.23 Augustine affirmed the necessity of apostolic succession and recognized Peter’s authority among the apostles, yet for Augustine, Petrine authority proceeded from Peter’s role as a figure of the whole church united in charity. Papal Primacy According to Leo Leo’s formulation of papal primacy went beyond predecessors like Cyprian and Augustine in his elevation of Peter’s place among the apostles and in relation to the church as the body of Christ.24 This was evident in his Sermons, 17 Augustine drew upon Optatus’s view that the bishops and their clergy acted as agents of Christ; J.P. Burns et al., Christianity in Roman Africa (2014), 428, 609-10. 18 Augustine, Bapt. 3.16.21-17.22. 19 Augustine, Bapt. 3.17.22. 20 Augustine, Bapt. 3.18.23; CSEL 51, 214-5: ergo si personam gerebant ecclesiae et sic eis hoc dictum est, tamquam ipsi ecclesiae diceretur, pax ecclesiae dimittit peccata et ab ecclesiae pace alienatio tenet peccata non secundum arbitrium hominum, sed secundum arbitrium dei et orationes sanctorum spiritalium, qui omnia iudicant, ipsi autem a nemine diiudicantur. 21 Augustine, Bapt. 3.18.23. 22 Augustine, Ep. 53.2; translation follows Augustine, Letters 1-99, trans. Roland Teske, WSA II/1 (New York, 2001), 205. 23 Geoffrey Dunn, ‘Augustine’s Use of the Pauline Portrayal of Peter in Galatians 2’, Augustinian Studies 46 (2015), 37. 24 S. Wessel, Leo the Great and the Spiritual Rebuilding of a Universal Rome (2008), 285-321.

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especially those on the anniversary of his succession to the papacy and on the feasts of Saints Peter and Paul. Leo also made the case for Roman authority in his Letters to the patriarchs of Constantinople and Alexandria.25 On the one hand, Leo referred to himself as the ‘unworthy heir’ (indignus heres),26 a phrase that was borrowed from Roman legal terminology.27 In Roman law, the ‘unworthy heir’ was legally unable to claim an inheritance; on the other hand, the successor of Peter certainly inherited his spiritual power and authority.28 According to Leo, Peter was placed ‘in charge of the universal convocation of peoples as well as of every apostle and all the Fathers of the church,’ for ‘it is Peter who properly rules each one of those whom Christ also rules principally’.29 Despite the unworthiness of the one occupying the office, the heir of Peter was given the duty and charge of carrying on Peter’s work. The power to bind and loose lived on in his office, that is, in the Roman see.30 By divine decree, the bishop was a ruler of the church, not by the line of birth or the privilege of paternity. Thus, Leo understood episcopal authority according to a divine law, not a human one.31 Christ gave Peter as chief of the apostles principal charge of administering his gifts to all nations and to all peoples. In a Letter to the bishops of Vienne, Leo declared that the gifts of Christ the head ‘flow into the entire body from Peter himself, as it were from the head. Thus, a man who had dared to separate himself from the solidity of Peter would realize that he no longer shared in the divine mystery’.32 Christ invited Peter into ‘companionship’ with his ‘inseparable 25 George Demacopoulos argues that Leo employs the ‘Petrine tropos’ in his correspondence and in his Sermons in distinct ways, and ‘in those situations where Leo was more certain of the loyalty of his correspondent, there was little need for the rhetorical performance and self-aggrandizement that the Petrine discourse enabled. Leo’s correspondence with the imperial and ecclesiastical leaders of the East followed this same pattern but only to a certain degree’; G. Demacopoulos, The Invention of Peter (2013), 59. While Demacopoulos offers nuanced readings of Leo, he goes too far in his claim that Rome’s bishops invented Peter as a tool for ‘aggrandizement’, beginning with Leo, and he fails to acknowledge that the focus on Leo’s early Sermons may not provide a balanced picture of Leo’s entire body of works; see Thomas F.X. Noble, review of The Invention of Peter by G. Demacopoulos, The Journal of Religion 95 (2015), 258-9, and Bronwen Neil, review of The Invention of Peter by G. Demacopoulos, Theological Studies 75 (2014), 662-4. 26 Leo, Serm. 3.4. 27 Walter Ullman, ‘Leo the First and the Theme of Papal Primacy’, Journal of Theological Studies 11 (1960), 25-51. See the discussion by B. Neil, Leo the Great (2009), 39-40. 28 B. Neil, Leo the Great (2009), 39-40. 29 Leo, Serm. 4.2; translation follows St. Leo the Great, Sermons, trans. Jane Freeland and Agnes Conway, FC 93 (Washington, DC, 1996), 26. 30 Leo, Serm. 3.3. 31 Leo, Serm. 3.1. 32 Leo, Ep. 10.1; translation follows St. Leo the Great, Letters, trans. Edmund Hunt, FC 14 (Washington, DC, 1957), 37; PL 54, 633: sed huius muneris sacramentum ita dominus ad omnium apostolorum officium pertinere uoluit, ut in beatissimo petro apostolorum omnium summo, principaliter collocarit; et ab ipso quasi quodam capite, dona sua uelit in corpus omne manare, ut exsortem se mysterii intelligeret esse diuini, qui ausus fuisset a petri soliditate recedere.

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unity’ by naming him ‘rock’ (Matt. 16:18), so ‘that the building of the eternal temple, by a marvelous gift of God’s grace, might stand on the solidity of Peter. Christ strengthened His Church with this solidity so that the rashness of men might not attack it and the gates of hell might not prevail against it’.33 The unity of the rock was a sign of the power Peter possessed from Christ, for Peter ‘was called “blessed” by the Lord and derived from the word rock that solidity associated with his virtue and his name’.34 Christ remained the one mediator and head of the body,35 yet Peter was given a role in the administration and dispensation of grace from the head to the members of the body. Peter’s mediatory role in the building up of the church as the temple of God did not stand in opposition to or in competition with Christ, rather it was given as a participation in his mediation. This was also a share in the Holy Spirit, for it was through the Spirit that the church was sanctified. Let us rejoice in honor of the Holy Spirit through whom the whole Catholic Church is sanctified and every rational soul is filled. He is the inspiration of faith, the teacher of knowledge, the fountain of love, the sign of chastity, and the cause of all virtue. Let the spirits of all the faithful rejoice that in the whole world one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is extolled by the praise of all languages, and that this sign, which appeared as fire, perseveres in both its work and its gift.36

Peter’s confession of faith in Matthew 16 revealed his role as a sign of the church’s unity. By proclaiming Christ as the son of the living God, Peter confessed the faith of the whole church. Peter’s faith was the faith of the church, and his confession showed that the church was destined to benefit all nations by the dispensation of truth and the proclamation of the Gospel to all people.37 Citing Ephesians 4:5-6, Leo argued that the unity of the one true faith, to which nothing has been added or taken away, was preserved by apostolic succession under the leadership of the Roman see.38 In addition, the bishop of Rome was given the power to maintain the truth in the cause of peace.39 Just as Peter was given a special rank among the apostles, so too his successor had a distinction of power, for ‘the care of the universal Church was to converge in the one see of Peter, and nothing was ever to be at 33 Leo, Ep. 10.1; E. Hunt, FC 14 (1957), 37; PL 54, 633-4: hunc enim in consortium indiuiduae unitatis assumptum, id quod ipse erat, uoluit nominari, dicendo: tu es petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam; ut aeterni templi aedificatio, mirabili munere gratiae dei, in petri soliditate consisteret; hac ecclesiam suam firmitate corroborans, ut illam nec humana temeritas posset appetere, nec portae contra illam inferi praeualerent. 34 Leo, Ep. 28.5; E. Hunt, FC 14 (1957), 100; Ep. 33.1; Ep. 119.2; Serm. 3.2; Serm. 62.2; Serm. 83.1. 35 Leo, Ep. 28.3; Ep. 35.3; Ep. 108.2; Ep. 124.2-6; Serm. 21.2; Serm. 31.1; Serm. 63.2. 36 Leo, Serm. 75.5; J. Freeland and A. Conway, FC 93 (1996), 334. 37 Leo, Serm. 3.2-3; Serm. 51.1-2. 38 Leo, Serm. 24.6. 39 Leo, Ep. 43.1.

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odds with his leadership’.40 By divine precept, the bishop of Rome was tasked with watching over all of the churches, offering rebuke and correction when necessary.41 In the case of a dispute between bishops, the bishop of Rome had to be consulted.42 For the unity of the body of Christ ‘makes all healthy,’ that is, the unity of the bond of love, but the union of the whole body required harmony among the clergy. Due to Peter’s exalted status among the apostles, the pope possessed the authority to settle matters of dispute and to defend doctrine against heretical propositions. He exercised Peter’s power to administer grace to the body by presiding over ecclesiastical affairs and by determining the proper use of the gifts of the members. As the heir of Peter, the bishop of Rome was entrusted with the governance of the church in terms of doctrine, discipline, and jurisdiction. The Church’s Missionary Dimension Leo’s teaching on Petrine authority underscored the missionary dimension of the papacy. The church was the means of salvation for the entire world, with the pope as head by participation in Christ’s headship. The church must continue to grow and expand, just as the empire expanded under the leadership of Rome. God chose Rome as the seat and citadel of Peter43 in order to extend grace to the world. ‘But so that the effect of his ineffable grace would spread throughout the whole world, divine providence prepared the Roman empire, whose growth reached as far as those borders that would join it with all other peoples as neighbours on all sides’.44 Peter was appointed to the citadel of the empire so that the light of truth and the grace of Christ might spread to all nations. For when the twelve apostles-who had received from the Holy Spirit the ability to speak in every tongue, and were assigned to the various regions of the earth-had undertaken to spread the Gospel through the world, most blessed Peter, the prince of the apostolic order, was headed for the stronghold of Roman power. This happened so that the light of truth that was being revealed for the salvation of all peoples would pour forth more effectively from the very head throughout the whole body of the world. But what nationality was not present in this city then? What races ever ignored what Rome had learnt?45 40

Leo, Ep. 14.12; E. Hunt, FC 14 (1957), 66. Leo, Ep. 16.1. 42 Leo, Ep. 14.12. 43 Leo, Serm. 8.4. 44 Leo, Serm. 82B.2; translation follows B. Neil, Leo the Great (2009), 116. 45 Leo, Serm. 82B.3; B. Neil, Leo the Great (2009), 116; CChr.SL 138A, 511-2: nam cum duodecim apostoli, accepta per spiritum sanctum omnium locutione linguarum, inbuendum euangelio mundum, distributis sibi terrarum partibus, suscepissent, beatissimus petrus, princeps 41

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The bishop of Rome was the spiritual head of the world by sharing in Peter’s headship and in the power to mediate the grace of Christ.46 Anyone who denied the power, authority, and jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome was cut off from the body. And although the power to bind and loose was given to Peter before the others, still, in an even more special way, the pasturing of the sheep was entrusted to him. Anyone who thinks that the primacy should be denied to Peter cannot in any way lessen the Apostle’s dignity; inflated with the wind of his own pride, he buries himself in hell. 47

Ecclesial unity required humble recognition of the headship of Peter that was passed on to his successors. Those who persisted in open rebellion and schism were to be excommunicated from the church, for they no longer received the graces that came from Christ nor the sanctification of the Holy Spirit. This was based upon Leo’s understanding of Peter’s role and participation in the administration of Christ’s grace. Leo’s views would influence the thought of Pope Gelasius and others in later formulations of papal primacy in the West. Conclusion What to make of this? Leo’s teaching on papal primacy was formed on the basis of his incarnational Christology by a reconfiguration of Roman law and his interpretation of Peter’s elevated place among the apostles. According to Leo, Christ gave Peter a participatory role in the administration of grace to the church throughout the world. Papal primacy was an extension of Peter’s mission to distribute gifts to the members of Christ’s body in order to spread the Gospel to all nations. As such, the elevation of the see of Peter was at the service of the church’s missionary mandate. Further, Peter’s headship offered a visible sign of the church’s unity in Christ. The church was guaranteed unity because of apostolic succession under the leadership of the Roman see, which enjoyed the fullness of power given by Christ to Peter.48 Like Cyprian, Leo prioritized Peter’s place among the apostles and his mediatory role, yet for Cyprian, Peter’s humility functioned primarily as a sign of the unity of the apostolic college. Each bishop possessed the power to sanctify by participating in the unity signified by Peter and maintained by the episcopal college. apostolici ordinis, ad arcem romani destinatur imperii, ut lux ueritatis quae in omnium gentium reuelabatur salutem, efficacius se ab ipso capite per totum mundi corpus effunderet. cuius autem nationis homines in hac tunc urbe non essent? aut quae usquam gentes ignorarent quod roma didicisset? 46 Leo, Serm. 82B.1. 47 Leo, Ep. 10.2; E. Hunt, FC 14 (1957), 40. 48 Leo, Serm. 14.1; Serm. 10.2.

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According to Augustine, Peter’s humility and confession of faith indicated the entire church’s unity in charity, that is, the union of the invisible body of Christ as a communion of charity that could not be identified with an ecclesiastical office. Leo certainly accepted the distinction between the invisible communion of charity and the communion of the sacraments, however, his doctrine of papal primacy was predicated upon the mediation of grace from Christ the head to the members of the church through the mediation of Peter. The successor of Peter had to remain humble in the reception of power to dispense gifts and graces, yet as the heir, he could boldly claim to be ruler over the entire body. For Leo, this participation in the dispensation of grace was offered not in competition with Christ and the Holy Spirit, but precisely as a participation in the power of the true head and in the sanctifying work of the Spirit. In the end, Leo’s ecclesiology maintained the traditional four marks of the church as one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic, yet these marks were necessarily linked to the mediatory role enjoyed by Peter and his successors due to his partnership with Christ, for Peter reigns over all whom Christ rules first of all.

Body and Spirit’s Health within the Thought of Caesarius of Arles and Gregory of Tours* Juan Antonio JIMÉNEZ SÁNCHEZ, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

ABSTRACT During Late Antiquity, ill people from the humblest social classes went to healers who applied natural remedies based on popular knowledge, since it was sometimes difficult to go to professional doctors. However, ecclesiastical authorities always condemned these treatments because they considered them to be related to magic, whose practice was forbidden by the Church. In this article, we study the writings of two authors in Late Antique Gaul regarding this topic: Caesarius of Arles (ca. 470-542) and Gregory of Tours (538-594). We analyze their common religious convictions, such as the condemnation of every kind of popular healing practice or the idea that to deposit the faith of healing in it meant losing the salvation of the soul; health could only be recovered through prayer. And above all we address the differences in the discourse of these two authors, which show the evolution of ecclesiastical thought during the sixth century. Thus, whereas Caesarius believed in the effectiveness of such remedies (although he thought that the demon was after such cures), Gregory considered that popular remedies did not grant the cure in any case; moreover, for Caesarius the prayer for the health of the body had to be directly addressed to God, while Gregory believed that it should be addressed to saints inasmuch as they were divine intermediaries, which evidences the rise of the cult of the saints and the popularity of their miracles.

During Late Antiquity, and as it had happened in previous times, ill people from the humblest social classes went to healers who applied natural remedies based on popular knowledge, since it was sometimes difficult to go to professional doctors, either because of geographical distance or due to economic problems. However, ecclesiastical authorities always condemned these treatments because they considered them to be related to magic, whose practice was forbidden by the Church. In this article, we study the writings of two authors in Late Antique Gaul regarding this topic: Caesarius,1 bishop of Arles between * This study is part of research developed within the GRAT (Grup de Recerques en Antiguitat Tardana) of the Universitat de Barcelona, and has been carried out with the help of the Research Projects HAR2016-74981-P and 2017SGR-211. I wish to thank Conchi Magariño Garlito for her help and wise advice. 1 See PCBE IV/1, 386-410, Caesarius 1.

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502 and 542, and Gregory,2 bishop of Tours between 573 and 594. We will analyse their common religious convictions, such as the condemnation of every kind of popular healing practice or the idea that to deposit the faith of healing in it meant losing the salvation of the soul; in fact, health could only be recovered through prayer. And above all, we will address the differences in the discourse of these two authors, which show the evolution of ecclesiastical thought during the sixth century. We are going to begin with the analysis of the sermons of Caesarius of Arles. When Caesarius was appointed bishop of Arles in 502, this territory had been deeply romanized for a long time; besides, Christianity had taken root in it for many years. However, the degree of Christianization was not as profound as the new bishop would have liked. In several of his sermons, Caesarius alluded to many of the pagan practices which were still well present among parishioners in his time. And mixed with these criticisms related to the idolatrous survivals are his condemnations of the activity of healers, whom he considered servants of the devil. Indeed, the bishop of Arles also referred in many of his sermons to soothsayers and healers, giving them a wide variety of names: harioli, haruspices, praecantatores, caragii, or sortilegi. As we can see, Caesarius used the same names to refer to both soothsayers and healers, something that we will also observe in Gregory of Tours, probably because the same individual could indifferently carry out both functions. At the beginning of sermon 50, Caesarius admitted that the health of the body was a good thing, but that the health of the heart was much better. Therefore, it was permissible for Christians to pray for bodily health, but they should pray much more for the health of their souls. According to the bishop of Arles, if people only cared about the health of their body, but not about the health of their soul, they were not at all different from a wild animal. And thus, in this sermon Caesarius regretted it and exclaimed: ‘What is deplorable is that there are some who seek soothsayers in every kind on infirmity. They consult seers and divines, summon enchanters, and hang diabolical phylacteries and magic letters on themselves’.3 Healers resorted to phylacteries, enchantments and amulets (sometimes made of amber), and even to natural remedies, such as herbs and potions.4 Those who received such treatments seriously believed in their effectiveness. Caesarius 2

See PCBE IV/1, 915-54, Georgius Florentius Gregorius 3. Caesarius Arel., Serm. 50, 1, ed. Germain Morin, CChr.SL 103, 225: sed, quod dolendum est, sunt aliqui, qui in qualibet infirmitate sortilegos quaerunt, aruspices et diuinos interrogant, praecantatores adhibent, fylacteria sibi diabolica et caracteres adpendunt (English text translated by Mary Magdeleine Mueller, St. Caesarius. Sermons, vol. I: Sermons 1-80, The Fathers of the Church 31 [Washington DC, 1956], 254). 4 Caesarius Arel., Serm. 13, 5; 14, 4, ed. G. Morin, CChr.SL 103, 68 and 71-2. See William E. Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles. The Making of a Christian Community in Late Antique Gaul, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought. Fourth Series 22 (Cambridge, 1994), 221. 3

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himself was no exception, for he also held the view that these diabolical treatments could be effective, although he warned his parishioners that God permitted such healings to the devil in order to prove the faith of Christian people. Those who were cured by these sacrilegious medicines recognized their value and, therefore, believed more easily in Satan, who could kill their souls after having healed their bodies.5 Caesarius remembered one of the most desperate cases, that of the mothers who saw their children fell ill and who did not hesitate to look for any remedy in order to achieve their cure. Thus, he said in sermon number 52: Mothers in grief and terror hasten when their sons are troubled with various trials or infirmities. What is worse, they do not entreat the Church’s remedy (…). They act in the opposite manner, so that while they seek bodily health they effect the death of souls. (…) However, they say to themselves: ‘Let us consult that soothsayer, seer, oracle, or witch. Let us sacrifice a garment of the sick person, a girdle that can be seen and measured. Let us offer some magic letters, let us hang some charms on his neck’.6

However, Caesarius warned them that by pretending the health of the body, they caused the death of their children’s souls. Phylacteries stand out among the amulets used to restore health. These objects were worn close to the body and contained magical prayers and, sometimes, even passages from the Holy Scriptures. It was surely the insistence of the ecclesiastical authorities on the power of the word of God compared to the ineffectiveness of pagan magic what led some faithful to seek their physical salvation in these Christian-type amulets made with verses from the Bible.7 And, undoubtedly, many clergymen saw their elaboration and distribution as part of their pastoral work, since Caesarius warned his listeners with the following words: Often enough they receive charms even from priests and religious, who, however, are not really religious or clerics but the Devil’s helpers. See, brethren, how I plead with 5 Caesarius Arel., Serm. 50, 1; 54, 3, ed. G. Morin, CChr.SL 103, 224-5 and 237-8. See W.E. Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles (1994), 221. 6 Caesarius Arel., Serm. 52, 5, ed. G. Morin, CChr.SL 103, 232: quando aliquarum mulierum filii diuersis temptationibus aut infirmitatibus fatigantur, lugentes et adtonitae currunt matres; et quod peius est, non de ecclesiae medicina (…) exposcunt (…). Econtrario faciunt, et dum salutem requirunt corporum, mortem inueniunt animarum. (…) Sed dicunt sibi: Illum ariolum uel diuinum, illum sortilegum, illam erbariam consulamus; uestimentum infirmi sacrificemus, cingulum qui inspici uel mensurari debeat; offeramus aliquos caracteres, aliquas praecantationes adpendamus ad collum (English text translated by M.M. Mueller, St. Caesarius. Sermons [1956], 262). See W.E. Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles (1994), 223. 7 Regarding these Christian phylacteries, see Oronzo Giordano, Religiosidad popular en la alta Edad Media (Madrid, 19952), 110-7 (trad. Pilar García Moutón and Valentín García Yebra, Religiosità popolare nell’Alto Medioevo [Bari, 1979]); Ramsay MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries (New Haven, London, 1997), 140-1; Don C. Skemer, Binding Words. Textual Amulets in the Middle Ages (University Park, PA, 2006), 37-44.

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you not to consent to accept these wicked objects, even if they are offered by clerics. There is no remedy of Christ in them, but the poison of the Devil which will not cure your body but will kill your poor soul with the sword of infidelity.8

Consequently, not even if a cleric was the author of the phylactery and told the ill person that this phylactery contained holy things, must the patient have faith in it and accept that remedy, although he believed it could be effective.9 So, what should the Christian do in case of falling ill? Caesarius recommended going to church, receiving the body and blood of Christ, and being anointed by the priests with consecrated oil. If the ill person did all these things and asked priests and deacons to pray in his name to Christ, he would receive a double good: ‘He will merit to receive both bodily health and the remission of his sins’;10 and, without any kind of doubt, for Caesarius the second good was by far more important than the first one. For Caesarius it was acceptable, even, to go in search of what he called ‘the simple skill of doctors’.11 However, as William E. Klingshirn pointed out, medical services were expensive, and, moreover, doctors lived in the cities, so that they were an inaccessible resource for the most humble strata 8 Caesarius Arel., Serm. 50, 1, ed. G. Morin, CChr.SL 103, 225: et aliquotiens ligaturas ipsas a clericis ac religiosis accipiunt; sed illi non sunt religiosi uel clerici, sed adiutores diaboli. Videte, fratres, quia contestor uos, ut ista mala, etiam si a clericis offerantur, non adquiescatis accipere: quia non est in illis remedium Christi, sed uenenum diaboli, unde nec corpus sanatur, et infelix anima infidelitatis gladio iugulatur (English text translated by M.M. Mueller, St. Caesarius. Sermons [1956], 254). See Juan Antonio Jiménez and Pere Maymó, ‘La magia en la Galia merovingia’, ETF(hist) 30 (2017), 193-4. 9 In the seventh century, Eligius of Noyon also asked his parishioners – in a sermon included in the biography written by Audoin of Rouen – not to use phylacteries, even if they were given to them by clerics; Audoenus, Vit. Elig., II, 16, ed. Bruno Krusch, MGH srm 4, 706. See Valerie I.J. Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (Oxford, 1991), 61-2. The use of phylacteries and ligatures is also condemned in the Indiculus superstitionum et paganiarum (Indic. superst. et pagan. 10, ed. Alfred Boretius, MGH leg. 2/1, 223). See J.A. Jiménez and P. Maymó, ‘La magia’ (2017), 194. 10 Caesarius Arel., Serm. 13, 3, ed. G. Morin, CChr.SL 103, 66: qui in infirmitate ad ecclesiam currit, et corporis sanitatem recipere, et peccatorum indulgentiam merebitur obtinere (English text translated by M.M. Mueller, St. Caesarius. Sermons [1956], 77); 19, 5, ed. G. Morin, CChr.SL 103, 90: praterea, quotiens aliqua infirmitas cuicumque superuenerit, ad ecclesiam recurrat, et corpus et sanguinem Christi accipiat, et oleo benedicto a presbyteris inunguatur, eosque presbyteros et diaconos petant ut in Christi nomine orent super eos: quod si fecerint, non solum sanitatem corporis, sed etiam indulgentiam accipient peccatorum (‘Further, as often as some infirmity comes upon a man, he should hurry back to the church. Let him receive the Body and Blood of Christ, be anointed by the presbyters with consecrated oil, and ask these presbyters and deacons to pray over him in Christ’s name. If he does this, he will receive not only bodily health, but also the forgiveness of his sins’; English text translated by M.M. Mueller, St. Caesarius. Sermons [1956], 101). 11 Caesarius Arel., Serm., 52, 5, ed. G. Morin, CChr.SL 103, 232: et atque utinam ipsam sanitatem uel de simplici medicorum arte conquirerent (English text translated by M.M. Mueller, St. Caesarius. Sermons [1956], 262). See W.E. Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles (1994), 223-4.

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of the rural population. For an ill peasant, healers were much closer and more economical when it came to paying for their services, since the elements they used were generally local and not too expensive. Surely, they were the first option to resort to, and only when this option failed, did they appeal to the church.12 For his part, Gregory of Tours also criticized with harshness that people resorted to magic in order to achieve healing. Here again we meet the healers qualified as harioli – id est, soothsayers –; however, we see that they were actually individuals who simply applied traditional remedies based on natural elements, such as ligatures made with herbs.13 Gregory denied any kind of efficacy to these remedies, because for him the healing could only come from God, who acted through the relics of his saints. In this sense, according to Gregory, the wax, the oil, and, mainly, the dust from Martin’s tomb in the Basilica of Tours were very effective in curing any type of disease, especially dysentery.14 It is normal for Martin’s relics to have that fame of healing power (uirtus), as he himself, while he was alive, enjoyed a great reputation as a thaumaturgist.15 Thus, after his death, Martin’s relics began to act also with the same healing power, in identical way as the relics of martyrs.16 An example of these miracles is the next one: a man named Charivald,17 afflicted with paralysis, was taken to the basilica of Martin; there he remained for a year fasting and praying until he regained the mobility of the body. The bishop of Tours explains this episode to warn his readers about the deceptions of the alleged cures by ‘non-Christian’ means and thus he says: ‘And therefore I urge that no one be tempted by soothsayers, because they will never benefit ill people. A bit 12

W.E. Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles (1994), 222-3. V.I.J. Flint, The Rise of Magic (1991), 247-8; Allen E. Jones, Social Mobility in Late Antique Gaul. Strategies and Opportunities for the Non-Elite (Cambridge, 2009), 308-9. See also Charles Lelong, La vie quotidienne en Gaule à l’époque mérovingienne (Paris, 1963), 181-2. 14 Gregorius Tur., De uirt. S. Mart. II 1; 2; 51; 52; III 12; 18; 52; 59; 60; IV 9; 25; 28; 33; 37; 43; 47, ed. Bruno Krusch, MGH srm 1/2, 609-10, 626-7, 635, 637, 646-7, 651-2, 655-6, and 658-61. See V.I.J. Flint, The Rise of Magic (1991), 306 and 308-9; A.E. Jones, Social Mobility (2009), 320-1. See also Peter Brown, Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, Los Angeles, 1982), 222-50. 15 Aline Rousselle, Croire et guérir. La foi en Gaule dans l’Antiquité tardive (Paris, 1990), 109-32. 16 A. Rousselle, Croire et guérir (1990), 164-5. The fame of the healing power associated to the relics and Martin’s tomb can go back to the fifth century. Indeed, in the third quarter of this century, Paulinus of Perigueux described the great number of pilgrims who came to the sepulchre of the saint in order to regain their lost health (Paulinus Petr., De uit. Mart. V 866-8, ed. Michael Petschenig, CSEL 16, 138). Likewise, he narrated various examples of healings of people who had gone to this tomb (Paulinus Petr., De uit. Mart. VI 34-70 and 152-217, ed. M. Petschenig, CSEL 16, 140-1 and 144-7), and the healing power of the oil placed beside the grave and mixed with the dust of the marble (Paulinus Petr., De uit. Mart. VI 291-319, ed. M. Petschenig, CSEL 16, 150-1). See A. Rousselle, Croire et guérir (1990), 118-9. 17 See PCBE IV/1, 463, Chariualdus. 13

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of dust from the church [of Martin] is more powerful than those men with their foolish medicines’.18 These words prove that Gregory’s main objective was to discredit the harioli, because these, despite the pretensions of the prelate of Tours, enjoyed fame and influence among the society of their time. As we have seen in the case of Caesarius of Arles, healers were the first option that people resorted to when there was an ill person at home, especially in rural areas, where it was easy and quick to find them; as Allen E. Jones pointed out, doctors and magicians would compete for the same clients. There was, nevertheless, a difference, which we have already mentioned: doctors moved especially in urban environments and their patients belonged mainly to the most affluent classes of society; on the contrary, healers were part of more humble social strata and acted mainly in rural environments; so, their clients came mostly from servants and peasants.19 Gregory always shows harioli failing in their attempts to cure. However, the very same stories he tells us prove that the recourse to these individuals was something so common that even the servants of the clergy went to healers when they fell ill. In order to discredit harioli, Gregory explains a wide amount of anecdotes related to patients who resorted to healers without obtaining any results and who were only saved when they placed their trust in Martin’s relics. Let us see some examples. Gregory relates that a certain Aquilinus20 went mad because of the devil; then, as it was usual among rustic people (Gregory adds), his relatives brought him ligatures and potions that had been given to them by sorcerers and soothsayers. Everything was useless, so that his relatives went with him to the basilica of Martin, where, after praying for a while to the saint, Aquilinus was able to regain his reason.21 Gregory also explains how one day the wife of one of his servants, called Serenatus,22 fell unconscious when returning from work. Her relatives took her to some harioli, who said that she was a victim of the ‘midday demon’, and they gave her bandages of herbs and they uttered spells. As nothing of this worked, the woman’s son turned to Gregory’s niece; she visited the ill woman, took off the bandages and healed her after pouring oil from the basilica into her mouth and burning the wax from Martin’s grave next to her.23

18 Gregorius Tur., De uirt. S. Mart. I 27, ed. B. Krusch, MGH srm 1/2, 601: et ideo monemus, ut nullus sollicitetur ab hariolis, quia nil proderunt umquam infirmis. Plus enim ualet parumper de puluere basilicae, quam illi cum medicamentis insaniae (English text translated by Raymond Van Dam, Saints and their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul [Princeton, 1993], 220). 19 A.E. Jones, Social Mobility (2009), 309-10. 20 See PCBE IV/1, 175, Aquilinus 3. 21 Gregorius Tur., De uirt. S. Mart. I 26, ed. B. Krusch, MGH srm 1/2, 601. 22 See PCBE IV/2, 1732, Serenatus. 23 Gregorius Tur, De uirt. S. Mart. IV 36, ed. B. Krusch, MGH srm 1/2, 658-9. See J.A. Jiménez and P. Maymó, ‘La magia’ (2017), 194-6.

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In these cases, the healing was achieved thanks to the fact that the patients’ relatives reconsidered their behaviour at the last minute and resorted to the help of the saint.24 However, if they persisted in their efforts and did not trust the saint, the result was death. In this way, Gregory explains that another of his servants fell victim to the bubonic plague; then his companions took him to a hariolus, but he, after exercising his arts, was unable to cure the ill servant and, in the end, the young man died of the disease.25 With these stories, Gregory aims to show that healers were not only unable to heal people, but were even harmful to health, to the extent that, because of them, the patient’s state of health could be aggravated to the point of death. This idea constitutes an important difference with the speech of Caesarius, given that the bishop of Arles admitted that healers were capable of healing a person with the help of the devil; as we have seen, for him it was a deceptive and harmful recovery, since, on the other hand, it damaged the soul.26 At this point, it is convenient to take stock of everything we have seen so far. At the beginning of the sixth century, Caesarius of Arles placed the emphasis above all on prayer and direct trust in God, without intermediaries, to achieve the healing of the body. At the end of that same century, Gregory of Tours continued to propose to his parishioners that they trusted in God, though not directly, but through intermediaries who were saints and martyrs. As Giselle de Nie has rightly pointed out, this implies a profound change in the conception of how the healing of the body should be carried out.27 Caesarius insists on the direct individual relationship with God and on the use of the Scriptures for the inner transformation of oneself; his piety is monastic, contemplative and based on texts. Gregory of Tours, for his part, considers that God would no longer be directly accessible, but would instead be accessible through the intercession of 24 Similar anecdotes can be read in hagiographic stories from the Merovingian era. Such is the case of Ruricius, a local nobleman who fell seriously ill; since doctors failed to cure him, his fideles led him to malefici and praecantatores, hoping they would heal him; and this attempt at healing cost him a good part of his fortune. As the healers did not succeed, Ruricius was finally taken to the ascetic Junianus, who restored his health through his prayers (Vit. Iun. conf. Comm. 6, ed. Bruno Krusch, MGH srm 3, 378); see PCBE IV/2, 1084-5, Iunianus; ibid. 1650-1, Ruricius 2. A similar story is that of Ursio, who broke his arm while hunting. Neither doctors nor incantatores managed to heal him; finally, he recovered his arm thanks to the oil of the lamps of Saint Praeiectus’ grave, which worked the miracle. In gratitude, Ursio delivered a ten-pound silver vessel to decorate the aforementioned grave (Pass. Praeiect. episc. and mart. Aru. 38, ed. Bruno Krusch, MGH srm 5, 247). See V.I.J. Flint, The Rise of Magic (1991), 61; J.A. Jiménez and P. Maymó, ‘La magia’ (2017), 196-7. 25 Gregorius Tur., De uirt. S. Iul. 46a, ed. B. Krusch, MGH srm 1/2, 582. See Yitzhak Hen, Culture and Religion in Merovingian Gaul, A.D. 481-751, Cultures, Beliefs and Traditions 1 (Leiden, New York, Köln, 1995), 173. 26 A.E. Jones, Social Mobility (2009), 315 and 317-8. 27 Giselle de Nie, ‘Caesarius of Arles and Gregory of Tours. Two Sixth-Century Gallic Bishops and “Christian Magic”’, in Doris Edel (ed.), Cultural Identity and Cultural Integration. Ireland and Europe in the Early Middle Ages (Dublin, 1995), 170-96.

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a saint, who would become the protector of the individual; consequently, it would no longer be the reading of a text, but the (direct or indirect) contact of an element of the tomb of the saint which would become a factor of salvation. In the end, the problem is that the ecclesiastical authorities wanted to promote the cult of the saints of their local churches, so they hoped to monopolize this type of healing power. And in this area they had to compete with harioli for the control of the supernatural element and for offering an answer to both human needs and human anguish. What was at stake was the prestige, the authority over the community and the control of donations from grateful people.28 There was a change in the ideology of the clergy throughout the sixth century. On the one hand, we have just seen that the cult of saints is increasingly being promoted. On the other hand, we may be witnessing the failure of the idea of Caesarius (based on trust in direct prayer to God) to achieve the healing of the body; a change of paradigms is taking place, an authentic reformulation in which the cult of the saints takes on more and more prominence.29 For Caesarius, all types of mediation were something diabolical and sinful. For Gregory, on the contrary, it was normal to look for physical remedies related to the relics of the saints. What was happening is that the Church simply had to adapt herself to the mentality of the people. Ordinary people needed something tangible to cling to when they fell ill. Harioli provided it in the form of ligatures and phylacteries, a use that Caesarius did not cease to condemn even when they were being made by priests. Conscious at last of the impossibility to end such practices, the Church decided to adopt them and adapt them to her value system; that is, the Church decided to Christianize them. This was, in short, one more step towards the paganization of Christianity, a paganization that was what allowed it to emerge triumphant. In this case, Gregory’s criticism of the harioli persisted, but now he was able to offer his parishioners some weapons to fight against them in their same terrain: facing the ligatures and the phylacteries, the power of the saints was now materialized, for example, in the dust of Martin of Tours’ tomb or in the wax and oil of his basilica of Tours. Therefore, it was necessary to change almost everything so everything could stay the same.

28 V.I.J. Flint, The Rise of Magic (1991), 60-1 and 69-70; A.E. Jones, Social Mobility (2009), 284 and 314-6. 29 According to Peter Brown, reuerentia had a towering importance in this process. In his words: ‘By reuerentia sixth-century Latin Christians meant a reverential attention to the saints. (…) It assumed that the saints were still active and present on earth, and that good and bad fortune depended on the manner in which they were treated by their worshippers. (…) The Christian saints dwelt in heaven, in the presence of God. But, when approached with reuerentia by those who prayed to them on earth, the saints were expected to prevail on God to touch the mundus at every level. Their interventions met the daily needs of believers’; see Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom. Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000, The Making of Europe (Oxford, 20133), 154-5. See also Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints. Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity, The Haskell Lectures on History of Religions, New Series 2 (Chicago, 1981), 119-20.

The Female Monastery of Saint Caesarius of Arles: His Hidden Collaborators in the Christianization of Arles and Beyond Sr Maria DEL FIAT MIOLA, The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, USA

ABSTRACT St Caesarius, Bishop of Arles, has often been recognized as a powerful evangelizer of Arles and the surrounding countryside, through his promotion of the monastic life and calling the faithful laity to an uncompromising moral standard and elevated piety. Yet few have understood the active role the cloistered women played in much of the pastoral work of the Arlesian bishop. Two of Caesarius’ greatest achievements, the founding of the female Monastery of St John in Arles with its Rule and the widespread preaching campaign, should be considered as the joint project of Caesarius and the first two abbesses, Caesaria the Elder and Caesaria the Younger, with their congregations. The inhabitants of the monastery were not guinea pigs on which Caesarius tested his monastic innovations, particularly strict enclosure, but rather co-authors of the final redaction of the Rule and active participants in shaping the monastic life inside. Though strictly cloistered, they also collaborated in a material way to the Christianization of the area: through their scribal labor, the sisters probably provided the local church with manuscripts of the Sacred Scriptures, and Caesarius with copies of his sermons which he gave to so many of his fellow clerics to read far beyond Arles.

The Vita of Saint Caesarius, Bishop of Arles from 502-542, represents him as an advocate and innovator of monastic life, relentless preacher, outspoken activist against superstition, champion of the poor, ransomer of captives, and intrepid missionary of Christian ethics. Interpretation of Caesarius’ works, principally a corpus of sermons and two monastic rules, has reinforced this depiction. While recent scholars such as Klingshirn, Diem, and Leyser have re-evaluated Caesarius’ pastoral efficacy in Arles with a more critical eye, they attribute his work and his success, or lack thereof, to himself alone; Caesarius has remained an entirely isolated figure.1 Here I argue that Caesarius’ pastoral plan in Arles Thanks to William Klingshirn, Robert Miola, Lucy Grig, and Catherine Gines Taylor for their helpful comments and suggestions. Translations are my own unless otherwise noted. 1 See William Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles: The Making of a Christian Community in Late Antique Gaul (Cambridge, 1994); Albrecht Diem, ‘“… Ut si professus fuerit se omnia impleturum, tunc excipiatur”: Observations on the Rules for Monks and Nuns of Caesarius and Aurelianus of

Studia Patristica CXXX, 87-95. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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heavily depended on others, namely, the silent and hidden women behind a cloister wall, the nuns whom some have even called ‘irrelevant’.2 Caesarius achieved two of his most important and lasting contributions – the foundation of the female monastery and his body of sermons – through the spiritual and material support of his sister and niece, the first two abbesses of the female monastery St John of Arles, and their congregations. The Monastery of St John, founded in 512 in the southeastern corner of the city of Arles under the episcopate of Caesarius, remained an active monastery for over 1250 years until its violent suppression during the French Revolution. It enjoyed both popularity and prestige from its beginnings: at the time of Caesarius’ death in 542 the members of the monastery numbered two hundred.3 The monastery can claim two historical ‘firsts’. The Rule that governed the life of the sisters inside, the Regula Virginum, was the first monastic rule explicitly written for women. Second, inside this Monastery of St John, the sisters observed a legislated strict cloister for the first time: the Rule states unequivocally that the nuns who entered the Monastery of St John could not leave it until their death.4 For these and other innovations, St John’s Monastery has an important but underappreciated role in the creation and development of Western monasticism. The Regula itself has rightly been called the ‘most influential programmatic monastic text’ aside from the Benedictine Rule,5 while the Arles’, in Victoria Zimmerl-Panagl, Lukas J. Dorbauer and Clemens Weidmann (eds), Edition und Erforschung lateinischer patristischer Texte. 150 Jahre CSEL. Festschrift Für Kurt Smolak zum 70. Geburtstag (Berlin, 2014), 191-224; Albrecht Diem, ‘Inventing the Holy Rule: Some Observations on the History of Monastic Normative Observance in the Early Medieval West’, in Hendrik Dey and Elizabeth Fentress (eds), Western Monasticism Ante Litteram: The Spaces of Monastic Observance in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Turnhout, 2011), 53-84; Conrad Leyser, Authority and Asceticism from Augustine to Gregory the Great (Oxford, 2000), 81-100. 2 ‘The text of the Rule itself Caesarius strove to make a vessel of the kind of immaculate rhetorical purity he is describing … In this sense, the nuns become irrelevant: their bodies, enclosed and defined, are a figure for the body of the text, which is the real object of Caesarius’ ascetic attention’, C. Leyser, Authority and Asceticism (2000), 98. 3 Alloquitur igitur quasi more et dulcedine sua ultra ducentarum puellarum uenerabilem Casariam matrem, Vita Caesarii, II.47; Vie de Césaire d’Arles, ed. Germain Morin and Marie-José Delage, SC 536 (Paris, 2010). For an English translation, see William Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles: Life, Testament, Letters, Translated Texts for Historians 19 (Liverpool, 1994). This number is most likely accurate; see Edoardo Bona, Vita Caesarii episcopi Arelatensis, testo critico, introduzione, traduzione e commento (Amsterdam, 2002), 270. 4 Si qua relictis parentibus suis saeculo renuntiare et sanctum ouile uoluerit introire, ut spiritualium luporum fauces deo adiuuante possit euadere, usque ad mortem suam de monasterio non egrediatur, Regula Virginum 2, in Œuvres pour les moniales, ed. Adalbert de Vogüé and Joël Courreau, SC 345 (Paris, 1988). See another formulation of this in the Recapitulation of the Rule, Reg.Virg. 50. 5 Albrecht Diem, ‘The Gender of the Religious: Wo/Men and the Invention of Monasticism’, in Judith M. Bennett and Ruth Marzo-Karras (eds), The Oxford Companion on Women and Gender in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2013), 432-46, 439.

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strict enclosure lived within became a requisite feature of female monastic life in the Middle Ages until our day.6 Too often scholars have considered the radical cloister of St John’s Monastery and the Regula that legislated it as the brainchild of Caesarius alone; yet the earliest documents about the monastery tell a different story.7 The sisters inside not only helped to create the monastery, but they also maintained and preserved it for posterity.8 The two first abbesses, both named Caesaria and both close relatives of Caesarius, particularly shaped the monastic life and legacy. The final redaction of the Rule, written in several stages over the course of twenty-two years,9 states that the lived experience of the sisters contributed to the final result: the sisters ‘investigated and tried’ stages of it, and their assistance and ‘diligent experimentation’ ‘tempered’ the final version (pertractantes enim et probantes … diligenti experimento … temperata est regula ipsa).10 Indeed, the many additions and alterations made during those years reflect a maturing development of the sisters’ own experience of enclosure. These changes include further specifications for candidates entering the monastery, the invention of the salutatorium (locutory) for visits, novices, and chastised sisters, a detailed and complete order of liturgical life and periods of fasting, the determination of rules for election of superiors, and the outline of the practical and spiritual rites at the death of a sister.11 Even if the Rule had not explicitly acknowledged the sisters’ role and participation, the internal logic of the text points to the same conclusion. The Regula physically excludes Caesarius from all parts of life in the female monastery, except for occasional liturgical 6 For an excellent history of enclosure, see Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg, ‘Strict Active Enclosure and Its Effects on the Female Monastic Experience (ca. 500-1100)’, in John A. Nichols and Lillian T. Shank (eds), Medieval Religious Women I: Distant Echoes (Kalamazoo, 1984), 51-86. See also Elizabeth M. Makowski, Canon Law and Cloistered women: Periculoso and Its Commentators, 1298-1545 (Washington, DC, 1997). 7 For more on the sisters’ agency in shaping the Regula Virginum and the foundation, see Maria del Fiat Miola, ‘The Family Monastery’, in Césaire d’Arles et les cinq continents, vol. 1 (Venelles, 2017), 192-7. See also Lindsay Rudge, ‘Texts and Contexts: Women’s Dedicated Life from Caesarius to Benedict’ (University of St. Andrews, 2006), especially 47-71; Lindsay Rudge, ‘Dedicated Women and Dedicated Spaces: Caesarius of Arles and the Foundation of St. John’, in Hendrik W. Dey and Elizabeth Fentress (eds), Western Monasticism Ante Litteram: The Spaces of Monastic Observance in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Turnhout, 2011), 99-116. 8 See William Klingshirn, ‘Caesarius’ Monastery for Women in Arles and the Composition and Function of the Vita Caesarii’, RBen 100 (1990), 441-81. 9 For the stages of composition and sources, see A. de Vogüé and J. Courreau, Œuvres pour les moniales (1988), 45-67. 10 Cum deo propitio in exordio institutionis monasterii uobis regulam fecerimus, multis tamen postea uicibus ibi aliquid addidimus uel minuimus: pertractantes enim et probantes quid inplere possitis, hoc nunc definiuimus, quod et rationi et possibilitati et sanctitati conveniebat. Quantum enim diligenti experimento capere potuimus, ita deo inspirante temperata est regula ipsa, ut eam cum dei adiutorio ad integrum custodire possitis, Reg.Virg. 48. 11 See Reg.Virg. 38, 43, 58, 61, 65, 66-9, 70, 71.

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functions, and so only the sisters’ own trials and errors could have shaped and re-shaped this new form of life.12 Another passage in the Regula unambiguously identifies the sisters as founders and co-creators of monastic life: ‘you should hold in gratitude my humble self and your holy mothers, that is, the founders of the monastery and authors of the Rule’.13 The term ‘holy mothers’, doubtless identifies Caesaria the Elder and Caesaria the Younger, the two mother superiors who reigned during the period of the Rule’s composition; the first was the sister of Caesarius and the second, probably the niece.14 The Recapitulation, the latest part of the document and full fruit of the collaboration between Caesarius and the nuns, significantly abounds with verbs of authorship and authority in the plural: ‘the things which we established’, ‘we wished to make this little recapitulation’, ‘we want this to be observed’ ‘as we established in this rule’.15 Reading the Rule through the lens of co-authorship, we should interpret the frequent use of the first person plural not as the pluralis maiestatis, the lone and solemn voice of the bishop, but as a literal plural, the shared voice of Caesarius and the Caesarias in fruitful collaboration.16 Thus the cloistered sisters of St John’s Monastery were not passive victims of a tyrannical bishop’s ascetic design; they were quite far from being ‘guinea pigs’ for Caesarius’ monastic experiment, as Diem ungraciously calls them.17 Such an opinion, unfortunately widespread in scholarship, fails to explain adequately the phenomenon of the many women who willingly joined and stayed in the cloister for their whole lives. It also fails to recognize the pastoral partnership between the bishop and sisters that brought forth an abundant harvest in sixth-century Arles. Though some sisters could have been children oblates offered by their families, as the Rule permitted,18 many members of the 12 See Reg.Virg. 36. The Regula explicitly forbids ‘the bishop of this city’, i.e. Caesarius, from sharing meals with the sisters (Reg.Virg. 39). In an early letter to his sister Caesaria, Caesarius states that he visited his sister less frequently than he would have liked, and that this arrangement was per the request of the sister rather than the bishop: Et quia secundum sanctum uotum uestrum frequentius uos uisitare non ualeo, Letter Vereor 1, in A. de Vogüé and J. Courreau, Œuvres pour les moniales (1988), 274-337. 13 Obtestor et deprecor, ut humilitati meae uel sanctarum matrum uestrarum, id est institutoribus monasterii et regulae conditoribus, hanc in perpetuum gratiam referatis, Reg.Virg. 72. 14 For the abbess as mother (mater), see Reg.Virg. tit.16, tit.25, 14, 18, 21, 24, 25, 27, 32, 35, 36, 42, 44, 67, 72. 15 Ea quae constituimus; istam paruulam recapitulationem … fieri uoluimus. Reg.Virg. 49; hoc … uolumus obseruari, Reg.Virg. 50; sicut in ipsa regula constituimus, Reg.Virg. 51. 16 For plural verbs and pronouns in the first part of the document, see Reg.Virg. 1, 2, 6, 36; for plural verbs and pronouns in the Recapitulation, see Reg.Virg. 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 55, 56, 63, 65, 66, 69, 71. 17 Albrecht Diem, ‘L’espace, la grâce et la discipline dans les règles monastiques du haut Moyen Âge’, in Isabelle Heullant-Donat et al. (eds), Enfermements II, Règles et dérèglements en milieu clos (IVe-XIXe siècle) (Paris, 2015), 218; see too C. Leyser, Authority and Asceticism (2000), 90-9. 18 Reg.Virg. 7; for the classic study of child oblation, see Mayke de Jong, In Samuel’s Image: Child Oblation in the Early Medieval West (Leiden, 1996).

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community would have been adult women and willing agents in the monastic experiment. The Rule itself places as the condition of admission to monastic profession a ‘ready and free will’ to assent to the Rule and the monastery’s way of life.19 Caesaria the Younger’s insightful writings, her letter and short Dicta, show a mature assimilation of the spirit of the Rule and the enclosure, and reflect how whole-heartedly and creatively she assumed the monastic commitment.20 Thus if there is originality, innovation, and durative power to the Regula Virginum and the strict cloister of St John’s Monastery, we must give due credit to the women inside.21 Besides monastic founder and legislator, Caesarius has also been remembered as a prolific preacher. Over 250 sermons from the Caesarian corpus survive, most of them edited by Germain Morin in 1937-1942, and many of which feature large sections from other authors.22 The Vita Caesarii amply illustrates that ardent, frequent, and insistent preaching characterized Caesarius’ episcopate.23 Perceiving that the people were in need of instruction on practical Christian ethics as well as about Scripture and doctrine, Caesarius preached short and stylistically simple sermons not just on Sundays and feast days, but also on weekdays, and sometimes even more than once a day. He addressed his sermons to a wide audience, including the aristocratic urban elite and the poor rural farmers, and he discussed topics ranging from almsgiving to abortion to Scriptural exegesis. His zeal extended even beyond his waking hours: one of the biographers heard him preaching about heaven and hell in his sleep.24 Yet Caesarius was not simply a preacher of sermons like other contemporary bishops:25 he was a preaching activist. He created a veritable ‘revolution’26 in 19 Prompta et libera uoluntate professsa fuerit se omnia regulae instituta conplere, Reg.Virg. 58. The Rule also requires the candidate to have a well-tested will: nisi antea in multis experimentis fuerit uoluntas illius adprobata, Reg.Virg. 4. 20 See Colleen McGrane, ‘The Abbess in the Concordia Regularum: The Dicta of Caesaria of Arles’, Magistra 20 (2014), 59-75. 21 Other early texts support the hypothesis that Caesaria helped found the Regula Virginum and monastery. The Vita Caesarii recounts that the virgins who join the new monastic foundation ‘seek the laps of Caesarius their father and Caesaria their mother’, VCaes 35; also Gregory of Tours, historia Francorum 9.40, 42; Venantius Fortunatus, carmina 8.3.39-47, 81-4. Pace de Vogüé’s interpretation of these early texts, Œuvres pour les moniales (1988), 456-7. 22 Sancti Caesarii episcopi arelatensis Opera omnia nunc primum in unum collecta, 2 vol., ed. Germain Morin (Maredsous, 1937, 1942). For a list of the sermons and their sources, including Caesarian sermons identified after Morin’s edition, see Roger Gryson, Bonifatius Fischer and Hermann Josef Frede, Répertoire général des auteurs ecclésiastiques latins de l’antiquité et du haut Moyen Âge, 5th ed., Vetus Latina: die Reste der altlateinischen Bibel 1/15 (Freiburg, 2007), 349-60. 23 VCaes. I 16, 17, 18, 52, 54, 55, 61. 24 VCaes. II 5, 6. 25 Germain Morin, ‘Mes principes et ma méthode pour la future édition de S. Césaire’, RBen 10 (1893), 66-7. 26 Thomas Nelson Hall, ‘The Early Medieval Sermon’, in Beverly Mayne Kienzle (ed.), The Sermon, Typologie des sources du Moyen Âge Occidental 81 (Turnhout, 2000), 209-69, 229.

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the praxis of church instruction, by urging his fellow bishops to preach clearly and more frequently, by allowing and exhorting the priests in his diocese to preach, and even by permitting deacons to read out sermons to the people.27 Ever the practical pastor, Caesarius had copies of his sermons prepared and gave them out freely and insistently to visitors and other clerics.28 The Vita recounts that even during his lifetime, Caesarius’ sermons reached far and wide, into the regions of France, Gaul, Italy, and Spain, spreading ‘the good odor of Christ’ (2Cor. 2:15) and touching many people whom he would never see or know.29 Current library holdings further prove how true this statement is long after Caesarius’ death: Morin cites over 243 medieval manuscripts of the sermons for his critical edition, and notes that every great library in Europe owns a copy of Caesarius’ monastic sermons.30 How was Caesarius able to provide ready copies of his sermons to willing, and even unwilling,31 acquaintances? He himself reveals the process in a preface to his sermons: he assembled his sermons, and those of other fathers of the Church, into collections, libelli or booklets, for other priests and deacons to use. Then, he explains, ‘it was necessary for us to make multiple booklets of these simple admonitory sermons.’32 Again, the plural ‘nobis’ (‘it was necessary for us’) is a literal plural. Caesarius did not organize and copy his sermons by himself, but had numerous scribes in Arles who helped him. Indeed, many of the manuscripts of the sermon collections were traced to an Arlesian school.33 27 VCaes. I 54; Caesarius, Sermon 1.15, Sermon 2, praef. See also the Council of Vaison (529), canon 2, presided by Caesarius; Concilia Galliae A. 511 - A. 695, ed. Charles de Clercq, CChr. SL 148A (Turnhout, 1963). 28 Praedicationes quoque congruas festivitatibus et locis … fecit, easque ita paravit, ut, si quis advenientum peteret, non solum non abnuerit inpertire sed et si minime suggereret ut deberet accipere, offerret ei tamen et importaret ipse quae legeret, VCaes. I 55. 29 Longe vero positis in Francia, in Gallias atque in Italia, in Hispania diversisque provinciis constitutis transmisit per sacerdotes, quid in ecclesiis suis praedicare facerent, ut, proiectis rebus frivolis et caducis, iuxta apostolum bonorum operum fierent sectatores. Bonus ergo Christi odor per ipsum longe lateque diffusus est, VCaes. I 55. 30 Sancti Caesarii Opera omnia, ed. G. Morin, vol. 1 (1937), XXV-CXV; see Gustave Bardy, ‘La Prédication de Saint Césaire d’Arles’, Revue d’histoire de l’église de France 29 (1943), 201-36. 31 ‘… he even pressed those who did not request [the sermons] to accept them as well, and he himself would bring them the material’, VCaes. I 55 (for the Latin, see above n. 28). 32 Pro intuitu paternae pietatis et qualiscumque pastoris sollicitudine admonitiones simplices parochiis necessarias in hoc libello conscripsimus, quas in festivitatibus maioribus sancti presbyteri vel diacones debeant commissis sibi populis recitare … Et quia nobis necesse fuit ut de istis simplicibus admonitionibus plures libellos faceremus, vobis vero si non displicuerint et potestis et debetis et meliori littera et in pergamenis pro vestra mercede transscribere, et in aliis parochiis ad transcribendum dare, ut non solum de vestro sed etiam de aliorum profectu duplicem mercedem habere possitis, Sermo 2 (‘praefatio libri sermonum’), Sancti Caesarii Opera omnia, ed. G. Morin, vol. 1 (1937). 33 Morin postulated that at least five sermon collections which contained the monastic homilies originated in Arles: M, C, A, V, and K; cf. Sancti Caesarii Opera omnia, ed. G. Morin, vol. 1 (1937), XXXI-XXXIX, XL-XLIII, XLV-LI, XXVIII-XXXI.

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At the same time, he urged all those who received the copies to make, in turn, more copies of even better quality and give them away, thus spreading the Christian message ever further.34 Who were these scribes? Morin imagines they were junior clerics who lived with Caesarius in the episcopal residence under a type of monastic discipline.35 He conceives the following scenario: With the help of these aspirants to the clerical career [Caesarius] set up within the shadow of the cathedral of St Stephen a veritable library workshop, for the purpose of compiling as many collections of sermons as possible, to be broadcast in every direction. The more accomplished students were assigned the task of extracting from the writings of the Fathers, especially from St Augustine, those passages best suited to the instruction of the people. Then the bishop would touch up this material, abridging the uselessly wordy passages and bringing light into the obscure ones … After that he would add a preface and a peroration in his own style, generally very short.36

Morin’s hypothesis, though plausible, has no supporting evidence from the Vita Caesarii or other texts. The only evidence that exists about scribes in Arles at the time actually points to women, the nuns in the Monastery of St John. The Vita describes that under Caesaria the Younger, who succeeded Caesaria the Elder as mother superior, the monastery ‘so flourished that the virgins of Christ, amidst Psalms and fasting, vigils and reading, were beautifully copying divine books, with the mother herself as their teacher’.37 Instead of conjuring up a fleet of imaginary male scribes, for whom no evidence exists, we might better turn our attention to the sister scribes who were Caesarius’ collaborators in the creation of monastic life. On the basis of the evidence, we can transpose the scene imagined by Morin to locate it behind the walls of the female cloister. Rudge called the Monastery of St John a ‘cottage industry’ for the copying of the bishop’s sermons; it certainly contained a large and willing workforce. According to one of the innovative features of this Rule, all sisters in the monastery had to learn to read;38 girls and grown women who had not been educated before their entrance into the monastery acquired an education once inside its wall in a sort of monastic school. This literacy requirement meant that all of the sisters also knew how to write, since in the Roman 34

VCaes. I 55; see above, n. 31. See VCaes. II 5-6. Caesarius set up, like Augustine before him, a sort of boarding school for clerics within his episcopal household. These schools were the first seminaries for the training of clergy; see Pierre Riché, Education and Culture in the Barbarian West, Sixth through Eighth Centuries, trans. John J. Contreni (Columbia, SC, 1978), 124-9. 36 Germain Morin, ‘The Homilies of Saint Caesarius of Arles: Their Influence on the Christian Civilization of Europe’, Orate Fratres 11 (1940), 481-6, 484. 37 Caesaria matre, cuius opus cum sodalibus tam praecipuum uiget, ut inter psalmos atque ieiunia, uigilias quoque et lectiones, libros diuinos pulchre scriptitent uirgines Christi, ipsam matrem magistram habentes, VCaes. I 58. 38 Omnes litteras discant, Reg.Virg. 18. 35

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school system children learned to write at the same time as they learned to read, often writing out letters and words onto a writing-tablet. At the beginning stages of reading and writing sisters might have used Caesarius’ sermons as practice for copying; in a preface to one of his sermon collections, Caesarius even makes reference to inexperienced scribes and asks pardon from the reader for their mistakes.39 New archaeological finds in the past decade further support this hypothesis. It has been discovered that the cathedral in which Caesarius preached many of his sermons, St Stephen’s, was at the Southeast corner of the city of Arles, next to the site of the medieval and modern Monastery of St John. According to the Regula, this Cathedral was the church adjacent to the sisters’ monastery: only a single door separated the sisters from the site of the preaching.40 The sisters may have even able to hear the sermons from the other side. Geographically, the sister-scribes were in the heart of the episcopal center of Arles and consequently of the preaching ministry of their bishop. The sisters in the monastery of Arles in the sixth century must have spent countless hours copying many manuscripts, among which Caesarius’ sermons must have had a privileged place. As Morin suggests in his scenario above, some of the more learned and spiritual scribes, for instance Caesaria the Younger, might not have merely copied sermons but might also have been assigned the task of extracting from the writings of the fathers and, in effect, helping to compose them. In this way, the sermons could well have been the product of a collaborative effort of the ‘School of Caesarius’. Such collaboration is analogous to how large altarpieces and other art works are the production of a School of medieval master. These cloistered sisters must be credited with a more active role in the spread of sacred texts, and therefore in Caesarius’ pastoral plan of evangelization in Arles and beyond, than hitherto acknowledged.41 To conclude, it is time to modify the narrative of Caesarius’ solitary brilliance and pastoral methods. Two of his greatest projects, the creation of the female 39 Et quia adhuc scriptores nostri incipientes sunt, si quid aut in literis aut in aliquibus forte sententiis aut minus aut amplius quam oportet inveneritis, cum caritate indulgete, et sicut expedit emendate, et literis melioribus transscribere iubete, Caesarius, sermo 2, from manuscript collection Z. 40 See Marc Heijmans, ‘À propos de la mise à jour de la Topographie Chrétienne des Cités de la Gaule: Réflexions sur le cas d’Arles’, in Michèle Gaillard (ed.), L’empreinte chrétienne en Gaule du IVe au IXe siècle (Turnhout, 2014), 151-71; id., ‘Le groupe épiscopal d’Arles à l’époque de Césaire et la question du monastère Saint-Jean’, in Marc Heijmans and Anastasia Ozoline (eds), Autour des reliques de saint Césaire d’Arles (Arles, 2018), 47-56. 41 McKitterick corroborates: ‘We may have the essential clue to the convent’s internal economy and how it might come about that certain items might be produced by the nuns in order to pay for the things they could not make themselves … The nuns would appear to have provided an expert service for the diocese to which they belonged.’ Rosamond McKitterick, ‘Nuns’ Scriptoria in England and Francia in the Eighth Century’, in Books, Scribes and Learning in the Frankish Kingdoms, 6th-9th Centuries (Aldershot, 1994), 1-35.

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monastery and its Rule, and the preaching and spreading of sermons throughout Western Europe, depended upon collaboration with the sisters of the female monastery. There is no need to posit a phantom scriptorium of clerics which aided him: we know that there was a real scriptorium right next door to the Cathedral and Caesarius’ residence, with highly literate women who vowed to spend the rest of their lives inside for the sanctification of themselves and the city. This collaborative process explains and justifies the striking mutual affection and profound respect that Caesarius and the sisters had for each other: their love was based not simply on common ideals but on a shared work. All the textual displays of this love, such as the veneration of Caesarius shown by Caesaria the Younger in her Letter and Dicta,42 the last wish of Caesarius to be carried to the female monastery to take his leave of the sisters,43 the poignant mourning of the sisters at the prospect of Caesarius’ death,44 the naming of the monastery as his principal heir,45 and the desire of the bishop to be buried along with the sisters in their special burial church Basilica of St Mary,46 receive their meaning not simply from hagiographic formulae, but from close and genuine collaboration. In this way, the nuns of the Monastery of St John truly ‘adorned the local church’ with their example and ‘fortified the entire city’ with their hidden pastoral labor.47

42 ‘Beatus Caesarius’, Dicta 1; nobis beatae et sanctae recordationis domnus papa Caesarius, Letter of Caesaria to Richild and Radegund; for the works of Caesaria, see Œuvres pour les moniales, ed. A. de Vogüé and J. Courreau (1988), 440-99. 43 VCaes. 47. 44 The nuns in the monastery ‘were so anxious about his impending death that they were not sleeping and were even forgetting to eat. The sound of Psalms was choked by tears, and they were pouring forth groans instead of songs and laments instead of Alleluias.’ … anxias, quibus suspicio transitus sui abstulerat somnum et cibum oblivio. Psalmorum quoque sono lacrimis intercluso, mugitum pro cantico et gemitum pro alleluia reddebant, VCaes. II 46. 45 See Testamentum Caesarii, in Œuvres pour les moniales, ed. A. de Vogüé and J. Courreau (1988), 380-97; see also William Klingshirn, ‘The Testament of Caesarius of Arles’, in Césaire d’Arles et les cinq continents, vol. 1 (Venelles, 2017), 83-8. 46 VCaes. I 58, II 50. 47 Non solum clericorum cateruis innumeris, sed etiam uirginum choris Arelatensium ornaretur ecclesia, et muniretur ciuitas, VCaes. I 28.

Gregory the Great Warns against Simony in his Letters Hector SCERRI, University of Malta, Msida, Malta

ABSTRACT Gregory the Great, the great master and mentor of pastoral orthopraxis, was cognizant – during his years as bishop of Rome – of many cases of simony in the Church. His great concern on the matter is reflected in the surprising frequency this practice is condemned in his Registrum Epistularum. When referring to this serious issue, Gregory often states ‘as we have written before’. This is indicative that simony was very common, and that he was using all possible means to curb it through persuasion and reparation. In fact, Gregory tirelessly spares no effort to wipe out greed and simony.

Simony consists in dealing with spiritual matters as if these could be purchased. Selling or purchasing an ecclesiastical office or a sacred rite, such as a sacrament, constitutes simony. The term is derived from the name of Simon the magician in the Acts of the Apostles (8:9-25) who attempted to purchase from Peter and John the power to impart the Holy Spirit. Church synods and councils, as well as Church legislation, have often condemned simony. The great concern shown by Gregory the Great with regard to this practice and the frequency with which he writes about it in his Letters denote that simony was rife in his time. As we shall see, Gregory sought to eradicate the practice, not only through disciplinary measures, but also through persuasion. In the very vast corpus of the Gregorian Registrum, I have encountered thirty-nine direct references to simony, an impressive quantity. The Bishop of Rome constantly taught the flock in various regions of the Western Church, in particular, and made consistent efforts to curb this sinful action which he describes, in the letter to Childebirth, king of the Franks, as ‘extremely pestiferous’ (pestiferum nimis) and a ‘detestable practice’ (detestabile),1 and in one of his letters to Brunhilde, queen of the Franks, ‘this depravity’ (pravitas).2 How does Gregory describe simony? Which are his main arguments? Finally, what can we conclude about his role in light of this vexing issue? In the detailed introduction to his excellent translation of the Registrum, the renowned John Martyn claims that, among the various heresies mentioned in

1 2

Greg. Magn., Reg. V 60. Martyn II 397. This letter was written in August 595. Greg. Magn., Reg. IX 214. Martyn II 677. This letter was written in July 599.

Studia Patristica CXXX, 97-101. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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his letters, the worst was simony.3 Although simony had been formally condemned at the Council of Chalcedon (451), it is clear – from the situations Gregory addresses at the end of the sixth century – that it was rampant.4 This is evident from the frequency with which Gregory seeks to stem this abuse, as well as its prominence in later church councils, synods and papal pronouncements. Besides the notorious case of Maximus of Salona (today’s Solin, close to Split) in Dalmatia, Gregory’s letters bear witness to the existence of simony in the Frankish Church, as well as in Greece and North Africa. Indeed, on their way to Britain to reinforce the mission of Augustine of Canterbury and his monks, the priest, Laurence, and the abbot, Mellitus – as they cross Gaul – have the brief from Gregory to make arrangements so that a synod could be convened to eradicate the sinful practice. In fact, writing to Clothar, king of the Franks, in June 601, Gregory states in very clear terms: It has come to our attention that Holy Orders are being conferred there with a gift of money, and we are extremely upset if men do not attain God’s gifts through their merit, but leap into them through bribery. And since this heretical simony (et quia haec simoniaca haeresis), when it first arose in the Church, was condemned by the authority of the apostles, we ask that you may be rewarded for calling a synod together, so that this sin is crushed by the decision of all the priests, and is cut out by its roots and can find no power there in future to endanger men’s souls, nor be allowed to rise up any further for any sort of excuse.5

This was undoubtedly part of the reform which Gregory wished to carry out in the Frankish Church, as he exercised his primatial authority. During the fifth year of his pontificate, namely September 594 to August 595, Gregory wrote no less than nine letters to various bishops and other clerics, and individuals exercising civil authority, on this serious matter. From these letters, we are able to glean the principles guiding the author, as he sought to offer pastoral direction. In February 595, Gregory wrote a letter to Castor, a notary of the Church in Rome, who lived in Ravenna, and who probably exercised the role of administrator of the papal patrimony in that region. The immediate context of the letter was the recent death of Bishop John of Ravenna, and the subsequent process to elect his successor with no delay. This situation enables us to comprehend the content. Here, Gregory is not reacting to reported cases, but he is simply forewarning the clergy and the people to act appropriately. He instructs Castor to inform them: We want you to advise them before all else not to attend to their private benefits in a general issue. Therefore, let there be no venality in this election (nulla ergo sit in hac electione venalitas), in case they lose their discretion in making a choice, while seeking 3 See John R.C. Martyn, The Letters of Gregory the Great, translated, with introduction and notes, 3 vol. (Toronto, 2004), I 84. 4 See Martyn I 52, 56. 5 Greg. Magn., Reg. XI 51. Martyn III 796.

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bribes (praemia), and think one suitable for this office as he pleases them not with his merits, but with his presents. For they should know specially and absolutely that he is not only unworthy of the priesthood, but he will certainly be guilty of other sins also, whoever shall presume to market the gift of God with the venality of a purchase price. And so, let him be elected who is not lavish with bribes but is worthy with merits. For a penalty will affect both the person elected and the electors, if they attempt to violate the sincerity of priesthood with sacrilegious minds.6

In other letters of that same year, we observe how Gregory exercises his teaching role, accompanied by his pastoral solicitude, his knowledge of human nature, and his sincere attempt to persuade his addressees to act correctly. Writing to John, bishop of Prima Justiniana in Illyria, in November 594, he underlines the avoidance of ‘illegal ordinations’. In this and similar texts, Gregory uses the expression ‘Heaven forbid!’ to highlight his aversion of the serious fault of corruption in the choice of bishops: ‘Heaven forbid! you are entangled in the snares of heretical simony’.7 In a letter to Virgil, bishop of Arles (August 595), he uses the image – something he employs elsewhere – of a rotten fruit. He states that the pastoral ministry is corrupted from the inside by bribery. While saying this, he sheds light on his own emotions: For I have learnt from certain reports, that in the lands of Gaul and Germany, no one obtains holy orders without handing over a payment. If that is so, I say with tears, I declare with groans that, when the priestly order is rotten on the inside, it will not be able to survive for long externally.8

In a letter to the queen of the Franks, Brunehild, Gregory makes this selfdisclosure: ‘I am extremely distressed and I weep over that country’.9 Many a time, Gregory repeats and reuses the same carefully worded argumentation to press home the point he wants to make. Indeed, in four of his letters, written within the space of a few days or weeks – 12 August 595 (to Virgil, bishop of Arles), 15 August 595 (to John, bishop of Corinth), August 595 (to the bishops of Achaea) and September 595 (to five bishops in Epirus) – he repeats, practically word by word, that this malpractice spreads because those who are ordained in such circumstances will not think twice to do the same. Indeed, he writes in these four letters: For the person also who is promoted to holy orders, being already corrupted in the very root of his promotion, is more ready to sell to others what he has bought. And where is it written saying ‘freely you have received, freely give?’ And since the heresy of simony was the first to arise against the Holy Church, why is it not considered, why is

6

Greg. Magn., Reg. V 24. Martyn II 339-40. Greg. Magn., Reg. V 16. Martyn II 334. The same exclamation features earlier in Reg. III 47. Martyn I 266. 8 Greg. Magn., Reg. V 58. Martyn II 393. 9 Greg. Magn., Reg. IX 214. Martyn II 677. 7

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it not seen that whoever ordains someone at a price, drives him to becoming a heretic (ut haereticus fiat) while promoting him?10

Gregory often uses scriptural quotations to support his moral argument, as for instance: ‘What profit would there be for a man, as the True word tells us, ‘if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own life’11 (Matt. 16:26); the episode when Jesus went into the temple and ‘overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves’12 (Matt. 21:12); and ‘freely you have received, freely give’ (Matt. 10:8).13 Having presented the theme, I now briefly refer to the notorious case of Maximus of Salona, featuring in at least ten letters by Pope Gregory: at times, he writes directly to the insubordinate Maximus, or to the authorities of Salona, or refers to the case in letters to third parties.14 It appears that the Pope’s preferred candidate to the bishopric was not elected, and that Maximus was promoted through bribery. Judging from the dates of these letters, the case dragged on for at least five years (prior to April 594 to mid-599). While exercising authority and seeking to bring order in the Church, Gregory was keen on promoting moral rectitude and purifying the Church from corruption. He strove to bring the excommunicated Maximus to reconciliation, and sought to reach a compromise even seeking the mediation of the bishop of Ravenna in the penitential process. On the one hand, we encounter references to the pride,15 jealousy16 and arrogance17 shown by Maximus who is called an ‘apostate’,18 ‘a sinner’,19 ‘a pretender’20 and ‘transgressor of the church of Salona’ (Maximus Salonitanae ecclesiae praevaricator),21 while on the other hand, we observe, at first an irritated Gregory, and eventually the latter’s paternal role when he writes that he ‘must be dealt with more earnestly so that he may receive [the Pope’s 10 Greg. Magn., Reg. V 58. Martyn II 393. See also Greg. Magn., Reg. V 62. Martyn II 399; Reg. V 63. Martyn II 401; Reg. VI 7. Martyn II 407. 11 Greg. Magn., Reg. V 16. Martyn II 334. 12 See Greg. Magn., Reg. V 58. Martyn II 393. 13 See Greg. Magn., Reg. V 58. Martyn II 393; Reg. V 62. Martyn II 399; Reg. V 63. Martyn II 401; Reg. VI 7. Martyn II 407. 14 See Greg. Magn., Reg. V 6. Martyn II 326; Reg. VI 3. Martyn II 403-4; Reg. VI 25. Martyn II 419-21; Reg. VI 26. Martyn II 421-2; Reg. VIII 24. Martyn II 519-20; Reg. VIII 36. Martyn II 531; Reg. IX 150. Martyn II 635-6; Reg. IX 156. Martyn II 641; Reg. IX 178. Martyn II 654; Reg. IX 179. Martyn II 655. 15 See Greg. Magn., Reg. VI 26. Martyn II 421. 16 See Greg. Magn., Reg. VIII 24. Martyn II 519. 17 See Greg. Magn., Reg. IX 156. Martyn II 641. 18 Greg. Magn., Reg. V 6. Martyn II 326. 19 Greg. Magn., Reg. VIII 36. Martyn II 531. 20 ‘Gregorius Maximo praesumptori in Salona’, Greg. Magn., Reg. IV 20. Martyn I 302; Reg. VI 3. Martyn II 403. 21 Greg. Magn., Reg. IX 150. Martyn II 635. See Greg. Magn., Reg. VI 25. Martyn II 420. In the latter, Gregory states that Maximus has ‘seized the bishopric in Salona’ and tells him ‘you are known to have forced your way irregularly into the priestly order’.

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envoys] with the love that they deserve, and should not in any way retain anger against them deep in his heart, but live with them with pure grace and sincere affection’.22 It is appropriate to conclude by underlining what led Gregory the Great to act in the way he did, when faced with so many instances of a grave problem which he tried to curb. The reading of the letters in question enables us to state the following points: (a) Gregory the Great insisted on moral rectitude in the Church and society; (b) Through his interventions on simony, he also defended Papal primacy and the importance of Rome when the latter’s ecclesial role was undermined with the shifting of the imperial capital to Milan, then to Ravenna, and later to Constantinople;23 (c) Gregory showed great determination and resilience, although he was generally unsuccessful in eradicating simony.24 He encouraged his addressees, as he wrote in March 602, to wipe out simony, that ‘it may be amputated from its root with the pruning hook’ (falce facto … radicitus amputetur);25 (d) Finally, he expressed the pastoral solicitude and the tireless effort to conserve the dignity of the priesthood, not as an honour to be aspired to by ambitious persons, but as humble service and selfless availability.

22

Greg. Magn., Reg. IX 179. Martyn II 655. See Jeffrey Richards, Consul of God. The Life and Times of Gregory the Great (London, Boston, Henley, 1980), 60. 24 The fact that simony was condemned several times – by Pope Zachary writing to Boniface of Mainz (744), at the Lateran Synod (1060), another Lateran Synod (1110), Lateran Council III (1179) and Lateran Council IV (1215), right to the 1983 Code of Canon Law – shows that the malaise persisted. 25 Greg. Magn., Reg. XII 9. Martyn III 815. 23

Gregory the Great’s Contribution to the Tradition of Patience Brendan LUPTON, University of St Mary of the Lake, Mundelein, IL, USA

ABSTRACT A topos in the Latin patristic tradition was the virtue of patience. Gregory the Great’s own contributions to this virtue, however, has not been studied in great detail, which is surprising since it serves a leitmotif throughout his work, and medieval authors quote his statements on patience frequently. This article will explore Gregory’s development of patience vis-à-vis his predecessors and explain how he contributes to the Western reflection on this virtue, specifically through two of his quotable statements, i.e., patience is the ‘root and guard of the virtues’ and that ‘we can be martyrs without a sword, if we truly guard patience in our heart’.

The virtue of patience was a steady current in the Latin patristic tradition. Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine all penned specific treatises on this virtue.1 In fact, Robert Lewis Wilken wrote that Tertullian composed ‘the first treatise in the history of the Church on a specific virtue’, De patientia.2 The word itself is multivalent and has a complex history. Stoicism and Christianity adopted it and emphasized different aspects of its meanings. At the risk of simplification, for the Stoics, patientia connoted endurance and submission. For the Christians, it had the sense of endurance but with hope and charity.3 Tertullian writes, God ‘by his patience … hopes to draw them [i.e., wayward humanity] to himself’.4 God’s waits upon the world to respond to his love.

1

Tertullian, ‘On Patience’, in Disciplinary, Moral, and Ascetical Works, trans. Sr. Elizabeth Daly, FC 40 (Washington, DC, 2010); the quotations from On Patience are taken from the above translation; when they are modified, it is noted; the quoted Latin text is from De la patience, SC 310 (Paris, 1984); Cyprian, À Donat et la vertu de patience, trans. Jean Molager, SC 291 (Paris, 1982); Augustine, De patientia, ed. J. Zycha, CSEL 4 (Vienna, 1900). 2 Robert Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God (New Haven, 2003), 283; see also Jean-Claude Fredouille, ‘Introduction’ [to De la patience, by Tertullian], SC 310 (Paris, 1984), 7-46, 21. 3 For more on these distinctions, see R. Wilken, The Spirit (2003), 283; Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire (Grand Rapids, 2016), 35; see also Robert A. Kaster, ‘The Taxonomy of Patience, or When Is ‘Patientia’ Not a Virtue?’, Classical Philology 97 (2002), 133-44, 135-6. 4 Tertullian, Pat. 2.1.

Studia Patristica CXXX, 103-112. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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Scholars, such as Wilken, David Harned, and Alan Kreider have studied the development of patience within the western patristic stream.5 The end of this river, or Gregory the Great’s own contributions to patience, has not been explored in great detail perhaps since he himself did not pen a separate treatise on the topic unlike his predecessors.6 This omission is surprising, since Medieval authors will mine his works for quotations on patience.7 Further, this virtue serves as an axial theme in Gregory’s corpus. Alfred Rush writes: ‘The virtue of patience is of capital importance in the spirituality of Gregory’.8 This article will explore Gregory’s development of patience vis-à-vis his predecessors and argue that two of his lapidary statements about patience are contributions to the Western reflection on this virtue, i.e., patience is the ‘root and guard of the virtues’9 and that ‘we can be martyrs without a sword, if we truly guard (custodimus) patience (patientiam) in our heart (animo)’.10 The first offers a theoretical formulation of the relationship between patience and the virtues; the second presents a new relationship between patience and spiritual martyrdom.

Statement One: Patientia is the Root and Guard of the Virtues This particular study will focus on Gregory’s most concentrated reflection on the patience, which is in Homily 35 of his Gospel Homilies.11 In this text, Gregory famously writes, 5 David Harned, Patience: How We Wait Upon the World (Cambridge, 1997), 14-58; A. Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church (2016). 6 For some general treatments, see Michel Spanneut, ‘Geduld’, in RAC 9 (Stuttgart, 1976), 243-94, 279; see id., ‘La patience’, in DSAM, 437-54, 449; D. Harned, Patience (1997), 58-64; Alfred C. Rush, ‘Spiritual Martyrdom in St. Gregory the Great’, TS 23 (1962), 569-89, 580. 7 These authors will be cited below. 8 A.C. Rush, ‘Spiritual Martyrdom’ (1962), 580; see also Michel Spanneut, ‘La patience, martyre au quotidien: la fortune d’une sentence de saint Grégoire le Grand’, SP 23 (1987), 186-96, 190; Carole Straw, ‘Gregory’s Moral Theology: Divine Providence and Human Responsibility’, in A Companion to Gregory the Great, ed. Bronwen Neil and Matthew Dal Santo (Boston, 2013), 177-204, 178. 9 Gregory the Great, Hev. 2.35.4.106, ed. Raymond Étaix, CChr.SL 141 (Turnhout, 1999): possessio animae in uirtute patientiae ponitur, quia radix omnium custos que uirtutum patientia est. Per patientiam uero possidemus animas nostras, quia dum nobis ipsis dominari discimus, hoc ipsum incipimus possidere quod sumus; see also, Mor. 5.16.28; 21.21.32, ed. Marcus Adriaen, CChr.SL 143, 143A, 143B (Turnhout, 1979). 10 Gregory, Hev. 2.35.7.191: Et nos ergo hoc exemplo sine ferro esse martyres possumus, si patientiam ueraciter in animo custodimus. This quotable sentence text has a long and complicated legacy in the middle ages, for an overview see M. Spanneut, ‘La patience, martyre au quotidien’ (1987), 188-96. 11 Gregory, Hev. 2.35; it should be noted that an abbreviated version of this same passage is in Reg. past., trans. Charles Morel, SC 381 (Paris, 1992), 3.9. The quotations are taken from, Forty

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possession of [your] soul (anima) is based on (ponitur) the virtue of patience (patientia), since it is the root (radix) and guardian (custos) of all the virtues, we gain possession of our lives by patience, since when we learn to govern ourselves, we begin to gain possession of the very thing we are.12

Medieval authors will cite the lapidary phrase ‘patience is the root (radix) and guardian (custos) of all the virtues’ frequently. In fact, David Harned explains that ‘Gregory’s conviction that ‘patience is the root and guardian of all virtues’ was cited countless times in the succeeding centuries in theology, moral treatises, homilies, and other devotional writings of the church’.13 This raises the question why? How was this particular formulation different from Gregory’s predecessors? The sentence ‘patience is the root and guardian of the virtues’ is unique in the development of Christian patience. To explain why, this article will now summarize a frequent topos in the various Latin patristic treatises on patience. Tertullian, Cyprian, and Lactantius praise ‘patience’ as the ‘highest virtue’, since it is reflected in the divine economy and grounds the virtues.14 To demonstrate its high status, Tertullian states that ‘patience (patientia) is the very nature (natura) of God’.15 At first blush, this seems shocking. Patientia literally denotes a type of passive suffering; how could it be God’s very nature? Surveying the history of salvation, Tertullian discerns that patience is a golden thread in the weaving of divine providence. God patiently allows the sun to shine both on the ‘just and unjust’.16 He permits the deserving and undeserving to enjoy the benefits of creation.17 He endures idol worshipers, etc.18 Not only does patience characterize God’s relationship to the world, but also typifies the

Gospel Homilies, trans. David Hurst, CS 123 (Collegeville, 1990). When the translation is adapted, it will be noted; for other discussions on patience in Gregory see, Mor. 5.16.22-36; 7.28.31-8; 13.47-8; 21.2.114-34; Hez. 1.7.266-76, 2.5.294-401, 2.9.484-93, ed. Marcus Adriaen, CChr.SL 142 (Turnhout, 1971). 12 Gregory, Hev. 2.35.4.106: possessio animae in uirtute patientiae ponitur, quia radix omnium custos que uirtutum patientia est. Per patientiam uero possidemus animas nostras, quia dum nobis ipsis dominari discimus, hoc ipsum incipimus possidere quod sumus. See also, Mor. 5.16.28; Mor. 21.21.32. 13 D. Harned, Patience (1997), 61; see also Ralph Hanna, ‘Some Commonplaces of Late Medieval Patience’, in The Triumph of Patience, ed. Gerald J. Schiffhorst (Orlando, 1978), 65-88, 71; Leo Elders, Thomas Aquinas and his Predecessors: The Philosophers and the Church Fathers in His Works (Washington, DC, 2018), 207; Thomas Aquinas, ST, II-II.136.2, ad.3; Bede the Venerable, In Lucam Exp. 6.21.160, ed. D. Hurst, CChr.SL 120 (Turnhout, 1960); Hrabanus Maurus, Commentariorum in Ecclesiasticum libri decem 1.7.773, PL 109. 14 Lactantius, D.I. 6.20, ed. Samuel Brandt, CSEL 19 (Vienna, 1890); Cyprian, Pat. 1.1; Tertullian, Pat. 1.7. 15 Tertullian, Pat. 3.11. Cyprian, Pat. 4-5. 16 Tertullian, Pat. 2.2; Cyprian, Pat. 4-5. 17 Tertullian, Pat. 2.2. 18 Ibid. 2.9

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life of Christ, who waits in the womb, who pardons sinners, and forgives from the cross.19 Not only does God and Christ exhibit patience for Tertullian and Cyprian, but this virtue grounds Christian discipleship, which contributes to its high status. In fact, both authors develop long passages, in which they cite various virtues and explains how patience undergirds them. To quote just one, Tertullian explains, ‘He [the Lord] says: “Revenge is mine and I will repay them”, that is: “Have patience with me and I will reward your patience”’.20 Patience, thus, grounds forgiveness in this case. Tertullian and Cyprian repeat this trope often in their discussions on patience and list a number of virtues and practices that patience supports, such as faith, hope, love and a host of others.21 Lactantius, on the other hand, is a little more theoretical and instead of listing the various virtues that patience undergirds, he generalizes that patience is ‘the one virtue opposed to all vices and emotions (adfectibus)’.22 Patience, for him, represents water that extinguishes the fire of vice. This is a little different from Tertullian and Cyprian who emphasize that patience undergirds the positive virtues as well, such as love, hope, forgiveness, etc. Gregory’s formulation, ‘patience is the root and guardian of the virtues’ summarizes the thought of Tertullian, Cyprian, and Lactantius well. He explains in a single sentence the relationship of patience to all of the virtues; it is ‘the root and guard of them’. All of the virtues proceed from patience and are defended through it. In this sense, his formulation is more general than Lactantius, who emphasized that patience stifles various vices, since Gregory’s formulation also undergirds the positive virtues. To be fair to Cyprian and Tertullian, their long lists of various Christian practices emphasize the importance of patience, and Gregory summarizes it with a single phrase, which explains why authors quoted it so frequently. It should be noted that Gregory’s formulation has stoic overtones.23 ‘Possessing oneself’ and ‘governing oneself’ is native to stoicism.24 Seneca writes, ‘man is most blessed and is secure in his own possession (possessor) of himself’.25 Further, the image of the radix and the custos of the virtues expresses the stoic notion of the interconnection of the virtues, a frequent Gregorian theme. Marcia 19 Ibid. 3.1-40; Cyprian, Pat. 6-9; this paragraph is adapted from my published article Brendan Lupton, ‘Patience a Spiritual Sign’, Homiletic & Pastoral Review, January 17, 2019, https://www. hprweb.com/2019/01/patience-a-spiritual-sign/. 20 Tertullian, Pat. 10.6; for further examples see 10.7; 12.3. 21 Cyprian, Pat. 13-8. 22 Lactantius, D.I. 6.18.32: una uirtus omnibus est opposita uitiis et adfectibus. 23 For more information on Gregory’s relationship to Stoicism see Carole Straw, Gregory the Great: Perfection in Imperfection (Berkeley, 1988), 15; for an important distinction between stoic patience and Gregory’s, see R. Hanna, ‘Some Commonplaces’ (1978), 71. 24 See M. Spanneut, ‘Patience’, in DS, 449. 25 Sen., Epist. 12.9, LCL 75 (Cambridge, 1934): Ille beatissimus est et securus sui possessor.

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Colish summarizes this well: ‘When Gregory examines the moral life from the perspective of the virtues ... he expresses quite clearly the Stoic doctrine of the interrelation of the virtues and their origin in a single intentional attitude on the part of the moral subject’.26 If the Christian focuses on patience, the other virtues will grow and be protected.27 In summary, Gregory’s first statement on patience summarizes his predecessors’ thought and also alludes to some central stoic principles. Statement Two: ‘We can be Martyrs without a Sword, if we truly guard patience in our heart’ In the history of ancient Christianity, martyrdom casts a long shadow. Many scholars have explored its development in the Christian imagination and also charted the rise of ‘white martyrdom’, i.e., the possibility of martyrdom outside of persecution.28 To contextualize Gregory’s contribution, it is important to summarize briefly the relationship between patience and martyrdom. Many fathers, such as Augustine, Tertullian, and Cyprian, note that the blood martyrs exhibit patience in their suffering.29 For example, Abel, Cyprian explains suffered Cain’s persecution patiently. 30 Prior to Gregory, a few authors ascribe patience to ‘white martyrs’, such as Sulpicius Severus [359419 AD], Commodianus [ca. 250 AD], and Diadochos of Photiki [499-500 AD], and John Cassian [360-435 AD].31 For them, if a person practices patience in certain respects, they can become a ‘white martyr’. For Commodianus and Cyprian, it is practicing patience with an aggressor.32 For Sulpicius, a whole catalogue of Christian actions made Martin of Tours a ‘white martyr’, but 26 Marcia Colish, The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages, vol. 2 (Leiden, 1985), 263. 27 For an important distinction between stoic patience and Gregory’s, see R. Hanna, ‘Some Commonplaces’ (1978), 71. 28 The scholarship on martyrdom is vast; for an introduction to the topic, see William W.H.C. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church: A Study of Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus (Eugene, 2014). For an overview of ‘white martyrdom’, see M. Spanneut, ‘La patience, martyre au quotidien’ (1987), 186-8. 29 Tertullian, Pat. 15.2; Cyprian, Pat. 10.205; Augustine, en. Ps., ed. E. Dekkers, CChr.SL 40 (Turnhout, 1956), 127.5.17. 30 Cyprian, Pat. 11.205. 31 These authors will be discussed in more detail below. 32 Commodianus, Inst. 2.3.14-5, ed. Martin, CChr.SL 128 (Turnhout, 1960): Multa sunt martyria, quae sunt sine sanguine fuso. Alienum non cupire, uelle martyrii habere, linguam refrenare, humilem te reddere debes, vim ultro non facere nec factam reddere contra, mens patiens fueris: intellege martyrem esse; Cyprian, Zelo. 2.3.14-5, ed. M. Simonetti, CChr.SL 3A (Turnhout, 1976): Habet et pax coronas suas, quibus de uaria et multiplici congressione uictores prostrato et subacto aduersario coronamur. Libidinem subegisse continentiae palma est. Contra iram, contra iniuriam repugnasse corona patientiae est.

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specifically the object of patience is ‘waiting’.33 In the Greek tradition, Diadochos explains that a martyrdom consists in the patient struggle with evil thoughts.34 In each of these examples, the Christian ought to practice patience in a specific area of discipleship in order to be a white martyr: being patient with an aggressor, being patient with the struggle against evil thoughts, and generally waiting. Gregory’s Contribution to the relationship between ‘white martyrdom’ and patience How does Gregory’s understanding of the relationship between ‘white martyrdom’ and patience differ from his predecessors? His articulation of the relationship is the following: ‘John [the apostle] did not end his life in martyrdom, yet was a martyr, because he sustained in his heart (mens) the suffering he did not undergo in his body. We too, following his example, can be martyrs without a sword, if we truly guard (custodimus) patience (patientiam) in our heart (animo)’.35 Therefore, ‘guarding patience in the heart’ leads to white martyrdom. Unlike his predecessors, Gregory does not limit patience to a particular area of life, such as evil thoughts or adversaries. Therefore, any form of patience can help form a ‘white martyr’. So, Gregory’s articulation of this relationship is more general and universal than previous ones: practicing patience, in any form, can form a ‘white martyr’. At this point, a critic might object that Gregory’s general understanding of patience is too vapid to be helpful for the Christian life. In sermon 35, again Gregory’s most concentrated reflection on patience, he specifies the object of patience: ‘There are three areas in which the virtue of patience is usually exercised. Some of the things we sustain come from God, some from our ancient 33 Sulpicius Severus, Epist. II.12, ed. Fontaine, SC 133 (1967): Sed quamquam ista non tulerit inplevit tamen sine cruore martyrium. Nam quas ille pro spe aeternitatis humanorum dolorum non pertulit passiones fame vigiliis nuditate ieiuniis opprobriis invidorum insectationibus inproborum cura pro infirmantibus sollicitudine pro periclitantibus … Praeter illa cotidiana illius adversum vim humanae spiritalis que nequitiae diversa certamina dum in eo variis temptationibus adpetito semper exsuperat fortitudo vincendi patientia expectandi aequanimitas sustinendi. 34 Diadochos of Photiki, Cent. Cap. XCIV; Cent chapitres sur la perfection spirituelle, trans. Édouard des Places, S.J., SC 5 (Paris, 1943), 160-1. 35 Gregory, Hev. 2.35.7.188; Iohannes namque nequaquam per martyrium uitam finiuit, sed tamen martyr exstitit, quia passionem quam non suscepit in corpore, seruauit in mente. Et nos ergo hoc exemplo sine ferro esse martyres possumus, si patientiam ueraciter in animo custodimus; this particular text has a complicated revisionist history in the medieval period, for a summary see M. Spanneut, ‘La patience, martyre au quotidien’ (1987), 191-6. It is cited in a number of different types of works such as Alcuin, Liber de virtutibus et vitiis, PL 101, 619C; Thomas de Froidmont, De modo bene vivendi, PL 184, 1261A; Aliulphe de Tournai, De exposition Novi Testamenti, PL 79, 1193A. I am indebted to Spanneut for these references.

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adversary, some from our neighbors’.36 Patience then can encompass all of life: what God allows, the devil afflicts, and what occurs in the Christian community. In some sense, it resembles an embrace of divine providence in all its facets and resembles stoic teaching. Carole Straw writes, ‘Gregory shares the Stoic conviction that providence allows nothing disordered or random in the universe; everything is rational and purposeful’.37 This specification of the object of patience implies that if a person embraces life with all its contours this is a type of ‘white martyrdom’. It should be noted that Gregory’s forerunners who wrote that patience can help make a ‘white martyr’ often listed a whole host of virtues that contributed to his/her formation as a martyr. For example, Commodianus writes, ‘there are many a martyr who are bloodless, not to desire another’s possessions … to hold one’s tongue, you ought to be humble; not willingly to use force, nor to retaliate, you will be patient in your heart, understand that you are a martyr’.38 Patience, for him, along with a host of other Christian practices forms a martyr. For Gregory, however, simply guarding patience in one’s heart leads to martyrdom, which reveals a universal aspect of this virtue, which will be discussed below. Gregory is unique in his formulation that patience alone makes a martyr and that its object is universal. John Cassian, however, makes a similar statement so it will be important to differentiate their respective formulations. John writes, ‘The patience (patientia) and strictness (districtio) with which the former [cenobitics] remain so devotedly in their profession, once they have taken it up, never fulfilling their own desires, crucifies them daily to this world and makes living martyrs of them’.39 Here, Cassian is distinguishing between cenobitic monks and sarabite ones, i.e., those who live as renegade monks. Through patience and strictness (districtio), the cenobites can live a ‘white martyrdom’ by sacrificing their will to community. Cassian qualifies that patience and persistence can lead to a ‘white martyrdom’, not just patience alone, as Gregory does. Further, for Cassian, the object of patience is the monastic community. In fact, Cassian emphasizes that a monastic community or troublesome people cultivate the virtue of patience the best.40 The object of patience for Cassian 36 Gregory, Hev. 2.35.9.231: tribus modis uirtus patientiae exerceri solet. Alia namque sunt quae a Deo, alia quae ab antiquo aduersario, alia quae a proximo sustinemus. 37 C. Straw, ‘Gregory’s Moral Theology’ (2013), 179. 38 Commodianus, Inst. 2.3.14-5: Multa sunt martyria, quae sunt sine sanguine fuso. Alienum non cupire, uelle martyrii habere, linguam refrenare, humilem te reddere debes, vim ultro non facere nec factam reddere contra, mens patiens fueris: intellege martyrem esse. 39 John Cassian, Col. 18.7.24, ed. M. Petschenig, CSEL 13 (2004); the translation is from John Cassian, The Conferences, trans. Boniface Ramsey (Mahwah, 1997), 639. 40 Cassian, Inst. 6.3; 8.18.2, 9.7; Col. 18.13.1; 19.11.2. See M. Spanneut, ‘Patience’, in DS, 450; Another distinction between Cassian and Gregory’s understanding of patience is that humility, for Cassian, is the source for patience whereas for Gregory patience grounds the virtues, see M. Spanneut, ‘Geduld’ (1976), 289.

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does not include the reproaches of God and trials from the devil as it does for Gregory. For Cassian, only the monk can achieve white martyrdom; for Gregory any Christian can become a white martyr. Therefore, Gregory introduced a development to the Western reflection on patience when he said that guarding patience can form a martyr. Implications of Gregory’s link between patience and white martyrdom What does the connection between patience and martyrdom mean for patience? In other words, Gregory equates the ‘white martyr’ with a patient person; therefore, what does this link connote for patience? How does martyrdom color or shade his understanding of patience? Martyrdom, of course, is multivalent and implies many ideas, suffering, witness, election, etc. What does it connote in this specific homily? Soon after articulating that patience alone makes a ‘white martyr’, Gregory illustrates this connection through a biographical account of Abbot Stephen of the city of Rieti. This brief narrative reveals what it means to have a patient ‘white martyr’. Abbot Stephen is described as a ‘a very holy man (vir valde sanctus), outstanding in patience (patientia)’.41 Throughout his life, ‘the virtue of patience had increased mightily in him’ especially while bearing wrongs from others.42 Eventually, he won the crown of patientia and was venerated as a martyr. The brief account of Stephen demonstrates that patience can lead a Christian disciple to great levels of holiness. Previous authors held this position as well. Tertullian, Cyprian, Lactantius claimed that patientia was the highest virtue, as mentioned above; therefore it could led to great levels of holiness.43 Gregory transcribes this high status of patientia into a new key that of the culture and language of the 6th century: patientia is now the road to ‘white martyrdom’, not just to holiness. It should be mentioned, however, that Gregory not only translates this idea, but also makes an innovation. Previous authors, as mentioned, spoke about how ‘red martyrs’ exhibited and practiced patience within their actual martyrdoms, but now practicing patientia alone can form a ‘white martyr’, which reveals Gregory’s high regard for this virtue. Not only does martyrdom imply holiness, but also witness. Many people acknowledged the witness of abbot Stephen. When the holy Abbot was about to die, ‘many people came together to commend their souls to so holy a soul passing from this world’.44 Like the martyrs of old, people sought the intercession 41 42 43 44

Gregory, Hev. 2.35.8.195: Vir valde sanctus patientiae virtute singularis. Ibid. 2.35.8.202: Virtus tamen patientiae in eo uehementer excreuerat. Lactantius, Inst. 6.18.6. Gregory, Hev. 2.35.8.328: Convenerunt multi, ut tam sanctae.

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of this holy soul. Further, after his departure, Gregory attests that ‘there are many still with us who knew him and speak of his life and death’.45 It is significant that martyrdom in one’s heart [mens] can become so public. Finally, martyrdom also implies suffering. Moving from the example of Stephen to the Apostle John, the prototype of the white martyrs, Gregory writes, ‘John did not end his life in martyrdom, yet was a martyr, because he sustained in his heart the suffering he did not undergo in his body’.46 John the apostle was a martyr who sustained ‘suffering in his heart’. Other Christians, Gregory explains, can follow John’s example by ‘sustaining patience’. To amplify the characteristic of suffering, Gregory imbues sermon 35 with military language and metaphors, which often narrate suffering and secret battles. George Demacopoulos explains that a common desert theme found in the writings of Gregory is ‘the internalization of the spiritual battle’.47 Fighting and battle imagery abound in his discussion on patience. The patient person is the victor48 and is engaged in bellum.49 He must avoid the ‘our cunning opponent (adversarius) stirs up war (bellum)’.50 These words and metaphors connote struggle, difficulty and suffering. Scholars have proposed various reasons for the inclusion of so much military language and metaphors in the Gregorian corpus as a whole, such as Gregory’s own experience of invading hordes and stoic tropes.51 Their ubiquity, however, also connotes a subjective dimension, i.e., it displays the rigor and spiritual energy, which Gregory believed, the Christian must use to remain patient. Conclusion Overall, this brief study has attempted to demonstrate that Gregory contributed to the western reflection on patience, since he offered a new theoretical summation of the relationship between patience and the virtues, which summarized the thought of his predecessors well. Further, he articulated a new relationship between patience and ‘white martyrdom’. The person who embraces patiently 45

Ibid. 2.35.8.197: Et supersunt multi qui illum nouerunt, eius que uel uitam uel obitum narrant. Ibid. 2.35.7.188; Iohannes namque nequaquam per martyrium uitam finiuit, sed tamen martyr exstitit, quia passionem quam non suscepit in corpore, seruauit in mente. 47 George Demacopoulos, Gregory the Great: Ascetic, Pastor, and First Man of Rome (Notre Dame, 2015), 23. 48 Gregory, Hev. 2.35.6.155. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid. 35.6.146: Callidus namque adversarius bellum contra duos movet, unum videlict inflammans ut contumelias prior inferat, alterum vero provocans ut contumelias laesus reddat. 51 Dagens attributes this theme to the various invading armies during Gregory’s life time, Claude Dagens, Saint Grégoire le Grand: culture et expérience chrétiennes (Paris, 1977), 190; Carole Straw, ‘Gregory and Tradition: The Example of Compassion’, in Gregorio Magno e le origini dell’Europa, ed. Claudio Leonardi (Firenze, 2006), 23-62, 30. 46

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providence in all its forms achieves a type of white martyrdom, which signifies witness, holiness of life, and suffering. Previous authors did not attach these characteristics to patience so explicitly. In the past, scholars accused Gregory of being unsystematic, but his patience theory is a quite succinct.52 Patience grounds all the virtues (statement one) and embraces all aspects of divine providence (statement two). In this sense, it encapsulates completely both the active and passive forms of Christian life, which is why the patient person becomes akin to a white martyr: the model saint. Perhaps, this study could aid Gregorian scholars who want to have a better understanding of this axial Gregorian virtue and/or medievalists, who are interested in the sources of respective authors.

52 For a recent review of authors who accused Gregory of unsystematic writing, see G. Demacopoulos, Gregory the Great (2015), 7.

Germanic Identities in the Gregorian Dialogues Pere MAYMÓ I CAPDEVILA, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

ABSTRACT Gregory the Great reached the pontificate when Italy was divided in two different opposed dominions – imperial and barbarian – constantly devastated by a cruel war. This geographical fragmentation and the resulting military struggles had serious consequences on the Italic society, where Romans, Byzantines and Germanics had to coexist despite their differences; and we may find traces of such a conflict in the writings of our pontiff. The Dialogorum patrum Italicorum libri IV, a hagiographical work composed in 593-594 when king Agilulf was besieging Rome, reflect this political division and provide us with information of its society, where population with varied ethnic and cultural origins lives forcibly together; but it also becomes a reinterpretation under Gregorian perspective that establishes categories for every role of the play according to his identity and personality. Thus, Germanic individuals – and peoples – perform a topic according to classic and Christian literary models according to which they become the necessary – and evil – counterpart of the Roman uiri Dei who are the real protagonists of the Gregorian accounts. It is my intention to clarify the pontiff’s regard about the Barbarians through the analysis of the Dialogi in their historical, literary and hagiographical context in order to understand the real extent of Gregory’s perception of his own reality.

Sixth-century Italy1 was quite a convulse place to live. Justinian’s conquest of the Peninsula in 553 had restored imperial rule on a devastated land for some fifteen years after half a century of Ostrogothic reign; then, the Lombard invasion split the territory in a mosaic of opposed dominions which caused serious problems to the coexistence of Romans and Germanics. That was the situation2 1 This study is based on research developed within the GRAT (Grup de Recerques en Antiguitat Tardana) and has been carried out with the help of the Research Projects HAR2016-74981-P and 2017SGR-211. 2 About the harsh conditions in Italy after the Gothic War and the Lombard invasion, see Ernst Stein, Histoire du Bas-Empire, II. De la disparition de l’Empire d’Occident à la mort de Justinien (476-565) (Amsterdam, 19682) [trad. J.R. Palanque]), 612-22; Peter Llewellyn, Rome in the Dark Ages (London, 1971), 78-87; Thomas S. Brown, Gentlemen and Officers: Imperial Administration and Aristocratic Power in Byzantine Italy (AD 554-800) (Rome, 1984), 39-48; Lellia Cracco Ruggini, Economia e società nell’Italia annonaria. Rapporti fra agricoltura e commercio dal IV al VI secolo d.C., Munera 2 (Bari, 19952), 445-56 and 478-89; Enrico Zanini, Le Italie bizantine. Territorio, insediamenti ed economia nella provincia bizantina d’Italia (VI-VIII secolo), Munera 10 (Bari, 1998), 33-76; Peter J. Heather, The Goths (Oxford, Malden, MA, 19982), 259-71.

Studia Patristica CXXX, 113-122. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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when Gregory the Great came to the throne of Peter; and he described it from his particular point of view throughout his writings, where political and social division also had a reflection in literary topics. In this article, I will aim to clarify the pontiff’s consideration about the Germanics from the analysis of the Dialogues and the help of fundamental historical and sociological studies.3 The Dialogorum patrum Italicorum libri IV were composed in 593-594, just when king Agilulf was besieging Rome. It is obvious that Gregory could not have a positive approach to Germanic peoples in that very moment; furthermore, many Italics should remember quite well the Gothic War that ravaged their country. For that reason, it seems clear that their regard towards the ‘Barbarians’ could not be the best. The Dialogues provide us with information of this society, where population with varied ethnic and cultural origins lives forcibly together in peace or in conflict; but it also becomes a reinterpretation in the light of the Gregorian thought that establish categories for every role of the play according to his identity and personality. Nevertheless, the categorization of characters is not as rigid not to allow exceptions, and Gregory understands well that good people may be found elsewhere despite of their birth, and despite of his own prejudices too. The Dialogues are a singular book; not only because of its hagiographical genre or its dialogic structure, but also because of its intimate objective: to prove the presence of the saints in Italy at the end of the sixth century in order to make clear that God kept watching over the Italic people. And who are that people? To a wide extent, this community includes all catholic Christians; in particular, it represents orthodox population under imperial rule in Italy, mostly of Italic origin and some few Easterners;4 so, Barbarians become the foreign elements who raise as a necessary counterpart of the Roman characters. Gregory describes an ideal society in which Latins face Germanics in a spiritual struggle for supremacy, and even if this description is partial and does not correspond with reality, the construction of an identity necessarily requires another one, alien and opposed. 3 Three historical monographies provide us with information and reflections about this particular point: André Guillou, Régionalisme et indépendance dans l’Empire byzantin au VIIe siècle. L’exemple de l’Exarchat et de la Pentapole d’Italie, Studi Storici 75-6 (Rome, 1969); T.S. Brown, Gentlemen and Officers (1984); Patrick Amory, People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489-554, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought 33 (Cambridge, 1997). From a sociological point of view: Giorgio Cracco, ‘Uomini di Dio e uomini di Chiesa nell’alto Medioevo (per una interpretazione dei Dialoghi di Gregorio Magno)’, Ricerche di Storia Sociale e Religiosa 12 (1977), 163-202; Alessandro Vitale Brovarone, ‘Latini e Germani nei Dialoghi di Gregorio Magno’, in Atti del 6º Congresso internazionale di studi sull’alto medioevo (Milano, 21-25 ottobre 1978) (Spoleto, 1980), II 717-26. 4 Only two individuals cited in the Dialogues belong to an Eastern ethnic group: a Jew – who did not necessarily have to come from the East – and a Syrian. See respectively Gregory the Great, Dial. 3, 7, 3-10 and 3, 14, 1-14 (Dialogorum libri IV [books I-III], ed. Adalbert De Vogüé, SC 260 [Paris, 1979], 280-4 and 302-14).

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From about 300 characters documented in the Dialogues, only 23 are Barbarians,5 not a high percentage indeed. In this counting, one may use just two criteria: onomastics6 – complex and unreliable as it is – and the categorization established by the Pope when he outlines every individual. Thus, the bulk of the cited characters are Italics, and they present a varied sort of professions: we may find clergymen – bishops, priests, monks or hermits – and laymen – aristocrats, magistrates, soldiers, artisans or simply common people –, covering the whole range of social strata. On the contrary, Germanics belong to a sole group: the military one, with a single exception which shall be considered later. There is another opposition between both ethnic groups: their sphere of action.7 While Latins appear in every scenery – urban or rural –, Germanics come out only in the countryside, being excluded from the city for it is a space reserved for Romanitas. Furthermore, as it is logical, Roman characters are well described and developed – especially the uiri Dei, the real protagonists of the Gregorian books – whereas Barbarians consist in simple, plain, supporting actors of the moralizing stories which confirm divine intervention and assign religion a leading role in Italic society. All these characteristics define a topic evil Germanic8, whose function – apart from some singular cases– is to justify the holy men’s power, granted by God 5 In Byzantine Italy, the number of Germanics does not seem to have been very high: T.S. Brown, Gentlemen and Officers (1984), 75; P. Amory, People and Identity (1997), 40-1; P.J. Heather, The Goths (19982), 73-4, 236-7 and 272-6; Nicoletta Francovich Onesti, I nomi dell’ostrogoti (Florence, 2007), 7-8. See the following note. 6 The first study concerning the number of Germanics in Ostrogothic and Byzantine Italy is A. Guillou, Régionalisme et indépendance (1969), 78-80, who estimates the Goths documented before the creation of the Exarchate of Ravenna in 584 in 14%, a percentage that drops to 7% after this date. Contra T.S. Brown, Gentlemen and Officers (1984), 67-77, stressing on the weak certainty of this calculation for it relies only on onomastics. Despite this weakness, onomastics are usually the only data we dispose of to infer the ethnicity of individuals, and so P. Amory, People and Identity (1997), 86-9, 463-85, provides analytical tables of characters with a sure or probable Gothic – and Germanic – origo, also those with a double name – Germanic and Latin –; cf. N. Francovich Onesti, I nomi (2007), 8-9 and 21-3, including mixed marriages. See the previous note. 7 A. Vitale Brovarone, ‘Latini e Germani’ (1980), 718-9. See also Giorgio Cracco, ‘Chiesa e Cristianità rurale nell’Italia di Gregorio Magno’, in Vito Fumagalli and Gabriella Rossetti Pepe (eds), Medioevo rurale. Sulle tracce della civiltà contadina, Problemi e Prospettive. Serie di Storia (Bologna, 1980), 361-79. 8 Germanics characters always receive a negative consideration, as attested in the few references to barbarus found in the Dialogues: Gregory the Great, Dial. 3, 1, 3 (SC 260, 258); 3, 6, 2 (SC 260, 278); 3, 8, 2 (SC 260, 286); 3, 26, 2 (SC 260, 366); 4, 27, 12 (Dialogorum libri IV [book IV], ed. Adalbert De Vogüé, SC 265 [Paris, 1980], 94). A. Vitale Brovarone, ‘Latini e Germani’ (1980), 717-8 and 722, n. 36-9; cf. Walter Pohl, ‘Gregorio Magno e i barbari’, in Claudio Leonardi, Gregorio Magno e l’origini dell’Europa. Atti del Convegno internazionale (Firenze, 13-17 maggio 2006), Millennio Medievale 100, Strumenti e Studi n.s. 37 (Florence, 2014), 171-80, 172. Adalbert De Vogüé, ‘Introduction’, in Dialogorum libri IV, ed. Adalbert De Vogüé, SC 251 (Paris, 1978), 34-6 and n. 33, also points the scarce use of Germanic words – actually three:

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himself. But we can distinguish a further difference among these Barbarians although their basic description; first, their belonging to a specific Germanic people. We come across twelve Ostrogoths, four Lombards, three Visigoths, two Vandals, one Frank and a certain Bulgar,9 spatharius of Narses, credited to be Bulgarian. This distribution seems quite logical if we take into account that many of the passages are placed during the long Gothic War or in the first moments of the Lombard invasion; and thus, Ostrogoths and Lombards stand as the main opponents to the Italic subjects of the Eastern Roman Empire. Both peoples have devastated Italy, and both receive the same epithets of ferocitas, crudelitas or perfidia as the barbaric enemies usually do; but the Ostrogoths have vanished and the Lombards are the actual foe, and this makes a relevant difference: only Gothic individuals deserve special esteem due to their attitude towards Catholic Christianity. Concerning the Ostrogothic characters,10 apart from a simple mention of Theodoric the Great,11 there is an outstanding figure who dominates the entire group: Totila,12 the king that lead the resistance of his people before the imperial troops and became a paradigm of savage cruelty. He is the only one to be merula, flasco and uanga – in his hagiographical work; and this would be strange in a late Latin plenty of barbaric expressions so one may think that Gregory avoids them intentionally due to his own sentiment of Romanitas. See note 46. 9 Bulgar will not be taken into account because he fights on the Roman side and therefore he is not an opponent of the Empire; besides, he only performs a secondary role in the story. Gregory the Great, Dial. 4, 27, 12 (SC 265, 94). 10 Apart from the singular cases specified in notes 11 to 23, there are three episodes in which generic Goths face the virtue of the uiri Dei: Gregory the Great, Dial. 1, 10, 11-5 (SC 260, 102-6; Fortunatus of Todi); 3, 8, 1-2 (SC 260, 284-6; Constantius of Aquino); 3, 18, 1-2 (SC 260, 344; monk Benedict of Campania). See A. Vitale Brovarone, ‘Latini e Germani’ (1980), 723 and n. 41-9; Salvatore Pricoco and Manlio Simonetti, Gregorio Magno. Storie di santi e di diavoli, I (Rome, 2005), xxxix-xl. About the construction of a ‘Gothic topic’ in the Dialogues, see Corinna Bottiglieri, ‘Gregorio Magno e la memoria dei regni dei Vandali e degli Ostrogoti’, in Claudio Azzara (ed.), Gregorio Magno, l’Impero e i «regna». Atti dell’Incontro Internazionale di Studio dell’Università di Salerno (Fisciano, 30 settembre-1 ottobre 2004), Archivum Gregorianum 14 (Florence, 2008), 81-99, 89-99. Cf. P. Amory, People and Identity (1997), 13-85; P.J. Heather, The Goths (19982), 299-321. 11 The famous king Theodoric deserves the consideration of haereticus rex because of his defence of Arianism and the imprisonment and death of Pope John I and patricii Simmachus and Boethius: Gregory the Great, Dial. 4, 31, 2-4 (SC 260, 104-6). See also Jacques Le Goff, La naissance du purgatoire, Histoire et Mémoire 20 (Paris, 1981), 130-1; C. Bottiglieri, ‘Gregorio Magno’ (2008), 90 and 98-9. 12 A. Vitale Brovarone, ‘Latini e Germani’ (1980), 724 and n. 58, regards Totila as a rich character who reaches a folkloric category; this author is followed by S. Pricoco and M. Simonetti, Gregorio Magno, I (2005), 332-3, and C. Bottiglieri, ‘Gregorio Magno’ (2008), 90-3. The Gothic king also serves as a dating element with the specific expression Totilae temporibus: Gregory the Great, Dial. 1, 2, 1 (SC 260, 24); 3, 13, 1 (SC 260, 298); 3, 18, 2 (SC 260, 344). However, the Pope depicts Totila in an evil way – perfidus; crudelitatis inmanissimae uesania succensus; crudelissimus; furoris insania; insatiabilis furor – although the king may change his mind due to the uirtutes and signa manifested by Benedict.

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worthy of some personality and merits to participate in several episodes, always confronted to well-known holy men. Totila demonstrated his crudelitas at the conquest of Perugia, when he tortured and beheaded its bishop, Herculanus13 – by means of an anonymous comes Gothorum, however. But he also admired the sainthood of Cerbonius of Populonia14 – when a wild bear bent its neck obediently instead of slaughtering him – Fulgentius of Otricoli15 – who was protected from a hard rain that dragged his captors away – Sabinus of Canosa16 – whose prophetic talent was appreciated – and especially that of Benedict of Nursia, the most important uir Dei in the Gregorian Dialogues, whom Totila visited.17 At first time, the king conceived of a trick:18 he made his spatharius Riggo dress in royal garments pretending to be him, and he also sent three comites – Vult, Rodericus and Blidin – as a royal retinue to deceive the abbot; but he easily realized the truth and astonished the Goths with his wisdom. Once informed, Totila himself came to Benedict and knelt before him just to receive a bitter prophecy:19 as a reward for his many misdeeds, he would reign for nine years and he would die in the tenth after crossing the sea. It seems that the king behaved in a better way from that day on, although the prophecy accomplished in any case, showing the divine power of the holy man. Apart from these individuals, there are still other Ostrogothic characters worth to be mentioned, most of them living in Totilae temporibus. Darida,20 a Gothorum dux who stole the horse of Libertinus, praepositus of the monastery of Fundi, and whose mounted troops could not cross the river Volturnus until they returned the horse to the prior. Or Zalla,21 a Gothus arianus eager to torture a peasant whose arms were tied; Benedict untied his bindings and the Barbarian admitted godly intervention. All these examples depict a topic portray of Germanics – Ostrogoths, in this case – always subjected to the superior rule of Christianity, sufficiently proved by miracles, but two exceptions give us a 13

Gregory the Great, Dial. 3, 13, 1-4 (SC 260, 298-302). Ibid. 3, 11, 1-3 (SC 260, 292-4). 15 Ibid. 3, 12, 1-4 (SC 260, 296-8). 16 Ibid. 3, 5, 1-2 (SC 260, 272-4). See notes 19 and 25. 17 About this visit, that probably took place in 546, see Anscari M. Mundó i Marcet, ‘Sur la date de la visite de Totila à saint Benoit’, Revue Bénédictine 59 (1949), 203-6. 18 Gregory the Great, Dial. 2, 14, 1-2 (SC 260, 180-2). S. Pricoco and M. Simonetti, Gregorio Magno, I (2005), 333-4, with some interesting reflections. 19 Gregory the Great, Dial. 2, 15, 1-2 (SC 260, 182-4). Just after the prophecy about Totila, talking to Sabinus, Benedict gave another prediction: that Rome would be destroyed by natural disasters, not by the barbarians, id., Dial. 2, 15, 3 (SC 260, 184). Benedict was a close friend of Sabinus of Canosa with whom he shared the gift of prophecy: Joan M. Petersen, The Dialogues of Gregory the Great in their Late Antique Cultural Background, Studies and Texts 69 (Toronto, 1984), 45-8; see also notes 16 and 25. 20 Gregory the Great, Dial. 1, 2, 2-3 (SC 260, 24-6). C. Bottiglieri, ‘Gregorio Magno’ (2008), 94. 21 Gregory the Great, Dial. 2, 31, 1-4 (SC 260, 222-6). C. Bottiglieri, ‘Gregorio Magno’ (2008), 94-5. 14

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different perspective. A pair of Goths22 travelling to Ravenna –maybe in peaceful times – received an unexpected gift from Bonifatius of Ferento: a wooden flask of wine that never gets empty – certainly, a good gift. Again, Benedict appears in the story. He accepted – presumably in his own monastic community – a Gothus pauper spiritu23 who had come willingly to him ad conuersionem. When he assigned him a hoe to farm, the Goth lost the metallic part of the tool in a nearby lake; ashamed, he ran to meet Benedict and the saint made the iron piece emerge from the bottom of the lake admonishing the Goth not to worry about and keep working. Both cases are examples of social integration through religion; both represent evidence of a possible understanding between Romans and Germanics. One may say that, even in the darkest moments, Gregory thinks that there is a shadow of hope in conciliating both peoples. And we also find Lombards.24 It must be remembered that they were the actual enemy of the Empire in Italy, and that king Agilulf besieged Rome when the Dialogues were composed; moreover, their arrival was predicted by two holy men according to Gregory’s accounts.25 Thus, as I already mentioned, Lombards could not have the same consideration as other Germanic peoples do; even so, their presence is less relevant although sometimes brutal. This is the case of the beheading of the abbot Suranus and of an unknown deacon from Marsi – both26 because of the Barbarian savagery and greed –, the hanging of two monks27 in Valeria, the forty peasants28 executed when they denied eating 22 Gregory the Great, Dial. 1, 9, 14 (SC 260, 88). A. Vitale Brovarone, ‘Latini e Germani’ (1980), 724-5, understands this episode as a jolly one (‘non mi pare privo di simpatia’), especially the sentence biberunt ut Gothi, which seems to humanize the Barbarians. See also C. Bottiglieri, ‘Gregorio Magno’ (2008), 96. 23 Gregory the Great, Dial. 2, 6, 1-2 (SC 260, 154-6). It is quite clear that this Gothus was part of Benedict’s community: both his humble attitude and the fact that he came ad conuersionem seem to confirm this point. C. Bottiglieri, ‘Gregorio Magno’ (2008), 95-6. On his side, S. Pricoco and M. Simonetti, Gregorio Magno, I (2005), 321, offer a precedent for this case, a certain Germanic called Bonosus who lived forty years as a monk in the monastery of Severinus of Noricum: Eugippius, Comm. de uita Seuer. 35 (Commemoratorium de uita sancti Seuerini, ed. Philippe Régerat, SC 374 [Paris, 1991], 264-6). 24 On the presence of the Lombards in the Dialogues, see A. Vitale Brovarone, ‘Latini e Germani’ (1980), 725 and n. 65; S. Pricoco and M. Simonetti, Gregorio Magno, I (2005), xl-xli; Walter Pohl, ‘Gregorio Magno e il regno dei longobardi’, in Claudio Azzara (ed.), Gregorio Magno, l’Impero e i «regna». Atti dell’Incontro internazionale di studio dell’Università di Salerno (Fisciano, 30 settembre-1 ottobre 2004), Archivum Gregorianum 14 (Florence, 2008), 15-28; and id., ‘Gregorio Magno’ (2014), 173 and 175, notes that all the Barbarians cited in Gregory’s letters are Lombards, but instead we find a great variety in the Dialogues. 25 Benedict predicts the destruction of his monastery at Mount Cassino and Redemptus of Ferentum – even dead! – the coming of a great evil associated with the Lombards: Gregory the Great, Dial. 2, 17, 1-2 (SC 260, 192); 3, 38, 2-3 (SC 260, 428-30). 26 See respectively: Gregory the Great, Dial. 4, 23, 1-2 (SC 265, 78-80); 4, 24, 1-3 (SC 265, 80-82). 27 Ibid. 4, 22, 1-2 (SC 265, 78). 28 Ibid. 3, 27 (SC 260, 372-4). On these specific pagan Lombard rites, see Raoul Manselli, ‘Gregorio Magno e due riti pagani dei Longobardi’, in Studi storici in onore di O. Bertolini

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meat from a heathen sacrifice, or a crowd of captives29 assassinated after refusing to adore a goat’s head: those were actions undertaken by anonymous, generic Lombards, and clearly show the perception of this nefandissima gens30 transmitted by the Dialogues. Nonetheless, they can recognize divine power. Their king Autharit31 was at the church of Saint Zeno in Verona together with comes Pronulfus when an inundation arrives to the temple submerging the building without flooding it. Crudelissimus dux Gumarit32 failed in preventing that the corpse of Cerbonius of Populonia arrived at the tomb that the bishop himself had determined. A certain Lombard33 – unnamed, but famous among his own people – tried to steal some little vases, the only property of uenerabilis uir Menas, but an evil spirit possessed him until he entered humbly the hermit’s cell. Some Barbarians were to slaughter the disciples of Equitius,34 hidden in the chapel of Saint Lawrence beside the tomb of the holy man, when they got possessed by evil spirits that sent them away. Other Germanic raiders got astonished by Sanctulus of Nursia,35 who had exchanged his life for that of a deacon and paralysed the arm with the sword that was about to decapitate him with his prayers. A Lombard Arian priest36 arrived to Spoleto, where he desired to celebrate a mass in the Catholic church of Saint Paul, but, when he entered the building, all the candles suddenly lighted up while he got blind. And we see how the actual foes of Rome are also stricken by the uirtus – and indeed the potentia – of Italic holy men. Finally, we come to a heterogeneous group of varied Germanics. The Frank Buccellinus37 – probably a military chief of the army that invaded Italy at the end of the Gothic War – believed a rumour which related to the riches of Libertinus and assaulted him in his oratory; the prayers of the famulus Dei blinded the Frankish soldiers, who abandoned the sacred place with no booty at all. A rex Wandalorum and his son-in-law – none of them mentioned by name – had an important role in the – erroneous and confusing – episode of Paulinus (Pisa, 1972), I 435-40; Stefano Gasparri, La cultura tradizionale dei longobardi. Struttura tribale e resistenze pagane (Spoleto, 1983), 45-51. 29 Gregory the Great, Dial. 3, 28 (SC 260, 374-6). See bibliography in previous note. 30 About the negative perception of the Lombards, see Cristina Ricci, ‘«Langobardorum episcopus»? I longobardi nell’esperienza pastorale di Gregorio Magno’, in Marcello Rotili (ed.), Tardo antico e alto Medioevo: filologia, storia, archeologia, arte, Giornate di Studio sull’età Romanobarbarica (Napoli, 2009), 63-8, 63-4. Cf. W. Pohl, ‘Gregorio Magno’ (2008), 18-9 and 22. 31 Gregory the Great, Dial. 3, 19, 1-5 (SC 260, 346-50). 32 Ibid. 3, 11, 4-6 (SC 260, 294-6). Paolo Conte, ‘Osservazioni sulla leggenda di san Cerbonio, vescovo di Populonia ( 575)’, Aeuum 52 (1978), 235-60. 33 Gregory the Great, Dial. 3, 26, 1-2 (SC 260, 366). 34 Ibid. 1, 4, 21 (SC 260, 56-8). 35 Ibid. 3, 37, 2-4 and 10-7 (SC 260, 412-4 and 418-20). Sanctulus also made a broken press pour litres of oil and fed crowds from a single piece of bread. 36 Ibid. 3, 29, 1-4 (SC 260, 376-8). 37 Ibid. 1, 2, 4 (SC 260, 26).

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of Nola38 and his captivity in Africa. According to Gregory, the Vandals sacked the Campanian city and took many prisoners – among them the same bishop – back to their reign; there, Paulinus saved the son of a widow from slavery by exchanging himself for the boy and served as a gardener for some time before his prophetic talent allowed him to return home with his fellow citizens. Actually, Paulinus39 was dead when the Vandals attacked Nola, but the Visigoths plundered the city soon after the fall of Rome in 410 and we know that the bishop suffered the sack of Alaric’s troops. Then, this account is historically false; what Gregory did was to create a narrative mixing reality and legend although we do not know for sure the sources he used. Moreover, we find a last mention of these Barbarians when the Pope describes the persecution against some African bishops40 exiled at Constantinople whom the Vandals cut their tongue but they continued speaking. To conclude, a story very well known to Gregory: that of Hermenegild,41 prince of the Visigoths, who had unsuccessfully rebelled against his father, the king Leovigild, and was therefore executed. It would have been another ‘simple’ rebellion if Hermenegild had not hoisted the flag of Catholicism; then, his death awarded him the condition of martyr – at least in the Pope’s opinion – for other chroniclers42 such as John of Biclarum or Gregory of Tours consider him merely a usurper. But in the eyes of Gregory, the prince – whom the Pope considered rex and Deo deditus – had provided the necessary step forward towards orthodoxy, and it convinced his Arian father to charge Leander of Seville

38

Ibid. 3, 1, 1-10 (SC 260, 256-66). Paulinus died in 431, so he could not be present when the Vandals of Genseric sacked his city in 455; but Augustine of Hippo, De ciu. Dei 1, 10 (ed. Bernard Dombart and Alphons Kalb, CChr.SL 47 [Turnhout, 1955], 23) informs us that he was taken prisoner by the Barbarians soon after his episcopal election, which coincides with the Visigothic sack of Rome in 410. Concerning the anecdote of him serving as a gardener, we may find a possible origin in Paulinus’s own letters – where he describes his gardening activity – or even the hagiographical tale of Maurilius of Angers: Paulinus of Nola, Ep. 5, 15-6 (ed. Wilhelm von Hartel, CSEL 29 [Wien, 1894], 71); Vita Maurili 16, 79-80 (ed. Bruno Krusch, MGH aa 4, 2 [Berlin, 1885], 93). See also Adalbert De Vogüé, ‘Notes complémentaires’, in Dialogorum libri IV, ed. Adalbert De Vogüé, SC 260 (Paris, 1979), 442-3; Joan M. Petersen, ‘The Garden of Felix: the Literary Connection between Gregory the Great and Paulinus of Nola’, Studia Monastica 26 (1984), 215-30; Salvatore Pricoco and Manlio Simonetti, Gregorio Magno. Storie di santi e di diavoli, II (Rome, 2006), 364-69; C. Bottiglieri, ‘Gregorio Magno’ (2008), 85-6 40 Gregory the Great, Dial. 3, 32, 3 (SC 260, 392). C. Bottiglieri, ‘Gregorio Magno’ (2008), 86-7. 41 Gregory the Great, Dial. 3, 31, 1-8 (SC 260, 384-90). José Vilella Masana, ‘Gregorio Magno e Hispania’, in Gregorio Magno e il suo tempo. XIX Incontro di studiosi dell’Antichità cristiana (Roma, 9-12 maggio 1990), I, Studia Ephemeridis Augustinianum 33 (Rome, 1991), 167-86, 16974; Walter Pohl, ‘Gregorio Magno’ (2014), 173. 42 John of Biclarum, Cont. Vict. Tonn. a. 579 and 582 (Continuatio Victoris Tonnennensis, ed. Theodor Mommsen, MGH aa 11 [Berlin, 1894], 215-6). Gregory of Tours, Hist. libri X 6, 43 (Historiarum libri X, ed. Bruno Krusch and Wilhelm Levison, MGH aa 11 [Hannover, 1951], 314-6). 39

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with the mission of making his youngest son Recared a second Hermenegild. Thus, the whole people of the Visigoths embraced definitely the true faith thanks to the sacrifice of a single man. As we have seen, Germanics are the necessary counterpart to Romans in the Dialogues. Their role consists in opposing worldly resistance to saintly superiority, and that is logical if we think of the war that confronted both sides, a war in which Italics usually took the brunt of it. Gregory chose a field favourable to his interests: first, to comfort his own Catholic community through pointing out the active, constant intervention of God in Italy; second, to give hope for peace by extending this community to the enemies of the Empire. The two Goths travelling to Ravenna, the Gothus pauper, the rebel Visigothic prince, or even the many Barbarians who feared the effects of divine virtue, all these quoted examples provide us with the key to social integration of Germanics through religion. Indeed, religion was the easiest way to become part of the Roman community, and many historical documents – such as private epistles or legal donations – confirm this point. Gregory was aware of this and exploited all the possibilities to reach this goal, even when he knew well that his desires – as well as the society he described – are more ideal than real. We may understand in this sense the sending of the Dialogues to Theodelinda,43 queen of the Lombards, for she was his best interlocutor in front of the fierce enemies who were attacking imperial Italy, especially if she intervened before her husband king Agilulf. Also, the Pope attempted to make her resign the Tricapitoline schism and embrace the catholic faith; this gift – together with a collection of ampullae44 – seems to be used as a way to reach her heart and propitiate reconciliation between Germanics and Romans through 43 Paul the Deacon, Hist. Lang. 4, 5 (Historia Langobardorum, ed. Ludwig Bethmann and Georg Waitz, MGH srl [Hannover, 1878], 117); we should place this sending in an early date, about 594: Marc Reydellet, La royauté dans la littérature latine de Sidoine Apollinaire à Isidore de Séville, Bibliothèque de l’École Française à Rome 243 (Rome, 1981), 449, 452-3, n. 37, and 484; J.M. Petersen, The Dialogues (1984), 18 and n. 39. Modern historiography considers that the Dialogues were written partially in a political key: Claude Dagens, Saint Grégoire le Grand. Culture et expérience chrétiens (Paris, 1977), 228-30; J. Vilella Masana, ‘Gregorio Magno’ (1991), 170-1; S. Pricoco and M. Simonetti, Gregorio Magno, I (2005), lxvii. 44 The pious queen had a strong devotion for the saints as her large collection of 65 ampullae containing sacred oil from Roman sanctuaries confirm; partly preserved, they are documented in a notula that specifies its donor: Gregory, bishop of Rome, Not. de olea sanct. mart. 94-101 (Notula de olea sanctorum martyrum, ed. Friedrich Glorie, CChr.SL 175 [Turnhout, 1965], 294-5). On the religious deeds of Theodelinda, see Nicole Herrmann-Mascard, Les reliques des saints. Formation coutumière d’un droit, Société d’Histoire du Droit. Collection d’Histoire Institutionnelle et Sociale 6 (Paris, 1975), 47-8; Conrad Leyser, ‘The Temptations of Cult: Roman Martyr Piety in the Age of Gregory the Great’, Early Medieval Europe 9 (2000), 289-307, 298-9 and 302-3; Felice Bonalumi, Teodelinda. Una regina per l’Europa, Vie della Storia 11 (Cinisello Balsamo, 2006), 162-4 and 239-44; See Pere Maymó i Capdevila, ‘Quando (romani) sanctorum reliquias dant. Las reliquias en la hagiopolítica de Gregorio Magno’, Sacris erudiri 57 (2018), 267-322, 279-81 and 300-1.

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religion.45 In the Dialogues, however, both collectives are clearly different and these two antagonistic social, cultural and religious identities serve to define Gregory’s political ideology, heir of an already vanishing Romanitas.46 This conception results in a ‘marvellous’ perception of reality in which the uiri Dei face the powerful Barbarians with extraordinary bravery to defend their community, an opposition47 that also reveals the ‘national’ character48 of Gregorian hagiography in a period of construction of a new Italic identity.

45

A. Vitale Brovarone, ‘Latini e Germani’ (1980), 726, believes that a reference to the Lombards religious policy in the Dialogues could be a veiled admonition to Theodelinda: Gregory the Great, Dial. 3, 28, 5 (SC 260, 376); cf. Paul the Deacon, Hist. Lang. 4, 8 (ed. Bethmann and Waitz, 118-9). Actually, it has been long discussed the real intention of Gregory towards the royal couple of Pavia: S. Pricoco and M. Simonetti, Gregorio Magno, I (2005), xl. 46 About the Gregorian Romanitas, both in its cultural and political aspects, see C. Dagens, Saint Grégoire (1977), 361-7; François Paschoud, Roma aeterna. Études sur le patriotisme romain dans l’Occident latin a l’époque des grandes invasions, Bibliotheca Helvetica Romana 7 (Rome, 1967), 9-21 and 323-35; M. Reydellet, La royauté (1981), 451-2 and 494-5. 47 We find this topic of the fair opposition of the holy man to the unjust rulers in late antique hagiography, from Athanasius of Alexandria facing Constantine and his sons to Martin of Tours defying Maximus or Severinus of Noricum prophesying Odovacar his death as Benedict would do later with Totila: S. Pricoco and M. Simonetti, Gregorio Magno, I (2005), 335; M. Reydellet, La royauté (1981), 490-2. See also the next note. About the Germanics as the new élite in Italy: P. Llewellyn, Rome (1971), 142-3; T.S. Brown, Gentlemen and Officers (1984), 34-7, 61-2 and 70-7; P. Amory, People and Identity (1997), 43-85. 48 S. Pricoco and M. Simonetti, Gregorio Magno, I (2005), lxvii. On the national character of the hagiography of Theodoret of Cyrus and Gregory of Tours, see respectively: Pierre Canivet, Le monachisme syrien selon Théodoret de Cyr, Théologie Historique 42 (Paris, 1977), 77; G. Cracco, ‘Uomini di Dio’ (1977), 189-90; Robert Godding, ‘Il Liber Vitae Patrum di Gregorio di Tours e l’origine dei Dialogi di Gregorio Magno’, in Gennaro Luongo (ed.), Scrivere di santi. Atti del II convegno di studio dell’Associazione italiana per lo studio della santità, dei culti e dell’agiografia (Napoli, 22-25 ottobre 1997) (Roma, 1998), 107-28, 112.

Blessed be the Sick? Eugenius of Toledo on Suffering, Sin, and Salvation (carm. 13 and 14) Annemarie PILARSKI, Regensburg, Germany

ABSTRACT Understanding the connections between sickness and sin in the course of a cultural development at the end of Late Antiquity, which Peter Brown calls ‘la peccatisation du monde’, is crucial for interpreting literary texts that deal with sickness and originate from the said cultural sphere. Accordingly, these multifaceted interconnections between two seemingly distinct concepts are outlined in order to gain a frame of reference for interpreting Eugenius II of Toledo’s laments over sickness and old age (carm. 13-4). While recent scholarship convincingly demonstrates that carm. 14 serves the didactic purpose of pointing towards spiritual benefits of bodily suffering that help purge the soul from sins, the shorter poem carm. 13 raises some problems regarding its basic intention. Up to now, two opposing interpretations have been offered. A third option, namely a possible metaphorical reading of the poem as referring to sin as the ‘sickness of the soul’, naturally arises both from the outlined cultural interconnections between sickness and sin and from inner-textual observations. The three possible interpretations are discussed with respect to their explanatory force, and it is argued that carm. 13 is best understood as a lament on sickness in its own right that employs rhetorical devices from the discourse of sin in order to portray sickness as an existential crisis affecting the human being in its entirety.

Introduction – The connection of sickness and sin in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages The Visigothic Kingdom in Spain takes part in the transformation1 that scholars traditionally associate with the end of Late Antiquity and the beginning of the Early Middle Ages.2 Periodization has always been a subject of scholarly 1 For a discussion of the paradigm ‘transformation’ as one, yet not the only suitable concept of interpreting the end of the Roman Empire, see Pablo C. Díaz, ‘Crisis, Transition, Transformation: The End of the Roman World and the Usefulness of Useless Categories’, in Rita Lizzi Testa (ed.), Late Antiquity in Contemporary Debate (Cambridge, 2017), 15-35, 27-9. 2 Already Jacques Fontaine, Isidore de Séville et la culture classique dans l’Espagne wisigothique (Paris, 1956), 807 speaks of the seventh century as a time of transformation, though basically accepting Isidore as an early medieval writer. This is well in tune with a tendency in

Studia Patristica CXXX, 123-134. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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debate without any hope, or even need, of achieving a definite consensus: ‘Where divisions are placed depends on the interest of the individual historian, or more often on what historians as a group think important at any particular time’.3 That is to say: Scholars use, or try to find, different markers of change to trace developments that ultimately justify speaking of a new period. For Peter Brown, an outstanding marker of this change taking place at the end of Late Antiquity is what he calls ‘la “peccatisation” du monde’:4 The ‘“discourse” of penance’5 becomes paramount. In Brown’s view, at the end of Late Antiquity, sin and penance gradually became the two central categories for interpreting human experience. He clearly demonstrates this development in Gaul under changing barbaric kingdoms. However, sin and penance were also enthusiastically discussed in Visigothic Spain,6 as attested in synods regulating the modalities of public penance7 as well as in theological texts about private spiritual practices.8 In this article, I would like to explore how this discourse of penance might have shaped (or not shaped) the literary treatment of sickness during the Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo, using the poet bishop Eugenius II of Toledo as an example. Focusing on the connection between sickness and sin is no arbitrary choice. It is suggested not only by Peter Brown’s interpretation of Late Antiquity, but also by a long and strong tradition of Judaeo-Christian thought that regards both more recent scholarship to speak of a ‘long late Antiquity’ covering as much as the eighth century; see e.g. Wolf Liebeschuetz, ‘The Birth of Late Antiquity’, AnTard 12 (2004), 253-61. Regarding the Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo, see Peter Heather, ‘Late Antiquity and the Early Medieval West’, in Michael Bentley (ed.), Companion to Historiography (London, New York, 1997), 69-87 for an overview about ruptures, but also basic continuities between the Late Roman Empire and barbaric kingdoms. 3 W. Liebeschuetz, ‘Birth’ (2004), 253. 4 Peter Brown, ‘Vers la naissance du purgatoire. Amnistie et pénitence dans le christianisme occidental de l’Antiquité tardive au haut Moyen Âge’, Annales 6 (1997), 1247-61, 1260. 5 Id., The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity (Cambridge, London, 2015), 126. Brown uses the term but once, to signify a certain branch of penitential thought represented by fifth-century Gallic churchmen like Caesarius of Arles. The religious climate that informed their teachings is characterized by a feeling of apocalyptic urgency resulting in a strong demand for penance not as a day-to-day practice, but as a total conversion of the whole person, affecting any area of life. However, Brown also describes how ‘the dramatic sense of the perils of the other world […] to which Salvian of Marseille and others had appealed in southern Gaul in the early fifth century, took root, in the sixth century, in the extensive kingdom of the Franks and elsewhere’ (ibid. 146). It thus seems justified to use Brown’s term in a more general way to signify both an emphasis on sin and the need of penance and discussions about their theological grounds and practical modalities. 6 Brown’s approach has been applied to the study of the Visigothic Kingdom by David Ungvary, ‘The Voice of the Dead King Chindasuinth: Poetry, Politics, and the Discourse of Penance in Visigothic Spain’, Early Medieval Europe 26 (2018), 327-54, 330. 7 See e.g. Concilium Barcinonense, can. 6-9 and Concilium Toletanum I, can. 2; both edited in Concilios visigóticos e hispano-romanos, ed. José Vives (Barcelona, Madrid, 1963). 8 See e.g. Isidorus Hispalensis, Sententiae, ed. Pierre Cazier, CChr.SL 111 (Turnhout, 1998).

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concepts as inextricably intertwined9 – an entanglement that features on different levels. 1) Level of metaphors: The traditional understanding of ‘metaphor’ and ‘the metaphorical’, which was common until the first decades of the twenty-first century, is right now changing simultaneously in different fields of scholarship.10 Whereas metaphor was traditionally understood as mere ornamental figurative speech based on analogy between two otherwise distinct domains, attention is now shifting to the notion that the two domains constituting the metaphor do not always remain discrete, but may join in complex relationships and interconnections. Thus, the borders between the ‘source domain’, i.e. the domain the metaphor is derived from, and the ‘target domain’, i.e. the domain the metaphor adds meaning to, become blurred. Prominent examples are the domains of medicine and religion, whose interconnection has long been noticed.11 Wendy Mayer has wonderfully summarized the various ways medical metaphors informed and thus structured various Christian discourses.12 Here, I would like to focus on one aspect of the metaphorical link between the medical and religious domain that most clearly connects sickness and sin. As cognitive linguistics as well as experimental moral psychology demonstrate, metaphor plays a central role in conceptualizing and, so to say, ‘getting a firm grip on’ the abstract. Becoming ‘conceptual metaphors’, phenomena from the concrete, perceptible (‘embodied’) world enable us to think and talk about essentially abstract entities (or objects) – the structure and inherent logic of the more concrete ‘source domain’ often having far-reaching consequences on the way the more abstract ‘target domain’ is perceived or assessed, and vice versa.13 Naturally, as the one concrete and everyday domain we all feel familiar with, the human body along with all its parts, states, and abilities constitutes a central source domain for understanding other, more abstract, domains.14 Thus, also the abstract entity called ‘sin’ is mainly conceptualized by metaphorically making 9 For an overview on the OT see e.g. Angelika Berlejung, ‘Sin and Punishment: The Ethics of Divine Justice and Retribution in Ancient Near Eastern and Old Testament Texts’, Interpretation 69 (2015), 272-87. For more refined concepts in the complaint psalms and the NT see Fredrik Lindström, Suffering and Sin. Interpretations of Illness in the Individual Complaint Psalms (Stockholm, 1994) and John T. Carroll, ‘Sickness and Healing in the New Testament Gospels’, Interpretation 49 (1995), 130-42. 10 Wendy Mayer, ‘Medicine and Metaphor in Late Antiquity: How Some Recent Shifts are Changing the Field’, Studies in Late Antiquity 2 (2018), 440-63 identifies the fields of medical anthropology, cognitive linguistics and moral psychology, and, of course, attests a broadening sensibility towards their conclusions in her own field. 11 See already Adolf Harnack, ‘Medicinisches aus der ältesten Kirchengeschichte’, TU 4 (1892), 37-152. 12 See W. Mayer, ‘Medicine and Metaphor’ (2018), passim. 13 For a basic introduction to conceptual metaphor theory, see e.g. Zoltán Kövecses, Metaphor. A Practical Introduction (Oxford, 2010), 4-15. 14 See ibid. 18.

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use of the bodily-medical sphere: Sin as sickness of the soul,15 salvation, penitence and forgiveness of sin as healing,16 the Christus medicus-motif,17 the individual or collective sin of heresy as a wounded limb of the church’s body that is, if gentler treatments fail, ultimately in need of amputation.18 The metaphorical link between the medical and the religious condition of the human being may be underlying religious discourse without being reflected on, but is nevertheless frequently made explicit by Late Antique Christian authors themselves. To give just one brief example from the Visigothic period: In his de natura rerum, Isidore of Seville compares the harmful effect of the sun’s warmth on a sick person with Christ’s terrifying effect on the godless, whereas the just are rewarded by his presence: Likewise, the sun gives light and burns and in overcast weather warms the healthy, but sets ablaze the feverous with the burning of redoubled heat. So also Christ illuminates believers with the invigorating spirit of faith, while he will burn those who deny him with the heat of eternal fire.19

2) Level of non-metaphorical, so to speak, inherent connections: Beyond such metaphorical connections, sin and sickness are often portrayed as connected to each other in the concrete lives of Christians (or their attempts to make sense of it). In fact, religion and medicine have never been totally distinct in premodern times, not in the Greco-Roman world either: Illness could be attributed to demonic influence, healing sought from the gods rather than physicians, physicians seen as responsible for the cure of both body and soul etc. And despite some shifts, this basically does not change in Christian times.20 What comes more as a surprise, however, is the variety of ways relating sickness to 15 See Wendy Mayer, ‘The Persistence in Late Antiquity of Medico-Philosophical Psychic Therapy’, Journal of Late Antiquity 8 (2015), 337-51. 16 See e.g. Augustine, doctr. chr. 1,14,13: Sicut autem curatio uia est ad sanitatem, sic ista curatio peccatores sanandos reficiendosque suscepit (Sancti Aurelii Augustini De Doctrina Christiana, ed. Joseph Martin, CChr.SL 32 [Turnhout, 1962]). For the presence of this concept in spiritual practices, see Hubertus Lutterbach, ‘Intentions- oder Tathaftung? Zum Bußverständnis in den frühmittelalterlichen Bußbüchern’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien 29 (1995), 120-43, 123, who speaks of a ‘medizinale[s] Bußverständnis’. 17 For an overview of the rich research done on this topic, see Gregor Emmenegger, Wie die Jungfrau zum Kind kam. Zum Einfluss antiker medizinischer und naturphilosophischer Theorien auf die Entwicklung des christlichen Dogmas (Fribourg, 2014), 2-3. 18 See Kristi Upson-Saia, ‘Wounded by Divine Love’, in Catherine M. Chin and Caroline T. Schroeder (eds), Melania. Early Christianity through the Life of One Family (Oakland, 2017), 86-105, 91-6. 19 Isidore of Seville, nat. 15,3: Item sol inluminat et exurit et opaco tempore confouet sanos, febricitantes uero flagrantia geminati caloris incendit. Ita et Christus credentes fidei spiritu uegetante inluminat, negantes se aeterni ignis ardore torrebit; (Isidore de Seville, Traité de la nature, ed. Jacques Fontaine [Bordeaux, 1960]); translation in Isidore of Seville, On the Nature of Things, trans. Calvin B. Kendall and Faith Wallis, Translated Texts for Historians 66 (Liverpool, 2016), 137-8. 20 See Heidi Marx-Wolf, ‘Religion, Medicine, and Health’, in Josef Lössl and Nicholas J. Baker-Brian (eds), A Companion to Religion in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2018), 511-28, 511-21.

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sin. As expected, a healthy, flawless body might be interpreted as conveying spiritual perfection – but the opposite also occurs: an ailing body considered as the hallmark of the ascetic champion.21 Where the correlation between sickness and sin is a ‘positive’ one, sickness again is not predominantly understood as divine punishment for sin, but the connection is established in a variety of ways. Basil of Caesarea is especially rich in theologizing about the nonmetaphorical links between sickness and sin.22 He regards the weakness of the human body and its susceptibility to disease as a natural consequence of humanity’s sinful state after the expulsion from Eden. Hence, in Basil’s view, God is not the origin of illness, just as he is not the origin of sin. He can, however, induce a concrete affliction, though there might be more profane causes such as an unhealthy lifestyle or other non-understandable causations as well. Most importantly, God never sends an illness to do harm, but to serve some higher purpose, like achieving a spiritual or moral improvement of the individual. This ‘spiritual benefit’ of suffering from sickness, in its turn, comes in different shapes: Sickness may lead the suffering Christian to reflect on the causes of the affliction, which might be one’s own sinfulness, and thus induce repentance and correction. Alternatively, it can be helpful for developing a higher state of asceticism. In a final twist, Basil advises to comprehend the long and dreadful process of recovering from severe illness as a typological anticipation (τύπον τῆς τῶν ψυχῶν ἐπιμελείας)23 of the toils and pains of spiritual perfection – an anticipation that releases a spiritual process where a ‘redoubled healing’ takes place, where healing the body goes along with healing the soul. At this point, we see the metaphorical meaning24 slipping onto the concrete 21 See Andrew Crislip, Thorns in the Flesh. Illness and Sanctity in Late Ancient Christianity (Philadelphia, 2013), 54-8 and id., ‘Illness and Ascetic Merit: The Moral Signification of Health and Sickness in Early Egyptian Monasticism’, in Warren A. Kappeler, III (ed.), Essays in Honour of Frederik Wisse (Montréal, 2005), 151-82. 22 For the following, see Basil of Caesarea, hom. quod deus non est auctor malorum (PG 31, 32954) and Regulae fusius tractatae 55 (PG 31, 1044-52). For the interpretation of Basil’s writings given here, see A. Crislip, Thorns (2013), 88-96. 23 Basil of Caesarea, Regulae fusius tractatae 55,2 (PG 31, 1045). 24 As far as I see, the relation of the metaphorical and the typological has often been touched but not thoroughly examined. According to Christian Hannick, ‘The Theotokos in Byzantine Hymnography: Typology and Allegory’, in Maria Vassilaki (ed.), Images of the Mother of God (Farnham, 2005), 69-76, 73, ‘typology is only distantly related to metaphor’. For different from the metaphorical use of a domain, the τύπος always seems to signify a concrete thing that makes visible another thing, and not a mere figure of thought or speech that makes an abstract concept ‘mentally visible’. As is the case with Basil: A concrete sickness and a concrete process of convalescence becomes the τύπος of spiritual perfection and thus makes the spiritual process perceptible. However, it seems highly probable that the already common metaphorical use of sickness for sin at least supports an understanding of concrete sickness as a τύπος. Additionally, slightly different from our modern theological discourse, in ancient Greek τύπος merely signifies an underlying identity of compared aspects (see Karl-Heinrich Ostmeyer, ‘Typologie und Typos. Analyse eines schwierigen Verhältnisses’, NTS 46 [2000], 112-31, 129), which draws near to perceivable

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level of the sickness-sin-connection and unfolding its potential to affect the actual spiritual lives of Christians.25 Similarly, Gregory the Great, an author widely read in seventh-century Spain,26 accounts for the possibility that God functions as an active agent in the emergence of sickness, but distinguishes four different ways of understanding sickness and suffering as originating from divine will.27 It may be 1) a punishment from God, or 2) a means to correct the sinner,28 or 3) to prevent someone from sinning in the future, or 4) simply to give God a chance to reveal his power by providing an unexpected recovery (in the latter case, sickness has of course nothing to do with sin at all). This multivalency and, hence, ambiguity of sickness and suffering, their transferability and connectivity to the religious sphere naturally complicate the interpretation of texts from the Judaeo-Christian cultural sphere that deal with sickness.

Eugenius of Toledo, carm. 14: Sickness and Compunctio cordis The bishop and poet Eugenius II of Toledo seems to focus considerably on bodily pain in his poems. While in four poems (carm. 6, 7, 41 and 101) the description of bodily suffering, at least, plays an important role, there are three poems (carm. 13-14b) where sickness is central. I focus on 13 and 14. The two poems are very different: The relatively short carm. 13 comprises just five elegiac couplets dealing exclusively with the sickness of the lyrical I, whereas carm. 14 is the longest poem in the whole corpus of Eugenius and, in fact, polymetric. Furthermore, in contrast to carm. 13, sickness similarity between two domains as perhaps the most common experiential basis for metaphorical use, see Z. Kövecses, Metaphor (2010), 78-9. 25 See A. Crislip, Thorns (2013), 92: ‘Basil moves beyond the mere typological comparison of medical healing to the cure of souls. Here the process of illness, treatment (or its failure), and convalescence is itself a form of “instruction” in the care of the self’. 26 See José Carlos Martín-Iglesias, ‘La biblioteca cristiana de los padres hispanovisigodos (siglos VI-VII)’, Veleia 30 (2013), 259-88, 268-9. 27 Gregory the Great, moral. praef. 5,12: Percussionum quippe diuersa sunt genera. Alia namque est percussio, qua peccator percutitur ut sine retractatione puniatur; alia qua peccator percutitur ut corrigatur; alia qua nonnunquam quisque percutitur, non ut praeterita corrigat, sed ne uentura committat; alia qua plerumque percutitur per quam nec praeterita culpa corrigitur nec futura prohibetur sed ut, dum inopinata salus percussionem sequitur, saluantis uirtus cogitata ardentius ametur; cumque innoxius flagello atteritur ei per patientiam meritorum summa cumuletur. (S. Gregorii Magni Moralia in Iob Libri, ed. Marcus Adriaen, CChr.SL 143 [Turnhout, 1979]). That the term percussio includes, for Gregory, sickness among many kinds of sufferings, becomes clear from the examples he gives for the four possibilities, among which two are certainly related to bodily afflictions. 28 Tellingly enough, in hagiographic texts like the Lives of the Fathers of Mérida, it is possible that God strikes the notorious sinner with illness after the penitent himself asked him to correct his evil ways: Quem statim diuina pietas exaudiri non distulit, sed de presenti in eodem loco dolore percutiens ui febrium extuare fecit; VSPE 2,79-80 (Liber Vitas Sanctorum Patrum Emeritensium, ed. Antonio Maya Sánchez, CChr.SL 116 [Turnhout, 1992]).

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in carm. 14 is dealt with as a manifestation of old age, which constitutes the main subject. The poem broadly, in fifteen verses within an anti-hymn of altogether thirty lines addressing the personified old age, describes, in detail, the horrors of suffering from sickness in the course of aging. This example might do: Tu frangis ossa, membra rugis asperas, Comas recidis atque canos inseris, Dentes retundis, mucculentos efficis, tremore foedo corpus omne discutis, febres minaris et dolores ingeris. You [sc. old age] break the bones, you coarsen the limbs with wrinkles, You make the hair fall out and replace it with white ones, You abrade the teeth, you make them slimy, You shake the whole body with abominable trembling, You threaten with fever and inflict pain. (carm. 14,17-21)29

These grievances, whose occurrence is no exception in Eugenius, might all too easily lead modern readers to a general negative evaluation of his poetry as ‘simply whining about his life and miserable lot’.30 However, the lament-like descriptions are finally superseded by theological reflections. Meditating on the evils of bodily suffering has two spiritual effects on the speaker that are explicitly designated in the poem: 1) The speaker recognizes the vanity of this world and is thus able to re-orient his heart towards God. Haec taediosa mente dum recogito, libet, relictis omnibus quae transeunt, Deum timere, sempiterna quaerere, terrena lucra deputare puluerem. Rethinking these [sc. calamities] with a weary mind, it pleases me, having the transient things all left behind, to fear God, to reach out for the everlasting, to depreciate earthly gain like dust. (carm. 14,27-9)

2) Frightened by his bodily sufferings, the speaker sees death rapidly approaching and is powerfully reminded of the judgement to come – the latter, as the top of a climax of pauenda (carm. 14,51), is portrayed as even more to be feared than any of the worldly losses or pains related to old age (carm. 14,52: sed mage quid uerear). The fear elicited this way finally leads the lyrical I to confess his sins and to pray to God for mercy: 29 For simplicity’s sake, I refer to the poems of Eugenius in parentheses, not in footnotes. The critical edition I use is Eugenii Toletani Opera Omnia, ed. Paulo Farmhouse Alberto, CChr.SL 114 (Turnhout, 2005). English translations are my own. 30 Andrew Fear, ‘Moaning to Some Purpose: The Laments of Eugenius II’, in Alan Deyermond and Martin J. Ryan (eds), Early Medieval Spain: A Symposium (London, 2010), 55-77, 58. Of course, Andrew Fear does not share this view, but anticipates it in modern readers.

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Parce, precor, animae pulsanti, parce petenti, quae flammas metuit, dum sua facta gemit. Gaudia tu sanctis, tu reddis praemia iustis, Eugenii miseri sit rogo poena leuis. Spare, please, spare the soul that hits itself and begs you, that fears the flames while weeping over its deeds. You make the saints rejoice, you reward the just, poor Eugene’s punishment may, I beg, be light. (carm. 14,77-80)

Though carm. 14 has many more observations to offer, its basic argument is straightforward: Bodily suffering and the approaching of death lead Christians away from earthly pleasures through their terrifying effect and inspire them to meditate on their sins. Going back to our overview of possible interconnections of sickness and sin, we can safely state that sickness here is not seen as divine punishment (the punishment ‘poor Eugene’ fears is eschatological, that of the final judgement). The link is not metaphorical either, but is constituted by a certain spiritual benefit attributed to the experience of sickness. As Andrew Fear elaborates in an insightful article,31 sickness is presented as aiding compunctio cordis,32 a spiritual practice and monkish virtue well established in the Christian East and taken up by Western thinkers such as Gregory the Great and Isidore of Seville as a way of purging the soul from sin.33 Seeing through the lens of the lyrical I, the readers or listeners are taken along on a spiritual journey of being ‘reminded’ by bodily suffering to concentrate on the things that really withstand the fugacity of time – conveniently, without necessarily having to suffer themselves. So in carm. 14, lament about the calamities of sickness and old age clearly serves a didactic purpose.34 Eugenius of Toledo, carm. 13: A metaphor for sin? By contrast, carm. 13 is less easy to interpret. It has not exactly been neglected by scholars, but seems to be overshadowed by its ‘big brother’, carm. 14. Kurt 31

See A. Fear, ‘Moaning’ (2010), 61-8. For an overview on the Christian East see Irénée Hausherr, Penthos: The Doctrine of Compunction in the Christian East (Kalamazoo, 1982). 33 Isidore of Seville, sent. 2,12,1 gives a handbook-like overview: Conpunctio cordis est humilitas mentis cum lacrimis, exoriens de recordatione peccati et timore iudicii (CChr.SL 111, 118, ed. P. Cazier). See also Gregory the Great, moral. 23,21,42: Perfectam animam ista compunctio afficere familiarius solet, quia omnes imaginationes corporeas insolenter sibi obviantes decutit. (S. Gregorii Magni Moralia in Iob Libri XXIII-XXXV, ed. Marcus Adriaen, CChr.SL 143B [Turnhout, 1985]). 34 A. Fear, ‘Moaning’ (2010), 63, drawing on Eugenius’ double-role as a poet and bishop, calls this poetic technique ‘a powerful preaching technique – the personal form is intended to make the reader to empathise all the more with the plight that is outlined to him and hence be led himself to heaven via conpunctio’. 32

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Smolak even regards it as a sort of preface to a cycle of poetic units scattered across the carm. 13-14b.35 Thanks to its shortness, it is possible to examine the whole poem here: Vae mihi, uae misero, qui semper fessus anhelo   et fractus animo languida membra traho. Morbus adest iugis, desunt fomenta salutis:   hinc dolor ossa terit, cor pauor inde quatit. Omnia quae prosunt ualidis, sunt noxia nobis,   dum stomachus tenuis uiscera laesa gerit. Frigida me laedunt nec semper feruida prosunt:   dum male corpus habet, nec mea uita placet. Da, Christe, quaeso, ueniam, da, Christe, medellam,   nam taedet animum tot mala ferre simul. Alas, alas, me, poor man, who always breathes heavily with exhaustion   and, broken in spirit, drags along his languid limbs. There is unending illness and the relief of health is lacking me:   Here, pain reams my bones, there, fear shakes my heart. Everything that benefits the healthy ones is harmful to me,   While my weak stomach has to bear injured organs. Cold things hurt me and hot things do not always benefit me,   while my body is in a bad state, and I do not like my life. Please, Christ, grant me mercy (uenia), grant me, Christ, healing,   For my spirit is weary of bearing so many evils at once. (carm. 13)

35 See Kurt Smolak, ‘Omnia passus – die Leiden des Eugenius von Toledo. Zu den Gedichten 5, 13-9, 101 Alberto’, in Richard Corradini et al. (eds), Ego Trouble: Authors and Their Identities in the Early Middle Ages (Vienna, 2010), 79-88, 80-3. I think there are good reasons against Smolak’s view of seeing carm. 13-14b as a poetic unit. His main arguments are that the beginning of carm. 14,2 (dolore nouo carmina maesta cano) recalls carm. 13 and that by carm. 14b we are informed that the final prayer of 13 has been answered and the lyrical I been healed. However, as Smolak states himself, dolor nouus is best understood as a topos advertising the novelty of the topic, thus not necessarily denoting a renewal of the pain described in carm. 13. Even if that was the case, the two poems embrace distinct topics: In 13, old age is never mentioned nor are there any typical age-related symptoms described. In 14, bodily suffering is related to old age from the first verse on (carm. 14,1: Impia […] senecta). If dolor nouus recalls the dolor of carm. 13, we would have to assume a convalescence in between or an escalation of pain in the course of aging. If so, how could a healing be indicated in 14b? How could old age be healed? In addition, I am not sure whether carm. 14b implies a healing at all. The poem in a sense looks back on the evils of old age (which links it more to carm. 14 than 13, as does the ending of 14b, carmine planxi, echoing the carmina maesta at the beginning of 14!), but it is nowhere clear that these evils have ceased to be present. From the context of the poem, it makes more sense to understand huius ut uitae mala funerarem (14b,3) in concordance with labilem cursum fugientis aeui / carmine planxi (14b,19-20): That it indicates not the passing of these evils, but the fact that the lyrical I ‘celebrated their funeral’ in a poetic way by turning his heart to the eternal realm (as opposed to haec uita, which otherwise would be a strange expression). From these reasons, it makes more sense for me to regard carm. 13 as independent in form and content.

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Scholarship has proposed two different readings of the poem, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive. They might just point to different aspects. 1) The first interpretation reads the poem simply as a lament: a literary treatment of a basic human experience, so to speak, without using (or abusing) it to make a theological point. Carmen Codoñer thus praises the poem for its personal tone and simplicity: ‘It is not a question of anything grandiose; he is a sick man, and he is complaining about his illness. There is no symbolism at all. He brings the everyday and ordinary into the category of poetry, but with no desire to inflate it into something pretentious’.36 2) While nobody has doubted that the poem is indeed a lament, Kurt Smolak and Andrew Fear go a little beyond: They focus on the lyrical I’s final prayer for uenia, which they interpret as ‘pardon’ and thus forgiveness of sin. For both of them, the plea for uenia is a clue that the poem follows a didactic purpose similar to that of carm. 14. To quote Fear: ‘The poet’s suffering is a form of conpunctio which leads to his self-realization and recognition of his sinfulness’.37 To further complicate things, I would like to point to a possible third aspect that could back up and deepen both aforementioned interpretations. There are features in the poem that might play on the metaphorical entanglement of sickness and sin which unites both in a common language game (Sprachspiel). Indeed, three observations suggest that such a metaphorical interplay could be at work in the poem: 1) The exclamation vae mihi, vae misero (carm. 13,1): This kind of selflamentation is in itself a neutral expression of distress, applicable to many kinds of woe. However, a search in the LLT-A yields that Patristic authors mostly use uae mihi to express distress and fear in relation to one’s own sinfulness – especially when combined with the adjective miser.38 2) The ‘good things do harm’ argument: In Isidore of Seville, we have seen that the medical observation that good things, like the warming sun, can be harmful to sick persons, is transferable to a discourse of sin and penance: Like the warmth of the sun, Christ enlightens believers but is a burning heat for unbelievers. In Eugenius’s poem, this medical insight seems to appear in its original context, but could it also refer to religious wisdom? 3) Throughout the whole poem, sickness is described as affecting not only the body, but also the animus – the soul, the inner part of a human being. So Codoñer finds it ‘interesting that in a poem about illness the vocabulary 36 Carmen Codoñer, ‘The Poetry of Eugenius of Toledo’, in Francis Cairns (ed.), Papers of the Liverpool Latin Seminar: Third Volume (Liverpool, 1981), 323-42, 337. 37 A. Fear, ‘Moaning’ (2010), 63. See also K. Smolak, ‘Omnia passus’ (2010), 80-1. 38 See e.g. Isidore of Seville, sent. 2,16,4b: Vae mihi, misero Isidoro, qui et paenitere retro acta neglego, et adhuc paenitenda committo! (CChr.SL 111, 129, ed. P. Cazier).

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referring to spiritual aspects is almost as abundant as that which refers to the physical’.39 Metaphorical phrases like fractus animo, or ‘fear shakes the heart’ clearly point beyond the body to the mind and the soul of the lyrical I, as does the reason for the lyrical I’s prayer: taedet animum. These expressions are quite common in discourses of sin and penance and appear so in Eugenius’ corpus, too.40 As we have seen, the spiritual practice of compunctio cordis, consisting of inner contrition and meditation about one’s own miserable and sinful state, played a major role in private practices of penance and was deemed necessary on a daily basis. Isidore even used the term taedium salubre for this kind of contrition that aims at re-orienting the human heart towards God.41 To sum up, we find language in the poem that is – at least possibly – multivalent. It employs vocabulary originally associated with medical conditions that could be used metaphorically to describe sickness of the soul, i.e. sin. However, the language of sin and penance is also transferred to the context of sickness, like the taedet animum which originates from the spiritual sphere. In this poem, there is a mutual exchange between the language games. This observation might support both current interpretations: The multivalency of the rhetorical devices suggests a second level in the poem: The statements on the body might be overlapped by allusions to the sickness of the soul – which bodily sickness might even help to cure if it causes man to recognize it and repent, as in carm. 14. Whereas in carm. 14 this didactic purpose is achieved by explicitly outlining the process of how bodily suffering leads to compunctio cordis, in carm. 13 the literary means to achieve this goal might be inviting a metaphorical reading. However, it could also be the other way around. In Eugenius’s times, mourning one’s sins was clearly a better-established practice than lamenting one’s sickness, at least in the literary field. It would be natural to use the expressions that were at hand, even more so when sickness and sin, due to their metaphorical connection, already share a common language. Thus, the spiritual aspects present in the poem could just be part of a comprehensive elaboration of the topic of sickness, stressing the seriousness of the existential crisis that bodily suffering means. Conclusion I do not know whether deciding between these two kinds of interpretation is possible. However, I tend to read the poem primarily as a lament about sickness 39

C. Codoñer, ‘Poetry of Eugenius’ (1981), 337. Compare e.g. carm. 13,10: taedet animum and carm. 14,27: Haec taediosa mente dum recogito as well as carm. 13,4: cor pauor inde quatit and carm. 14,71: Talia dum rite paueo, dum corde tremesco. 41 See Isidore of Seville, sent. 2,12,4: mens iusti taedio salubri conpungitur (CChr.SL 111, 118, ed. P. Cazier). 40

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that borrows or even reclaims language from the discourse of sin and penance. The strongest argument for this reading is that the connection between sickness and sin is nowhere made explicit. If we discount the questionable uenia that occurs often in a context of sin, but could also mean mercy or beneficence in general or could just be a standard object of prayer,42 nothing confirms a metaphorical reading of the poem. To be sure, the ‘target domain’ need not be present to constitute a metaphorical reading – poetry has its own licences in that respect.43 However, if the whole poem gave us sickness as a metaphor for sin, it should be expected that the source domain is systematically used to deepen our understanding of the target domain, e.g. by equating every symptom of sickness with a certain aspect of sinfulness. On the other hand, the symptoms affecting the spirit, if taken metaphorically, would spoil the imagery and seem better understood as conveying an obvious factual connection: Bodily suffering affects the spirit as well. And even if we see these symptoms in combination with the plea for uenia as a bridge to a compunctio cordis-reading comparable to that in carm. 14, or if the plea for uenia implies a causal connection between sickness and sin, the topic seems strangely little developed. So I suggest that the two poems serve different purposes and stress different aspects of sickness and bodily suffering: Carm. 14, by rationalizing and spiritualizing bodily suffering, imparts the message that corporal afflictions are not altogether meaningless – they may even turn into a spiritual aid reminding us of our own contingency and purging our souls from sin. It thus accords very well with Brown’s ‘peccatisation du monde’. In contrast, carm. 13 treats mourning bodily pain as an act in its own right44 without instrumentalizing it for the benefit of the soul. We have to be cautious not to read a general characterization of the age into every piece of literature: If we take the poem as it is it appears utterly down-to-earth. The lyrical I does not ask ‘how to make sense’ of suffering. It simply wants suffering to end.

42

See Oxford Latin Dictionary, ed. Peter G.W. Glare (Oxford, 1982), 2235-6 s.v. uenia. However, the OLD does not provide evidence from Christian authors. For uenia in prayers see e.g. Eugenius, carm. 9,22, where it never becomes explicit what uenia could mean concretely, though ‘forgiveness of sin’ is a well possible meaning. Similarly ambiguous is the plea for the uenia malorum in Hymnodia Hispanica 110,34, which, as the ensuing examples suggest, signifies being spared from various kinds of evil (Hymnodia Hispanica, ed. José Castro Sánchez, CChr.SL 167 [Turnhout, 2010]). 43 See Z. Kövecses, Metaphor (2010), 51. 44 A parallel to this way of dealing with sickness is found in the liturgy: The ritual of anointing the sick, though insinuating a ‘double healing’ of both body and soul, did not cease to be primarily a prayer for corporal convalescence in Visigothic Spain – as it did in Ireland, where it was transformed into a preparation of the soul for death. See Frederick S. Paxton, Christianizing Death. The Creation of a Ritual Process in Early Medieval Europe (Ithaca, London, 1990), 69-73.

La ordenación de la vida monástica según Tajón de Zaragoza (Sententiae 2, 45-9) Joel VARELA RODRÍGUEZ, Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, España1

ABSTRACT This paper analyzes the chapters of Taio of Zaragoza’s Sententiae that regulate monastic life (Sententiae 2, 45-9). The Bishop of Zaragoza here applies to the monks the considerations of Gregory the Great regarding the process of conversion and sanctification of the elect, without speaking directly of those who profess a monastic life. The change is carried out by means of cuts of the Gregorian extracts used as a source, as well as by varying the name of the elements to which the discourse refers (that is, by introducing the term monachus or its derivatives when necessary). The doctrine thus exposed by Taio has important parallels with the Isidorian conception of the monastic life, but also introduces relevant differences, originated from the adoption by Taio of Gregory’s own theology. Taking on board Gregory’s conception of charity and the relationships between active life and contemplative life, Taio shows the danger to the soul of surrendering to the anachoretic life, which demands a degree of spiritual perfection accessible only to a few, an observation that Isidore does not seem to have dared to make. Moreover, and as a consequence of this, Taio is less reluctant than Isidore to the fact that monks dedicate the Church guidance. En la presente contribución se analizan los capítulos de las Sententiae de Tajón de Zaragoza que regulan la vida monástica (Sententiae 2, 45-9). El obispo cesaraugustano hace aquí de aplicación a los monjes las consideraciones de Gregorio Magno respecto del proceso de conversión y santificación de los elegidos, sin hablar directamente de quienes profesen una vida monástica. El cambio se lleva a cabo mediante recortes de los extractos gregorianos empleados como fuente, así como variando el nombre de los elementos a que se refiere el discurso (es decir, introduciendo el término monachus o sus derivados cuando es necesario). La doctrina expuesta así por Tajón guarda paralelismos importantes con la concepción de la vida monástica que tuvo Isidoro de Sevilla, pero también diferencias relevantes, originadas de la adopción por Tajón de argumentos propios de la teología gregoriana. Asumiento plenamente la concepción de Gregorio acerca de la caridad y las relaciones entre vida activa y vida contemplativa, Tajón muestra el peligro para el alma de entregarse a la vida anacorética, que exige un grado de perfección espiritual accesible sólo a unos pocos: una observación esta que Isidoro 1 Este trabajo se inscribe en el seno de las actividades del GI-1908 de la Universidad de Santiago de Compostela.

Studia Patristica CXXX, 135-144. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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no parece haberse atrevido a realizar; además, y como consecuencia de lo mismo, Tajón se muestra menos reacio que Isidoro a la dedicación de los monjes al gobierno de la Iglesia.

Las Sententiae de Tajón, obispo de Zaragoza (651-ca. 683?)2, contienen cuatro capítulos al final del libro 2 que tratan el ordenamiento de la vida monástica. No me consta que hayan recibido la atención específica de ningún autor, por lo que, habida cuenta de sus puntos de interés, me ha parecido oportuno dedicarles estas líneas. 1. Doctrina, lugar en la obra y fuentes El libro que contiene el desarrollo sobre los monjes se inicia con una serie de capítulos sobre el nacimiento, predicación, muerte y resurrección de Cristo, a lo que siguen capítulos sobre la Iglesia como depositaria del deber de predicación, por medio de la que conduce al hombre nuevo con Dios. Dichos capítulos presentan un claro desarrollo cronológico (se habla de los evangelistas, los inicios de la Iglesia y los nuevos sacramentos: bautismo y comunión; la conversión de los gentiles; los mátires; los herejes, etc.), que encuentran sentido en la asunción de la teología agustiniana de la historia que es parte constituyente de las novedades de las Sententiae de Tajón respecto de su principal modelo, la obra homónima de Isidoro de Sevilla3. Sólo después se pasa a hablar de la ordenación de la vida eclesiástica actual, donde se diserta por lo menudo acerca de la función de los “pastores”, la elección, virtud, poderes y peligros morales de los obispos, su relación con sus subditi y específicamente el género de vida de los clerici (Sententiae 2, 31-44)4; finalmente, nuestros capítulos sobre los monjes, que cierran el libro (Sententiae 2, 45-9). La doctrina sobre el ordenamiento de la vida monacal, según Tajón la presenta, es como sigue5. Del primer capítulo (2, 45: De vita vel conversatione 2

Para lo que tiene que ver con la vida de este autor es de recibo consultar hoy los trabajos de José Carlos Martín, ‘Tajón de Zaragoza’, en Diccionario biográfico español (Madrid, 2013), 544-5 y ‘Tajón de Zaragoza’, en Carmen Codoñer (coord.), La Hispania visigótica y mozárabe. Dos épocas en su literatura (Salamanca, 2010), 196-201. El contenido de las Sententiae ha sido objeto de análisis en una bibliografía relativamente amplia; véase mi ‘Las Sententiae de Tajón de Zaragoza. Sus modelos literarios y su aproximación a la teología de Gregorio Magno’, e-Spania 30 (2018), en línea: https://journals.openedition.org/e-spania/28247, con las convenientes referencias bibiográficas. 3 Véase J. Varela Rodríguez, ‘Las Sententiae’ (2018). 4 Ha prestado atención a estos capítulos Elena Conde Guerri, ‘Tajón de Zaragoza y su tradición doctrinal sobre los pastores animarum’, Aragón en la Edad Media 14-15 (1999), 329-39. 5 Las Sententiae no cuentan hoy con una edición crítica. En cualquier caso, he colacionado el texto en los manuscritos Laon, Bibliothèque Municipale, 319, 85r-88v y Paris, Bibliothèque

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monachorum) puede deducirse que es el desprecio del mundo y el deseo de contemplación lo que impulsa al hombre a consagrarse a la vida monacal6. El ideal de su vida se encuentra en San Pablo, que no sólo murió al mundo, sino que también el mundo murió a él, pues ni él buscaba la gloria del mundo ni la gloria del mundo le buscaba7. Muchos monjes no llegan a alcanzar este estado, pero la tardanza hace que busquen con más fuerza la contemplación, de modo que, temiendo las tentaciones del mundo, se esfuerzan más en progresar en santidad para alcanzar los bienes supremos8: cuanto más cerca estén del final, más empeño ponen en llegar a ellos9. El siguiente capítulo (2, 46: De humilitate vel opere eorum) cifra la humildad del monje (la mayor de las virtudes, antídoto de la soberbia, que es madre de los vicios) en el deseo de abandonar el mundo y el temor de verse involucrado en él10. Así, los monjes que rechazan implicarse en el mundo, viven simples en el pensamiento, encerrados en la habitación de su conciencia11. Con frecuencia, para progresar en su camino de perfección, reciben el castigo de sus superiores aun por las faltas más pequeñas12. En el siguiente capítulo (2, 47: De remissa conversatione ipsorum) se advierte contra el peligro de involucrarse en los asuntos del mundo sin haber consumado el proceso de conversión. Hay algunos, en efecto, que comenzaron a huir del mundo, pero vuelven a él para ocupar algún cargo, y caen presos de la soberbia: sólo con una prolongada conversión y la perseverancia en el

Nationale de France, lat. 9565, 86r-89v, dos códices representantes de tradiciones diversas, sin contrastar diferencias en cuanto al texto seleccionado y su tratamiento, ni tampoco omisiones relevantes en el texto de PL. Para mayores pormenores sobre la tradición textual de la obra, véase J. Varela Rodríguez, ‘Las Sententiae’ (2018), con conveniente bibliografía. 6 Bonus monachus ab huius mundi inquieta concupiscentia se penitus subtrahit, ac terrenarum actionum strepitum deserit, et per quietis studium eius mens virtutibus intenta, quasi vigilans sternuit (PL 80, 847AB). 7 Paulus vas electionis, quia nec mundi gloriam quaerebat, nec a mundi gloria ipse quaerebatur; et se mundo et mundum sibi crucifixum esse gloriatur (PL 80, 846B). 8 Cum huius mundi gloria tristibus gementibusque tribuitur, poena se validissimi timoris afficiunt… Nonnumquam monachi idcirco ad concepta desideria minime perveniunt, ut ipsa interviniente tarditate ad eadem desideria laxato mentis sinu dilatentur… Sed eorum desiderium differtur ut proficiat, et tarditatis suae sinu nutritur ut crescat (PL 80, 846BC). 9 Cum spiritales monachi plene mortificationem suam appetunt, quanto fiunt viciniores ad finem, tanto se exhibent ardentiores in opere. Laborando ergo non deficiunt, sed magis ad usum laboris crescunt (PL 80, 846D). 10 Piae monachorum mentes, cum deest exteriorum curarum administratio, in his exterioribus implicari non quaerunt. Graviter autem etiam, cum adsunt, ferunt, quia per exteriorum curam a se exire pertimescunt (PL 80, 847C). 11 Omnes monachi qui in curis exterioribus spargi refugiunt, simplices in cogitatione atque in conscientiae suae habitatione consistunt (PL 80, 847C). 12 Saepe bona agentes monachi, paterna adhuc flagella sentiunt, ut tanto perfectiores ad haereditatem veniant, quanto eos pie feriens disciplina quotidie etiam de minimis purgat (PL 80, 847D-848A).

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camino de santidad se logra que el fruto del monje no perezca13. El capítulo siguiente (2, 48: De monachis curis saeculi implicantibus) complementa lo dicho: los monjes que intervienen en los asuntos del siglo sólo actuarán bien si se refugian continuamente en la tranquilidad de su propio interior, sin amar las perturbaciones del mundo14. El último capítulo (2, 49: De tepeditate monachorum) advierte de la debilidad que puede darse en los monjes. Hay algunos, en efecto, que huyen de las obras exteriores, pero no se ejercitan en las virtudes: éstos caen en el ocio y en la perturbación de sus propios pensamientos inmundos15. La perseverancia en las buenas obras es, pues, el camino para no caer en la disolución16. La vida del hombre es como una nave que recibe el golpe de la corriente contraria del río: no tiene permitido quedarse en un único lugar, porque será arrastrada hacia abajo si no se esfuerza en avanzar hacia arriba17. Todos estos capítulos están constituidos, como la mayor parte de la obra, a partir de extractos de Gregorio Magno, cuya teología y exégesis Tajón se encargó convenientemente de difundir con este y otros trabajos suyos18. Desde el punto de vista del tratamiento de la fuente, su principal particularidad son las intervenciones que Tajón aplicó directamente a los extractos, intervenciones que el autor practica en otros puntos de su obra (en concreto Sententiae 2, 19, sobre los mártires; 2, 32-44, sobre la ordenación de la vida eclesiástica; 2, 45-9, nuestros capítulos sobre los monjes; 5, 9-12, sobre la ordenación de la vida del poder civil: príncipes, ricos y jueces), como ya han señalado varios autores19. Estas intervenciones presentan un patrón común: Tajón introduce 13

Nisi prius cor longo studio et diutina conversatione in desideriis caelestibus convalescat, cum ad exteriora agenda refunditur, ab omni statu boni operis eradicatur (PL 80, 848B). Et quoties inchoantes quique bona opera, laudari ab aspicientibus coeperint, atque in suis laudibus delectari, fit caligo intelligentiae in cogitatione, ut jam discernere nequeant qua intentione quid faciant, et fructum perdant operis, velut ex nebula favoris (PL 80, 849AB). 14 Monachi qui in rebus temporalibus occupantur, tunc bene exteriora disponunt, cum sollicite ad interiora refugiunt: cum nequaquam foras perturbationum strepitus diligunt, sed apud semetipsos intus in tranquillitatis sinu requiescunt (PL 80, 849D). 15 Nonnulli monachorum mundi quidem actiones fugiunt, sed nullis virtutibus exercentur… Plerumque monachis contigit, ut quanto securius ab externis actionibus cessant, tanto latius inmundae in se cogitationis strepitum per otium congerant (PL 80, 850CD). 16 Monachus qui coepta bona districte non exsequitur dissolutione negligentiae manum destruentis imitatur (PL 80, 851A). 17 In hoc mundo humana anima quasi more navis est contra ictum fluminis conscendentis, uno in loco stare non permititur, quia ad ima relabitur, nisi ad suma conetur (PL 80, 852D). 18 En concreto un comentario a las Escrituras compuesto igualmente con extractos de la obra del papa, conocido hoy como Excerpta sancti Gregorii (CPL 1269). Se le atribuye también una recensión de los Moralia in Iob que ha dejado trazas en algunos manuscritos hispánicos: véase al respecto Joel Varela Rodríguez, ‘¿Una edición “tajoniana”? Edición y estudio de un corpus preliminar a los Moralia in Iob’, Sacris erudiri 57 (2018), 323-65. 19 Véanse Jean Batany, ‘Tayon de Saragosse et la nomenclature sociale de Grégoire le Grand’, Bulletin du Cange 37 (1970), 173-92; Bruno Judic, Totius Europae speculator. La posterité de Grégoire le Grand dans le haut Moyen Âge latin. Thèse d’habilitation à diriger les recherches,

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directamente en el fragmento extractado el término que designa la categoría social concreta a la que quiera hacer de aplicación el texto (en nuestro caso, monachus; en los otros capítulos se leen rector, episcopus, princeps, etc.), originalmente referido, en la mayoría de los casos, a categorías de significación mucho más amplia y ambigua (vir sanctus, pastor, praedicator, etc.), a las que subyace una inspiración universalista y con las que se evitaba la posibilidad de relación con cualquier elemento institucional de la época. La mayor parte de fragmentos de Gregorio escogidos para componer los capítulos sobre los monjes están sacados del libro 5 de los Moralia in Iob20. El primer capítulo (2, 45: De vita vel conversatione monachorum) es sustancialmente un collage de fragmentos de moral. 5, 3-5, donde Gregorio desarrolla el proceso de conversión de los elegidos (electi). Tajón aplica a la profesión monacal lo que Gregorio desarrolla acerca de los electi, lo cual, si en éste se presenta en modo descriptivo, en Tajón adquiere un tono por momentos admonitivo. Para Gregorio, el deseo de abandonar el mundo es fruto de la amargura que los elegidos – sin consideración de su categoría social – sienten por estar exiliados de los bienes supremos en la vida presente: aunque la perfección de su vida se encuentra en el modelo de San Pablo, estando muerto él al mundo y el mundo muerto a él, estos santos son llamados muchas veces a los cargos de autoridad en el mundo, donde pueden ejercer una vida activa santa si, muertos al mundo, perseveran en las buenas obras sin desear la gloria temporal. Otros fragmentos empleados en la composición de estos capítulos son moral. 5, 11, 19-20 y 5, 31, 55, en los que Gregorio expone que no basta con abandonar el mundo si no se pone la mirada en los bienes supremos, pues las mentes malvadas (pravae mentes) no dejan de pensar en las cosas temporales aun cuando vacan, mientras que los hombres santos (sancti viri), aunque se impliquen en soutenue à l’université de Lille (Lille, 2000), 78-97; Patrick Catry, ‘L’amour du prochain chez saint Grégoire le Grand’, Studia Monastica 20 (1978), 287-344, 298. Este último estudioso se plantea la posibilidad de que las lecturas de Tajón se hallaran en la tradición hispánica de los Moralia in Iob, y que por lo tanto el obispo de Zaragoza las hubiera heredado de su fuente. Hay que apuntar, no obstante, que esas intervenciones no sólo se dan en fragmentos de los Moralia: véase por ejemplo en Sententiae 2, 49, PL 80, 851A-852A, pasaje tomado de la Regula pastoralis (3, 34, ed.), donde las Sententiae (monachus qui coepta bona districte non exsequitur…) incorporan un monachus que no figura en el original (quia videlicet qui copeta bona districte non exsequitur…). En cualquier caso, debo decir que varios de los pasajes “intervenidos” de las Sententiae aparecen también en los Excerpta (cuya edición crítica estoy realizando), que transmite la lectura gregoriana original frente a las lecturas “propias” de las Sententiae. Un ejemplo, en Sententiae 2, 47, PL 80, 849B, leemos: Quosdam saepe monachos vidimus terrena, mientras que en los Excerpta (In Cantica 43, según la capitulación de mi edición): Nam quosdam saepe vidimus terrena, conviniendo así con la fuente: Gregorio Magno, moral. 12, 52, 61, ed. M. Adriaen, CChr.SL 143A (Turnhout 1985), 666. 20 En los capítulos aquí analizados no hay coincidencias claras con el Liber testimoniorum de Paterio, un florilegio gregoriano que Tajón empleó indudablemente en otros puntos: véase Lucia Castaldi, Fabrizio Martello, ‘Tempera quasi aurum: origine, redazione e diffusione del Liber testimoniorum di Paterio’, Filologia mediolatina 18 (2011), 23-107.

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las acciones del mundo, permanecen en su paz interior. Asimismo, no todos pueden aspirar a la contemplación propia de los hombres santos, pues el abandono de la vida activa puede acarrear el fin de las buenas obras con las que se inicia el camino de conversión espiritual, cayendo por lo tanto el hombre en el ocio y los malos pensamientos. En el capítulo 2, 47 (De remissa conversatione ipsorum), Tajón emplea moral. 12, 52-3, donde Gregorio advierte de los peligros de ejercer el gobierno sobre otros hombres sin haber consumado el proceso de conversión, pues se caerá preso de la soberbia que nace de la adulación; de ahí la perseverancia en el camino de santidad que se había emprendido. Con una finalidad similar selecciona Tajón las advertencias a los que no perseveran en las buenas obras que Gregorio desarrolla en past. 3, 34. Por fin, para estos capítulos Tajón escogió también un par de de fragmentos de la homilía 17 sobre el Evangelio: el primero (hom. Ev. 17, 14) se trata de una interpretación moral de Ct 1, 5, según la cual la implicación en las obras exteriores aparta del progreso espiritual de uno mismo; el segundo (hom. Ev. 17, 14), al inicio de 2, 46 (De humilitate vel opere eorum)21, no había sido señalado hasta ahora, y es el único donde el término monachus aparece explicitado: se trata de una advertencia al auditorio de que considere su propio estado y obre según la carga de pecado que le venga aparejada, de modo que por lo que respecta al monje: reverentiam habitus in actu, in locutione, in cogitatione sua semper circumspiciat; ea quae mundi sunt, perfecte deserat, et quod ostendit humanis oculis habitu, hoc ante Dei oculos moribus praetendat22. 2. La doctrina de Tajón en su contexto Desde fines del siglo VI tanto los autores eclesiásticos como las actas de los concilios muestran acerca del monacato ideas diversas, contradictorias a veces. El fenómeno cuenta con estudios clásicos a cargo de Antonio Linage Conde23 y Manuel Díaz y Díaz24, y de él se viene ocupando más recientemente Pablo C. Díaz en varios trabajos25. 21

PL 80, 847C. Ed. R. Étaix, CChr.SL 141, 133 (lin. 436-439). 23 Principalmente Antonio Linage Conde, Los orígenes del monacato benedictino en la Península Ibérica, vol. 1 (León, 1973). De interés asimismo para lo que aquí se hablará ‘El ideal monástico de los padres visigóticos’, Ligarzas 1 (1968), 79-97 e ‘Isidoro de Sevilla, De monachis (Etymologiarum, VII, 13)’, SP 13 (1975), 479-86. 24 Numerosos son los trabajos de este autor que, de una forma u otra, han aportado algo al tema. Cito, por su carácter fundamental todavía, Manuel Cecilio Díaz y Díaz, ‘El eremitismo en la España visigótica’, Revista portuguesa de história 6 (1955), 217-37; ‘La homilía De monachis perfectis’, en Anécdota Wisigothica, vol. 1 (Salamanca, 1958), 80-7; Valerio del Bierzo. Su persona, su obra (León, 2006). 25 Véase Pablo C. Díaz, ‘La recepción del monacato en Hispania’, en Codex Aquilarensis 5 (1991), 131-40; ‘Monasticism and Liturgy in Visigothic Spain’, en Alberto Ferreiro (ed.), The 22

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Por lo que se puede deducir de las fuentes, desde el siglo VII la vida cenobítica va ganando importantes apoyos y simpatías de parte de los obispos visigóticos. La autonomía de los cenobios sobre su propio patrimonio queda sancionada en el IV Concilio de Toledo, y no faltan medidas legislativas evidentemente favorables a la vida comunitaria en detrimento de la anacorética, tendente al conflicto con abades y obispos26. El ordo abbatum suscribe las actas de los sínodos desde el VIII Concilio de Toledo en el 653, aunque su participación en las reuniones conciliares puede comprobarse desde más atrás. La vida en el cenobio contó con la regulación de Isidoro de Sevilla27, quien en su Regula monachorum prescribe una vida de trabajo activo en el monasterio y se preocupa de preservar su autonomía respecto de las influencias externas, censurando la existencia de las comunidades urbanas, proclives a una “vida activa” en el mundo que debía de ser difícil de sustraer de las injerencias interesadas de los obispos y poderes seculares28. Pero valga destacar que este monacato urbano no dejó de contar con apoyos, como aquel anónimo autor de la homilía De monachis perfectis, que, aun alabando la vida de los “monjes solitarios”, destaca las buenas obras de la vida activa de los que se consagraron al monacato en las ciudades, que con ellas llevan a la cumbre las exigencias de la caridad. Se viene considerando que Isidoro tuvo, como mínimo, escaso entusiasmo por la vida anacorética: las referencias que encontramos en sus obras la presentan como la perfección de la vida espiritual, que debe iniciarse necesariamente en el cenobio (la vita actualis), donde no hace sino repetir las prescripciones de Casiano. En cualquier caso, y a pesar de las trabas impuestas, el eremitismo contó en época visigótica con una aparente buena salud. La figura de Valerio es un ejemplo destacado, aunque extremo: su opinión acerca de los cenobios Visigoths. Studies in Culture and Society (Leiden, Boston, Köln, 1999), 169-99; ‘Regula communis: Monastic Space and Social Context’, en Hendrik Dey, Elisabeth Fentress (ed.), Western Monasticism ante litteram. The Spaces of Monastic Observance in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Turnhout, 2011), 117-34; ‘Non dicimus monasteria sed animarum perditionem et ecclesia subuersionem. El monasterio como espacio de heterodoxia y alternativa social en la Hispania tardoantigua’, Studi e materiali di Storia delle Religioni 85 (2019), 125-35. 26 Véase por caso el canon 5 del VII Concilio de Toledo, que exige de los reclusi (monjes solitarios que viven en una pequeña celda normalmente aneja a un monasterio) el haber pasado previamente por la vida cenobítica. 27 En concreto obre la concepción del monacato para Isidoro puede leerse Adalbert de Vogüé, Histoire littéraire du mouvement monastique dans l’antiquité, vol. XI. La Gaule franque et l’Espagne wisigothique (VIe-VIIe siècle) (Paris, 2007), 105-65, y Paula Barata Dias, ‘L’idéal monastique, les moines et les monastères du monde wisigothique selon Isidore de Séville’, Antiquité tardive 23 (2015), 143-54. 28 Véase reg. monach. 1: villam sane longe remotam esse a monasterio, ne vicinius posita aut labis inferat periculum, aut famam inficiat dignitatis (PL 83, 869A). De la misma opinión su hermano mayor Leandro de Sevilla, reg. 26: Nec velis imitare eas virgines, quae in urbibus per cellulis demorantur, quas multimoda cura constringit (ed. J. Velázquez, Corpus Patristicum Hispanum 1, 163).

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– donde llevó a cabo intentos frustrados de vida comunitaria – llegó a ser extremadamente negativa, habida cuenta de la ligereza de la vida de la religiosa que, en su opinión, se había instalado en estos centros. Sea como fuere, tanto su figura y la de San Millán (anacoreta biografiado por Braulio de Zaragoza) como la tendencia de la legislación atestiguan cuando menos que la vida solitaria había alcanzado relevancia. Las tendencias eremíticas contaron siempre con una mayor implantación en la antigua provincia de la Gallaecia, ya afectada tiempo atrás por la heterodoxia priscilianista, y donde la Regula de San Fructuoso impone al monje del cenobio una vida de soledad y oración fuera de los trabajos y obligaciones comunitarios, contrastando claramente con Isidoro en este sentido. El monacato gallego tuvo por lo demás una evolución particular que trasciende a los intereses de este trabajo29. La doctrina de Tajón es en gran medida próxima a la de Isidoro de Sevilla, si bien el obispo cesaraugustano asume importantes características de la teología gregoriana claramente ausentes en el hispalense, lo que le dota de originalidad en este planteamiento suyo de la ordenación de la vida monacal. En primer lugar, respecto al problema del conflicto entre cenobitismo y anacoretismo, Tajón, tomando y aplicando a los monjes las consideraciones de Gregorio acerca del proceso de conversión y santificación, enfatiza varias veces los peligros aparejados a quien abandona completamente el mundo y la vida activa sin haber consumado el proceso de conversión: los malos pensamientos, que hacen que el solitario siga anclado a la tierra. Tajón deja claro como Gregorio que lo relevante no es en sí retirarse, sino la conversión individual que lleva al hombre a poner su deseo en los bienes celestes y abandonar los anhelos del siglo. En este sentido, se favorece claramente una vida activa (comunitaria en el caso de los monjes) que permita la perseverancia en las buenas obras que santifican a través en la caridad, cuyo abandono es con frecuencia la vía hacia el vicio del solitario. Es el precepto evangélico de caridad: el amor a Dios – que implica la renuncia a los propios anhelos temporales, el refugio en el “monasterio interior” que viene con la conversión – y el amor al prójimo, realizado en las obras pías. De estos capítulos de las Sententiae tajonianas se desprende, por lo tanto, que es necesaria una práctica de la vida activa para no caer en la disolución, y aunque no se cierra el camino de una santidad totalmente anacorética, parece presentarse como inalcanzable para la mayoría. Esta argumentación, calcada de Gregorio, resultaba novedosa. Isidoro no explicitó que el desvincularse por completo de las obras de la vida activa pudiera ser un peligro, ni llegó a asumir la teología gregoriana que establece una necesaria complementariedad entre la vida activa y la contemplación. 29 Me refiero principalmente a los problemas de los monasterios dúplices y el desarrollo del monacato pactual, entre otros problemas específicos de textos probablemente relacionados con el monacato en esta zona y esta época, como la Regula communis y la Consensoria monachorum. Sobre ello remito a la bibliografía dada.

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Antes al contrario, las dos vías aparecen claramente diferenciadas30. Aunque ciertamente su concepción de la vida anacorética no debía de distar demasiado de la de Tajón (tenemos alguna discreta referencia a la rareza de la perfección de la vida contemplativa31), el silencio que los escritos isidorianos guardan sobre ella muestran todavía reverencia a la tradición de la vida solitaria. Los argumentos de Gregorio adoptados por Tajón, en cambio, siembran una clara duda sobre la santidad de los que profesan el monacato eremítico, cuyos peligros lo hacen válido únicamente para aquellos que han alcanzado una completa santidad. En relación con esta asunción de la teología gregoriana de la caridad, hay que decir que en Tajón no se percibe la preocupación de Isidoro por la participación de los monjes en los asuntos del mundo, y en concreto en el gobierno de la Iglesia. Cierto es que en sus Sententiae se advierte de la necesidad de que el monje sea capaz de mantenerse dentro de su estabilidad interior sin desear la gloria del mundo, pero la interferencia como tal no queda censurada, a diferencia de lo que Isidoro había hecho32. Receloso respecto de las relaciones entre contemplación y acción, Isidoro no contempló siquiera que el acceso a la dignidad episcopal pudiera nacer de la voluntad de servicio al prójimo, sino que se limitó a declarar que el hombre debía aceptarla humildemente cuando venía determinada por la Providencia33. Tajón, en cambio, a través de los argumentos de Gregorio, deja clara una mayor permisividad. Y ello – parece importante apuntarlo – conviene con las tendencias evidentes del mundo visigótico, cargado de ejemplos de obispos de extracción monástica y caracterizado por una progresiva intevención de los abades en la actividad legislativa de los concilios.

30 Léase al respecto Patrick J. Mullins, The Spiritual Life According to Saint Isidore of Seville (Washington, DC, 1940), 112-50 31 Así sent. 3, 15, 1: Activa vita innocentia est operum bonorum, contemplativa speculatio supernorum; illa communis multorum est, ista vero supernorum (ed. P. Cazier, CChr.SL 111, 241). 32 Véase sent. 3, 21, 1-2: Hii qui pro Dei timore saeculo renuntiant, et tamen curis rerum familiarium implicantur, quanto se rerum studiis occupant, tanto divinae se ipsos subtrahunt caritati… Nisi prius a secretioribus cordis expellatur inportuna saecularium multitudo curarum, anima, quae intrinsecus iacet, nequaquam resurget. Nam dum se per innumeras saeculi cogitationis aspargit, ad considerationem sui se nullatenus collegit. (ed. P. Cazier, CChr.SL 111, 251-2). Más adelante (sent. 3, 21, 4): Multi enim monachorum amore parentum non solum terrenis curis, sed etiam forensibus iurgiis involuti sunt, et pro suorum temporali salute suas animas perdiderunt (ed. P. Cazier, CChr.SL 111, 252). 33 Así sent. 3, 33, 1: Vir ecclesiasticus et crucifigi mundo per mortificationem propriae carnis debet, et dispensationem ecclesiastici ordinis, si ex Dei voluntate provenerit, nolens quidem, sed humilis gubernandam suscipiat (ed. P. Cazier, CChr.SL 111, 272). Según argumenta de hecho Jacques Fontaine, ‘La vocation monastique selon saint Isidore de Séville’, en Théologie de la vie monastique. Études sur la tradition patristique (Paris, 1961), 353-69, la vertiente ascética de Isidoro, a pesar del sabor gregoriano de muchos de sus pasajes, queda reducida a su aspecto más duro y espiritual, frente a la llama de amor viva que subyace a la teología gregoriana.

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3. Conclusiones Puede concluirse que la ordenación de la vida monástica que Tajón desarrolla en sus Sententiae concretiza en los monjes de su tiempo el proceso de santificación según Gregorio Magno. Aunque sus posicionamientos al respecto pueden considerarse muy próximos a los de Isidoro de Sevilla, la asunción explícita de la autoridad de Gregorio le permite a Tajón presentar sutilezas teológicas novedosas, que en este caso tienen que ver fundamentalmente con la concepción gregoriana de la caridad y sus implicaciones acerca de la vinculación entra vida activa y contemplativa. Tajón explicita la existencia de un claro peligro en el abandono de las obras de la vida activa, y es claro que se muestra menos riguroso respecto de la implicación de los monjes en el mundo. Esto se traduce en un ideal cenobítico para la mayoría de los monjes, quedando el anacoretismo como un estado cuya santidad lo hace prácticamente inalcanzable, que la mayoría no debería imitar a riesgo de caer en la disolución. A la luz de lo que se lee en estas líneas de sus Sententiae, parece que Tajón no habría tenido problema en suscribir la apología de la vida activa del monacato urbano que realiza el anónimo autor de la homilía De monachis perfectis, para quien los monjes de las ciudades llevan a la cumbre los preceptos de la caridad. Aunque para ambas clases de vida monástica la conversión exige una ascesis igualmente exigente, el obispo de Zaragoza, apoyado en la autoridad de Gregorio, carece del escrúpulo de Isidoro respecto de las vínculos naturales entre las vidas activa y contemplativa. Conviene destacar que entre los escritores visigodos Tajón presenta la argumentación más dura contra la vida anacorética, o al menos en contra de su proliferación.

Metamorphosis and Theosis: Andrew of Crete on the Transfiguration of the Lord and the Deification of the Human Nature Jan Dominik BOGATAJ, Institute for Patristic Studies, Faculty of Theology, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia

ABSTRACT The article discusses the broad topic of patristic and Byzantine theology of the Gospel account on the Transfiguration of the Lord (Matt. 17:1-8; Mk. 9:2-8; Lc. 9:28-36), which has been providing ancient authors with the rich theological foundation and enabled them to base their doctrine in it. One of the first authors who connected this Gospel narrative scene with the rich theological idea of deification (theosis) was Andrew of Crete (ca. 660–770). Through the examination of the ideas of deification in his homiletic corpus and especially in the unedited Homilia in Transfigurationem Domini nostri (Hom. 7; CPG 8176), this study provides an insight into his rhetoric, exegetic, philosophical and theological ideas that contributed to his synthesis. For Andrew, metamorphosis means theosis: Τοῦτο τοίνυν ἑορτάζομεν σήμερον, τὴν τῆς φύσεως θέωσιν, τὴν εἰς τὸ κρεῖττον ἀλλοίωσιν, τὴν ἐπὶ τὰ ὑπὲρ φύσιν τῶν κατὰ φύσιν ἔκστασιν καὶ ἀνάβασιν (Hom. 7; PG 97, 933A). Additionally, the text explores Andrew’s Homily in the context of the corpus of patristic and Byzantine literature on the Transfiguration and deification, searching to define the human mode of participating in this divine mystery, as Andrew lucidly elaborated: ὥσπερ ἐξ ἀεννάου πηγῆς, κατ’ ἀπειρόδωρον χάριν τῆς ἀκηράτου θεώσεως, εἰς ἡμᾶς τὸ μέγα πρόεισι δώρον (Hom. 7; PG 97, 933B).

Introduction Though intuitively very close, the event of Christ’s Transfiguration has been related to the doctrine of deification in the Greek Patristic and Byzantine thought relatively late. Although there have been some previous attempts of expressing these theological ideas combined, it was only St Andrew of Crete at the beginning of the 8th century who introduced this creative synthesis between the spiritual and ontological significance of the Transfiguration and the classical doctrine of human deification.

Studia Patristica CXXX, 145-158. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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Deification in the Early Homilies on the Transfiguration According to the classical patristic maxim on deification, formulated as an ‘exchange formula’ by Athanasius of Alexandria, God became human that we might become divine.1 Christians in God’s economic plan are called to a metamorphosis from the fallen to the original nature according to God’s primordial idea. Anthropological ontology of this process, at its peak explicated in the event of the Transfiguration, is founded on Christological ontology.2 The theological topos of the Transfiguration have provided many patristic and early medieval Christian authors – in Greek, Latin and Oriental traditions – with a fertile ground for developing many creative insights for anthropology, Christology, Trinitarian theology, etc.3 Among the most significant theological doctrines, characteristic especially for the Greek Patristic and Byzantine tradition, is the idea of deification, which has already been the subject of much research.4 But unfortunately, previous studies have not dealt with the relation between Transfiguration and deification, unless in a very general or sporadic way. However, John A. McGuckin in his impressive survey on the patristic interpretation on the Transfiguration, mentions Andrew of Crete to be the first who connected these two theological notions but fails to acknowledge any previous attempts and makes no attempt to discuss this relation any further.5 By a more thorough and systematic approach we can assess that there are some 1 2

De incarnatione 54.3; SC 199 (Paris, 1973), 458. John A. McGuckin, ‘The Patristic Exegesis of the Transfiguration’, SP 18.1 (1989), 335-41,

336. 3 For some general studies on the topic, see John A. McGuckin, The Transfiguration of Christ in Scripture and Tradition (Lewiston, Queenston, 1986); Christopher N. Veniamin, The transfiguration of Christ in Greek patristic literature: from Irenaeus of Lyons to Gregory Palamas (Oxford, 1991); Andreas Andreopoulos, Metamorphosis: The Transfiguration in Byzantine Theology and Iconography (New York, 2005); Aaron Canty, Light and Glory: The transfiguration of Christ in early Franciscan and Dominican Theology (Washington, 2011); Andreas Andreopoulos, This is My Beloved Son: The Transfiguration of Christ (Brewster, 2012); Brian Daley, Light on the Mountain: Greek Patristic and Byzantine Homilies on the Transfiguration of the Lord (Crestwood, 2013); Peter Anthony, Interpreting Vision: a survey of patristic reception of the Transfiguration and its earliest depiction, with special reference to the Gospel of Luke (Oxford, 2014). 4 See Jules Gross, La divinisation du chrétien d’après les Pères grecs. Contribution historique à la doctrine de la grâce (Paris, 1938); Myrrha Lot-Borodine, La deification de l’homme selon la doctrine des Pères grecs (Paris, 1970); Norman Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition (Oxford, 2004); Stephen Finlan and Kharlamov Vladimir, Theosis, deification in Christian theology, Princeton Theological Monograph Series 52 (Pittsburgh, 2006); Michael J. Christensen and Jeffery A. Wittung, Partakers of the divine nature: the history and development of deification in the Christian traditions (Grand Rapids, 2007); Paul M. Collins, Partaking in divine nature: deification and communion (London, New York, 2010); Vladimir Kharlamov (ed.), Theosis: deification in Christian theology, Vol. 2, Princeton Theological Monograph Series 156 (Eugene, 2011); Jared Ortiz (ed.), Deification in the Latin Patristic Tradition (Washington, 2019). 5 J.A. McGuckin, The Transfiguration of Christ (1986), 117.

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mutual allusions present already before Andrew of Crete in the corpus of homilies on the Transfiguration. An important example is Proclus of Constantinople († 446) who already in the middle of the 5th century argued about the future transformation of the human nature, although without explicit mentioning the notion of theosis. ‘For Christ was transfigured (μετεμορφώθη), not simply to be so, but that he might show us the transfiguration of our nature that is to come (δείξῃ τὴν μέλλουσαν τῆς φύσεως μεταμόρφωσιν) – his second coming, for our salvation’.6 Proclus is among the first authors who, besides eschatology and Christology, points out the ontological significance of Christ’s Transfiguration what is later on more fully developed with a concept of theosis. It was Maximus the Confessor († 662) who two centuries later as the first author merged the theological meaning of the Transfiguration with the doctrine of deification. In his work Capita theologica et oeconomica in the First century on Theology 97, Maximus speaks about some kind of duomorphism of the Logos, who reveals himself in a ‘common and more popular’ form to beginners and in a ‘more hidden’ form to those perfected in the spiritual knowledge. If the first manner represents the image of the Lord’s initial advent and a literal meaning of the Gospels, then the second one is: more hidden, it can be perceived only by a few, that is, by those who have already become like the holy apostles Peter and John, before whom the Lord was transfigured with a glory that overwhelmed the senses (see Matt. 17:2); … it prefigures the second and glorious advent, in which the spirit of the Gospel is apprehended, and which by means of wisdom transfigures and deifies those imbued with spiritual knowledge: because of the transfiguration of the Logos within them ‘they reflect with unveiled face the glory of the Lord’ (2Cor. 3:18) (τῆς διὰ σοφίας τοὺς γνωστικοὺς μεταμορφούσης πρὸς θέωσιν ἐκ τῆς ἐν αὐτοῖς τοῦ λόγου μεταμορφώσεως “ἀνακεκαλυμμένῳ προσώπῳ τὴν δόξαν Κυρίου κατοπτριζομένους”).7

Those who participate in the deeper divine realities – i.e. apophatic theology, according to Maximus – are, due to the metamorphosis of the Logos, also themselves being transformed, deified (μεταμορφούσης πρὸς θέωσιν). Anastasius of Sinai at the end of the 7th century as an heir of this tradition expresses the same two ideas in a new, creative way. Theosis is a fruit of Christ’s metamorphosis: ‘With him, let us also flash like lightning before spiritual eyes (μεθ’ οὗ συναστράψοιμεν τοῖς νοεροῖς ὄμμασι), renewed in the shape of our souls (τοῖς ψυχικοῖς χαρακτῆρσιν ἀνανεούμενοι), and made divine (ἀναθεούμενοι) transformed along with him in order to be like him (σὺν 6 Hom. 8,2 (PG 65, 768). Translations, if it is not stated otherwise, are quoted from B. Daley, Light on the Mountain (2013). 7 Maximus Confessor. Capita theologica et oeconomica, ed. Andreas Wollbold und Kersin Hajdú, Fontes Christiani 66 (Freiburg, Basel, Wien, 2016), 154-5. For Maximus’ transformative usage of verb μεταμορφόω, see also Second century on theology 13 and 15.

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αὐτῷ ὡς αὐτὸς συμμορφούμενοι), always being deified (ἀεὶ θεούμενοι), always changing for the better (ἐπὶ τὸ κρεῖττον διαλλατόμενοι)’.8 Deification is therefore a dynamic process, which had initiated with the economic Transfiguration at Tabor and will be brought to its telos in eschaton. Anastasius’ formulation is not some kind of metaphysical speculation, but instead a theologically innovative expression of a deep spiritual experience. Deification is actually Christification, Christo-morphosis, since we can achieve it through our taking form of the transfigured Christ. Some decades later, in the middle of the 8th century, John Damascene († 749) continues this tradition when in his homily on the Transfiguration, using the verb θεόω, claims very similarly: ‘For if the human person is divinized, in that God is humanized, and the one God himself is revealed as also human, then the same individual, being human, is eternal in divinity, yet still, being God, begins to live in his humanity (εἰ γὰρ θεοῦται μὲν ἄνθρωπος ἐν τῷ θεὸν ἀνθρωπίζεσθαι αὐτός τε ὁ εἷς θεός τε καὶ ἄνθρωπος δείκνυται, ἄρα ὁ αὐτὸς ἄνθρωπος ὢν ἄναρχός ἐστι τῇ θεότητι καὶ θεὸς ὢν τῇ ἀνθρωπότητι ἄρχεται)’.9 Similar ideas form that period are present also in the liturgical texts for the office of the Transfiguration feast in the Byzantine tradition, written by Cosmas of Jerusalem (of Maiuma) between 7th and 8th century. Deification in Andrew’s Homiletical Corpus: ἡ τοῦ προσλήμματος θέωσις Surprisingly, no attempt has been made to examine the doctrine of deification in the thought of Andrew of Crete. Although, for example, Norman Russell in his exhaustive study on the doctrine of deification in the Greek patristic tradition takes his account only up to Maximus the Confessor, he discusses the concept of theosis also as inherited by diverse Byzantine authors.10 However, he makes no attempt to include writings of Andrew of Crete. There are still relatively few studies in the area of middle Byzantine homiletics and theology; Andrew’s writings are no exception and they have not been treated in much detail,11 since a certain number of his homilies remain unedited and a critical 8 André Guillou, ‘Le monastère de la Théotokos au Sinaï: origines; épiclèse; mosaïque de la Transfiguration; Homélie inédite d’Anastase le Sinaïte sur la Transfiguration (Étude et texte critique)’, Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire 67 (1955), 216-58, 242. 9 Homilia in transfigurationem Domini 3. Bonifatius Kotter (ed.), Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos. V. Opera homiletica et hagiographica (Berlin, 1988), 440. The noun θέωσις is found two times in his homily: καὶ τῆς ὑπὲρ νοῦν τῆς βροτείας σαρκὸς ἀτρέπτου θεώσεως (PG 96, 548); Εἰ Ἀδὰμ μὴ πρὸ καιροῦ τὴν θέωσιν ἐπεζήτησεν, ἔτυχεν ἂν τῆς ἐφέσεως (PG 96, 569). 10 N. Russell, The Doctrine of Deification (2004), 8. He discusses Leontius of Jerusalem, John Damascene, Symeon the New Theologian and Gregory Palamas. 11 For the most important studies on Andrew’s literary activity, see Constantin D. Papadakis, Saint André de Crète: son témoignage sur le mystère du Christ dans la spiritualité chrétienne. Étude sur son œuvre oratoire et poétique, Doctoral dissertation (Strasbourg, 1964); Theocharis

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edition remains desideratum.12 Likewise, Andrew of Crete’s own life remains somewhat shadowy, since we can chiefly rely only on the probably late eightcentury Vita by Niketas the Patrician and Questor (BHG 113).13 Due to this fact the exact date of origin of his hymns and homilies is uncertain. However, in order to understand Andrew’s usage of the doctrine of deification, we must examine his extant edited homilies.14 Besides his well-known Great Canon,15 there are some of his very genuine, rhetorically and theologically rich homilies preserved to us from the period when he was a metropolitan bishop of the Cretan city Gortyna.16 In Homilia I in Nativitatem B. Mariae Andrew introduces the expression ἡ τοῦ προσλήμματος θέωσις when he speaks about the effects of Christ’s incarnation; it is paralleled to the three similarly significant expressions: ἡ τοῦ μυστηρίου φανέρωσις, ἡ κενωθεῖσα φύσις and θεὸς καὶ ἄνθρωπος.17 Andrew E. Detorakis, ‘Le vocabulaire d’André de Crète’, JÖB 36 (1986), 45-60; Mary B. Cunningham, ‘Tradition and Innovation in the Homilies of St. Andrew of Crete’, in The 17th International Byzantine Congress, Abstracts of short papers (Washington, 1986), 66; ead., ‘Andreas of Crete’s homilies on Lazarus and Palm Sunday: the preacher and his audience’, SP 31 (1997), 22-6; ead., ‘Andrew of Crete: A High-Style Preacher of the Eighth Century’, in M.B. Cunningham and P. Allen (eds), Preacher and Audience: Studies in Early Christian and Byzantine Homiletics, A New History of the Sermon I (Leiden, 1998), 267-93; Aleksandr Kazhdan, A history of Byzantine literature, Vol. 1 (650-850) (Athens, 1999), 37-54. 12 For the manuscript tradition of his homilies, see Pauline D. Eyre, St. Andreas of Crete – A Catalogue of Mss of his Homilies, 2 vol. (Birmingham, 1966); Mary B. Cunningham, Andreas of Crete’s Homilies on Lazarus and Palm Sunday: a critical edition and commentary (Birmingham, 1983); J. Neville Birdsall, ‘Homilies ascribed to Andreas Cretensis in MS. Halensis A 119’, in Jürgen Dummer (ed.), Text und Textkritik (Berlin, 1987), 49-52. 13 M. Papadopoulos-Kerameus (ed.), Ἀνάλεκτα Ἱεροσολυμίτης Σταχυολογίας 5 (St. Petersburg, 1891), 169-79. On Andrew’s life, see Siméon Vailhé, ‘Saint André de Crète’, Échos d’Orient 5 (1902), 378-87; S. Eustratiades, ‘Ἀνδρέας ὁ Κρήτης ὁ Ἱεροσολυμίτης’, Nea Sion 29 (1934), 673-88; Theocharis E. Detorakis, Οι άγιοι της πρώτης βυζαντινής περιόδου της Κρήτης και ή σχετική προς αυτούς φιλολογία (Athens, 1970), 160-90; Marie-France Auzépy,’La carrière d’André de Crète’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 88 (1995), 1-12. 14 CPG 8170-8193 (PG 97, 805-1305); M.B. Cunningham, Andreas of Crete’s Homilies on Lazarus and Palm Sunday (1983), 188-229, 335-82; Marc De Groote, ‘Andrew of Crete’s Homilia de exaltatione S. Crucis (CPG 8199; BHG 434f). Editio princeps’, Harvard Theological Review 100 (2007), 443-87. For the translations, see Mary B. Cunningham (ed.), Wider than Heaven: eight-century homilies on the Mother of God, Popular Patristic Series 35 (New York, 2008), 71-138, 197-219; Brian E. Daley (ed.), On the Dormition of Mary: early patristic homilies (New York, 1998), 103-52; Vittorio Fazzo (ed.), Andrea di Creta. Omelie mariane, Collana di testi patristici 63, 2nd ed. (Roma, 1996). 15 The fifth canon for the feast of the Transfiguration of Christ is in one of the manuscripts ascribed to one ‘Andrew’. Joseph Schirò (ed.), Analecta Hymnica Graeca e codicibus eruta Italiae inferioris, Vol. 12, Canones Augusti, ed. Alcestis Proiou (Rome 1980), 60-71. There are some similarities on the rhetorical and theological levels with the Andrew of Crete’s homily on the Transfiguration, but the canon does not include the explicit notion of deification. 16 It is not exactly clear when the homilies have been written. It is also possible that some of them were made already during his stay in Constantinople. 17 PG 97, 805-8.

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exalts Christ’s deification of the human nature, which he assumed. This is denoted with the term πρόσλημμα, which originally meant upper garment (cf. πρόσληψις, addition or acquisition), but in the Patristic Greek took very specific meaning: acquisition of human nature assumed by Christ in incarnation. In a similar manner, celebrating the birth of the Mother of God, Andrew contemplates the mystery of Christ’s incarnation and the consequences for human nature: σήμερον ἡ πρὶν ἀπογαιωθεῖσα φύσις, ἀρχὴν λαμβάνει θεώσεως.18 In Christ human nature, which has previously been made dust after the fall, becomes divine. Andrew uses the exact same expression in Homilia III in Nativitatem B. Mariae when he speaks about the beginning of the deification which happened at the time of Mary’s birth: ἄρτι γὰρ τὸ καθ’ ἡμᾶς συγγενὲς ἀρχὴν λαμβάνει θεώσεως.19 Our theosis is therefore on no account a mere one-time occurrence made once and for all, but is more like a seed, which must be planted at one moment (ἀρχή), but afterwards it grows towards its fullness. The theological concept of deification is found implicitly expressed in the Homilia II in Nativitatem B. Mariae, where Andrew formulates this idea that all Christians achieve the exalted state, by means of baptism and participation in the Eucharist. And we would be his foal, since we have become one in him and have been joined, as it were, by an unbreakable tie through the Incarnation [ἀλύτῳ τινὶ δεσμῷ συναφθέντες διὰ τοῦ προσλήμματος], in which he, the wealthy One, impoverished himself on our behalf and bestowed his own (property) on us who were complete paupers. And indeed, in this manner we have become gods on account of him, while he has been called a human being on our account [καθ' ὄν δὴ τρόπον θεοὶ μὲν ἡμεῖς δι' αὐτὸν γεγόναμεν, αὐτὸς δὲ δι' ἡμᾶς κεχρημάτικεν ἄνθρωπος.]20

In another very important passage of Andrew’s Homilia in Annuntiationem B. Mariae he elaborates the spiritual meaning of the feast: τοῦτο πανηγυρίζομεν σήμερον, τὴν τοῦ θεοῦ πρὸς ἀνθρώπους συνάφειαν, τὴν τοῦ προσλήμματος θέωσιν, τὴν τῆς εἰκόνος ἡμῶν ἀναμόφωσιν, τὴν εἰς τὸ κρεῖττον ἀλλοίωσιν, τὴν εἰς οὐρανοὺς ὕψωσιν καὶ ἀνάβασιν.21 Deification (θέωσις), as a fruit of Christ’s incarnation – the joining (συνάφεια) of God with humanity – celebrated in the liturgy, is paralleled to his assuming of our nature (ἀναμόφωσις), its change for the better (ἀλλοίωσις) and its exaltation and ascent (ὕψωσις and 18

PG 97, 809. PG 97, 860. Cf. ἡ ἀνθρώπου φύσις χαρᾶς προοίμια δέχεται καὶ ἀρχὴν λαμβάνει θεώσεως. Homilia in Annuntiationem B. Mariae (PG 97, 884). 20 PG 97, 836. See Cunningham, Wider than Heaven (2008), 98-9. Cf. ποία γὰρ ἦν καὶ ἔσται ταύτης χαριεστέρα χαρὰ τῷ ἀνθρωπίνῳ γένει, τοῦ κοινωνὸν γενέσθαι θείας φύσεως and τήν τε ἀνθρωπίνην φύσιν ὁρᾷν ὅλην συνημμένην τῷ πλάσαντι, ἵνα ὅλος ὁ ἄνθρωπος θεωθῇ, Homilia in Annuntiationem B. Mariae (PG 97, 892). 21 PG 97, 885. In his homily on the Transfiguration, we find strikingly similar expression, see Hom. 7 (PG 97, 933). 19

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ἀνάβασις). All five syntagmas relate to a double meaning: deification of Christ’s individual human nature or universal human nature.22 Andrew’s Homilia I in Dormitionem B. Mariae employs another aspect of his view on deification. Speaking about the dormition of the Virgin Mary, Andrew states that in her God has not changed anything regarding the nature (οὐδὲν τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων παραμείψασα κατὰ φύσιν θεσμῶν), while her body was changed and it took a new form, sharing by grace in God’s being: μεταλλάττομαι καὶ μορφοῦμαι τὴν ἐν χάριτι θέωσιν.23 The source and the final form of the transformation into God (ἀρχὴν ἐκείνην καὶ πέρας ποιουμένη τὴν θέωσιν) is Him who became in her womb when he remade his own humanity into something divine (ἡνίκα δηλαδὴ τὸ ἀνθρώπινον ἐν ἑαυτῷ θεούμενον ἀνέπλαττε).24 In the same homily Andrew once again implies the concept of deification of πρόσλημμα through conceiving Mary’s body as a ‘source of life’: ἐξ οὗ καὶ τὸ πρόσλημμα θεώσας ὁ ύπερούσιος, καὶ εἰς οὐσίαν ἀληθῶς ἐλθων, ὑπὲρ οὐσίαν οὐσιώθη.25 In Homilia III in Dormitionem B. Mariae we find an exclamative alliteration celebrating Mary’s role in the divine plan. Her body is named: τὸ πηγάζον τὴν ἀφθαρσίαν, ἐξ οὗ ἡ θέωσις· ἐν ᾧ ἡ τελείωσις, δι’ οὗ ἡ σωτηρία.26 Andrew attributes to Mary mediatory role for the deification which is explained as completion and salvation. Another important insight in Andrew’s usage of the concept of deification can be found in his work De humana vita et de defunctis which may also reflect the reminiscence of the Transfiguration (verb συμμορφίζομαι). Gracious deification awaits believers at the end, in the eschatological perspective, when men will be renewed and co-formed according to God: τῇ ἀνακαινίσει τῆς ἀναστάσεως θεῷ συμμορφούμενον, τὴν ἐν χάριτι θέωσιν ἐπιδέχεται.27 In summary, a precise definition of Andrew’s doctrine of deification has proved elusive, since he uses this concept very naturally, he implies it relatively often, without any need of systematically treating it.28 22 Cf. ὅλων ἡμῶν ἐν ἑαυτῷ θεώσας τὸ πρόσλημμα (PG 97, 888); ἐν ἑαυτῷ φιλανθρώπως τὴν ἀνθρωπίνην ἀναμορφώσηται φύσιν, Homilia IV in Nativitatem B. Mariae (PG 98, 877). 23 PG 97, 1056. 24 PG 97, 1056. 25 PG 97, 1065. 26 PG 97, 1097. Cf. ἐνανθρωπισθέντος ἵν’ ὅλον σε θεοποιήσῃ τῷ πνεύματι (PG 97, 1103) and οὐδὲν ἡμῖν τοῦ θείου σταυροῦ σωστικώτερον, ὥστε ἔξεστι λέγειν διὰ μὲν τὴν ἡμετέραν ἀπολύτρωσιν καὶ σωτηρίαν, πρὸς δὲ τούτοις καὶ θέωσιν, τὸν σταυρὸν γεγονέναι, Homilia de exaltatione S. Crucis 3 (De Groote, ‘Andrew of Crete’s Homilia de exaltatione S. Crucis’ [2007], 465). 27 (PG 97,1295). Cf. καινὴ κτίσις αὖθις ἐκεῖθεν ἐπιγενόμενος καὶ λήγων οὐδέποτε τοῦ καινὸς ἀεὶ γίνεσθαι, ἀπὸ δόξης εἰς δόξαν κατὰ τὸ θεῖον ῥῆμα μεταμορφούμενος, Homilia de exaltatione S. Crucis 2 (De Groote, ‘Andrew of Crete’s Homilia de exaltatione S. Crucis’ [2007], 459). 28 E.g. ἡ σκηνὴ τῆς καθ’ ἡμᾶς οὐσίας τῇ θεώσει τοῦ προσληφθέντος φυράματος, ναὸς Θεοῦ κεχρημάτικεν, Canon in B. Mariae Annuntiationem (PG 97, 1329). Cf. τὸ κεφάλαιον ἐν

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For Andrew, deification is strictly connected to Christ’s incarnation which might reflect a certain influence of Maximus the Confessor. This becomes even more clear if we examine some of Maximus’ theological ideas, style and terminology.29 In Andrew’s work, the apophatic character is very noticeable, what is also due to the influence of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Like the Areopagite and Maximus before him, Andrew employs a threefold schema: the practical way (πράξις) – natural contemplation of the world in the Spirit (τῆς ἐν πνεύματι φυσικῆς θεωρίας) – the supreme contemplation of Christ’s visible and noetic theophany (τῆς ὁρατῆς αὐτοῦ καὶ νοητῆς θεοφανείας).30 Because of its own rhetorical brilliance, Andrew was able to prove also his theological creativity which can be seen, among other examples, from his own characteristic expression: ἡ τοῦ προσλήμματος θέωσις.31 In Andrew’s vision deification is therefore a process with a clear beginning (Christ’s incarnation), with a Mother of God as mediator, which has a parallel, double meaning: Christ’s assuming human nature (Christology), which is not without consequences for our humans (soteriology and anthropology). Metamorphosis and Theosis: Homilia in Transfigurationem Domini One of the most linguistically refined, rhetorically wrought and conceptually demanding Christian texts on the Transfiguration from the first millennium is without any doubt the Homilia in Transfigurationem Domini (Hom. 7; CPG 8176) by St Andrew of Crete. Because of his provenance – born in Damascus, he became a monk at the Anastasis church in Jerusalem – and his later office of archdeacon in the church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, Maurice Sachot claims that Andrew played an important role in the process of transmitting the feast of Transfiguration from the limited context of Palestine to the official calendar through the whole Byzantine empire.32 Andrew’s homily on the Christ’s Transfiguration is the most mystical and philosophical among the corpus of the early Christian literature on this topic.33 ᾧ τῆς ἀπογαιωθείσης φύσεως ἀναμορφωθὲν ἐθεώθη τὸ φύραμα, Homilia I in Dormitionem B. Mariae (PG 97, 1069). 29 C.N. Veniamin, The transfiguration of Christ (1991), 219-20. 30 PG 97, 940-1. Cf. C.N. Veniamin, The transformation of Christ (1991), 156-60 on PseudoDionysios and ibid. 200ff. on Maximus. 31 Cf. Sophronius of Jerusalem, Trop. (PG 87, 4005); John Damascene, De fid. orth. 3.12 (PG 94, 1032). 32 Maurice Sachot, L’homélie pseudo-chrysostomienne sur la Transfiguration CPG 4724, BHG 1975. Contextes liturgiques, Restitution à Léone, prêtre de Constantinople, édition critique et commentée, traduction et études connexes (Frankfurt am Main, Bern, 1981), 34-77. 33 For some brief general examinations of the homily, see M.B. Cunningham, ‘Andrew of Crete’ (1998), 287; A. Kazhdan, A history of Byzantine literature, Vol. 1 (1999), 42-3; Vladimir Baranov, ‘Classical Philosophy in the Homily on the Transfiguration of the Lord by Andrew of Crete’, ΣΧΟΛΗ 12.2 (2018), 433-43.

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From the text itself it is clear that it was composed in order to be delivered at the feast day what is generally typical for Andrew’s homilies which were meant to serve as initiation to the mystery of sacramental life. His elevated style does not eliminate his didactical, catechetical and mystagogical intentions, since he tries to clearly present orthodox Chalcedonian Christology. One of the underlying themes in the homily is mystagogical psychagogy of the listeners into the spiritual meaning of the feast they are celebrating and which is deeply transformative in its essence. This is exemplified already in the introduction where Andrew uses the wordplay ‘Logos – alogia’ to demonstrate the central importance of incarnation: All of you, by taking off the cloak of irrationality because of the Word’s self-emptying (τῇ κενώσει τοῦ Λόγου τῆς ἀλογίας περιαιρεθέντες τὸ κάλυμα), have raised up your minds from the earth and learned to think ‘the things that are above’, come now as I spread out before you a spiritual banquet of words: let us ascend with the Word today, as he goes up the high mountain of the Transfiguration.34

Thus, as the Christ-Logos emptied itself at the incarnation, so must the listeners take off the irrationality in order to become capable of understanding divine things. Incarnation is the foundation for Andrew’s thought since ‘Christ himself, the pure goal of life, the supernatural Word of the one who begot him, the one who came down from above for our sakes and became a poor man in our flesh out of love for humanity’,35 wishes us to lift our spiritual lives and make an ascent together with him. By revealing glory and radiance of his own divinity, Christ had ‘in a mystical way transformed the nature (μετεστοιχείωσε τὴν φύσιν) which had once heard the words, “You are earth, and to earth you shall return” (Gen 3:19)’.36 The ontological reality of the transformation of the human nature is in full view disclosed by Christ’s Transfiguration. This conceptual background, together with the evident liturgical context, serves as a basis for Andrew’s doctrine of deification. This is what we celebrate in our feast today, then: divinization of nature (τὴν τῆς φύσεως θέωσιν), its change for the better (τὴν εἰς τὸ κρεῖττον ἀλλοίωσιν); the displacement and ascent of what conforms to nature, towards what is above nature (τὴν ἐπὶ τὰ ὑπὲρ φύσιν τῶν κατὰ φύσιν ἔκστασιν καὶ ἀνάβασιν). How and from where does this great and supernatural grace (μεγάλης καὶ ὑπερφυοῦς χάριτος) come to us? Surely in that the Godhead, which incomparably surpasses all mind and reason, has overwhelmed what is human by the Word.37

Andrew elaborates three aspects or effects of entering into the spiritual realm of Christ’s Transfiguration: divinization of nature (τῆς φύσεως θέωσις), change for the better (εἰς τὸ κρεῖττον ἀλλοίωσις) and displacement and ascent of what 34 35 36 37

Hom. Hom. Hom. Hom.

7. 7. 7. 7.

(PG (PG (PG (PG

97, 97, 97, 97,

932). 932). 932-3). 933).

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conforms to nature, to what is above nature (ἐπὶ τὰ ὑπὲρ φύσιν τῶν κατὰ φύσιν ἔκστασις καὶ ἀνάβασις). All this together he names as great and supernatural grace (μεγάλη καὶ ὑπερφυὴς χάρις). With great rhetorical masterfulness Andrew creates a tricolon, centered around crucial concepts (θέωσις – ἀλλοίωσις – ἔκστασις and ἀνάβασις) that are not that much intensifying or ascending as they can be regarded as mutually explicative. Deification (theōsis), which has something to do with nature, is therefore an alternation (alloiōsis) for the better, an improvement, an ecstasy, a displacement (exstasis), an ascent and a progress (anabasis) to what is supernatural. Further on, deification of nature is in Andrew’s perspective therefore – as an allusion to the Chalcedonian definition – unconfused union of the divine and human; first presented in Christ and then an invitation for the believers. Cretan metropolitan adds a genuine philosophical argumentation in the Aristotelian manner of the precise inner structure of this process: Only the otherness of the Unmoved is preserved immoveable in this Mystery, because of the unconfused union, according to which the more perfect element dominates (μόνες τῆς ἀκινήτου διάφορᾶς, ἀκινήτου φυλαττομένης τῷ μυστερίῳ, δὶα τὴν ἀσύγχυτον ἕνωσιν, καθ’ ἤν καὶ τοῦ κρείττονος ἡ ἐκνίκησις). To put it more precisely, the ineffable act of divinization offers this perfectly true demonstration of itself: the union and identity, in one real individual, of the elements that have come together, which we know has happened in a supernatural way from the very deepest structure of the Mystery (ἢ τό γε κυριώτερον εἰπεῖν, ἡ ἀνεκλάλητος θέωσις, ἀπόδειξιν ταύτην ἑαυτῆς ἀληθεστάτην παρεχομένη, τὴν ὑποστατικὴν τῶν συνελθόντων ἑνότητα καὶ ταυτότητα, ἢν ὑπερφυῶς ἴσμεν γεγενημένην ἐξ αὐτῆς ἄκρας συμπήξεως τοῦ μυστερίου).38

Baranov states that ‘the Aristotelian concept of the unmoved mover is applied to emphasize the essentially Chalcedonian nature of Andrew’s Christology’.39 The possibility of deification had been offered when the incarnated Logos took on the whole human nature. Andrew of Crete’s thought is characteristically relevant for anthropology, since Christology cannot be alienated from the questions about human nature. It was because of us, for our sakes, because of our transformation, that the incarnation happened. ‘I am speaking here of what touches us, about the pure synthesis and substantial presence of the Word here below, for our sakes (λέγω δὴ ὅσον πρὸς ἡμᾶς τείνει· καὶ τὴν κάτω καὶ δι ‘ἡμᾶς ἀκραιφνεστάτην τοῦ Λόγου σύνθεσιν καὶ οὐσίωσιν): his second birth, without a Father, from a Virgin Mother’.40 Continuing the explanation of deification, Andrew in his third mentioning of the concept of theosis refers to the previous theological traditions, using interesting syntagma ἀκήρατη θέωσις: 38 39 40

PG 97, 933. V. Baranov, ‘Classical Philosophy in the Homily on the Transfiguration of the Lord’ (2018), 440. PG 97, 933.

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So, according to the infallible guidance by the theological writers into the mysteries, this great gift comes forth to us as from an ever-flowing spring, a limitless grace of unalloyed deification (ὅθεν κατὰ τὴν ἀψευδῆ τῶν θεολόγων μυσταγωγίαν, ὥσπερ ἐξ ἀεννάου πηγῆς, κατ’ ἀπειρόδωρον χάριν τῆς ἀκηράτου θεώσεως, εἰς ἡμᾶς τὸ μέγα πρόεισι δῶρον).41

Anthropological meaning of the Transfiguration is therefore a glimpse of a promised deification, sharing in divine nature, which is based on the Christological significance of Christ’s incarnation and Transfiguration. The same mystery that is working in Christ, works in us.42 To achieve personal participation of the listeners, Andrew turns then to introducing a passage of apophatic discourse in which he explains the primary transcendental inability of noetic understanding of the inaccessible and incomprehensible God and above-comprehensible philanthropy of Logos. Only by Logos’ love for us one can ascend to the mountain, gaze at the transfigured Christ and surpass the limited linguistic expression. To participate at this gaze Andrew presupposes the negation of visual and noetical reality in order to become able of being introduced in the mystery which surpasses what is human (μυηθῆναι τὰ ὑπὲρ ἄνθρωπον).43 Mystical meaning of Christ’s Transfiguration (τὰ μυστικὰ θεωρήματα) lies beyond our senses or minds; only the Holy Spirit can introduce us into it. The vocabulary here reminds of Greek mystery cults intertwined with pseudo-dionysian style what shows Andrew’s intention of bringing the listeners to the sacral spiritual ambient, fully inexpressible through human language. Who were judged worthy to become eyewitnesses of the Transfiguration on the mountain, came to be far removed from all visible things and even from themselves: so that they might be instructed, through unseeing and unknowing, in the Mystery – supersubstantial by sheer excess – that lies beyond all affirmation and negation,44 by the manifestation of the Word and the overshadowing of the Spirit and the voice of the Father, borne down from the cloud above them (ἔξω πάντων ἐγένοντο τῶν ὁρωμένων, ἔτι δὲ καὶ ἑαυτῶν, ἵνα τὸ πάσης θειόσεώς τε καὶ αφαιρέσεως ἐκβεβηκὸς καθ’ ὑπεροχὴν ὑπερούσιον, τῇ ἐκφάνσει τοῦ Λόγου, καὶ τῇ ἐπισκιάσει τοῦ πνεύματος, καὶ 41

Hom. 7. (PG 97, 933). Cf. Βούλεται γὰρ συνιέντας ἡμᾶς τοῦ βάθους τῶν κατ’ αὐτὸ πεπραμένων, καὶ εἰρημένων τῇ γνώσει, δραστικωτέραν ἐπισπάσασθαι τὴν χάριν, μιμήσει τοῦ μεταμορφωθέντος, καὶ ἐν ἡμῖν αὐτοῖς ἐνεργοῦσαν τὸ θαυμαστὸν δὴ τοῦτο καὶ ξένον μυστήριον, Hom. 7 (PG 97, 936). Andrew speaks about the ‘grace of the Transfiguration’ (ἡ χάρις τῆς μεταμορφώσεως), Hom. 7 (PG 97, 937). 43 Hom. 7 (PG 97, 936). 44 All the oldest existing manuscripts – see Grec 1470, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France (9th cent.), f. 177v; MS Hagios Sabas 13, Jerusalem (10th/11th century), f. 139r; Vat. gr. 823, Vatican (11th cent.), f. 155; MS Laud Gr. 82, Oxford (13th/14th cent.), f. 284v – have here the term theiōseōs (divinization), but Combéfis suggested an emendation of theseōs (affirmation). For the support of this emendation, without exact referring to the manuscripts, see also B. Daley, Light on the Mountain (2013), 198, n. 47. 42

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τῇ ἄνωθεν ἐκ τῆς νεφέλης φερομένῃ φωνῇ τοῦ γεννήτορος, δι’ ἀβλεψίας καὶ ἀγνωσίας παιδευθῶσι μυστήριον).45

When explaining the temporal circumstance of the transfiguration event – ‘after six days’ (Matt. 17:1) – the preacher numerically interprets this as six different kinds of love, with the most perfect form of love as the highest philosophy, since love as active endeavour for the good also of your neighbour in reality transforms us. ‘That is the Transfiguration, in which the unchangeable one has illuminated what is ours, what has been taken on for our sake, more brightly that the sun (τοῦτο γὰρ ἡ μεταμόρφωσις, καθ’ ἣν ὁ ἀναλλοίωτος, ὑπὲρ τὸν ἥλιον ἔλαμψε τὸ ὑπὲρ ἡμᾶς καὶ ἡμέτερον)’.46 Human participation in Christ’s Transfiguration takes place also in our personal relationships; if Christ has illuminated what is ours, then we also have to illuminate all those around us that are in distress and radiate Christ’s healing light upon them. The fourth mentioning of the term theōsis in the homily takes place at the parenetical ending. Although the real significance of the mystery of the Transfiguration has essentially and most clearly eschatological character, it is the hope for it that maintains it present in our lives and thus the eagerness for our final transformation changes us already while being in the present time. Andrew warns against the danger of laziness and attraction to material things: In every fiber of your being become the pure devotee of better, heavenly things, and receive in the Spirit the pure and blessed gift of sharing the life of the Word, whose outcome is divinization and the enjoyment of ineffable blessings (τὴν ἐν πνεύματι πρὸς τὸν Λόγον δέχου συμβίωσιν τὴν καθαρὰν καὶ μακαρίαν, καὶ ἧς ἔργον ἡ θέωσις, καὶ τῶν ἀῤῤήτων ἀγαθῶν ἀπόλαυσις). As a result, true virtue, shaped and stamped by all the virtues, will be revealed in you; and in your steady contemplation of what is, truth will be unveiled.47

Those are the two aspects of the divinization that Andrew underlies at the end: virtue (ἀρετή) and contemplation (θεωρία). The first centres on the changed moral behaviour and the latter directs the contemplative longing for God, who is the ‘chief and purest goal of virtue and contemplation. Because of him, all other things exist; the goal itself has no cause!’48 And blessed is the one who, at the touch of the Word made dense flesh, made subject to our sense-perception for our sakes, has received knowledge of what is revealed in mystical symbols, and does not despise grace, thereby proving himself unworthy of the 45

Hom. 7 (PG 97, 953). Hom. 7 (PG 97, 941). 47 Hom. 7 (PG 97, 956). Ἀλλὰ ῥᾳθυμίαν ἅπασαν τῆς ψυχῆς παρωσάμενος, καὶ τὴν πρὸς τὰ ὑλικὰ προσπάθειαν ἀποτιναξάμενος, γενοῦ καθαρῶς ὅλος δι ‘ ὅλου τῶν κριττόνων καὶ οὐρανίων· καὶ τὴν ἐν πνεύματι πρὸς τὸ Λόγον δέχου συμβίωσιν τὴν καθαρὰν καὶ μακαρίαν, καὶ ἧς ἔργον ἡ θέωσις, καὶ τῶν ἀῥῥήτων ἀγαθῶν ἀπόλαυσις. 48 Hom. 7 (PG 97, 956). 46

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Spirit; but who rather considers him (Christ) to be the unique law – and does not simply considers him so, but makes himself, by the illumination of the Spirit, to be like (Christ), as he shares our way of life in a new way, by law which is both divine and human (τὸν νόμῳ θείῳ καὶ ἀνθρωπίνῳ καινοπρεπῶς). For he has become human, and so shares our present life; and he has introduced into our pattern of life the gift of sharing with us a way of life above the world (τὴν ὑπερκόσμιον πολιτείαν).49

Divine kenosis is the horizon into which one can enter in sharing the divine transformation, and the event of the Transfiguration is the tropos par excellence to enter into the divine process of changing of our lives. ‘Accompany the Word (παρομάρτει τῷ Λόγῳ) and do not turn aside; he has emptied himself for your sake, after all, and put on a form alien to himself, and bears you completely, along with all that is yours (διὰ σὲ κενωθέντι καὶ μορφωθέντι τὸ ἀλλότριον καὶ ὅλον σε φέροντι μετὰ τῶν σῶν), that he might consume in himself what there is in you that is inferior, and completely free you from sin’.50 The notion of theosis is thus mentioned four times in the homily On the Transfiguration by Andrew of Crete; three lexical appearances in the beginning and one in the end. They stand as two pillars supporting a beautiful arch of the theandric theological vision through which Andrew presents the present and the eschatological effect on humanity caused by Christ’s glorious Transfiguration at the mount Tabor. In the introductory passage of the homily, the concept of theosis is used to present the ontological change in the human nature and the new modality in which Christians can find themselves in, whereas at the end divinization presents the final goal, achieved through virtue and contemplation.

Conclusion In his homily on the Transfiguration, Andrew does not focus on the historicity or actuality of the event, but rather on the mystery of the divine dispensation of salvation. Transfiguration, according to Andrew of Crete, is a stage on our way of becoming divine, a stage for refreshment, a panorama of our final destination, but with a path still in front of us. It is a process of our transformation in the present time, which, however, has a clear initial foundation: Christ’s incarnation. Deification employs a theandric vision; theosis of Christ’s individual human nature and universal human nature. As J. Meyendroff wrote: ‘Deification does not suppress humanity, but makes it more authentically human’.51 It is our sharing in the divine life of the Logos that brings us fruits of deification: virtue 49

Hom. 7 (PG 97, 956). Hom. 7 (PG 97, 957). 51 John Meyendorff, Byzantine theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes (New York, 1987), 72. 50

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(ἀρετή) and contemplation (θεωρία).52 Transfiguration, more than any other Gospel account, shows the ontological relevance of the deification for our human nature (τῆς φύσεως θέωσις), what remains a topic for further investigations. For the Cretan metropolitan, our guide on this journey of deification is human eros which strives for infinity, our longing desire for God. ‘Preserve this divine love (τὸν θεῖον ὑπερκόσμιον ἔρωτα) for what is beyond this world, unyielding and unsullied forever. For that beloved object, which all your longing reaches out to grasp, is without beginning and without end. This is its limit (ὅρος): to be completely unlimited and boundless (τὸ πάντη ἀόριστόν τε καὶ ἄπειρον)’.53

52 Very significant is Andrew’s rhetoric of our participation, often formed with a prefix συν-; e.g. συνόδευσον τῷ Χριστῷ διὰ σὲ τὸν κόσμον ὁδεύοντι; εἰς οὐρανοὺς ἀνιόντι συνάνελθε; etc. Hom. 7 (PG 97, 957). 53 Hom. 7 (PG 97, 957).

Insubstantial Mystery: The Role of ἐνυπόστατος in the Christology of John Damascene Thomas CATTOI, Jesuit School of Theology at Santa Clara University, Berkeley, CA, USA

ABSTRACT The Christological vision developed by John Damascene throughout his corpus weaves together terminological and conceptual resources drawn from a variety of authors ranging chronologically from the time of the early Trinitarian controversies to the period of the contested reception of the Chalcedonian paradigm and the emergence of the Neo-Chalcedonian synthesis. This article will focus on the role played by the concept of ἐνυπόστατος in Damascene’s Christological speculation. The first part of the article will survey the historical development of ἐνυπόστατος from the writings of Cyril of Jerusalem to the apologetic compositions of John the Grammarian and the speculative treatises of Leontios of Byzantium and Maximos the Confessor. The second part of the article will offer a review of John’s use of ἐνυπόστατος, mapping the congruence of his Christological vision with the Neo-Chalcedonian paradigm and its emphasis on the eternal Logos as the lynchpin of the hypostatic union, but will also illustrate John’s retrieval of earlier readings of ἐνυπόστατος so as to affirm the integrity of Christ’s humanity in the hypostatic union. This essay will broadly acknowledge Keetje Rozemond’s and John Meyendorff’s classical reading of the Damascene’s Christology as fundamentally Neo-Chalcedonian; at the same time, in light of Benjamin Gleede’s monograph on ἐνυπόστατος, it will offer some qualifying observations, noting how John’s retrieval of early ‘Trinitarian’ ‒ anti-modalist ‒ readings of ἐνυπόστατος effectively balances its emphasis on the divine hypostasis and actually affirms the equal ontological status of Christ’s humanity and divinity.

The purpose of this essay is to explore the role played by the concept of ἐνυπόστατος in the Christology of John Damascene (675-749 AD), and to argue that John’s presentation of Christ’s saving work rests on his appropriation of different strands of the theological tradition, some exploring the composite reality of Christ’s subjectivity, and some dealing with the ‘insubstantial’ character of Christ’s humanity.1 The first part of this article will chart the broad 1

The classical reference work on John Damascene’s Christology is Keetje Rozemond, La Christologie de Saint Damascène, Studia Patristica et Byzantina (Ettal, 1959); for a more comprehensive survey of his theology, see St. John Damascene: Tradition and Originality in

Studia Patristica CXXX, 159-170. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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conceptual genealogy of the notion of ἐνυπόστατος, underscoring its Trinitarian roots in the writings of earlier authors such as Cyril of Jerusalem (313-386AD), Epiphanius of Salamis (310-403 AD), and John Chrysostom (349-407 AD), mapping its conceptual metamorphosis into a Christological concept in the writings of John the Grammarian (sixth century), Leontios of Byzantium (485543 AD), and finally Maximos the Confessor (580-662 AD). By distinguishing a number of distinct readings of the term ἐνυπόστατος, this discussion will chart the process whereby the apologetic appropriation of this term by NeoChalcedonian authors necessitated a conceptual shift away from its earlier Trinitarian understanding. The second part of the article will show how John’s use of ἐνυπόστατος to illustrate the reality of Christ’s humanity and the salvific role of Christ’s divine ὑπόστασις rests within the broader Neo-Chalcedonian consensus of his time,2 but also incorporates the earlier meaning of ἐνυπόστατος that had originated in the context of fourth-century Trinitarian controversies. While acknowledging John’s subtle conflation of different meanings of ἐνυπόστατος in line with Gleede’s recent monograph on the history of this term, this essay will vindicate, though also qualify, Keetje Rozemond’s classical interpretation of the Damascene’s Christological vision as fundamentally Neo-Chalcedonian. Finally, this essay will endeavor to show how John’s synthesis of older and more recent understandings of ἐνυπόστατος help him find a creative via media between symmetrical and asymmetrical readings of the hypostatic union, thereby affirming the ontological centrality of a single principle of subjectivity against the background of a duality of natures. If John Damascene is the author marking the moment when the great Trinitarian and Christological controversies of the early church finally come to an end, in his construal of the relationship between Christ’s two natures one may arguably find a compelling rejoinder to the claim that Chalcedonian Christology fails to offer a cogent account of humanity’s ontological status in the hypostatic union. At the outset of this discussion, it is important to note that the nouns ἐνυπόστασις and ἀνυπόστασις are not to be found in the literature of the period Christian following Chalcedon or even the Second Council of Constantinople. Rather, these two terms were coined during the great humanist revival of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, as Greek texts became more widely available Byzantine Thought, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford, 2002). Possibly the most detailed study of the history of ἐνυπόστατος is Benjamin Gleede, The Development of the Term ἐνυπόστατος from Origen to John of Damascus (Leiden, Boston, 2012). 2 Despite its popularity, the term ‘Neo-Chalcedonianism’ is first used at the beginning of the twentieth century by Joseph Lebrun, in his monograph Le Monophysisme Sévérien (Leuven, 1909). For a conceptual history of the Neo-Chalcedonian ‘moment’ in early Christian thought, see Siegrief Helmer, Der Neuchalkedonismus: Geschichte, Berechtigung und Bedeutung eines dogmengeschichtlichen Begriffes (Bonn, 1962); Patrick Gray, ‘Neo-Chalcedonianism and the Tradition: From Patristic to Byzantine Theology’, Byzantinische Forschungen 8 (1982), 61-70.

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to scholars.3 Some of the first systematic thinkers to use these terms were representatives of the so-called German Lutheran ‘Scholasticism’4 – a historical occurrence that may help explain the great fortune of ἀνυπόστασις, three centuries later, in the vast theological output of Karl Barth.5 The terms used in early Christian literature are the adjectives ἀνυπόστατος and ἐνυπόστατος, and that their meaning changed significantly over time, with later readings virtually erasing memory of the earlier understanding. The locus classicus for the modern interpretation of ἐνυπόστατος is an 1888 article where Friedrich Loofs, on the basis of his reading of Leontios of Byzantium, claims that enhypostatisation indicates the individualization of the human nature of Christ by way of its ‘being in the enhypostasis of the Logos’ (εἶναι ἐν τῇ ἐνυποστάσει τοῦ λόγου), or its ‘hypostatization in the Logos’ (ὑποστηνία ἐν τῷ λόγῳ).6 As Brian Daley demonstrates in his explorations of Leontios’ legacy, this reading went significantly beyond Leontios’ original intent, which ‒ broadly speaking ‒ was merely to defend the concrete character of Christ’s humanity despite the absence of a human subject in Christ.7 The popularity of Loofs’ reading also ensured that many scholars effectively overlooked the original Trinitarian usage of the term ἐνυπόστασις; familiarity with the latter casts in a rather different light later post-Chalcedonian attempts to articulate conceptually the nature of Christ’s subjectivity and its relationship with Christ’s humanity. Let us now turn to the beginning of the fifth century. In the works of Cyril of Jerusalem, whose theological vision broadly echoed the Nicene defense of consubstantiality, the term ἐνυπόστατος is used with a broad anti-modalist or even anti-Arian intent. In his catechetical writings, Cyril notes that, while speech is dispersed in the air, the intellect within us is enhypostatic; in the same 3 The first printed edition of the Greek text of one of John Damascene’s works ‒ the Expositio Fidei ‒ appeared in Verona in 1531, to be followed by the Dialectics in 1575. See Bonifaz Kotter, O.S.B., Die Überlieferung der ‘Pege gnoseos’ des Hl. Johannes von Damaskos (Ettal, 1959), 224-30. 4 See for instance Johann Andreas Quenstedt, Theologia didactico-polemica (Wittenberg, 1691), III, 3; Johann Gerhard, Loci Theologici (Tübingen, 1764), Locus IV, Cap. VII. 5 In his Church Dogmatics, Karl Barth goes as far as to claim that ‘enhypostasis or anhypostasis’ ‒ he makes no distinction ‒ is ‘the sum and root of all the grace’ that Christ received. See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, trans. G.W. Bromley and T.F. Torrance (London, New York, 2004), 91. 6 Friedrich Loofs, ‘Leontius von Byzanz und die gleichnamigen Schriftsteller der griechischen Kirche’, TU 3,1-2 (Leipzig, 1887), 1-317. For a (critical) overview of the historical impact of ἐνυπόστατος on later theology including Barth’s Kirchliche Dogmatik, see F. LeRon Shults, ‘A Dubious Christological Formula: from Leontius of Byzantium to Karl Barth’, TS 57 (1996), 431-46. 7 Brian Daley, S.J., ‘“A Richer Union”: Leontius of Byzantium and the Relationship of Human and Divine in Christ’, SP 24 (1993), 239-65; id., ‘Nature and the “mode of the union”: Late Patristic models for the personal unity of Christ’, in Stephen Davis, Daniel Kendall and Gerald O’Collins (eds), The Incarnation: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Incarnation of the Son of God (Oxford, 2002), 164-96.

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way, the eternal Son is not a λόγος προφορικός ‒ something proffered by the Father and then lost ‒, but a λόγος ἐνυπόστατος that comes to rest enhypostatically in the Godhead.8 Cyril was well aware of the dangers of Christological subordinationism and Sabellianism, and consistently emphasized the ontological equality of Father and Son within the Trinity. To this aim, Cyril used the term ἐνυπόστατος to indicate that the eternal Son is ontologically grounded in the Godhead ‒ he is invested with a principle of subjectivity that is distinct from the Father and yet he fully shares in the Father’s divine essence. This approach affirms the Nicene teaching of consubstantiality ‒ thereby eliminating all possible Arianizing temptation ‒ but also stresses that the Son does not come into being in time and is eternally distinct from the Father.9 At this point in time, ἐνυπόστατος is a conceptual tool that supplements the vocabulary of Trinitarian apologists eager to defend the Nicene settlement. In this specific guise, the term comes to enjoy remarkable, if short-lived popularity. In his Ancoratus, Epiphanios of Salamis uses the term ἐνυπόστατος or its cognates to critique Sabellius for conceiving of the Logos in anthropomorphic terms, rather than as a reality that subsists eternally within the Godhead.10 In the Panarion, the same author resorts to it again to debunk the claims of a whole slew of modalists and adoptionists, including Paul of Samosata and Novatianus. The enemies of orthodoxy are still the same: Christological subordinationists or anti-Trinitarian heretics dissolving Father, Son, and Holy Spirit into an undifferentiated essence.11 In his homiletic reflections on the Letter to the Hebrews, John Chrysostom uses ἐνυπόστατος to buttress the Nicene notion of consubstantiality: if the Father is ἐνυπόστατος, so is the Son, since the Son shares everything that the Father has from all eternity.12 As the Trinitarian vision of the Cappadocians is eventually received by the broader church and we move into the fifth and sixth century, the focus of theological controversy shifts away from Trinitarian theology to Christology. The Christological appropriation of the Trinitarian notion of hypostasis by Chalcedonian apologists is well-known, but other concepts and terms were also retrieved and adjusted to the theological exigencies of the time; while Chalcedon affirmed the presence of two natures in Christ and the role of the eternal 8 Cyril of Jerusalem, Cat. XI, 10; XVI, 3, in W.C. Reischl and J. Rupp, Catecheses (Munich, 1848-1860). In the New Testament, the term ἐνυπόστατος is used to refer to Christ as the personification of abstract concepts, such as life, truth, or power; see for instance, 1Cor. 1:24, John 14:6. Indeed, before the fourth century, the use ἐνυπόστατος is attested largely in the exegetical discussion of these passages – such as Origen, Commentarii in Johannem VI, 44 (SC 157) ‒, and it lacks the later technical connotations. 9 See also B. Gleede, The development of the term ἐνυπόστατος (2012), 26. 10 Epiphanios of Salamis, Ancoratus 62,1 (GCS 31, 389). 11 Id., Panarion 65, 1 (GCS 37, 3). Epiphanios’ reasoning echoes Cyril’s claim that our λόγος is ephemeral, whereas the Father’s own λόγος is eternal. 12 John Chrysostom, In Epistulam ad Hebreos 2 (PG 63, 20B).

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Logos as regulative principle in the event of the hypostatic union, this creative solution raised as many questions as it tried to quell.13 Both Nestorians and the so-called ‘Monophysites’ were dissatisfied with Chalcedon’s treatment of Christ’s subjectivity, and were setting out searching for other solutions. Some followers of Nestorios, going considerably beyond Nestorios’ own position, argued that each of Christ’s natures required its own principle of subjectivity, and that the person of the Logos had to be balanced by a human subject who was invested with its own agency. The ‘Monophysites’, for the most part, may have had no actual qualms with the claim that Christ encompassed a human and a divine dimension, but rejected the Chalcedonian assertion that the hypostatic union involved two φύσεις ‒ a statement veering dangerously close to the Nestorianism they so passionately condemned.14 As a result of this two-pronged backlash against the conciliar settlement, Chalcedonian theologians start borrowing the term ἐνυπόστατος from the Trinitarian camp. Initially, there is a clear awareness of the Trinitarian origins of this concept. In his Apologia Concilii Chalcedonensis, John the Grammarian ‒ also known as John of Caesarea ‒ distinguishes two specific understandings of the term ἐνυπόστατος.15 The first goes back to the earlier Trinitarian controversies and asserts the ‘insubstantial’ character of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The latter, however, maps this concept onto the inner dynamics of the hypostatic union, affirming the ontological reality of Christ’s humanity and divinity while underscoring the absence of an independent human hypostasis. It is this shift that enables John to say in his Apologia that, in the case of the hypostatic union, ‘we call our substance in Christ ἐνυπόστατος, not because it is a characterized hypostasis of its own, and a personal appearance, but because it came into being and it exists’.16 This terminological sleight of hand is made possible by the fact that hypostasis originally indicated an individuated substance; now, however, ἐνυπόστατος it is applied to Christ’s humanity in the incarnation – a substance whose mode of individuation is utterly distinct from that of the Trinitarian persons. The term ἐνυπόστατος resurfaces in the writings of Leontios of Byzantium, though, as Brian Daley has convincingly shown, Leontios should be regarded 13 See for instance Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol. 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600) (Chicago, 1975), Ch. 5, 256-66. 14 The literature on the reception ‒ and rejection ‒ of Chalcedon is enormous. See Martin Jugie, Nestorius et la controverse nestorienne (Paris, 1912); W.H.C. Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement: Chapters in the History of the Church in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries (Cambridge, 1972); Bernard Meunier, Le Christ de Cyrille d’Alexandrie: l’humanité, le salut et la question monophysite (Paris, 1997); Michael Dahnke, Nestorius oder: Wie hält er Ihn zusammen? (Norderstedt, 2012). 15 John’s creative retrieval of Cappadocian Trinitarian terminology and its application to Christology is discussed in S. Helmer, Der Neuchalkedonismus (1962), 160-3. 16 John the Grammarian, Apol. IV, 6, 202-9 (CChr.SG 1, 55)

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as a strenuous defender of Chalcedonian Christology rather than a Neo-Chalcedonian thinker in Lebrun’s sense of the term.17 In the mid-sixth century, the council’s opponents continued to question the council’s treatment of Christ’s subjectivity, even as they disagreed with each other about the mode and location of Christ’s human agency. In his treatise Contra Nestorianos et Eutychianos, Leontios draws a distinction between ὑπόστασις and ἐνυπόστατος, noting that ὑπόστασις signifies the individual, and sets apart the person by means of individual characteristics that are not shared with anyone else, whereas ἐνυπόστατος is a term that characterizes the nature or substance as it relates with its principle of subjectivity.18 To make this point clearer, Leontios draws a parallelism between the relation of οὐσία and ἐνούσιος, on one hand, and ὑπόστασις and ἐνυπόστατος, on the other.19 The hypostatic realization of a nature is made to be analogous to the way the qualities of a nature relate to the nature in which they inhere, and without which they could not manifest themselves at all; similarly, without a ὑπόστασις, a nature could not manifest at all. At the same time, there is a subtle conceptual difference: while the qualities of a nature cannot exist on their own, but always inhere in a particular οὐσία, the ὑπόστασις and the nature are fully determined in themselves, even if they cannot be perceived independently of each other.20 Finally, in the seventh century, Leontios’ Chalcedonian reading of ἐνυπόστατος is further refined by Maximos the Confessor, who deploys it in his polemic against Monothelitism and Monoenergism. Some proponents of these positions ‒ many of whom vehemently disagreed with each other on various points of Christological doctrine ‒ denied the existence of a human will or a human energy in Christ, as they thought that this would entail the presence of a human ὑπόστασις.21 In his Opuscula theologia et polemica, Maximos contends that this claim is ‘an abuse of the term ὑπόστασις’, because the fact that no nature lacks a ὑπόστασις does not entail the existence of its own ὑπόστασις, but merely the fact that all nature must be enhypostatic to exist and be perceived.22 17 B. Daley, ‘“A Richer Union”’, SP 24 (1993), 239-65. Leontios’ work is now available in its entirety in Brian Daley S.J. (ed. and trans.), Leontius of Byzantium: The Complete Works (Oxford, 2017). 18 See Contra Nestorianos et Eutychianos Libri Tres (PG 86, 1267-396). This should not be confused with Leontios of Jerusalem’s Christological writings, where a variety of anti-Chalcedonian positions are similarly outlined and debunked: see Patrik T.R. Gray, Against the Monophysites: Testimonies of the Saints and Aporiae (Oxford, 2006). 19 Contra Nestorianos et Eutychianos (PG 86, 1277D-80B). 20 The remarkable impact of this passage on later authors ‒ no less than its fortune among contemporary scholars ‒ should not let us forget that the term ἐνυπόστατος is only used a couple of times throughout the whole of Leontios’ writings; see B. Daley, ‘Nature and the “mode of the union”, in S. Davis et al. (eds), The Incarnation (2002), 164-96. 21 For an outline of this controversy, see Cyril Hovorun, Will, Action and Freedom: Christological Controversies in the Seventh Century (Leiden, Boston, 2008). 22 Maximos the Confessor, Op. 16 (PG 91, 205AB).

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Maximos’ Christology, however, is not a mere restatement of the original Chalcedonian position, but also adds an interesting twist, affirming the composite character of Christ’s ὑπόστασις. In the Disputatio cum Phyrro, for instance, Maximos says that Christ is the ὑπόστασις of his natures, and indeed, he is ‘nothing else but his natures’.23 In the hypostatic union, the Logos plays the role of the seed, bringing together different physiological elements into a stable whole. Christ’s unique mode of existence ensures that his two natures come together without in any way modifying the ontological make-up of the two natures; the Logos remains utterly unchangeable, but the human nature is elevated into a new manner of being (ὑπόστῆναι θεικῶς).24 When Maximos claims in Epistle 15 that Christ’s humanity is ἐνυπόστατος, because it receives the origin of its being from another source, he is building on Leontios’ understanding of this concept, but is also affirming the claim by the Second Council of Constantinople that the second person of the Trinity is the unchangeable principle of subjectivity within the hypostatic union.25 This quick survey of the history of ἐνυπόστατος shows us that this term served an anti-modalist and anti-subordinationist purpose in the Trinitarian conversations of the fourth and early fifth century, played an anti-Monophysite and anti-Nestorian role in the aftermath of Chalcedon, and was finally co-opted into the apologetic armory of the Neo-Chalcedonian consensus of the sixth and seventh century, when ‒ especially in the writings of Maximos the Confessor ‒ it came to buttress an explicitly ‘Neo-Cyrillian’ reading of the council’s Christological definition.26 Loofs’ understanding of ἐνυπόστατος effectively ignores the first of these three readings, and actually blends the second interpretation ‒ which is the one effectively embraced by Leontios ‒ with the more creative reading of the term given by Maximos the Confessor, who emphasized the composite nature of Christ’s subjectivity despite its identity with the second person of the Trinity. What is peculiar to John Damascene’s Christological synthesis in the eighth century is that John masterfully weaves together the three understandings of ἐνυπόστατος listed above, placing all three readings of ἐνυπόστατος at the service of his own particular reading of the hypostatic union. The Cyrillian emphasis on ‘insubstantiality’, its early anti-Nestorian and anti-Monophysite rendition adumbrated by John the Grammarian, and Leontios’ and Maximos’ idiosyncratic appropriations of the concept, are all marshalled by John Damascene at the service of his own Christological agenda. John is of course eager to maintain that his position does not contain any innovations, but merely offers a new articulation of the faith of the Fathers in 23

Id., Disputatio cum Phyrro (PG 91, 289B). Id., Op. 4 (PG 91, 61B). 25 Id., Ep. 15 (PG 91, 552C-560A); see also J. Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought (Crestwood, NY, 1975), 145-6. 26 J. Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought (1975), 32. 24

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light of the pressing questions of his day. In fact, for ‘ecumenical’ purposes, he is eager to downplay the divide between Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian Christologies: in De Recta Sententia, he quips that Cyril of Alexandria’s Christological synthesis was not a private possession of the so-called ‘Monophysites’, but belonged to the universal church, as long as its terminology was correctly understood.27 John cleverly renders Cyril’s position as to support his own understanding of the inner dynamics of the incarnation: in Expositio fidei 3 and 11, he claims that when Cyril talked of the ‘one incarnate nature’ of the Word, he used the term ‘nature’ (φύσις) to indicate the concrete reality of an existence which was seen in a particular manner (ἐν ἀτόμῳ θεορουμένη) and not merely intellectually imagined.28 This claim affords him the mantle of continuity, while also enabling him to affirm the particularity of Christ’s humanity in a way echoing authors like Leontios and Maximos. Similarly, in Dialogus Contra Manicheos 5, John defines φύσις as ‘a species that cannot be divided into other species’, and goes on to apply this concept to the case of human nature, which brings together body and soul in an irreversible manner, since even death can sunder their union only until the day of the resurrection.29 When it comes to the hypostatic union, however, this Cyrillian concept could actually be misleading. Whoever holds on to the faith of Chalcedon cannot say that Christ has only one nature, since his divinity already existed – and was fully perfect – before the incarnation; to claim otherwise would amount to postulating a new ‘Christic’ nature brought about by the hypostatic union that would lack consubstantiality with either humanity or the Father. To escape this conceptual dead-end, John retrieves Maximos the Confessor’s construal of Christ’s subjectivity as composite, characterizing it as a relationship (σχέσις).30 Reflecting on what happened to the body and the soul of Christ in the period between Christ’s death and his resurrection, John notes that while Christ’s soul in Hades was separated from his body in the tomb, both of them were deified in virtue of their union with the eternal Word, and therefore both continued to enjoy the privileges of the hypostatic union.31 In this way, a Christological position that emerged almost three centuries after the life and work of Cyril of Alexandria is presented as a development of the Cyrillian vision, though it is now the ὑπόστασις ‒ and not the φύσις ‒ that is the locus of composition. How does John define ὑπόστασις? In 1959, in her seminal study of the thought of John Damascene, Keetije Rozemond wrote that ‘the notion of ἐνυπόστασις (sic) was the systematic basis of his Christology’, or indeed a crucial element of each one of his Christological statements.32 Rozemond’s understanding of 27 28 29 30 31 32

John Damascene, De recta sent. (PG 94, 1460C). Id., Expos. 3 (PG 94, 992AB); 11 (PG 94, 1021D-1024A). Id., Ctr. Man. 5 (PG 94, 593A). Id., Expos. 12 (PG 94, 1029C). Id., Expos. 29 (PG 94, 1101AB). See K. Rozemond, La Christologie de saint Jean Damascène (1959), 22.

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John’s Christology would be echoed by John Meyendorff in his no less seminal study Christ in Eastern Christian Thought, and this position would shape the reading of John Damascene for decades to come.33 Both Rozemond and Meyendorff stressed the ‘asymmetric quality’ of John’s Christology; they viewed this asymmetry as a defining feature of the Neo-Cyrillian Chalcedonian synthesis that had already been articulated by Maximos the Confessor, and that John preferred to earlier, more ‘symmetrical’ conceptualizations of the hypostatic union. Rozemond explained the rational of this Christological asymmetry from a soteriological standpoint: in her opinion, within the hypostatic union, the eternal Word is the locus of human and divine agency, and it is necessary to introduce the theory of ἐνυπόστατος to affirm the reality of Christ’s humanity while also asserting the dominant status of his divinity.34 Meyendorff, for his part, reads John’s Christology via Cyril’s emphasis on the role of the Word as the subject of all of Christ’s actions; this position is quite clearly warranted by John’s claim in Expositio fidei that in Christ, there is no human principle of subjectivity: the Word’s ὑπόστασις ‘does not exist as the ὑπόστασις now of one nature, now of the other, but always without division or separation as the ὑπόστασις of both’; this is why the humanity of Christ is not ἀνυπόστατος’ ‒ wholly lacking a principle of subjectivity ‒ ‘yet it does not bring another ὑπόστασις’ ‒ the much-dreaded homo assumptus ‒ ‘into the Trinity’.35 Meyendorff is eager to stress the relationship of ontological dependency that binds the humanity of Christ to the eternal Logos, but is also adamant that for John, this humanity is always concrete: if it is true that Christ did not assume all the hypostases that share our human nature – indeed, that would have required as many incarnations as are the members of the human species- it is also the case that the Word did not assume humanity in a theoretical or noetic manner, but in an individual way (ἐν ἀτόμῳ), and what he assumed only came into being through the ὑπόστασις of the Logos.36 Alongside these passages, however, there are moments when John’s Christology goes well beyond a mere rehearsal of Neo-Chalcedonian obiter dicta drawn from Maximos’ appropriation of Leontios. In Expositio fidei 6, for instance, John retrieves the pre-Chalcedonian ‒ ‘Trinitarian’ ‒ usage of ἐνυπόστατος to affirm the orthodox teaching about the fullness of the Son’s divinity; indeed, 33 John Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought (1975), Ch. 8: ‘An Effort at Systematization: St. John of Damascus’, 153-72. 34 K. Rozemond, La Christologie de saint Jean Damascène (1959), Ch. 2: ‘Christologie asymétrique’, 17-49. 35 John Damascene, Expos. 9 (PG 94, 1017AB). 36  Id., Expos. 7 (PG 94, 1009AB). In Hom. in transfig. 12 (PG 96, 564AC) John Damascene echoes Maximos’ notion of the Logos as the agent bestowing the gift of being on to the humanity of Christ: ‘Remaining himself in the elevated condition of his own divinity, [Christ] also accepted what is inferior, creating in himself the human in a divine manner (θεικῶς)’. This work would become very popular among the hesychasts; see J. Meyendorff, Gregoire Palamas, Triades pour la defense des saints hésychastes I, 3, 38, Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense 30 (Louvain, 1959), 190-3.

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he even recovers Cyril of Jerusalem’s distinction between the λόγος ἐνυπόστατος and the λόγος προφορικός.37 In Dialectica, John actually engages in a theoretical discussion of ἐνυπόστατος, reminding his readers of the twofold meaning of ὑπόστασις and ἐνυπόστατος, and noting that the older usage ‒ establishing perfect equivalence between the two ‒ remains absolutely legitimate.38 In the same work, when connecting this discussion with Maximos’ Christological debates, John presents the Confessor’s speculation on Christ’s composite subjectivity as a valid subset of the older, broader usage.39 Similarly, in a later passage, John ‘notes that ἐνυπόστατος sometimes signifies being as such, and in other cases it indicates the individual manifestation’.40 In light of these passages, we can summarize John’s argument as claiming that, generally speaking, ἐνυπόστατος signifies something which is perceived in its ὑπόστασις, and not by itself; yet, on occasion, it also indicates something which enters into composition with a substantially different reality to create a new whole. The latter is the case of human nature, which comprises a body and a soul; neither of them exists on its own, but both are enhypostatically united, because they come together in one single ὑπόστασις. In the same way, the humanity of Christ is not called ὑπόστασις but ἐνυπόστατος, because it subsists in the ὑπόστασις of the Logos and it rests in the latter as its own principle of subjectivity. The implication of this claim is that the older meaning, derived from fourth century Trinitarian controversies, remains fully valid, even if ‒in the context of Christological speculation‒ it comes to be applied to the special case of Christ’s humanity. A passage in Contra Jacobitas offers a good example of a blended use of both meanings. With a tip of the hat to Maximos’ notion of composite subjectivity, John notes that the ὑπόστασις of Christ ‘is ἐνούσιος, because it inheres in the two substances it is composed of’, but also that each of Christ’s nature is enhypostatic, as they have this one single ὑπόστασις in common. The difference is that the divine nature has had this ὑπόστασις from all eternity, whereas the human nature of Christ ‒ which John calls his ‘ensouled flesh’ ‒ only received it at the incarnation.41 Similarly, in Contra Acephalos, John states that both Christ’s divinity and Christ’s humanity are enhypostatic, though the preexistence of the eternal Logos entails that they are enhypostatised in different ways.42

37

Id., Expos. 6 (PG 94, 1001-8). Id., Dial. fus. 30 (PTS 7). 39 Ibid. 43. 40 Ibid. 45. 41 John Damascene, Ctr. Jac. 11, 3-22 (PTS 22, 114). This passage echoes quite directly the language of Leontios of Byzantium in Contra Nestorianos et Eutychianos (PG 86, 1277D-1280B), though John is arguably more invested in underscoring the integrity of Christ’s humanity. 42 Id., Ctr. Aceph. 6, 11-5 (PTS 22, 414); even here, the passage references Maximos’ notion of ὑπόστασις συνθετική. 38

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On one hand, John seems to realize that any statement about the enhypostatic character of Christ’s humanity only makes sense if enhypostatisation is a characteristic of every nature. As such, it is necessary to predicate it of both the humanity and the divinity of the incarnate Son, in such a way that the prefix ἐν is really nothing but the opposite of the privative ἀν; and this kind of symmetrical reading seems to dovetail the classical parallelism between the event of the hypostatic union and the composite character of human nature. However, John is also aware of the limitations of this classic analogy, since an emphasis on the symmetry of enhypostatisation may jeopardize the ontological precedence ascribed to the divine subject.43 As such, John finds it necessary to integrate the two strands of the tradition: on one hand, we find frequent references to the fact that the Logos causes the human nature to subsist, but on the other, we have a strong emphasis on the concrete ontological reality of the humanity of the incarnate Word. The result is a Neo-Chalcedonian conceptual amalgam that is not too divergent from the Loofsian reading of the term, but is also attentive to the integrity of Christ’s humanity, and accomplishes this balance by retrieving an older reading of ἐνυπόστατος, whose roots go all the way back to Cyril of Jerusalem. In his careful reconstruction of the genealogy of ἐνυπόστατος, Gleede qualifies Rozemond’s emphasis on John’s Christological asymmetry, and goes on to highlight the presence in John of ‘alternative’ readings of ἐνυπόστατος.44 Gleede’s critique has the obvious merit to bring to our attention some overlooked elements of John’s thought; however, it would be an overstatement of one were then to dismiss John’s Christology from the Neo-Chalcedonian camp. The overarching thrust of the Damascene’s corpus clearly indicates that the Neo-Chalcedonian, ‘asymmetric’ paradigm remains the driving force behind John’s Christological vision. What is striking, however, is that John’s recovery of older notions of ἐνυπόστατος enable him also to develop alternative, more ‘symmetric’ readings of the hypostatic union, where both natures are seen to rest enhypostatically in the person of the Word. On one hand, these readings are conceptually subordinate to the ‘asymmetric’ understanding of the hypostatic union, and they support a Christological vision where agency is ultimately exercised by the ὑπόστασις of the Logos; on the other hand, the ‘insubstantiality’ 43 In De recta sent. (PG 94, 1461C), he is eager to stress, for instance, that in the hypostatic union the flesh is deified, but ‘the nature of the Logos does not become carnal’. 44 See the discussion in S. Gleede, The notion of ἐνυπόστατος (2012), 163-74. S. Gleede ‒ ibid. 163 ‒ claims that in John Damascene, ‘with respect to the traditional trinitarian use of ἐνυπόστατος, we encounter a comprehensive resumption of almost the entire complex of motives connected with the term during the fourth-century debate’. This may overstate the scope of John’s ressourcement – after all, in his Christological speculation, he does not engage in overt anti-subordinationist or anti-modalist polemics. John’s creative recovery of this older tradition sheds most of its Trinitarian frame of reference, and deploys its conceptual power to support a Christological vision developed long after the fourth century.

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of the human nature of the incarnate Christ also ensures that John can affirm the irreducible ontological equality ‒ and complementary salvific role ‒ of Christ’s divinity and humanity. This quick overview of the history of ἐνυπόστατος and its use by John Damascene has omitted many aspects of John’s Christology that may merit further consideration; for instance, this paper did not discuss how John’s balance of symmetry and asymmetry in the hypostatic union could also account for the ontological character, as well as the soteriological import, of Christ’s two wills and energies.45 More modestly, the burden of this paper was to probe the sources and chart the rationale behind John’s choice to retrieve a pre-Chalcedonian reading of a popular neo-Chalcedonian term. This combination of nova et vetera had a clear apologetic purpose, and the popularity of John’s Christological synthesis in the following centuries is a clear indication of the success of this strategy. Thanks to his skillful deployment of the older meaning of ἐνυπόστατος, John was able to moderate the tendency of neo-Chalcedonian Christology to privilege the role of the divine subject to the detriment of the concreteness of the incarnation. The upshot of this strategy ‒ which effectively made orthodox ‘neo-Chalcedonian’ Christology less ‘neo-Chalcedonian’ ‒ was that ἐνυπόστατος would ascribe all initiative in the hypostatic union to the eternal Son while also guaranteeing the equal and complementary role of Christ’s two natures in the economy of salvation.

45

See for instance John Damascene, De duabus vol. (PG 95, 180B).

The Religious Other in the Homilies of John of Damascus: References to the Christian Confessions and Muslims of the Middle East Petros TSAGKAROPOULOS, University of Valladolid, Valladolid, Spain

ABSTRACT In the eighth century the emerging communities of Melkite Christians in the Umayyad caliphate in Syria and Palestine lived side by side with the ruling Muslims and with Christian groups of different theological inclinations. Against this background, John of Damascus (ca. 675 – ca. 749) undertook to define Melkite identity through his prolific and diverse literary production. His theological and polemical treatises were aimed at defending Chalcedonian orthodoxy and attacking the views of non-Chalcedonian and Monothelite Christians and Muslims in a thorough and systematic way. Nevertheless, John of Damascus was not only distinguished as a writer but also as a talented and influential preacher. His homiletic work consists of sermons of great artistic value on major liturgical feasts and saints. A significant feature of his homilies, which they share with his other works, is their theological thrust, through concise summary presentations of doctrine and the exegesis of biblical passages. Yet unlike his treatises, John of Damascus’ homilies do not directly engage with the beliefs of non-Melkite Christians and Muslims, and so the evidence they provide about these communities is at first sight scant. They have therefore been neglected for the most part as sources for understanding John of Damascus’ preaching and the position of Melkite Christians in the Umayyad caliphate in this period. A more detailed examination of these texts, however, reveals previously unrecognised references and allusions to other religious groups of the Middle East which enrich our knowledge of the preacher and his audience. From these we can gain an insight into John’s concern to draw a line between the Melkites and other Christians, his view of Muslim teachings about Christ, and the social implications of life in the world of Islam through the lens of John’s remarks. Above all, the Damascene’s homilies emerge as dynamic texts which interact with the wider context, despite their apparent resistance to external influences.

The writings of John of Damascus are inseparably linked to the particular religious composition of the Umayyad society in which he lived.1 The coexistence

1

See Sidney H. Griffith, ‘John of Damascus and the Church in Syria in the Umayyad Era: The Intellectual and Cultural Milieu of Orthodox Christians in the World of Islam’, Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 11 (2011), 207-37. With regard specifically to the Christian denominations

Studia Patristica CXXX, 171-182. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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of various Christian groups and Muslims in Syria and Palestine in the seventh and eighth centuries exercised an enormous influence on his intellectual and spiritual development which is reflected in his literary production. The bulk of John of Damascus’ prose works is concerned either with the refutation of heresy, in the form of polemical tracts, or with the authentic expression of the Christian faith, most notably in his compendium of orthodox doctrine, the Expositio Fidei.2 His works, therefore, help open a window to the identity of the Christian and Muslim communities of the caliphate, from the vantage point, of course, of a prominent Melkite and fervent defender of Chalcedonian orthodoxy such as himself.3 Yet, despite John of Damascus’ preoccupation with the profile of the different religious confessions of the Middle East in his treatises, his homiletic works are practically silent on the subject, at least at first glance. The lack of direct engagement with the wide spectrum of beliefs and practices of the local populations is particularly striking. The reason may be found in the specific aims of John’s homilies. In contrast to his anti-heretical writings, the focus of his sermons was the liturgical occasion on which they were delivered rather than issues of broader contemporary relevance, such as theological rivalries or other types of social interaction.4 Nevertheless, the Damascene’s homilies are not completely cut off from the dynamic cultural environment from which they emerged. Embedded in John’s discourse are glimpses – sometimes vague, other times clearer – of the Christian and Muslim communities with which Chalcedonian Christians in the Islamic world had close contact. Andrew Louth was the first to pinpoint examples in which the Damascene alludes to these groups in his homilies, although they have not received further attention either by him or by any other scholar.5 However, a more detailed examination of the texts can shed more light on this aspect of John’s sermons by bringing forward hitherto unnoticed references of the Middle East, id., ‘“Melkites”, “Jacobites” and the Christological Controversies in Arabic in Third/Ninth-Century Syria’, in Thomas David (ed.), Syrian Christians under Islam: The First Thousand Years (Leiden, Boston, Köln, 2001), 9-55. 2 Ibid. 19-55; also Andrew Louth, St John Damascene: Tradition and Originality in Byzantine Theology (Oxford, 2002), 84-116 and 155-79. 3 S.H. Griffith, ‘“Melkites”, “Jacobites” and the Christological Controversies in Arabic in Third/Ninth-Century Syria’ (2001), 21-2. On Melkite identity, id., ‘The Church of Jerusalem and the ‘Melkites’: The Making of an ‘Arab Orthodox’ Christian Identity in the World of Islam (750–1050 CE)’, in Ora Limor and Guy G. Stroumsa (eds), Christians and Christianity in the Holy Land: from the Origins to the Latin Kingdoms (Turnhout, 2006), 175-204. 4 As can be concluded, for example, from the analysis of John of Damascus’ homilies on the Transfiguration of the Lord and the Dormition of the Mother of God in Louth, St John Damascene (2002), 234-49. 5 Andrew Louth, ‘St John Damascene: Preacher and Poet’, in Mary B. Cunningham and Pauline Allen (eds), Preacher and Audience: Studies in Early Christian and Byzantine Homiletics (Leiden, 1998), 247-66, 254-5; and again id., St John Damascene (2002), 229-30.

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and allusions to the religious and social panorama of eighth-century Syria and Palestine. This article will therefore offer a survey of the Damascene’s implicit and explicit remarks about the different Christian confessions and Muslims in the region, revealing him as a preacher whose message was attuned to contemporary reality.

The Christian denominations The conquest of the Middle East by the Arab Muslims invading from the Arabian Peninsula took place against the background of a society plagued by long-standing religious dissent.6 The story of the controversies that led to the creation of different Christian factions is all too familiar.7 By the seventh century Christians were divided into those who accepted (‘Melkite’/‘Chalcedonians’) and those who rejected (‘Jacobites’/‘Monophysites’ and ‘Nestorians’) the decisions of the Council of Chalcedon on Christology some two hundred years before (451).8 In addition, Monothelitism, the doctrine that Christ had two natures but one will, which was promoted by Byzantine emperors as a point of compromise among the several parties, further complicated the situation.9 By the time of John of Damascus little had changed, and the existence of the various Christian groups was still a pressing issue for him. As the theological content of John of Damascus’ preaching suggests, although his sermons were primarily associated with the feast day on which they were delivered, they were also preached with a view to counterweighing non-Chalcedonian doctrinal teaching. As a general rule, this function was fulfilled indirectly, through systematic affirmations of orthodox belief. Thus, throughout John’s homilies, one can detect succinct summaries of Chalcedonian doctrine, designed to develop familiarity with the theological language of the Chalcedonian tradition and bolster resilience to heterodox views.10 The most salient feature of these summary presentations is the rigorous use of technical terminology to explain the tenets of Melkite theology and express 6 For the history of the period, see John Haldon, The Empire that Would Not Die: The Paradox of East Roman Survival, c. 640–740 CE (Cambridge, MA, 2016). 7 See Philip Booth, Crisis of Empire: Doctrine and Dissent at the End of Late Antiquity (Berkeley, 2014). For a more theological approach to the debates, see Demetrios Bathrellos, The Byzantine Christ: Person, Nature, and Will in the Christology of Saint Maximus the Confessor (New York, 2004). 8 Despite their polemical overtones, these terms will be used here for reasons of convention. 9 D. Bathrellos, The Byzantine Christ (2004), 60-98. 10 For example, John of Damascus, On Holy Saturday 12-8; Encomium of St John Chrysostom 3; On the Dormition I 3.24-46 in Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos V: Opera homiletica et hagiographica, ed. Bonifatius Kotter, Patristische Texte und Studien 29 (Berlin, New York, 1988).

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the mystery of Christ’s two natures in one hypostasis, his two wills and two energies.11 Occasionally, however, a certain overemphasis on these aspects of Chalcedonian Christology gives us an insight into what were meant to be interpreted by John’s audience as clear allusions to the erroneous beliefs of other Christian groups. Although contemporary Christian denominations are not mentioned by name, John’s carefully formulated statements make them easily identifiable. The most evident example occurs in the Homily on Holy Saturday, in which the Damascene objects to Monophysitism in a series of rhetorical questions: How would Christ be of one composite nature, if the Father and the Spirit are contemplated in a simple nature? Or how can he be consubstantial with the Father and with us, unless one says that the Father is also consubstantial with us, which is more outrageous than all monstrous thoughts? And how does he himself say ‘Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father’, and again, ‘Why are you looking for a way to kill me, a man who has told you the truth?’ For if one has only seen him as a man, he has not seen God the Father.12

John here focuses on the assertion that Christ has ‘one composite nature’. He wonders how the composite nature of Christ can be compatible with the simple nature of the Father and the Holy Spirit, and further seeks to reduce this formula to absurdity by asking how one can speak of a composite nature in Christ without also claiming that the Father is consubstantial with us, a thought he forthrightly rejects as unacceptable. He then includes two biblical quotes and raises the question of how they should be interpreted in light of this false doctrine. The preacher leaves these questions unanswered, without engaging in a refutation of the assumption that Christ has a composite nature. He trusts, however, that his audience would readily appreciate the theological consequences of this formula and would easily associate it with the large number of Christians who espoused it both in Syria and Palestine.13 That John makes reference here to the Jacobites and their Christological teaching can be confirmed from his treatise Against the Jacobites. There the Damascene asks his Jacobite interlocutors: ‘If you say that there is one composite nature from two natures, tell us, how do things that are composite come to be united?’14 Just as in the 11 See, for instance, with regard to John’s use of technical language in the homilies on the Dormition, Fr Evgenios Iverites, ‘Christological and Ecclesiological Narratives in Early EighthCentury Greek Homilies on the Theotolos’, in Thomas Arentzen and Mary B. Cunningham (eds), The Reception of the Virgin in Byzantium: Marian Narratives in Texts and Images (Cambridge, 2019), 257-80, 262-3. 12 John of Damascus, On Holy Saturday 15. 13 Chalcedonian Christians were outnumbered by the Jacobites and the Nestorians in the area; see S.H. Griffith, ‘John of Damascus and the Church in Syria in the Umayyad Era: The Intellectual and Cultural Milieu of Orthodox Christians in the World of Islam’ (2011), 217. 14 John of Damascus, Contra Jacobitas 24.1-2 (Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos IV: Liber de haeresibus; Opera polemica, ed. Bonifatius Kotter, Patristische Texte und Studien 22

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Homily on Holy Saturday, John dwells on the concept of the one composite nature and comments on its implications, although, as one might expect, in greater detail. The difference between the homily and the treatise is that what, in the first instance, is a series of rhetorical questions implicitly aimed at the Jacobites, in the second one is a query explicitly addressed to them. For our purposes, it is significant that John’s sermon unmistakably reflects the theological challenges that this distinct Christian tradition presented for the Chalcedonian community. Similarly, in the same set of rhetorical questions that John poses in the Homily on Holy Saturday, there are several that touch upon heretical views about the energies and wills of Christ. Monenergism, the doctrine that Christ possessed one activity, figures in the following passage: ‘And if we say that he has one energy, to what shall we attribute the corporeal walking, the breaking of the bread, the oral speech and the like, which do not belong to the divine nature but to human energy?’15 Nevertheless, it is monothelitism that attracts greater attention in the next two sections.16 The Damascene asks with respect to Christ’s natural desires: ‘If we assume that he is without a natural and free will according to his human nature, to what shall we attribute the nature desire for food and the rest?’17 He then continues with biblical examples from Christ’s earthly life which prove his possession of both a divine and a human will.18 John’s enquiry into the truth of the claims about Christ’s one will and energy could also be viewed as an indirect reference to contemporary adherents of these doctrines, and most specifically of monothelitism. The so-called Maronites, Christians who embraced the decisions of Chalcedon yet supported the doctrine of one will, represented yet another Christian group from which Melkites had to differentiate themselves and whose erroneous Christological beliefs John intends to signal in his homily.19 As in the case of the Jacobite Monophysites, John’s homily does not provide any particular information on the identity of the Maronite community. However, it confirms that their religious beliefs were a concern for him as a preacher in fulfilling the need of the Melkite community for self-definition. [Berlin, New York, 1981]). The treatise is in fact a letter which John Damascene wrote on behalf of Peter II, bishop of Damascus for the Jacobite bishop of Daraea. It is not, therefore, addressed to a fictional interlocutor but reflects a real exchange of views on Christology between the members of the two communities. 15 John of Damascus, On Holy Saturday 16.1-3. On monenergism, see P. Booth, Crisis of Empire (2014), 186-224. 16 John of Damascus, On Holy Saturday 17-8. This case is also noted by A. Louth, ‘St John Damascene’ (1998), 254. 17 John of Damascus, On Holy Saturday 17.1-3. 18 Ibid. 18.1-6. 19 For the Chalcedonian Maronites, A. Louth, St John Damascene (2002), 166.

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In terms of direct references, the only example of a religious group being explicitly named in John of Damascus’ homilies concerns the Nestorians in the Third Homily on the Dormition: ‘Let demons take to flight, let the Nestorians wail as the Egyptians of old and their leader, the new Pharaoh, the bitter scourge and tyrant, for they were buried down in the depths of blasphemy.’20 This particularly hostile depiction of the Nestorians is related to their refusal to recognise the Virgin Mary as the Mother of God (Theotokos).21 Furthermore, their representation in such harsh terms enhances the rhetorical effect the preacher is seeking at this point, since Mary is exalted in the defeat of the ‘wailing’ Nestorians. Elsewhere, the Damascene also appears unforgiving with this group of Christians, which was active in his immediate milieu, although it enjoyed a greater influence in the territories of the former Persian empire.22 In the first lines of his treatise Against the Nestorians, John brands them as heretics: ‘The discourse with those who are of like mind with Nestorius should begin thus: You tell us, whom did the holy Virgin conceive: the Son of God by nature and God, or a man? And if they say the Son of God by nature and God, they are orthodox […] But if they say a man, then let us converse with them as heretics.’23 It seems that the extent of the theological error of the Nestorians justified a reprimanding tone. The comparison between them and the Melkites in the Third Homily on the Dormition eloquently captures this idea: ‘But we, who have been saved with our feet dry and have passed over the salty sea of impiety, let us sing our exit ode to the Mother of God.’24 John here reassures his audience of the superiority of the intact orthodox doctrine over the blasphemies of the heretics, something he repeats in relation to his non-Christian opponents, as we shall see now.

The Muslim threat Christian theology does not stand out as the only field of debate to which the Damascene devoted his energy. He was also well familiar with the system of beliefs embraced by the Muslim overlords and propagated in the territories of the Umayyad caliphate. Aware of the growing momentum of Islam, John 20

John of Damascus, On the Dormition III 3.1-3. On the Nestorian controversy and Nestorius’ condemnation at the Council of Ephesus (431), see Christopher A. Beeley, The Unity of Christ: Continuity and Conflict in Patristic Tradition (New Haven, London, 2012), 256-84. 22 See S.H. Griffith, ‘John of Damascus and the Church in Syria in the Umayyad Era’ (2011), 214. 23 John of Damascus, Against the Nestorians 1.1-7 (Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos IV: Liber de haeresibus; Opera polemica, ed. Bonifatius Kotter, Patristische Texte und Studien 22 [Berlin, New York, 1981]). 24 John of Damascus, On the Dormition III 3.3-5. 21

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undertook to deal with some of the views it expressed in the last chapter of his book On Heresies.25 This pioneering work exhibits remarkable knowledge not only of common Muslim beliefs and practices but also of the Qur’an, probably as a result of John’s close relations with the Umayyads while still employed in their service early in his life.26 That the threat of Islam to Christianity deeply troubled John also becomes obvious in his homilies. His attention is primarily drawn to the Muslim claim that Jesus was a prophet and a servant of God, a position that disputed the most essential Christian doctrine, that Christ was the true Son of God. John’s reaction in the Homily on Holy Saturday is very telling of his determination to combat this notion in the most aggressive terms: ‘Let us hate his [Christ’s] enemies. Whoever (Πᾶς ὅστις) does not confess that Christ is the Son of God and God is an Antichrist. If somebody (Εἴ τις) says that Christ is a servant, let us close our ears, knowing that he is a liar and that there is no truth in him. Let us bear the insult as a crown of glory.’27 This extraordinary exhortation comes in the closing part of the homily, after the Damascene’s exposition of the mystery of Resurrection. The preacher launches a particularly harsh attack on the deniers of Christ’s divinity and sonship, calling them enemies of Christ and ‘antichrists’. Although John preserves the anonymity of this group under the generic formulation πᾶς ὅστις/ τίς, there is no doubt that he refers to Muslim believers. John’s well known chapter 100 on Islam in his On Heresies provides two parallels which confirm this connection: the first one is his description of Islam as a forerunner of the Antichrist (‘There is also the superstition of the Ishmaelites which to this day prevails and keeps people in error, being a forerunner of the Antichrist’), and the second his reference to the prophet Muhammad’s teaching about Jesus as a servant (‘He [Muhammad] says that the Christ is the word of God and his spirit, and a creature and a servant’).28 Besides the religious differences between Muslims and Christians, the Damascene occasionally hints at the precarious social position of the latter in the world of Islam. Although explicit indications are lacking, a close reading of the

25 See A. Louth, St John Damascene (2002), 76-81. On John and Islam in general, see most recently Daniel J. Janosik, John of Damascus: First Apologist to the Muslims (Eugene, OR, 2016); Peter Schadler, John of Damascus and Islam: Christian Heresiology and the Intellectual Background to Earliest Christian-Muslim Relations, History of Christian-Muslim Relations 34 (Leiden, Boston, 2017). 26 For the Damascene’s career in the Umayyad court, see Sidney H. Griffith, ‘The Manṣūr Family and Saint John of Damascus: Christians and Muslims in Umayyad Times’, in Antoine Borrut and Fred. M. Donner (eds), Christians and Others in the Umayyad State (Chicago, 2016), 29-51, 32-4. 27 John of Damascus, On Holy Saturday 37.11-5. Andrew Louth also draws attention to this reference: A. Louth, ‘St John Damascene’ (1998), 255. 28 John of Damascus, On heresies 100.1-2 and 18-9.

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sermons allows us to gain a firmer grasp of John’s carefully targeted language. The opening lines of the Homily on the Transfiguration are revealing: Come, let us celebrate, O God‐loving assembly! Come, let us feast together with the heavenly powers that love to feast! […] For whom is this feast and celebration? For whom this gladness and rejoicing? For those who fear the Lord, who worship the Trinity, who reverence the Son and the Spirit as coeternal with the Father, who with one soul and mind and word confess one divinity that is made known indivisibly in three hypostases, and know and proclaim Christ as the Son of God and God, one hypostasis that is made known in two indivisible and unconfused natures with their natural properties. For us (Ἡμῖν) all festal merriment and joy. For us (Ἡμῖν) did Christ institute the feasts, ‘for there is no joy for the impious’ (τοῖς ἀσεβέσι). Let us rid ourselves of every cloud of sorrow (λύπης) that darkens the mind and prevents us from being lifted up on high. Let us scorn all earthly things, for our citizenship (πολίτευμα) is not on earth. Let us raise our mind to heaven, whence we welcomed Christ, our Lord and Saviour.29

The homily begins with a repeated invitation to celebrate the feast of the Transfiguration that is soon followed by the question of who should take part in this celebration. The answer is straightforward: those who fear the Lord and worship the triune God. John and his audience are the recipients of ‘all merriment and joy’ on the day of a feast which Christ established ‘for them’ in contrast to the ‘impious’. Rather than emphasising the theological importance of the feast in the proemium of the homily, the preacher wishes, first and foremost, to distinguish himself and his congregation from those who do not deserve to participate in it. As will become apparent, those ‘impious’ seem to have been a source of concern for John at the moment of the sermon’s delivery. This is also perhaps the reason why he invites the faithful to free themselves from the clouds of sorrow in order to listen to his speech. Besides, he reassures them, their citizenship is not on earth. John uses Paul’s words, who speaks of ‘citizenship in heaven’, to emphasise that they should free themselves of all earthly affairs.30 Combining these two elements – the God-given right of the faithful to take communion in divine joy to the exclusion of those who are unworthy of it, and the need to abandon their sorrow – we may assume that John alludes to some event or circumstances that caused distress to his community. That this is not mere speculation is confirmed by another passage further on in the homily. Explaining St Peter’s role as a witness of Christ’s Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, John suddenly interrupts the flow of the narration with a petition to the Apostle: ‘We pray for the sea storm (κλυδῶνα) to calm down, for the tumult (τάραχον) to disintegrate, and for calm and waveless peace (εἰρήνην) to be conferred on us. Entreat this of Christ, the immaculate Bridegroom of [the Church]…’31 29

John of Damascus, On the Transfiguration 1.1-16. Phil. 3:20. The idea that Christians are members of a celestial world is recurrent in John’s homilies; see E. Iverites, ‘Christological and Ecclesiological Narratives’ (2019), 275. 31 John of Damascus, On the Transfiguration 6.49-51. 30

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It is not clear what kind of ‘sea storm’/‘tumult’ John refers to. The passage is not related to anything that precedes or follows in the homily, and there is therefore no sufficient evidence to attempt an identification of the event to which John alludes. The task is made even more difficult by the fact that the date of John’s homilies cannot be established due to the lack of chronological indicators. What can be said is that whatever affected John’s congregation was likely provoked on religious grounds. The end of the homily provides a clue in this direction. John asks the faithful to remember the words of God the Father to his Son: ‘“This is” not a servant (δοῦλος), nor an envoy (πρέσβυς), nor an angel (ἄγγελος), but “my beloved Son; listen to him”.’32 John merges here two biblical passages. The first one is a quote from the gospel of Matthew (Matt. 5:21). The phrase ‘no envoy or angel’ is drawn from the book of Isaiah (Is. 63:9). There is, however, a third element, the word servant (δοῦλος), which is John’s own addition and is given priority over the characterisations ‘envoy’ and ‘angel’, being placed before them. The phrase echoes again the Muslim teaching that Jesus was a servant of God, against which John also rails in the Homily on Holy Saturday and in On Heresies. Thus, in his final address to the congregation, John wants the faithful to bear in mind what he considers to be the most fundamental Christian belief in the Islamic milieu, that Christ is not a servant or envoy or angel, but the true Son of God. John’s appeal to the Apostle Peter for ‘waveless peace’ could, then, be a request for free and unimpeded confession of the Christian faith. It is worth noting in this respect two instances that reflect Christian unease on the question of religious expression. The first one comes also from the Homily on the Transfiguration: ‘Let us confess without being ashamed (ἀνεπαισχύντως) that Christ is the Son of the living God’.33 The preacher here hopes to disperse feelings of discomfort for upholding Christian orthodoxy and inspire steadfastness in his audience. A similar exhortation is found in the Homily on Holy Saturday, as already seen above: ‘Let us bear the insult (ὀνειδισμόν) as a crown of glory’.34 Both examples provide a unique insight into the psychological effects that persistent Muslim pressure had on John’s Melkite community. Interestingly, we may observe a shift of focus between them: although, in the first case, John hints at the passive embarrassment of Christians for their beliefs, in the second, he emphasises the actively offensive attitudes (‘insult’) to which they were exposed. His evocation of martyrial imagery (‘crown of glory’) further implies that Christians felt they suffered disrespectful treatment.35 The unfavourable conditions under which Christians lived in the caliphate lead us to the last point to be considered in this study. A curious passage in the 32

Ibid. 20.3-4. Ibid. 5.3. 34 See fn. 27. 35 It should be noted, however, that we should also be cautious about inferring too much from these statements, since they were also used to create a certain rhetorical effect. 33

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Second Homily on the Dormition is perhaps the closest we can ever come to John of Damascus’ political viewpoint and his opinion of the ruling Muslim authorities. John entreats his audience to accept his speech despite his weaknesses as an orator, just like when a peasant brings, out of season, a violet or a rose ‘to the emperor (τῷ αὐτοκράτορι) that has divinely (θεόθεν) been entrusted with the helms of those who are of the same race with him (τῶν ὁμοφύλων)’.36 In this captatio benevolentiae, the preacher presents himself as a peasant who offers a humble but valuable gift to the emperor, his audience. Although from a rhetorical point of view there is nothing out of the ordinary in this simile, the connotations it carries deserve some comment. The language John employs is appropriate of the Christian Byzantine political orbit rather than of the Muslim caliphate. He speaks of an emperor appointed by God to rule over those with whom he shares a common race.37 It would not be an exaggeration to claim that John consciously avoids here using an analogy built on elements from the political context of the caliphate. This perhaps represents an indirect way of expressing disapproval of the Muslim authorities.38 One could argue, of course, that in referring to a divinely chosen emperor, John simply draws on a literary commonplace for his simile. Nevertheless, his listeners would have no difficulty in recognizing in this statement the implicit rejection of the Muslim claim of authority over the Christian populations of the Middle East which already felt alienated from their overlords, as the examples adduced from the homilies in this section have intended to demonstrate.

Conclusion Since the mid-seventh century, Melkite Christians in the Middle East had represented one of the several religious communities that experienced the dramatic changes brought about by the establishment of a new Islamic hegemony in the area. Christians of the so-called ‘Chalcedonian’, ‘Monothelite’, ‘Monophysite’ and ‘Nestorian’ denominations competed both with each other and with the Muslim newcomers for the title of the possessor of the true faith and for a better position in the social fabric of the caliphate. This plurality of confessions that shared the same living space had a profound effect on the mentality 36

John of Damascus, On the Dormition II 1.20-1. For the title αὐτοκράτωρ in relation to the Byzantine emperor in contemporary historical sources, see for example, Theophanes the Confessor, Chronographia 448.22; 466.15, Theophanis Chronographia, ed. Carl de Boor (Leipzig, 1883). 38 The fact that Constantinople was still politically and religiously relevant for the Melkites in the eighth century might have also contributed to this: S.H. Griffith, ‘John of Damascus and the Church in Syria in the Umayyad Era’ (2011), 220. 37

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and literary output of John of Damascus. In his extensive treatises John attempted to define orthodox doctrine in order to make it more accessible to his coreligionists, and minutely exposed the weaknesses of the religious convictions of his adversaries. His active involvement in the shaping of Melkite identity reveals a man that was sensitive to the social and cultural developments that were underway in Syria/Palestine in the eighth century. It has been the aim of this article to argue that John Damascene’s homiletic work could not possibly have remained unaffected by the contact with other religious communities, especially in light of the treatment these receive in the rest of his writings. Considering that his public presence as a preacher would have allowed his message to reach a wide audience, it is hard to believe that John had nothing to say about contemporary Christians with heterodox views or the ruling Muslims in his oral deliveries. A first approach to the homilies, however, seems to confirm this rather peculiar characteristic of John’s sermons, which are overwhelmingly concerned with the theological exposition of the great liturgical feasts of the year and the praise of the celebrated saints. Nevertheless, upon closer inspection, one can discern references and allusions that suit the contemporary context of the homilies’ production. Though limited in number, these instances of John’s interaction with factors that are external to the original thematic scope of the homilies demonstrates the engaging capacity of his preaching. References can be distinguished into implicit (the majority of the examples) and explicit, and are made with regard to Christians and Muslims alike. In the first case, they appear exclusively as criticisms against the erroneous theological teachings of non-Melkite Christians and provide no information of special historical interest. They strongly attest, however, to the social relevance of the various Christian groups for the Damascene and his audience, as can also be deduced from his polemical treatises. Charges against the doctrines of Monophysitism and Monothelitism emerge with particular clarity from more general statements about orthodox doctrine, while Nestorians become the focus of disparaging remarks, an indication that the different Christian traditions were approached, at least in terms of theological discourse, with varying degrees of tolerance. The second case involves references and allusions to the Muslim community. The Damascene insists in his homilies on the Muslim belief that Christ is a slave and attempts to deter his audience from such deviations. The most significant observation in this regard is that for the first time in the homilies, and perhaps in his entire work, John of Damascus expresses the feelings of the Chalcedonian community with respect to Muslim objections to Christian doctrine and, specifically, to Christ’s divinity. John encourages his listeners to bear Muslim offences without embarrassment, implying that Christians felt uncomfortable proclaiming their faith in the caliphate and that they were presumably victims of offensive behaviour, as a result of the superior political position of Islam. For the first time we also encounter allusions to specific historical circumstances,

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which, though difficult to identify, seem to have affected adversely John’s community, as well as language with potential political overtones which betrays disapproval of the Muslim political authorities. Far from being sterile, then, John of Damascus’ homiletic discourse responded to external stimuli, even though the preacher’s remarks were camouflaged by his lengthy theological meditations. This study has sought to throw light to some of them and provoke reflection on the contemporary context of the Damascene’s preaching activity.

Divine Attributes and the Notion of Atemporal Eternity in the Old English Boethius Rūta ŠILEIKYTĖ ZUKIENĖ, Vilnius University; Vytautas Magnus University, Vilnius, Lithuania

ABSTRACT The article examines the notion of divine eternity in Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy and investigates its rendering in the Old English translation of the Latin book. In the final part of his work, Boethius elaborates on the important Neoplatonic doctrine of the simplicity of the divine mind. The superior power of intellect (intellegentia) depends on the simple nature of the divine being and its key attribute – divine eternity. To explain the perfection of divine existence, Boethius examines the difference between temporal and timeless eternity and contends that only by being simple and beyond time that the divine intellect is able to grasp both past and future events in the timeless present. In the Old English translation of Boethius, the corresponding passage is rendered with significant modifications that obscure the original distinction of the two types of eternity: although the divine eternity is called ‘the highest’ and is distinguished from the eternal life of human and angelic souls, it is not immediately clear whether the Neoplatonic concept of timeless eternity is preserved in the vernacular passage. The study focuses on the concluding Old English encomium on the divine nature and argues that its peculiar treatment of the divine memory as well as the divine attributes that refer to God’s simplicity, immutability and impassibility speak about the vernacular author’s accurate understanding of the distinctness of divine eternity. To account for the presence of such Neoplatonic philosophemes in the Old English rendering, a brief inquiry is made into the temporal views of Augustine and John Scottus Eriugena, who both offer important evidence on the notion of timeless eternity circulating in the intellectual context of the vernacular book.

The long-standing appeal of Boethius’ De consolatione philosophiae – the Consolation of Philosophy – rests in the philosophical treatise’s attempt to address the fundamental issues of the highest good, justice, punishment, fate and providence. In the medieval world, the book attracted attention as a notably unusual work, suspiciously indifferent to the mainstream Christian doctrine and treating metaphysical questions from its peculiar late antique perspective. An array of philosophical doctrines that appear in Boethius’ work own their origins to the writings of Plato, Plotinus, Proclus, Iamblichus and other non-Christian authors; through the Consolation, the doctrines reach the Christian Middle Ages and being sanctioned by Boethius’ reputation enter the speculative discourse of

Studia Patristica CXXX, 183-194. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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the time. Numerous Platonic philosophemes have become part of the Christian doctrine long before Boethius’ Consolation, yet in Boethius’ work they appear with a new force and vitality, demanding our attention as Neoplatonic elements present the valediction of a man who due to the impact of his theological works might be rightly called another Father of the Church.1 The present study focuses on the Boethian notion of divine eternity, which in the Consolation is distinguished from the perpetuity of the created world by being ‘the whole, simultaneous and perfect possession of unbounded life’ that transcends the limits of time.2 Firmly grounded in the Greek philosophical tradition of late antiquity, Boethius’ doctrine of atemporal eternity meant passing to the medieval readers, in the words of Richard C. Dales, ‘the most fully developed and sophisticated views on time and eternity’, the influence of which extended well beyond the Middle Ages.3 The ninth-century vernacular rendering of Boethius’ Consolation into the Old English language is a unique witness to the medieval reception of the late antique views on time and eternity: ranked among ‘the first English works of philosophy’,4 the Old English Boethius (henceforth – the OEBo) implements significant modifications to the Boethian discussion of divine eternity that obscure the original distinction between aeternitas and perpetuitas; however, as the discussion concludes with a glowing encomium on the divine nature, a peculiar cluster of divine attributes is provided to clarify ‘why God is called the highest eternity’.5 The aim of the present paper is to draw attention to a number of divine attributes included in 1 I am most grateful to Monica Tobon for her inspiring thoughts on Boethius shared with me at the Oxford Patristics Conference, August 2019, and to Deirdre Carabine for the exceptional opportunity to discuss with her the kataphatic nature of the Old English encomium. I am also thankful to my audience at the conference session ‘Augustine’s Legacy’ for their stimulating input. Finally, I sincerely thank Tatjana Aleknienė as well as the anonymous readers, who read the earlier version of this paper and provided their most helpful comments and suggestions for the improvement of the work. Any mistakes that remain are solely my own. On Boethius’ originality and the arguments against the conduit view of his writings see John Marenbon, Boethius (Oxford, 2003) and ‘Boethius’ Unparadigmatic Originality and Its Implications for Medieval Philosophy’, in Andreas Kirchner, Thomas Jürgasch and Thomas Böhm (eds), Boethius as a Paradigm of Late Ancient Thought (Berlin, 2014), 137-48. 2 Cons. V.6.9-10: Aeternitas igitur est interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio. I quote the Latin Consolation from Boethius, De consolatione philosophiae. Opuscula theologica, ed. Claudio Moreschini, Bibliotheca Scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana (München, Leipzig, 2005), and I use Boethius, Tractates. De consolatione philosophiae, trans. H.F. Stewart and E.K. Rand, Loeb Classical Library 74 (London, 1973) for the English translations throughout this work. 3 Richard C. Dales, Medieval Discussions of the Eternity of the World, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 18 (Leiden, 1990), 13. 4 Malcolm Godden, ‘The Alfredian Project and its Aftermath: Rethinking the Literary History of the Ninth and Tenth Centuries’, in Ron Johnston (ed.), Proceedings of the British Academy 162 (Oxford, 2009), 93-122, 122. 5 Malcolm Godden and Susan Irvine (eds), The Old English Boethius: An Edition of the Old English Versions of Boethius’ De Consolatione Philosophiae, 2 vol. (Oxford, 2009), II 95.

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the encomium that indicate an accurate understanding of atemporal eternity.6 The ensuing analysis will reveal that despite its initial reluctance to follow the Platonic line of thought regarding the eternity of the world, the Old English fragment does convey the idea of divine timelessness, as well as the notions of divine impassibility, immutability, and simplicity – the key attributes rooted in Neoplatonic philosophy that form a systematic whole when speaking about the divine being. To start with the immediate context, Boethius resorts to the notion of atemporal eternity in his discussion of the relationship between the divine prescience and the human free will. In the final book of the Latin Consolation, the character Boethius ponders over the issue of whether human freedom is compatible with divine foreknowledge: if God knows everything in advance, then our future is fixed, and there is no freedom of human action or will. Conversely, if we can detour from the foreseen, our future is not fixed; however, that would imply an ‘uncertain opinion’ (opinio incerta), and not firm knowledge of the future (futuri firma praescientia) on God’s part, which, in Boethius’ opinion, is impious to predicate of God.7 To resolve the contradiction, Lady Philosophy remarks that God’s way of knowing is different from that of human beings. It is a mistake to think that all ways of understanding are equal, and Philosophy applies the Neoplatonic Modes of Cognition Principle to solve the problem of divine prescience: four cognitive faculties – sense, imagination, reason, and intelligence – grasp one and the same object differently; what is grasped by the higher faculties, cannot be grasped by lower ones (for example, senses cannot reach anything beyond the material realm). Intelligence (intellegentia) is the highest and the most perfect way of knowing; it cuts through the form of all things ‘with that one twinkling of the mind’, grasps the pure form of the thing contemplated and belongs solely to God.8 Having emphasised that a particular way of knowing is 6 The encomium [OEBo B 42.23-41] is a remarkable interpolation that abridges and replaces the original ending of Boethius’ work. The origin of the passage is yet unknown, and as Malcolm Godden and Susan Irvine indicate, it cannot be related to any of the glosses in the commentary tradition on the Consolation. M. Godden and S. Irvine, Old English Boethius (2009), II 496. Stylistically, the ample use of parallelisms links it firmly with the poetic tradition of the Psalms, whereas the selective use of biblical material and the philosophical load of the fragment link it – via Boethius’ poetry in the Consolation – with the Neoplatonic tradition of philosophical hymnsinging. At the Athenian Academy, hymns were perceived as true philosophy, capable of aiding the soul in reverting and ascending to the noetic realm. More on the characteristics of the philosopher’s hymn as a prayer or praise see R.M. Van den Berg, Proclus’ Hymns: Essays, Translations, Commentary, Philosophia Antiqua 90 (Leiden, 2001). The mediating power of Boethius’ poetry between ratio and intellegentia is highlighted in Stephen Blackwood, The Consolation of Boethius as Poetic Liturgy, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford, 2015), 87-92. 7 Cons. V.3.5-15. 8 Cons. V.4.86-8: Intellegentiae vero celsior oculus exsistit; supergressa namque universitatis ambitum, ipsam illam simplicem formam pura mentis acie contuetur. Also Cons. V.5.16-8.

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determined not by the nature of the object, but by the nature of the cognizer, Philosophy proceeds to consider eternity – the condition of divine existence (status divinae substantiae), which differs from the temporal way of being in that it is ‘the whole, simultaneous and perfect possession of unbounded life’.9 To highlight the properties of divine being, Boethius makes an important comparison between temporal and atemporal eternity. The temporal eternity, which the philosopher calls perpetuity or sempiternity,10 is an endless life of the created world: it involves no beginning nor end in time and is an ‘infinite motion of temporal things’, ‘an infinite quantity of future and past’.11 In contrast, the divine eternity – the eternity proper – ‘is timeless and motionless; it embraces the whole presence of an endless life all at once’.12 Boethius insists that timeless eternity is outside the conditions of time and involves no succession of moments or passing from the past through the present to the future.13 He also maintains that timeless eternity determines God’s way of knowing: since God is eternal and present, so also his knowledge ‘remains in the simplicity of its presentness and, embracing the infinite spaces of the past and future, considers all things in its simple condition as if they were now happening’.14 At this point it is important to note that even though in his discussions of time and eternity Boethius uses temporal words such as ‘now’, ‘present’ and ‘always’, he explains that their meaning is different when applied to the divine being: ‘Our present connotes changing time and sempiternity; God’s present, abiding, unmoved, and immovable, connotes eternity’.15 Boethius’ attention to the 9 Cons. V.6.9-10. Boethius’ famous definition of eternity is strikingly similar to that of Plotinus’ in Enneads III.7.3.36-8. References to the Enneads follow Plotinus, Enneads, 6 vol., trans. A.H. Armstrong, Loeb Classical Library 440-5, 468 (Cambridge, MA, 1966-88). On the Neoplatonic background of Boethius’ definition of eternity see Richard Sorabji, Time, Creation, and the Continuum: Theories in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (London, 1983), 112-20. 10 Cons. V.6.55-7. On Boethius’ discussion of the categories of place and time as applied to God and the proposed term sempiternitas to denote the ‘constant, incessant and thereby perpetual course of our present time’, see Boethius’ treatise De Trinitate IV.54-77. 11 Cons. V.6.39-49. In his Elements of Theology, Proclus considers perpetual existence as a necessary intermediate between the temporal and eternal (Prop. 5). See Joachim Gruber, Kommentar zu Boethius De Consolatione Philosophiae (Berlin, 1978), 409. 12 Cons. V.6.33-7: Aliud est enim per interminabilem duci vitam, quod mundo Plato tribuit, aliud interminabilis vitae totam partier complexum esse praesentiam, quod divinae mentis proprium esse manifestum est. 13 Cons. V.6.17-21. 14 Cons.V.6.59-64: [E]st autem deo semper aeternus ac praesentarius status, scientia quoque eius, omnem temporis supergressa motionem, in suae manet simplicitate praesentiae infinitaque praeteriti ac futuri spatia complectens, omnia, quasi iam gerantur, in sua cognitione considerat. 15 De Trinitate IV.238-48: [N]ostrum ‘nunc’ quasi currens tempus facit et sempiternitatem, divinum vero ‘nunc’ permanens neque movens sese atque consistens aeternitatem facit. R.T. Mullins points out that ‘the use of temporal words to describe eternity can cause confusion in contemporary reconstructions of divine eternity’; however, classical Christians were acutely aware of this problem and continuously insisted that these terms should be understood in the non-temporal way. R.T. Mullins, The End of the Timeless God, Oxford Studies in Analytic Theology (Oxford, 2016), 46.

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terminology used emphasizes the profound contrast between the temporal and timeless eternity that he is careful to draw in the Consolation. In the Anglo-Saxon rendering of Philosophy’s discussion of divine eternity, significant changes are introduced both on the level of terminology and that of content. In the Old English text, the lady Philosophy is substituted by Wisdom, the precise Boethian distinction between temporal and timeless eternity is replaced by a threefold classification of the world, and the Platonic idea of the eternity of the world is omitted altogether, speaking instead of the eternal nature of created souls. The new classification obscures the original thought of Boethius both in terms of matter and the terminology applied. In the new classification, all things are divided into 1) transitory things, which have both beginning and end, 2) the eternal (OE ece) things that have beginning but no end (to this category belong angels and human souls), and 3) the eternal (OE ece) God, who has neither beginning nor end.16 The vernacular rendering applies the same adjective ece ‘eternal’ both to God and the angelic and human souls thus ignoring Boethius’ terminological distinction between perpetuitas and aeternitas.17 The major problem that the Old English rendering creates is that its succinct wording makes it impossible to tell whether the Boethian distinction of the two types of eternity is preserved in the vernacular: the phrase ‘eternal without end and without beginning’ predicated of God can mean both timeless and temporally everlasting eternity.18 It is only by turning to the ensuing encomium on the divine nature that we find evidence for the accurate understanding of timeless eternity. The most remarkable indication that the idea of timeless eternity has been grasped in the Anglo-Saxon text is the following denial of God’s need to remember: Ne ofman he næfre nanwuht forþam næfre nauht he ne forgeat (‘He never remembers anything because he never forgot anything’).19 In Boethius’ text, there is no exact equivalent of this statement; Philosophy only says that nothing that is past can escape the eternal mind.20 Boethius explains that for 16

OEBo B 42.13-20. Dermot Moran in his discussion of Eriugena’s notions of time and eternity in the Periphyseon draws attention to Augustine’s threefold classification of beings according to their life in time and space: God is said to be outside both time and space, spiritual creatures move in time only, whereas corporeal beings move in both time and space (Periphyseon V 889A, referring to Augustine’s De Genesi ad litteram VIII.20.39). Further research is needed to see if the Old English division might be related to Augustine’s classification, but it seems significant that the Old English fragment also has a threefold structure, the middle level of which is assigned to human souls and angels – a likely interpretation of the Latin phrase conditus spiritus. Dermot Moran, ‘Time and Eternity in the Periphyseon’, in History and Eschatology in John Scottus Eriugena and His Time (Leuven, 2002), 487-507, 496. 18 The temporalist view of eternity maintains that aeternitas means everlasting, ‘temporally infinite in duration, unbounded in the past and future’. Thomas V. Morris, Our Idea of God: Introduction to Philosophical Theology (Downers Grove, IL, 1991), 120. 19 OEBo B 42.28-9. 20 Cons. V.6.26-7. 17

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the divine mind, the infinity of the moving time is present all at once; therefore, there are no future nor past events for the simple reason that all of them are present to it, but no explicit mention in that discussion is made of God’s memory nor of the cognitive process of remembering. Compared to the Biblical framework of thought, the idea that God never remembers anything, is striking. Both the Old and New Testaments are full of examples of how God remembers his people and of tokens that trigger his memory and remind God about his promises. As the professor of Jewish thought Nehemia Polen wittily remarks, the Bible ‘endows God with a memory, but not a perfect one’.21 The author explains it further: ‘For to have a perfect memory – presumably because past, present and future are all the same for a Being existing in an eternal now – is to have no memory at all, since one does not remember the moment we call now, one simply lives in it. Prefect memory self-destructs into incoherence’.22 In the Old English passage, the divine memory is precisely this: it is perfect, and God has no need to search through his memory to remember anything. The Neoplatonic doctrine that underpins the Old English author’s line of thought can be traced back to the Enneads, where Plotinus decisively denies memory to timeless and unchanging beings. As Plotinus considers what has the natural capacity to remember, he observes that memory is ‘something acquired, either learnt or experienced’; therefore, it is not present in those realities, which are unaffected by experience or live in timeless eternity:23 Μνήμην δή περὶ θεὸν οὐδὲ περὶ τὸ ὄν καὶ νοῦν θετέον· οὐδὲν γὰρ εἰς αὐτοὺς οὐδὲ χρόνος, ἀλλ᾽ αἰὼν περὶ τὸ ὄν, καὶ οὔτε τὸ πρότερον οὔτε τὸ ἐφεξῆς, ἀλλ᾽ ἒστιν ἀεὶ ὡς ἔχει ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ οὐ δεχόμενον παράλλαξιν. We must certainly not attribute memory to God, or real being or Intellect; for nothing [external] comes to them and there is no time, but eternity in which real being is, and there is neither before nor after, but it is always as it is, in the same state not admitting of any change.

A little further Plotinus argues that in the noetic realm, there is no time but eternity, therefore, no succession of thoughts (discursive thinking) and hence no memory:24 Εἰ δὲ καί, ὥσπερ δοκεῖ, ἄχρονος πᾶσα νόησις, ἐν αἰῶνι, ἀλλ᾽οὐκ ἐν χρόνῳ ὄντων τῶν ἐκεῖ, ἀδύνατον μνήμην εἶναι ἐκεῖ οὐχ ὅτι τῶν ἐνταῦθα, ἀλλὰ καὶ ὅλως ὁτουοῦν. ἀλλὰ ἔστιν ἕκαστον παρόν· ἐπεὶ οὐδὲ διέξοδος οὐδὲ μετάβασις ἀφ᾽ ἐτέρου ἑπ᾽ἄλλο. But if, as we believe, every act of intelligence is timeless, since the realities there are in eternity and not in time, it is impossible that there should be a memory there, not 21 Nehemia Polen, ‘God’s Memory’, in Steven T. Katz, Allan Rosen and Ellie Wiesel (eds), Obliged by Memory: Literature, Religion, Ethics (Syracuse, NY, 2006), 139-53, 139. 22 N. Polen, ‘God’s Memory’ (2006), 139. 23 Enn. IV.3.25.13-7. The English translation is by A.H. Armstrong in Plotinus, Enneads, IV.1-9 (1984), 113. 24 Enn. IV.4.1.12-6. Plotinus, Enneads, IV.1-9 (1984), 137-9.

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only of the things here below, but of anything at all. But each and every thing is present there; so there is no discursive thought or transition from one to the other.

Even though Plotinus’ name does occur in a contemporary ninth-century Anglo-Saxon translation of Augustine’s Soliloquia, it is unlikely that the Old English translator had any direct access to the Enneads. Therefore, to account for the Neoplatonic overtones in the Old English representation of the divine mind, we must search for other sources that could have absorbed and transmitted Neoplatonic doctrines to medieval England. Multiple instances of such possible influence occur in Augustine’s writings: De civitate Dei, for example, transmits an important philosophical doctrine of the non-discursiveness of the divine mind:25 Ille quippe non ex hoc in illud cogitatione mutata, sed omnino incommutabiliter videt; ita ut illa quidem, quae temporaliter fiunt, et futura nondum sint et praesentia iam sint et praeterita iam non sint, ipse vero haec omnia stabili ac sempiterna praesentia comprehendat … Neque enim eius intentio de cogitatione in cogitationem transit, in cuius incorporeo contuitu simul adsunt cuncta quae novit; quoniam tempora ita novit nullis suis temporalibus notionibus, quem ad modum temporalia movet nullis suis temporalibus motibus. God’s mind does not pass from one thought to another. His vision is utterly unchangeable. Thus, he comprehends all that takes place in time – the not-yet-existing future, the existing present, and the no-longer existing past – in an immutable and eternal present … His knowledge of what happens in time, like his movement of what changes in time, is completely independent of time.

Augustine ponders over God’s ability to know temporal events in a timeless manner; however, he (contrary to Plotinus) does not deny God the very faculty of memory, but explains that memory in God is of a more prefect nature, different from human and difficult to comprehend. In the Confessions, as well as in De musica, Augustine discusses the essential role that memory plays in the human measurement of time, claiming that both our anticipation of future events and the reminiscence of past events depend on memory’s capacity to grasp temporally extended periods.26 Similarly, in De Trinitate, Augustine contemplates the interrelationship between human memory and foresight: even though past events are present for us only by way of our memory, a certain knowledge of the future also comes to us through memory, for example hymns, which we render in proper sequence from memory. For Augustine, the discovery 25 Civ. XI.21. For the Latin text, I use Saint Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans (De Civitate Dei contra Paganos), translated by W.M. Green, Loeb Classical Library, 7 vol. (London, Cambridge, MA, 1960-6). The English translation is from St. Augustine, The City of God, Books VIII-XVI, trans. Gerald G. Walsh, S.J. and Grace Monahan, O.S.U. (Washington, DC, 2008), 218. 26 Gerard J.P. O’Daly, Platonism Pagan and Christian – Studies in Plotinus and Augustine, Routledge Revivals (London, New York, 2019), 175-6.

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of unity between human memory and foresight is suggestive of the unity that might exist in the divine mind; however, writes Augustine, the more we seek to consider how all this happens in our mind, the more our language and attention fail us: ‘Do we … believe that we can comprehend whether God’s foresight is the same as His memory and understanding, who does not behold individual things by thought, but embraces all that He knows in one eternal, unchangeable, and ineffable vision?’27 Another likely author to have transmitted Neoplatonic ideas to ninth-century England was John Scottus Eriugena, whose discussion of temporality is a powerful synthesis of both Greek and Latin sources.28 As Dermot Moran in his study ‘Time and Eternity in the Periphyseon’ notes, Eriugena believes ‘all temporal predicates apply only improperly to God’, since God is timeless; regarding God’s memory, Eriugena follows Boethius saying that for God ‘nothing is in the future, because he awaits nothing, nothing is past because for him nothing passes’.29 Dionysius the Areopagite’s influence adds yet another dimension to Eriugena’s views, as now God is understood as ‘eternal and “more than eternal”, infinite and more than infinite’.30 The importance of these views, in the words of Moran, lies in their ‘philosophical critique of temporal predicates in God’, eliding ‘the temporal and historical understanding’ and promoting ‘the true theoria which leads to theosis and to timelessness’.31 When speaking about the divine memory, the Old English encomium also prefers the philosophical line of thought to that of literally scriptural: by negating God’s need to remember, the author not only discreetly undermines the Scripture-based forgetfulness of God, but also aims to indicate the absence of discursive thought, or successive moments in divine existence, in this way affirming a far more reaching concept – divine atemporality. As R.T. Mullins explains, ‘succession was the fundamental basis in the Middle Ages for determining whether or not something was temporal or non-temporal’.32 By eliminating the possibility of successive thoughts in the divine memory, the vernacular text 27 Trin. XV.7.13. Stephen McKenna’s translation from Augustine, On the Trinity, Books 9-15, ed. Gareth B. Matthews, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy (Cambridge, 2002), 181. 28 On the ‘anonymous presence’ of Eriugena’s thought in the Old English Soliloquies, see Michael Treschow, ‘Echoes of the Periphyseon in the Third Book of Alfred’s Soliloquies’, Notes and Queries (September 1993), 281-6. 29 D. Moran, ‘Time and Eternity’ (2002), 498. 30 God’s atemporal nature is further emphasised by the attribute plus quam tempus ‘more than time’ (Periph. I 469A). Eriugena also believes, as Dermot Moran puts it, that ‘God is the beginning and end of all things but is himself without a beginning “anarchos” and, as infinite, is literally without an end, finis. “Beginning” and “end” do not apply to God, “are not proper names of the divine nature” (Periph. II 528A), but express the relation of God to created things’. D. Moran, ‘Time and Eternity’ (2002), 498. The Old English author similarly believes that God is ‘eternal without end and without beginning’, whereas that what is temporal has both end and beginning. 31 D. Moran, ‘Time and Eternity’ (2002), 507. 32 R.T. Mullins, The End of the Timeless God (Oxford, 2016), 45.

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offers firm evidence for the accurate understating of the implications that atemporality has on the divine mind. Further evidence for the notion of atemporal eternity in the Old English text is provided by the close analysis of the divine attributes in the encomium. According to Mullins, the doctrine of timeless eternity is not ‘solitary’, and as such cannot be studied in isolation; according to the scholar, the notion of timeless eternity is ‘systematically connected to a particular set of divine attributes … simplicity, immutability, and impassibility’.33 The Old English encomium, included into the vernacular rendering as an account of the supremeness of divine eternity, contains a number of attributes that affirm divine immutability, impassibility and simplicity; hence once again the fragment indicates that the divine eternity that the Old English passage speaks about is not only endless and beginningless, but also the atemporal one. To start with divine immutability, the doctrine maintains that God does not change; in its strict form, the teaching negates the very possibility of change in God: as Richard E. Creel points out, it is not enough to say that God does not change, but ‘to say that God is immutable is to say that God cannot change’.34 An important argument behind this claim is God’s absolute perfection: as a truly perfect being, God cannot change into anything better or worse without losing his perfection.35 When Plotinus describes emanation from the One, he insists on the notion of ‘undiminished giving’, which involves no lessening in the One’s power and no diminution of its substance: ‘It must be a radiation from it [i.e. the One] while it remains unchanged, like the bright light of the sun which, so to speak, runs round it, springing from it continually while it remains unchanged’.36 The Old English fragment starts with a similar claim about God as the unchanging and undiminished giver: ‘His wealth does not grow at all, and also never wanes … He is always giving, and his possessions never wane’. No change occurs in God’s memory; God’s alertness is unchanging either (‘He never sleeps’). The last statement is a quote from Psalm 121:3-4, which together with two others from the Old Testament suggest the translator’s selective use of scriptural material in his treatment of divine immutability.37

33

R.T. Mullins, End of Timeless God (2016), xxii. Richard E. Creel, ‘Immutability and Impassibility’, in Charles Taliaferro, Paul Draper and Philip L. Quinn (eds), A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, 2nd ed. (Chichester, 2010), 322-8, 322. 35 R.T. Mullins, End of Timeless God (2016), 48. 36 Enn. V.1.6.28-30. On the notion of ‘undiminished giving’ see R.T. Wallis, Neoplatonism (London, 1972), 62-3. 37 OEBo B 42.35 Simle he bið lociende (‘Always he is looking on’) is comparable to Prov. 15:3 ‘The eyes of the Lord are in every place’ (KJV), and OEBo B 42.39-40 His micelnesse ne mæg nan mon ametan (‘No man can measure his greatness’) reminds of Ps. 145:3 ‘Great is the Lord … his greatness is unsearchable’ (KJV). On the affinity between the Old English Soliloquies, Boethius and the Psalms in terms of their quest for true understanding, lexical similarities and 34

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Related to God’s changelessness is the doctrine of divine impassibility – a claim that God cannot be moved by external causes. In the words of Creel, ‘it is not sufficient to say merely that God has not or never will be affected by anything. Impassibility means it is impossible for God to be passive in relation to anything’.38 In the Consolation, when the character Boethius raises the question of whether it is possible for man to do anything unforeseen by God and by doing this to cause a change in God’s mind, Philosophy responds by pointing out the absurdity of such claim, because temporal events by no means can be the cause of eternal knowledge.39Augustine explains the same principle by saying that God does not know all his creatures because they are, but they are because he knows them; ‘nothing has been added to His wisdom from them; it has remained the same as it was’.40 In the strict sense, the doctrine of divine impassibility has important consequences for the relationship between God and the created world: if God is beyond the influence of his creatures, is not he then beyond their joys and sorrows, beyond their prayers? In the Enneads, Plotinus speaks about the relationship between the One and the world precisely in this way: in stark contrast to the Judaeo-Christian belief in communicating, loving and sympathetic Creator, the One not only has no deliberate will to create the world, but even when the world is already there (having emerged by way of emanation), the One stays unaffected by it. A related principle of divine aseity (God’s absolute self-sufficiency) means that ‘he does not need the things which have come into being from him, but leaves what has come into being altogether alone, because he needs nothing of it, but is the same as he was before he brought into being’.41 ‘He would not have cared if it [i.e. the world] had had not come into being,’ concludes Plotinus. This Neoplatonic background helps us in recognizing a similar framework of thought in the Old English fragment: ‘He seeks nothing nor ponders, for he knows it all. He seeks nothing because he lost nothing … He has no need of anything … Always he is free, nor is he compelled to any act because of his divine power’42 – these and similar statements convey the Neoplatonic understanding of divine aseity and immutability.43 shared intellectual context see Amy Faulkner, ‘Mind in the Old English Prose Psalms’, The Review of English Studies 70/296 (2019), 597-617. 38 R.E. Creel, ‘Immutability and Impassibility’ (2010), 323. 39 Cons. V.3.46-8. 40 Trin. XV.13. Stephen McKenna’s translation from Augustine, On the Trinity, Books 9-15, ed. Gareth B. Matthews (Cambridge, 2002), 194. 41 Enn. V.5.12.41-5. 42 M. Godden and S. Irvine, Old English Boethius (2009), II, 95. 43 One should note, however, the interplay between the divine attributes that owe their origin to the Plotinian account of the One – the source of all being, changeless and immutable, absolutely simple, yet beyond any being and thus unknowable to us – and that of the Intellect (Nous or divine Mind), whose life – ‘changelessly motionless and ever holding the Universal content in actual presence’ (Enn. III.7.3) – is defined as timeless eternity and characterised by the non-discursive,

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Finally, the attribute of divine simplicity insists on the radical indivisibility of God, claiming that a perfect being must be without any complexity, be it spatial, temporal, essential or existential. The doctrine of divine simplicity comprises a number of claims, two of which, the insistence on God’s indivisibility in space and time and the identity of God’s essential attributes, are adhered to in the Old English fragment.44 The closing lines of the passage claim that ‘He is everywhere present. No man can measure his greatness. That thought is not to be thought physically but spiritually, as is wisdom and rightness, for he himself is that’.45 Having stated God’s omnipresence, the Old English author proceeds to negate its physicality and insists that God’s greatness is not to be understood in spatial terms. His statement on the identity between God’s greatness, wisdom and rightness reminds of Augustine’s claim that God’s greatness is the same as his wisdom, and his goodness ‘the same as His wisdom and greatness; and His truth is the same as all these qualities’; ‘in Him it is not one thing to be blessed, and another thing to be great, or to be wise, or to be true, or to be good, or in a word to be Himself’,46 concludes Augustine. To summarise the present study, in his final book of the Consolation, Boethius bequeaths to the medieval readers an important Neoplatonic doctrine of the simplicity of the divine mind. The superior power of intellect depends on the simplicity of divine being, which in turn is expounded by examining the difference between the temporal and timeless existence. By being simple and beyond time, the divine intellect is able to grasp both past and future events in intuitive thought. It seems that in Christian Neoplatonism, God is described using the attributes of both the One and the Intellect. An example of this fusion could be Boethius’ definition of divine eternity, which Boethius, following Plotinus, transfers from the Intellect to God. However, as Werner Beierwaltes observes in his commentary on the Enneads III.7, since we speak about eternity using terms that originally had a temporal sense, such as ‘is’ or ‘now’, we miss the eternity’s absolute distinctness from time; Beierwaltes insists that ‘Eternity is – like the highest concept of Plotinian philosophy, the ONE itself – only accessible to a negative dialectic, and this again is only in an analogical sense: as the negation of time, as that which is dissimilar to time’, as quoted in William Lane Craig, The Problem of Divine Foreknowledge and Future Contingents from Aristotle to Suarez (Leiden, 1988), 95. By postulating an attribute of Nous that is accessible only by via negativa, Beierwaltes reveals an essential similarity between the attributes of the One and the Nous, which has to be kept in mind as we approach the divine attributes in the OEBo: every statement about the divine being rises from the entanglements of our language and is best understood as being only provisory and having only an analogical sense. 44 Eleonore Stump, ‘Simplicity’, in Charles Taliaferro, Paul Draper and Philip L. Quinn (eds), A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, 2nd ed. (Chichester, 2010), 270-7, 270. 45 M. Godden and S. Irvine, Old English Boethius (2009), II, 95. 46 Trin. VI.7: Deus uero multipliciter quidem dicitur magnus, bonus, sapiens, beatus, uerus, et quidquid aliud non indigne dici uidetur; sed eadem magnitudo eius est quae sapientia (non enim mole magnus est sed uirtute), et eadem bonitas quae sapientia et magnitudo, et eadem ueritas quae illa omnia; et non est ibi aliud beatum esse et aliud magnum aut sapientem aut uerum aut bonum esse aut omnino ipsum esse. For an in-depth discussion of Augustine’s texts on divine simplicity see John P. Rosheger, ‘Augustine and Divine Simplicity’, New Blackfriars 77/901 (February 1996), 72-83.

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the timeless present. As his treatment of the divine memory shows, the author of the Old English Boethius retains the idea of two types of eternity; however, since the rendering introduces a few modifications – most probably due to the reading of Boethius in Augustine’s light – the primary Boethian distinction between perpetuitas and aeternitas becomes obscure. The supporting arguments that the difference is still there come from the closing encomium on the divine nature that succinctly describes a series of divine characteristics rooted in the tradition of Neoplatonic thought, such as divine simplicity, immutability, aseity and impassibility as well as the absence of recollection in the divine mind, which in the present study are taken to indicate the atemporal nature of the divine eternity. Augustine’s and to a lesser degree Eriugena’s thoughts on the simplicity and timelessness of the divine nature, briefly examined in the paper, provide important evidence for the presence of Neoplatonic philosophemes in the patristic sources that most probably influenced the Anglo-Saxon work, multiple elements of which still radiate the light of Neoplatonic thought.

FEMALE POWER AND ITS PROPAGANDA

edited by Mattia CHIRIATTI

Praise and Polemics. Theodosian Empresses and their Contemporaries Anja BUSCH, Hamburg, Germany

ABSTRACT Women of the Theodosian dynasty acted as representatives of the emperor. Through charitable deeds, personal patronage, church foundations and ostentatiously displayed piety they contributed to the stability of the imperial rule. As representatives of the emperor, whose religious-political task was to preserve Orthodoxy and to integrate various Christian groups, empresses also actively intervened in church politics. For their taking actions imperial women were usually praised by their contemporaries. Yet Empresses Eudoxia and Pulcheria are known not least for their confrontations with the bishops John Chrysostom and Nestorius respectively. Both bishops were not prepared to accept that the empresses’ scope of action also extended to church affairs. The respective controversies between John and Eudoxia as well as Pulcheria and Nestorius resulted first in heavy polemics on the part of the bishops against the empresses, and eventually the deposition of both bishops by intervention of the empresses.

In recent years Theodosian empresses enjoy anew the attention of researchers of late antiquity. Ever since Kenneth Holum’s pathbreaking study on the basileia of the Theodosian women1 it has been noted that in late antiquity the women of the imperial household and particularly those, who had been honoured with the title of Augusta, played a considerable role in the empire’s politics especially where religious matters were concerned. By taking actions as the emperor’s representatives they were able to increase their own public image and gain reputation as being devoted Christians. They achieved this through charitable deeds, church building activities and by exercising patronage for individuals or groups with various – often religious – interests.2 For their public appearances and their taking actions they were usually applauded by their contemporaries. Nevertheless, two cases in particular are prominent, in which conflicts arose over politically powerful Augustae, because the respective opposing party was not prepared to fully accept their roles within the 1 Kenneth G. Holum, Theodosian Empresses: Women and Imperial Dominion in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, Los Angeles, 1982). 2 This is the main argument of my book Die Frauen der theodosianischen Dynastie. Macht und Repräsentation kaiserlicher Frauen im 5. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 2015).

Studia Patristica CXXX, 197-214. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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religious life of the capital and their interfering in church politics on behalf of the empire.3 Empress Eudoxia is known to have been victim to heavy polemics of the bishop of Constantinople, John Chrysostom, while her daughter, Empress Pulcheria, enjoyed the praise of the majority of her contemporaries for her orthodox piety. Nevertheless, just like her equally pious mother Eudoxia, Pulcheria too quarrelled with the later bishop of the capital, Nestorius. Both cases are comparable insofar as both empresses, by acting in accordance with the Theodosian ideology of imperial rule, interfered with both bishops’ episcopal authority. In the case of Eudoxia and John conflicts arose also because of a different understanding of the respective other’s competence in church politics. Nestorius on the other hand questioned the empress’ place in the church, as claimed by Pulcheria for herself. By openly opposing to the idea of the Theotokos he furthermore challenged Pulcheria’s role model, the Virgin Mary. Eudoxia was the wife of Emperor Arcadius and mother of the later emperor Theodosius II and his elder sister Pulcheria. Eudoxia is known to us particularly for her constant quarrelling with the eastern roman capital’s bishop, John Chrysostom. This is cause for her bad reputation in some of our Christian sources.4 But definitely not all of our late antique Christian authors paint a negative picture of Empress Eudoxia, whose behaviour with regard to her representative functions as an emperor’s wife and her influence over her husband in fact differed hardly from that of her predecessor Flaccilla.5 In his funeral oration on Empress Flaccilla Gregory of Nyssa had designed Theodosius’ I deceased wife as the model Christian empress. Gregory had praised the empress for her chastity, mildness, philanthropy, and her devotion to the christian faith.6 By other sources Flaccilla is also known to us for her charitable deeds,7 and she had a reputation for great sense of justice.8 And it 3 Peter Van Nuffelen, ‘Playing the Ritual Game in Constantinople’, in Lucy Grig and Gavin Kelly (eds), Two Romes: Rome and Constantinople in Late Antiquity (Oxford, New York, 2012), 183-200 also focuses on this subject emphasising the problem that John Chrysostom as well as several years later Nestorius, both, before assuming the bishopric of Constantinople, had been bishops in Antioch. Due to their origin neither of them was accustomed to the requirements concerning the role of a capital’s bishop. In Constantinople the emperor and his relatives played an important part in the church ceremonies, as these gave forum for their self-representation and the creation of consensus with various religious groups as well as the people within the city. As both John and Nestorius lacked the sensitivity for this important aspect of imperial rule they came into conflict with the imperial authority. 4 Wendy Meyer, ‘Doing Violence to the Image on an Empress: The Destruction of Eudoxia’s Reputation’, in Harold Allen Drake (ed.), Violence in Late Antiquity: Perceptions and Practices (Aldershot, 2006), 213. 5 W. Meyer, ‘Doing Violence’ (2006), 205 notes the ‘significant objective parallels’ between Flaccilla and Eudoxia. 6 Greg. Nyss., in Flac. 480.15-23 for Gregory’s characterisation of Flaccilla employing vivid metaphors. 7 Greg. Nyss., in Flac. 487.13-7; Theodt. 5.19.2-3; cf. Suda, s.v. Plakilla (π 1695). 8 Themist. 18.225 b-c on Flaccilla as a model of justness; cf. Greg. Nyss., in Flac. 480.15-6 describing Flaccilla as τὸ τῆς δικαιοσύνης πηδάλιον.

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was surely Flaccilla as a model whom Eudoxia followed when taking actions on behalf of the Christian Roman Empire.9 However, there is a lack of evidence of concrete policy measures that Flaccilla may have influenced directly. Yet she is described by Gregory as sharing basileia and archê with her husband Theodosius.10 In fact several sources present Eudoxia as ‘most god-loving empress’ (θεοφιλεστάτη βασιλίσσα) and design her as a very motivated Christian making provisions to strengthen the nicene Christian faith. Eudoxia, following the orthodox orientation of the Theodosian dynasty, was a supporter of the Nicene confession and was equally committed to the fight against homoeanism as well as the pagan cults. Socrates and Sozomen report that Eudoxia supported John Chrysostom in his actions against the Homoeans. These regularly marched through the streets at night to provoke the Nicenians with mocking songs. John met them with a nightly counter-procession. For this purpose Eudoxia had donated silver candlesticks and commissioned her eunuch Brison with the musical design of the procession.11 An episode in the 5th-century Life of Porphyry for example, reports an event in which Empress Eudoxia is approached by some Syrian bishops, who beg her to use her influence on Emperor Arcadius to give his admission for the destruction of a pagan temple in Gaza. Although Arcadius is initially hesitant to admit his agreement, Eudoxia ultimately accomplishes this with a trick: In the baptismal procession of Theodosius II, the future heir to the throne, a servant of the empress moves the baby’s head in such a way that it appears to the public present that the baby has complied with the monks’ requests. Emperor Arcadius is not able or does not want to undo the first publicly announced official act of his son, and so he too gives his consent.12 Later the empress would provide large sums of money as well as 32 columns of precious marble for the construction of a church at the very position, where the ancient temple had been located.13 Various written sources other than the sermons and homilies of John Chrysostom or texts written by his followers thus refer to Eudoxia in a rather positive way. And even John himself, being the capital’s bishop once praised her as a model Christian empress. At an uncertain time between 400 and 402 the relics of some otherwise unknown martyrs had been brought from Constantinople to a nearby place 9 For Flaccilla’s functioning as the role-model for the succeeding Augustae of the Theodosian household K.G. Holum, Theodosian Empresses (1982), 21-44. 10 Greg. Nyss., in Flac. 488.7-9: ἥτις συνηνιοχοῦσα τῷ μεγάλῳ βασιλεῖ τὴν τοσαύτην ἀρχὴν πάσης δυναστείας ὑποκυπτούσης, τοσούτων ἐθνῶν ὑποτελούντων; on the shared archê of emperor and empress see A. Busch, Frauen der theodosianischen Dynastie (2015), 227-30 as for Flaccilla in particular ibid. 30-1. 11 Socr. 6.8.4-6; Soz. 8.8.4-6. 12 V. Porph. 41-9. 13 V. Porph. 78; 84.

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called Drypia. Empress Eudoxia had taken part in the procession as the representative of her husband, Emperor Arcadius, who was expected only the following day. In praise of Eudoxia’s public appearance and her humility shown in view of the martyrs’ shrine John held a speech in which he praised Eudoxia: … καὶ αὐτὴ ἡ τὸ διάδημα περικειμένη καὶ τὴν πορφυρίδα περιβεβλημένη, παρὰ τὴν ὁδὸν ἅπασαν … ὥσπερ θεραπαινὶς παρηκολούθει τοῖς ἁγίοις, τῆς θήκης ἁπτομένη καὶ τῆς ὀθόνης τῆς ἐπικειμένης, καὶ πάντα τὸν ἀνθρώπινον καταπατοῦσα τῦφον, καὶ ἐν μέσῳ θεάτρῳ τοσούτῳ φαινομένη δήμῳ, ἣν οὐδὲ εὐνούχοις ἅπασι τοῖς ἐν ταῖς βασιλικαῖς στρεφομένοις αὐλαῖς θέμις ἰδεῖν.14 … she [= Eudoxia], who wears the diadem and has put on the purple, … followed these saints like a servant, touched their shrine and the covering cloth, and despising every earthly pomp, in the midst of such a location she appeared before the people, she, who is not even allowed to be seen by all the eunuchs who prowl the imperial palace.

Eudoxia’s public self-humiliation must have strongly affected the contemporary eye-witnesses. All the more so because, as John explains, not even the eunuchs in the imperial palace were allowed to see the empress. By casting aside her imperial insignia, the distinct symbols of the imperial power held by her, she thus submitted herself to the sacral power of the Christian martyrs: ‘… and she threw aside the imperial diadem … and dressed herself in the cloak of humility instead of the purple one’ (βασιλείαν μὲν καὶ διαδήματα … ἐνδυσαμένη δὲ τὴν τῆς ταπεινοφροσύνης στολὴν ἀντὶ τῆς πορφυρίδος).15 Surely this was an action, which John deemed appropriate for a representative of the worldly power and therefore praiseworthy. In his speech he called Eudoxia even a teacher of others (τοῖς ἀλλοῖς … διδάσκαλος) in matters of faith,16 suggesting the exemplary nature of her piety. As Claudia Tiersch remarks, John’s speech already expresses the contrast between Eudoxia’s self-image as empress and John’s understanding of her role; a potential conflict, which they as the main protagonists of the ceremony, at that time may not even have been aware of: John praised the empress precisely for the fact that by casting off her insignia, she subordinated herself to the martyrs, and by this overcame her feminine nature and could even compete with the apostles.17 According to John, in this way Eudoxia also put all previous empresses in the shade, ‘who had only dress and diadem with her in common

14

Joh. Chrys., Hom. 2.1 (PG 63, 469). Joh. Chrys., Hom. 2.1 (PG 63, 470). 16 Joh. Chrys., Hom. 2.1 (PG 63, 469). 17 Joh. Chrys., Hom. 2.1 (PG 63, 471): Εἰ γὰρ γυναικείαν ἔλαχες φύσιν, ἀλλ’ ἔξεστί σοι καὶ πρὸς ἀποστολικὰ κατορθώματα ἁμιλλᾶσθαι; for further discussion see Claudia Tiersch, Johannes Chrysostomus in Konstantinopel (398-404). Weltsicht und Wirken eines Bischofs in der Hauptstadt des Oströmischen Reiches (Tübingen, 2002), 214; 218-9. 15

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also in terms of imperial dignity’ (αἳ τῆς στολῆς αὐτῆς καὶ τῶν διαδημάτων ἐκοινώνησαν μόνον, καὶ τῆς δόξης τῆς βασιλικῆς).18 For Eudoxia, however, public self-humilitation in this highly religious context was a way of underlining her outstanding piety and thus the legitimacy of her imperial authority. Ever since Theodosius I, the relationship of the emperor and his family to the God of the Christians has been emphasised as the basis of legitimation of imperial rule. This bond between God and the imperial household was also visibly expressed on the coins minted in the name of Eudoxia: while already Flaccilla had been depicted on coins in the same imperial ordinate as her husband Theodosius (and her successors were represented in the same way),19 Empress Eudoxia was the first Augusta to be depicted on coins with the hand of God crowning her from above.20 From then on this attribute appeared regularly on the coins struck for the Augustae, showing that they, just like the emperor, were legitimised by divine grace. The public display of piety was therefore a means for Eudoxia to emphasise her function as representative of the Empire and to strengthen her personal reputation. Moreover, participation in liturgical practices and church processions offered the emperor and his relatives the opportunity to demonstrate not only their personal piety but also civilitas, and, by doing so, to integrate the empire as a whole into the urban life of Constantinople. Gestures of piety and civilitas, demonstrated in this way, had a stabilising effect on imperial rule.21 Eudoxia’s self-representation was thus in accordance with political communication of the late antique imperial household. However, attempts by the imperial couple, Eudoxia and Arcadius, to integrate John Chrysostom, the bishop of Constantinopel, into their church policy proved difficult in the long run.22 Initially the relationship between Eudoxia and John Chrysostom apparently was not even bad, but rather co-operative, though anything else but stable.23 Just like his equivalent Sozomen, however, Socrates suggests, that John didn’t display much diplomacy with Eudoxia in terms of her role as an empress and 18

Joh. Chrys., Hom. 2.1 (PG 63, 471). K.G. Holum, Theodosian Empresses (1982), 23; 33-4; Diliana N. Angelova, Sacred Founders: Women, Men, and Gods in the Discourse of Imperial Founding, Rome through Early Byzantium (Oakland, 2015), 185-94. 20 K.G. Holum, Theodosian Empresses (1982), 65-6. 21 Steffen Diefenbach, ‘Frömmigkeit und Kaiserakzeptanz im frühen Byzanz’, Saeculum 47 (1996), 35-66; id., ‘Zwischen Liturgie und civilitas. Konstantinopel im 5. Jahrhundert und die Etablierung eines städtischen Kaisertums’, in Reiner Warland (ed.), Bildlichkeit und Bildorte von Liturgie. Schauplätze in Spätantike, Byzanz und Mittelalter (Wiesbaden, 2002), 21-49; Mischa Meier, ‘Die Demut des Kaisers. Aspekte der religiösen Selbstinszenierung bei Theodosius II. (408-450 n.Chr.)’, in Andreas Pečar and Kai Trampedach (eds), Die Bibel als politisches Argument. Voraussetzungen und Folgen biblizistischer Herrschaftslegitimation in der Vormoderne (München, 2007), 135-58. 22 Also see P. Van Nuffelen, ‘Playing the Ritual Game’ (2012), 193-9. 23 John H.W.G. Liebeschuetz, ‘The Fall of John Chrysostom’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 29 (1985), 3-4; C. Tiersch, Johannes Chrysostomus (2002), 208. 19

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as representative of the imperial power.24 However, Eudoxia’s many attempts at reconciliation indicate that the imperial couple, despite repeated interpersonal failures on the part of the bishop, remained interested in working together with John for quite some time. John’s polemics against Eudoxia come down to us only by second hands, transmitted by his contemporaries or his followers. This makes it difficult to identify which occurrence exactly lead to the final outbreak of their controversy. One fracture occurred some time after the Syrian bishop Severian had arrived at Constantinople in 401. Severian had started preaching in the capital and despite his foreign accent soon enjoyed the favour of his audience. Early in 401 John travelled from Constantinople to Ephesus to arrange a bishopric succession and left Severian in charge of his church during his absence. According to Liebeschuetz by this time John must (still) have enjoyed the favour of the imperial couple, otherwise he would not have been sent to Ephesus.25 After John’s return to the capital, however, the popularity of the Syrian bishop seems to have arisen John’s jealousy, perhaps incited by his deacon Serapion, and therefore he ordered Severian to leave Constantinople.26 But Empress Eudoxia, herself an admirer of the Syrian bishop and his patron,27 called Severian back and enforced the reconciliation between the two bishops by publicly pleading with John and putting her new-born son Theodosius II on his knees.28 This action, in which the empress symbolically put the future of the empire under John’s protection,29 proves that at this time Eudoxia was still willing to co-operate with John and to publicly demonstrate her respect for his authority as a bishop. According to Claudia Tiersch, it would have been up to John now to meet the empress’s gesture of humility with a concession and to comply with her request. Instead the bishop continued to resent Severian, which – this time in turn – must have been an affront to the empress.30 In contrast to this view Peter Van Nuffelen interprets the scene as an assault by the empress on John’s episcopal authority: ‘Not only did her action show that she, better than John, understood the Christian virtue of humility and reconciliation, but her action gave … the impression, that John was not in full control of ecclesiastical affairs in Constantinople.’31 The same might have been the case already earlier; – the 24 Socr. 6.18.3; Soz. 8.20.2. Certainly we have to consider that both church historians dedicated their works to Theodosius II, son of Eudoxia, and therefore would not have wanted to criticise the emperor’s mother. 25 J.H.W.G. Liebeschuetz, ‘The Fall of John Chrysostom’ (1985), 5. 26 Socr. 6.11.12-7; Soz. 8.10.41-5. 27 According to Gennad., De vir. illust. 21 the empress later made Severian godfather of her Son Theodosius II. 28 Socr. 6.11.20; Soz. 8.10.6. 29 Also see Laurence Brottier, ‘L’impératrice Eudoxie et ses enfants’, Revue des sciences religieuses 70 (1996), 329-30. 30 C. Tiersch, Johannes Chrysostomus (2002), 223. 31 P. Van Nuffelen, ‘Playing the Ritual Game’ (2012), 196.

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chronology of the individual events is not entirely clear, as the episode with Severian and the following one seem to have overlapped. In about 400 four Egyptian monks called the ‘Tall Brothers’ had come to Constantinople to seek the support of Bishop John and of the imperial court. Being followers of the teachings of Origen they had been driven out of Alexandria by the patriarch Theophilus. John seems to have avoided making a decision on that matter. The Life of Prophyry hints to an already ongoing quarrel between bishop and empress, however no details are given: John according to the 5th-century Vita refuses the monks’ request declaring that he was not able to support their cause in front of the emperor, because Eudoxia was angry with him. Nevertheless, he seems to acknowledge that Eudoxia would be able and willing to intercede on behalf of the monks and therefore advises them to turn to one of the empress’ eunuchs.32 Eudoxia, whom the same monks addressed personally probably during the festival of St John the Baptist on 24 June 402, promised her help to them.33 This might (again) have questioned John’s authority as the capital’s bishop.34 However the summoning of a synod was announced, at which John should preside and at which Theophilus of Alexandria was supposed to declare himself. In the meantime, though, Theophilus together with Epiphanius of Salamis had come to Constantinople. Both avoided contact with John, but sought support among the other bishops in the capital, in order to have the teachings of Origen condemned as heresy.35 According to Liebeschuetz, the outbreak of conflict between empress and bishop is mainly due to this second episode.36 Eudoxia by asking Epiphanius to pray for the health of her apparently ill son Theodosius37 seems to have questioned John’s position anew. While Eudoxia perhaps still hoped to co-operate with John with regards to this Alexandrian conflict brought to the capital, John may have misinterpreted Eudoxia’s conversation with Epiphanius as a prove that the two of them were conspiring against him.38 According to Sozomen, though, Eudoxia did not give in to Epiphanius’ request, that she should turn 32

V. Porph. 37-8. Soz. 8.13.4-5; cf. Pallad., Dial. 8 (PG 45, 26); J.H.W.G. Liebeschuetz, ‘The Fall of John Chrysostom’ (1985), 8 for the dating; W. Meyer, ‘Doing Violence’ (2006), 212 observes that Eudoxia in this episode ‘was presented without comment as having the authority to summon an ecclesiastical council, whether or not it was on the emperor’s behalf’. 34 P. Van Nuffelen, ‘Playing the Ritual Game’ (2012), 196. 35 Socr. 6.12; Soz. 8.14. 36 Wolfgang J.H.G. Liebeschütz, ‘Bischof, Kaiser und Kaiserinnen in der Arianer Krise: Ambrosius von Mailand und Johannes Chrysostomus von Konstantinopel’, in Detlev Kreikenbom, Karl U. Mahler and Patrick Schollmeyer (eds), Krise und Kult. Vorderer Orient und Nordafrika von Aurelian bis Justinian (Berlin, 2010), 41-60, 53. 37 Soz. 8.15.1. 38 Socr. 6.15.1; cf. Soz. 8.16.2; W.J.H.G. Liebeschütz, ‘Bischof, Kaiser und Kaiserinnen’ (2010), 53. 33

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away from the Tall Brothers (implying that the charges against Theophilus should have been dropped); even more she sent the same monks to Epiphanius. Contrary to John’s worry the Tall Brothers, maybe in accordance with what they had agreed with Eudoxia, managed to persuade Epiphanius to abandon Theophilus and return to Salamis.39 It was common practice that imperial women exercised patronage for individuals or groups of certain interests. Several sources suggest that, even more so, it was generally expected that the empress in particular would advocate the interests of petitioners to the emperor.40 Their special proximity to the emperor made it easy for them, to influence him directly, and the reception of requests therefore seems to have been one of the more important functions of the imperial women.41 By positively responding to them these women demonstrated caritas and civilitas. This was further method of promoting acceptance of the rule of the respective emperor and also provided a means of integrating various interest groups into the empire. It is not clear from the sources how independently imperial women were able to respond to the requests made to them. However, when Eudoxia, addressed by the Tall Brothers, immediately agrees to take care of convening a synod, there is no hint given by our sources that the emperor’s consent would have been required. This suggests that the Augusta to a certain extent my have been able to act independently in her decisions. At least the scene implies that Eudoxia could be quite optimistic that her husband Arcadius would willingly comply with her request. Similarly, as mentioned above, Eudoxia confidently assured the monks from Gaza of her help without first consulting the emperor.42 Both church historian report that shortly after the second episode discussed above John held a sermon, in which he preached in a general manner against women (κοινὸν κατὰ γυναικῶν).43 His audience understood this speech as a hidden critique of Eudoxia. John’s enemies, therefore, seized the opportunity, recorded John’s words in writing and send their notes to the empress. Eudoxia was furious. She complained to her husband Arcadius about the alleged insults of the capital’s bishop directed against her and thus she convinced the emperor that at the upcoming synod now John should be accused under the presidency of Theophilus.44 We cannot be sure if the two occurrences mentioned before had anything to do with John’s sermon against women, which, as mentioned before, comes down to us only by the short remarks of each Socrates and Sozomen. However, 39

Soz. 8.15.1-5. Greg. Nyss., in Flac. 480.18 praised Empress Flaccilla for her accessibility, while Olymp. fr. 37 accused Galla Placidia for having failed to support petitioners. 41 A. Busch, Frauen der theodosianischen Dynastie (2015), 225-6. 42 V. Porph. 41. 43 Soz. 8.16.1; cf. Socr. 6.15.1-3; Theod. Lect. 293. 44 Socr. 6.15.3-4; cf. Soz. 8.16.1; Theod. Lect. 293. 40

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both Socrates and Sozomen chronologically link the aforementioned episodes with John’s speech. By now the bishop had made himself several enemies within the capital.45 And by informing Empress Eudoxia these enemies accomplished that John was to be accused of lèse-majesty. According to an earlier source, written by one of John’s followers shortly after the bishop’s death in 407, several of his enemies had been plotting against John for quite some time already. Besides Severian of Gabala and Theophilus, these included other clergymen and some courtiers as well as three wealthy widows from the entourage of Empress Eudoxia, namely Maria, Castricia and Eugraphia.46 These claimed now, according to Palladius, that John had insulted the empress by calling her Jezebel (ὅτι εἶπεν αὐτὴν Ἰεζάβελ).47 It is known that John’s speeches were often directed against the sumptuous lifestyle of wealthy women, and it is possible that Eudoxia felt personally addressed (and attacked) by them.48 Although the text of the ‘Jezebel speech’ has not been preserved and its existence cannot even be proven, at the time of John’s death, rumors must have been circulating about the comparison between Eudoxia and the biblical queen made by the bishop: the very topos is already used in the funeral oration for John Chrysostom, according to which the devil used Eudoxia as a weapon against John, just as he had once used Jezebel against Naboth.49 Also the ‘vineyard legend’, which is transmitted in the Vita Epiphanii, uses the same topos. The legend reports that Eudoxia had illegally appropriated the vineyard of a senator’s widow, who thereupon desperately sought help from John. John’s intervention on behalf of the betrayed lady, according to the Vita, caused a quarrel between bishop and empress, in which John compares Eudoxia with Jezebel.50 Whether John had used the Jezebel-Eudoxia comparison in his speech or not, apparently the accusations of his opponents were sufficiently convincing for Eudoxia and Arcadius. Perhaps the imperial couple was already used to such invectives by the bishop. 45 W.J.H.G. Liebeschuetz, ‘The Fall of John Chrysostom’ (1985), 26 remarks that, considering the multitude of John’s enemies, Eudoxia’s involvement in the bishop’s downfall should not be overestimated; W. Meyer, ‘Doing Violence’ (2006), 210; in contrast to this C. Tiersch, Johannes Chrysostomus (2002), 208 states ‘die Quellen lassen keinen Zweifel daran, daß es vor allem Eudoxia war, die zusammen mit Theophilus … auf die Absetzung des Johannes Chrysostomus hinarbeitete.’ 46 Pallad., Dial. 4 (PG 47, 16). 47 Pallad., Dial. 5 (PG 47, 30). 48 See C. Tiersch, Johannes Chrysostomus (2002), 215-7; Zos. 5.23.2 reports that John used to mock Eudoxia in his speeches. 49 Ps.-Mart. 36 (P478a-b). For further discussion concerning dating and authenticity of this text see Florent Van Ommeslaeghe, ‘Jean Chrysostome en conflit avec l’impératrice Eudoxie. Le dossier et les origines d’une légende’, AnalBoll 98 (1997), 131-59, 149. 50 V. Epiph. 61 (PG 41, 101-2); V. Porph. 37 may allude to the same dispute, which also concerns a property obtained by Eudoxia; for further discussion on that matter see C. Tiersch, Johannes Chrysostomus (2002), 224-6.

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It was the Synod of the Oak in 403, at which John was originally supposed to take the chair for leading the accusations against Theophilus from Alexandria, at which the assembled bishops eventually disposed John of his seat. Before now leaving Constantinople John is supposed to have held a speech – the authenticity of the transmitted text, again, is controversial –, in which he maybe expressed his polemics against Eudoxia by evoking Jezebel, Herodias, and Eve. ἐριλέλειπται τῆς Ἰεζαβελ ὁ σπόρος … Φέρε δέ μοι εἰς μέσον τὸν θαυμαστὸν καὶ πλούσιον τῆς ζωῆς κήρυκα, Ἰωάννην λέγω, τὸν πένητα, καὶ ἕως λύχνου μὴ κτησάμενον· εἶχε γὰρ τὴν λαμπάδα τοῦ Χριστοῦ· οὗ τὴν κεφαλὴν ἐπεθύμησεν ἡ τῆς Εὔας συλλειτουργός. Jezebel’s offspring has survived … Bring me the marvellous and wealthy guardian of life, I say John, the poor man, who doesn’t even own a light, for he is holding the light of Christ: Eve’s companion is desiring his head.51

Nevertheless, Eudoxia still was ready to seek reconciliation with the bishop: After his leaving the city for exile, John’s followers in Constantinople were in uproar. They accused the imperial couple of having allowed John to be banned from the capital. This was an eminently political problem for Eudoxia and her husband Arcadius: It was one of the primary imperial duties to provide for and maintain the peace within the realm and even more so within the capital. Eudoxia therefore called John back from his exile. He in return again praised her as θεοφιλεστάτη Αὐγυούστη52, which was acknowledged with applause by his audience. Yet John’s position in Constantinople remained a matter of controversy: he was officially displaced of his office as a bishop.53 Soon though occurred what seems to have ultimately manifested the deterioration of the relationship between Eudoxia and John: a statue of the empress was erected in Constantinople in a public place between the imperial palace and the Great Church. As was custom the inhabitants of Constantinople celebrated when the statue was put into place. This bothered John, who claimed these celebrations were an affront against the church.54 Based on the pagan imperial cult the celebration of imperial statues became part of the imperial representation of Christian emperors and their families as well: it was a method of integrating the imperial household into the urban life and thus connecting the people to the emperor and his family. Therefore, it was a crucial part of the political communication within the Roman Empire. Once again John was reluctant to acknowledge the usual ways of communication of the imperial house 51 Joh. Chrys., ante. ir. in ex. 4 (PG 52, 431); cf., cum ir. in ex. 2 (PG 52, 437). For the possible origin of the two texts see K.G. Holum, Theodosian Empresses (1982), 75, note 107. 52 Joh. Chrys., post redit. ab ex. 4 (PG 52, 445-6); cf. Soz. 8.18.8. 53 Ps.-Mart. 84-5 (P505a-b); Pallad., Dial. 9 (PG 47, 31-2). 54 Soz. 8.20.1-2; cf. Socr. 6.18.1.

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with the cities population, which were so essential to the assertion of the empire in the urban context of the capital.55 After the relationship between the bishop and the imperial house had just started to improve again, the conflict between the two parties broke out again. And this time the situation escalated: Eudoxia was in rage and determined to ban John from the city permanently. In reaction to this John is said to have declared in one of his sermons: ‘Herodias is raging again, she’s dancing again, again she’s striving to receive John’s head on a dish’ (πάλιν Ἡρῳδιὰς μαίνεται, πάλιν ὀρχεῖται, πάλιν Ἰωάννου τὴν κεφαλὴν ἐπὶ πίνακος σπουδάζει λαβεῖν).56 Again John’s followers were in turmoil. This time however Eudoxia and Arcadius were relentless and John was banished. Eudoxia’s imminent death in 404 to John’s followers appeared as a divine punishment for the empress. However, this should be noted, Eudoxia wasn’t John’s arch-enemy from the beginning. He had other enemies, and they were many. Eudoxia came into play however, when John displayed what I believe to be a heavy misunderstanding of his position as compared to hers as an empress.57 The two older sources, written by John’s followers, report nothing about the conflict over the statue. However, they prove that John’s return to Constantinople gave his opponents another reason to complain about him to the emperor.58 Moreover, John’s deposition does not seem to have been reversed by synodal decision.59 Since John refused Emperor Arcadius’ order to leave the church, claiming this command to be a sin, Eudoxia, ‘as if she was even holding the reins of the heavenly kingdom’ (καὶ τῆς ἐκεῖσε βασιλείας οἴσουσα τὰς ἡνίας), made another attempt to convince the bishop to surrender. John in his hardly diplomatic fashion responded to this, ἀλλ’ οὐκ οἶμαί σε, ἔφη, ὦ γύναι, ἀξιόχρεών μοι ἔσεσθαι ἐγγυήτριαν ἀφέσεως ἁμαρτίας οὕτω μεγάλης. οὔτε γὰρ τὸν Ἀδὰμ ὤνησέ τι τὸ εἰπεῖν ‘ἡ Εὔα με ἠπάτησεν’, οὔτε τὴν Εὔαν αὐτὴν ἡ πρὸς τὴν τοῦ ὄφεως ἀπατὴν καταφυγή, ἀλλ’ ἕκαστος αὐτὸς ὑπὲρ τῆς ἁμαρτίας τῆς αὑτοῦ δίκην ἔδωκεν τῷ θεῷ.60 I do not think, women, that you will be a worthy guarantor for so great a sin. For it did not help Adam when he said, ‘Eve deceived me’, not did Eve’s excuse that she had been deceived by the serpent help; but each gave account to God for his own sin.

A fundamental problem expressed in this passage of the funeral oration held for John is the competition between bishop and emperor for supreme authority 55 On this subject S. Diefenbach, ‘Frömmigkeit und Kaiserakzeptanz’ (1996), esp. 63-4; and recently Mischa Meier, ‘Der Monarch auf der Suche nach seinem Platz. Kaiserherrschaft im frühen Byzanz (5.-7. Jahrhundert n.Chr.)’, in Stefan Rebenich (ed.), Monarchische Herrschaft im Altertum, Schriften des Historischen Kollegs 94 (Berlin, 2017), 513-24. 56 Soz. 8.20.3; cf. Socr. 6.18.5. 57 P. Van Nuffelen, ‘Playing the Ritual Game’ (2012), 193-4. 58 Ps.-Mart. 84-5 (P 505a-b); Pallad., Dial. 9 (PG 47, 31-2). 59 W.J.H.G. Liebeschuetz, ‘The Fall of John Chrysostom’ (1985), 18-9. 60 Ps.-Mart. 87 (P 506b-507a).

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in religious matters. According to John’s self-conception as a bishop, as expressed here, the emperor does not have the authority to give orders to a bishop in church affairs. Eudoxia, trying to convince the bishop to withdraw, in the author’s view, exceeded the powers of the imperial authority as well as of normative boundaries of her female nature.61 Nevertheless, the author of the funeral oration clearly acknowledges (not approves of) Eudoxia’s powerful position, which is in his opinion limited to the dominion of this world, while the office of the bishop is subject only to heavenly judgment. Eudoxia was a representative of the earthly dominion. She acted accordingly to what was expected of such a representative: receiving petitions, reacting to them by bringing them to the emperor, and being a contact-person for anyone in need, not least in matters of church politics and religious quarrels providing for the maintenance of peace within the empire. And apparently she tried to integrate John into her political actions. In the beginning John even accepted her role as sharing the basileia with her husband (γὰρ κοινωνεῖ τῆς βασιλείας αὐτῷ [i.e. Arcadius]),62 at least when she publicly showed herself as a humble Christian and appeared to subordinate her authority to that of the martyr relics. What John did not understand or was not willing to accept was, that Eudoxia’s claim to power extended to intervening in church affairs – maybe not least due to his attitude towards women in general.63 Necessarily, therefore, conflicts had to arise when she independently took measures by which he felt his episcopal authority being infringed. However, Eudoxia as a shareholder of the emperor’s baisileia, which was ideologically based on divine grace, felt called to follow and enforce the will of the Christian God on earth; just as it was the emperor’s duty to do so. At the beginning of the 5th century the role of the imperial women had changed. It may be that Eudoxia actually forwarded that change. Generally though, the empress’s taking political actions was publicly accepted and also expected. This is proven by the fact, that other contemporary Christian sources do not express any objections against Eudoxia’s activities, on the contrary they speak in high terms about her. Eudoxia’s daughter Pulcheria would further enlarge the empress’ scope of action to the result that on the peak of her power she even attended the ecumenical Council of Chalcedon in 451. There she was praised as a protector of orthodoxy and a victorious combatant against the various heresies of her time.64 61 Ps.-Mart. 87 (P 506b-507a): ῥίψασα ἡ γυνὴ τὴν ταῖς γυναιξὶ κόσμον φέρουσαν αἰδῶ, ὥσπερ αὐτὴ καὶ τῆς ἐκεῖσε βασιλείας οἴσουσα τὰς ἡνίας· ‘αὐτὴ ταύτην, ἔφη, τὴν ἁμαρτίαν ἐπὶ τὴν ἐμαυτῆς οἴσω κεφαλήν’. 62 Joh. Chrys., Hom 2.3 (PG 63, 472); already Gregory of Nyssa described the relationship between empress Flaccilla and emperor Theodosius as ‘sharing life and basileia’ (τοῦ βίου τε καὶ βασιλείας κοινωνία): Greg. Nyss., in Flac. 478.20. 63 C. Tiersch, Johannes Chrysostomus (2002), 215-20. 64 Also see K.G. Holum, Theodosian Empresses (1982), 215-6; A. Busch, Frauen der theodosianischen Dynastie (2015), 130-1.

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Pulcheria’s career began in 414, when she took the vow of virginity giving a public performance, which is described by her contemporary admirer Sozomen: … καὶ θεὸν αὐτὸν καὶ ἱερέας καὶ πάντα ἀρχόμενον μάρτυρας ποιουμένη τῶν αὐτῇ βεβουλευμένων, ἐκ χρυσοῦ καὶ λίθων τιμίων θαυμάσιόν τι χρῆμα θεαμάτων κάλλιστον ὑπὲρ τῆς ἰδίας παρθενίας καὶ τῆς τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ ἡγεμονίας ἱερὰν ἀνέθετο τράπεζαν ἐν τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ Κωνσταντινουπόλεως·65 … and she made God himself, as also the priests and all her subjects witnesses of her proposition, and (as a symbol) for her own virginity and her brother’s reign she put a most beautiful piece of art made of Gold and (adorned) with precious stones on the altar in the Great Church of Constantinople.

Even if the context of this scene is a totally different one, there are some similarities to John’s praise of Eudoxia described earlier, who exalted herself as a model christian by her humble appearance during the translation of relics: the Theodosian empresses’ authority resulted to a great extent from their religious self-expression. To demonstrate their devotion for the Christian faith they usually sought a public location. Sozomen here furthermore links Pulcheria’s vow with her brother’s reign. This alludes to the fact that Pulcheria’s decision ensured that her brother’s reign would not be challenged by a brother-in-law.66 It also hints to the imperial women’s role of partners in the emperor’s reign. By expressing their devoutness to the christian faith, they provided for the stability of the emperor’s reign, which was subject to divine grace.67 Sozomen attributes to Pulcheria a very personal closeness to the Christian God: As previous empresses Pulcheria too financed the construction of countless churches, monasteries and poorhouses,68 which were a visible proof that Pulcheria was eager to realise the divine will on earth. Sozomen also saw proof of Pulcheria’s closeness to the Christian God in the miraculous discovery of some martyr relics. These relics were probably translated in the presence of Pulcheria in a similarly pompous fashion as those of the unknown martyrs of ca. 400-2 with the participation of Eudoxia.69 The church historian even declares it had been, above all, Pulcheria’s (and her sisters’) piety and chastity that secured Theodosius II’s reign against conspiracy and war,70 and that thanks to Pulcheria no further heresies emerged, as she had 65

Soz. 9.1.4. Soz. 9.1.3; also Pulcheria’s two younger sisters were encouraged to swear chastiy. 67 Jill Harries, ‘Men withouth Women: Theodosius’ Consistory and the Business of Government’, in Christopher Kelly (ed.), Theodosius II: Rethinking the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity, Cambringe Classical Studies (New York, 2013), 69-70. 68 Soz. 9.1.10. 69 Soz. 9.2.17-8; K.G. Holum, Theodosian Empresses (1982), 137-8; P. Van Nuffelen, ‘Playing the Ritual Game’ (2012), 194. 70 Soz. 9.3.2-3. 66

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brought up her younger brother teaching him orthodoxy.71 This view expressed by Sozomen emphasises one important aspect of the Christian empresses’ piety. Piety of the imperial family as a whole was less a private matter – although we should assume that each individual of the Theodosians dynasty was wholeheartedly devoted to the Christian faith, but more so a political one. Therefore, piety had to be demonstrated in public: it was the most important condition for the grace of God, which guaranteed the stability of the entire empire and thus the safety of all its subjects. Previous in his writing Sozomen explains, it had been divine provision to put Pulcheria in charge of Theodosius II’s empire: ὑπεισελθοῦσα δὲ τὴν φροντίδα τῆς ἡγεμονίας ἄριστα καὶ ἐν κόσμῳ πολλῷ τὴν Ῥωμαίων οἰκουμένην διῴκησεν, εὖ βουλευομένη καὶ ἐν τάχει τὰ πρακτέα ἐπιτελοῦσα καὶ γράφουσα. … τῶν δὲ πραττομένων τὴν δόκησιν εἰς τὸν ἀδελφὸν ἀνέφερε·72 After having assumed the responsibility for the reign she governed the Roman Empire in the best possible way and with great prudence, as she reasoned well, and she accomplished everything, that had to be done, quickly and wrote it down. … But the glory for her work she conferred to her brother.

The shared basileia of emperor and empress (κοινωνία τῆς βασιλείας), as also acknowledged by John Chrysostom, was a motive stressed by several Christian authors in the Theodosian era. It seems to have been conceivable for many contemporaries, if not self-evident, that, based on this koinônia, the empress played a legitimate part in the imperial politics, even if her role was never legally defined as an official function within the empire’s hierarchy.73 Pulcheria acted in a clearly political manner in the early 430s, when she engaged in the debate on the Theotokos, launched by Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople. – Again we can observe an evolving conflict between empress and bishop, escalating as the bishop was not prepared to accept the empress’ role and self-conception, which, however, was in line with the imperial representation of the Theodosian dynasty in general, and just met the expectations of the people of Constantinople. In the case of Pulcheria, who apparently identified herself in a special manner with the virgin Mary,74 the differences started to escalate, when Nestorius had openly opposed the idea that Mary was the mother of God. For this reason, he came into conflict with other bishops throughout the empire, most prominent among them Cyril of Alexandria. Cyril wrote several 71

Soz. 9.1.8-9 hinting probably to Pulcheria’s triumph over Nestorius. Soz. 9.1.5. 73 D.N. Angelova, Sacred Founders (Oakland, 2015); 183-4; A. Busch, Frauen der theodosianischen Dynastie (2015), 227-30. 74 Kate Cooper, ‘Contesting the Nativity: Wives, Virgins, and Pulcheria’s imitatio Mariae’, Scottisch Journal of Religious Studies 19 (1998), 31-43. 72

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letters in this matter to the women around the emperor Theodosius II, Pulcheria included, hoping to win them as allies.75 Previous to that Nestorius, newly elevated bishop of Constantinople, had refused admission to Pulcheria to that particular section of the church, where the priests took seat. Pulcheria claimed that she was accustomed to pray there, a privilege conferred to her by Nestorius’ predecessors. But Nestorius drove her away.76 Pulcheria had probably already felt attacked by Nestorius in her perception of herself, as he had removed not only the empress’ portrait hanging above the altar of the Great Church, but also her cloak, which up to then had served as as the altar cloth.77 However by challenging Pulcheria’s self-conception as well as her place in the Great Church and its rituals, Nestorius had created himself a powerful enemy. Both occurrences, however, hint to the Theodosian concept of imperial rule, which emphasised the sacrality of the basileia shared by the empress. On this basis Empress Pulcheria was claiming her place in the church.78 In 431 Nestorius was condemned for heresy and displaced as bishop of Constantinople by the First Council of Ephesus. According to his own account it was Pulcheria, who had been the driving force, that lead to his disposition: ‘You have a bellicose woman against me on your side, a queen, a virgin, who leads a war against me, because I refused to give in to her request to compare a person corrupted by men with the bride of Christ’.79 The men mentioned here may have been a group of clerics and monks whom Pulcheria had gathered around herself, and who perhaps supported her imitation of Mary.80 In any case, Nestorius points to a conspiratorial opposition that made use of Pulcheria’s power to work towards his deposition. The comparison with the conflict between Eudoxia and John Chrysostom is quite obvious. Eudoxia had come into conflict with the bishop because, in his opinion, she was assuming powers that were not hers. In fact, Eudoxia acted as a representative of the emperor within the usual scope of action of imperial women, which was within the communication framework between the imperial 75 ACO 1.1.5, 26-61 no. 149 (= PG 76, 1336-420); ACO 1.1.5, 62-118 no. 150 (= PG 76, 1201-336); see also K.G. Holum, Theodosian Empresses (1982), 159-61; Susan Wessel, Cyril of Alexandria and the Nestorian Controversy: The Making of a Saint and of a Heretic (Oxford, 2004), 98-9; Fergus Millar, A Greek Roman Empire: Power and Belief under Theodosius II (408–450), Sather classical lectures 64 (Berkley, Los Angeles, 2007), 153-4. 76 Letter to Cosmas 8 (PO 63, 279). 77 Letter to Cosmas 5-7 (PO 63, 278-9). 78 M. Meier, ‘Der Monarch auf der Suche nach seinem Platz’ (2017), 521-3. 79 Nest., Lib. Heracl. 148 (trans. based on Nau 98). 80 K.G. Holum, Theodosian Empresses (1982), 139-40; Nicholas P. Constas, ‘Weaving the Body of God: Proclus of Constantinople, the Theotokos, and the Loom of the Flesh’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 3 (1995), 169-94, 188; John Anthony McGuckin, ‘Nestorius and the Political Factions of Fifth-Century Byzantium: Factors in his Personal Downfall’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library 78 (1996), 7-21, 14-6.

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house and the urban public. Apart from being visibly represented as crowned by God on coins, which hints to the sacral aspect of Eudoxia’s power, her influence derived mainly from the fact that she was the emperor’s wife and mother to his children. Nevertheless, she emphasised her piety and devotion to the Nicene faith as one pillar of her authority. Pulcheria, who was the emperor’s sister, based her ‘sacral basileia’81 entirely on her piety and her imitatio Mariae. In this way, and through her harsh treatment of heretical positions, Pulcheria acquired the reputation of being a guardian of orthodoxy,82 and became the contact person for individuals or groups of people seeking imperial support in their efforts to preserve the Nicene teaching, among them not least the Roman Bishop Leo. The role of imperial women as mediators in religious affairs was generally acknowledged and accepted by their contemporaries, as is shown not least by the petitions addressed to these women. Even Nestorius did not generally question the empress’ power in church politics: in the aftermath of the Second Council of Ephesus in 449 he lamented that Pulcheria did not use her influence on the emperor Theodosius assuming that she would have been in the position to prevent the holding of this synod, which resulted in the temporary triumph of the miaphysite school of thought.83 After Theodosius’ sudden death in 450 and the accession of Marcian, whom Pulcheria took as a husband to guarantee for the latter’s legitimate succession to her brother’s throne, Pulcheria did everything to reverse the decisions made in Ephesus. Eventually in 451 in Chalcedon the old nicene formula was renewed and re-established as orthodoxy in the presence of Pulcheria and her husband, emperor Marcian.84 On this very occasion Pulcheria was praised by the assembled bishops as the saviour of orthodoxy.85 It was shown that imperial women as representatives of the empire played an important role in the religious life of the capital. They presented themselves as devoted Christians and guardians of Orthodoxy. In this respect they also had an important function within the political communication of the imperial house. In the view of the contemporaries the right relationship of the imperial family guaranteed the protection of the empire. Sozomen’s praise of Pulcheria as well 81

J.A. McGuckin, ‘Nestorius and the Political Factions of Fifth-Century Byzantium’ (1996),

19. 82 K.G. Holum, Theodosian Empresses (1982), 170-4; A. Busch, Frauen der theodosianischen Dynastie (2015), 122-5. 83 Nest., Lib. Heracl. 470 (Nau, 300). In fact, Pulcheria’s hands were tied at the time, presumably because she had no access to the imperial palace due to internal court intrigues, see K.G. Holum, Theodosian Empresses (1982), 204-5; J. Harries, ‘Men without Women’ (2013), 69-70; A. Busch, Frauen der theodosianischen Dynastie (2015), 116-7. 84 K.G. Holum, theodosian Empresses (1982), 213-6; A. Busch, Frauen der theodosianischen Dynastie (2015), 128-33. 85 ACO 2.3.2, 175-6 no. 6.11.

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as the sermon of John praising Eudoxia’s devotion in front of the martyrs correspond to the official propaganda of the imperial household. Nestorius was irritated by Pulcheria’s presence in his church. Her elevated position there was visibly expressed by her portrait hanging above the altar and her robe, which served as an altar cloth. Moreover, Pulcheria demanded access to the area reserved for clergy in prayer, which Nestorius’ predecessors had granted her. In Nestorius’ view, Pulcheria’s claim exceeded her competence, perhaps not least because he lacked an understanding of the political significance of the intertwining of imperial power and the religiousness of the dynasty’s members in the context of the capital’s public sphere, to which Peter Van Nuffelen refers. Pulcheria’s religious self-representation and her self-identification with the Holy Virgin were part of the political communication of the Theodosian Empire. Her appearance in the church, as described by Sozomen, and her symbolic presence conveyed by her portrait and her cloak covering the altar served to integrate the empire into the religious life of the capital, in which the members of the imperial family and especially Pulcheria present themselves as guarantors of orthodoxy and, by doing so, protectors both of the empire and its inhabitants. Conversely, however, the protection of the empire was threatened by a bishop who is suspected of violating the orthodox doctrine. This was the case with Nestorius, who had unquestionably challenged the orthodox doctrine, while John’s numerous opponents stirred up doubts about the bishop’s orthodoxy, by accusing him of being attached to the doctrine of Origen. In both cases the imperial house, prominently represented by empresses Eudoxia and Pulcheria, had to react, and while it was clear which side Pulcheria, identifying herself with the Holy Virgin, would chose, it was less clear in John’s case which side Eudoxia (and her husband Arcadius) should take. It seems, however, that John’s opponents took advantage of already existing tensions between the bishop and empress, so that the empress, who had long been striving for reconciliation and cooperation with the bishop, finally turned away from him. What position Eudoxia’s husband, Emperor Arcadius, had taken for the longest time cannot be decided on the basis of the account in the sources that emphasise Empress Eudoxia as the driving force behind actions against John Chrysostom. But when the conflict finally escalated, with the city of Constantinopel in turmoil over John, who, although no longer in a favourable position, attacked Eudoxia again, Emperor Arcadius, most likely in accordance with his wife, eventually ordered John’s banishment. Both empresses, Eudoxia and Pulcheria, had taken side for parties opposing John Chrysostom and Nestorius respectively. Both bishops, John and Nestorius, had lost their position by intervention of an empress, – but in each case there were other opponents. As both bishops, John and Nestorius, had lost the grace of the respective empress, it was easy for their opponents to request the empresses’ help in their deposing. Empresses regularly functioned as intercessors between

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the empire’s subjects and the emperor. By the empresses’ intervention with the emperor petitioners often were able to enforce their own political interests. In this regard though empresses could find themselves in the firing line of those, whose interests had been offended by their taking actions. The political influence of Eudoxia and Pulcheria, being representatives of the emperor and shareholders of his basileia, in the end proved to be superior to that of the capital’s bishop. Yet, not even John Chrysostom and Nestorius fundamentally objected to the public religious engagement of imperial women, but rather encouraged it or sometimes demanded it where it coincided with their interests: this was the case, for example, in the case of the translation of relics ca. 400-402 or in the dispute over Miaphysitism 449-451. The authority and impact, that imperial women could exercise in the religious context, including church politics, was thus recognised by both bishops, as long as these women did not interfere with their immediate episcopal sphere of influence. What both bishops, John and Nestorius, seem to have misunderstood was that the interference of imperial women in church affairs in Constantinople was part of the political communication of the imperial house: the emperor and his (female) relatives as guarantors of divine protection were equally closely linked to the religious life of the capital as was its bishop. Therefore, within the religious context of Constantinople, at least, the bishops’ cooperation with the imperial house was required, whereas a bishop, who refused to cooperate was not suitable from the perspective of the imperial house. As has been shown, Eudoxia repeatedly sought a compromise with John Chrysostom: the demonstratively good connection of the imperial house with the bishop of the capital, but also the search for a favourable balance with the bishop’s opponents, as well as Pulcheria’s claim to her place in the church, were important fort the integration of the imperial house into the (orthodox) Christian city community.

‘Con toda certeza llegasteis a conocer a esta joven paloma, criada en el nido imperial’ (Pulcher., 462, 10-2): Pulqueria y su representación en el βασιλικὸς λόγος de Gregorio de Nisa* Mattia CHIRIATTI, Universidad de Alcalá, Spain

ABSTRACT The discourse In Pulcheriam by the Cappadocian father Gregory of Nyssa constitutes an interesting literary piece on the literary representation of the imperial female figure in Late Antiquity, as well as a patent adaptation of the βασιλικὸς λόγος theorized by Menander of Laodicea. The translation reveals these peculiarities and, in a particular way, the adherence of the Cappadocian Father to models and canons typical of the Second Sophistics.

Gregorio de Nisa, tras convertirse en orador de la corte1, al haber pronunciado el discurso para el patriarca de Antioquía Melecio (381) y el de la emperatriz Flaccilla (386) compuso el sermón fúnebre de la princesa Pulqueria en el cual, haciendo público un aspecto tan íntimo como el fallecimiento de un allegado, máxime en muy tierna edad, revela al mismo tiempo un sentido apego popular por el luto acaecido en la familia imperial. Este llega a manifestarse mediante una declaración de συμπάθεια – en el más clásico de los matices – por parte del autor hacia el retoño imperial, en el cual la condolencia por la defunción de un miembro de la corte pasa de una dimensión de luto íntimo a una “aflicción” común2, una συμφορά de proporciones ecuménicas. Cabe subrayar, en primer lugar, siendo este uno de los objetivos de la presente investigación, cómo Gregorio se plantea esbozar, en este λόγος, el retrato literario de la hija * El presente artículo se encuadra dentro del proyecto “Augustae. Materializando a una Augusta: Historia, Historiografía e Historiología de las emperatrices leónidas (451-518)” [Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, PGC2018-093729-B-100]” y en el marco del contrato de investigación “Juan de la Cierva [Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, FJCI-201630844]”. Las traducciones griegas y latinas presentes en el texto han sido llevadas a cabo por el autor. 1 G. May, ‘Gregor von Nyssa in der Kirchenpolitik seiner Zeit’, Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistischen Gesellschaft XV (1966), 105-32, especialmente la página 123. 2 Oratio consolatoria in Pulcheriam, ed. A. Spira, GNO IX: Gregorii Nysseni sermones, I (Leiden, New York, Köln, 1992), 461-72, 463.21.

Studia Patristica CXXX, 215-229. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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de Teodosio I, el cual, sin embargo, desde el principio, no esconde unas ciertas dificultades: “no sé de qué manera tratar este discurso. Veo de hecho un doble sujeto, luctuoso por ambas partes, de manera que la oración no estará sencillamente exenta de lágrimas, cualquiera que entre ambos sea escogido”3. La dificultad que se le plantea al rétor cristiano es esencialmente aquella de retratar, de la manera más fiel posible, a una joven que ha fallecido en tan temprana edad y, asimismo, canalizar su discurso hacia la presentación de una princesa cristiana, vehiculando de manera propagandística su discurso. Por tanto, nuestro estudio presentará, mediante la primera traducción en lengua castellana de la obra, los diferentes aspectos del discurso gregoriano respecto a la tradición retórica anterior, en modo particular de la Segunda Sofística, subrayando los puntos de readaptación de τόποι clásicos hacia el mensaje cristiano. No se ha de pasar por alto la gran deuda de Gregorio de Nisa hacia el patrimonio literario y retórico clásico: la misma estudiosa Averil Cameron, en su ensayo “Christianity and the Rhetoric of the Empire. The development of Christian Discourse” afirmaba a este propósito: “Gregory of Nyssa’s aim was to persuade, and he could achieve it disposing of the full armory of classical technique at his disposal”4. El autor cristiano readaptó pues la mayoría de los tópoi de la literatura clásica junto con los cánones estilísticos propios de los rétores tardoimperiales, insertándolos dentro los discursos fúnebres y de sus distintos géneros, cuales los epitafios, los discursos consolatorios y los panegíricos para, como ya matizó en su tiempo A. Cameron, alabar los mas altos cargos del poder político y eclesiástico y, al mismo tiempo, redefinir el credo de Nicea mediante el recurso a la retórica5. La posición privilegiada de Gregorio en la corte permitió pues que, mediante sus discursos, consiguiera presentar, en este caso, una figura imperial femenina como un arquetipo de fe ortodoxa, una soberana de un imperio cristiano, una valedora de la religión cristiana.

3 Oratio consolatoria in Pulcheriam, 461.3-9. El pasaje niseno sigue al pie de la letra a las normas retóricas clásicas, como por ejemplo aquellas dictadas por Apsines de Gadara (Ars Rhetor., ed. L. Spengel; K. Hammer, Rhetores graeci, I [Leipzig, 1853], 331-414, 328.14-8): ἐν τοῖς πάθεσι καὶ αἱ διαπορήσεις χρήσιμοι εὐθὺς ἐν ἀρχῇ· “τί πρῶτον ἢ τελευταῖον εἴπω;” ἢ οὕτως· “ἀπορῶ τί χρὴ δρᾶσαι; πότερον μεθεῖναι ἀμνημόνευντα; ἀλλ’ ἀλυσιτελὲς τοῦτό γε· ἀλλὰ διεξελθεῖν δεῖ; ἀλλ’ οὐ ῥᾴδιον ἀδακρυτὶ τοῦτο δρᾶν” […] πάθος δὲ κινέσομεν οὐ μόνον ἐφ’ οἷς προπεπόνθαμεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐφ’ οἷς δέος ἐστὶ μὴ πάθωμεν; “en los eventos dolorosos son útiles, desde el primer instante, las expresiones de perplejidad: ¿en qué orden contaré la primera o la última? Es decir, frases tipo: «no consigo entender lo que se ha de hacer». ¿Acaso se podría omitir aquello que se ha echado en olvido? Sin embargo, esto sería inútil. ¿Pues como hay que explicarlo? No resultará para nada sencillo sin derramar lágrimas”. 4 A. Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of the Empire. The development of Christian Discourse (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1991), 123. 5 Ibid. 29.

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La princesa Pulqueria nació hacia el 377/3786, de la unión de Teodosio y de su primera esposa Flaccilla, quienes se habían casado en el 3767, y murió en Constantinopla siendo todavía una niña en el 385/386, entre los siete y los nueve años8. Vino pues al mundo poco antes de que Teodosio, nombrado co-emperador por Graciano el 19 de enero 379, abandonara su país natal, Hispania, donde se había retirado cuando su padre, a principios de 376, fue ejecutado por orden de rivales influyentes9. El único dato histórico presente en el texto, el cual a su vez permite fechar el discurso, es la mención al terremoto de Nicomedia. Siguiendo la hipótesis de Daniélou, la oración debería datarse el 25 agosto del 38510, ya que la muerte de Pulqueria acaeció el día anterior al discurso, es decir, el 24 de agosto del 385. Por otra parte, teniendo en cuenta las referencias presentes en la oración 11, 6 Véase W. Ensslin, ‘Pulcheria (1)’, en A. Pauly, G. Wissowa y W. Kroll (eds), Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, XXIII 2 (Stuttgart, 1959), 1954; H. Leppin, ‘Pulcheria (1)’, en H. Cancik y H. Schneider (eds), Der neue Pauly. Enzyklopädie der Antike, X (Stuttgart, 2001), 587; A.H.M. Jones, J.R. Martindale y J. Morris, Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, I-II (Cambridge, 1971-1980), II 755; O. von Seeck, ‘Aelia Flaccilla Augusta’, en A. Pauly, G. Wissowa y W. Kroll (eds), Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, VI 2 (Stuttgart, 1909), 2431-3, 2432; Claudianus, Laus Serenae, ed. J. Koch, BSGRT (Leipzig, 1893), 240-6, 111-4; Ambrosius, De obitu Theodosii, ed. O. Faller, CSEL 73 (Wien, 1955), 369401, 40 [p. 392]; J. Bernardi, La predication des Pères Cappadociens (Paris, 1968), 318, alarga la fecha entre el 378 y el 383, un año antes del nacimiento de Arcadio y un año después del nacimiento de Honorio. 7 J. Bernardi, La predication des Pères Cappadociens (1968), 318. 8 Ibid. 318. El terminus post quem es indudablemente la muerte de Flaccilla, el 14 de septiembre del 385, según la referencia que nos da el Niseno en el texto: “aquella que nos trajo al mundo con dolor esta flor, que sufrió de nuevo los trabajos del parto por segunda vez en su alma, no en su cuerpo, cuando este botón le fue arrancado”. 9 K.G. Holum, Theodosian Empresses: Women and Imperial Dominion in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, 1982), 7. 10 Sobre el terremoto de Nicomedia del 24 agosto del 358, véase Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, ed. W. Seyfarth, BSGRT (Stuttgart, Leipzig, 1999), 17, 7, 2 [p. 114]: Primo lucis exortu, diem nonum Kal. Septembrium. J. Daniélou, ‘La chronologie des sermons de Grégoire de Nysse’, Revue des sciences religieuses 29 (1955), 346-72, basándose en la versión de Amiano, afirma: “Il [el texto] s’agit de la destruction de Nicomédie, qui a eu lieu le 24 aout 358. Notre sermon est donc du 25 aout 385”. Keil duda que el terremoto en cuestión haya acaecido en Nicomedia, sino más bien en Galípoli, ya que la mención de Gregorio de καλλίπολις no hacer referencia en este caso a la capital, sino más bien a la ciudad homónima (B. Keil, “Kyzikenisches”, Hermes 32/3 [1897], 497-508, 499). 11 Oratio consolatoria in Pulcheriam 462.10-20: “Esta grande y eminente ciudad, hermosa urbe que destaca por encima de todo lugar que se encuentra bajo el sol, también ha sufrido otro terremoto y no ha sido privada de un pequeño ornamento, sino que se ha visto despojada de manera fulminante del astro luminoso que en ella resplandecía para incremento de la fortuna imperial: por esta razón, la ciudad participa apenada de la tristeza de los emperadores. De lo que acabo de decir seguramente estáis al corriente vosotros, que llenáis esta asamblea, porque tenéis ante vuestros ojos tanto este lugar, en el cual estamos congregados, como el desaliento que se percibe en este sitio. No sé, entonces, hacia qué seísmo dirigiré el discurso, si a este acontecimiento de ahora o a aquel acaecido anteriormente. ¿O quizás sería más oportuno enfrentarse al

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esta fue pronunciada en ocasión del trigésimo día de su fallecimiento, el 25 agosto del 385, a juicio de Bernardi12. El estudioso francés duda, además, del emplazamiento del discurso fúnebre, a partir de una referencia presente en el mismo texto niseno13. Según él, el lugar al que se refiere el capadocio no es la iglesia de los Santos Apóstoles de Constantinopla, sino más bien el mausoleo que Constantino había mandado edificar para acoger la sepultura de su madre y de él mismo14. En lo que concierne los aspectos literarios del texto, el discurso para Pulqueria plantea los mismos interrogantes de otros discursos fúnebres nisenos, como el dedicado al obispo Melecio o el dedicado a la emperatriz Flaccilla, es decir, cuestiones históricas y teológicas, pero literarias en su mayoría15, centradas estas últimas en el análisis de su género literario y su específica clasificación dentro de la categoría literaria llamada discurso imperial (βασιλικὸς λόγος), teorizado detalladamente por el rétor Menandro de Laodicea en su tratado “Sobre los géneros literarios”16, así como su adaptación cristiana dentro del mismo.

sufrimiento más agudo y aliviar el dolor, propio de la ciudad, con razonamientos que puedan mitigarlo? Pues, a pesar de que en la asamblea no estén presentes todos aquellos que participan de la desventura, no obstante, por medio de los aquí presentes, el discurso podrá ser difundido también a aquellos que ahora no se encuentran aquí”. 12 J. Bernardi, La predication des Pères Cappadociens (1968), 319. 13 Oratio consolatoria in Pulcheriam, 461.15-7: “de lo que acabo de decir seguramente estáis al corriente vosotros, que llenáis esta asamblea, porque tenéis ante vuestros ojos tanto este lugar, en el cual estamos congregados, como el desaliento que se percibe en este sitio”. 14 J. Bernardi, La predication des Pères Cappadociens (1968), 319; J. Daniélou, ‘La chronologie des sermons’ (1955), 364. 15 U. Gantz, ‘Gregory of Nyssa’s Encomium of Meletius (GNO IX, 445, 14/446, 17) as an Example of Christian chresis’, en W. Blümer, R. Henke y M. Mülke (eds), Alvarium. Festschrift für Christian Gnilka (Münster, 2002), 139-50; A. Caimi Danelli, ‘Sul genere letterario delle orazioni funebri di Gregorio di Nissa’, Aevum 53 (1979), 140-61, 146-7. Por lo que concierne el aspecto literario, el primer estudio, el de Bauer, J. Bauer, Die Trostreden des Gregorios von Nyssa in ihrem Verhältnis zur antiken Rhetorik (Marburg, 1892), ha puesto en evidencia la relación intrínseca entre la oración y su tradición retórica tardoantigua, concretamente con el tratado Περὶ ἐπιδεικτικῶν de Menandro. Otro análisis, igual de meticuloso como el de Bauer, es el de Caimi Danelli (A. Caimi Danelli, ‘Sul genere letterario’ (1979), el cual, además de comparar su análisis con el del Bauer, confronta la obra del orador con la tradición retórica helenística, cotejándola con autores como Aftonio, Elio Teón, Dionisio de Halicarnaso, Elio Arístides, Libanio, llegando así a confutar por completo las tesis de Bauer. Cabe destacar también, por lo que concierne a la subdivisión de los τόποι, que en la obra de Menandro, tal como ha precisado el estudio de Ponce (M.J. Ponce, ‘Menandro Rétor y el discurso imperial’, Habis 29 [1998], 221-32), el método utilizado es el de la tétrada platónica y no el cronológico, como en otros discursos de época imperial (L. Pernot, La rhétorique de l’éloge dans le monde gréco-romain, Collection des Études Augustiniennes. Série Antiquité 137-8 [Paris, 1993], 134-78). 16 Menandro, Περὶ ἐπιδεικτικῶν, ed. L. Spengel y C. Hammer, Rhetores Graeci, III (Leipzig, 1856), 368-422. D.A. Russel y N.G. Wilson, Menander Rhetor (Oxford, 1981). R. Romero Cruz

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La crítica moderna, de hecho, concuerda en afirmar que la oración para Pulqueria constituye un claro ejemplo de παραμυθητικὸς λόγος, debido, pues, a la joven edad de la muchacha, y a la objetiva ausencia de τόποι ἐγκωμιαστικοί17, puesto que la parte encomiástica es muy reducida en favor de la παραμυθία. En consecuencia, la estructura del discurso puede resumirse, a grandes rasgos, así: προοίμιον; ἐγκώμιον; παραμυθία; ἐπίλογοι (εὐχή, μακαρισμός). Como puede deducirse de esta subdivisión, el esquema sigue el ejemplo menandreo del discurso consolatorio, con la parte inicial dedicada a la lamentación18. La división misma del encomio en tres tiempos, según los preceptos del Περὶ ἐπιδεικτικῶν acerca del discurso de consolación, es respetada por el Niseno19: el tiempo futuro, a modo de confirmación de la tesis de Caimi Danelli, se refleja en las esperanzas que proyectaba la princesa en su futuro, ilusiones truncadas por el φθόνος20. La referencia de Spira en el título del discurso, que lo define como un παραμυθητικὸς λόγος, es confirmada también por la misma estructura del discurso, la finalidad de consolar al auditorio21 y la similitud médica al principio de la oración22. El Niseno, de hecho, manifestando su intención de equilibrar la tragedia con algo más llevadero, al más puro estilo de los principios de la medicina, recurre a un expediente retórico23 comparando la muerte de la princesa con el seísmo – en una posición destacada al comienzo (ed.), Menandro. Sobre los géneros epidícticos, Acta Salmanticensia. Estudios filológicos 218 (Salamanca, 1989). 17 Dada la muy joven edad de la muchacha, el autor se ve obligado a prescindir de los ἐπιτηδεύματα y de las πράξεις, característicos de un elogio en edad adulta; el γένος, la φύσις y la παιδεία están englobados en la parte 462.10-9; la γένεσις en la 463.7-10. 18 Menandro, Περὶ ἐπιδεικτικῶν, 413.6-7: “El que pronuncia un discurso de consolación, paramicético, se lamenta por el fallecido”. 19 Ibid. 413.14-5: “Dividirás el encomio, según se ha dicho, en tres tiempos, el pasado, el presente y el futuro, a través de los cuales el autor va marcando el ritmo del encomio”. 20 Véase: A. Caimi Danelli, ‘Sul genere letterario’ (1979), 146-7. Menandro, Περὶ ἐπιδεικτικῶν, 413.15-20: “Sin embargo, el que pronuncia el discurso de consolación basará en esas su tratamiento en la primera parte del discurso, así, por ejemplo: “a pesar de su juventud – si es que es así, ha fallecido contra lo que se podía esperar de su edad, no como uno desearía – privó a su familia, padres y patria de la esperanza, ya que no era un cualquiera sino de tales y cuales virtudes”. 21 Oratio consolatoria in Pulcheriam 461.19-21: “¿O quizás sería más oportuno enfrentarse al sufrimiento más agudo y aliviar el dolor tocado a la ciudad con razonamientos que puedan mitigarlo?”. 22 Oratio consolatoria in Pulcheriam 461.24-462.7: “Entre los sabios médicos, hay quien, en efecto, a través de su ciencia, lucha contra el dolor más fuerte, posponiendo la cura de aquello que es menos doloroso. Como dicen los expertos en estos asuntos, si dos males afligen simultáneamente a un solo cuerpo, la percepción se limita al más agudo, ya que, con la prevalencia del dolor más intenso, el menor desaparece; de la misma manera lo veo en esta situación: el dolor reciente y que nos es cercano es más intenso que aquel que nos apena a través del recuerdo. ¿Cómo se podría no sufrir por los hechos acaecidos? ¿Quién posee un alma tan insensible? ¿Quién es de índole tan férrea para percatarse de este hecho sin padecimiento alguno?”. 23 Menandro, Περὶ ἐπιδεικτικῶν 413.7-8: “Magnifica la desgracia exagerando en la medida de lo posible por el discurso el sentimiento”.

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de su discurso – para poder conferir de esta manera, tanto a la oración como al mismo destinatario, una solemnidad y un tono apto a la conmemoración de sus exequias. El símil entre el terremoto y la muerte de la infanta, por consiguiente, magnifica la importancia del suceso, ya que el final prematuro no permitió a la muchacha desarrollarse plenamente y poner al servicio del Imperio sus cualidades, aunque estas, alimentadas por el modelo de la madre, ya comenzaban a perfilarse24. No solo la imagen del terremoto sirve para magnificar el tamaño de la desdicha – esta representación icástica quizás es la más gráfica, al alcance más inmediato del escritor para poder incrementar la captatio benevolentiae, la atención de su auditorio, y al mismo tiempo el πάθος –, sino que esta además reverbera también en la representación de los fieles conmocionados, los cuales abarrotan calles, callejones e incluso los techos de las casas; a pesar de la limitada importancia pública del personaje, la muerte de la muchacha parece haber sido recibida en Constantinopla con manifestaciones colectivas de duelo25: “todo lo 24 Oratio consolatoria in Pulcheriam 462.10-5. Esta es la parte dedicada a la ἀνατροφή: Pulqueria es comparada a una joven paloma, criada en el nido imperial, y a una flor, arrancada por el φθόνος. Para la interpretación de φθόνος como el maligno véase artículo U. Gantz, ‘Gregory of Nyssa’s Encomium of Meletius’ (2002), 142-4 y las numerosas definiciones en A. Spira, ‘Rhetorik und Theologie in den Grabreden Gregors von Nyssa’, SP 9 (1966), 106-14. 25 Oratio consolatoria in Pulcheriam 461.6-19; 462.24-6: “Yo he visto un espectáculo increíble, al que no podrían dar crédito quienes, a través del oído, creen en prodigios: He visto un mar de gente que, por el amontonamiento de los que se habían congregado, a simple vista parecía como si hubiera sido un océano: llena estaba la iglesia, lleno el vestíbulo de la iglesia, la plaza adyacente, los callejones, las calles, la calle principal, la plaza, las calles transversales, las azoteas de las casas; todo lo visible era una multitud humana, como si toda la ecúmene se hubiese reunido en dicho lugar para el duelo. Y como un espectáculo yacía, ante todos, aquella sagrada flor, transportada en una angarilla de oro. ¡Qué tristes eran los rostros de todos aquellos que a ella dirigían su mirada! ¡Qué húmedos sus ojos por las lágrimas! ¡Manos estrechadas unas con otras! ¡Gemidos que dejaban vislumbrar el íntimo tormento! En aquella ocasión a mí no me pareció (y puede que quizás tampoco a los demás presentes) que el oro reluciese del modo habitual, ni tampoco las iridiscencias de los mármoles ni los áureos tejidos ni los destellos de la plata, por la luz emanada del fuego, que se extendía abundante y generosa a lo largo de las calles, a un lado y al otro, debido a la procesión ininterrumpida de cirios. Todo esto estaba oscurecido por el luto y todo participaba de la tristeza común”. La descripción de las exequias de Pulqueria se asemeja mucho al de la emperatriz Flaccilla: Oratio funebris in Flaccillam imperatricem, ed. A. Spira, GNO IX: Gregorii Nysseni sermones, I (Leiden, New York, Köln, 1992), 475-90, 481.19-482.9: “Cuando, cubierta de oro y de púrpura, la soberana era llevada por la ciudad (la transportaba una angarilla), la gente de todos los niveles sociales y de todas las edades de la ciudad, toda junta se echó a la calle, volviendo agobiante el amplio espacio abierto, ya que todos, también aquellos que eran eminentes por rango, seguían a pie el cortejo fúnebre: recordad que el sol cubrió de nubes sus propios rayos, quizás para no ver a plena luz la soberana entrar en la ciudad en tal estado. No iba encima de un carruaje o sobre un carro de oro, como conviene al protocolo imperial; no iba, magnífica, escoltada por doríforos, sino encerrada en un ataúd, oculto su aspecto por aquel funesto envoltorio, ¡ay! espectáculo terrible y desgarrador, que se ofrecía para que provocara el llanto de los presentes, ya que toda la multitud que allí se había congregado, tanto los forasteros como los lugareños, acogía su entrada no con vítores, sino con expresiones de duelo. En aquel

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visible era una multitud humana, como si toda la ecúmene se hubiese reunido en dicho lugar para el duelo”26. El paroxismo vinculado a la calamidad pues llega a forzar la mano del autor a la hora de utilizar la αὔξησις: los lamentos por el fallecimiento de Pulqueria llegan incluso a ser comparados con aquellos de los salmos de David27. Esta referencia bíblica28, conectada circularmente al apartado del encarecimiento, abre pues una reflexión sobre el dolor: “Entonces, siendo que la razón ha sido derrotada a tal nivel por el dolor, sería el momento adecuado en el que el deprimido intelecto viniese a ser reconfortado, en la medida de lo posible, a través de la ayuda de los razonamientos”29. Gregorio recurre, para encontrar un argumento de respuesta eficaz a la cuestión, al Nuevo Testamento, a la Primera Carta a los Tesalonicenses30. La introducción de este versículo marca un punto de inflexión en la oratio, ya que el padre capadocio afirma delante de la asamblea que la joven, máxime por haber fallecido en tierna edad, no está afectada por el pecado31. Esta consideración se sostiene mediante el τόπος menandreo del τὸ τοῦ σώματος εἶδος32, trasladado en sentido cristiano, al unir la descripción de la belleza del cuerpo con la del alma: “te entristece que la belleza de su cuerpo (τὸ τοῦ σώματος κάλλος) ya no sea sensible (aparezca), porque de ella no ves la verdadera belleza del alma (τῆς ψυχῆς κάλλος), de la cual ahora se enorgullece en el homenaje de los cielos”33. Aparentemente, Gregorio parece

entonces, incluso el cielo se oscureció por el pesar, envolviéndose de oscuridad como en un vestido de luto, y las nubes, según podían, se unían al llanto, vertiendo por el dolor delicadas gotas en vez de lágrimas”. 26 Oratio consolatoria in Pulcheriam 463.19-21. Para la descripción de los cortejos fúnebres en el discurso de consolación, véase Menandro, Περὶ ἐπιδεικτικῶν 436.11-5: “Luego, tras los tres apartados del tiempo, describirás el funeral, la asistencia de la ciudad”. Gregorio establece en este punto un paralelismo con el epitafio de Flaccilla, subrayando la presencia de la oscuridad (πάντα τῷ πένθει συνεμελαίνετο), al igual que durante las posteriores exequias de su madre (Oratio consolatoria in Pulcheriam, 463.26-464.4). 27 Ibid. 464.4-9. 28 Las referencias bíblicas, en el discurso paramicético, pasan a sustituir las citas de autores clásicos en sus discursos. 29 Oratio consolatoria in Pulcheriam 464.10-3. 30 Ibid. 464.16-7; 1Tes. 4:13: “no tenemos que sufrir por los difuntos, ya que este dolor es propio de aquellos que no tienen esperanza”. 31 Ibid. 464.28-465.16. Gregorio investiga el problema de los ahori primero en su obra De Mortuis y sucesivamente en el tratado De infantibus praemature abreptis, ed. H. Horner, GNO III/2: Gregorii Nysseni opera dogmatica minora, II (Leiden, 1987), 67-97; véase también F.L. Mateo-Seco y G. Maspero (eds), The Brill Dictionary of Gregory of Nyssa (Leiden, 2010), 421-2. El nudo de la cuestión es el de destino, después del juicio final, del alma de quien ha fallecido prematuramente. Las soluciones planteadas por Gregorio son dos: 1) el ἄωρος desaparecería puesto que no ha merecido la vida eterna ni tampoco la condenación eterna; 2) al no haber merecido el castigo eterno, el ἄωρος, por consiguiente, recibe su contrario, la felicidad eterna. 32 Menandro, Περὶ ἐπιδεικτικῶν 436.15-21. 33 Oratio consolatoria in Pulcheriam 465.16-9.

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rehuir los preceptos menandreos34: sin embargo, los utiliza describiendo la belleza de Pulqueria35 y llega, por consiguiente, a demostrar a posteriori los efectos del ajamiento de la belleza en su cuerpo, si hubiese sobrevivido a los horrores del desgaste físico: “pero quizás te apena que ella no haya podido llegar a la vejez; pues entonces dime, ¿qué encuentras de bueno en la senectud? ¿Es quizás agradable el apagarse de los ojos, el arrugarse de las mejillas, el caer de los dientes de la boca, el tartajear con la lengua, el temblar de las manos y el encorvarse hacia el suelo, el cojear con el pie y el sostenerse en los que te acompañan de la mano, el perder la sensatez y el musitar palabras sin sentido, las típicas degeneraciones que esa edad conlleva?”36. No obstante, Gregorio se opone a esta hipótesis aduciendo como justificación el hecho de que la muchacha no llegara a disfrutar del lecho nupcial: “ella tendría que haber llegado a una edad adecuada para conocer las alegrías del tálamo. Pero a este propósito el verdadero esposo te contestará que es preferible el matrimonio celestial y digno de mayor honor que aquel tálamo, en el cual no hay temor a la viudez. Entonces dime ¿de qué bien ha sido privada por haberse despojado de esta vida carnal?”37. “Este tálamo nupcial se opone al sustrato platónico del cuerpo como prisión del alma: “es preferible, sin duda, vivir en ausencia del 34 El elogio cristiano, como había sostenido Basilio, también en In Gordium martyrem, ed. J. Garnier, PG 31 (Paris, 1857), 489-508, 492C: “La codificación de los encomios [ἐγκωμίων νόμος], prevee investigar sobre la patria, informarse sobre el parentesco, la formación; nuestro patrón [ἡμέτερος νόμος], sin embargo, haciendo caso omiso a los detalles sobre el parentesco, alaba plenamente en base a los méritos propios”) rehuía el modelo clásico por considerarlo poco verídico. Basilio contrapone a la codificación servil a los cánones retóricos, puramente ficticia, la ἀλήθεια de la panegirística cristiana basada en la μαρτυρία de los hechos reales, puesto que, según las palabras del capadocio, “es sumamente ridículo considerar celebrar las alabanzas de aquellos que no han tenido en ninguna consideración el mundo entero (In Gordium martyrem, 492D)”. La recusatio de los tópicos clásicos es acompañada paralelamente por el τόπος del contemptus mundi, el rechazo de lo profano sustituido por una nueva sensibilidad que justifica la renovación de este género literario. Los lugares comunes de la preceptística clásica, pues, no vienen eliminados, sino revisitados: el elogio de la patria, por ejemplo, se convierte en el medio mediante el cual el laudandus es alabado (I. Trabace, ‘La “retorica del silenzio” negli scritti encomiastici dei Padri Cappadoci’, en Silenzio e parola nella Patristica. XXXIX Incontro di studiosi dell’Antichità cristiana, Studia Ephemeridis Augustinianum 127 [Roma, 2012], 323-40, 325). Sobre la adopción y el consiguiente rechazo de la tópica clásica, véase también G.J.M. Bartelink, ‘Adoption et rejet des topiques profanes chez les panégyristes et biographes chrétiens de la langue grecque’, Siculorum Gymnasium 39 (1986), 25-40. 35 Oratio consolatoria in Pulcheriam 464.23-6: “sino que la primavera de la vida ha sido truncada por la muerte en la primerísima edad y la luz de sus ojos ha sido cubierta por los párpados, y el colorido de sus mejillas se ha convertido en palidez, y su boca ha sido sellada por el silencio, y la flor en sus labios se ha ennegrecido”. Véase Menandro, Περὶ ἐπιδεικτικῶν III, 436: “Entonces describirás su aspecto, cómo era: «¡Cómo ha desaparecido su belleza, el rubor de sus mejillas! Su lengua está muda, parece agostado el vello de su bozo, los rizos de su cabello que ya no llamarán la atención, las órbitas y pupilas de sus ojos adormecidos, los pliegues de sus párpados ya no son tales, sino que todo le acompaña en su caída»”. 36 Oratio consolatoria in Pulcheriam 466.1-8. 37 Ibid. 466.13-9.

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mal que según las leyes de la naturaleza humana. Así también el sabio Salomón, en sus escritos, considera al difunto más afortunado que el vivo, y el gran David afirma que la permanencia en la carne mortal es digna de compasión y lamento. Aunque ambos, en efecto, fueran insignes por su realeza y aunque dispusieran en profusión de todos los placeres de la existencia, no se inclinaron hacia el gozo presente, sino que, anhelando las inefables bondades que reserva la vida incorpórea, consideraron penosa la vida carnal. Frecuentemente en los sagrados salmos, he escuchado a David aspirando a salir de esta obligación, donde dice: «mi alma anhela y desfallece por los atrios del Señor» o «saca de prisión a mi alma». Y, análogamente, también Jeremías considera malhadado el día en que dio comienzo semejante vida”38. En el íncipit del discurso, en comienzo de la segunda parte, la del ἐγκώμιον, dividido a su vez, como marcado por Menandro, en tres tiempos: el pasado (462.10-5), el futuro (462.16-24) y el presente (462.25-464.10). He aquí donde Gregorio perfila la primera descripción de la princesa, presentada como una joven paloma, que ha abandonado su nido, y posteriormente como una flor, un topos muy querido por la tradición literaria clásica: “Con toda certeza llegasteis a conocer a esta joven paloma, criada en el nido imperial, a punto de echar a volar con su cándido plumaje y aventajando a su edad por sus donaires, ¡Cómo se ha marchado, después de haber dejado el nido imperial! ¡Cómo alzó el vuelo, fuera del alcance de nuestros ojos! ¡Cómo, de golpe, la envidia nos la arrancó de las manos, ya sea como una paloma, ya sea como una flor recién brotada! ¡No había empezado todavía a resplandecer en su propio cáliz, pero ya refulgía, y, aunque en su pequeño y limitado fulgor, brillaba sobremanera! Antes de llegar a su esplendor y de florecer plenamente, de golpe toda la flor se marchitó en su botón y se dobló sobre sí misma y se convirtió en ceniza; ¡Nadie la cogió ni la hizo parte de una guirnalda, sino que la naturaleza se esforzó en vano! Allí donde el bien se encontraba entre esperanzas, la envidia, abalanzándose a modo de espada, truncó la ilusión”. Al describir la ἀνατροφή de la princesa, Gregorio recurre al léxico de la literatura lírica, el más apto para describir una imagen infantil: después de haber utilizado la imagen de la paloma (περιστερά), símbolo de inocencia, el autor pasa a utilizar el de la flor (ἄνθος)39. De la misma manera que la poesía arcaica, el predicador lamenta el hecho de que ella no llegara a desarrollar todas 38

Ibid. 467.3-18. Ibid. 463.17: “Y como un espectáculo yacía, ante todos, aquella sagrada flor, transportada en una angarilla de oro”. El término utilizado por el padre capadocio es νεοθαλής (cultismo literario propio del dialecto dórico por νεοθηλής); propio de la lírica arcaica (Homerus, Iliad. 14, 347 [p. 57]; Hesiodus., Theog. 576 [p. 31: ἀμφὶ δέ οἱ στεφάνους, νεοθηλέος ἄνθεα ποίης]; Anacreon, Fragmenta, ed. B. Gentili (Roma, 1958), 28, 1; 51 [p. 28]; Anthologia Palatina, ed. P. Waltz et al., CUF (Paris, 1929-2011), 9, 274, 3 [p. 110]; para más ejemplos, véase L. Rocci, Vocabolario Greco-Italiano (Roma, 1993), 1274; F. Montanari, Vocabolario della lingua greca 39

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estas virtudes por haber fallecido en temprana edad. Este era uno de los preceptos menandreos (Menand., Περὶ ἐπιδεικτικῶν, 434.31-435.13: “en el caso de que el fallecido sea joven, incitarás a la lamentación basándote en la edad, en su físico – «porte hermoso», «prometía mucho» –, en sus consecuencias: «en breve estaría dispuesto el tálamo, la alcoba nupcial […]». Así pues, nada más comenzar se ha de recriminar a las divinidades y al destino inicuo, a la inexorabilidad que ha fijado una ley injusta; a continuación, seguir el hilo a partir de lo inmediato, por ejemplo: «¡Cómo nos lo arrebataron! ¡Cómo se cebaron con él!»)”. También Himerio (Orat. 8, 4 [p. 53]) recurre a este precepto menandreo, enlazándolo al filón lírico arcaico de la flor que ha despuntado, pero que no ha llegado a florecer. La descripción de la belleza del cuerpo sigue los parámetros menandreos (Περὶ ἐπιδεικτικῶν 436.15-21: el rétor griego aquí presenta el τόπος de τὸ τοῦ σώματος εἶδος, definido por el niseno τὸ τοῦ σώματος κάλλος [465.16-7], el cual se transformará, en sentido cristiano, en τὸ ἀληθινὸν τῆς ψυχῆς κάλλος [465.17-8]) según el cual había de llevarse hasta el paroxismo la imagen de la caducidad de la belleza, para poder así, mediante un mecanismo antitético, destacar las bondades de la belleza en vida y, al mismo tiempo, apesadumbrar al auditorio al demostrar lo caduca que es la belleza humana y lo terrible que es la muerte: Gregorio de hecho consigue, en un pasaje del De anima et resurrectione (De an. et resurrect. 4, 4-8), mediante un razonamiento paralelo, demostrar lo efímero de la belleza carnal al llegar la muerte e, implícitamente, llegar a negar el principio menandreo y el valor de la consolatio misma: “Por qué no debería ser considerado digno de dolor (οὐκ ἔστι λύπης ἄξιον) – me dirige así a ella – cuando nos percatamos que aquel que hasta hace poco estaba vivo y hablaba se convierte en un ser inanimado, afónico e inmóvil (ἄπνουν καὶ ἄναυδον καὶ ἀκίνητον ἀθρόως γενόμενον) y todos sus sentidos naturales (τὰ φυσικὰ αἰσθητήρια) se apagan, al no despertarse en él ni la vista ni el oído (οὐκ ὄψεως οὐκ ἀκοῆς ἐνεργούσης οὐκ ἄλλου τινός) y la percepción entre ellas es la única a tener efecto?”40. (Torino, 2013), 1583; H.G. Liddell et al., A Greek-English Lexicon with a Revised Supplement (Oxford, 1996), 1168. 40 Agustín también, comentando la cita de Pablo, expresa la misma idea al respecto (Augustinus, Serm. 173, 3 [p. 939]): necesse este ut contristemini: sed ubi contristaris, consoletur te spes. quomodo enim non contristaris, ubi corpus quod vixit ex anima, fit exanime, discedente anima? qui ambulat iacet, qui loquebatur tacet, clausi oculi lucem non capiunt, aures nulli voci patescunt: omnia membrorum officia conquieverunt […] discessit qui non videbatur, remansit quod cum dolore videatur. ista est causa tristitiae. Si haec est causa tristitiae, sit huius tristiae consolatio. quae consolatio? [...] pereat contristatio, ubi tanta esta consolatio: detergatur luctus ex animo, fides expellat dolorem. in tanta spe non decet esse triste templum Dei; “Es de necesidad que os entristezcáis, pero adonde llega la tristeza, allí entre el consuelo de la esperanza. En efecto, ¿cómo no vas a entristecerte cuando el cuerpo que vive del alma se queda exánime, abandonándolo aquélla? Yace el que andaba, calla el que hablaba, cerrados los ojos ya no perciben la luz, los oídos permanecen sordos a cualquier voz; todos los miembros descansan de sus

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En la oración, Gregorio matiza: “pero quizás te apena que ella no haya podido llegar a la vejez; pues entonces dime, ¿qué encuentras de bueno en la senectud? ¿Es quizás agradable el apagarse de los ojos, el arrugarse de las mejillas, el caer de los dientes de la boca, el tartajear con la lengua, el temblar de las manos y el encorvarse hacia el suelo, el cojear con el pie y el sostenerse en los que te acompañan de la mano, el perder la sensatez y el musitar palabras sin sentido, las típicas degeneraciones que esa edad conlleva?”41. No obstante, el padre capadocio se opone a esta hipótesis aduciendo como justificación el hecho de que la muchacha no llegara a disfrutar del lecho nupcial: “ella tendría que haber llegado a una edad adecuada para conocer las alegrías del tálamo. Pero a este propósito el verdadero esposo te contestará que es preferible el matrimonio celestial y digno de mayor honor que aquel tálamo, en el cual no hay temor a la viudez. Entonces dime ¿de qué bien ha sido privada por haberse despojado de esta vida carnal?”42. Este tálamo nupcial se opone al sustrato platónico del cuerpo como prisión del alma: “es preferible, sin duda, vivir en ausencia del mal que según las leyes de la naturaleza humana. Así también el sabio Salomón, en sus escritos, considera al difunto más afortunado que el vivo, y el gran David afirma que la permanencia en la carne mortal es digna de compasión y lamento. Aunque ambos, en efecto, fueran insignes por su realeza y aunque dispusieran en profusión de todos los placeres de la existencia, no se inclinaron hacia el gozo presente, sino que, anhelando las inefables bondades que reserva la vida incorpórea, consideraron penosa la vida carnal. Frecuentemente en los sagrados salmos, he escuchado a David aspirando a salir de esta obligación, donde dice: «mi alma anhela y desfallece por los atrios del Señor» o «saca de prisión a mi alma». Y, análogamente, también Jeremías considera malhadado el día en que dio comienzo semejante vida”43. Llegado a este punto, el niseno plantea una diatriba, comparando, mediante un pronunciado dualismo, el binomio constituido por la vida terrenal, de carácter marcadamente negativo, y la vida eterna, positiva. Gregorio invita a reflexionar al auditorio sobre dos cuestiones: “¿cómo es posible vencer las pasiones funciones, no hay quien mueva los pasos para caminar, las manos para obrar, los sentidos para percibir sensaciones. ¿No es ésta la casa que adornaba no sé qué morador invisible? Se alejó el que no se veía y quedó lo que al verlo causa dolor. Esta es la causa de la tristeza. Si ésta es la causa de la tristeza, haya un consuelo para ella. ¿Qué consuelo? El mismo Señor, a la orden y voz del arcángel y al sonido de la última trompeta, descenderá del cielo, y los muertos en Cristo resucitarán los primeros; a continuación, nosotros, los que aún vivamos, quienes permanezcamos, seremos arrebatados juntamente con ellos a las nubes para el encuentro con Cristo en el aire. ¿Acaso será esto también algo pasajero? No. ¿Cómo, entonces? Y así estaremos siempre con el Señor. Desaparezca la tristeza donde es tan grande el consuelo; séquese el llanto del alma y que la fe expulse el dolor. Con tan grande esperanza no es decoroso que esté triste el templo de Dios”. 41 Oratio consolatoria in Pulcheriam 466.1-8. 42 Ibid. 466.13-9. 43 Ibid. 467.3-18.

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sin dejar que la naturaleza humana se apiade y se vea subyugada por el dolor? ¿Cómo es posible concebir, desde una perspectiva humana, terrenal, que la muerte no llegue en la vejez, como es debido, sino en la flor de la vida?”44 La solución planteada por el obispo a la primera cuestión es sencilla: “por eso, hermanos, rechacemos el dolor por los difuntos, por el cual se apenan solo aquellos que no tienen esperanza, ya que la esperanza es Cristo”45. La segunda cuestión, por otro parte, contiene la referencia a 1Tes. 4:13, donde Gregorio presenta a sus oyentes la explicación de esta única alternativa común: la esperanza. La estructura de su respuesta es reforzada mediante el añadido de Mt. 19:14, gracias al cual consigue diluir el dolor a través de una metáfora, por así decirlo, lúdica: “dejad a los niños, y no les impidáis que se acerquen a mí, porque de ellos es el reino de los cielos”46. Lo que destaca en esta citación es la asociación que hace el autor entre dos conceptos aparentemente antitéticos, “reino” (ἡ βασίλεία) y “niños” (τὰ παιδία), asociación, sin embargo, necesaria, puesto que este binomio representa a grandes rasgos los atributos de la joven princesa. Sucesivamente, este paralelismo τὰ παιδία – ἡ βασίλεία está flanqueado por seis ulteriores: τὸ παιδίον – τὸν δεσπότην, ἔκλεισεν – διήνοιξεν, τῆς σῆς ἀπέστη τραπέζες – τῇ ἀγγελικῇ προσετέθη, τὸ φυτὸν ἀνεσπάστη – ἐνεφυτεύθη, ἐκ βασιλέιας – εἰς βασιλείαν, ἐξεδύσατο […] τῆς πόρφυρας – τῆς ἄνω βασίλείας ἐνεδύσατο47. Estos paralelismos constituyen, como es evidente, una esmerada estructura retórica, donde la sucesión sintagma nominal – verbal – nominal se repite en manera consecuente, o, por utilizar una categoría exegética gregoriana, siguen una ἀκολουθία48 interna: el de Nisa contrarresta el caos y la corruptibilidad de la naturaleza humana con su contrario, es decir, con el orden y los valores eternos. Este juego de contrastes se realza aún más mediante la equiparación púrpura imperial – vestimenta del reino de los cielos, aludiendo a uno de los conceptos clave de la ideología nicena, la mutabilidad de la naturaleza humana, representada por la túnica de piel – y las prendas humanas, metáfora de la carne, y por consiguiente, del pecado: “¿Debo, quizás, describirte de qué material está hecha la prenda divina? No está hecha de lino, de lana o hilos de seda49. Escucha a David, de qué están tejidos los trajes por Dios: «de confesión y magnificencia te has vestido, envolviéndote en luz como en un manto». ¿Te das cuenta de qué indumentaria y a 44

Ibid. 464.19-23. Ibid. 472.15-8. 46 Ibid. 465.3-4. 47 Ibid. 465.5-11. 48 Sobre el principio de la ἀκολουθία, véase F.L. Mateo-Seco (ed.), Diccionario de San Gregorio de Nisa (Burgos, 2006), 350; véase también nota infra, 356. 49 Este ejemplo deriva del comentario niseno al Eclesiastés (In Eccl. hom. 326.18-327.9): “Nuestra naturaleza corpórea, en tanto que (por el tiempo que) esté uncida a la carne (ἕως ἂν συζῇ τῇ σαρκί), la cuidará a tal punto que no la privará de lo necesario. Le ofrecerá pues un cobijo […] de la misma manera que una vestidura cubre un cuerpo desnudo. No es necesario que esta sea de púrpura, violeta, sea de oro o de seda de Seres, cuyos vestidos están tejidos con seda y oro”. 45

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qué otra condición ella ha cambiado?”50. Gregorio fundamenta sus teorías aportando exempla del Viejo Testamento, para poder así hacer reflexiones sobre el carácter efímero de la existencia humana: en el Περὶ ἐπιδεικτικῶν aparece también esta norma, según la cual la muerte constituye un factor inevitable en la vida terrenal51. El dolor por el fallecimiento de la princesa, pues, mediante estas comparaciones, se rebaja mediante el recurso a la monodia paramicética; los exempla de Abraham y de Job consiguen rebajar el πάθος trágico, aunque su repentina muerte es indicativa del sufrimiento por la partida de un ser querido, especialmente cuando ha sido arrebatado en la “flor de la vida”52. En la oración, pues, el primero de los grandes modelos a seguir, por haber soportado las aflicciones de la “existencia carnal”53, es Abraham, el cual también aparece de manera significativa en la producción anterior. Más concretamente, el capadocio describe la dura prueba que Abraham sufrió cuando mandó sacrificar a su hijo Isaac, cuya “dulce juventud se parecía a la de Pulqueria”54. El segundo modelo que Gregorio presenta a su audiencia es el de Job, del cual destaca su resistencia bajo la tribulación, especialmente por su pérdida de tres hijas y siete hijos55. Aquí Gregorio estremece la narración de la trágica desaparición añadiendo detalles macabros de la muerte, característica presente en la descripción de la muerte de la joven: “pero ¿qué les (scil. Job y sus hijos) pasó? En pleno goce de aquellas alegrías, al derrumbarse el techo, la fiesta se convirtió en la tumba de los diez hijos y el vino se mezcló con la sangre de los jóvenes y los manjares se mancharon con los restos de sus cuerpos”56. La σύγκρισις con Job, sirve para destacar su fortaleza: “¿ya veis entonces a qué nivel 50

Oratio consolatoria in Pulcheriam 465.8-19. Menandro, Περὶ ἐπιδεικτικῶν III 414.2-7: “En esas ocasiones no resulta fuera de lugar hacer especulaciones filosóficas sobre la naturaleza humana en general, a saber, que la divinidad condenó a los hombres a la muerte, y que «ella es el límite de la vida para todos los hombres», y no escaparon ni héroes, ni hijos de dioses”. 52 Referente a este tema, Gregorio escribió un breve tratado, ya mencionado, sobre los niños que han muerto prematuramente (De infantibus praemature abreptis), el cual, aunque ostente congruentes diferencias con la oración para Pulqueria, presenta también alguna afinidad, puesto que ambos tratan de niños que han fallecido antes de alcanzar la plenitud del desarrollo humano: “Nada de esto pertenece a aquellos que han nacido de forma prematura, puesto que su muerte se considera beneficiosa (De infantibus praemature, 2, 75)”. 53 Oratio consolatoria in Pulcheriam 467.21. 54 Ibid. 468-9.2. 55 Ibid. 469.24-5. 56 Ibid. 470.9-14. El exemplum de Job aparece también en varios pasajes de este corpus: el profeta es presentado como icono de valor (ἀνδρεῖα) y modelo a imitar, un “un profesor de gimnasia (παιδοτρίβης), cuyo ejemplo nos unge el alma por la paciencia y fortaleza cuando las pruebas sobrevienen (In XL martyres, ed. O. Lendle, GNO X/1: Gregorii Nysseni sermones, II (Leiden, New York, København, Köln, 1990), 137-69; 470.17-20). Sobre el personaje de Job como locus communis dentro de la obra nisena, véase comentario infra, p. 300 y el estudio de J. Leemans, ‘Job et les autres. L’usage de l’Écriture dans les panégyriques sur les martyrs de Grégoire de Nysse: Cinq exemples’, en M. Cassin y H. Grélier (eds), Grégoire de Nysse. La Bible dans la construction de son discours, Collection des Études Augustiniennes. Série Antiquité 84 (Paris, 2008), 227-44. 51

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sublime de magnanimidad llegó el atleta? Él convirtió el momento de la aflicción en reflexión filosófica sobre los seres (εἰς ἐπίσκεψιν τῆς περὶ τῶν ὄντων φιλοσοφίας μετέστησεν); sabía perfectamente que la vida en realidad se da a través de la esperanza y que la vida presente es como una semilla de la vida futura”57 . Este concepto viene reforzado por el niseno a través de una analogía con una espiga de trigo, cuyas semillas contienen la plenitud de su belleza: “la existencia terrenal es similar a la semilla, mientras que la vida que nos espera se manifiesta en la belleza de la espiga: hace falta que este ser corruptible se vista de incorruptibilidad y que este cuerpo mortal se vista de inmortalidad”58. El ejemplo del crecimiento retratado mediante la comparación con una espiga, la cual tiene su comienzo a partir de una semilla escondida en el suelo y llega a su objetivo final, su brote, es aplicado por el predicador al verdadero objetivo del hombre, su objetivo final: la restauración (ἀποκατάστασις) del estado original del hombre, la recuperación de su semejanza con Dios (ὁμοίωσις θεῷ). Así como la semilla crece y de ella brotan retoños verdes que incluyen la cáscara, el grano, el tallo y diversos segmentos de la planta, de la misma manera el fruto comestible alcanza pues su madurez a través de todas estas etapas59. Gregorio concluye pues su oratio consolatoria con algunas observaciones sobre su doctrina bien conocida como ἀποκατάστασις, denominada como “resurrección”, una “renovación (ἀναστοιχείωσις) de nuestra naturaleza original”60. En el primer paso, tenemos otra referencia al famoso término 57 Oratio consolatoria in Pulcheriam 471.7-11. La definición de Gregorio de “filosofía” como investigación de los entes es retomada en otra obra (De infantibus praemature abreptis, 71.1-5: “Como acerca de las maravillas celestiales, al mismo nivel ve de ellas la belleza fenoménica (τὰ φαινόμενα κάλλη), sea una persona instruida o sea una persona iletrada, aquel que discierne (διανοεῖται) esto de la misma manera es aquel que lo hace a partir del conocimiento (ἀπὸ φιλοσοφίας), contemplando aquello que es visible (τὸ φαινόμενον) mediante sus propias percepciones sensoriales (ταῖς αἰσθήσεσι)”. 58 Oratio consolatoria in Pulcheriam 471.13-6. 59 Ibid. 471.13-4. 60 Ibid. 472.2-15. El uso teológico de la palabra ἀποκατάστασις en el sentido de restauración de todo a su estado anterior tiene su origen en Orígenes y en la cita de Act. 3:21: ἄχρι χρόνων ἀποκαταστάσεως πάντων. La idea de apocatástasis como retorno se encuentra ya en el paganismo: en astronomía se definía así el regreso de las estrellas a su punto de partida. La doctrina de Gregorio de la apocatástasis del mundo recuerda en muchos aspectos a la idea estoica de la creación del universo después de la ἐκπύρωσις mientras la ἀποκατάστασις de los individuos singulares se basa en la doctrina platónica del retorno del alma al hiperuranio. La ἀποκατάστασις gregoriana, a diferencia de las teorizaciones anteriores, constituye un unicum dentro de la teología cristiana: el retorno se efectúa en cuerpo y alma, aunque el Niseno fuera a menudo acusado de ser platónico, por mencionar raramente la resurrección de la carne y hacer hincapié, al contrario, en la inmortalidad del alma. Esta crítica podría sustentarse con la referencia presente en el discurso de Pulqueria, en la cual el capadocio compara los males de la vida en la carne en contraste con la alegría del alma liberada de su prisión terrenal. Mientras que la belleza del cuerpo es destruida por la muerte, la inmortalidad del alma brilla en el cielo. Gregorio también hace equivaler la ἀποκατάστασις con la resurrección en su Comentario sobre el Eclesiastés (In Eccl. hom. 296. 12-8): “el alma existía durante los principios, y purificada de nuevo, se manifestará en el futuro.

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controvertido, la ἀποκατάστασις, es decir, la restauración de todas las cosas en Cristo, en la cual todo tipo de alteración o mutabilidad que pertenece al reino de lo creado logrará su cumplimiento. Dentro del contexto de tratados como el De anima y el De opificio hominis, Gregorio sostiene el abandono de la existencia terrenal y del cuerpo humano, yendo en contra, así, de la posición de Orígenes, el cual, al contrario, apoyaba su restauración. Como señala T.J. Dennis61, la obra juvenil De infantibus es más radical en su aplicación del concepto de la ἀποκατάστασις que las otras dos obras, ya que hace hincapié en la desaparición del cuerpo terrenal. Además, parece que el ataque severo de Gregorio a la corporeidad de nuestro cuerpo deja poco o ningún espacio para una imagen cristiana más equilibrada de la resurrección, es decir, de la función del cuerpo humano62. La homilía concluye con la plegaria final, volviendo a citar, por segunda vez, a 1Tes. 4:13; el autor invita a tener esperanza, ya que gracias a ella podemos conseguir evitar el sufrimiento por los difuntos, pues al final de la vida el alma vuelve a su estado originario, la reunión con Dios63. El cuerpo humano que ha sido plasmado (πλασσόμενον) por las manos de Dios, la resurrección lo ensalzará en el momento adecuado, porque lo que viene después de la resurrección es el momento para el cual este fue creado. La resurrección (ἡ ἀνάστασις) no es otra cosa que la restauración (ἀποκατάστασις) de todas las cosas a su estado original (εἰς τὸ ἀρχαῖον)”. En otro texto titulado De Mortuis, Gregorio habla de la mutabilidad de la naturaleza humana y utiliza los siguientes términos para expresarlo: ἀλλαγῆναι (Mort. 62, 14, 17, 21), ὑπαλλαγῆναι (Ibid. 65, 14), ἡ μεταποίησις (Ibid. 62, 20), συμμετατίθεσται (Ibid. 63, 1) συμμετεωροποροῦσι (Ibid. 62, 26), μεταστοιχειωθέντες (Ibid. 62, 26). Todos estos términos se unen para formar una ἀκολουθία o secuencia de ideas, que se refieren en una u otra manera a la condición inestable de nuestra naturaleza humana, que requiere la transformación divina. 61 Véase T.J. Dennis, ‘Gregory on the resurrection of the body’, en A. Spira y C. Klock (eds), The Easter Sermons of Gregory of Nyssa. Translation and Commentary (Cambridge, MA, 1981), 55-80; para una visión más amplia sobre la teoría de la resurrección nisena, véase J. Daniélou, ‘La résurrection des corps chez Grégoire de Nysse’, VC 7 (1953), 154-70, en particular modo las páginas 169-70. 62 A pesar de esta actitud generalmente negativa hacia el cuerpo, el obispo de Nisa hace reconocer su papel en el proyecto de Dios para nuestra redención (In Ecclesiasten homiliae, ed. P.J. Alexander, GNO V: Gregorii Nysseni In Inscriptiones psalmorum, In Sextum psalmum, In Ecclesiasten homiliae (Leiden, 1962) 277-442, 48.14-20): “Los sentidos entienden la belleza a su manera mientras que el alma percibe que la belleza trasciende la comprensión: el sentido solo se puede juzgar por el color, la masa y cualidades similares. Una vez que el alma ya no se identifica con las apariencias después de salir del cuerpo, se une a ese bien que está conforme a su naturaleza. Ya la visión de colores hermosos no atrae al ojo, ni elegimos cualquier otra cosa que deleita los sentidos; toda percepción corporal ha sido apagada”. 63 Oratio consolatoria in Pulcheriam 472.15-8 (véase Menandro, Περὶ ἐπιδεικτικῶν 414. 21-5): “Estoy convencido de que él, que ha mudado de vida, habitará la llanura Elisia […]. e incluso ahora quizá conviva con los dioses, se pasee por el cielo y contemple lo de aquí. Es más, tal vez desapruebe que le lamenten, pues al ser el alma del linaje divino, una vez que ha descendido de allí, se esfuerza por subir de nuevo junto a su afín”. Por lo que podemos observar, la teoría de la ἀποκατάστασις se refleja también en Menandro el cual, tal vez, se haya inspirado en Orígenes, el primer autor en canonizar este concepto, aunque esta existiera anteriormente y hubiera sido tratada exhaustivamente por Platón en sus obras cuales el Fedro y el Fedón.

‘Invitado por el emperador y la Augusta, el santo se sentó a la mesa con ellos’ (Vida de Teodoro de Sykeon, 97): Brechas en la invisibilidad y reclusión de las emperatrices bizantinas (ss. IV-VII) Silvia ACERBI, Universidad de Cantabria, Santander, España

ABSTRACT The aim of this article on ‘Invited by the Emperor and the Augusta, the saint sat at the table with them (Life of Theodore of Sykeon, 97): gaps through invisibility and seclusion of Byzantine empresses (4th-7th centuries)’ aims to qualify the commonly accepted idea that the Byzantine empresses lived isolated in the Court with little or no contact with the external world. By means of some hagiographic sources (4th to the 7th centuries), we intend to demonstrate that very often the Augustae broke their enclosure to receive visits from holy-reputed monks as to enjoy their presence and benefit from their prophetic or miraculous charisms. The texts analysed in this article are the Life of Martin of Tours by Sulpicius Severus of Western origin, the History of the Monks of Syria by Theodoret of Cyrrus, the Life of Porphyry of Gaza by the deacon Marcus, the Life of Hypatius by Callinicus, the Life of Sabas by Cyril of Scytopolis and the Life of Theodore of Sykeon written by his disciple George.

En un estudio reciente Sylvain Destephen describe a la emperatriz de los siglos IV y V como un personaje ‘omniprésent et invisible’. Y continúa: ‘Voilée et occultée, protégée et surveillée, la femme de l’empereur doit partout et toujours montrer sa pudeur et sa discrétion, au point d’être recluse dans ses appartements et de se rendre inaccessible aux solliciteurs et même à leurs courriers’1. Esta imagen me parece válida en líneas generales, pues si el contemporáneo Sinesio de Cirene define al emperador Arcadio (395-408) como una figura ‘recluida, sacralizada y arcaica’, mucho más lo era la Augusta por el pudor que las costumbres de la época exigían a la mujer, máxime si pertenecía

* El presente artículo se enmarca en el Proyecto 2018-099798-B-I00 titulado Heterotopías de la autoridad y de la sacralidad en el Mediterráneo cristiano tardoantiguo (siglos IV-VI): léxico, rituales, symbola y synthemata del poder político y religioso (MCIU/AEI/FEDER, UE). 1 Silvaine Destephen, ‘En représentation et par délégation: la souveraine chrétienne sur les routes du Bas-Empire’, en François Chausson y Sylvain Destephen (ed.), Augusta, Regina, Basilissa. La souveraine de l’Empire romain au Moyen Âge: entre héritages et métamorphoses (Paris, 2018), 39.

Studia Patristica CXXX, 231-249. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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a la familia imperial. En efecto, para subrayar la excepcionalidad de las salidas públicas de las emperatrices con ocasión de importantes procesiones religiosas, Juan Crisóstomo describe a Eudoxia en estos términos: ‘Ella, a la que ni siquiera los eunucos de Palacio podían ver, fue vista por la entera ciudad resplandeciente como la luna entre las estrellas’2. Con todo, me propongo analizar algunas circunstancias en la vida de las basilissas tardoantiguas que proporcionan matices y hasta excepciones a esta invisibilidad, reclusión e inaccesibilidad que, según el historiador francés, caracterizaban su existencia en la Corte imperial. En un reciente y bien documentado estudio, Ignazio Tantillo se lamentaba del mal conocimiento que aún tenemos del ceremonial predominante en el Palacio imperial durante la Antigüedad Tardía3. Si esto es aplicable a la figura del emperador que es la que atrae la atención del historiador italiano, con mucho más motivo se puede atribuir a su consorte. Me propongo por ello contribuir a esclarecer algunos aspectos relativos a la vida de la emperatriz en la Corte recurriendo a fuentes hagiográficas escasa o nulamente utilizadas hasta ahora. A finales del siglo IV la figura del monje santo, asceta y taumaturgo, alcanzó una enorme popularidad de un extremo al otro del Mediterráneo. Gentes de toda condición social acudían en su busca: el objetivo era recibir su bendición, tener contacto físico con su cuerpo o entrar en posesión de alguna de sus reliquias (eulogíai en griego, benedictiones en latín), bien en vida bien después de su muerte4. 2

Juan Crisóstomo, Hom. 2., PG 43, 469. Ignazio Tantillo, ‘I cerimoniali di corte in età tardoromana (284-395)’, en Le Corti nell’Alto Medioevo (Spoleto, 2015), 543-85. Véanse también Ramón Teja, ‘Il cerimoniale imperiale’, en Storia di Roma, III, 1. L’età tardoantica. Crisi e trasformazioni (Torino, 1993), 613-42, y Michael McCormick, ‘Emperor and Court’, en The Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. 14 (Cambridge, 2000), 135-63. 4 Entre las fuentes numerosas de las que disponemos me limitaré a mencionar dos pasajes, ambos escritos por Teodoreto de Ciro en sus Vidas de los monjes de Siria, pasajes que ilustran con extrema eficacia un fenómeno que ha sido objeto de sumo interés por parte de la literatura científica. El primero pertenece a la Vida de Jacobo: cuenta su autor que cuando se difundió la noticia de que éste estaba a punto de morir ‘acudió gente de todas partes para hacerse con su cuerpo. Llegaron también los habitantes de la ciudad, civiles y militares, unos con sus armas, otros con lo que podían encontrar y que hiciera las veces de armas. Se pusieron en orden de batalla y lanzaban dardos y piedras, no para hacer daño, sino sólo para causar miedo. Una vez que rechazaron a sus vecinos, colocaron sobre una litera al luchador victorioso, sin que él fuese consciente, pues ni siquiera recuperó el sentido cuando los campesinos comenzaron a arrancarle los cabellos e iniciaron la marcha hacia la ciudad’, Teodoreto de Ciro, 21, 10: Paul Canivet y André LeroyMolinghen (ed.), Théodoret de Cyr, Histoire des moines de Syrie, Sources Chrétiennes 234 y 237 (Paris, 1977); cito en base a la traducción al español de Ramón Teja, Teodoreto de Ciro, Historias de los monjes de Siria. Introducción, traducción y notas (Madrid, 2008). En las mismas Historias, 26, 11, Teodoreto recuerda en estos términos la enorme popularidad gozada ya en vida por el primer estilita conocido, Simeón, mientras permanecía en lo alto de su columna: ‘Su fama se difundía por todas partes y acudían a él en gran número no solo las personas de los lugares próximos sino también otras que estaban a varios días de camino… Como eran muchos los que iban 3

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Las personalidades políticas y eclesiásticas más relevantes intentaban con frecuencia que, en vez de acudir ellas a visitar a los santos monjes, fuesen estos quienes se desplazasen para consentirles el beneficio de sus carismas sobrenaturales. Es lógico que al ardiente deseo de entrar en contacto con su persona no fuesen ajenos los propios emperadores y los miembros de su oikía. Las narraciones hagiográficas confirman a través de numerosos y variados testimonios que, a partir de finales del siglo IV, no hubo casi ningún miembro femenino de la familia imperial – esposas, madres, hijas o hermanas – que no intentase encontrarse con los santos monjes. En el caso de las consortes, cuya misión principal era la de proporcionar descendencia a la dinastía, no era infrecuente que se evadieran del espacio de su reclusión en búsqueda de ayudas que pudieran favorecer su fertilidad. La información es en cualquier caso más abundante para los emperadores quizá por el recelo que se manifiesta en esta literatura a la hora de mencionar cualquier forma de contacto entre monjes y mujeres y, de hecho, con frecuencia los autores de las narraciones hagiográficas se ven en la necesidad de buscar justificantes a estos encuentros para acallar posibles críticas que comprometieran la fama de santidad de los theioi andres. I. Un precedente en la Corte de Occidente: San Martín de Tours y la esposa del emperador Máximo El primer caso conocido de un encuentro entre una emperatriz y un monje tiene como escenario Tréveris, capital occidental del Imperio, con Martín de Tours, el emperador Máximo y su esposa como protagonistas. Sulpicio Severo habla en dos loci diferentes de la estancia de Martín en la corte imperial: en la Vita Martini 20, 1-4 y en Dialogi 2, 4 ss. No está claro si ambos textos obedecen a una única estancia, como sostiene J. Fontaine en su edición de la obra, o a dos diferentes, opinión de T.D. Barnes5. En cualquier caso, sólo en los Dialogi se menciona a la esposa del emperador, por lo que es a esta obra a la que nos atenemos. La narración de Sulpicio es la única fuente de las que vamos a comentar en que el hagiógrafo se detiene a justificar el motivo por el que una figura como Martín, monje y obispo, accediese a sentarse a la mesa con un emperador. de todas partes, era un océano de gente lo que se podía ver reunido en este lugar, un océano donde desembocan los ríos que fluyen de todas partes’. La bibliografía sobre el theios aner es inabarcable, por lo que me limito a recordar el clásico Peter Brown, ‘The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity’, The Journal of Roman Studies 61 (1971), 80-101. Sobre la enorme difusión del culto a las reliquias, remito a la valiosa monografía de Luigi Canetti, Frammenti di eternità. Corpi e reliquie fra Antichità e Medioevo (Roma, 2002). 5 Interesante la discusión del tema en Timothy D. Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography and Roman History (Tübingen, 2010), 231-3. Para la edición de los Dialogi de Jaques Fontaine véase la n. 10.

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La explicación hay que buscarla en el hecho de que en la segunda mitad del siglo IV se generalizó entre los obispos la costumbre de frecuentar los palacios imperiales, práctica que se intentó controlar mediante disposiciones conciliares6 y que mereció severas críticas por parte de las personalidades cristianas más intransigentes. Se trata de los escrúpulos expresados en esa misma época y en un tono muy retórico por un obispo con una forma mentis exquisitamente monástica, Gregorio de Nacianzo, cuando recuerda el momento en que tuvo que presentarse ante Teodosio I para comunicarle su renuncia a la catedra episcopal de Constantinopla en el 381: Pero, ¿cómo me comporto con el emperador? ¿Me postro? ¿Hago la proskynesis? ¿Le tomo la mano? ¿Pronuncio palabras de súplica? … Yo me acerqué al manto de púrpura y, en presencia de muchos espectadores, dije: “No te pido oro ni mesas espléndidas ni preciosos comedores, ni cualquier dignidad para mis parientes, o un puesto en la Corte, ¡oh emperador! Que estas peticiones sean para otros que se ocupan de pequeñas cosas”7.

Sulpicio Severo, muy crítico con el episcopado contemporáneo al que califica en sus relaciones con los emperadores como regia clientela y del que censura, sirviéndose de una expresión de Tácito, la foeda adulatio, se ve en la necesidad de justificar que también Martín accediese a sentarse en la mesa con Máximo, aunque aclara que no lo hizo como los demás comensales en el triclinio, sino ‘acomodado en una simple silla (sedula) junto al emperador’8. Con todo, en la Vita, como ya he señalado, no se menciona la presencia en estos banquetes de la emperatriz, sí en la otra obra del escritor galo, los Dialogi9. Sulpicio recurre al argumento de que ‘Máximo honraba a Martín con toda la consideración, lo llamaba a menudo y lo acogía en Palacio; toda la conversación con él versaba sobre la eternidad de los santos’; y respecto a la Augusta arguye que ‘el santo admiraba la piedad de la emperatriz’ y ella ‘día y noche estaba pendiente de los labios de Martín’. Respecto al escándalo que podía provocar el trato de un monje con una mujer, Sulpicio se adelanta a declarar que ‘a Martín nunca le había tocado ninguna mujer’; para justificarlo se basa en el encuentro de Jesús con Marta y María, aunque el texto que cita parece aludir más bien a María Magdalena, con quien compara a la emperatriz10. 6 Es el caso del concilio de Sárdica, reunido en el 343 bajo la presidencia de Osio de Córdoba, que en su can. 5 establece que ningún obispo acceda a la corte (ad comitatum accedat), si no ha sido convocado por el emperador. 7 Gregorio de Nacianzo, Carmen II, 1, 11, 1871-80. 8 Sulpicio Severo, Vida de Martín 20, 1-4. 9 En el análisis de la estancia de Martín en la corte de Tréveris me sirvo del estudio de Ramón Teja, ‘Quid episcopis cum palatio? Cuando los obispos se sentaron en la mesa con Constantino’, en Giorgio Bonamente, Noel Lenski y Rita Lizzi Testa (ed.), Costantino prima e dopo Costantino (Bari, 2012), especialmente 217-22. 10 ‘No inferior al ejemplo evangélico, regaba los pies del santo con su llanto, los secaba con sus cabellos. Martín, a quien nunca había tocado una mujer, no podía escapar a esta relación, por

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El paralelismo evangélico cuadra muy bien con la descripción que hace Sulpicio del convite privado ofrecido al santo hombre. Fue el deseo del hagiógrafo de explicar la presencia de Martín en el Palacio imperial y salvaguardarlo de las críticas que sin duda se produjeron, lo que lo llevó a ofrecernos una detallada narración de su tête à tête con la basilissa. Lo más novedoso del convite es que en él se invirtieron los papeles: la emperatriz es la que cumple el oficio de sirvienta, imitando el ejemplo de Marta, y el monje-obispo el de huésped regio, prisionero en cierta manera de la piedad y admiración que la emperatriz sentía por el: Finalmente pide a su esposo que le permita ofrecerle a solas un banquete (convivium) alejando a todos los sirvientes. Y no pudo el hombre santo oponerse a pesar de su rechazo. Prepara con sus propias manos una frugal comida (castus apparatus); ella misma dispone la silla (sellulam), aproxima la mesa, le vierte el agua con sus propias manos, le sirve la comida que ella misma había cocinado. Y, mientras él come, ella permanece inmóvil, en pie, clavada al suelo, según es la costumbre de los sirvientes, mostrando en todo la disciplina de los esclavos y la actitud modesta del sirviente. Ella misma hace la mezcla del vino que va a beber y se lo sirve. Una vez terminada esta frugal cena recoge los trozos y las migas de pan anteponiendo con toda su fe aquellos restos a los banquetes imperiales11.

Con todo, el interlocutor literario en la obra, Postumiano, insiste en el posible escándalo que el episodio podría provocar entre sus contemporáneos y en la falsedad de la creencia de que nunca ninguna mujer había estado cerca de Martín. Por ello reitera Sulpicio que se trató de una cena atípica sin divanes, a la que el monje-obispo accedió en cuanto se vio acosado por los ruegos del emperador y obligado por la fe de la emperatriz y, consciente de que aun así ‘algunos harán mal uso de este ejemplo’, se esfuerza en alejar toda sospecha resaltando que Martín era ya un septuagenario y la emperatriz una mujer casada que había accedido por los ruegos de su propio esposo12.

mejor decir, a esta servidumbre hacia él. Ella no pensaba en las riquezas del reino, ni en la dignidad del poder, ni en la corona, ni en la púrpura; tirada al suelo, no podía ser arrancada de los pies de Martín’, Diálogos 2, 6, 3-4: me atengo a la edición crítica de Jaques Fontaine, Sulpice Sèvere, Gallus: Dialogues sur les “vertus” de saint Martin. Introduction, texte critique, traduction et notes, Sources Chrétiennes 510 (Paris, 2006); me sirvo de la traducción al español de Carmen Codoñer, Sulpicio Severo, Obras Completas, Estudio preliminar, traducción y notas (Madrid, 1987). 11 Sulpicio Severo, Diálogos, II, 6, 4-6. 12 ‘Vean que a Martín, una sola vez en su vida, ya septuagenario, le sirvió y asistió, mientras comía, sin sentarse en el diván con el invitado, no una viuda libre, no una virgen frívola (virgo lasciviens), sino una emperatriz que estaba bajo la potestad del marido e, incluso, a ruegos de éste; y no se atrevió a participar en el banquete sino que se limitó a prestarle servicio. Aprende, pues, esta lección: que una matrona te sirva, no que te ordene y, cuando te sirva, no se recueste a tu lado en el diván (recumbat), al igual que aquella Marta sirvió al Señor sin ser admitida al banquete’, Sulpicio Severo, Diálogos, 2, 6, 7.

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II. Juan Crisóstomo, Porfirio de Gaza y la emperatriz Eudoxia En Oriente las noticias sobre el protagonismo de las emperatrices en la Corte se multiplican bajo el reinado de Eudoxia, esposa del emperador Arcadio, que recibió de manera oficial el título de Augusta en el 400 (†404)13. Es bien conocida su responsabilidad en la deposición y exilio de Juan Crisóstomo, aunque la principal fuente de que disponemos, el Diálogo sobre la vida de Juan Crisóstomo de Paladio de Helenópolis, es un buen ejemplo de la reticencia y discreción demostradas a veces por los escritores cristianos en mencionar a las mujeres, y máxime si se trataba de emperatrices. En la obra Arcadio es mencionado, bien por su nombre, bien como basileus, cuarenta y tres veces, mientras que la basilissa sólo aparece seis veces, aunque, sin duda, fue a ella a quien correspondió el papel principal; como aducían los acusadores de Juan, ‘el crimen de lesa majestad que se le atribuía sería el insulto a la emperatriz ya que Juan, de creer lo que ellos decían, la habría denominado Jezabel’14. Es significativo que en todos los casos en que se alude a los acusadores de Juan en la Corte, siempre se dice que la audiencia se realizaba con Arcadio, obliterando la presencia de Eudoxia. La única excepción aparece en el pasaje en que uno de los obispos defensores del Crisóstomo lanza con evidente parrhesia esta amenaza contra la Augusta: ‘Eudoxia, ten temor de Dios; ten piedad de tus hijos, no profanes la fiesta de Cristo con la efusión de sangre’15. Es interesante el dato de que la amonestación tenga lugar no en la Corte sino durante una visita de la pareja imperial al Santuario de los Mártires16. De una manera similar, en la otra fuente significativa sobre el affaire – la Oratio Funebris atribuida a Martirio de Antioquía – el nombre de la emperatriz no es mencionado nunca, aunque se 13 Sobre emperatrices de época teodosiana, además del imprescindible Kenneth Holum, Theodosian Empresses. Women and Imperial Dominion in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, Los Angeles, 1982), citamos a Manfred Clauss, ‘Die Frauen der theodosianischen Familie’, en Hildegard Temporini (ed.), Die Kaiserinnen Roms von Livia bis Theodora (München, 2002), 370-436; Ramón Teja, ‘Figure di imperatrici fra Oriente e Occidente’, en Antonio Carile (ed.), Ravenna da capitale imperiale a capitale esarcale (Spoleto, 2005), I 87-99; Françoise Thélamon, ‘Un modèle féminin chez les historiens de l’Église du IVe et du Ve siècle: la souveraine chrétienne’, en Pascal-Grégoire Delage (ed.), Les Pères de l’Église et les femmes (La Rochelle, 2003), 313-25; Antonio Carile, ‘Donne, sessualità e potere a Bisanzio’, en Comportamenti e immaginario della sessualità nell’Alto Medioevo (Spoleto, 2006), 481-530; Anja Busch, Die Frauen der theodosianischen Dynastie. Macht und Repräsentation kaiserlicher Frauen im 5. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 2015). 14 Paladio, Diálogo, VIII, 246. Aunque esta supuesta acusación se ha convertido en un lugar común de la historiografía, el estudioso holandés Florent van Ommeslaeghe, ‘Jean Crysostome et l’impératrice Eudoxie’, Analecta Bollandiana 972 (1981), 131-59, se ha esforzado en demostrar su falsedad con buenos argumentos. 15 Paladio, Diálogo, IX, 155-7. 16 Diálogo, IX, 149-50. Debía de tratarse de la iglesia que había hecho construir Teodosio I en el 391 para acoger la reliquia de la cabeza de Juan Bautista que aparece mencionado con motivo de otra visita de ambos al que denominan martyrion de san Juan, donde, quienes les interpelan son, en este caso, los acusadores del obispo: ibid. VIII, 14-6.

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aluda a ella en términos despreciativos: “mujerzuela” (gynaios)17 o, en otra ocasión, ‘mujer (gyne) que no tiene el pudor que proporciona decoro a las mujeres’18, expresión puesta en boca de Juan con una referencia implícita a Eva: “No pienso, mujer, que tú serás para mí una garantía suficiente para la remisión de un pecado tan grande”. La emperatriz no pasó por alto la alusión y respondió, tras alejarse de él con gritos y rabia, que “la había equiparado a Eva por lo que no se necesitan más testimonios”19. Pero es en la narración de la muerte de Eudoxia a consecuencia de un dolorosísimo aborto, interpretado como un castigo divino, donde el Pseudo Martirio se desahoga en su áspera diatriba contra la emperatriz, aunque sin mencionarla nunca por su nombre20. Los historiadores eclesiásticos también son prudentes en sus alusiones, especialmente Teodoreto de Ciro por la gran amistad y estima que demostró hacia su coterráneo Acacio de Berea, uno de los principales responsables de la condena del Crisóstomo. Después de alabarlo, dedica pocas líneas al caso del obispo de Constantinopla del que se limita a decir que “con su parrhesia criticaba las culpas de algunos y aconsejaba al emperador y a la emperatriz”21. Si Eudoxia aparece en la narración de Paladio siempre en la penumbra y en el Pseudo Martirio ni siquiera se la menciona por su nombre, no sucede así en la Vida del monje-obispo de Gaza, Porfirio (ca. 347-420). Su autor, Marco el Diácono, narra con gran detenimiento el viaje que el monje, acompañado del obispo Juan de Jerusalén, realizó a la Corte de Constantinopla para solicitar la ayuda imperial para la destrucción del templo de Gaza dedicado al Zeus local, adorado bajo el nombre del dios Marnas. Marcos se complace en narrar las maniobras de ambos en la Corte sirviéndose de la mediación del eunuco de la emperatriz, de la piedad de esta y de su obsesión por tener un hijo varón después de haber engendrado tres hijas. La profecía hecha por otro monje con el que Porfirio se había encontrado en su escala en la isla de Rodas – la Augusta, ya embarazada del futuro Teodosio II, daría a luz al tan anhelado hijo varón solo si apoyaba las demandas de la comitiva – sirve al hagiógrafo para ofrecer una magistral narración de las intrigas y enredos que caracterizaron la corte de Constantinopla durante el reinado de Arcadio, y en especial del papel desempeñado por un destacado miembro femenino de la dinastía teodosiana22. 17 Sigo la edición crítica de Martin Wallraff y Cristina Ricci, Oratio funebris in laudem sancti Iohannis Crysostomi (Epitafio attribuito a Martirio di Antiochia) (Spoleto, 2007), 66, 8 y 67, 3. 18 Ibid. 87, 7. 19 Ibid. 87, 10-20. 20 Ibid. 121, l 21 Teodoreto, Historia Eclesiástica, V, 28, 1. 22 Me sirvo de la traducción al español de Ramón Teja, Vida de Porfirio de Gaza. Marco el Diácono. Introducción, traducción y notas (Madrid, 2008). Es sabido que la historicidad de la obra ha planteado dudas ya desde la época de Baronio en el siglo XVI, pero hoy parece aceptada, con matices, por la mayoría de los estudiosos siguiendo a los autores de la primera edición crítica: Henri Grégoire y M.A. Kugener, Marc le diacre, Vie de Porphyre évêque de Gaza (Paris, 1930). Recientemente Timothy D. Barnes ha defendido que toda la obra es un falso producido en época

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El texto nos da a conocer, en primer lugar, las tareas desplegadas por los eunucos en la Corte. Junto al senado, el consistorio y la guardia palatina, ocupaban un lugar relevante los officia encabezados por el eunuco mayor denominado praepositus sacri cubiculi. El sacrum cubiculum estaba desdoblado por lo que la Augusta tenía su propia ‘casa’ presidida por el que la narración denomina con propiedad castrensis y cubicularius de la basilissa, su hombre de máxima confianza que, por su condición de eunuco, era la única persona que podía acceder a sus estancias más privadas e íntimas; en este caso, se nos dice que era el eunuco Amantios quien estaba al frente del cubiculum de Eudoxia23. También Zósimo condena la devoción de Eudoxia hacia ‘los eunucos insaciables y ubicuos y a sus ayudantes femeninas’24. Eran ellos quienes servían la mesa y preparaban los vestuarios del emperador y de la emperatriz, y solían dormir entre su cama y la puerta de la estancia. El importante papel desempeñado por de Justiniano, teoría que ha intentado refutar Ramón Teja, ‘La Vida de Porfirio de Gaza de Marco el Diácono: ¿Hagiografía histórica o invención hagiográfica?’, en Philippe Blaudeau y Peter Van Nuffelen (ed.), L’historiographie tardo-antique et la transmission des savoirs (Berlin, Boston, 2015), 145-52; Giulia Sfameni Gasparro, ‘Porfirio di Gaza, un “uomo santo” fra pagani, eretici e maghi: modelli retorici di propaganda religiosa’, en Mariangela Monaca (ed.), Problemi di storia religiosa nel mondo tardoantico (Cosenza, 2009), ha dedicado a la obra hagiográfica un largo y documentado estudio donde a expresa la idea de que la gran y detallada cantidad de información es ‘un segno evidente della sua storicità’, 217. 23 John R. Martindale, PLRE II, s.v. Amantius 1, 66. A estos eunucos, pero en referencia a los del emperador, alude Sinesio de Cirene cuando crítica a ‘esos con los que convivís en vuestras estancias y en otros lugares y para quienes la entrada al palacio está más expedita que para los capitanes y los generales… De los más sensatos de vuestro pueblo sospecháis y os revestís de majestuosidad ante ellos, mientras a los necios los admitís a vuestra presencia y ante ellos os desnudáis’, Sinesio, Al emperador. Sobre la realeza, 14. Hago mías las ideas expresadas sobre este tema por Ramón Teja en Emperadores, obispos, monjes y mujeres. Protagonistas del cristianismo antiguo (Madrid, 1999), 61-8. Se vean también Mathew Kuefler, The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian Ideology in Late Antiquity (Chicago, 2001); Kathryn M. Ringrose, The Perfect Servant: Eunuchs and the Social Construction of Gender in Byzantium (Chicago, 2003); Georges J. Sidéris, ‘Eunuchs of Light. Positive Representations of eunuchs in Byzantium (IVth-XIIth centuries)’, en Shaun Tougher (ed.), Eunuchs in Antiquity and Beyond (London, 2003), 16175; id., ‘Eunuques, chambre impériale et palais à Byzance (IVe-VIe siècles)’, en Marie France Auzépy y Jöel Cornette (ed.), Palais et Pouvoir. De Constantinople à Versailles (Saint-Denis, 2003), 163-81; Maria Dora Spadaro, ‘Gli Eunuchi nell’impero bizantino’, en Comportamenti e immaginario della sessualità nell’impero bizantino (Spoleto, 2006), 535-65. 24 Zósimo, Historias V, 24. Se trata de un ambiente que he descrito en otra ocasión: ‘Encerrado en su dignidad inaccesible y recluido en una dimensión exclusiva, separada, celosamente custodiada por los eunucos, (“prisionero asediado por sí mismo” en la crítica de Sinesio de Cirene) todo lo que estaba en contacto con él – centro simbólico la “proxémica del poder”, según la afortunada expresión de Antonio Carile – era divino y sagrado, y los que le rodeaban o se le acercaban debían mostrar la misma compostura que ante la divinidad: la proskynesis-adoratio (genuflexión o inclinación de la cabeza hasta el suelo) era gesto obligado; nadie podía tocarlo, delante de él nadie podía sentarse y en su presencia había que observar un mutismo absoluto, ya que el menor murmullo podía ser considerado sacrílego’, Silvia Acerbi, ‘La figura del silentiarius en la corte bizantina’, ’Ilu. Revista de Ciencias de las Religiones 19 (2007), 209-21; Antonio Carile, ‘La prossemica del potere: spazi e distanze nei cerimoniali di corte’, en Uomo e spazio nell’Alto Medioevo (Spoleto, 2003), 589-656.

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el castrensis de Eudoxia explica en gran medida el éxito de la misión de Porfirio y Juan de Jerusalén en la Corte. Tanto el monje Procopio con el que se encontraron en Rodas como Juan Crisóstomo les recomendaron que, llegados a Constantinopla, para ser recibidos y hacer brecha en la inaccesible esposa imperial, se entrevistasen previamente con Amantios. Esta fue su respuesta tras la cita propiciada por el Crisóstomo, que no podía intervenir personalmente por su enfrentamiento con Eudoxia: ‘No os desaniméis, padres… Vosotros orad y yo hablaré a la Augusta… Yo os introduciré mañana ante ella y exponedle de propia boca lo que deseáis, pero la encontrareis previamente informada por mi’25. En efecto, al día siguiente fueron conducidos ante Eudoxia, que los recibió sentada en su trono dorado, en una primera audiencia narrada en estos términos por Marco: Ella, al verlos, los saludó y después les dijo: “Dadme vuestra bendición, padres”, y ellos se prosternaron (literalmente hicieron la proskinesis) ante ella. Se sentó en su trono dorado y les dijo: “Perdonadme, sacerdotes de Cristo, por las necesidades que me impone el embarazo. Pues yo debería haber salido al vestíbulo para recibir a vuestra Santidad. Pero orad por mí para que deponga con facilidad lo que llevo en el vientre”26.

Una vez que los hombres expusieron los motivos de la visita, ella manifestó que ya conocía el tema por haber sido informada previamente por Amantios, y los animó a no desesperar, pues ella se encargaría de convencer al emperador a que accediese a sus demandas. Antes de despedirles, ordenó que se entregase a cada uno ‘tres puñados de monedas’ para hacer frente a ‘sus pequeños gastos’, pues el protocolo exigía que todos los que disfrutaban de ser recibidos en Palacio recibiesen algún obsequio para aumentar la “felicidad” que significaba el ser recibidos27. La segunda audiencia con la Augusta se produjo algunos días después con el mismo ceremonial. Eudoxia les informó del inicial rechazo del emperador pero les prometió que no cesaría en su empeño hasta lograr convencerlo. El monje Porfirio recurrió, para insistir en su petición, al tema que más inquietaba a la emperatriz, su próximo parto, y le hizo una profecía: ‘Esfuérzate, Señora, por Cristo, y Él te lo recompensará con un hijo que vivirá y reinará viéndolo tú misma y disfrutarás de él durante muchos años’28. Al escuchar estas 25

Vida de Porfirio, 38. Ibid. 39. 27 Es conocida la venalidad de los funcionarios de la Corte cuya ayuda era necesaria para no encontrar obstáculos, como sucedió en este caso: en el texto se dice que fueron los dekanoi quienes los acompañaron hasta el palacio. Hasta qué punto era importante la figura del cubicularius se manifiesta en que cuando Eudoxia transmite a su esposo la petición, y se produce un primer rechazo de este, Marco reproduce el diálogo entre ambos gracias a la información proporcionada por Amantios que había estado presente. 28 Hay que hacer constatar que la profecía solo se cumplió en parte pues Teodosio II efectivamente reinó durante muchos años (408-450), pero la madre no lo pudo ver y disfrutar pues murió al poco tiempo (el 6 de octubre del 404) por las consecuencias de un aborto al que ya hemos aludido. 26

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palabras, la Augusta que, escribe Marco, ‘se llenó de alegría, su rostro se enrojeció y añadió nueva belleza a la que ya tenía’29, se reafirmó en la promesa de conseguir que Arcadio accediese a sus peticiones. El nacimiento del futuro Teodosio II, el primer porfirogénito de la corte bizantina, se produjo felizmente: el hagiógrafo se detiene en narrar con extrema precisión los detalles de la gran fiesta celebrada con motivo del bautismo imperial. Aprovechando la alegría del momento se llevó a cabo una estratagema pensada por la propia Augusta para arrancar a su esposo la promesa de acceder a las peticiones de los santos hombres. Siete días después del parto los había recibido de nuevo en audiencia, expresándoles su satisfacción por el feliz alumbramiento, y pidiéndoles que acudiesen al bautismo del recién nacido y, en esa circunstancia, entregasen al que debía llevar al niño en brazos un papel con sus demandas. La descripción de la procesión que acompañó al bautismo y las celebraciones en la ciudad constituyen una de las fuentes más elocuentes sobre los grandes festejos que tenían lugar en Constantinopla con motivo de acontecimientos excepcionales. Es sabido que las apariciones o ‘epifanías’ en público de los emperadores tenían lugar, además de en el hipódromo, en las grandes procesiones entre el Palacio y Santa Sofía, escenarios privilegiados de fastuosas coreografías áulicas30. Merece resaltarse que de la narración se desprende la ausencia de la Augusta tanto en el bautismo como en la posterior procesión encabezada por Arcadio seguido por ‘el cortejo de los patricios, los ilustres y todos los dignatarios’; ausencia que se puede explicar por la cuarentena a que debía someterse la esposa imperial después del alumbramiento. La estratagema ideada por Eudoxia consistió en que los obispos entregasen a la salida del baptisterio el papel con sus peticiones al alto personaje de la Corte que en la procesión llevaba al niño en sus brazos y pidiesen a gritos su pública lectura. El personaje en cuestión, que ya había sido advertido por la Augusta, se detuvo, ordenó que se hiciese el silencio, desplegó el papel, ordenó que se leyese una parte, lo enrolló, y puso la mano sobre la cabeza del niño e inclinándose delante de todos exclamó: “Su Majestad ordena que se cumpla lo que está en la súplica”. Todos los que lo contemplaron se quedaron admirados y se prosternaron ante el emperador felicitándole porque había sido considerado digno de ver ya en vida reinar a su hijo. Arcadio lo escuchó lleno de orgullo y se apresuró a comunicar a la Emperatriz lo que había sucedido gracias a su hijo31. 29

Todas las fuentes contemporáneas, en especial Zósimo V, 32 aluden a la gran belleza de Eudoxia y este es un dato más de los aducidos por R. Teja, Vida de Porfirio de Gaza (2008), sobre la fidelidad histórica de la narración, difícil de explicar en un falsario siglo y medio posterior. 30 Cristina Carile, ‘Iconicità e potere nella tarda antichità: il principe cristiano nel suo spazio’, en Sylvain Destephen, Bruno Dumézil y Hervé Inglebert (ed.), Le Prince chrétien de Constantin aux royautés barbares (IVe-VIIIe siècle) (Paris, 2018), 197-226. 31 Vida de Porfirio, 49.

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Una vez ya dentro del palacio fue cuando Eudoxia besó al niño y abrazó al Emperador diciéndole: ‘Felicidades, Señor, por lo que han visto tus ojos aún en vida’, y abrió el papel para leer su contenido a lo que el Emperador ‘accedió con mucho desagrado por intercesión de la Emperatriz’. Marco añade, para dar credibilidad a la narración, que de todo esto le informó el piadoso Amantios. Pueden plantearse muchas dudas sobre la historicidad de la maniobra llevada a cabo por Eudoxia para alcanzar su propósito a instancias del monje-obispo Porfirio y su acompañante; en cualquier caso, la autoridad y prestigio de que disfrutaban los santos monjes, la piedad casi supersticiosa de los protagonistas, incluido el cubiculario Amantios, y la debilidad del carácter de Arcadio frente a la determinación de su ambiciosa esposa, reflejan muy bien las intrigas que caracterizaron la Corte bizantina durante el reinado del hijo de Teodosio I, el emperador que puede ser considerado legítimamente como su fundador32.

III. Otros encuentros con monjes de Teodosio II y sus hermanas Unánimemente las fuentes aluden al hecho que ‘el muy piadoso’ Teodosio II (408-450) organizó la Corte como si se tratase de un monasterio (asketerion) y que esta piedad era compartida por sus tres hermanas vírgenes, Pulqueria, Arcadia y Marina33. No deben por lo tanto sorprendernos las noticias del afán de todos los miembros de la familia por conocer personalmente y recibir las bendiciones de los numerosos monjes con fama de santidad que proliferaban en Oriente; un afán que tuvo su reflejo en la literatura hagiográfica que llegó incluso a imaginar los que podríamos denominar ‘viajes virtuales’ de monjes a la Corte, como el que se atribuyó al egipcio Shenute de Atripe. Shenute había nacido en el Alto Egipto en el 345, en la aldea de Shmin, próxima a las primeras fundaciones monásticas de Pacomio. Con el tiempo llegó a estar al frente del gran centro monástico conocido como “Monasterio Blanco” que se convirtió en el foco religioso y cultural más importante de Egipto, a lo que contribuyeron su gran personalidad y longevidad (se dice que murió a los 120 años de edad). Los datos reales y legendarios sobre su vida se mezclaron pronto, y de ello es fiel reflejo el bios escrito por su discípulo Besa que, a pesar de estar redactado poco después de su muerte, está plagado de narraciones de milagros y acciones sobrenaturales. Tal es el relato de un viaje portentoso para encontrarse con Teodosio II en la Corte de Constantinopla: 32 Como ha escrito, comentando este pasaje, Giulia Sfameni Gasparro, ‘Porfirio di Gaza, un “uomo santo” fra pagani, eretici e maghi’ (2009), 240, en la narración ‘si riflette il complesso cerimoniale che regolava alla corte di Costantinopoli i rapporti dei due poteri, politico e religioso’. 33 Sócrates, Historia Eclesiástica VII, 22. Sobre las hijas de Eudoxia y Arcadio véase Laurence Brottier, ‘L’imperatrice Eudoxie et ses enfants’, Revue des Sciences Réligieuses 70 (1996), 313-92.

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ante las presiones del emperador para que acudiese a visitarlo y la negativa del monje a abandonar su monasterio, Dios hizo el milagro de transportarlo en una nube34. Aunque en la narración no se dice que se entrevistase también con las emperatrices, no nos resistimos a recordarlo porque es una elocuente demostración de la atracción y devoción de los miembros de la Corte por los monjes taumaturgos en olor de santidad: Shenute se presentó de improviso en la estancia donde dormía el emperador, hablaron detenidamente, el monje le dio su bendición y regresó en la misma noche a su monasterio llegando a tiempo para celebrar la sinaxis antes de que saliese el sol35. Volviendo a los viajes reales, es conocido el papel alcanzado en la Corte por el fanático monje sirio Bar Sauma. Nacido en las montañas del Alto Éufrates donde llevó a cabo una dura vida ascética, vivió encerrado en una caverna sometiéndose a severos ayunos. Viajaba descalzo, con una larguísima cabellera y se ufanaba de no dormir nunca acostado. En torno suyo formó una banda de monjes violentos que recorrían los territorios de Siria y Palestina entregados a la destrucción de templos paganos y de sinagogas36. El salvaje archimandrita se atrajo la admiración de Teodosio II y de su esposa Eudocia, quien lo invitaron a acudir a la Corte para conocerlo en persona y disfrutar de su carismática presencia. Es más, cuando se convocó el concilio de Éfeso del 449, el emperador invitó personalmente al archimandrita a acudir a la llamada, a pesar de no ser obispo y no hablar el griego37. El resultado fue el esperado: Bar Sauma y sus monjes fueron los protagonistas de la violencia que se desencadenó durante el desarrollo del sínodo y que justificó que este fuese estigmatizado por el papa León Magno como Latrocinium Ephesinum38. La invitación de Bar Sauma a la 34

Besa, Vida de Shenute 53. Besa, Vida de Shenute 53, 67. Me sirvo de la edición italiana de Tito Orlandi (ed.), Vite di monaci copti (Roma, 1984). Con todo, el texto fundamental sigue siendo el clásico de Johannes Leipold, Schenute von Atripe und die Entstehung des national-ägyptischen Christentums (Leipzig, 1903). 36 François Nau, ‘Deux épisodes de l’histoire juive sous Théodose II d’aprés la vie de Bar Sauma’, Revue des Études Juives 83 (1927), 184-206; Silvia Acerbi, ‘Il potere dei monaci nei concili orientali del V secolo: il costantinopolitano Eutiche e il siro Bar Sauma’, Studia historica. Historia antigua 24 (2006), 291-313; Andrew Palmer, ‘A Tale of Two Synods: The Archimandrite Barsumas at Ephesus in 449 and at Chalcedon in 451’, Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 66 (2014), 37-61. 37 ACO = Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum: ed. Edward Schwartz, t. I. Conc. Ephesinum (431), vol. I-V; t. II. Conc. Chalcedonense (451): vol. VI (Strasburg, 1914; Berlin, Leipzig, 1922-1940); II, I, 1, 71: con el theion gramma imperial fechado 14 de abril de 449 el archimandrita era invitado como representante del monacato oriental. Remito al fundamental Heinrich Bacht, ‘Die Rolle des orientalischen Mönchtums in den kirchen-politischen Auseinandersetzungen um Chalkedon (431-519)’, en Aloys Grillmeier y Heinrich Bach (ed.), Das Konzil von Calchedon (Würzburg, 1953), II 71-89. 38 Algunos obispos le acusaron incluso de haber dado muerte al obispo de Constantinopla Flaviano: Silvia Acerbi, Conflitti politico-ecclesiatici in Oriente nella Tarda Antichità: il II concilio di Efeso (449) (Madrid, 2001), 110, en referencia a ACO II, I, 2, 216. Para una reflexión más 35

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Corte refleja eficazmente los sentimientos encontrados (una mezcla de admiración piadosa y curiosidad) que este tipo de personajes provocaban en el emperador, su esposa y sus hermanas39. El archimandrita constantinopolitano Eutiques, que recibía con frecuencia las visitas de los cónyuges imperiales en su monasterio, fue uno de los principales protagonistas de la política eclesiástica de la primera mitad del siglo V, como asesor de confianza del eunuco Crisafio y del mismo Teodosio II. Las Actas de Calcedonia también nos informan de la red de amistades monásticas que acompañaron a Pulqueria, hermana del emperador, durante su forzado retiro en el Ebdomon: en especial se menciona al archimandrita Emanuel, que iba a menudo a visitarla para mantenerla informada sobre la delicada situación40. Las fuentes dejan constancia de otras invitaciones a visitar la Corte dirigidas a monjes menos influyentes, y de la veneración supersticiosa con la que eran acogidos rompiendo, en el caso de las mujeres, la compostura que se les exigía y era de esperar de ellas. Este fue el caso de Abrahames, monje consagrado obispo de la ciudad de Carras, en el alto Éufrates, donde había alcanzado enorme popularidad por su ascesis y milagros. Su fama llegó también a Constantinopla y atrajo el interés de la Corte. Teodoreto de Ciro describe así su encuentro con la familia imperial, poco antes de su muerte en el 423: ‘El emperador tuvo deseos de conocerlo, pues la fama tiene alas y propaga tanto lo bueno como lo malo. Lo hizo llamar, lo abrazó cuando llegó y apreció como más digna de respeto su rústica sisira que la púrpura. El coro de las emperatrices le cogía las manos y las rodillas y hacía peticiones a un hombre que ni siquiera entendía el griego’. Se dice después que cuando murió, al parecer durante esta estancia en la capital, el emperador quiso sepultarlo en uno de los mausoleos de la ciudad pero, ante las súplica de los fieles, decidió devolverlo a su pueblo (Carras), y ‘se puso en persona a la cabeza del cortejo fúnebre acompañado por las emperatrices; seguían después todos los magistrados y autoridades, los militares y el pueblo’41. Un interés similar demostraron Teodosio y sus hermanas por conocer a otro monje muy reputado, Hipacio, que vivía cerca de Constantinopla, al otro lado amplia sobre violencia y concilios: Ramón Teja-Silvia Acerbi, ‘Éphèse I (431) et Éphèse II (449): concilia ou latrocinia?’, en Guillaume Cuchet y Charles Mériaux (ed.), La dramatique conciliaire (des premiers conciles à Vatican II) (Villeneuve d’Ascq, 2019), 67-84. 39 Sobre el encuentro en Tierra Santa entre la emperatriz Eudocia y Bar Sauma puede consultarse Silvia Acerbi, ‘Terror y violencia antijudía en Oriente durante el siglo V: la biografía del archimandrita sirio Bar Sauma’, en Gonzalo Bravo Castañeda y Raúl Gómez Salinero (ed.), Formas y usos de la violencia en el mundo romano (Madrid, 2007), 277-90. 40 Peter Hatlie, The Monks and Monasteries of Constantinople, 350-850 (Cambridge, 2007), 75; Philippe Blaudeau, ‘Les Augustae garantes de la continuité de la politique religieuse théodosienne? Regard sur l’engagement respectif de Pulcherie et d’Eudocie dans la controverse christologique après la mort de Théodose II (450-460)’, en P. Delage (ed.), Les Pères de l’Église et les femmes (La Rochelle, 2003), 368-99. 41 Teodoreto, Historias de los monjes de Siria, 17, 9-10.

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del Bósforo, en un monasterio que había fundado aprovechando el abandono de una residencia construida por el hombre de confianza de Arcadio, Rufino, ajusticiado en el 395, por lo que se le conocía con el nombre de Rufiniana. Su biógrafo, Calínico, recuerda la fama alcanzada por Hipacio en vida, en términos que evocan la descripción que Teodoreto ofrece de la gran popularidad de Simeón estilita: ‘Como se oía hablar de él en Occidente y en Oriente, le escribían como a un padre y le pedían eulogíai de Jerusalén, de Egipto, de Siria, de Roma, de Asia, de Tesalónica’42. Esta fama no podía escapar a la curiosidad de las piadosas moradoras de la Corte. Si nos atenemos a la descripción de Calínico, durante el encuentro se produjo una verdadera inversión de los papeles y protocolos cortesanos: el emperador acudía a visitarlo en su monasterio y también sus hermanas estaban decididas a acudir personalmente a verlo, rompiendo las normas del pudor femenino. Si esto se hubiese producido seguramente podría haberse interpretado como un hecho escandaloso – mujeres imperiales que entran en un monasterio masculino –, por lo que Calínico en su narración ofrece una explicación de carácter piadoso: Las tres primeras emperatrices, hermanas del emperador, deseosas de conocer a Hipacio, se dirigieron al Palacio próximo a los Santos Apóstoles43 y le enviaron este mensaje: “Ven para que nosotras te conozcamos, o bien nosotras iremos a ti para recibir tu bendición”. Él se vio obligado a ir porque ellas amaban a Cristo. Las edificó con sus exhortaciones, hizo una plegaria, las bendijo y se retiró44.

IV. El monje Sabas en la Corte de Constantinopla Una vez que los monjes aprendieron el camino que los llevaba a Constantinopla, siguieron recorriéndolo después de la muerte de Teodosio II y sus hermanas. Como hemos escrito en otra ocasión45, en los relatos hagiográficos de los siglos VI y VII, los viajes a Constantinopla se convirtieron casi en un lugar común, y los monjes más conocidos y apreciados se sirvieron de su carisma para arrancar a los emperadores o a las Augustas las promesas más variadas en una época en que las luchas teológicas habían dividido profundamente al Oriente cristiano y muchos ascetas pretendían orientar la política religiosa imperial. Quizá es en las Historias monásticas escritas por Cirilo de Escitópolis 42

Calínico, Vida de Hipacio, 37. Se trataba de la Iglesia que servía de capilla del monasterio. 44 Calínico, Vida de Hipacio, 37: me sirvo de la edición crítica de Gerhardus J.M. Bartelink, Callinicos, Vie d’Hypatios (Paris, 1971); la traducción procede de la edición en español de Ramón Teja, Calínico, Vida de Hipacio, Introducción, traducción y notas (Madrid, 2009). 45 Ramón Teja y Silvia Acerbi, ‘Del desierto a la Gran Ciudad: viajes de monjes a la Corte de Constantinopla’, en Miguel Cortés Arrese (ed.), Caminos de Bizancio (Cuenca, 2007), 75-104, 84. 43

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donde mejor se manifiesta el enorme protagonismo que los theioi andres llegaron a adquirir ante los emperadores bizantinos poniendo su carisma profético y taumatúrgico al servicio de una precisa acción política. Uno de los monjes que alcanzó mayor popularidad en Oriente fue Sabas, discípulo de Eutimio y, junto con su maestro, fundador de los monasterios que a partir del siglo V florecieron en el desierto de Judea. Su biógrafo, Cirilo de Escitópolis, narra dos viajes del santo a Constantinopla para entrevistarse con los emperadores de turno, primero Anastasio (491-518), y después Justiniano (527-565). En ambas ocasiones las Augustas respectivas no desaprovecharon la ocasión de recibir también al monje y sus bendiciones. En el primero de los viajes, después de la audiencia concedida por Anastasio en la gran sala del Palacio imperial, formando parte de un grupo de monjes de Palestina, Sabas penetra en las estancias privadas de la Augusta Ariadna. En el capítulo 51 se narra cómo fue introducido con sus hermanos en el denominado “pequeño consistorio”, pero los silenciarios que vigilaban el acceso no le permitieron el paso por creer que se trataba de un mendigo. Los silenciarios formaban un tagma de vigilantes o porteros (gentleman ushers, así los definen los historiadores anglosajones): vestidos con ropajes blancos, actuaban en los consistorios o consilia principis regulando la entrada y salida de los dignatarios recibidos por el basileus y, en general, en todas las apariciones y ceremonias que tenían lugar en el Palacio imperial46. Es fácil imaginar la escena: los invitados serían introducidos en la sala del triklinos sólo cuando el basileus, rodeado por su séquito personal y por los jerarcas, había tomado asiento en el trono, colocado bajo la imagen de Cristo. Con rígida impasibilidad el emperador hacía un gesto a los eunucos y éstos a los silenciarios que introducían, desarrollando la función de admissionales, a los altos dignatarios que entraban protocolariamente (los de rango superior después de los de rango inferior) y divididos por clases hasta cruzar el velum donde, después de realizar la obligada proskynesis, eran recibidos por el basileus47. El velum – parapetasma en griego – era el mejor símbolo material del aislamiento e invisibilidad que caracterizaba la vida del emperador en el Palacio: se trataba de una cortina que en la sala de audiencias aislaba al emperador sentado en el trono de quienes eran recibidos en audiencia. Sólo en casos excepcionales se permitía a los visitantes traspasarlo: lo normal era que se escuchase la voz del emperador pero no se pudiese disfrutar de su visión, tal como sucede hoy en día en la liturgia oriental, donde el oficiante está oculto detrás de la ikonostasis y los fieles sólo oyen 46 Antonio Carile, ‘Il palazzo imperiale come luogo della epifania del potere trascendente dell’imperatore’, en Andrea Augenti (ed.), Palatia. Palazzi imperiali tra Ravenna e Bisanzio, (Ferrara, 2003), 6-15, id., ‘Il sacro palazzo di Costantinopoli Nuova Roma’, Quaderni di Scienza della Conservazione 2 (2003), 15-35. 47 Tomo la descripción de mi artículo ‘La figura del silentiarius’ (2017), 215; véanse también Maria G. Castello, Le segrete stanze del potere. I comites consistoriani e l’imperatore tardoantico (Roma, 2012); I. Tantillo, ‘I cerimoniali di corte’ (2015), 554.

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su voz. Pues bien, Cirilo recuerda que se concedió a todos los monjes acceder a la presencia del emperador y este preguntó por Sabas al que tenía especial deseo de conocer. Al no encontrarle entre los presentes mandó buscarlo y los silenciarios lo encontraron sentado en un rincón fuera de la sala recitando salmos: ‘una vez que traspasó el velum y estuvo en presencia del emperador, éste vio a un ser de aspecto angelical que lo precedía…’48. Terminada la audiencia, el emperador despidió a los restantes monjes pero pidió a Sabas que pasase el invierno en la Capital. En el capítulo 52 se narra un nuevo encuentro del santo con el emperador en que discuten sobre los temas teológicos candentes del momento tras lo cual se alude al hecho de que se concedió al monje, sin duda a petición de la propia Augusta, el privilegio de acceder a la “casa”, es decir el cubiculum sacrum de esta, tal como vimos había sucedido con Porfirio y Eudoxia: ‘Tras dejar al emperador, el anciano entró junto a la Augusta Ariadna, la bendijo y la exhortó a permanecer firme en la fe de su santo padre, el gran emperador León… Después, una vez que salió junto a ella, huyendo de los tumultos, abandonó la ciudad…’49. Finalmente, en el capítulo 54 se narra un último encuentro con Anastasio durante el cual el asceta logra una serie de privilegios fiscales para los monasterios de Palestina. Pero no se mencionan nuevos encuentros con la Augusta. Sabas realizó un segundo viaje a la Corte, en esta ocasión durante el reinado de Justiniano (527-565). Cirilo nos ofrece otra bella descripción del ceremonial cortesano que rodeaba la pareja imperial con la que se entrevista. En este caso, al igual que había sucedido con la esposa de Arcadio, la Augusta Teodora aprovecha para pedir al santo que la bendiga para que su vientre se haga fértil y le proporcione un hijo, a lo que santo se niega por considerarla herética en cuanto defensora de los monofisitas. Esta es la descripción de los acontecimientos en la pluma de Cirilo: Salieron a su encuentro en la ciudad el patriarca Epifanio, el presbítero Eusebio y el obispo de Éfeso, Hipacio. Lo tomaron consigo y lo introdujeron ante el emperador y, al igual que bajo el reinado de Anastasio, Dios hizo resplandecer a los ojos del emperador la gracia que acompañaba a su siervo. En efecto, una vez que con todos los prelados hubo entrado en el Palacio y traspasado el velum, Dios abrió los ojos del emperador y vio una especie de aureola divina en forma de corona que resplandecía sobre la cabeza del anciano proyectando rayos como el sol. Inmediatamente se acercó al santo, se inclinó ante él y con alegría y entre lágrimas besó aquella cabeza divina. Después de ser bendecido por él y que hubo recibido de sus manos las súplicas de los habitantes de Palestina, lo persuadió a entrar en los apartamentos para bendecir a la Augusta Teodora. El anciano entró, la Augusta lo acogió con alegría y

48 Me sirvo de la edición crítica de Edward Schwartz, Kyrillos von Skythopolis (Leipzig, 1939), L-LIV. Para la traducción se puede recurrir a Romano Baldelli y Luciana Mortari, Cirillo di Scitopoli, Storie Monastiche del deserto di Gerusalemme (Abbazia di Praglia, 1990). 49 Vida de Sabas, 53.

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después de venerarlo le dijo: “Ora por mí, padre, para que Dios conceda un fruto a mi seno…”50.

Sigue un corto diálogo en que reprende a la Augusta por su fe monofisita. Viendo a Teodora profundamente decepcionada por su frustrada demanda de bendición, ‘los padres que le acompañaban le dijeron perplejos: “¿Por qué has entristecido a la Augusta no orando como te pidió?”. El anciano les respondió: “Creedme, padres, no surgirá fruto de su seno para que nadie beba la leche de las doctrinas de Severo y perturbe a la Iglesia de Anastasio”’51. Es evidente que Cirilo atribuye a Sabas este enfrentamiento entre el monje y la Augusta como un recurso para atacar la política religiosa de esta última en cuanto seguidora de las doctrinas de Severo de Antioquía, cabeza de los monofisitas denominados autocéfalos, logrando al mismo tiempo que la infertilidad de la esposa de Justiniano fuera interpretada como un castigo divino por ese mismo motivo. De hecho Teodora no tuvo hijos, por lo que la narración constituye una auténtica profecía post eventum, al igual que había sucedido en la predicción favorable de Porfirio a Eudoxia. Cirilo narra una nueva audiencia con Justiniano52 (en la que las peticiones presentadas por el monje y satisfechas por el basileus se mezclan con las profecías sobre sus triunfos militares en África) pero en el texto no se menciona ningún nuevo encuentro con Teodora. V. Los viajes de Teodoro de Sykeon a la Corte imperial Nacido en esta pequeña localidad de Galacia situada en el interior de Asia Menor, región donde transcurrió la mayor parte de su vida, Teodoro alcanzó gran popularidad por sus extremas penitencias ascéticas, por sus dotes taumatúrgicas, y en especial por sus exorcismos. La fama de que disfrutó en vida fue el origen de sus estrechas relaciones con los emperadores de la época, tanto recibiendo visitas de estos en su monasterio, situado en una estratégica vía de comunicación entre Constantinopla y la frontera oriental del imperio, como por las realizadas por él mismo en la Corte. El autor de su larga y minuciosa Vida53, un discípulo de nombre Jorge, menciona tres viajes del santo a la capital del Imperio invitado por los emperadores de turno. El primero tuvo lugar durante el reinado de Mauricio (582-602) por iniciativa de este y del patriarca Ciriaco deseosos de recibir su bendición. Según la narración del hagiógrafo tanto el emperador como la Augusta y los altos cargos civiles y eclesiásticos de la ciudad pudieron disfrutar de su presencia y de sus favores: 50

Vida de Sabas, 71. Ibid. 52 Storie Monastiche, LXII-LXIV. 53 Me sirvo de la edición crítica de André Jean Festugière, Vie de Théodore de Sykéon, I. Texte grec, II. Traduction, commentaire et appendice, Subsidia Hagiographica 48 (Bruxelles, 1970). 51

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En aquella época le llegaron al santo siervo de Cristo cartas de invitación del emperador Mauricio, amigo de Cristo, del bienaventurado patriarca Ciriaco y de los magistrados para que fuese a la ciudad imperial de Constantino para impartirles su bendición. Obligado por ello, se dirigió a la ciudad protegida por Dios, saludó al muy bienaventurado patriarca Ciriaco, al emperador y al senado, les bendijo muchas veces y se sentó con ellos a la mesa. Le manifestaron un gran afecto el emperador, la emperatriz y toda su casa. Y le colmaron de honores…54

El término de que se sirve el autor griego para indicar la casa de la familia imperial es, como en otras fuentes anteriormente mencionadas, cubiculum o “habitación”, expresión latina adoptada en el vocabulario de la administración bizantina para indicar las dependencias más íntimas de palacio que formaban la morada de la familia imperial. De todos los textos utilizados hasta ahora, este es el primero, después del que narra el encuentro de la esposa de Máximo con Martín de Tours, en que se nos dice que se invitó al monje a sentarse a la mesa con la Augusta y su esposo55. Después de recordar este primer encuentro con la familia del emperador Mauricio, el autor narra una serie de milagros curativos realizados por el santo monje en Constantinopla, del último de los cuales se benefició un hijo del propio emperador, gravemente enfermo56. Convocado por el basileus ‘el siervo de Dios hizo una plegaria, bendijo agua con la que le roció y mandó que con el resto le rociasen una vez más. Gracias a su santa plegaria, el niño se vio libre de la enfermedad y quedó sano’. La narración concluye recordando que una vez más ‘invitado por el emperador y la Augusta se sentó con ellos a la mesa tras lo cual, y después de orar por ellos, les dejó para volver a su patria y llegar a su monasterio’57. La segunda estancia de Teodoro de Sykeon en Constantinopla se produjo durante el reinado del emperador Focas (602-610) y del patriarca Tomás, sucesor de 54

Vida de Teodoro de Sykeon, 82. Es sabido que desde la época romana el sentarse a la mesa con el emperador o la emperatriz representaba un acontecimiento mucho más significativo y cargado de implicaciones simbólicas que en el mundo moderno. Como ha escrito R. Teja, ‘Quid episcopis cum palatio?’ (2012), 210, se trataba de un privilegio del que muy pocos podían disfrutar pues implicaba no solo escuchar al invitado, sino también acceder a sus peticiones y prometer satisfacerlas. Además, no era un acto que se llevase a cabo con discreción, sino de una forma pública y todos eran muy conscientes de su significado. La invitación a Teodoro no representó una excepción a esta costumbre: se nos dice que el emperador le recompensó con una serie de favores, el más importante la inmunidad fiscal de su monasterio. Un caso similar, aunque no se trató de una comida, sino de una audiencia, lo recoge la anécdota narrada por Cirilo de Escitópolis con motivo de la visita de san Sabas al emperador Anastasio que ya hemos recordado (Cirilo, Vida de Sabas, 51). 56 ‘Sucedió que uno de los hijos del emperador Mauricio padecía una enfermedad incurable. En efecto, había provocado la aparición de muchos granos de pus hasta el punto de que parecía sufrir de elefantiasis, pero es una enfermedad que unos denominan paulacis y otros cleopatra, y que, pese a los numerosos tratamientos médicos, no encontraba mejoría’, Vida de Teodoro de Sykeon, 97. 57 Ibid. 98. 55

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Ciriaco, pero no fue tan feliz como la anterior. El emperador le hizo acudir al Palacio, y el santo le curó de los dolores que sufría en manos y pies, pero le reprochó su crueldad y las numerosas condenas a muerte que había ordenado ejecutar con la amenaza de que, si no se emendaba, la cólera de Dios caería sobre él. ‘Al escuchar estas palabras’ – escribe su hagiógrafo – ‘el emperador se irritó contra el santo’58. Ello quizá explique que, aunque la estancia fue larga, no se nos habla de ningún nuevo encuentro con el emperador o con otros miembros de su familia. No fue así en el tercer viaje que tuvo lugar después del asesinato de Focas, al inicio del reinado del piadoso Heraclio (610-641). El hagiógrafo, Jorge, recuerda el recibimiento efusivo que le deparó el nuevo emperador y la invitación a sentarse con él a la mesa, pero no se menciona la presencia de la Augusta, que sin duda estuvo presente también: se nos dice de hecho que ‘cuando el emperador se trasladó a Sofiana59, le invitó también allí y le presentó a hijo pequeño para que lo bendijese, el mismo que ha sido denominado “nuevo Constantino”60. El santo oró por ellos, se despidió también del patriarca, y retornó a su patria’61. Clausuramos este recorrido sobre los encuentros de las Augustas bizantinas con los monjes taumaturgos más populares de la Antigüedad Tardía pues recordando que por los mismos años en que Porfirio de Gaza era recibido por la Augusta Eudoxia, Juan Crisóstomo expresaba este juicio sobre el prestigio disfrutado por los obispos y su facilidad de acceso al Palacio Imperial, incluso a las moradas de las mujeres de la aristocracia: ‘Los Prefectos y magistrados no reciben tantos honores como el que está al frente de la iglesia. Si viene al Palacio, ¿Quién ocupa el primer lugar? Tampoco entre las mujeres y en las casas de los grandes, nadie está por encima (de los obispos) en lo que respecta a los honores’62. Si el obispo era además un monje con fama de santidad, estos honores se multiplicaban, tal como manifiestan los deseos que expresaron con frecuencia las Augustas por entrar en contacto con ellos, a costa incluso de romper el aislamiento impuesto por el ceremonial de la Corte a su condición femenina.

58 59 60 61 62

Ibid. 133. Palacio de veraneo en la costa asiática. Hijo de Heraclio que con el nombre de Constantino III, solo reinará unos meses en el 641. Vida de Teodoro de Sykeon, 155. Juan Crisóstomo, Sobre los Hechos de los Apóstoles, Homil. III, 5.

Pelagia, the Barbarian Wife of the Last of the Romans. Women, Politics, and Religion in the Fifth Century AD Oriol DINARÈS CABRERIZO, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

ABSTRACT Pelagia is a biographical enigma: she was the wife of two of the most powerful men in the Roman fifth century AD (Bonifatius and Aëtius), but despite this, most aspects of her life and deeds are unknown or subject to profound debate. She could have played an important role in Western politics, but ancient sources pay little attention to her. Modern researchers are not sure about her date of birth, her offspring, or her faith. Even her actual name is uncertain. This contribution examines the scarce biographical accounts of the Roman-barbarian noblewoman Pelagia to demonstrate her relevance as a female character during the final years of the Roman West. Some clues will be provided about her historical significance, as an example of a fifth-century female aristocrat, an example of Roman-barbarian political unions, and an example of Arian conversions and their political relevance in military contexts.

Introduction It is always a difficult task to perform a study, even if brief as with this present work, on female characters of Late Antiquity. In only a few specific cases have our (male) sources paid attention to some pre-eminent women. Those women are often empresses or queens who have played a public role that, paradoxically, they were not meant to play according to the norms of their time. Because of this, eminent female characters of Late Antiquity can be classified as isolated or exceptional cases: they are women who stand out because they do not fit the role given to them. For this very reason, they have been treated mostly by our sources as clichés, or in a biased way. We have excellent examples of this in the fifth century AD: Galla Placidia, Eudoxia, or Pulcheria. As we move down the social scale and try to focus on less spectacular – a less trivial adjective than it seems – characters, the sources’ voices keep weakening until they fall silent. It is impossible to provide a coherent biography of women whom, even if we are aware of their possible pre-eminence, we know very little. Pelagia, the wife of the so-called – by Procopius of Caesarea – ‘last of the Romans’, Flavius Aëtius and the comes Bonifatius,1 is unfortunately one of these cases. Her life 1 Procop., Bell. Vand., 3, 14, Procopii Caesariensis opera omnia, I. De bellis libri I-IV, ed. J. Haury, Teubner (Leipzig, 1962).

Studia Patristica CXXX, 251-262. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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account is contradictory because, as I said, whenever she transcends the role imposed on her, Pelagia becomes worthy of attention. Instead, she becomes an almost irrelevant or literary character whenever she accomplishes what male sources expect from her. This means – and I remark so as a caueat to my work – that both voices and silence must be studied, and that is always a problem. I believe her to be remarkable for many reasons already pointed out by modern scholars: the royal barbarian origins of Pelagia, her marriage to two front-line characters of fifth-century Roman politics, and her conversion to the Nicene faith. Barbarian royal dynasties, marriage, and conversion, three issues in which the role of aristocratic women at the end of the Western Roman Empire can be better understood through Pelagia’s life.

The limits of a biography of Pelagia Pelagia’s life has never been the subject of monographic studies, even brief ones. However, her public role has been analysed from different points of view. As we shall see, our sources remark on this woman’s importance because of her relationship with two key historical characters: the comes Africae Bonifatius, who was Pelagia’s first husband, and her second husband, Flavius Aëtius. Almost every study involving the lives of Bonifatius and Aëtius has paid attention to Pelagia.2 However, most studies offer no more than notes about her, mainly as a supporting role in her husbands’ biographies. She was initially missing, or barely analysed, in studies about Roman-barbarian marriage, although recent works have definitely solved this.3 The following summarises Pelagia’s life and relevance. Firstly, we only know her name thanks to a single source: comes Marcellinus tells that, after the final battle between Aëtius and Bonifatius, the latter advised his wife, Pelagia, to marry Aëtius: Aetius longiore Bonifatii telo pridie sibimet 2 See Joannes L.M. de Lepper, De rebus gestis Bonifatii: comitis Africae et magistri militum (Breda, 1941); Jeroen W.P. Wijnendaele, The Last of the Romans. Bonifatius – Warlord and comes Africae (London, New York, 2015); Andreas Schwarcz, ‘Marriage and power politics in the fifth century’, Medieval Prosopography 24 (2003), 35-43; Alexander Demandt, ‘The osmosis of Late Roman and Germanic aristocracies’, in Evangelos Chrysos and Andreas Schwarcz (eds), Das Reich und die Barbaren (Wien, Köln, 1989), 75-85; Giuseppe Zecchini, Aezio. L’ultima difesa dell’occidente romano (Roma, 1983), 164, 222; Frank M. Clover, ‘Flavius Merobaudes: a Translation and Historical Commentary’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 61 (1971), 1-78. There is only one study devoted to her, by Elvira Gil Egea, ‘Warrior Retinues in Late Antiquity: the case of Pelagia’, in Carl Deroux (ed.), Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History XI (Brussels, 2003), 493-503, dealing with her role in her husbands’ barbarian retinues. I was, unfortunately, unable to access this work, and all references to it are second hand. 3 Roger C. Blockley, ‘Roman-Barbarian Marriages in the Late Empire’, Florilegium 4 (1982), 69, mentions her, but not Rosario Soraci, Ricerche sui ‘conubia’ tra romani e germani nei secoli IV-VI (Catania, 1974).

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praeparato Bonifatium congredienten uulneravit inlaesus, tertioque mense Bonifatius uulnere quo sauciatus fuerat emoritur, Pelagiam uxorem suam ualde locupletem nulli alteri nisi Aetio nupturam fore exhortans.4 All other sources never mention her name, so even this is non-demonstrable data, although no author doubts it nor suggests any alternative,5 and I will call her ‘Pelagia’ as well. We must keep in mind, however, that her name only appears in one source, so her biographical accounts have been put together and given coherence by prosopographers, because ancient authors never told a linear story of Pelagia. Researchers cannot be sure if previous or later accounts on Bonifatius’ and Aëtius’ wife refer to her, or to another woman. Without mentioning her name, Pelagia comes into history through a contemporary account: a letter written by Augustine of Hippo to Bonifatius.6 We do not know when Pelagia was born, nor her age when she married Bonifatius. In fact, the date of this wedding is contested: we only know of it from Augustine’s letter, which is a complex one. It can be dated between 427 and 429: in 426, Bonifatius had been appointed comes domesticorum by Placidia, as told by Augustine (Bonifatio domesticorum et Africae comite), and the next year he fell into disgrace, apparently due to a scheme by either Felix or Aëtius, and had to fight imperial forces in Africa until 429.7 This situation is also recorded by Augustine, so the letter must have been written at some point between these two events. There, the bishop of Hippo reprimanded the general for his lack of Christian zeal: cum ergo te esse in hoc proposito gauderemus [Bonifatius had promised Augustine to remain chaste after the death of his first wife], navigasti, uxoremque duxisti: sed navigasse obedientiae fuit, quam secundum Apostolum debebas sublimioribus potestatibus; uxorem autem non duxisses, nisi susceptam deserens continentiam concupiscentia victus esses. Quod ego cum comperissem, fateor, miratus obstupui: dolorem autem meum ex aliqua parte consolabatur, quod audivi te illam ducere noluisse, nisi prius catholica fuisset facta; et tamen haeresis eorum qui verum Filium Dei negant, tantum praevaluit in domo tua, ut ab ipsis filia tua baptizaretur.8 Bonifatius married Pelagia during a stay overseas – i.e., outside Africa –; but when? Martindale thought that the general married Pelagia in 426, when he was summoned to Italy after his appointment as comes domesticorum. However, Wijnendaele points out that, according to Augustine, the voyage took place soon afterwards a meeting with Bonifatius at Thubunae, when he was there as a military commander. So, he could have referred to the appointment of Bonifatius as a military 4 Marcell., Chron., a. 432, Marcellini V. C. comes chronicon, ed. T. Mommsen, MGH aa 11, 2 (Berlin, 1894). 5 PLRE II Pelagia 1, 865-7; Pauly, s. v. Pelagia 5 (W. Ensslin), 223. 6 Aug., Ep., 220, S. Aurelii Augustini operum sectio II. S. Augustini epistulae, IV: Ep. 185270, ed. A. Goldbacher, CSEL 57 (Leipzig, 1911). 7 PLRE II, Bonifatius 3, 239. 8 Aug. Ep., 220.

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commander, attached to the magister militum Castinus, during the campaign against the Vandals in 422, when he left Africa and his former destination as tribunus, and married Pelagia shortly afterwards.9 I concur with the latter, but there is insufficient information to clarify the debate. Other than the quoted text by Augustine, nothing is directly known of her children with Bonifatius. It seems that the daughter, baptised by heretic priests, was Pelagia’s, although this is also unclear: Bonifatius had a daughter who, by 435, was married to Sebastianus.10 If Pelagia and Bonifatius were married by 422, she could be that daughter, albeit very young; but if we choose 426 as the date of the wedding, she must have been his previous wife’s daughter. In any case, whether she was Sebastianus’ wife or not, the Arian-baptised daughter mentioned by Augustine would probably be Pelagia’s, who seemed to be an Arian before her marriage. According to E. Gil Egea, Pelagia and Bonifatius could have had another son, Verimodus, who was a hostage by 429 during the peace negotiations between Bonifatius and Darius, but this is even more unclear.11 Nothing more is known about Pelagia’s life as wife of Bonifatius (either from 422, or 426, onwards), because she is not mentioned again until 432. During that time, the comes Africae had an intense life: he remained loyal to Placidia during Ioannes’ usurpation, he was recognised as the rightful comes Africae after the restoration of Valentinian III,12 and was finally appointed comes domesticorum by the empress, seeking to strengthen his position against Felix and Aëtius. In 426, he fell from grace within the court, maybe because of a plot by Aëtius, or Felix, or for another reason.13 He subsequently fought and defeated Roman troops sent to Africa by the magister militum Felix. In this context, the Vandals invaded Africa and, according to some sources, Bonifatius had a pact with them or even summoned the barbarians.14 However, the conflict 9 See PLRE II, Bonifatius 3, 239, against J.W.P. Wijnendaele, The Last of the Romans (2015), 48-9. 10 Since Sebastianus, by 435, was already son-in-law of Bonifatius (PLRE II, Sebastianus 3, 983). J.W.P. Wijnendaele, The Last of the Romans (2015), 66, believes that Sebastianus was son-in-law of Bonifatius back in 426, according to Aug., Ep., 7*, but I am afraid that their family relationship cannot be proved. That this daughter was not Pelagia’s, also in G. Zecchini, Aezio (1983), 161. 11 Gil Egea’s opinion, in J.W.P. Wijnendaele, The Last of the Romans (2015), 49. This Verimodus is cited in Aug., Ep., 229; Ep. 230, as a ‘pignus pacis’, but he is referred as ‘filius noster’ by the Roman envoy Darius. 12 Although it is unclear if he simply seized African power or his position was legitimately obtained. See J.W.P. Wijnendaele, The Last of the Romans (2015), 53-64. 13 J.W.P. Wijnendaele, The Last of the Romans (2015), 72-3. 14 The question has long been debated, see PLRE II, Bonifatius 3, 239; Pauly, s. v. Bonifatius 1, 698-9 (O. Seeck), for sources’ accounts. J.W.P. Wijnendaele, The Last of the Romans (2015), 87-92; Andrew H. Merrills and Richard Miles, The Vandals (Malden, 2010), 52-3; Guy Halsall, Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West: 376-568 (Cambridge, 2007), 239-41, for the debate about the Vandal invasion. Bonifatius’ implication in that is usually regarded as an invention performed by hostile sources.

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against Ravenna ended soon, and just when Bonifatius seemed unable to stop Geiseric’s armies, he was again summoned to Italy, this time to fight Aëtius on behalf of Galla Placidia, given that Aëtius had become master of the Western court after the death of Felix in 430.15 It was at that time when, in 432, Bonifatius managed to defeat Aëtius in battle, but he was mortally wounded and, according to comes Marcellinus, on his deathbed when he advised his wife Pelagia, who was very wealthy by then, to marry Aëtius.16 As we know nothing else until this time, one could believe that this Pelagia is no other but the wife mentioned by Augustine in his letter. Bonifatius died a while after, and his son-in-law, Sebastianus, tried to preserve both his legacy and his position and rivalry against Aëtius. The latter, unfortunately for Sebastianus, managed to return to Italy and recover from his loss with Hunnic reinforcements, with whom he defeated Sebastianus. He fled into exile and Aëtius again became the master and later patricius of the West.17 Regarding Pelagia, no sources specify that she was married to Aëtius, but John of Antioch,18 Sidonius Apollinaris,19 and Merobaudes20 mention that the patricius had a son, by the name Gaudentius, from a wife who was of barbarian and noble blood.21 Virtually nobody doubts that Aëtius took Pelagia as his wife after the death of Bonifatius, for political reasons. However, it is not clear if Pelagia was still Aëtius’ spouse by 440, when Gaudentius was born. F. Clover stated that this barbarian mother of Gaudentius was none other than Pelagia, contrary to A. Loyen, who believed that she was a third wife of Aëtius – he had a former wife – who was a Gothic princess, daughter to Theoderic I. Loyen’s position is based solely on a too rigid interpretation of onomastics: if Gaudentius’ mother were of barbarian lineage, she could not have been named Pelagia. Despite being a barbarian, probably a Goth, she might have adopted a Roman name after her baptism, as F. Clover suggested, and I follow his view from an early article.22 G. Zecchini follows Loyen but giving a more nuanced opinion: he believes that Pelagia could not be depicted as a good Catholic by Gregory of Tours and, mainly, that she was too old to give birth

15

PLRE II, Fl. Aetius 7, 22. Marcell., Chron., a. 432. 17 See Zecchini, Aezio (1983), 161-5. 18 Joh. Ant., fr. 201, 3, The Fragmentary Classicising Historians of the Later Roman Empire, 1, ed. R.C. Blockley (Liverpool, 1983). 19 Sid. Apol., Carm., 5, 203, Poèmes. Sidoine Apollinaire tome I, ed. A. Loyen, Collection des Universités de France (Paris, 1960). 20 Merob., Panegyr., 4, 21, Fl. Merobaudis reliquiae, Blosii Aemilii Dracontii carmina, Eugenii Toletani episcopi carmina et epistulae, ed. F. Vollmer, MGH aa 14 (Berlin, 1905). 21 Trait also remarked in Sid. Apol., Carm., 5, 128. 22 F. Clover, ‘Flauius Merobaudes’ (1971), 31; Oriol Dinarès, ‘La onomástica como indicador de identidad en el Bajo Imperio romano. Una aproximación a las problemáticas analíticas’, Polis 26 (2014), 67-8. 16

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to Gaudentius by 440.23 Modern research has followed Clover, correctly rejecting the onomastic prejudice that, in any case, could be explained by her conversion, as he had already suggested.24 Pelagia’s barbarian, probably Gothic, ascendancy could also explain her former attachment to the Arian faith, and may open some questions concerning her daughter’s baptism, as I will discuss later. Her Arianism fits well in a Gothic noble lineage, and for this reason I believe that Gaudentius’ mother, praised by Merobaudes and Sidonius, was indeed Pelagia. As Aëtius’ wife, both Merobaudes, in the mentioned text, and Sidonius Apollinaris25 depict Pelagia as an honourable, powerful, and influential woman who fits the role ascribed to the noble wives of great men: supporting the husband, giving birth to heirs, and defending (or exhorting to defend, according to Sidonius) the interests of the family and the offspring, in relation to the quarrels for power at the court between Aëtius and the future emperor Majorianus. Pelagia is not mentioned again in contemporary sources apart from these accounts in panegyrics and praises to Aëtius. The last reference to her is later and, in my opinion, quite fanciful: Gregory of Tours, mentions this devout wife of Aëtius who prays for him and his victorious return from Gaul in 451, during the war with Attila the Hun.26 This account utterly depersonalises Pelagia – and it is only meant to fit in a literary cliché, in accordance with Gregory of Tours’ taste,27 – regarding the opposition between the pious and the unfaithful. It shows the divine intercession, through the prayers of the devout wife, in the victory of Aëtius against the heathen Huns. I do not trust this account, not even as a chronological marker to state that Pelagia was still alive in 451, even though she probably was. Those are all the biographical sources that are known about Pelagia. As we have seen, they are scarce, but interesting as they suggest some comments concerning her political and personal role. I will now focus on Pelagia’s political figure and her conversion.

23 Different opinions, in F. Clover, Flauius Merobaudes (1971), 30-2, against André Loyen, ‘L’œuvre de Flavius Merobaudes et l’histoire de l’Occident de 430 à 451’, Revue des Études Anciennes 74 (1972), 172, followed by G. Zecchini, Aezio (1983), 222, n. 39. The chronological problem is suitable, but I reject Gregory of Tours’ reliability on the religious beliefs of Pelagia, as I shall explain later. 24 See, for example, PLRE II, Pelagia 1, 856; R.C. Blockley, ‘Roman-Barbarian Marriages’ (1982); J.W.P. Wijnendaele, The Last of the Romans (2015), 49 who also cites E. Gil Egea, ‘Warrior Retinues’ (2003), who had a similar view. 25 Sid. Apol., Carm., 5, 269. 26 Greg. Tur., Hist., 2, 7, Gregorii episcopi Turonensis libri historiarum X, ed. B. Krusch and W. Levison, MGH srm 1, 1 (Hannover, 1951). 27 Greg. Tur., Hist., praef., Ecclesiae inpugnarentur ab hereticis, a catholicis tegerentur, ferueret Christi fides in plurimis, tepisceret in nonnullis, ipsae quoque ecclesiae uel ditarentur a deuotis, uel nudarentur a perfides.

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Roman-barbarian political marriages Despite not being sure from the sources, I support the usual consensus that Pelagia is indeed the barbarian wife of Flavius Aëtius. Thus, we are facing one of the multiple marriages between noble barbarians and Romans of Late Antiquity and, specifically, of the fifth century.28 The classical theory that stated that mixed marriages were forbidden by that time according to Cod. Theod., 3, 14, 1, is nowadays questioned:29 R.W. Mathisen and H. Sivan proved that legal issues on permitting certain barbarian groups to marry certain provincial groups hid behind marriage prohibitions, but there had never been any strong impediment to political marriages between aristocrats of both lineages.30 A look at Blockey and Soraci’s mentioned works, or A. Demandt’s stemmata of the leading people of the Empire,31 would show that, among the upper classes, and even among royal and imperial families, this kind of union was quite common in relative terms. Without doubt, what we see with Pelagia and Bonifatius, and afterwards, with Aëtius, is indeed an example of political marriage between two aristocrats. In global terms, as stated by A. Demandt, one of the definitory traits of the leading clans of the Empire was their personal links. The imperial family and the upper military aristocracy tended to bind through marriage, and one important step for a newcomer into the club was setting up personal ties, through marriage, with the existing elite.32 We can recall Stilicho’s marriage to Serena or Arcadius and Eudoxia, Bauto’s daughter. In the case of Pelagia, the specific details cannot be known because of the unknown origins of her lineage. Thanks to the accounts of Sidonius and Merobaudes, we know that she was from royal descent, but the use of the word Geta by Sidonius could cause confusion.33 She 28 As I said, an exhaustive catalogue can be found in R.C. Blockey, ‘Roman-Barbarian Marriages’ (1982), and R. Soraci, Richerche sui ‘conubia’ (1974), but this particular one does not appear in the latter’s work. 29 Cod. Theod., 3, 14, 1: nulli prouincialium, cuiuscumque ordinis aut loci fuerit, cum barbara sit uxore coniugium, nec ulli gentilium prouincialis femina copuletur. For instance, in the case of the Goths, the law has been recently questioned by John H.W.G. Liebeschuetz, ‘Goths and Romans in the Leges Visigothorum’, in Gerda de Klejn and Stéphane Benoist (eds), Integration in Rome and in the Roman World. Proceedings of the Tenth Workshop of the International Network Impact of Empire (Lille, June 23–25, 2011) (Leiden, 2014), 93. 30 Hagith S. Sivan, ‘The Appropriation of Roman Law in Barbarian Hands: “Roman-Barbarian” Marriage in Visigothic Gaul and Spain’, in Walter Pohl and Helmut Reimitz (eds), Strategies of Distinction. The Construction of Ethnic Communities, 300-800 (Leiden, 1998), 189-203; Ralph W. Mathisen, ‘Provinciales, gentiles and Marriages between Romans and Barbarians in the Late Roman Empire’, JRS 99 (2009), 150-2. 31 Alexander Demandt, ‘Der spätrömische Militäradel’, Chiron 10 (1980), 618. 32 A. Demandt, ‘Der spätrömische Militäradel’ (1980), 611-4. Also about this, Alexander Demandt, ‘The osmosis of Late Roman and Germanic aristocracies’, in Evangelos Chrysos and Andreas Schwarcz (eds), Das Reich und die Barbaren (Wien, Köln, 1989), 75-85; and A. Schwarcz, ‘Marriage and Power Politics’ (2003), 43. 33 In Sid. Apol., Carm., 5, 205: exclusa sceptris Geticis.

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was not necessarily a Goth, even less so if the words were used in a poetic context: according to Jordanes, for instance, the Vandals were Getes just like the Huns were Scythians.34 Despite this, we must remember that this term, used by Sidonius, has a positive meaning – being Scythian the usual derogatory term applied to barbarians – so maybe Pelagia was indeed someone linked to Visigothic royalty. Loyen’s suggestion, that she was daughter to Theoderic I, is however merely hypothetical: the word Geta is ambiguous, but no more ambiguous than the Gothic ‘kingship’ at the beginning of the fifth century.35 Wijnendaele, being more cautious, states that Pelagia could have been a Gothic noblewoman who was part of Placidia’s entourage, which was still linked to her by being Athaulf’s widow.36 That is a possibility, and it may imply that Pelagia could be related to any Gothic lineage that, by the 440s (the date of the panegyrics to Aëtius37), was eager to depict itself as royal.38 E. Gil Egea goes further and proposes that Pelagia was the Ostrogoth Berimud’s daughter, an Amal who was by then in service of Theoderic I.39 What was Pelagia’s political appeal? Bonifatius had a complicated relationship with the imperial court, and especially with Galla Placidia, after the deaths of both Constantius III (421) and Honorius (423).40 As suggested by the aforementioned scholars, Pelagia could have been a key element in softening and ensuring Bonifatius’ good relations with the court. As Schwarcz defended, the nature of these ties was political, and maybe Pelagia’s will was hardly involved. She might have been used as a bargaining chip between Bonifatius and his entourage and the bride’s hypothetical courtly entourage – the Visigothic king? The Augusta? The specific benefits of the marriage are also unknown. Was Bonifatius an African magnate well connected to the senatorial African nobility, or was he an upstart African soldier?41 Was Pelagia an important person and 34

Iord., Get., 94-5, Iordanis Romana et Getica, ed. T. Mommsen, MGH aa 5, 1 (Berlin, 1882). Sarus and his alleged brother Sigeric were both reges: PLRE II, Sarus, 978. 36 J.W.P. Wijnendaele, The last of the Romans (2015), 49. 37 A. Loyen, ‘Flavius Merobaudes’ (1972), 171. 38 See Herwig Wolfram, History of the Goths (Berkeley, Los Angeles, 1988), 144-6, for the problems involving Visigothic kingship at that time. 39 Her opinion from J.W.P. Wijnendaele, The Last of the Romans (2015), 49. Since I could not read it, I do not know the details, but I guess it has something to do with her disposition of a Gothic retinue (used by both Bonifatius and Aëtius) and the identification of Verimodus (in Aug., Ep. 229; Ep. 230) as Bonifatius and Pelagia’s son, being named after his alleged grandfather Berimud. 40 On Placidia’s position, Hagith Sivan, Galla Placidia. The Last Roman Empress (Oxford, 2011), 89-93. 41 Opposite opinions in J.W.P. Wijnendaele, The Last of the Romans (2015), 29-32 (nonaristocrat), contrary to R.W. Mathisen, ‘The Last of the Romans. Bonifatius – Warlord and Comes Africae by Jeroen W.P. Wijnendaele (review)’, Journal of Late Antiquity 10 (2017), 524; and Brent D. Shaw, ‘Augustine and Men of Imperial Power’, Journal of Late Antiquity 8 (2015), 50-5 (aristocrat). I follow the second option and, in any case, I reject the Thracian origins accounted by Ps.-Bonif., Ep. 10. 35

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close to Placidia? Was she directly linked to Theoderic I, as Loyen believed? All this remains unknown, although biographers of Bonifatius agree that Pelagia was indeed a key character in the West and had much to do to improve Bonifatius’ position in the imperial court.42 The only thing that we can try is to relate this information to Bonifatius’ biography. Apart from a violent encounter with Athaulf in 413,43 the Roman general never had further contact with the Visigoths, but he did with the Vandals. On the other hand, if we suppose that Placidia’s position at court was sustained by her alliance to the exercitus Gothorum faction (then led by Theoderic I) and that she was opposed to Aëtius’ faction, with Hunnic federates’ support, we may have something here. As E. Gil Egea suggested, the marriage with Pelagia could have given Bonifatius access to Gothic bucellarii who could have helped him secure his power as comes Africae and as a major military figure in the West.44 The story became different when Bonifatius died and Pelagia married Aëtius. Marcellinus cannot avoid saying she was very rich by that time (ualde locupletem).45 Behind the maybe somewhat fanciful tale of Bonifatius on his deathbed recommend that Pelagia marry his rival Aëtius, something must be unknown to us. Marcellinus always depicts Aëtius positively: had he in fact forced Pelagia to marry him after defeating Sebastianus and achieving power, Marcellinus’ account would have covered it.46 I see the story as intending to be a posthumous recognition of Aëtius as a proper successor of Bonifatius (by marriage to his widow). What is certain is that, again, it is not important that Bonifatius believed Aëtius to be a proper husband to Pelagia. With the marriage, Aëtius obtained a wealthy wife and a marriage bond to his former rival’s family and maybe with someone close to Placidia. As for the barbarian ties of Pelagia, i.e., the retinue cited by Gil Egea, that seems unclear to me: Aëtius’ relations with the Visigoths were not good after 432, and if he finally gained their support, it was rather thanks to military subjugation and the intercession of the Gallic nobleman Avitus, as Pelagia is not mentioned anywhere.47 Aëtius had indeed barbarian (maybe Gothic) bucellarii (called satellites by Marcellinus)48 42 J. De Lepper, De rebus gestis (1941); J.W.P. Wijnendaele, The Last of the Romans (2015), 51-2. I support this view. 43 Olymp., fr., 21, The Fragmentary Classicising Historians of the Later Roman Empire, 1, ed. R.C. Blockley (Liverpool, 1983). 44 On the struggle between Aëtius and Placidia, see H. Sivan, Galla Placidia (2011), 104-18; G. Zecchini, Aezio (1983), 141-64. On the Gothic bucellarii, see J.W.P. Wijnendaele, The Last of the Romans (2015), 50-2, who follows E. Gil Egea, ‘Warrior Retinues’ (2003). 45 Marcell., Chron., a. 432. 46 See J.W.P. Wijnendaele, The Last of the Romans (2015), 107. Examples of positive propaganda of Aëtius in Marcellinus, in Marcell., Chron., a. 431, where he blames Placidia of the struggle between Aëtius and Bonifatius; and, more clearly, Marcell., Chron., a. 454, describing Aëtius as ‘magna Occidentalis rei publicae salus et regi Attilae terror’. 47 See G. Halsall, Barbarian Migrations (2007), 258. 48 Marcell., Chron., a. 454.

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who were important during the events of his Valentinian III’s death. However, Aëtius’ biography is complex enough to guess that, by 454, his retinue could have been picked from anywhere else. Unfortunately, since I could not study Gil Egea’s proposal and arguments, I will press this no further. According to Marcellinus, Aëtius sought Pelagia’s wealth, not her political connections. As a matter of fact, if Pelagia was relevant to her husband on some important political matter, it was encouraging his rivalry with Majorianus, according to Sidonius, in a strange way: Sidonius’ text emphasises the familial and maternal zeal of Pelagia. She sees Majorianus as a threat to her family and the future glory of her child Gaudentius.49 Although the writer regards Pelagia’s move as despicable, even blaming her barbarian blood,50 he reduces the whole event to a private affair. According to gender prejudices, Aëtius’ scheming wife was moved by envy and maternal affection. Any political motivations – we must remember that by the 440s Pelagia was a veteran politician – are concealed in order to fit in the usual wicked female depictions.51 No other significant account is given of Pelagia in our sources – and I have stated that I will not pay attention to the reference by Gregory of Tours. Even as an example of Christian virtue in literary portraits of Roman noblewomen, the vagueness of Gregory’s account is misleading. Pelagia herself is not regarded as devout by any contemporary source – in fact, she is seen in a different manner by Augustine, as I will examine later.52 The story is probably apocryphal and, so, it has nothing to do with the real Pelagia nor her portrait. The account is only useful as a proof that, by the sixth century, Gregory of Tours liked to imagine Aëtius’ wife as a faithful, devout, and pious woman. Conversion and Arianism Augustine of Hippo informed that Bonifatius only agreed to marry Pelagia once she had abandoned her heretical faith and accepted the conversion to Nicenism. Apart from the benefits obtained by her on doing so, it meant renouncement to her. Once again, new questions emerge: to what point was her conversion consensual? Did Bonifatius force her to do so, or did she accept it willingly, due to political calculations? Was the decision made without paying attention to the opinion of Pelagia’s family or political entourage, or was it a part of the compromise? We can add to all these questions the curious fact that, 49 Sid. Apol., Carm., 5, 202-4: quid faciam infelix? Nato quae regna parabo / exclusa sceptris Geticis, respublica si me / praeterit et paruus super hoc Gaudentius huius / calcatur facis? 50 Sid. Apol., Carm., 5, 126-8: ducis iam liuida coniux / […] suffusaque bili / coxerat internum per barbara corda uenenum. 51 Even comparing her to Medea (Sid. Apol., Carm., 5, 133-4). 52 Piety is not especially remarked on by Merob., Panegyr., 4, 21, or Sid. Apol., Carm., 5, 126-8.

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despite Pelagia’s conversion to the Nicene faith, Bonifatius let his daughter be baptised by a heretic priest. This issue then becomes even more interesting. Arianism was Pelagia’s faith, and as I said, this not only fits into her Gothic, or at least, barbarian, origins, but may also be a reason for the Greek etymology of her name, instead of the Germanic one. Thanks, again, to Augustine, we know that this was not the first time that Bonifatius came across religious matters in his life. He wrote a letter to Augustine because he had some doubts about the actual beliefs of the heretics.53 Augustine does not explain the reason for Bonifatius’ doubts: were his soldiers heretics? Were there heretic communities in Africa with whom he had some relationship? Were these heretics Arians, or (probably) Donatists? Augustine had contact with him for the first time in 417, when Bonifatius was a tribunus in Numidia. Although almost every author believes that he was there commanding a unit of foederati. B.D. Shaw recently proposed that he was a tribunus et notarius in charge of the repression of the Donatists.54 His proposal is compelling and fits well in Bonifatius’ will to learn about the heretics from a local bishop, given that he was probably meant to deal with heretic troublemakers in the province. In any case, Bonifatius was a learned man, with spiritual concerns,55 and Augustine seems to be proud enough of him to address a moral edification letter to him, which has become the model for the classical monitorium to the Christian military man. Bonifatius, therefore, should have been well aware of what was he doing in demanding Pelagia’s baptism. Conversion and marriage is not an isolated case: Eudoxia converted to Christianity when she married Arcadius, for instance.56 Bonifatius’ gesture gained Augustine’s approval, and probably also that of the African Nicene community in which Bonifatius was integrated. On the other side, the heretic baptism of his daughter – who disappears from History after that – saw the disapproval of the bishop of Hippo. As I have explained, there are some issues that must be examined. First, it is not sure that this daughter was Pelagia’s, although I believe she probably was. Second, who exactly baptised her? Augustine blames Bonifatius for letting ‘those who deny the true Son of God’ to be too influential in his household, even to let them baptise his daughter.57 Those heretics were Arians, since Augustine did not 53 Aug., Ep. 185; Ep. 189. See B.D. Shaw, ‘Augustine’ (2015), 51-2 on the identification of this letter with an Augustinian treaty against Donatists. 54 See, mainly, J. de Lepper, De rebus gestis (1941); J.W.P. Wijnendaele, The Last of the Romans (2015), 29-41; PLRE II, Bonifatius 3, 239, against B.D. Shaw, ‘Augustine’ (2015), 52-5. 55 That fits with R.W. Mathisen, ‘The Last of the Romans (review)’ (2017) expressed opinion: that Bonifatius was a well-connected African nobleman. However, it does not fit with the opinion of B.D. Shaw, ‘Augustine’ (2015), 53, who believes that he came from outside Africa and, in fact, was not aware at all of the nuisances of the religious differences there. 56 In Socrat., Hist. eccles., 7, 21 (Socratis scholastici, Hermiae Sozomeni historia ecclesiastica, ed. H. Valois, PG 67) it is reported that her original name was Athenaïs, and that she was not Christian. 57 Aug., Ep. 220.

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regard Donatists as having trinitarian mistakes. Finally, was the Arian baptism some condition for Pelagia’s support of Bonifatius (or his Gothic retinue)? Augustine tells that by 426, during Bonifatius’ struggle against Ravenna, those heretics were influential among his entourage (haeresis […] tantum praevaluit in domo tua). Pelagia was, therefore, an important character for Bonifatius’ political and military position: she may have played a key role in keeping the general’s military retinues together not only due to her political connections, but also her attachment to Arian priests, who baptised her daughter.58 As a complement to this possibility, it could also prove that Pelagia was indeed a Gothic aristocrat and the same woman praised by Merobaudes and quoted by Sidonius, contrary to Loyen and Zecchini’s views that this later wife of Aëtius was a different person.

58 On Arian clergymen among barbarian units of the Roman army, Ralph W. Mathisen, ‘Barbarian ‘Arian’ Clergy, Church Organization, and Church Practices’, in Guido M. Brendt and Roland Steinacher (eds), Arianism: Roman Heresy and Barbarian Creed (Farnham, Burlington, 2014), 157-8.

The Image of Empress Lupicina (Euphemia) in the Patristic Sources Margarita VALLEJO GIRVÉS, Universidad de Alcalá, Alcalá de Henares, Spain1

ABSTRACT Among the important governments of emperors Anastasius and Justinian, and those of their respective wives, that of Justin I has gone unnoticed. Until the study of B. Croke in 2007 the period between 518 and 527 has been treated as a previous step of the mandate of Justinian I, being therefore Justin I a mere puppet in the hands of his nephew. Nonetheless, there is currently a broad debate about the figure of Justin I and his real political activity. On top of this, it should not be surprising that the interest for Euphemia, wife of Justin I, has been practically reduced to a simple opposition to the marriage of Justinian and Theodora. However, the ecclesiastical sources present her with a great capacity to influence her husband in such matters as the end of the Acacian schism, which was the great religious initiative of Justin I’s reign. This is the case of Pope Hormisdas, on behalf of the supporters of the ecclesiastical union between Rome and Constantinople, who requests the intervention of Euphemia to persuade the emperor to restore three Chalcedonian bishops deposed by Anastasius I. This is also the case of John of Ephesus who, as attested in fragments preserved through Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre and Michael the Syrian, is presented not only as an active militant of the Chalcedonian, but also as the only member of the court of Justin I whose pressure on John of Constantinople achieved that he accepted, in the end, the union with Rome.

The position of the reign of Justin I and Euphemia between the ‘greats’ of Anastasius and Ariadne, and Justinian and Theodora, and the fact that we have lost all the historical works written contemporaneously with the reign of Justin I – the work of Theodorus Anagnostes, written under his reign, has only reached us piecemeal; and the part of the History that Hesychius dedicated to Justin has been completely lost2 –, explain the fact that we only have one monograph dedicated to Justin I, and a very old one too, dating from 1950, authored by 1

This article has to be included in the research project PGC2018-093729-B-100, ‘Augustae. Materializando a una Augusta: Historia, Historiografía e Historiología de las emperatrices leónidas (451-518)’. 2 Geoffrey Greatrex, ‘Lawyers and Historians in Late Antiquity’, in Ralph Mathisen (ed.), Law, Society and Authority in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2001), 148-61; Anthony Kaldellis, ‘The Works and Days of Heysichos the Illoustrios of Miletos’, GRBS 45 (2005), 381-403 (Hesychius); Filippo Carcione, Liberato di Cartagine. Breve Storia della controversia nestoriana ed eutichiana. Introduzioine, traduzione e note (Anagni, 1998), 23-4; Cyril Mango and Roger Scott, The

Studia Patristica CXXX, 263-278. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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Alexander Vasiliev.3 There are two chapters dedicated to this emperor in Paulys Realencyclopädie den classischen Altertumswissenschaft (RE) and in the Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum (RAC), some articles and a few book chapters dedicated exclusively to his performance as a ruler and to his religious policy.4 The subtitle of Vasiliev’s monograph is illustrative of the line that has been followed when covering Justin I’s reign and government: ‘An Introduction to the Epoch of Justinian the Great’, as traditionally Justin I has been presented as absolutely dependent on his nephew Justinian from the very outset of his reign, without being recognised as the true and only emperor in his own right. In fact, the numerous monographs and articles dedicated to Justinian I usually begin their analysis of his rule when Justin I accesses the throne, in 518, and not when Justinian I was actually proclaimed Caesar and heir, in 525.5 In 2007 Brian Croke published, in Byzantinische Zeitschrift, an article entitled ‘Justinian under Justin: Reconfiguring a Reign’, in which he convincingly demonstrates, in our opinion, how Justin I was, actually, an emperor who made many decisions of his own.6 Unfortunately, this line of study has not been amply embraced. In any case, if Justin, as a figure, and his rule, are characterised by this peculiarity in the historiography, it should hardly be surprising that his wife’s intervention regarding religious matters has gone completely overlooked, her life as empress falling between those of two important, powerful empresses, Ariadne and Theodora, who, moreover, played key roles in the religious controversies of their respective times. Procopius’s Secret History, a work dedicated to vilifying the emperors Justinian and Theodora, as people, and everything about their reign, portrays Euphemia as Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor. Byzantine and Near Eastern History. A.D. 284-813 (Oxford, 1997), LCCV-LXXVI (Theodorus Anagnostes). 3 Alexander A. Vasiliev, Justin the First. An Introduction to the Epoch of Justinian the Great (Cambridge, 1950). 4 Erns Stein, ‘Iustinus I’, RE X (1919), 1328; Milton Anastos, ‘The Emperor Justin I’s Role in the Restauration of Chalcedonian Doctrine 518-519’, Byzantina 13 (1985), 127-39; Jakob Spiegel, ‘Sydonen im Gefolge der Wender der Religionspolitik unter Kaiser Justin (518)’, Ostkirchliche Studien 46 (1996), 3-20; Klaus Rosen, ‘Iustinus I’, RAC 19 (1999), 777; Geoffrey Greatrex, ‘Justin I and the Arians’, SP 34 (2000), 72-81; Frèderic N. Alpi, ‘L’orientation christologique des livres XVI et XVII de Malalas: les règnes d’Anastase (491-518) et de Justin Ier (518-527)’, in Sandrine Agusta-Bualarot (ed.), Recherches sur la chronologie de Jean Malalas II (Paris, 2006), 227-46; Geoffrey Greatrex, ‘The Early Years of Justin I’s Reign in the Sources’, Electrum 12 (2007), 99-113; Volker L. Menze, Justinian and the Making of the Syrian Orthodox Church (Oxford, 2008), 16-87; Jan-Markus Kötter, Zwischen Kaisern und Aposteln. Das Akakianische Schisma (484-519) als Kirchlicher Ordnungskonflikt der Spätantike (Stuttgart, 2013), 138-43. 5 To this historiographic perspective did not help that Procop., De aed. I 3, affirmed: ‘for to the Emperor’s credit there must also be reckoned the buildings erected by his uncle Justinus, since Justinian administrated the government also during this uncle’s reign on his own authority’, trans. H. Dewing (Cambridge, 1954), 39. 6 Brian Croke, ‘Justinian under Justin: Reconfiguring a Reign’, BZ 100 (2007), 13-56.

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For the woman chanced to be far removed from wickedness, but she was very rustic and a barbarian by birth … And she was quite unable to take part in government, but continued to be wholly unacquainted with affairs of State…7

It seems clear that Procopius seeks to portray Euphemia as a figure standing in contrast to Theodora, an empress who, contrary to what should be expected of a woman –according to him –, participated in politics, greatly influencing the decisions of her husband, Justinian.8 Moreover, Euphemia is depicted in this manner specifically to assert that this empress was not involved in any affairs of state, except her opposition to Theodora becoming Justinian I’s legitimate spouse.9 Beyond the implications that all this may have, what interests us here are recognitions of the influence that Euphemia had on Justin I, which must have been great, as Justinian and Theodora were not married until after Euphemia’s death, as Procopius again indicates.10 Before the coronation of her husband, Justin I, Euphemia was known as Lupicina. According to various authors, Theodorus Anagnostes, Victor of Tununa, Procopius and Theophanes Confessor, it was the demos, the people of Constantinople who, at that ceremony, began to cheer her using the name ‘Euphemia’.11 According to Procopius, this was due to the fact that her original name was ridiculous for an empress;12 it was lost on no one that the name ‘Lupicina’ evoked the Latin lupa, one of this word’s meanings being 7 Procop., HS IX 48-9: πονηρίας μὲν γᾶρ ἡ γυνὴ ἀποτάτω οὖσα ἐτύγχανεν, ἄγροικος δὲ ἦν κομιδῆ καὶ βάρβαρος γένος, ὥσπερ μοι εἴρηται. ἀντικαβέσθαι τε ἀρχῆς οὐδαμῆ ἰσχυσεν, ἀλλ᾿ ἀπειροτάτη οὖσα διατετέλεκε τῶν κατὰ τὴν πολιτείαν πραγμάτων, ed. H. Dewing (Cambridge, 1935), 116-8. 8 Cf. Harmut G. Ziche, ‘Abusing Theodora: Sexual and Political Discourse in Procopius’, Byzantiaka 30 (2012-2013), 311-23, 313-4, 317. 9 Procop., HS IX 47: ἐν τούτῳ γὰρ μόνον ἀπ᾿ ἐναντίας αὐτῷ ἐχώρει, καίρεπ ἀντιστατοῦσα, τῶν ἄλλων οὐδέν, ed. H. Dewing (Cambridge, 1935), 116. See A.A. Vasiliev, Justin the First (1950), 91-2. 10 Procop., HS IX 47: Ἕως μὲν οὖν ἡ βασιλὶς περιῆν ἔτι, γυμαῖκα ἐγγυητὴν ᾿Ιουστινιανὸς τὴν Θεοδώραν ποιήσασθαι οὐδεμιᾷ μηχανῇ εἶχεν, ed. H. Dewing (Cambridge, 1935), 116. Cf. David Daube, ‘The Marriage of Justinan and Theodora. Legal and Theological Reflections’, Cambridge University Law Review 16 (1967), 380-99, 386-7, about the possible reasons Euphemia could have had to be against that marriage; B. Croke, ‘Justinian under Justin’ (2007), 41, about the influence of that empress on Justin precisely analyzing that ‘victory’ over Justinian. 11 Theod. Anag., HE 524: σύμβιον ἔχων ὀνόματι Λουππικίναν, ἣ γενομένην Αὐγούσταν Εὐφημίαν οἱ δημόται ὠνόμασαν, ed. Th. Hansen (Berlin, 1971), 151; Vict. Tun., Chron. ad a. 518: cuius coniux Lupicina nomine dicebatur, quam Constantinopolitani Euphemiam postea vocaverunt, ed. Th. Mommsen (Berlin, 1894), 196; Procop., HS VI 17: γυναικὶ δὲ ὄνομα Λουππικίνῃ ξυνῷκει; Procop., HS IX 49: ἥ γε οὐδε ξὺν τῷ ὀνοματι τῷ αὐτῆς ἰδίῳ ἄτε καταγελάστῳ ὄντι ἐς Παλάτιον ἦλθεν, ἀλλ᾿ Εὐφημία ἐπικληθεῑσα, ed. H. Dewing (Cambridge, 1935), 72 and 118; Theoph. Conf., Chron. a. m. 6011: σύμβιον δὲ ἕχων ὀνόματι Λουπικίαν ταύτην Εὐφημίαν οἱ δῆμοι ἐκάλεσαν στεφθεῖσαν αὐτηὴν αὐγούσταν, ed. C. de Boor (Leipzig, 1883), 165; also Cedren., Hist. 636; Zon., Ann. XIV 5. See Alan Cameron, Circus Factions: Blues and Greens at Rome and Byzantium (Oxford, 1976), 145. 12 Procop., HS IX 49; cf. D. Daube, ‘The Marriage of Justinan’ (1967), 385.

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‘prostitute’.13 The fact that – again, according to Procopius – she was a woman of barbarian origins, a former slave, bought and manumitted by Justin when he was still a member of the imperial guard, and whom he married before he had been proclaimed emperor, could have spurred the people of Constantinople to consider it necessary for their new Empress to have a more dignified name.14 Such a rechristening of an empress had no precedent, and it would only be repeated once: in the case of Ino, Tiberius II’s wife, who came to be called ‘Anastasia’.15 In any case, we must bear in mind some fundamental questions: firstly, that, as has been stated, the name ‘Lupicina’ was but a Greco-Latin interpretation of her original barbarian name, which we do not know; secondly, given the demos of Constantinople’s scant knowledge of Latin, we are sceptical of the extent to which it was the people’s decision to change the name Lupicina to Euphemia. It seems more plausible that it was the ‘courtiers’ who backed Justin’s ascent to the throne, more versed in Latin, who came up with this new name for the empress, with the masses then embracing and applying it.16 In any case, it should be remembered that the name Euphemia is that of one of Constantinople’s great women saints, and that one of the churches dedicated to her, that of Chalcedon, has been associated with the site of the eponymous Council, which, for our study of the religious policies of Justin I and Euphemia, is of the most profound importance.17 Lupicina and Euphemia were not the only names Justin I’s wife was dubbed with. In events that took place in the Hagia Sophia between July 15 and 18 of the year 518, and whose protagonists were the patriarch of Constantinople, John, and the people of the city, the crowds cheered the emperors, using not only their names: ‘Justinus Augustus, triumph!, Euphemia Augusta, triumph!’18 but also others whose reminiscences are well known: ‘The Faith of the emperor triumph, the Faith of the Augusta triumph, long live the New Constantine, long live the New Helena!’19 That is, Justin I’s wife was known as Lupicina, and 13

Misha Meier, ‘Der “Kaiser der Luppa”: Aspekte der Politischen Kommunikation im 6. Jahrhundert n. Chr.’, Hermes 129 (2001), 401-30, 417. 14 Procop., HS VI 17. 15 PLRE III A, 60-1, sub ‘Aelia Anastasia (Ino)’. The case of Ino-Anastasia has many similarities with that of Lupicina-Euphemia, as in addition to the name changed when accessing the throne, she was also called Helena; both onomastic baptisms were proclaimed by the demos of Constantinople; see Iohan. Ephes., Hist. III 3,9 and infra. 16 M. Meier, ‘Der “Kaiser der Luppa”’ (2001), 417-8. 17 See infra. 18 ACO III. Collectio Sabbaitica 5, p. 74, l. 25: ᾿Ιουστῖνε αὔγοθστε TVINCAS, Εὐφημία αὐγουστα TVINCAS, ed. E. Schwartz (Berlin, 1940), 74. 19 ACO III. Collectio Sabbaitica 5, p. 72, l. 11-3: νικᾶι ἡ πίστις τοῦ βασιλέως, νικᾶι ἡ πίστις τῆς αὐγουστας. τοῦ νέου Κωνσταντίνου πολλὰ τὰ ἔτη, τῆς νέας Ελένης πολλὰ τὰ ἔτη, ed. E. Schwartz (Berlin, 1940), 74. Also ibid. p. 72, l. 26-8: πολλὰ τὰ ἐτη τοῦ βασιλέως, τοῦ νέου Κωνσταντίνου πολλὰ τὰ ἐτη, τοὺ ὀρθοδόξου βασιλέως πολλὰ τὰ ἔτη, τῆς νέας ῾Ελένης πολλὰ τὰ ἔτη, ed. E. Schwartz (Berlin, 1940), 72. Cf. also ibid., p. 74, l. 23-4. See Michael Whitby, ‘Images for Emperor in Late Antiquity: a Search for New Constantine’, in Paul Magdalino (ed.), New Constantines (Birmigham, 1994), 83-93.

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Euphemia, and also cheered on as the ‘New Helena’.20 At those same acts the people praised them as the defenders of the Trinity, and concluded with the following cheers: ‘Justinus Augustus, pride of the Trinity, triumph! Long live the Augusta!’21 All of the above occurred a few days after Justin I’s election I as emperor, and in a context in which, as we will try to explain below, the people were clamouring for ecclesiastical union with Rome, recognition of the Council of Chalcedon, the inclusion in the Church of Constantinople’s ecclesiastical diptychs of the four ecumenical councils, and the Roman pontiffs since Leo I; the restoration of Euphemius and Macedonius, the patriarchs of the city deposed and exiled by Emperor Anastasius I, Justin I’s predecessor; the condemnation of the Nestorians and Monophysites, the deposing of Monophysite bishops; and the censure, ousting, exile, and amputation of the Severus of Antioch’s tongue, the religious leader of Monophysitism.22 Euphemia Augusta would play a key role in realising virtually all of these demands, voiced by the people, and, as we shall see, the pope Hormisdas, both Chalcedonian and Monophysites coinciding entirely in this regard. The refusal by the Church of Constantinople, and by the emperors Zeno and Anastasius, to condemn the Bishop of Alexandria, Peter Mongus, as a heretic, and to annul the Henotikon – a document issued by Zeno and in whose drafting Acacius, the patriarch of Constantinople, played an essential role –, both demands of the Church of Rome, triggered the first rupture in the history of Christianity: the Acacian Schism, for the name of the patriarch who refused to comply with Rome’s demands. The crisis spanned from 483 to 518, that is, during the reigns of Zeno and Anastasius I, who considered it more expeditious for their governmental interests to tolerate Monophysite positions, which prevailed in the rich eastern provinces of Syria and Egypt.23 During the final years 20 ACO III. Collectio Sabbaitica 5, p. 75, l. 7-8: τῆς νέας ῾Ελένης πολλὰ τὰ ἔτη, ed. E. Schwartz (Berlin, 1940), 75. 21 ACO III. Collectio Sabbaitica 5, p. 61, l. 22; 90, l. 6-8 22 The whole documentation regarding these facts is collected within the Acts of the Council of Constantinople of the year 536, published by Edward Schwartz in ACO III. Collectio Sabbaitica contra Acephalos et Origeniastas Destinata. Insunt acta Synodorum Constantinopolitanae et Hierosolymitanae (Berlin, 1940). 23 Among others, cf. Edward Schwartz, Publizistiche Sammlungen zum Acacianischen Schisma (Munich, 1934), passim; William H.C. Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement. Chapters in the History of the Church in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries (Cambridge, 19792), 14499; Alois Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition. Volume Two. From the Council of Chalcedon (451) to Gregory the Great (590-604). Part. One. Reception and Contradiction. The Development of the Discussion about Chalcedon from 451 to the Beginning of the Reing of Justin (English trans., Atlanta, 1987), passim; Philip Blaudeau, Alexandrie et Constantinople (451-491). De l’histoire à la géo-ecclésiologie (Roma, 2006), passim; id., ‘Motifs et structures de division ecclésiales. Le schisme acacien (484-519)’, AHC 39 (2007), 65-99; Pauline Allen and Bronwen Neil, Crisis Management in Late Antiquity (410-590 CE). A Survey of the Evidence from Episcopal Letters

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of this reign Anastasius I suffered two major rebellions of clearly Chalcedonian inspiration. The first were the Trisagion Riots, in 512-513, a popular uprising to proclaim Ariobindus emperor, the husband of the powerful Theodosian Juliana, the noble whose militant defence of the principles of the Council of Chalcedon is very well documented, thanks to several epigrams in the Palatine Anthology, Cyril of Scythopolis’ Vita Sancti Sabae, and some epistles inserted in the Collectio Avellana.24 Anastasius I, however, managed to quell the rebellion, this having the significant consequence of the deposing and exile of Patriarch Macedonius II.25 The second rebellion, arising in the Thracian area, was led by Vitalianus, a general of the imperial army who demanded ecclesiastical reconciliation with Rome. Although initially this was also a great success, as Vitalianus laid siege to Constantinople, forcing Anastasius to commence negotiations with the Roman pontiff to accede to his demands, it ultimately failed and the emperor was able to resume his defiant stance towards the Roman postulates.26 With regards to this process of resistance to Rome, in addition to the aforementioned Monophysite majority in the rich Syrian/Egyptian regions,27 it should be noted that it occurred at a time when there was no longer an emperor in the West, and when the Italic Peninsula was successively conquered by Theoderic the Ostrogoth, which made the Roman pontiff a subject of this barbarian king, rather than any emperor.28 Anastasius I’s death before he had children, his nephews’ absence from Constantinople at that time – elsewhere we showed that not all of Anastasius’s family was Monophysite,29 and court intrigues favoured the election as emperor of the comes excubitorum, or head of the imperial guard, Justin I, a Thracian from (Leiden, Boston, 2013), 107-11; Rafal Kosiński, The Emperor Zeno. Religion and Politics (Cracow, 2010), 177-201; J.M. Kötter, Zwischen Kaisern (2013), passim. 24 Michael Whitby, ‘Factions, Bishops, Violence and Urban Decline’, in Jens-Uwe Krause and Christian Witschel (eds), Die Stadt in der Spätantike – Niedergang oder Wandel? (Stuttgart, 2006), 452; Misha Meier, ‘Stauortheis di’hemas – Der Aufstand gegen Anastasios im Jahr 512’, Millenium 4 (2008), 200-34, and see infra. 25 Cf. Margarita Vallejo Girvés, ‘Decretos de destierro sin juicios previos. El caso del patriarca Macedonio II de Constantinopla según Teófanes Confesor, Chron. a. m. 6004, ad a. 511-512’, in Lex et Religio (Roma, 2013), 461-82. 26 Cf. Paul Peeters, ‘Hypatius et Vitalien: autour de la succession de l’empereur Anastase’, AIPh 10 (1950), 5-51; Carmelo Capizzi, L’Imperatore Anastasio I (491-518). Studio sulla sua vita, la sua opera e la sua personalità (Roma, 1969), 123-7; Geoffrey Greatrex, ‘“Flavius Hypatius, quem vidit validum parthus sensitque timendum”. An investigation of his career’, Byzantion 66 (1996), 120-34, 132-4; Dan Ruscu, ‘The Revolt of Vitalianus and the “Scythian Controversy”’, BZ 101 (2009), 773-85. 27 Fundamentally V.J. Menze, Justinian and the Making (2008), 67-103; J.M. Kötter, Zwischen Kaisern (2013), 81-9. 28 John Moorhead, Theoderic in Italy (Oxford, 1992), 194-200. 29 Margarita Vallejo Girvés, ‘El patriarca Macedonio y la aristocracia femenina de Constantinopla’, in Giorgio Vespignani (ed.), Polidoro. Studi offerti ad Antonio Carile (Spoleto, 2013), 79-104.

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Bederiana, though not without some resistance at the court.30 From the outset, shortly after his proclamation Justin revealed his intention to end the separation of the churches of East and West and sign the Libellus Hormisdae, a statement of faith demanded by the Roman Pontiff Hormisdas.31 Thus, the Council of Chalcedon was to be accepted as ecumenical, and to be included, along with the names of the Roman pontiffs, on the diptychs of the Constantinople’s church.32 Justin I’s plans, though well received by the population of Constantinople – as augured by the events of July 15 to 18, 518, in which the people demanded that the emperors meet all of Rome’s requirements – initially met with strong resistance by John, who then occupied the patriarchal see of the city. The patriarch was recalcitrant not only because he rejected the principles of the Council of Chalcedon, but also because Rome’s demands included the elimination from the church’s diptychs of the name of the ancient patriarch Acacius.33 John, who had been chosen by Anastasius, collaborated with him actively in resisting Rome’s demands.34 Most of the chroniclers refer only to Justin I’s intention to end the rupture of the Church, and this venture’s success, without mentioning that his wife, the Empress Euphemia, played a key role in it.35 Two Monophysite chronicles, however – that of the Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre, written in the eighth century; and that of Michael the Syrian, composed in the twelfth century – mention that it was the Empress Euphemia’s stance that overcame the resistance of the patriarch John, who, as a result, acceded to the Chalcedonians’ demands.36 According to the Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre: By the bishop of the city, by the name of John, having realized that wrong things were about to happen in the Church, omitted to inscribe the Councils on the church (diptychs). 30 Zach., HE VIII 1; Procop., HS VI 10-1; Malal., Chron. 410; Evagr., HE IV 1; Iohan. Nik., Chron. XC 1. Cf. G. Greatrex, ‘The Early Years’ (2007), 99-105. 31 Coll. Avell., Epist. 141-4. 32 Zach., HE VII 14 and VIII 1; Malal., Chron. 411; Evagr., HE IV 5; Lib. Pontif. 54.5; Iohan. Nik., Chron. XC 6-7; Pseudo-Dionysius of Tell-Mahre, Chron. II 16-7. Cf. M. Anastos, ‘The Emperor Justin I’s Role’ (1985), 134-8; B. Croke, ‘Justinian under Justin’ (2007), 26-7. 33 Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre, Chron. II 16-7; Mich. Syr., Chron. IX, 16. Cf. V.L. Menze, Justinian and the Making (2008), 26-7. On the importance of the inclusion or suppression of names of bishops in ecclesiastical diptychs, cf. Yonatan Moss, Incorruptible Bodies: Christology, Society and Authority in Late Antiquity (Oakland, 2016), 92 and n. 67; Robert F. Taft, A History of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. IV. The Diptychs (Roma, 1991), 122-4. See Otto Stegmüller, ‘Diptychon’, RAC 3 (1957), 1138-45; Robert F. Taft and Alexander Kazhdan, ‘Diptychs, Liturgical’, ODB I (Oxford, 1991), 637-8. 34 Vict. Tun., Chron. ad a. 517; Theoph. Conf., Chron. a. m. 6010. 35 Zach., HE VII 14 and VIII 1; Marc. Com., Chron. ad a. 519 and ff.; Malal., Chron. 410 and 416; Lib. Pontif. 54.5; Evagr., HE IV 1; Chron. Pasch. § 611; Const. VII Porphyr., De caerem. I, 93. 36 Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre, Chron. II 16-7; Mich. Syr., Chron. IX 16. Cf. M. Meier, ‘Der “Kaiser der Luppa”’ (2001), 417, that the monophysites referred to her as Lupicina, and not as Euphemia, in a clear derogatory sense.

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When the day of a feast came, (the Elder)’s wife, whose name was Lupicina, who was also zealous in this matter and urged others about it, sent a message to the bishop: ‘If you do not inscribe the Councils in the diptychs of the church, I will not come to church, and I will not receive communion from your hands’. In this way he was compelled to inscribe and proclaim these four Councils on that feast.37

Thanks to various authors we know that both authors, the Pseudo-Dionysius of Tell-Mahre and Michael the Syrian, used different manuscripts of the lost second part of the Ecclesiastical History by John of Ephesus, written in the second half of the sixth century, to document the events of the church for Justin’s time.38 Therefore, we believe that the Monophysites of the second half of the sixth century actually attributed Empress Euphemia a key role in the union with Rome, while Chalcedonian writers (with a sole exception that we will analyse later) did not, at any time, as for them all credit was to be given to Pope Hormisdas and, perhaps, Justin I and de Vitalianus, the Chalcedonian general who rebelled against Anastasius.39 The recognition of empress Euphemia in this success is also found in a Coptic source of the eighth century: the Chronicle by Bishop John of Nikiu, also a Monophysite. When this author presents the election of Justin I as emperor he makes the following comment: ‘Justin the terrible, the consort of empress Euphemia’.40 The role John of Ephesus assigns Euphemia in the episode of the patriarch John’s ‘Roman conversion’ may have an initial explanation reminiscent of Procopius and his portrayal of her as a figure contrasting with Theodora; while for this author Euphemia had not become involved in matters of state, Theodora had done so excessively.41 According to all the Monophysite writers, especially John of Ephesus, Theodora was a pious, orthodox Empress; that is, a defender of the Monophysites.42 Thus, it is easily understandable that he accuses a clearly Chalcedonian empress, Euphemia, of treachery used to weaken the resistance of the tepidly Chalcedonian patriarch John. That is, John of Ephesus also uses Euphemia as a counterpoint to his heroine, Empress

37 Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre, Chron. II 16-7 (trans. Witold Witakowski, Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre, Chronicle, Part III [Liverpool, 1996], 18). 38 Jan van Ginkel, John of Ephesus. A Monophysite Historian in Sixth Century Byzantium (Groningen, 1995), 60; Witold Witakowski, ‘Sources of Pseudo-Dionysius for the Third Part of his Chronicle’, Orientalia Suecana 40 (1991), 252-75, 252, 259, 268. 39 See supra. 40 Iohan. Nik., Chron. XC 1, trans. Robert H. Charles, The Chronicle of John, Bishop of Nikiu (London, Oxford, 1916), 132. Cf. John Moorhead, ‘The Monophysite Response to the Arab Invasion’, Byzantion 51 (1981), 579-91. 41 See supra. 42 Susan A. Harvey, Asceticism and Society in Crisis: John of Ephesus and ‘The Lives of the Eastern Saints’ (Berkeley, 1990), 80-91, 177-83; ead., ‘Theodora, the “Believing Queen: A Study of Syriac Historiographical Tradition’, Hugoye. Journal of Syriac Studies 4 (2010), 20934, 220-9.

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Theodora, presenting her as a defender of the same Christian tendencies as her husband, Justin I. Euphemia’s threat issued to the patriarch, to not attend the church – possibly Hagia Sophia – any longer, and especially her refusal to receive communion from the patriarch’s hands, for his refusal to include the Council in the diptychs, seems a recurrent form of intimidation used by the emperors of that era to pressure the different patriarchs to comply with their wishes or ambitions. This, for example, was the case of Ariadne and Anastasius, who, according to a letter reproduced by the Monophysite Zacharias of Mytilene, refused to receive communion from the patriarch Macedonius at the dedication ceremony of a martyrium in the district of Hebdomón, because he was convinced of the need for ecclesiastical union with Rome. In spite of this refusal, Macedonius stood firm, which ultimately led to his removal and exile.43 If we believe the retrieved text by John of Ephesus about Euphemia’s threat to John of Constantinople, this patriarch was not so brave, as he yielded to the Empress’s demand and agreed to begin the negotiations and protocols for union with Rome.44 The taking of communion by the emperors from the patriarch was the most visible gesture signifying their shared faith. As of the fourth century the only lay people who took communion at the altar were the emperors, in an absolutely formal, ceremonial act that included kissing the patriarch, and that only took place on very important days, most previously marked on the liturgical calendar; days when, as John of Ephesus’ aforementioned text says, the imperial couple would go to the city’s Great Church. According to the Liber de caeremoniis, there were five occasions on which the imperial couple would take communion at Hagia Sophia: Christmas, Hypapante, Annunciation, Easter Monday and Sunday of Pentecost. In addition, they would surely do so on the day of the Theophany, the Feast of Orthodoxy, and on the Sunday of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, the Sunday after Easter, the Transfiguration, and on all those occasions constituting major liturgical celebrations in the Great Church.45 Although John of Ephesus – via Pseudo-Dyonisius and Michael the 43 Zach., HE VII 8; the author of the letter he reproduces was the presbyter Simon of Amida, who claimed to witness these facts. Cf. also Ps.-Athan., Vit. Sever. (vers. Arabica), 74. Cf. A. Grillmeier, Christ in Christian (1987), 277-8; Brian E. Daley, ‘Apollo as a Chalcedonian: A New Fragment of a Controversial Work from Early Sixth-Century Constantinople’, Traditio 50 (1995), 31-54, 39-40; Jitse Dijkstra and Geoffrey Greatrex, ‘Patriarchs and Politics in Constantinople in the Reign of Anastasius (with a Reedition of O. Mon. Epiph. 59)’, Millenium 6 (2009), 223-64, 237; M. Vallejo Girvés, ‘El patriarca Macedonio y la aristocracia’ (2013), 88-9. 44 Coll. Avell., Epist. 146; see Theoph. Conf., Chron. a. m. 6010. Cf. J. Van Ginkel, John of Ephesus (1995), 151-7; G. Greatrex, ‘The Early Years’ (2007), 99; V.L. Menze, Justinian and the Making (2008), 26-7, 32, which attributes only to Justin I a decisive role in the change of attitude of Patriarch John. 45 Const. VII Porfyr., De caerem. I 1, 9, 10, 32, 37, 39. Cf. Robert F. Taft, ‘The Decline of Communion in Byzantium and the Distancing of the Congregation from the Liturgical Action: Cause, Effect, or Neither?’, in Sharon E.J. Gerstel (ed.), Thresholds of the Sacred Architectural

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Syrian – does not specify it, the fact that he mentions that this radical decision of Euphemia happened on one of the feast days on which the imperial couple attended the liturgical services inclines us to surmise that it was on one of the aforecited days. Since the coronation of Justin I took place in June of 518, and the events already described, involving the imperial pair, took place from 15 to 18 July of that year, revealing the patriarch’s reluctance to grant everything that the people demanded, we can suppose that this episode of tension between the Empress Euphemia and Patriarch John must have taken place at one of the celebrations in August and September; that is, the Transfiguration (August 6) or the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (September 14). Therefore, from that episode involving Euphemia and the patriarch John – whose veracity we have no reason to doubt, because we know the precedent of Anastasius, Ariadne and the patriarch Macedonius – we can deduce Euphemia’s influence as empress, and as Augusta, but also her strong personality, and that her Christian sensibilities were the same as those espoused by her husband, Justin I.46 Now, we have to deal with the only Chalcedonian source that had given empress Euphemia an important role in the ‘negotiations’ between her husband, the emperor Justin I, and pope Hormisdas. If the Monophysite sources tell us about all of the above, Hormisdas’s epistles to Euphemia also paint for us an empress who was presumed to strongly influence her husband, which leads to the conclusion we already reached when we suggested that Euphemia managed for Justin to reject the marriage of Theodora and Justinian. Euphemia’s influence on Justin was greater, then, than Justinian’s, a circumstance that was well known in Rome. Hormisdas’s information sources were, it is well known, the akoimetoi monks of Constantinople, fervent Chalcedonians, numerous and highly influential in the capital.47 Let us, therefore, analyse the papal epistles addressed to Euphemia to try to understand what the pope expected of the Empress in the context of the end of the Acacian Schism. Thanks to several epistles included in the Collectio Avellana we know well what happened between Rome and Constantinople in the years 518 to 520 in terms of efforts to return to the ecclesiastical union existing before the Art: Historical, Liturgical and Theological Perspectives on Religious Screens, East and West (Washington, 2006), 27-50, 34-6. 46 See A. Cameron, Circus Factions (1976), 145, for whom there is not enough evidence that Eufemia was contrary to monophysism. 47 On the activity of the Acemetes monks during the Acacian schism, generally acting in favor of union with Rome, cf. W.H.C. Frend, The Rise (19792), 165; Margarita Vallejo Girvés, ‘Los monjes acemetas y la incomunicación por custodia de los legados de Félix III (II) de Roma en Constantinopla (483-485)’, Revista Diálogos Mediterrânicos 13 (2017), 86-102, 94-100. About these monks, cf. Jules Pargoire, ‘Acémètes’, DAChrT I (Paris, 1903), 307-21; Vernace Grumel, ‘Acémètes’, Dictionnaire de Spiritualité I (Paris, 1937), 169-75; Rudolph Riedinger, ‘Akoimeten’, Theologische Realenzyklopädie 2 (Berlin, New York, 1978), 148-53; Alice Mary Talbot and Robert F. Taft, ‘Akoimetoi, Monastery of’, ODB I (Oxford, 1991), 46-7.

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year 483.48 Thus, we know that in the months following the aforementioned events of mid-July of 518, in which an agreement was almost reached, backed by Justin I, to return to ecclesiastical and doctrinal unity – with the stubborn exception of many Episcopal sees in Syria, and all the Egyptians –, the emperor and the patriarch John – drawn to the cause by Euphemia’s intervention – sent letters to Hormisdas communicating their intention. This was followed by the sending of papal legates to Constantinople charged with the negotiations that were to lead to the union; these also carried various epistles for Emperor Justin, his nephew Justinian, the patriarch John, and the Empress Euphemia. The letters sent to the former – Justin, Justinian and John – praised the emperor and the patriarch’s intentions, although in them Hormisdas demanded the same thing that he had conveyed to Anastasius, a subject to which we have already alluded.49 In this same context, the first epistle that Hormisdas sent to Augusta Euphemia evidences the confidence that the pontiff had that she would convince Justin I to agree to the pope’s demands.50 That request of Hormisdas’ portrays an Empress firm in her Chalcedonian convictions, but especially an empress who held great sway over her husband. Thus, in Epistle 156 of the Collectio Avellana, dated in January 519, Hormisdas tells Euphemia that ‘since the sacred decision of your husband is known, we confidentially send this letter to your Clemency so that, Through you, your spouse’s piety may be more stimulated, to obtain peace in the church’.51 This short papal letter is full of praise for Euphemia, no doubt intended to incite the Empress to act with Justin I in favour of the Roman cause, which we understand as the result of the information about the Empress in Rome, especially regarding the importance that the emperor attached to her opinions and judgments.52 Thus we understand phrases like ‘since God has chosen you for the Empire, peace will be reached in the church; … you will have an important role in her to strengthen your husband’s piety and to achieve complete ecclesiastical peace’.53 In addition, Hormisdas very ably exploits the fact that in the 48

Coll. Avell., Epist. 141-210. Coll. Avell., Epist. 142, 144, 145, 148-50. 50 Coll. Avell., Epist. 156. 51 Coll. Avell., Epist. 156: Hinc est, quod quis sanctum coniugi vestri constat esse propositum, has fiducialiter ad vestram clementiam litteras destinamus, ut per vos ad perficiendam Ecclesiam pacem mariti vestri pietas amplius incitetur, ed. O. Gunther, CSEL 35, 603-4. Cf. Julia Hillner, ‘Empresses, Queens, and Letters: Finding a “Female Voice” in Late Antiquity’, Gender & History 31 (2019), 358-82, 362-3. 52 Cf. Joan M. Ferrante, ‘Licet longinquis regionibus corpore separate: Letters as Link in and to the Middle Ages’, Speculum 76 (2001), 877-95, 881, about the ‘use’ that the popes made of the feelings of imperial and aristocratic women to achieve their doctrinal goals; in the same sense, but applied to the specific case at hand, Julia Hillner, ‘Preserving Female Voices: Female Letters in Late Antique Letter Collections’, in Rita Lizzi Testa and Giulia Marconi (eds), The Collectio Avellana and Its Revivals (Cambridge, 2019), 210-44, 215-6, 226. 53 Coll. Avell., Epist. 156: Ecclesiarum pax iam caelesti ordinatione componitur, cum vos ad imperium deus elegit, apud quos esse integrum semper religionis suae cognouit affectum … ut 49

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events of mid July 518 Euphemia was cheered as a ‘New Helen’, as in that same epistle we see that he says ‘if the unity of the church found its sign [that is, the Cross] thanks to her, through you it will find the remedy [presumably, a return to unity]’.54 Now, Hormisdas recognised that it was a hard and great task for a woman to contribute to the union of the church; thus we understand this magnificent phrase, which reflects the above: ‘It will be a great occasion to praise your sex if, thanks to your intercession, Christ joins all the members of the church, which has been divided’.55 Euphemia’s response, which is dated in the spring of 519, is interesting, as it recognises the authority of the Apostolic See as the defender of the ‘right faith’.56 There seems to be a broad consensus that the epistles sent by Justin I, some of Justinian’s, and this from Euphemia, written in Latin, were composed by Proclus, a well-known quaestor at the court of Justin I, although there can be no doubt that its contents reflected the sentiments of their ‘nominal authors’.57 Thus, it should not surprise us that in that epistle by ‘Euphemia’ the authority of Rome was recognized, as this was something expressed in Justin I’s repeated epistles to Hormisdas, all of them prior to Euphemia’s reply. Although there was correspondence between Rome and Constantinople during the Acacian Schism – more abundant in the first years than in the last ones –, none of the pontiffs addressed the Empress during the whole process – Ariadne, the wife of Zeno and, later, Anastasius – quite possibly because in Roman papal circles they were aware that her thinking was in accord with that of her successive husbands.58 The election of Hormisdas in 514 did not facilitate any correspondence with Ariadne, who died at some point between 514 and 515, although at that time epistolary relations with Constantinople were non-existent. In any case, if Hormisdas decided to write to Euphemia, transmitting per vos ad perficiendam ecclesiae pacem mariti uestri pietas amplius incitetur, ed. O. Gunther, CSEL 35, 603. 54 Coll. Avell., Epist. 156: Superabitis quinimno illius merita, quia Ecclesiae unitas per illam suum invenit signum, per vos habituere remedium, ed. O. Gunther, CSEL 35, 603. Cf. Joan M. Ferrante, To the Glory of Her Sex: Women’s Role in the Composition of Medieval Texts (Bloomington, 1997), 16. 55 Coll. Avell., Epist. 156: Magna etiam vestro sexui parata es laudis occasio, si vobis instantibus Ecclesiae suae Christus quae divisa fuerant membra coniugant, ed. O. Gunther, CSEL 35, 604. See J.M. Ferrante, ‘Licet longinquis’ (2001), 882; id., To the Glory (1997), 6. 56 Coll. Avell., Epist. 194: Quem etenim non solum apostolicae sedis auctoritas celebrat, sed vitae quoque comendat integritas et studiosa rectae fide sollentia, ed. O. Gunther, CSEL 35, 652. 57 See Procop., HS VI 13-5. Cf. Tony Honore, ‘Some Constitutions Composed by Justinian’, JRS 65 (1975), 107-23, 107-12, 117; B. Croke, ‘Justinian under Justin’ (2007), 27 n. 73; see J. Hillner, ‘Preserving Female Voices’ (2019), 214-5, and ead., ‘Empresses, Queens, and Letters’ (2019), 367-72, in a more detailed study on the female authorship of some epistles, included those of Euphemia. 58 M. Vallejo Girvés, ‘El patriarca Macedonio y la aristocracia’ (2013), 84-91.

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everything we have indicated, it was because he must have been highly conscious of the empress’ capacity for influence on this matter. In the last decade of the reign of Anastasius several Chalcedonian women were distinguished among the aristocratic circles of Constantinople;59 all of them, even members of Anastasius’ family, revolved around the parallel court of Anicia Iuliana, the granddaughter of Valentinianus III and Licinia Eudoxia and daughter of the emperor Olybrius and Placidia; she was the last Theodosian, always defending, at all cost, unity with Rome and the supremacy of the seat. We have extensive documentation of her role, and that of her circle, in resisting Anastasius in his attempt to impose his will on religious matters. Under Anastasius, the resistance of aristocratic Chalcedonian women was totally united around Anicia Iuliana.60 However, again thanks to the Collectio Avellana we can gather that, under Justin and Euphemia, this Chalcedonian female unity in Constantinople weakened, and was even shattered. All this could have been due to the non-selection as emperor of any member of the family of Anicia Iuliana, which had been united with the family of Anastasius through the marriage between Olybrius, son of Anicia Iuliana, and Irene, Anastasius’s niece.61 After Justin I’s election and the arrival of the pontifical legates to Constantinople, Juliana turned to Hormisdas, urging him not to leave that city if they had not definitively concluded the signing of the Libellus Hormisdae;62 Juliana then had no confidence that the ‘raving dogs’, an expression she used in other epistle to designate the Monophysites and Acacians, would be defeated in the new ecclesiastical struggle that the new emperor had undertaken.63 Significantly, at no time did Juliana mention Justin, while in an epistle to her, Hormisdas, thanking her for her tenacity in the defence of the True Faith, praised her lineage: ‘In the same way as the vein of imperial blood renders your noble person, your conscience may shine in the light of good works’.64 In this context, the 59

J. Hillner, ‘Preserving Female Voices’ (2019), 227-8. M. Vallejo Girvés, ‘El patriarca Macedonio y la aristocracia’ (2013), 96-101, with bibliography. 61 See John Bardill, ‘New Temple for Byzantium: Anicia Juliana, King Solomon, and the Gilded ceiling of the Church of St. Polyeuktos in Constantinople’, in Will Bowden, Adam Gutteridge and Carlos Machado (eds), Social and Political Life in Late Antiquity (Leiden, 2006), 339-70, 340-1; M. Vallejo Girvés, ‘El patriarca Macedonio y la aristocracia’ (2013), 96. 62 Coll. Avell., Epist. 164, unequivocal signal, as J. Hillner advises, ‘Preserving Female Voices’ (2019), 227-9, of the distrust that the Theodosian had of the intentions of the new emperor; see infra regarding similar doubts expressed by Pompeius. 63 Coll. Avell., Epist. 198: rabidos canes, ed. O. Gunther, CSEL 35, 657; trans. J. Hillner, ‘Preserving Female Voices’ (2019), 241. 64 Coll. Avell., Epist. 179: Personam vestram imperialis sanguinis vena nobilitat, ita conscientiae bonorum meritorum luce praefulgat, ed. O. Gunther, CSEL 35, 635; trans. J. Hillner, ‘Preserving Female Voices’ (2019), 240. Cf. A.A. Vasiliev, Justin the First (1950), 181; Aglae M.V. Pizzone, ‘Da Melitene a Constantinopoli: S. Polieucto nella política dinastica di Giuliana Anicia. Alcune osservazione in margine ad A. P. I, 10’, Maia 55 (2003), 107-31; J. Bardill, ‘A New Temple’ (2006), 341; J. Hillner, ‘Preserving Female Voices’ (2019), 229. 60

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erection of a column of a golden statue of the Empress Euphemia opposite the ‘Theodosian’ church of Santa Euphemia, in the neighborhood of Olybrius, where the great palace of Anicia Iuliana was located, suggests a Justin I firmly determined for his wife not to be eclipsed by Anicia Iuliana.65 Hormisdas corresponded on this same matter with other women of Constantinople’s aristocracy. Perhaps the most significant is the epsitle written by Anastasia, wife of the patrician Pompeius, who was a nephew of Anastasius.66 In her epistle, Anastasia does mention ‘our … lord Augustus’,67 a reference that it does not cause surprise given that Pompeius continued, with total normality, his cursus honorum under Justin I.68 In the initial epistle of correspondence with Anastasia – at least the first epistle exchanged that has been preserved – Hormisdas informed her of the sending of the aforementioned legates, and asked her to persevere in her attitude to achieve the reconciliation of the church. However, at no time did he ask her to act directly upon Justin I.69 This request is only made of Euphemia, because, in our opinion, she was the only one who could significantly influence Justin I, although with some limitations, as we will try to explain. Although Justin I and Patriarch John signed the Libellus Hormisdae, and ecclesiastical union with Rome was restored, there were numerous episcopal sees in Syria and Egypt that expressed their disagreement.70 Justin I had orded 65 Parasat. Synt. Chron. 30: Εὐφηεμίας γυναικὸς ᾿Ιοθστίνου τοὺ Θρᾳκὸς ἐν τοῖς Ὀλυβρίου πλησίον. Τηἠς ἁγίας Εὐφεμίας, ἥτις ἐκκλησία ὑπ᾿ αὐτῆς ἐκτισθη, στήλη ἐν ἀναβάσει μικρὰ πάνυ χρυςέμβαφος ὑπάφχουσα, ed. Averil Cameron and Judith Herrin (Leiden, 1984), 92; Sud., Epsilon 3796, Εὐφημία. Cf. Judith Herrin, ‘The Imperial Femenine in Byzantium’, P&P 169 (2000), 3-35, 6-7; Anne McClanan, Representations of Early Byzantine Empress. Image and Empire (New York, 2002), 87-8. 66 Pompeius and Anastasia were ‘punished’ by Anastasius for their support to Macedonius: Theod. Anag., HE 505; Theoph. Conf., Chron. a. m. 6005. Cf. M. Vallejo Girvés, ‘El patriarca Macedonio y la aristocracia’ (2013), 93-4. 67 Coll. Avell., Epist. 165: domini nostri Augusti, ed. O. Gunther, CSEL 35, 616, trans. J. Hillner, ‘Preserving Female Voices’ (2019), 239. 68 Although J. Hillner, ‘Preserving Female Voices’ (2019), 229-30, from Coll. Avell., Epist. 163, sent by Pompeius to Hormisdas believes that he feared that the final outcome of the negotiation with Rome did not conclude successfully. Cf. PLRE II, 898-9, sub ‘Pompeius 2’. Pompeius was executed in 532 by order of Justinian, because the emperor suspected that he had participated in the Nikà; cf. Alan Cameron, ‘The House of Anastasius’, GRBS 19.3 (1978), 259-76, 262-9; id., Circus Factions (1976), 278-80. Anastasia, after that, moved to Jerusalem, where she was abbess of a monastery on the Mount of Olives; cf. John Patrich, Sabas. Leader of Palestinian Monasticism. A comparative Study in Eastern Monasticism. Fourth to Seventh Centuries (Washington, 1995), 282. 69 Coll. Avell., Epist. 157. This epistle of Hormisdas also includes, as a recipient, a woman named Palmatia; presumably she would be part of the most immediate circle of Anastasia and Pompeius; cf. M. Vallejo Girvés, ‘El patriarca Macedonio y la aristocracia’ (2013), 94-5 n. 50. Coll. Avell., Epist. 180, also addressed to Anastasia, it has a similar sense and intention. 70 Cf. W.H.C. Frend, The Rise (19792), 249-54; V.L. Menze, Justinian and the Making (2008), 19-30; Philip Blaudeau, ‘Between Petrine Ideology and Realpolitik: The See of Constantinople

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the deposition and banishment of the bishops, mostly from the Patriarchate of Antioch, who had been appointed under Anastasius, or who refused to recognise the union with Rome, or to grant authority to the Council of Chalcedon. He had also condemn Severus of Antioch, who was forced to flee and take refuge in Egypt, a province that Justin I did not include in his policy of ecclesiastical depositions for reasons that we can not deal with now.71 Justin, however, did not depose all the bishops who had been appointed by Anastasius, as some of them had expressed their agreement with his new policy of union with Rome. Hormisdas, however, demanded from the emperor, through the pontifical legates that still remained in Constantinople, that three Chalcedonian bishops who had been deposed and exiled by Anastasius, be restored, which meant removing those who had replaced them. These bishops were Elias of Caesarea, possibly the city of Palestine, and Nicostratus and Thomas, whose cities we cannot determine.72 Numerous are the epistles from Hormisdas related to the Acacian Schism that address this question of these bishops’ replacement. In addition to those sent to Justin, he sent others to Justinian and Germanus, nephews of the emperor, requesting their intercession.73 The pontiff also sent an epistle to this same end to Empress Euphemia,74 that once again evidences the confidence that Hormisdas had in Euphemia’s influence over her husband Justin I, although this time he does not refer to the glory of her sex should she manage to persuade him.75 We do not know whether Euphemia acted in response to Hormisdas’ request. In any case, the efforts made by the Pope in favour of these three bishops were fruitless. Justin and Justinian settled the issue by indicating that the bishops in Roman Geo-Ecclesiology’, in Lucy Grig and Gavin Kelly (eds), Two Romes. Rome and Constantinopolis in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2012), 368-84, 378-82. 71 Malal., Chron. 411; Evagr., HE IV 4. Cf. V.L. Menze, Justinian and the Making (2008), 44; Fredèric N. Alpi, La Route Royale. Sévère d’Antioche et les Églises d’Orient (512-518). I. Texte (Beyrouth, 2009), 73-4. 151-3. 72 Ernst Honigmann, Évêques et évêches monophysites d’Asie Anterieure au VIe Siècle (Louvain, 1951), 110-2. 73 Coll. Avell., Epist. 171, 172, 173, 175, 202, 203, 204, 211, 227. Cf. A.A. Vasiliev, Justin the First (1950), 188; B. Croke, ‘Justinian under Justin’ (2007), 30; V.L. Menze, Justinian and the Making (2008), 54; Ph. Blaudeau, ‘Between Petrine’ (2012), 378. 74 Coll. Avell., Epist. 203: Quaesumus namque et tandem de venerabilibus fratribus et coespiscopis nostris, Elia, Thomate atque Nicostrato, quod sacratissimorum canonum dictat auctoritas, vobis decernentibus impleatur: ne videantur ut auctores alicuis mali, quod primi ad unitatem sedis apostolicae festinarunt, in communi omnium gaudio soli meruisse perceli, et in facto laudabili victam personali odio cessisse iustitiam. Nostris ergo precibus apud clementissimum Augustum vestras adiungite, ut fructum, quem illis patrim regulae tribui et conservari praecipiunt, inimica tergiversatio auferre non possit”. The final part, Nostris ergo precibus apud clementissimum Augustum vestras adiungite, ut fructum, quem illis patrim regulae tribui et conservari praecipiunt, inimica tergiversatio auferre non possit, ed. O. Gunther, CSEL 35, 662. 75 See Coll. Avell., Epist. 210, as Hormisdas informs the three affected bishops that he has also sent a letter to the Augusta: quam ad praecellentissimam Augustam, ed. O. Gunther, CSEL 35, 669.

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overseeing those sees had accepted the union with Rome and were highly respected men in their communities, which is why Elias, Thomas and Nicostratus were required to wait for them to die before they could return to the sees from which they had been banished by Emperor Anastasius.76 Through the documents we have analysed, it seems clear to us that Empress Euphemia did more than effectively oppose Justinian’s marriage to Theodora. She was a fervent Chalcedonian, which the Chalcedonians in Constantinople and in Rome knew, but also the Monophysites. Hence, their testimonies suggest that through her actions Euphemia may have significantly contributed to the reconciliation, already desired by Justin I, of the churches of Rome and Constantinople, thereby ending the Acacian Schism. Euphemia died – possibly in 524 or 525 – and was buried, according to various chronicles, in a sarcophagus in the ‘Monastery of the Augusta’, attached to the church dedicated to the Apostle Saint Thomas. She could not be buried in the pantheon of the Holy Apostles because there was no space for any more sarcophagi. Two years later Justin I passed away and was buried in the same place. We cannot determine whether the denomination ‘monastery of the Augusta’ was due to the fact that it was founded by her, or because it was her place of burial; what in other documents is called ‘Justin’s monastery’ does not help us to advance a plausible hypothesis.77

76 Coll. Avell., Epist. 193 and 207. Cf. E. Honigmann, Évêques et évêches (1951), 110; W.H.C. Frend, The Rise (1972), 239; V.L. Menze, Justinian and the Making (2008), 17; Ph. Blaudeau, ‘Between Petrine’ (2012), 378. 77 Const. VII Porphyr., De caerem. II, 42; Patria Constantinop. 183 (Preger, 273). Cf. Glanville Downey, ‘The Tombs of the Byzantine Emperor at the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantiniple’, JHS 79 (1952), 27-51, 48-51; Philipp Grierson, ‘The Tombs and Obits of the Byzantine Emperors (337-1042)’, DOP 16 (1962), 3-60, 45-6; Raymond Janin, La géographie ecclésiastique de l’Empire Byzantin. Le siège de Constantinople et le Patriarchat Oecumenique. III. Les églises et les monastères (Paris, 1969), 54-5; Milena Manini, Liber de Caerimoniis Aulae Byzantinae: Prosopografia e Sepolture Imperiali (Spoleto, 2009), 148-9, 216.

Matrimonio y conversión en las cortes merovingia y visigoda: Brunehilda e Ingunda* Elisabet SEIJO IBÁÑEZ, Barcelona, España

ABSTRACT The famous queen Brunehilda, born in the Visigothic court, married the Merovingian monarch Sigebert I of Austrasia in 566 in the city of Metz. Their connection led to the conversion of the bride to the Catholic faith and the abandonment of Arianism. Brunehilda converted without showing any opposition and remained firm in her beliefs until her death, serving as a bulwark of Catholicism in Gallic lands. Her daughter Ingunda, born from her union with Sigebert I, was betrothed to Prince Hermenegild, son of Leovigild, and therefore would have to follow the same path as her mother, although in reverse. Upon her arrival at the Visigothic court, her grandmother Gosvinta expected Ingunda to convert to Arianism. However, her firm opposition unleashed the fury of Gosvinta, who, according to Gregory of Tours, exerted terrible violence on her granddaughter. Both links were the result of the dynastic policy of the Merovingian and Visigothic courts, although we can also frame them in the large-scale alliances of the barbarian kingdoms. The objective of this research is, firstly, to analyze the circumstances in which both links were forged and, secondly, to study the conversion episodes. Military power and protection from enemies seem to be the main reasons for the dynastic alliances, but the tremendous contrast between the Brunehilda and Ingunda conversions could have its origin in the pro-Catholicism rhetoric of Gregory de Tours.

Introducción Rex pie, reginae tanto de lumine gaude, Adquaesita bis est quae tibi nupta semel, Pulchra, modesta, decens, sollers, pia, grata, benigna, Ingenio, uultu, nobilitate potens1

Con estas bellas palabras el poeta Venancio Fortunato elogiaba las virtudes de la reina Brunehilda. Nacida en Hispania y perteneciente a la familia real visigoda, Brunehilda representó, una vez más en la Historia, el perfecto ejemplo * Este estudio se enmarca en los proyectos de investigación HAR2016-74981-P del Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, cuyos investigadores principales son los profesores Josep Vilella y Juan Antonio Jiménez, y del GRAT, Grup de Recerca 2017SGR-211, de la Direcció General de Recerca de la Generalitat de Catalunya, dirigido por el profesor Josep Vilella. 1 Venan. Fort., Carm. VI, 1, 35-8, ed. M. Reydellet (Paris, 2003), 52.

Studia Patristica CXXX, 279-294. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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de cómo las alianzas matrimoniales eran el sello de las alianzas políticas2. Por supuesto, el devenir de los acontecimientos políticos, sociales, militares e incluso religiosos podía hacer fluctuar las necesidades de los monarcas, por lo que las promesas de matrimonio no siempre se cumplían o las futuras esposas eran rechazadas a favor de otras candidatas que en aquel momento encajaran mejor con las pretensiones de los soberanos. Sin embargo, el pacto entre Atanagildo, padre de Brunehilda y monarca visigodo, y Sigeberto I de Austrasia se llevó a cabo con gran satisfacción para ambas partes. Brunehilda emprendió un gran viaje hacia su nuevo hogar3 y el enlace matrimonial con Sigeberto I de Austrasia se celebró sin contratiempos en la ciudad de Metz en el año 5664. Esta unión entre francos y visigodos no fue única ni singular, sino que forma parte de la política dinástica que se fraguó a gran escala entre los reinos bárbaros de Occidente. Al respecto, las fuentes nos informan de que, a lo largo de muchas décadas, las princesas de los pueblos visigodo, franco, burgundio u ostrogodo, entre otros, fueron enviadas a reinos extranjeros para desposarse con reyes o príncipes. Esta práctica tan común era el resultado de las alianzas que se establecían entre monarcas en un determinado momento, ya fuera para reforzar su propia posición dentro y fuera de sus fronteras como para obtener la ayuda de aliados extranjeros. Un ejemplo paradigmático de esta práctica es la del rey ostrogodo Teodorico, quien consiguió extender su influencia política por la Europa bárbara gracias a un complejo y astuto sistema de alianzas dinásticas a través del matrimonio de las mujeres de su familia5. Esta investigación se centra en el estudio del matrimonio y la conversión religiosa de Brunehilda y de su hija Ingunda. Ambas fueron prometidas con hombres en el extranjero como fruto de los pactos políticos de sus familias, lo 2 María del Rosario Valverde, ʻLos viajes nupciales entre el reino de Toledo y la Galia merovingia: una ocasión para la escenificación del poderʼ, en José Manuel Iglesias Gil y Alicia Ruiz Gutiérrez (ed.), Viajes y cambios de residencia en el mundo romano (Santander, 2011), 335-66, 337. 3 Los viajes nupciales de estas princesas, en los cuales iban acompañadas de un gran séquito y de carros cargados con su dote, eran un momento ideal para escenificar la riqueza de su familia de origen, y así lo entendían los autores de la época, que se deleitaban con describir la abundancia y la riqueza de la dote. Sobre los viajes nupciales de las princesas visigodas y merovingias destaca la detallada investigación de María del Rosario Valverde. En su opinión, resulta paradójico que sepamos los lugares a los que se desplazaron los reyes visigodos para entrar en batalla, pero que desconozcamos cómo se organizaron estos desplazamientos, mientras que algunos de los viajes nupciales de las princesas visigodas están muy bien documentados (M. del Rosario Valverde Castro, ʻLos viajes nupcialesʼ [2000], 336-7). 4 Carmela Urso, ʻBrunechilde «prudens consilio et blanda colloquio» (A propósito della regina d’Austrasia in Gregorio di Tours)ʼ, Quaderni catanesi di studi classici e medievali 15 (1986), 89-112, 92; Marc Reydellet, Venance Fortunat. Poémes, vol. 1 (Paris, 2002), IX; Ana María Jiménez Garnica, ʻGosvinta, el fracaso de una coniux realʼ, Stud. His., Hist. Antig. 26 (2008), 345-73, 355. 5 Régine Le Jan, Famille et pouvoir dans le monde franc (VIIe-Xe siècle). Essai d’anthropologie sociale (Paris, 1995), 289.

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que conllevó una alianza visigoda – merovingia de larga perduración en la segunda mitad del siglo VI. Y lo que resulta muy llamativo de ambos casos es la enorme diferencia entre las conversiones de ambas. Según las fuentes, Brunehilda se convirtió al catolicismo tras ser convencida por su marido y por algunos prelados; en cambio, Gosvinta, madre de Brunehilda y abuela de Ingunda, primero empleó dulces palabras y finalmente recurrió a la violencia contra su nieta6. En esta investigación analizaremos las condiciones en las que se formalizaron ambos matrimonios y los motivos que pudo haber tras ellos, así como las circunstancias en las que se llevaron a cabo las conversiones y qué nos sugieren las diferencias entre ambas. Para nuestro estudio hemos recabado información de diversas fuentes y especialmente de la obra de Gregorio de Tours. Gracias a los datos que nos aporta este obispo y otras fuentes del periodo Brunehilda es una de las mujeres mejor conocidas por la historiografía. Sin embargo, debemos tener en cuenta que la imagen de Brunehilda en la obra de Gregorio de Tours es todo menos negativa, y la de su esposo cuenta con la misma benevolencia. Eso se debe a que ambos actuaron como protectores y promotores del obispo7 y, por tanto, su imagen fue sin duda adecuada a los intereses de su autor. En contraposición, Fredegunda, la mujer que se convirtió en la nueva esposa del rey Chilperico I tras la muerte de Galsvinta en extrañas circunstancias (la hermana mayor de Brunehilda)8, es presentada bajo una luz muy diferente9. El interés del autor por mostrar los acontecimientos de una manera favorable a un personaje y contraria a otro – lo que incluye adecuar u omitir hechos –, contribuye a que los lectores puedan interpretar sus actuaciones como un retrato dicotómico clásico: por ejemplo, el de la benevolente Brunehilda y la “pérfida” Fredegunda10.

6

Gregorius. Tur., Hist. V 38, MGH srm, 1/1, 244. Venan. Fort., Carm. V, 3, 15, ed. M. Reydellet (2003), IX, n. 9 y 17. Pauline Stafford, Queens, Concubines and Dowagers. The King’s Wife in the Early Middle Ages (London, 1998), 13; Martin Heinzelmann, ʻGregory of Tours: The Elements of a Biographyʼ, en Alexander Callander Murray (ed.), A Companion to Gregory of Tours (Boston, 2015), 7-34, 24. 8 Lib. hist. Franc. 31, MGH srm, 2, 292. 9 Erin Thomas Dailey, Queens, Consorts and Concubines. Gregory of Tours and Women of the Merovingian Elite (Leiden, 2015), 4-5. Según Alexander Callander Murray, cuando Gregorio de Tours empezó a poner en orden su obra, Chilperico I ya había muerto en manos de un asesino y Fredegunda vivía retirada en Ruan para cuidar de su hijo Clotario II, por lo que ninguno de los dos monarcas suponía una amenaza y, en consecuencia, el obispo de Tours tenía las manos libres para describir a Fredegunda como una fría asesina y mortal enemiga de Brunehilda. En cambio, destaca el silencio del prelado en algunos aspectos de la actuación de Sigeberto I y Brunehilda, lo que implica que en el momento de poner fin a su obra no podía permitirse desacreditarlos (Alexander Callander Murray, ʻThe Composition of the Histories of Gregory of Tours and Its Bearing on the Political Narrativeʼ, en Alexander Callander Murray [ed.], A Companion to Gregory of Tours [Boston, 2015], 63-101, 92 y 94). 10 Juan Francisco Rivera Recio, ʻLas hijas del rey visigodo Atanagildo y las tragedias de la familia merovingia reinanteʼ, en Estudios en Homenaje a Don Claudio Sánchez Albornoz en sus 7

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De gran relevancia para el estudio de la figura de Brunehilda se revelan también tres obras del poeta ya citado, Venancio Fortunato. Éste, nacido ca. 530-540 cerca de Treviso11, se había adiestrado en las artes literarias en la ciudad de Rávena y tras llegar a la corte de Sigeberto I en la primavera del 56612 escribió un bello epithalamium en honor a Brunehilda y Sigeberto I que fue su puerta de entrada al círculo real y el inicio de su exitosa carrera literaria en la Galia merovingia13. En esta obra se recoge un retrato a partir del cual se nos dibuja una mujer que cuenta con todas las bondades deseables en una novia regia, si bien no deja de ser una descripción arquetípica. Junto con este poema se conserva una elegía que contiene la conversión de Brunehilda al catolicismo14. La tercera obra que nos concierne fue escrita con motivo del asesinato de Galsvinta, hermana de Brunehilda, no mucho después de haber contraído matrimonio con Chilperico I, monarca visigodo y a su vez hermano de Sigeberto I. Gracias a ella conocemos algunos detalles sobre el viaje nupcial de Galsvinta hasta la ciudad de Rouen en el año 567 o 56815, pero, tal y como señala María del Rosario Valverde, esta descripción tiene un contenido tan altamente retórico que el único dato que podemos considerar como verosímil es que el viaje nupcial de Galsvinta se produjo en primavera16. Según Reydellet, que el poeta se atreviera a escribir una elegía sobre Galsvinta, habida cuenta de las circunstancias en las que murió, nos ayuda a entender cuál era su disposición hacia Chilperico I y qué intenciones políticas o diplomáticas había detrás de esta obra17. De la misma opinión se muestra Allen Jones, quien opina que detrás de esta pieza podría haber un propósito propagandístico y estaría dirigido a Brunehilda y a la audiencia austrasiana18. En efecto, al igual que con Gregorio de Tours, el apoyo que los reyes de Austrasia proporcionaron a Venancio Fortunato es 90 años (Buenos Aires, 1983), I 317-28, 321. Para un análisis detallado de la dicotomía entre Brunehilda y Fredegunda, véase E.T. Dailey, Queens (2015), 118-56. 11 Liliana Pégolo, ʻVenancio Fortunato y sus relaciones con los obispos de la Galia en el contexto del siglo VIʼ, Anales de Historia Antigua, Medieval y Moderna 52 (2018), 13-22, 14. 12 Michael Roberts, ʻVenatius Fortunatus and Gregory of Tours: Poetry and Patronageʼ, en Alexander Callander Murray (ed.), A Companion to Gregory of Tours (Boston, 2015), 35-59, 35. 13 Yitzhak Hen, Roman Barbarians. The Royal Court and Culture in the Early Medieval West (London, New York, 2007), 98. Según Allen Jones, es posible que Venancio valorara este enlace como la oportunidad perfecta para cruzar los Alpes. Gracias a su epitalamio, Venancio ganó una buena reputación y, tras la boda, se dedicó a cultivar sus relaciones con la aristocracia austrasiana (Allen Jones, Social Mobility in Late Antique Gaul. Strategies and Opportunities for the Non-Elite [Cambridge, 2009], 45). 14 Venan. Fort., Carm. VI, 1a, 31-4, ed. M. Reydellet (2003), 52. Marc Reydellet, La royauté dans la littérature latine de Sidoine Apollinaire à Isidore de Séville (Roma, 1981), 299. 15 Véase A.M. Jiménez Garnica, ʻGosvintaʼ (2008), 355 y M. Reydellet, Venance (2003), XXIII, n. 56. 16 M. del Rosario Valverde Castro, ʻLos viajes nupcialesʼ (2011), 348. 17 M. Reydellet, La royauté (1981), 300. 18 A. Jones, Social Mobility (2009), 51.

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motivo suficiente para considerar que sus obras contienen unos retratos conscientemente positivos de los monarcas19. Antes de proseguir con el análisis del caso que nos ocupa, no quisiéramos dejar de subrayar lo significativo que resulta que poseamos información sobre Brunehilda, Galsvinta e Ingunda teniendo en cuenta la escasez de noticias que existe sobre reinas y princesas visigodas. En especial, cabe reconocer que la obra de Gregorio de Tours nos ilumina acerca de la historia de la Galia, pero también lo hace de forma significativa sobre una gran variedad de mujeres. Veamos ahora cómo se fraguó el matrimonio entre Brunehilda y Sigeberto I y cómo este enlace dio pie al de Ingunda y Hermenegildo. La llegada al poder de Atanagildo y Gosvinta Brunehilda era la hija menor de los reyes Atanagildo y Gosvinta y, sin embargo, fue la primera en casarse con un rey merovingio. No se sabe con seguridad si Atanagildo pertenecía a una familia noble visigoda20, ni tampoco cuál era la ascendencia de Gosvinta21, pero ambos entraron en la Historia gracias al alzamiento de Atanagildo contra el rey Agila en el año 551. En opinión de José Ángel Castillo Lozano, ʻposiblemente este individuo sería la cabeza de un poderoso grupo aristocrático ligado a su persona a través de la concesión de patrimonio con la suficiente fuerza y base social como para rebelarse y enfrentarse con éxito al grupo de poder liderado por el monarca Agila. De igual modo sus nupcias o enlace […] con Gosvinta apuntarían al objetivo de agrandar sus bases sociopolíticas y económicas, al aliarse con otro poderoso clan aristocrático para tener el poder suficiente como para apartar al rey de su posición de honorʼ22. En cualquier caso, se trató de una revuelta que pudo llevar a cabo con éxito gracias al apoyo militar del gobierno romano de Oriente, pero el resultado de esta intervención se saldó con la dominación bizantina de varias ciudades durante unas décadas23. 19

Ian Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms 450-751 (London, 1994), 126. Aunque Venancio Fortunato hace referencia a la nobleza de Atanagildo, realmente no sabemos si pertenecía a una familia de noble linaje (Venan. Fort., Carm. VI, 1, 124-6, ed. M. Reydellet [2003], 49: nobilitas excelsa nitet, genus Athanagildi longius extremo regnum qui porrigit orbi, diues opum quas mundus habet populumque gubernat hispanum sub iure suo pietate canenda). 21 María del Rosario Valverde Castro, ʻMujeres “viriles” en la Hispania visigoda. Los casos de Gosvinta y Benedictaʼ, Stud. Hist., Hist. med. 26 (2008), 17-44, 20-1. 22 José Ángel Castillo Lozano, Categorías de poder en el reino visigodo de Toledo: los tiranos en las obras de Juan de Bíclaro, Isidoro de Sevilla y Julián de Toledo (Murcia, 2019), 97. 23 Gregorius Tur., Hist. IV 8, MGH srm, 1/1, 140. Isidoro de Sevilla nos informa de que Atanagildo solicitó ayuda militar al emperador Justiniano para alzarse contra Agila. Los ejércitos se encontraron en Sevilla y Atanagildo se alzó con la victoria. Poco después, Agila fue asesinado en Mérida. Las tropas de Justiniano permanecieron en la península largas décadas hasta que fueron definitivamente expulsadas de la península en el año 624 (Isid. Hisp., Hist. 46-7, ed. Cristóbal 20

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Desconocemos el año de nacimiento de Brunehilda, pero suele fecharse ca. 550. Al menos así lo sostiene B. Dumézil, quien opina que el nacimiento de la princesa debió producirse antes de que su padre accediera al poder, basándose en la onomástica del nombre de su hija. Dumézil argumenta que si Gosvinta hubiera dado a luz a su segunda hija después de asentarse en el trono Atanagildo hubiera seguido el ejemplo del rey ostrogodo Teodorico, quien nombró a su hija menor Amalasunta (“gloria de los amalos”) como símbolo de su poderío en Italia e independencia con respecto a Bizancio. Además, la fecha del 550 para el nacimiento de Brunehilda implicaría que tendría alrededor de quince años cuando el embajador merovingio acudió a la corte para acompañarla hasta su nuevo hogar24. Según la información que nos ofrece Gregorio de Tours, la iniciativa para concertar este matrimonio partió del monarca franco. Sigeberto I, viendo que sus hermanos se juntaban con mujeres indignas de su rango, decidió enviar una embajada a la corte de Toledo y pedir la mano de Brunehilda. Atanagildo no se opuso a la proposición y la envió con grandes riquezas a la corte del monarca merovingio25. La manera en que Gregorio expone la reacción de Atanagildo nos hace preguntarnos qué razones pudo tener para aceptar la oferta. Es decir, en qué podía beneficiarse. Por otro lado, poseemos muy pocos datos sobre el viaje que Brunehilda emprendió hacia Metz, a diferencia de otros casos como el de Galsvinta y Rigunta26. Como ya hemos mencionado antes, el acceso al poder de Atanagildo se produjo en unas circunstancias muy particulares. Y es que, una vez asentado en el trono, el monarca tuvo que lidiar con la nueva situación política y militar de la Rodríguez Alonso [León, 1975], 248 y 250). Según Alexandra Chavarría Arnau, los análisis fruto de la comparativa entre fuentes históricas y materiales han dado pie a la idea de que la presencia bizantina fue más extensa de lo que tradicionalmente se ha aceptado. La llegada de las tropas imperiales a suelo hispano comportó la creación de un sistema defensivo sobre el territorio por parte de la autoridad imperial y la construcción o refuerzo de algunos asentamientos por parte de los visigodos. Se gestó entonces una amplia frontera “no estática” con la que se pretendía controlar los recursos y las vías de comunicación (Alexandra Chavarría Arnau, A la sombra de un imperio. Iglesias, obispos y reyes en la Hispania tardoantigua [siglos V-VII] [Bari, 2018], 31). 24 Bruno Dumézil, La reine Brunehaut (Paris, 2008), 70-1 y 76. Respecto a la elección del nombre de Amalasunta, Massimiliano Vitiello opina que la personalidad de este personaje parece ser un espejo de su nombre gótico y se pregunta si el nombre es un reflejo de los deseos de Teodorico sobre el futuro de su hija y si los autores estaban al tanto de esta coincidencia, ya que era habitual que recalcaran su fuerte personalidad (Massimiliano Vitiello, Amalasuintha. The Transformation of Queenship in the Post-Roman World [Philadelphia, 2017], 22-3). 25 Gregorius Tur., Hist. IV 27, MGH srm, 1/1, 166; Fredegarius, Chron., III, 57, MGH srm, 2, 108. Según el testimonio de las fuentes, parece que Sigeberto I compró Brunehilda a su padre Atanagildo y ella, a su vez, aportó al matrimonio un ajuar (José Manuel Pérez-Prendes MuñozArraco, ʻDel mito de Friné al símbolo de Brunegilda. Observaciones sobre la percepción histórica del cuerpo femeninoʼ, Cuadernos de Historia del Derecho vol. extr. [2010], 471-505, 479). 26 Venan. Fort., Carm. VI, 1, 113-7 y VI, 5, 209-36, ed. M. Reydellet (2003), 49 y 68-9.

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península fruto de la presencia bizantina. Respecto a los merovingios, cabe recordar que los visigodos habían sufrido una terrible derrota en el 507, a raíz de la cual perdieron todos sus territorios más allá de los Pirineos, excepto una franja costera, lo que favoreció su definitivo asentamiento en la península y el nacimiento del futuro reino de Toledo27. Acerca de los motivos de Atanagildo para aliarse con los reyes merovingios, es posible que considerara que, si sus socios atacaban la frontera italiana y él, a su vez, los fuertes bizantinos en la península, los soldados imperiales difícilmente podrían defenderse con efectividad de los dos atacantes28. Y es que, no mucho después de asentarse en el poder, Atanagildo se habría dado cuenta de que los bizantinos habían aprovechado la ocasión para acrecentar su poder e influencia en el Mediterráneo y que, además, eran una clara amenaza para su trono. Por esta razón habría actuado ʻencarnizadamente para recuperar las plazas ocupadas por el ejército imperial, aunque sin poder deshacerse de la presencia bizantina en territorio peninsularʼ29. Esta 27 Carmen Eguiluz Méndez, Sedes regiae: ideología y propaganda imperial como legitimación de las nuevas monarquías germanas: los ostrogodos en Italia y los visigodos en Hispania, Tesis doctoral (Santander, 2016), 199-200. La historiografía ha considerado tradicionalmente que la elección de Toledo como sedes regia se produjo durante el reinado de Teudis (531-548), concretamente en el año 546. Sin embargo, durante un corto periodo se prefirió a Hispalis hasta el asentamiento definitivo en Toledo con Atanagildo (Rafael Barroso Cabrera et al., ʻToletum. Configuración y evolución urbana de la capital visigoda y su territorioʼ, en Isabel Sánchez Ramos y Pedro Mateos Cruz [ed.], Territorio, topografía y arquitectura de poder durante la Antigüedad tardía [Mérida, 2018], 195-236, 207). Sobre la elección de Toletum como sedes regia por el pueblo godo, Gisela Ripoll destaca dos factores: ʻla privilegiada situación geográfico-estratégica y las características de la ciudad de Toletum, además de un número de habitantes poco elevadoʼ y ʻque ya desde muy a finales del siglo V o principios del siglo VI, existe entre los valles de los ríos Duero y Tajo, el asentamiento popular visigodo conocido por la arqueología funerariaʼ (Gisela Ripoll, ʻSedes regiae en la Hispania de la antigüedad tardíaʼ, en Gisela Ripoll y Josep Maria Gurt [ed.], Sedes regiae [an. 400-800] [Barcelona, 2000], 371-401, 393). Para un análisis detallado de esta cuestión, véase: Ralph Whitney Mathisen y Hagith Sivan, ʻForging a New Identity: The Kingdom of Toulouse and the Frontiers of Visigothic Aquitania (418-507)ʼ, en Alberto Ferreiro (ed.), The Visigoths. Studies in Culture and Society (Leiden, Boston, Köln, 1999), 1-62, 62; Pablo de la Cruz Díaz Martínez, ʻVisigothic Political Institutionsʼ, en Peter Heather (ed.), The Visigoths from the Migration Period to the Seven Century. An Etnographic Perspective (Woodbrige, 1999), 331-56, 336; Isabel Velázquez y Gisela Ripoll, ʻToletum, la construcción de una urbs regiaʼ, en Gisela Ripoll y Josep Maria Gurt (ed.), Sedes regiae (an. 400-800) (Barcelona, 2000), 521-78; Gisela Ripoll, ʻChanges in the Topography of Power: from civitates to urbes regiae in Hispaniaʼ, en Richard Corradini, Maximilian Diesenberg y Helmut Reimitz (ed.), The Construction of Communities in the Early Middle Ages. Texts, Resources and Artefacts (Leiden, 2003), 123-48, 125. 28 Bruno Dumézil, La reine Brunehaut (2008), 75. Ana María Jiménez sostiene que con esta política dinástica Atanagildo ʻpodía garantizar que el regnum gothorum de Hispania no quedaría integrado en el Imperioʼ (A.M. Jiménez Garnica, ʻGosvintaʼ [2008], 355). 29 Cristina Godoy Fernández y Josep Vilella Masana, ʻDe la fides Gothica a la ortodoxia nicena: inicio de la teología política visigóticaʼ, en Antigüedad y cristianismo. Monografías históricas sobre la Antigüedad tardía. Los visigodos. Historia y Civilización. Actas de la Semana Internacional de Estudios Visigóticos (Madrid – Toledo – Alcalá de Henares, 21-25 de octubre de 1985) (Murcia, 1986), 117-44, 122.

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teoría ha sido discutida por algún autor que defiende que Atanagildo siempre tuvo una relación excelente con los bizantinos y que el cambio de política militar se dio en el reinado de Leovigildo30. Otro de los motivos esgrimidos para la alianza entre Atanagildo y los reyes merovingios es la voluntad de minimizar el poder de Gontrán I de Borgoña y proteger así la franja de Septimania31, pero también se ha contradicho esta propuesta señalando que ʻestos enlaces no se pensaron con la intención de consolidar relaciones diplomáticas, ni tampoco para proteger las fronteras de la Septimania. Se hicieron para evitar que el reino de los godos desapareciese por segunda vezʼ32. Hay un último aspecto importante que debemos tener en cuenta en lo relativo a la familia real visigoda, y es que Brunehilda era la hija menor, por lo que, probablemente, Atanagildo estaba reservando a Galsvinta, su hija mayor, para una alianza política dirigida a la sucesión del trono. Es posible que el monarca visigodo previera casar a su hija mayor con algún destacado miembro de la aristocracia que en el futuro pudiera convertirse en su heredero y quizás sucesor33. Sin embargo, como ya es bien sabido, no mucho después de que Brunehilda abandonara Toledo, Galsvinta tuvo que encaminarse más allá de los Pirineos siguiendo el ejemplo de su hermana34.

La partición de la herencia franca: los hijos de Clotario I En el año 561 fallecía el monarca Clotario I, dejando como herencia un reino que se repartiría entre sus cuatro hijos: Cariberto I, Gontrán I y Sigeberto I, de su unión con Ingunda; y Chilperico I, de su unión con Arnegunda. De estos cuatros herederos nos interesa ahora centrarnos en Sigeberto I, el tercero de los hijos de Clotario I, que recibió un territorio situado en la parte nordeste del reino de su padre, con capital en Reims. El equilibro de poder entre los cuatro hermanos era frágil. De hecho, poco después de enterrar a su padre, el menor de ellos, Chilperico I, se apoderó del tesoro real, y tras entrar en París, exigió heredar la parte más rica del reino de su padre. Los tres hermanos mayores, hijos de Ingunda, se aliaron para expulsarlo y fue entonces cuando acordaron la repartición35.

30 Stefan Esders, ʻGallic politics in the sixth centuryʼ, en Alexander Callander Murray (ed.), A Companion to Gregory of Tours (Boston, 2015), 429-61, 438. 31 Amancio Isla Frez, ʻLas relaciones entre el reino visigodo y los reyes merovingios a finales del siglo VIʼ, En la España Medieval 13 (1990), 11-32, 11-2; J.Á. Castillo Lozano, Categorías de poder (2019), 133. 32 A.M. Jiménez Garnica, ʻGosvintaʼ (2008), 354. 33 B. Dumézil, La reine Brunehaut (2008), 76. 34 Venan. Fort., Carm. VI, 5, 209-36, ed. M. Reydellet (2003), 68-9. 35 Gregorius Tur., Hist. IV 22, MGH srm, 1/1, 154-5.

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Fue en estas circunstancias en las que, según nos dice Gregorio de Tours, Sigeberto I tomó la decisión de ponerse en contacto con el rey de los visigodos36. En concreto, el obispo afirma que esta decisión partió del hecho de que Sigeberto I quería diferenciarse del resto de sus hermanos, quienes se rodeaban de mujeres que, por su bajo rango, no estarían a la altura de lo que se esperaría de la esposa de un rey37. En efecto, el contraste entre los hermanos mayores y menores en cuanto al matrimonio no podría ser más drástico. Mientras que Sigeberto I y Chilperico I buscaron una esposa de sangre real, Chariberto y Gontrán I tuvieron relaciones con mujeres de muy bajo estatus. Esto nos indica que el enlace matrimonial podía servir para alcanzar objetivos diferentes, aunque un interés común sería el de engendrar descendientes38. Según Ian Wood, resulta llamativo que, en líneas generales, los merovingios no contrajeran matrimonio con mujeres con un estatus similar. Opina que esta elección quizás se explique como una manera de evitar lazos innecesarios – al fin y al cabo, expulsar o asesinar a la hija de un poderoso aristócrata o de un rey (como Galsvinta) tendría mayores consecuencias que hacerlo con una exesclava39. En cualquier caso, la elección de una esposa de linaje real extranjero permitía una alianza política que aportaba mayor seguridad al trono. Y teniendo en cuenta la repartición de la herencia de Clotario I, no resulta extraño que tanto Sigeberto I como Chilperico I quisieran buscar un aliado en la monarquía visigoda40. Si examinamos la situación de Sigeberto I, observaremos que no había recibido la mejor de las cuatro herencias y que tenía muchas fronteras que proteger41. Dada la situación geográfica de su territorio, es posible que Sigeberto I se aliara con Atanagildo para conseguir un aliado frente a sus hermanos en vez de para obtener una esposa con un rango adecuado. En cualquier caso, si realmente fue Sigeberto I el que inició los contactos con la corte de Toledo, probablemente fue porque él sentía una mayor urgencia que Atanagildo en 36

Según María del Rosario Valverde, la información que obtenemos de las fuentes sobre las negociaciones y los viajes nupciales nos permite establecer con bastante seguridad que la iniciativa para concertar estos matrimonios solía proceder del novio (o del padre del novio si éste aun era príncipe) (M. del Rosario Valverde, ʻLos viajes nupcialesʼ [2000], 358). 37 Gregorius Tur., Hist. IV 27, MGH srm, 1/1, 166. Por su parte, Venancio Fortunato también incide en el hecho de que Sigeberto I, siguiendo la ley del matrimonio, buscaba juntarse con una sola mujer (Venan. Fort., Carm. VI, 1, 32-6, ed. M. Reydellet [2003], 44-5. Además, el ahínco del poeta en subrayar la belleza y la elegancia de Brunehilda sería una forma de exaltar la dignidad de Sigeberto I en contraposición a sus hermanos (J.M. Pérez-Prendes Muñoz-Arraco, ʻDel mito de Frinéʼ [2010], 481-2). 38 Ryan Patrick Crisp, Marriage and Alliance in the Merovingian Kingdoms, 418-639. Dissertation (Ohio, 2003), 149. 39 Ian Wood, ʻDeconstructing the Merovingian Familyʼ, en Richard Corradini, Maximilian Diesenberg y Helmut Reimitz (ed.), The Construction of Communities in the Early Middle Ages. Texts, Resources and Artefacts (Leiden, 2003), 149-71, 169. 40 María del Rosario Valverde Castro, ʻLa monarquía visigoda y su política matrimonial: el reino visigodo de Toledoʼ, Stud. His., Hist. Antig. 18 (2000), 331-55, 335. 41 B. Dumézil, La reine Brunehaut (2008), 110.

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encontrar un aliado42. Y está claro que lo que hizo fue buscarlo en el sur, lo que a su vez propiciaba una etapa de paz entre visigodos y merovingios43. Como ya hemos adelantado, no mucho después de la alianza entre Atanagildo y Sigeberto I, el menor de los herederos de Clotario, Chilperico I, acordó con Atanagildo el matrimonio de su hija mayor, Galsvinta. Se ha interpretado que esta doble alianza con el rey visigodo bien podría deberse a que Chilperico I y Sigeberto I quisieron unir fuerzas contra Gontrán I, e incluso que Chilperico I se sintió impresionado al ver el gran tesoro que Brunehilda trajo con ella como dote. Ahora bien, esta alianza no duró demasiado, probablemente porque tras la muerte de Atanagildo Chilperico I decidió que su unión ya no le convenía44, y Galsvinta apareció asesinada hacia el 569 o 57045. Antes de buscar una esposa en el reino visigodo, Chilperico I mantenía relaciones estables con algunas mujeres46, pero se habría comprometido a dejarlas de lado para casarse con Galsvinta47. Este compromiso sería fruto de la voluntad de los reyes visigodos por asegurarse de que la sucesión de Chilperico I recaería en la descendencia engendrada con Galsvinta48. Entre estas mujeres se encontraba Fredegunda49. En cuanto a los motivos que suscitaron la muerte de Galsvinta, Gregorio nos explica que ella quiso volver a casa tras ver el gran ascendente de Fredegunda sobre Chilperico I50, pero el rey merovingio resolvió matarla para conservar la gran dote que su esposa había traído consigo. Este suceso propició un conflicto que se alargó durante tres generaciones y tuvo su punto final con la brutal ejecución de Brunehilda en el año 613 por Clotario II, hijo de Chilperico I51. 42 Resulta interesante la opinión de Ana María Jiménez Garnica, quien argumenta que los reyes merovingios vieron en la falta de descendencia masculina de Atanagildo la oportunidad de engrandecer sus propios territorios (A.M. Jiménez Garnica, ʻGosvintaʼ [2008], 355). 43 María del Rosario Valverde Castro, Ideología, simbolismo y ejercicio del poder real en la monarquía visigoda: un proceso de cambio (Salamanca, 2000), 138. 44 M. del Rosario Valverde Castro, ʻLa monarquía visigodaʼ (2000), 337. 45 P. Stafford, ʻQueensʼ (1998), 34; S. Esders, ʻGallic politicsʼ (2015), 437. 46 Mujeres a las que Gregorio de Tours se refiere como uxorae (Gregorius Tur., Hist. IV, 28, MGH srm, 1/1, 160). 47 Syzanne Fonay Temple, Women in Frankish Society. Marriage and the Cloister 500 to 900 (Philadelphia, 1981), 40. 48 Amancio Isla Frez, ʻReinas de los godosʼ, Hispania 64/2, 217 (2004), 409-34, 421. Según Régine Le Jan, las princesas de origen extranjero que se casaban con reyes francos recibían una dotación marital a cambio de las riquezas que ellas portaban consigo como esposas legítimas. En cambio, aquellas que tenían un origen servil no podían ofrecer nada similar. A partir de mediados del siglo VI, fuera cual fuera el origen de las esposas reales, el rey podía reconocer a sus descendientes como herederos legítimos si así lo quería (Régine Le Jan, Femmes, pouvoir et société dans le haut Moyen Age [Paris, 2011], 70). 49 Sobre el debate historiográfico acerca de la condición social de las mujeres con las que se relacionaron los reyes merovingios, y de si realmente se trataba de esposas o no, recomendamos la lectura del capítulo quinto de la obra de E.T. Dailey, Queens (2015), 101-15. 50 Gregorius Tur., Hist. IV, 28, MGH srm, 1/1, 160. 51 Patrick Geary, Before France & Germany. The Creation & Transformation of the Merovingian World (Oxford, 1988), 121; Philip Lyndon Reynolds, Marriage in the Western Church. The Christianization of Marriage during the Patristic & Early Medieval Periods (Leiden, 1994), 110.

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Del matrimonio de Brunehilda al de Inguda Brunehilda, además de pertenecer a la realeza, también era arriana. Y eso es un factor ineludible cuando tratamos sobre la política dinástica de los pueblos bárbaros. Desde su conversión a la fe arriana52, el pueblo y la élite visigoda se mantuvieron firmes en sus creencias hasta el año 587. A pesar de que, como indica R. Collins, ʻlas limitaciones de las fuentes hacen difícil afirmar con certeza hasta qué punto el arrianismo constituyó un problema serio antes del reinado de Leovigildo, pues no se conservan documentos de la Iglesia visigoda arriana en España, […] parece posible afirmar que a lo largo del siglo [VI] el arrianismo fue perdiendo fuerza entre la población goda y que en todo caso fue el catolicismo el que planteó un auténtico desafíoʼ53. Según nos explica Gregorio de Tours, fueron dos los factores que motivaron la conversión a la fe católica de Brunehilda: la predicación de los obispos y la insistencia de su marido. Si hemos de creer las palabras del obispo de Tours, Brunehilda se convirtió sin mayores problemas: no hubo lágrimas ni oposición alguna54. No obstante, hemos de tener en cuenta que la conversión de Brunehilda probablemente ya estuvo pactada desde un principio, cuando se negoció su matrimonio con Sigeberto I, por lo que, de entrada, no debería extrañarnos este relato. Ahora bien, la fluidez con la que se llevó a cabo la conversión de Brunehilda contrasta, sin lugar a duda, con el rechazo de su hija Ingunda y la violencia que ejerció Gosvinta. De su matrimonio con Sigeberto I, Brunehilda concibió a Childeberto II, Clodosinda e Ingunda. A raíz del asesinato de su hermana Galsvinta, ella y su esposo iniciaron un enfrentamiento con Chilperico I y Fredegunda que se prolongó durante décadas y una de las primeras víctimas fue el propio Sigeberto I en el año 575, quien supuestamente habría sido asesinado por dos hombres enviados por Fredegunda55. Apenas unos años después, en el 578 o 579, Ingunda 52

Un conflicto político que estalló en las entrañas del pueblo godo en el año 376 y que pudo estar motivado por cuestiones religiosas empujó a una parte de este pueblo a cruzar el Danubio y entrar en suelo romano. Fue entonces cuando adoptaron el arrianismo homoiano a través de Ulfila; un credo que, además, era apoyado por el emperador Valente, a quien pidieron ayuda tras llegar al Imperio Romano (Hans Christoff Brennecke, ʻDeconstruction of the so-called Germanic Arianismʼ, en Guido Berndt y Roland Steinacher [ed.], Arianism: Roman Heresy and Barbarian Creed [Farnham, 2014], 117-30, 122). Para José Orlandis, la conversión del pueblo visigodo entrañó una gran relevancia histórica por dos razones: ʻpor lo que significaba en sí misma la adhesión de un gran pueblo germánico a la herejía, a la hora misma en la que ésta desaparecía prácticamente del horizonte religiosoʼ y ʻpor su altísimo valor ejemplarʼ (José Orlandis, ʻLa doble conversión religiosa de los pueblos germánicos [siglos IV al VIII]ʼ, Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia 9 [2000], 69-84, 74). 53 Roger Collins, España en la alta edad media 400-1000 (Barcelona, 1986), 60-1. 54 Gregorius Tur., Hist. IV 27, MGH srm, 1/1, 160: et quia Arrianae legi subiecta erat, per praedicationem sacerdotum atque ipsius regis commonitionem conuersa, beatam in unitate confessa Trinitatem credit atque chrismata est. Quae in nomine Christi catholica perseuerat. 55 Estos hombres habrían cometido el asesinato bajo órdenes de Fredegunda y lo habrían hecho con la ayuda de dos grandes puñales envenenados (Gregorius Tur., Hist. IV 51, MGH srm, 1/1,

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realizó el viaje nupcial hacia tierras visigodas para contraer matrimonio con Hermenegildo, hijo del rey visigodo Leovigildo (casado con Gosvinta en segundas nupcias), en lo que representa una continuación de la alianza política franco-visigoda56. En efecto, para Leovigildo esta unión suponía fortalecer su propia posición, ya que reforzaba sus lazos con la facción de Gosvinta y con los reyes de Austrasia y a su vez ejercía presión sobre Borgoña57. La necesidad de protegerse frente a Gontrán I podría ser también el motivo principal por el cual intentó establecer una nueva alianza político-matrimonial, aunque esta vez con la facción de Chilperico I y Fredegunda al intentar unir a su hijo Recaredo con Rigunta58. Dejando de lado las ʻramificaciones genealógicas interesantesʼ del enlace de Ingunda y Hermenegildo, como bien dice Roger Collins59, procedemos ahora a analizar el episodio de forzada conversión al que Gosvinta sometió a su nieta para entender mejor el de la propia Brunehilda. Según nos dice Gregorio, Ingunda fue recibida con gran alegría por su abuela Gosvinta, quien, al principio, trató de convencerla de que se convirtiera al arrianismo con dulces palabras. Cuando su nieta se negó en redondo a acceder a esta petición, Gosvinta montó en cólera y la agarró por el pelo. Tras lanzarla al suelo, la apaleó, y, ya ensangrentada, ordenó desnudarla y sumergirla en un estanque. Gregorio finaliza este episodio explicando al lector que Ingunda nunca perdió la verdadera fe60. Amancio Isla afirmaba en una de sus publicaciones ʻque las noticias referidas por Gregorio de Tours sobre la actuación violenta de Gosvinta con respecto a Ingunda deben ser exageradas al menos en parteʼ61. De hecho, unos años antes, este mismo autor ya señalaba que el relato le parecía ʻdudosoʼ, ʻy más aún si lo comparamos con la facilidad con que, unos años antes, las princesas visigodas Gasvinta y Brunequilda se habían convertido al cristianismo niceísta y, más 188). Para más información sobre la relación que el obispo de Tours establece entre Fredegunda y las pócimas y venenos, véase Juan Antonio Jiménez Sánchez y Pere Maymó i Capdevila, ʻLa magia en la Galia merovingiaʼ, Espacio, Tiempo y Forma. Serie II Historia Antigua 30 (2017), 183-204, 187-8. 56 Gregorius. Tur., Hist. V 38, MGH srm, 1/1, 244. 57 J.Á. Castillo Lozano, Categorías de poder (2019), 135. Según Margarita Vallejo, Leovigildo valoró este enlace inicialmente como positivo porque le proporcionaba margen en sus enfrentamientos con el reino suevo y con los bizantinos. En cambio, tanto para Brunehilda como para Gosvinta sería la vía por la que se aseguraban de que su propia estirpe prosiguiera en el trono visigodo. Eso sí, al poco tiempo de que se celebrara el matrimonio entre Ingunda y Hermenegildo, el monarca visigodo se habría dado cuenta de su error y habría rectificado buscando casar a su hijo menor Recaredo con Rigunta, la hija de Chilperico I (Margarita Vallejo Girvés, ʻ«Un asunto de chantaje». La familia de Atanagildo entre Metz, Toledo y Constantinoplaʼ, Polis 11 [1999], 261-79, 263-6). 58 A. Isla Frez, ʻReinasʼ (2004), 422. 59 R. Collins, España (1986), 66. 60 Gregorius. Tur., Hist. V 38, MGH srm, 1/1, 244. 61 A. Isla Frez, ʻReinasʼ (2004), 414.

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aún, si consideramos que Ingundis debía ser entonces muy jovenʼ62. Además, hemos de tener en cuenta que cuando se fraguó el enlace entre Hermenegildo e Ingunda, al igual que el de Brunehilda y Sigeberto I, probablemente ya se tenía en cuenta que la princesa se convertiría a raíz de su matrimonio63. Así pues, ¿cómo se explica el uso de la violencia y la virulencia del ataque de Gosvinta en la conversión de Ingunda? Nuestra respuesta es que esta diferencia la marca el hecho de que Ingunda era católica. Dada la visión pro católica de Gregorio de Tours y su cercanía con Brunehilda, resulta lógico pensar que el obispo quisiera relatar la conversión de Brunehilda como una sabia decisión por parte de la joven reina, quien siguió toda su vida profesando el niceísmo y fue reconocida por ello64. Ahora bien, ¿cómo podía la conversión de Ingunda al arrianismo describirse con el mismo tono? El propio discurso pro católico de Gregorio le condujo a afirmar que Ingunda se resistió con todas sus fuerzas, y al igual que los mártires de la Antigüedad, sufrió en sus carnes el dolor por mantener su fe. En línea con la opinión de Amancio Isla, Roger Collins señala que este episodio bien puede tratarse de una alegoría y que el hecho de que las princesas merovingias fueran maltratadas en la corte goda a causa de su religión ya era un tema existente en la obra del obispo (en concreto, cita el caso de la princesa Clotilda, hija de Clovis I). Es más, la obra del obispo de Tours es la única fuente que recoge estos acontecimientos y, a pesar de toda su resistencia, Ingunda recibió el 62 A. Isla Frez, ʻLas relacionesʼ (1990), 15. Por su parte, José Orlandis opina que la violencia que Gosvinta ejerció sobre Ingunda es ʻuna prueba de que las tensiones religiosas habían penetrado en el propio Palacio real toledanoʼ (José Orlandis, ʻLa doble conversión religiosa de los pueblos germánicos [siglos IV al VIII]ʼ, Anuario de la Historia de la Iglesia 9 (2000), 69-84, 80). 63 Bruno Dumézil, Les racines chrétiennes de l’Europe. Conversion et liberté dans les royaumes barbares, Ve-VIIIe siècle (Paris, 2005), 164 64 Para Clelia Martínez Maza, Brunehilda ʻparticipó activamente en la propagación del cristianismo y en la consolidación de las sedes episcopales en el territorio bajo su gobierno. Su trágica muerte […] favoreció la pésima imagen de su reputación que en absoluto puede oscurecer su programa político y su compromiso evangelizador de Gregorio Magnoʼ (Clelia Martínez Maza, ʻLas nuevas Helenas. Las reinas bárbaras como agente de cristianizaciónʼ, Potestas 2 [2009], 133-46, 138). En efecto, uno de los corresponsales más célebres de Brunehilda fue el Papa Gregorio el Grande. Según Bruno Dumézil, Gregorio solía cartearse frecuentemente con los reyes francos y sus cartas son una manifestación de una ideología de poder a la cual se adherían tanto emisor como receptor. En el caso de Brunehilda, Bruno Dumézil opina que hay cuatro argumentos que sostienen su dimensión cristiana ante los ojos del Papa: en primer lugar, que Dios ha apelado a la reina para dirigir a los francos y que ella posee un amor profundo por la fe; en segundo lugar, la reina solo debe someterse a Dios; en tercer lugar, el amor de Dios le permite administrar los intereses temporales con eficacia y velar por las almas de sus súbditos; y, finalmente, Brunehilda tiene el derecho a vigilar de cerca el clero galo (Bruno Dumézil, ʻLe modèle royal à l’époque mérovingienneʼ, en Michèle Gaillard [ed.], L’empreinte chrétienne en Gaule du IVe siècle au IXe siècle [Turnhout, 2014], 132-47, 142-3). Para un estudio exhaustivo de la relación (epistolar) entre Brunehilda y Gregorio Magno, consúltese Pere Maymó i Capdevila, El ideario de lo sacro en Gregorio Magno (590-604). De los santos en la diplomacia pontificia, Tesis doctoral (Barcelona, 2013).

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bautismo arriano, lo cual probablemente fue pactado por ambas partes65. A esta opinión se suma la de José Ángel Castillo Lozano, quien interpreta ʻque esta imagen de arriana fanática y perseguidora de cristianos pueda encontrar su razón de ser en la misma naturaleza del escrito que refleja esto, ya que no hemos de olvidar la concepción católica de la historia que tiene Gregorio de Tours […]. En definitiva, la figura de Gosvinta pasaba por ser un argumento del todo conveniente dentro de la concepción de la historia político-religiosa del obispo de Toursʼ66. Conclusiones En esta investigación hemos abordado el matrimonio de Brunehilda y Sigeberto I, así como el de Ingunda y Hermenegildo, como piezas dentro de la política dinástica de los reinos visigodo y merovingio, lo que a su vez puede enmarcarse en la política de alianzas de los reinos bárbaros de Occidente. Hemos reflexionado sobre las razones por las que tanto Atanagildo como Sigeberto I creyeron beneficioso aliarse políticamente y en qué circunstancias se pactó el matrimonio de Ingunda con Hermenegildo. Son varias las razones que pudieron motivar a uno u otro monarca para buscar un pacto con un soberano extranjero. Primero nos hemos detenido en el caso de Brunehilda y hemos analizado la negociación de su matrimonio desde ambas ópticas, la visigoda y la merovingia. Si bien Gregorio de Tours describe el enlace como fruto de la decisión de Sigeberto I de buscar una esposa digna de él, probablemente el matrimonio fue el sello de la alianza política, y no al revés. En cualquier caso, fuera o no Sigberto quien inició el contacto, ambos tenían una o varias razones para aliarse y la más acuciante probablemente era hacer frente a sus enemigos más cercanos: en el caso de Sigeberto I, se trataría de su hermano Gontrán I; y en el de Atanagildo, de las tropas bizantinas asentadas en la península. Tras abordar las circunstancias en las que se fraguó el enlace de Brunehilda y Sigeberto I hemos examinado su conversión religiosa y nos hemos adentrado en la concertación del matrimonio entre su hija Ingunda y el príncipe Hermenegildo. Finalmente hemos comparado las conversiones de ambas protagonistas y ello nos ha permitido llegar a unas conclusiones muy sugerentes. Nos ha 65

Roger Collins, ʻGregory of Tours and Spainʼ, en Alexander Callander Murray (ed.), A Companion to Gregory of Tours (Boston, 2015), 498-515, 504. Véase E.T. Dailey, Queens (2015), 26-8. 66 J.Á. Castillo Lozano, Categorías de poder (2019), 137. De similar opinión se muestra María del Rosario Valverde, quien cuestiona ʻla veracidad de sus testimonios en los casos en los que se refiere a los actos violentos cometidos por los visigodos contra los católicos ortodoxosʼ (María del Rosario Valverde, ʻLeovigildo. Persecución religiosa y defensa de la unidad del reinoʼ, Iberia 2 [1999], 123-32, 125).

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llamado la atención que, a diferencia de lo que las fuentes explican sobre numerosos casos de la Antigüedad (sin ir más lejos, el del legendario Clovis67), en el caso de Brunehilda es el esposo, de fe católica, el que convence a su mujer de que se convierta, y no al revés. En cuanto a la conversión en sí, resulta imprescindible comprarla con la de Ingunda, porque a través de dicha comparación podemos intuir qué propósito había detrás del relato de cada una. La impresión que da el relato de Gregorio de Tours es que las conversiones de madre e hija son dos caras de la misma moneda puesto que reflejan la actitud de su autor y su afán por exaltar al catolicismo. La arriana Gosvinta se convierte en un familiar capaz de ejercer la violencia sobre su nieta, y la virulencia de su ataque, junto con la razonable suposición de que la conversión ya estaría pactada, hacen pensar que el relato de Gregorio es altamente fantasioso e incluso pudo ser inventado para la ocasión. Por último, resulta de gran interés observar la enorme diferencia que se establece entre este retrato de Gosvinta, el de una abuela cruel, despiadada y arriana68, con el que dibuja Venancio Fortunato en su poema a la muerte de Galsvinta. Y es que, con motivo de la marcha de Gosvinta por su inminente boda con Chilperico I, la reina visigoda es representada sufriendo un gran dolor por su partida y demostrando un amor y un cariño inmenso hacia su hija mayor69. Este contraste tan llamativo entre ambos retratos nos recuerda una vez más que la descripción de una figura histórica en una fuente está supeditada y se amolda a los objetivos del autor. En el caso de Galsvinta tenemos la suerte de poder contrastar dos fuentes y observar cómo esta figura fue adaptada al discurso de cada autor: para Venancio Fortunato, en el momento de escribir su poema, quiso describir a Galsvinta como una madre amorosa y efusiva que se resistía a aceptar la marcha de su hija; en cambio, la descripción de Gregorio de Tours la convirtió en una hereje capaz de apalear a su propia nieta. Ambas imágenes no tienen por qué verse como contradictorias, ya que aluden a episodios distintos de una misma persona. 67 Tal y como explica Clelia Martínez Maza, en las fuentes altomedievales hallamos relatos recurrentes sobre la conversión de un rey bárbaro por la predicación de su esposa. Un caso próximo y ajustado a este modelo sería el de Clovis y su esposa Clotilde, recogido en la obra de Gregorio de Tours (Hist. II 27-31, MGH srm, 1/1, 71-7). Dicho relato contendría todos los tópicos sobre la conversión, pero, además, ʻsu interpretación ofrece la pauta literaria para la descripción de otras conversiones realesʼ (C. Martínez Maza, ʻLas nuevas Helenasʼ [2009], 134, 137). 68 Para Jennifer McRobbie, el contraste entre la actuación de las mujeres católicas y las arrianas es clave para entender el papel del arrianismo en la obra de Gregorio de Tours. Mientras que las primeras se muestran sumisas, castas, gentiles y virtuosas, las féminas arrianas son dominantes, descontroladas e incluso violentas. Y esa sería precisamente la diferencia entre la doctrina católica y la arriana (Jennifer McRobbie, Gender and Violence in Gregory of Tours’ Decem Librim Historiarum, Thesis [Saint Andrews, 2011], 84). 69 Gran parte del poema que Venancio Fortunato le dedica a Gosvinta tras su fallecimiento está inundado por la pena que sintió Glasvinta cuando su hija mayor marchó de la corte visigoda para casarse con Chilperico I (Venan. Fort., Carm. VI, 5, ed. M. Reydellet [2003], 60-75).

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Para finalizar, queremos resaltar que la política dinástica de las cortes visigoda y merovingia dio pie a que los autores de la época se hicieran eco de las conversiones religiosas de sus princesas, algunas más discretas y otras más sonadas. Dado que lo lógico es que la conversión ya se tuviera en cuenta en las negociaciones para pactar un matrimonio, cabe preguntarnos por qué existe un episodio como el de Ingunda. ¿Realmente la princesa merovingia no estuvo nunca dispuesta a convertirse o es que quizás el relato de Gregorio de Tours cumplía un propósito? En nuestra opinión, la narración de la forzosa conversión de Ingunda bien pudo ser incluida en la obra del obispo como una escena para alabar la fe y la resistencia de los creyentes católicos frente a la herejía arriana.

The Contest of Beauty and Sainthood: The Empress Bride as the Mirror of Perfection Ernest MARCOS HIERRO, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain

ABSTRACT This article deals with the accounts of the imperial bride-show on Byzantine hagiographical sources from the ninth and the tenth centuries. Putting aside the discussion on the historicity of such a ceremony, which is dubious, it identifies as its literary origin the account of the Book of Esther about the search of a new wife for King Artaxerxes and as its purpose the justification of the marriage of a saint empress to a heretical husband. It proposes to read as an actualisation of the so-called ‘novel of Esther’ the narratives on the marriage of Theodosius II and Eudocia in Malalas’ Chronography (sixth century) and on the marriage of Theophilos and Theodora in the Life and encomium of Theodora (ninth century). The article also argues that the Life of Theodora could be the model for the other sources on this subject from the ninth century such as the Lives of St Philaretos, St Theophano and St Irene of Chrysobalanton, the Funeral Oration for Basil I attributed to Leo VI and the accounts on Cassia as a contender in the event for the search of a bride for Theophilos.

In 1965, the great Austrian Byzantinist Herbert Hunger published an article in the journal Byzantion aiming to prove the Greekness of one of the most beautiful medieval romances in vernacular Greek, Belthandros and Chrysantza.1 Since the first publication of the poem by Adolf Ellissen in 1861, there has been a great controversy about its alleged Western origin and many scholars have tried to find, as in the case of another great romance Kallimachos and Chrysorrhoe, its model among the contemporary works of the French or Italian literature. On the contrary, Hunger, who was convinced of the original Byzantine character of the romance, adduced as historical evidence the beauty contest episode in the castle of Eros, the Schönheitskonkurrenz, which he presented as an allusion to a ceremony of the imperial court, the Brautschau, the bride-show to choose a new empress. In his article, Hunger mentions five cases of celebration of such a contest in Constantinople from the eighth to the tenth centuries, but he concentrates his attention on the literary comparative analysis of the romance episode with two of the most detailed narratives of the imperial bride 1 Herbert Hunger, ‘Die Schönheitskonkurrenz in Belthandros und Chrysantza und die Brautschau am byzantinischen Kaiserhof’, Byzantion 35 (1965), 150-8.

Studia Patristica CXXX, 295-314. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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shows. The sources are, in chronological order of the events, the Life of St Philaretos the Merciful, who was the grandfather of Empress Maria of Amnia, Emperor Constantine’s VI first wife, and the Life of Empress Theophano, Emperor Leo’s VI first wife. He also points out as precedent another famous narrative, the passage of the Book fourteenth of the Chronicle of John Malalas devoted to the story of the marriage of Emperor Theodosius II and Empress Eudocia. Since then, putting aside the comparation with the episode in Belthandros and Chrysantza, the discussion of this topic focused on the historicity of the bride shows with contending Byzantinists trying to support or to contradict Hunger’s arguments. The most important contributions to this debate in its early stages were made in 1979 by Warren T. Treadgold,2 who collected nearly all the alleged evidences on the five contests previously identified by Hunger and explained them in their contemporary political context thus accepting both the historicity of the ceremony and the reliability of the narratives which describe it, and in 1985 by Lennart Rydén, who denied their credibility as historical sources and concluded his research with the sentence ‘there is little reason to believe that these brideshows ever occurred in reality’.3 After some articles devoted to the whole topic (Linda-Marie Hans4) or to a concrete episode (the bride-show for Staurakios in the case of Paul Speck5) always weighing the reliability of the stories, a turning point for the polemic arrived in 1999 with the publication by Martha Vinson of an article in the Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik.6 Vinson focused on a source that had been neglected until then, the Life with encomium of Empress Theodora, Emperor Theophilos’ wife and Michael’s III mother. This new source confirmed apparently the celebration in 830 of a beauty contest to choose the bride for Theophilos, something previously known through the allusions by some chronographs to the participation of the nun and poetess Cassia in this ceremony. Vinson, however, did not use the coincidence of both stories for affirming their historicity, but without entering the debate about the historical events, she took the opportunity to analyse from a literary point of view the narratives on the bride show for the last iconoclast emperor and for the four extant cases. Thanks to this new philological approach, that relies on 2 Warren T. Treadgold, ‘The Bride-shows of the Byzantine Emperors’, Byzantion 49 (1979), 395-413. 3 Lennart Rydén, ‘The Bride-shows at the Byzantine Court – History or Fiction?’, Eranos (1985), 175-91. 4 Linda-Marie Hans, ‘Der Kaiser als Märchenprinz. Brautschau und Heiratspolitik in Konstantinopel 395-882’, JÖB 38 (1988), 33-52. 5 Paul Speck, ‘Eine Braut für Staurakios?’, JÖB 49 (1999), 25-30. 6 Martha Vinson, ‘The Life of Theodora and the Rhetoric of Byzantine Bride Show’, JÖB 49 (1999), 31-60. See also her second insight on the topic ead., ‘Romance and reality in the Byzantine bride shows’, in Leslie Brubaker and Julia M.H. Smith (eds), Gender in the early medieval world. East and west, 300-900 (Cambridge, 2004), 102-20.

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her sound knowledge of the ancient rules established for the epideictic oratory by Menander Rhetor, Vinson concluded that the bride-show is a rhetorical topos, a sort of narrative device, which originated in the context of the imperial discourse, the basilikós logos, to praise the beauty and sanctity of the lady who wins it, the empress bride, or, in some cases, to blame the shameful conduct of the bridegroom (Theophilos) or of the organizers of the ceremony (Emperor Nikephoros for his son Staurakios). According to Vinson, then, there is no need to search the confirmation of the historicity of these sources through their comparation. Their common features will only proof the literary character and the rhetorical origin of these narratives and not their reliability as truthful stories. Despite Warren Treadgold7 who shows in a reply the weaknesses of some of Rydén’s arguments and tries thus to affirm the historicity of the bride-shows, I share the doubts of the Swedish professor about their real existence. Therefore, I will examine these sources in Vinson’s way, as I did in fact in my previous research on this subject.8 I have started this article with this detailed exposition of the origins of the controversy about the Byzantine bride-shows because I wanted to underline an important question. It is the fact that the evidences on their historicity have been gathered from very varied sources regardless of their motivations and put into a common framework which makes sense only if we are previously convinced of the existence of such a ceremony. A closer insight into the narratives, bearing always in mind the conventions of their genre ascription, will allow me not only to confirm, as Martha Vinson already stated, that we are dealing with a rhetorical topos of the medieval Byzantine literature, but also that the contest of beauty and sainthood described by the modern scientific literature is a cultural construct that should be also deconstructed. Here are listed the five cases mentioned above with a detailed record of the sources and their contents. The testimonies are presented in the chronological order of the marriages. 1. Marriage of Emperor Constantine VI and Mary of Amnia, celebrated in the month of November 788. The organizer was Empress Irene, Leo’s IV widow and mother of the groom. The source is the Life of St Philaretos the Merciful, that was apparently written around 821/2 by the monk Nicetas, grandson 7 Warren T. Treadgold, ‘The historicity of imperial bride show’, JÖB 54 (2004), 39-52. See also the discussion on the purpose of the bride-shows in Judith Herrin, Women in purple. Rulers of Medieval Byzantium (London, 2001), 130-8. 8 Ernest Marcos Hierro, ‘Beauté et sainteté: hagiographie et littérature dans le motif du concours d’élection des imperatrices byzantines (VIIIe-IXe siècles)’, in XXe Congrès International des études byzantines, Pré-actes III. Communications libres, Collège de France-Sorbonne (Paris, 2001) III, 121; E. Marcos Hierro, ‘Usos ideológicos de personajes históricos en la tradición bizantina y neogriega’, in S. Torallas Tovar (ed.), Memoria de los Seminarios de Filología e Historia (Madrid, 2003), 187-201; E. Marcos Hierro, ‘Atenaís-Eudòcia: santedat i poder en una època difícil’, in Eulàlia Vintró, Francesca Mestre and Pilar Gómez Cardó (eds), Homenatge a Montserrat Jufresa (Barcelona, 2012), 175-92.

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himself of the saint and therefore nephew of Empress Mary.9 There is no mention of the contest in the Chronography of Theophanes the Confessor, written between 815 and 817.10 2. Marriage of Staurakios and Theophano, celebrated in December 807. The organizer was Emperor Nikephoros, father of the groom, and the source is the Chronography of Theophanes the Confessor (AM 6300), that mentions another two maidens who were more beautiful and desirable than Theophano and were raped by the sovereign.11 3. Marriage of Emperor Theophilos and Theodora, dated traditionally in 829/ 830.12 According to the other historians of the Macedonian Age,13 the organizer was the groom’s stepmother, Empress Eufrosyne, and the nun and poetess Cassia took part in the contest and almost won it because of her beauty and suitability for the imperial crown. However, after she gave a bold reply to an impious sentence proffered by Theophilos, the young emperor preferred to take Theodora as his bride. On the contrary, the most detailed source about the contest, the Life with encomium of St Theodora, written by an anonymous author during the reign of Basil I (867-886) or Leon VI (886-912) doesn’t mention in its narrative either Euphrosyne’s patronage of the ceremony or Cassia’s participation in it.14 There is no mention of the bride-show in the Continuation of Theophanes, when it speaks about of the origin of Theodora and her devotion to the icons prior to her husband’s death.15 4. Marriage of Emperor Michael III and Eudocia Decapolitissa, celebrated in 855. Among the other selected women there were two important ladies, Eudocia Ingerina, Michael’s alleged lover and future wife of Emperor Basil 9 M.H. Fourmy and M. Leroy (eds), ‘La Vie de s. Philarète’, Byzantion 9 (1934), 85-170, 13543; Lennart Rydén (ed.), The Life of St Philaretos the Merciful Written by His Grandson Niketas. A Critical Edition with Introduction, Translation, Notes, and Indices (Uppsala, 2002). 10 Carl de Boor (ed.), Theophanes Chronographia (Leipzig, 1883; reprint Hildesheim, 1980), 463; Cyril Mango and Roger Scott (eds), The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor. Byzantine and Near Eastern History AD 284-813 (Oxford, 1997), 637-8. 11 C. de Boor (ed.), Theophanes (1883), 483; C. Mango and R. Scott (eds), Theophanes (1997), 663-4. 12 About this marriage’s dating see Juan Signes Codoñer, The Emperor Theophilos and the East, 829-842. Court and Frontier in Byzantium during the last phase of Iconoclasm, Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Studies 13 (Farnham, 2014), 73-4. 13 Immanuel Bekker (ed.), Theophanes Continuatus, Ioannes Cameniata, Symeon Magister, Georgius Monachus, Corpus Scriptorum Historia Byzantinae 33 (Bonn, 1838): Symeon Magister (Pseudo-Symeon), 624-5, George the Monk, 789-90; Immanuel Bekker, Leonis Grammatici Chronographia, Eustathii de Capta Thessalonica, Corpus Scriptorum Historia Byzantinae 46 (Bonn, 1842): Leo Grammarian (Symeon Logothetes Redaction A), 213. 14 Athanasios Markopoulos, ‘Βίος τῆς αὐτοκρατείρας Θεοδώρας’, Symmeikta 5 (1983), 249-83, 259-60. 15 Jeffrey Michael Featherstone and Juan Signes Codoñer (eds), Chronographiae quae Theophanis Continuati nomine fertur libri I-IV, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae Series Berolinensis 53 (Boston, Berlin, 2015), 130-5.

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I and mother of Emperor Leo VI, and St. Irene, who became the abbess of Chrysobalanton. The source for the participation of Eudocia Ingerina is a passage from the funeral oration in honour of Basil I, attributed to his son Leo VI by one manuscript of the emperor’s works preserved in the library of the Vatopedi monastery of Mount Athos.16 If we accept this attribution, we must conclude that this imperial speech has as terminus post quem the death of Basil I in 886 and as terminus ante quem the passing away of the author himself, Leo VI, in 912. Irene’s selection to participate in Michael’s III bride show is mentioned by the Life of St Irene, abbess of Chrysobalanton, an anonymous author’s work, probably written during the reign of Emperor Basil II (976-1025), more than one hundred years after the event.17 According to this text, however, the saint arrived too late at Constantinople to took part at the contest and she decided to devote herself to religious life. There is no mention of the bride-show either in the chronicles of Pseudo-Symeon Logothetes18 or of George the Monk.19 Both works attribute to Empress Teodora and the Logothetes Theoctist the idea of marring Michael III and Eudocia Decapolitissa, because they wanted thus to separate the young emperor from his lover Eudocia Ingerina. The Continuation of Theophanes does not mention either the contest or the marriage in its book about the reign of Michael III. 5. Marriage of Emperor Leo VI and his first wife Theophano, celebrated in 882. Our only source about the contest is the Life of St Theophano, the work of an anonymous author, linked to the empress’s family, who wrote it perhaps during the reign of Leo VI (886-912).20 The Continuation of Theophanes does not mention the contest in its brief allusion to Theophano,21 neither do Pseudo-Symeon Logothetes,22 nor George the Monk.23 At first sight, from the mere lecture of these notes, the fact strikes that nearly all our sources for the bride-show belong to the same literary genre, hagiography, which flourished in the Byzantine Empire in these centuries. In two cases, the Life with encomium of St Theodora and the Life of St Theophano, the winner herself is the work’s protagonist. In another two cases, the Life of 16 A. Vogt and I. Hausherr (eds), ‘Oraison funèbre de Basile I par son fils Léon VI le sage’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica 26 (1932), 5-79, 54; Therodora Antonopoulou (ed.), Leonis VI Sapientis Imperatoris Byzantini Homiliae, CChr.SG 63 (Turnhout, 2008), 195-218, 204. 17 J.O. Rosenqvist, The Life of St. Irene Abbess of Chrysobalanton, a Critical Edition with Introduction, Translation, Notes and Indices (Uppsala, 1986), 8-10. 18 Immanuel Bekker (ed.), Theophanes Continuatus (1838), 655. 19 Ibid. 816. 20 E. Kurtz (ed.), Zwei griechische Texte über die hl. Theophano, Gemahlin Kaisers Leo VI. (St. Pétersbourg, 1898), 1-24, 5-6. 21 Immanuel Bekker (ed.), Theophanes Continuatus (1838), 702. 22 Ibid. 694. 23 Ibid. 846.

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St Irene of Chrysobalanton and the allusion to the exchanging remarks between Emperor Theophilos and Cassia, preserved in the chronicles of the Macedonian Age, both leading figures are participants in the contest. Irene and Cassia did not win, but they were suitable for the crown and, in fact, superior to the chosen ones. In the fifth case, the Life of St Philaretos, the bride-show plays a key role in the life of the grandfather of the empress bride, because it allows him to go to Constantinople and to enter the higher circles of the Empire. In my opinion, we can therefore conclude that the episode of the bride-show must be closely linked to the literary genre in which it appears for some reasons that I will try to explain. First, however, I must deal with two sources about the contests in 807 and in 855 which raise questions that are not easy to solve. Considering that the first occurrence of one imperial bride-show in the sources is the passage of the Chronography of Theophanes about Staurakios, Martha Vinson affirmed that the topos originated in the ‘iconoclastic invective’ of the Confessor against his enemy Nikephoros and that it was ‘soon thereafter adopted to encomium’ by the author of the Life of St Philaretos.24 She based the statement on the chronological order of the sources mentioned in my notes, but in my view, it lacks logical consistency. According to Vinson’s presentation of the contest as an important episode for the structure of the logos basilikós, it would be more likely that it originated for praising the bride’s virtues than for blaming her future father-in-law. In the same issue of the Jahrbuch der österreichischen Byzantinistik, Paul Speck provided a reasonable solution for that question.25 After a detailed philological analyse of the passage in the Chronography, Speck concludes that from the lecture of this much damaged text it is not possible to prove that Nikephoros organized a contest for his son.26 Speck’s article met the opposition of Treadgold and Kislinger, who were convinced of the historicity of the bride-shows.27 However, in spite of his polemic character and some exaggerations in his argumentation, I think that Speck is right putting into question the previous interpretation of this passage as the narrative of a bride-show with the same features as in the above-mentioned Lives. I am convinced that we read it in this way because Hunger included this episode in his dossier and even gave to the two maidens raped by the emperor the role of the final contenders with Theophano for Staurakios’ hand as in the beauty contest in Belthrandros and Chrysantza.28 Because of his assumption, Mango and Scott, who translated correctly the 24

M. Vinson, ‘Life of Theodora’ (1999), 60. P. Speck, ‘Staurakios’ (1999). 26 P. Speck, ‘Staurakios’ (1999), 29: ‘Mit der Chronographie des Theophanes ist jedenfalls weder im Fall des Staurakios noch sonst überhaupt eine Brautwahl, geschweige denn eine Brautschau nachzuweisen’. 27 W.T. Treadgold, ‘Historicity’ (2004), 89; E. Kieslinger, ‘Bibliographie: 5 B. Politische Geschichte’, BZ 93 (2000), 721. 28 H. Hunger, ‘Schönheitskonkurrenz’ (1965), 154-5: ‘3 Mädchen in engster Wahl’. 25

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words πολλὴν ἐκλογὴν παρθένων as ‘an extensive selection of maidens’, interpreted the syntagma ἐκ πάσης τῆς ὑπ’ αὐτου ἐξουσίας in a geographical sense thus translating it as ‘from all the domains subject to him’.29 Vinson, on the contrary, dismissed this interpretation and proposed to understand ‘by the full authority vested in him’ or ‘out of all resources at his disposal’, which serves to underline the shameful conduct of the emperor towards the selected women on a process that he fully controlled from its very beginning.30 Accepting both Vinson’s interpretation of the whole of the episode as an attack against Nikephoros’ prestige and Speck’s arguments against the reading of Theophanes’ passage as a proof of the celebration of such a ceremony for Staurakios, I propose that we exclude this contest from our list as a case of misunderstanding of the source’s content. According to Theophanes’ words, to my view, in 507 at the Byzantine court there was not a bride-show like the contest described in the Lives mentioned above, but only an irregular process of selecting candidates for the crown that ended very badly with the victory of an unsuitable bride and the dishonour of two better contenders. Regarding the marriage of Emperor Michael III and Eudocia Decapolitissa in 855, we have already seen that both the Continuation of Theophanes and the chronicles of the Logothetes tradition do not mention the previous celebration of a bride-show. At first sight, our sources on the event seem quite sound, but there are some aspects of them that are questionable. Putting aside the narrative of the Life of St Irene of Chrysobalanton, a later source that clearly depends from the accounts on bride-shows from the ninth century, I will deal with the funeral oration of Basil I, attributed to his son and successor Leo VI.31 As Martha Vinson points out, the allusion to the contest in the imperial speech ‘consists of a single phrase embedded in a larger narrative’ about the beauty of Leo’s mother, Empress Eudocia Ingerina.32 In Rydén’s translation, the passage reads as follows: ‘Not long before (Eudocia Ingerina was married to Basil I), he says, it was time for the then reigning emperor (Michael III) to marry. The most beautiful girls were brought together from everywhere. Among them she (Eudocia Ingerina) also was selected, but since she had been given by God to another (Basil I) and not to him (Michael III), he passed by the one that was immensely superior and married another (Eudocia Decapolitissa)’.33 Since the beginning of the controversy about the historicity of the bride-show, this passage has been considered the most authoritative testimony for the existence of such a ceremony because it comes from the hand of the son of a contender. For that reason, Rydén and Vinson, who tried to deny or diminish the reliability of 29 30 31

C. Mango and R. Scott (eds), Theophanes (1997), 663-4. M. Vinson, ‘Life of Theodora’ (1999), 42. A. Vogt and I. Hausherr, ‘Oraison’ (1932), 54; Th. Antonopoulou, Leonis VI Homiliae (2008),

204. 32 33

M. Vinson, ‘Life of Theodora’ (1999), 63. L. Rydén, ‘Bride-shows’ (1985), 182.

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all the sources on the subject, felt obliged to explain Leo’s reasons to use the topos despite knowing that it was a mere literary fiction. Rydén thinks that the mention of the contest made possible for Leo both ‘to transform the scandalous background of his parent’s marriage’ and to counterattack the rumours of the anti-Macedonian propaganda about his own birth.34 It states that despite his enemies’ lies God and Eudocia Ingerina preferred Leo’s real father, Basil I, over the alleged one, Michael III, for both the throne and the imperial bedroom. For her part, Vinson considers that the introduction of the bride-show in this imperial speech ‘represents a creative solution to the problem posed by the need to establish continuity with the preceding regime while also maintaining a certain distance from it’.35 Although I consider that both Rydén’s and Vinson’s explanations are sound and consistent, I would prefer in this case to come back to the forgotten controversy on the authenticity of this funeral oration, which was already questioned by its own first editors A. Vogt and I. Hausherr in 1932.36 As a matter of fact, this speech is preserved by one single manuscript, the Codex Athos Vatopedinus 408, that the modern editor of the Homilies of Leo VI, Theodora Antonopoulou, calls Codex B, and by its nineteenth-century apograph, Codex G. To explain this anomality in the transmission, Antonopoulou reminds us that this is also the case for four other homilies and points out that the monastic circles that copied and read the emperor’s works could have no interest in such a historical document as the funeral oration.37 Giving the difficulties of all kinds that the speech poses about the chronological dating of the historical events to which it refers, I think that we cannot totally exclude the possibility that the text could be a late forgery. In any case, its author, whether he was Emperor Leo VI or another erudite of the Macedonian Age, can have borrowed the allusion to the gathering of eligible maids from the most detailed narratives on the contest of the hagiography with which I will deal next, beginning with the work in which the winner lady is not the protagonist of the story, but only a secondary figure, the Life of St Philaretos the Merciful. Both the first editors of the text, M.H. Fourmy and M. Leroy, and the second one, Lennart Rydén, have underlined the splendid quality of this text, which has also been described by Alexander Kazhdan and L.F. Sherry as an ‘outstanding monument’ because of its use of the Byzantine vernacular and the literary skills of his author.38 All scholars have agreed that the narrative of the bride-show 34

L. Rydén, ‘Bride-shows’ (1985), 183. M. Vinson, ‘Life of Theodora’ (1999), 53. 36 A. Vogt and I. Hausherr, ‘Oraison’ (1932), 7-13. 37 Theodora Antonopoulou, ‘Emperor Leo VI the Wise and the “First Byzantine Humanism”: On the Quest for Renovation and Cultural Synthesis’, Travaux et mémoires 21/2 (1932), 187-233, 231. For Codex B and G see Th. Antonopoulou, Leonis VI Homiliae (2008), LXXX-LXXXII. 38 A. Kazhdan and L.F. Sherry, ‘The Tale of a Happy Fool: The Vita of St. Philaretos the Merciful (BHG 1511z-1512b)’, Byzantion 66 (1996), 351-62, 353. About its literary character see also Paul Speck, Kaiser Konstantin VI. (Munich, 1978), 204-7. 35

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in this work has been embellished through the introduction of a set of ordinary folktale motifs that characterize the empress bride Maria as a ‘Byzantine Cinderella’:39 the troublesome journey of the messengers from the imperial court, their arrival to Philaretos’ house and his hospitality, the measurement of the height and the size of the feet and probably also of the waist of the selected girls. However, despite being aware of its high degree of fiction, the fact that one of the two versions in which the Life survives names as his author a grandson of Philaretos, the monk Niketas of Amnia, has given to this text a great prestige as a historical source. As in the case of the funeral oration for Basil I, the Byzantinists who believe in the historicity of the beauty contest have stressed the family bonds between the author and Philaretos’ family to affirm the reliability of the core of his information.40 For his part, considering the account of the contest a fiction, Rydén focuses on the eventual political goals for using it of Niketas, who according to his own description writes the Life during his exile in the Peloponnesus.41 After the marriage of Emperor Michael II with Maria’s daughter Euphrosyne in 821/2, her cousin Niketas could have conceived the project of writing down the deeds of their common grandfather in order to gain the imperial permission to return to Constantinople. Vinson, finally, accepting Rydén’s hypothesis on the origin of the work, that ‘both confers legitimacy on the new Amorian dynasty and improves the author’s chances of recall from exile’,42 carefully analyses Niketas’ narrative and concludes that the bride-show episode contributes in this case to the encomium of the Merciful and of the whole of his virtuous family. In any case, there is a consensus on the fact that the beauty contest serves here to explain why a girl from an obscure family of the Paphlagonian province without any important known connection could become the wife of Emperor Constantine VI. It was not primarily because of her beauty and virtue, but because of the sainthood of her grandfather, who after a long life as a Byzantine rural Job gets from God his reward through Maria’s marriage. As in the case of the alleged contest for Staurakios, I don’t believe that this episode originated in this narrative, something that we could perhaps affirm if we state the chronological precedence of this text in respect to the Life with encomium of Empress Theodora. It seems more logical to me to believe that the contest motif originated for the praise of the bride’s virtues than for the encomium of her grandfather. Therefore, once again, I want to focus on a philogical question that could be important for our understanding of this source. Both editions of the Life of St Philaretos the Merciful have considered as the original recension the text with many vernacular elements preserved in the 39

A. Kazhdan and L.F. Sherry, ‘The Tale of a Happy Fool’ (1996), 353. See the arguments in W.T. Treadgold, ‘Bride-Shows’ (1979), 397, and W.T. Treadgold, ‘Historicity’ (2004), 40-1. 41 L. Rydén, ‘Bride-Shows’ (1985), 180-2. 42 M. Vinson, ‘Life of Theodora’ (1999), 52. 40

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Genoa manuscript Bibl. Franz. 34 from the eleventh century. Only Kazhdan and Sherry have stressed the values of the other recension, written in a higher linguistic style, which is represented by another manuscript, the Paris, BN gr. 1510, probably from the tenth century.43 Next to its importance as a testimony of the Byzantine vernacular, the Genoa manuscript is the only one that has the epilogue naming Niketas of Amnia as the author of the Life. Without this part, as in the case of the Paris manuscript, the Life of Saint Philaretos the Merciful would become the work of an anonymous author, also deprived of the information about the empress’ family which allows us to give it a dating and to explain its purpose. It is easy to understand the reasons for the preference of the Genoa version, but I think that we should bear in mind, as Kazhdan and Sherry did, the possibility that the Paris version could be earlier. In my opinion, the possibility cannot be excluded that the epilogue could be a later interpolation with the purpose to confer more authenticity to the Life’s account through a forged family connection between the saint and the author. As Martha Vinson points out, there are striking similarities between the narratives of both brideshows in the Life of St Philaretos and in the Life of St Theophano, which is also presented as the work of a close friend of the bride’s family and therefore as a trustworthy testimony of the historical event. According to the traditional dating of the Philaretos’ Life in 821/2, Vinson affirms that the author of the hagiography for the first wife of Leo VI was ‘deeply indebted’ to that previous work.44 However, it could be maybe the other way around that the Life of the Merciful would depend on the Life of Theophano, and specially the epilogue of the Genoa version.45 In any case, all the arguments that I have exposed until now allow us to consider, as Martha Vinson does, the Life with encomium of St. Theodora as the most relevant text to analyse the bride-show episode and, probably, in my opinion, the one in which it originated for the first time during the reign of Basil I or Leo VI. In her article in the Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik of 1999, Vinson shows us the encomiastic character of the Life of Theodora through a detailed description of its structure and contains.46 Presented from the title and the first paragraph as a ἐγκώμιον addressed to the holy defender of the Orthodoxy,47 this works follows closely the rhetorical rules of the imperial orations as Menander Rhetor established them in the third century in his treatise on epideictic oratory. After the proem, in which the anonymous author states the need and the utility of admiring and thus praising the virtues of the holy 43

A. Kazhdan and L.F. Sherry, ‘The Tale of a Happy Fool’ (1996), 352. M. Vinson, ‘Life of Theodora’ (1999), 57. 45 M.H. Fourmy and M. Leroy (eds), ‘Philarète’ (1934), 165. 46 M. Vinson, ‘Life of Theodora’ (1999), 57-60. 47 A. Markopoulos, ‘Βίος’ (1983), 257: Βίος σὺν εγκωμίῳ τῆς μακαρίας καὶ ἁγίας Θεοδώρας τῆς βασιλίδος. 44

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empress, he exposes her life and deeds mentioning firstly, according to the genre’s tradition, the accomplishments of her country, Paphlagonia, and of her parents, Marinos and Theoctiste. In a time of ‘great persecution’, promoted by the ‘enemies of the images’, Theodora’s parents were distinguished for their courageous and helpful attitude towards the chased Christians, being therefore for their daughter an example of piety. Almost without transition, the author begins then his narrative of the marriage of the young girl, which assumes in the context of an imperial woman’s encomium the key role played in an encomium for an emperor by the narrative of his accession to the throne either as heir of his ancestors or as victor over his enemies. Unlike the accounts of the Life of St Philaretos and of the Life of St Theophano, which both seem to me the result of a rhetorical amplification of the original story, the Life of St Theodora gives us no great details about the origin and the development of the bride show before its beginning. As I have already said, the author does not name Empress Euphrosyne as the organizer of the contest, although she appears later as being pleased by its issue. He clearly states that the initiative for the search of a bride comes from the emperor alone and the only criteria for the selection of the candidates is their physical beauty.48 After the arrival of the girls at Constantinople, Theophilos himself selected the seven ones who pleased him the best and tested their virtue, that is, their chastity, giving to each of them an apple and sending them to their housing. The next morning the maidens were summoned49 again to the emperor’s presence and Theophilos asked them for the ‘royal apples’ (τὰ βασιλικὰ μῆλα). Six of the girls couldn’t find the apples, because they had presumably eaten them. Only Theodora had kept it and even produced another one, offering to the amazed emperor an explanation not only of the significance of the apple that he had given to her the previous day, but also of the new apple that she shows him now. The royal apple symbolizes her virginity and prudence, which she, unlike the other candidates, will keep intact. The other one is the gift of a holy anchorite from Nikomedia, who has given it to her with the prophecy that she would marry the emperor. This second apple is the symbol of the son and heir that Theophilos will obtain from her.50 Persuaded by Theodora’s beauty, virtues and eloquence, Emperor Theophilos takes her hand and gives to her the imperial betrothal ring before the Senate of Constantinople. The narrative continues with the account of the celebration of the marriage in the Church of St Steven of Dafni, that is diminished in its solemnity by the insults that the author proffers 48 Ibid. 259: καὶ οὐ μόνον ταύτης, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἄλλων πολλῶν τῶν ἐπὶ θέᾳ κατ’ ἐκεῖνο καιροῦ θαυμαζομένων ἐπὶ ὡραιότητι καὶ εὐμορφίᾳ μεταπεμφθεισῶν πρὸς τὰ βασίλεια, ἀμφοτέρας ἐπὶ θέᾳ καὶ προκρίσει κάλλους ὁ βασιλεὺς προεβάλλετο. 49 Ibid. 259. 50 Ibid. 259: ὸ μὲν πρῶτον μῆλον, ὦ δέσποτα, τὸ καταπιστευθέν μοι παρὰ Θεοῦ τάλαντον, ἀπολάμβανε σῷον καὶ ὁλόκληρον, τοὐτέστιν τὴν παρθενίαν μου καὶ σωφροσύνην· τὸ δὲ δεύτερον, ὡς δηνάριον καὶ τοῦ ἐξ ἐμοῦ τικτομένου υἱοῦ σου, μὴ ἀποστρέψῃς.

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against the celebrant of the ceremony, the iconoclast patriarch Antonius.51 This is the first sign of Theodora’s ill fate: she has married into the very heart of the iconoclastic heresy, to a man who follows the steps of the most wicked Byzantine sovereign, the three times dammed Emperor Constantine V Copronymus.52 The next chapters of the Life deal with the joint reign of Theophilos and Theodora, in which the persecution against the iconophile was not more lenient than before according to the author. In fact, the author says that the emperor ‘remained incorrigible’ and thus afflicted the Orthodox Christians with many tortures and punishments.53 They persisted, however, in their faith, because the Orthodoxy is the ‘first virtue’.54 After naming Ioannikios, Nikephoros, Methodios, Michael, Theodoros and Theophanes, who suffered persecution for defending the images, the author turns out his attention to the object of his praise, Theodora, and gives us a striking account of her life under Theophilos’ terror regime. Unlike the champions of Orthodoxy, the empress kept silence on the subject. She secretly revered the iconophile confessors and abominated the impious iconoclast heretics, but she feared her husband’s rage and therefore avoided to contradict him both in public as in their intimacy.55 The author says that she waited for a more propitious time to bring into light her ‘sincere orthodox faith’,56 a moment that will only come after Theophilos’ death. It is important that we bear in mind that, according to her Life, Theodora did not play before her wicked husband the role of intercessor that the tradition often attributes to the imperial consorts imitating the Mother of God. She will only intercede with her prayers for the salvation of Theophilos’ soul in the emperor’s death bed, having in fact a less important role in his last hours than her ally the logothetes Theoctist.57 As it is well known, the historians of the Macedonian Age speak of the secret veneration of icons by the empress 51

Ibid. 260. Ibid. 260-1: ὁ οὖν βασιλεὺς Θεόφιλος τὴν αὐτοκρατορικὴν ἀρχὴν διέπων, τὴν ἀθέμιτον καὶ πονηρὰν τοῦ θεηλάτου καὶ τρισκαταράτου Κοπρωνύμου καὶ τῶν θηριωνύμων καὶ θηριοτρόπων χαλεπὴν καὶ ψυχόλεθρον αἵρεσιν διεδέξατο καί, ταύτην ἀναδεξάμενος, οὐδὲν ἧττον ὤφθη τῆς ἐκείνων δυστροπίας τε καὶ τυραννίδος. 53 Ibid. 262: ὁ δὲ δείλαιος καὶ ἄθλιος Θεόφιλος, ἀδιόρθωτος μένων, πολλαῖς καὶ πικραῖς τιμωρίαις, αὑκ[ε]ίαις τε καὶ βασάνοις πολλοὺς τῶν ὀρθοδόξων ὑποβαλὼν ὑπερορίαις κατεδίκαζε. 54 Ibid. 262: πρώτη γὰρ ἀρετὴ ἡ ὀρθόδοξος γνώμη ἐστί. 55 Ibid. 262-3: Θεοδώρα τε ἡ τιμία καὶ εὐσεβεστάτη ἄνασσα τοὺς μὲν ὀρθοδόξους ἐτίμα κρυφίως καὶ φιλοφρόνως ἐδεξιοῦτο, τοὺς δὲ ματαιόφρονας καὶ θεοβδελύκτους εὑκονομάχους ἐβδελύσσετο καὶ ἀπεστρέφετο·ἤσχαλλε δὲ καὶ ἠδημόνει καὶ ἠθύμει ὅ τι καὶ διαπράξοιτο, ἀλλ’ ἐδεδίει τὸ θυμῶδες καὶ ὀργίλον καὶ σκυθρωπὸν τοῦ ἀνδρὸς αὐτῆς καὶ τὸ περὶ τὰς τιμωρίας δυσμείλικτον, τήν τε τοῦ θυμοῦ σφοδρότητα καὶ τὸ τραχὺ τῆς φωνῆς καὶ ἀγριώτατον τοῦ προσώπου συστρεφόμενον κατὰ μικρὸν καὶ πτοουμένη αὐτὸν ἐσιώπα. 56 Ibid. 263: ἐζήτει δὲ καιρὸν εὔθετον τοῦ φανερῶσαι καὶ εὑς φῶς ἐξενεγκεῖν τὸν φιλόθεον αὐτῆς τρόπον καὶ τὴν εἰλικρινῆ καὶ ὀρθόδοξον πίστιν. 57 Ibid. 264-5. 52

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and her mother Theoctiste during Theophilos’ lifetime,58 but there is no hint of it in Theodora’s hagiography. According to the account of its author, the empress did not betray through any gesture her inner faith in the images. It has been argued that this earlier narrative surely fits the historical reality better than that of later historiography.59 It is more plausible to think that Theodora became iconophile after the emperor’s death than to accept the Macedonian version of her clandestine devout practices. For our purpose, however, it matters that her Life gives the fear of her husband as the reason of her passive attitude during Theophilos’ persecution against the orthodox Christians. In my opinion, this motivation allows us to postulate for this narrative the existence of a strong bond of dependence from an old and prestigious source, the Book of Esther. The editors of the Life of St Philaretos, M.H. Fourmy and M. Leroy, were the first to point out for this work a possible influence of the narrative of the search in all regions of Persia for a new wife for King Artaxerxes, such as it described in the second chapter of the biblical book.60 The only requisites to be selected for this contest are virginity and beauty and the girls came from all parts of the Persian Empire to its capital city Susa, where they have their lodgings in the royal gynaeceum under the surveillance of the eunuch Hegai, the keeper of the women.61 There are of course important differences in the selection process, because the heathen Persian king has sexual intercourse with the contenders prior to his definitive decision for Esther, something that, as we have seen, was only attempted in Byzantium by the wicked emperor Nikephoros. However, adapting the process to a Christian context, where the visual inspection and the apple test substitute the intimate nocturnal encounter in the royal chambers, the similarities between both accounts are so striking that Warren T. Treadgold postulated that the Byzantine sovereigns found perhaps the inspiration for their bride-shows in the episode of the marriage of Artaxerxes 58 J.M. Featherstone and J. Signes Codoñer (eds), Chronographiae quae Theophanis Continuati (2015), 130-5; Immanuel Bekker (ed.), Theophanes Continuatus (1838), 647 (Symeon Magister (Pseudo-Symeon), 811 (George the Monk); Johannes Thurn (ed.), Ioannis Scylitzae Synopsis Historiarum, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae, Series Berolinensis 5 (Berlin, 1973), 52-4. 59 Leslie Brubaker and John Haldon, Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era c. 680-850 (Cambridge, 2011), 398, 448. 60 M.H. Fourmy and M. Leroy (eds), ‘Philarète’ (1934), 103. About the contemporary interest for the Book of Esther among the Franks, which was linked to the highly controversial figure of Empress Judith, Louis the Pious’ second wife, see Mayke de Jong, ‘Bride shows revisited: praise, slander and exegesis in the reign of the empress Judith’, in L. Brubaker and J.M.H. Smith, Gender (2004), 257-77. 61 Esther 2:2-3: 2 καὶ εἶπαν οἱ διάκονοι τοῦ βασιλέως· ζητηθήτω τῷ βασιλεῖ κοράσια ἄφθορα καλὰ τῷ εἴδει· 3 καὶ καταστήσει ὁ βασιλεὺς κωμάρχας ἐν πάσαις ταῖς χώραις τῆς βασιλείας αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἐπιλεξάτωσαν κοράσια παρθενικὰ καλὰ τῷ εἴδει εἰς Σοῦσαν τὴν πόλιν εἰς τὸν γυναικῶνα· καὶ παραδοθήτωσαν τῷ εὐνούχῳ τοῦ βασιλέως τῷ φύλακι τῶν γυναικῶν, καὶ δοθήτω σμῆγμα καὶ ἡ λοιπὴ ἐπιμέλεια.

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and Esther.62 Here it is enough to affirm that there is a literary dependence between both narratives, but, to my view, in the particular case of the Life with encomium of St Theodora, it is necessary to extend the comparison to the next episodes in the lives of both the Jewish queen and the Byzantine empress, and specifically to the descriptions of their troublesome relationships with their husbands. As a matter of fact, when Esther enters the royal palace, she does not show ‘her people nor her kindred’ either to the eunuchs nor to the king himself, because her cousin Mordecai ‘had charged her that she should not show it’.63 According to the counsel of her ambitious protector, who seeks a career in the Persian court, Esther does not reveal that she is a pious Jewish girl and she therefore takes part in the selection process under the same conditions than the other girls, as if she were one of them and not a daughter of Israel. After being chosen by Artaxerxes to be the new queen, she also keeps silent about her origin and only reveals it when she tries to save the Jews of the Empire from the destruction planned by the eunuch Haman, Mordecai’s enemy, and already approved and even ordered by the king.64 At this moment, when the persecution against God’s people is about to begin, Queen Esther, although she is seized with mortal anguish, dares enter the presence of the king without his permission and faints before him out of fear.65 If we compare the accounts of their deeds, we see that, until this passage, both Esther and Theodora share the secrecy about her true beliefs and the fear of the wrath of her husband. After her bold gesture, the Persian queen manages to save her people and to destroy her enemies thanks to her beauty and eloquence and the love Artaxerxes feels for her. On the contrary, Theodora, as we haven seen, must wait until Theophilos’ death to free her brethren from the persecution in the devotion for the images and to restore definitely the Orthodoxy. Both women are equal in beauty and virtues, but their husbands are very different. Artaxerxes is heathen and perhaps a little bit too choleric, but he is not wicked. His minister Haman, who hates Mordecai and the people of Israel, has tricked him. The Persian king loves sincerely his queen consort and is therefore ready to hear her pleads for mercy towards the Jews. This is not the case with Theophilos, who is described as a bloodthirsty monster by the author of the Life with encomium of Theodora. In this narrative, 62

W.T. Treadgold, ‘Bride-Shows’ (1979), 398. Esther 2:10: 10 καὶ οὐχ ὑπέδειξε Ἐσθὴρ τὸ γένος αὐτῆς οὐδὲ τὴν πατρίδα· ὁ γὰρ Μαρδοχαῖος ἐνετείλατο αὐτῇ μὴ ἀπαγγεῖλαι. 64 Esther 3-4. 65 Esther 5:1d-2a: 1δ καὶ εἰσελθοῦσα πάσας τὰς θύρας κατέστη ἐνώπιον τοῦ βασιλέως, καὶ αὐτὸς ἐκάθητο ἐπὶ τοῦ θρόνου τῆς βασιλείας αὐτοῦ καὶ πᾶσαν στολὴν τῆς ἐπιφανείας αὐτοῦ ἐνδεδύκει, ὅλος διὰ χρυσοῦ καὶ λίθων πολυτελῶν, καὶ ἦν φοβερὸς σφόδρα. 2α καὶ ἄρας τὸ πρόσωπον αὐτοῦ πεπυρωμένον δόξῃ ἐν ἀκμῇ θυμοῦ ἔβλεψε, καὶ ἔπεσεν ἡ βασίλισσα καὶ μετέβαλε τὸ χρῶμα αὐτῆς ἐν ἐκλύσει καὶ κατεπέκυψεν ἐπὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν τῆς ἅβρας τῆς προπορευομένης. 63

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the Byzantine emperor plays not only the royal role of Artaxerxes, but also the evil one of the eunuch Haman, because he himself plans, orders and executes the persecution against the orthodox Christians. In these circumstances, there is no reason for Theodora to try to win his compassion as Esther does with her husband. It is much better to wait in silence for the perfect occasion, when nobody will hinder the accomplishment of God’s will. If we put aside the rest of both accounts, which depends from the historical circumstances, and only consider the episodes that I have mentioned, there is no doubt, in my opinion, that they expose one and the same narrative, the story of a beautiful and pious maiden who, through a contest with other contenders inferior to her, obtains the hand of a king with whom she does not partake in the same religion and therefore, out of fear, feels obliged to keep silent on her true beliefs. The bride-show, that is the general search of a wife for a sovereign regardless of her social status and ethnic origin and having as only requisites her virginity and beauty, provides the perfect explanation for a match which otherwise would have been impossible because of the unsurmountable differences between bride and groom. In the archetypal case of Cinderella, the episode serves to bridge the social gap between the prince and the maiden, but in the case of Esther, in which this narrative’s schema originated, and in the case of Theodora, which actualized it in the ninth century, the interreligious character of the marriage is the key element. Through the union of the enemy of God’s people with one of its daughters, a woman aware of her dangerous situation and full of respect towards her husband, God will provide the salvation of His flock in the right moment according to each circumstance. In order to confirm the existence of such a narrative pattern, which I would name the ‘novel of Esther’, I will turn now our attention to the story previously presented as a precedent to the episode of the Byzantine bride-shows of the eight and ninth centuries. I mean the account of the marriage of Theodosius II and Aelia Eudocia in 408 according to Book fourteenth of the Chronography of John Malalas.66 First, as in the cases of Esther and Theodora, the union of the Christian emperor and the heathen daughter of an Athenian philosopher is so unforeseeable that it is presented by Malalas as the result of a command given by Theodosius to his elder sister Pulcheria. She should provide him with a beautiful wife despite her origin and fortune.67 Although Theodosius is more explicit expressing his wishes than the Persian king and the iconoclast emperor, Pulcheria does not organize a contest such as the ones held in Susa and Constantinople in the ninth century, but she mobilizes all her agents to find the perfect match wherever she is. After a long and unfruitful search, Providence brings the young 66

Johannes Thurn (ed.), Ionnis Malalae Chronographia, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae Series Berolinensis 35 (Berlin, 2000), 273-5. 67 J. Thurn (ed.), Malalae Chronographia (2000), 273.

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maiden Athenais to the palace in an unexpected way, because she enters the presence of Pulcheria as a suppliant, pleading imperial protection against her brothers. Her beauty and eloquence conquer firstly Pulcheria and then Theodosius himself, who hiding behind a curtain admires her during a private audience with his sister. Falling immediately in love with Athenais, the emperor chooses the heathen girl for his wife and, in order to become empress, she must convert to Christianity and be baptized as Eudocia. As in the other cases, this is again an interreligious marriage, but one that involves the woman’s conversion, because she is not on the ‘right side’ from the very beginning. One could argue that this feature does not allow us to read this narrative as another actualization of the ‘novel of Esther’. As in the previous case of Theodora, however, I want to direct now the attention to the whole of the narrative about the marriage of Theodosius and Eudocia in Malalas’ Chronography, and specifically to the infamous apple episode, that causes the empress’ disgrace and her retirement to Jerusalem. In an article published in 1994 about the treatment of the accession of Martian in monophysite and chalcedonian sources, Richard W. Burgess pointed out that the same episode of the apple, but with other protagonists, appears also in a Coptic hagiography for the monophysite patriarch Dioscoros of Alexandria, written by Theopistos before 477.68 In the Vita Dioscuri, the figures involved in the conflict are Emperor Theodosius, his sister Empress Pulcheria and her secret lover Marcian. Bearing in mind the chronological gap between this hagiography of the fourth century and the Chronography of Malalas of the sixth century, Burgess held the monophysite circles responsible for the creation of a narrative which undermined Pulcheria’s virginity, the source of her power’s legitimacy. He therefore suggested that the Malalas version in which Eudocia plays the role of the woman suspected of adultery could be ‘an example of orthodox “damage control” to subvert a popular myth concerning Pulcheria and Marcian’. In his view, the story of the Vita Dioscuri ‘works better and makes more sense in the Theopistos version’.69 More than a decade later, Roger Scott assumed Burgess’ conjecture and stated that ‘it is simply much more likely that the Eudocia story was invented to counter monophysite propaganda against Pulcheria than rather the other way round’.70 As a consequence, following Burgess’ suggestion, Scott attributed the creation of the apple story with the triangle Eudocia, Theodosius and Paulinus to the Chalcedonian propaganda ‘to save Pulcheria from monophysite slander’71 and thus presented the 68 Richard W. Burgess, ‘The Accession of Marcian in the Light of Chalcedonian Apologetic and Monophysite Polemic’, BZ 86/7 (1994), 47-68. 69 Ibid. 50, note 40. 70 Roger Scott, ‘From propaganda to history to literature: the Byzantine stories of Theodosius’ apple and Marcian’s eagles’, in Ruth J. Macrides (ed.), History as Literature in Byzantium, Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies 15 (Farnham, 2010), 115-31, 119. 71 Roger Scott, ‘From propaganda to history’ (2010), 121.

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Coptic version preserved in the Chronicle of John of Nikiu, which explicitly exonerates Eudocia from both the adultery and the responsibility for Paulinus’ execution, as a counter-story forged as a response by the monophysite bishop and historian.72 However, if we carefully read the account of Malalas about the apple episode, we immediately see that it does not content any accusation against Eudocia. On the contrary, it reads like an apology of her conduct and a disapproval of Theodosius’ overreaction. In fact, Malalas states that the empress sends the apple to Paulinus, because he is a friend of the emperor, not her lover.73 It is not her who is to blame, but Emperor Theodosius, who out of jealousy misinterprets her gift to Paulinus and orders his execution thus unjustly exposing his wife to public shame as an adulteress. In his account on the later empress’ life, Malalas mentions that she protests her innocence even on her deathbed, where all sinners traditionally confess their crimes in order to obtain the final absolution.74 Without trying to consider his eventual personal views on the subject, that we cannot surely know from the lecture of his narrative, I think that we can safely conclude that Malalas’ version of the story is not so biased against Eudocia as the scholars have traditionally assumed that it is. On the contrary, I believe that it presents the empress as a pious woman and victim of slander, who retires to the most holy place in the world to live a life of devotion and piety. In my previous research about this subject,75 I have therefore proposed to read Malalas’ narrative as the remnants of a not yet identified monophysite Vita Eudociae, which also survives in the Chronicle of John of Nikiu. According to my view, the apple story originated in the monophysite tradition both for Eudocia and for Pulcheria. For Eudocia originated in the frame of a hagiographical encomium for the empress who presided with her husband over the Robber Synod of Ephesus in 449 and did not hide her sympathy for the monophysites during the last years of her life in Jerusalem. For Pulcheria originated as a clear example of psogos, aiming to destroy the reputation of the virginal augusta. Unlike Burgess and Scott, as I have already argued in the case of Theophanes’ account about the selection of a bride for Staurakios, it seems more likely to me that the encomium precedes the blame, that is, that Eudocia’s version would be prior than Pulcheria’s one. Its triangular structure ‘husband, wife and lover’ fits much better as the origin of the narrative than the structure ‘brother, sister and lover’. Adultery, of course, has a great and a long tradition in literature beginning with Homer’s Iliad, in which an apple has also an important role to 72 R.H. Charles, The Chronicle of John, Bishop of Nikiu translated from Zotenberg’s Ethiopic Text (London, 1916), 104-5. 73 J. Thurn, Malalae Chronographia (2000), 276-7. 74 Ibid. 278. 75 E. Marcos Hierro, ‘Atenaís-Eudòcia’ (2012), 181-2.

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play. Considering the whole of the story, this triangular conflict efficiently explains the reason why Empress Eudocia abandons her husband, her daughter and the palace and goes away to Jerusalem. Pulcheria’s narrative, on the contrary, does not have the same importance. It only states that it existed a previous sacrilegious relationship between the alleged virgin and her secret lover, but it does not cause the accession of Martian to the Byzantine throne. The episode ends with Martian’s exile and no punishment for Pulcheria, who remains in Constantinople and therefore can recall him to the court after her brother’s death. It has not the same key role in its account as in the case of Theodosius, Eudocia and Paulinus. In my opinion, accepting the precedence of the source of Malalas’ version over Theopistos’ version also allows us to better understand the meaning of this episode in the story of the imperial marriage and thus to come back to the ‘novel of Esther’. As Emperor Theodosius himself, many readers of Malalas believe that Eudocia is guilty of adultery, because she lies to her husband when he asks her for the apple. Instead of confessing that she has given it to Paulinus, Eudocia says that she has eaten it in order to put a rapid end to the inquiry. Accepting Theodosius’ logic and thus condemning Eudocia as an adulteress, nobody questions the reason that may have led the empress to answer with a lie. In my opinion, she lies for the same reason that St Elisabeth of Aragon lies to her husband King Dionis of Portugal when he asks for the things that she hides in her bosom76 or Desdemona lies to Othello about the handkerchief,77 that is, out of fear from his uncontrollable rage. In my view, the apple episode in the story of the marriage of Theodosius II and Eudocia characterizes the emperor as a sovereign so frightful as King Artaxerxes and Emperor Theophilos are and therefore characterizes the empress as a new Esther and a precedent of Theodora, a woman married to a man who frightens her. Lying to such a husband is not a sin, but a way to avoid greater evil, and God, as in the case of St Elisabeth, can even transform those lies in truths helping a wife in distress.78 The analogy with the narratives of the Book of Esther and The Life with encomium of Theodora also allows us to better understand the purpose and the structure of the Vita Eudociae that we can retrace in this passage. 76 See Helena Maria Ribeiro Almeida Costa Toipa, ‘O milagre das rosas em De vita et moribus Beatae Elisabethae Lusitaniae Reginae de Pedro João Perpinhão’, Boletim d’Estudos Clássicos 60 (2015), 131-41. 77 William Shakespeare, Otello, Act III, Scene IV. 78 See the text of Pedro João Perpinhão’ in H.M. Ribeiro Almeida Costa Toipa, ‘O milagre das rosas’ (2015), 35, note 5: Helena Maria Ribeiro Almeida Costa Toipa: Cum aliquando clam in sinu ferret, quod pauperibus quibusdam praeberet, Regem quid occulte gereretur suspicantem, ac forte non coniugem largiri miseris nolentem, sed regiam in eo maiestatem retinere uolentem, quaesisse quid portaret; Elisabetham timentem, ne id facere prohiberetur in posterum, respondisse, rosas; ac de improuiso Dionysii iussu explicato sinu, quaecumque ferret, in rosas pulcherrimas esse conuersa. As Perpinhão also mentions, the same wonder is also attributed to St Casilda of Toledo and St Elisabeth of Hungary.

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As a matter of fact, if Theodosius II plays in this account the same structural role as Artaxerxes and Theophilos in their narratives, it is likely that he also shares with them the condition of not having the same religious belief than his wife in the moment of conflict. We have previously seen that this original difference between bride and groom seemed surmounted by the conversion of Athenais to Christianity, but I dare to propose that the apple episode in Malalas serves to introduce a new religious rift in the imperial marriage. I mean the conflict between the empress who remains faithful to the monophysite faith proclaimed at the so-called Robber council of Ephesos in 449 and the emperor who, according to the Chalcedonian propaganda, died in Christ’s peace having returned to the Orthodox flock under the guidance of her sister Pulcheria. In this narrative, then, unlike Esther, who can persuade her husband to save God’s people, and Theodora, who must remain silent at the iconoclast court, Eudocia, unjustly accused by a heretical emperor, dares to abandon him and goes to live in a country where her faithful brethren rule. The historical circumstances are of course different. Athenais, like the other Theodosian empresses, had enough freedom and authority to go away from Constantinople and live as a sovereign in the Holy Land. Theodora, living in the ninth century, could only seize the power as her son’s regent after Theophilos’ death. However, the narrative structures used to relate their lives are the same that originated in the Book of Esther and, in my view, define the model for all hagiographical narratives about queens or empresses married to a husband of different religious beliefs and bad temper. As a summary of my research, I propose to identify the Byzantine bride-show episode as a literary topos of the hagiographical genre, the origin of which is the account of the Book of Esther about the search of a new wife for King Artaxerxes. The authors of the Life of Eudocia, from which one can recognize its remnants in the fourteenth book of the Chronography of Malalas in the fifth century and of the Life of Theodora in the ninth century, used in their works as a narrative structure, taken from the biblical book, which was their inspiration and model. From this common source, they took the characterisation of the two leading figures, the saint empress, who is the mirror of perfection, and her unworthy husband, who loves her only for her physical beauty and does not partake in her religious beliefs. They also took some main lines of the plot: the way in which husband and wife meet through the contest and the way in which they confront each other because of his impiety and rage. Of course, the story’s resolution is different in each case, but it always implies in some way the reward of the empress’ virtues on earth and in heaven and her husband’s rebuke. After examining the debated questions about the authenticity and the chronology of the sources that offer other accounts on the bride-shows, I also propose to consider the Life with encomium of Theodora as the work in which originated the topos in the 9th century. In my opinion, the other works that mention such

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an episode – the Life of St Philaretos the Merciful, the Life of Empress Theophano, the Life of St Irene of Chrysobalanton, the passages in Macedonian historiography about Cassia and the Funeral Oration for Basil I – are all of them dependent from the account of Theodora’s Life. The fact that they offer more elaborated narratives of the episode as in the case of the two first sources or that they even present as the leading figure one contender that does not win the contest like Irene, Cassia and Eudocia Ingerina speak for their epigonal status. In my view, they are later developments of the original marriage story that we can read in the Life with encomium of Theodora. Finally, as I have said, I consider as a misunderstanding the inclusion in the list of bride-shows of the episode of the Chronography of Theophanes about the search for a bride for Staurakios organized by his father Emperor Nikephoros. In my opinion, the two only Byzantine actualisations of the ‘novel of Esther’ are the narratives of the marriage of Theodosius II and Eudocia in Malalas’ Chronography and of Theophilos and Theodora in her Life with encomium. As the biblical book, both sources offer to our devotion the portrait of an orthodox woman superior to her heretical and unsuitable husband who has chosen her in a contest of beauty and sainthood. As in the case of Esther, these are the two features, which distinguish them as the embodiment of the perfect Christian empress.

Empress Aikaterine’s Role in John Skylitzes’ Continuation Francisco LÓPEZ-SANTOS KORNBERGER, Alcobendas, Spain

ABSTRACT The eleventh-century Byzantine historical account known as the Continuation of John Skylitzes’ Synopsis has received little attention by scholars. This may be largely due to the fact that the Continuation mostly consists of the edition of previous historical materials, most of them being accessible to modern researchers. However, the Continuation hides a number of oddities regarding the author’s edition of sources and additions from unknown materials. Some of these additions concern Skylitzes’ depiction of the empress Aikaterine of Bulgaria, daughter of the tzar Ivan Vladislav of Bulgaria (1015-1018 AD) and wife of Isaak I Komnenos (1057-1059). The Continuation’s main source, the History of Michael Attaleiates, does not develop the character of Aikaterine. Michel Psellos’ Chronographia, perhaps the second source used most by Skylitzes, depicts her as a disruptive element at court, an ‘annoying woman’ who put the emperor’s patience to the test. Against all odds, Skylitzes developed Aikaterine’s character in the Continuation. Even further, the empress became a positive character in Skylitzes’ representation of Isaak’s reign. Aikaterine is represented as a pious woman who cared for her duties as a mother and a wife, even after Isaak’s decease. This article will contextualise Skylitzes’ decision based on recent contributions to eleventh-century Byzantine history-writing and the audience’s expectations of female characters. Aikaterine’s role in the Continuation is possibly linked to the Komnenian expected audience of the account – more specifically, it may have offered a model of feminine virtue to a court where the women’s place possibly had become a matter of debate.

This publication analyses the inclusion of a relatively brief yet significant depiction of the empress Aikaterine ‘the Bulgarian’, wife of the emperor Isaak Komnenos (1057-1059 AD), in the eleventh-century Byzantine historical account known as the Continuation of John Skylitzes. Aikaterine’s life is almost a complete mystery, as her presence in the historical record is extremely sparse. However, her brief depictions in both Michael Psellos’ Chronographia and the Continuation are both worthy of scholarly attention inasmuch as they become instrumental for their respective authors’ commentaries on contemporary Byzantine politics, morality and gender conventions.1 Previous scholars 1 Michaelis Pselli Chronographia, ed. Diether R. Reinsch, Millenium Studies 51 (Berlin, Boston, 2014), 7.82-3, henceforth Chronographia; Η Συνέχεια της Χρονογραφίας του Ιωάννου Σκυλίτζη,

Studia Patristica CXXX, 315-331. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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have recently analysed Aikaterine’s role in the Chronographia successfully;2 however, Aikaterine’s appearance in the Continuation remains largely unexplored, the whole account constituting one of the most understudied historical sources for eleventh-century Byzantium. Therefore, the first half of this publication will bring forward some key aspects of the Continuation and the representation of Aikaterine’s husband Isaak. Later on, Aikaterine’s role in that narration will be analysed by contrasting it with the information conveyed in other contemporary sources and in the backdrop of the feminine role in politics during Alexios’ time. This article aims to contribute to wider analyses on the evolution of gender roles from late Antiquity onwards, across the Medieval stage of Roman imperial history. Approaching the canvas: John Skylitzes’ Continuation and Isaak Komnenos The Continuation narrates the political events between Isaak Komnenos’ accession to the throne in 1057 and the years immediately preceding the rise to power of Isaak’s nephew, Alexios Komnenos (1081-1118). This account has arrived to us in five manuscripts dated between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries. The text has no title of its own in either of the copies, nor does it offer any clue about who its author is. All the surviving manuscripts of the Continuation follow a different account: the Synopsis of Histories written by John Skylitzes. The Synopsis covers the events between the early ninth century and 1057 and is conserved in about twenty different manuscripts.3 Following the line of scholars such as Catherine Holmes and Jonathan Shepard, I argue that Skylitzes wrote both accounts, possibly in the decade of the 1090s, and is therefore contemporary to Alexios Komnenos’ rule.4 ed. Eudoxos T. Tsolakis (Thessaloniki, 1968), 103-11, henceforth Continuation; the author thanks Eric McGeer and John Nesbitt for providing him a copy of their unpublished translation of the Continuation, which was extremely useful for the completion of this research: Eric McGeer and John Nesbitt, Byzantium in the Time of Troubles: The Continuation of the Chronicle of John Skylitzes (1057-1079), The Medieval Mediterranean 120 (Leiden, Boston, 2020). 2 Leonora A. Neville, Heroes and Romans in Twelfth-Century Byzantium. The Material for History of Nikephoros Bryennios (Cambridge, 2012), 140-8. 3 Eirini S. Kiapidou, Η Συνόψη Ιστοριών του Ιωάννη Σκυλίτζη και οι πηγές της (811-1057), Μελέτες Βυζαντινής Γραμματείας 9 (Athens, 2010), 45; an analysis of the different manuscripts of the Synopsis can be found in the introduction to Skylitzes’ edition: Ioannis Scylitzae Synopsis Historiarum, ed. Hans Thurn, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae 5 (Berlin, New York, 1973), xx-xxviii; henceforth Synopsis; see also Tsolakis’ introduction to his edition, and his own opinion on the manuscript tradition, in Continuation, 23-51. 4 The authorship of the Continuation is still a matter of debate. Evidence from the primary source material provides ambiguous information in that respect. John Zonaras’ Epitome ranked a depiction of Isaak Komnenos that could only reasonably belong to the Continuation as the working of Skylitzes: Ioannis Zonarae Epitome historiarum, ed. Moritz Pinder and Theodor Büttner-Wobst, Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae 47-9 (1841-1897), 672-3. Conversely, the late eleventhcentury compilation of historical accounts made by John Kedrenos always relies on Skylitzes’

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Both John Skylitzes’ Synopsis and its Continuation are generally ascribed to the controversial category of ‘world chronicles’, a type of historical account distinguished from the more renown ‘classicising’ works, such as Michael Psellos’ Chronographia and Michael Attaleiates’ History.5 While these two accounts are generally pinpointed as extreme examples in regards to the authors’ self-representation within the account and the pursuit of specific political agendas, Skylitzes’ accounts have generally been approached from a different perspective.6 In the Synopsis, the author does not appear in the narrative explicitly, dramatic digressions are generally avoided and, in the case of the Synopsis, some of the sources used to build up the account are listed and discussed in the account’s prooimion. The Synopsis’ prooimion also offers information concerning the author’s aims and methodology. Skylitzes aimed to avoid partial accounts crafted with the purpose of praising somebody. Precisely, the Synopsis has a fame for impartiality among modern scholars: it has been approached as a stupendous ‘mine of historical facts’, because the author seems not to have any sneaky political intentions behind his narration of events.7 Synopsis for the period 811-1057, but never incorporates the Continuation into his account. Concerning modern scholarly debate on the matter, see Tsolakis’ remarks at the beginning of his edition: Continuation (1968), 75-95. Tsolakis defended Skylitzes’ authorship of the Continuation on the grounds of linguistic affinities; his approach was criticised by Kiapidou, who nevertheless acknowledges the existence of significant linguistic similarities between the Synopsis and the Continuation, and hypothesises that the continuator may have deliberately copied Skylitzes’ style in order to harmonise both accounts: Eirini S. Kiapidou: ‘Η πατρότητα της Συνέχειας του Σκυλίτζη και τα προβληματά της, συγκλίσεις και αποκλίσεις από τη Σύνοψη Ιστοριών’, Ἐπετηρὶς Ἑταιρείας Βυζαντινῶν Σπουδῶν 42 (2006), 329-62, esp. 333-5; also in E.S. Kiapidou, Η Συνοψη Ιστοριών (2010), 48-9; Tsolakis’ recent response to Kiapidou can be found in Eudoxos T. Tsolakis, ‘Συνέχειας συνέχεια’, Βυζαντινά Σύμμεικτα 25 (2015), 115-42; Catherine Holmes and Jonathan Shepard also sided with Tsolakis’ approach in Catherine Holmes, Basil II and the Governance of Empire (976-1025), Oxford Studies in Byzantium (Oxford, 2005), esp, 67-8, 80, 83, 85, 90-1, 203; and Jonathan Shepard, ‘Memoirs as Manifesto: The Rhetoric of Katakalon Kekaumenos’, in Teresa Shawcross and Ida Toth (eds), Reading in the Byzantine Empire and Beyond (Cambridge, 2018), 185-214, 187. 5 The distinction between ‘classicising’ historical accounts and ‘world chronicles’ can be traced back to Karl Krumbacher, Geschichte der Byzantinischen Literatur von Justinian bis zum Ende des oströmischen Reiches (527-1453) (Munich, 1897), 219-21; see also a modern and more nuanced approach to the matter in Athanasios Markopoulos, ‘Le public des textes historiographiques à l’époque macédonienne’, Parekbolai. An Electronic Journal for Byzantine Literature 5 (2015), 59-62. 6 Ruth J. Macrides, ‘The Historian in the History’, in Costas N. Constantinides, Nikolaos M. Panagiotakes, Elizabeth Jeffreys and Angel D. Angelou (eds), Philellen: Studies in Honour of Robert Browning, Bibliotheke, Istituto ellenico di studi bizantini e postbizantini di Venezia 17 (Venice 1996), 205-24; for a larger discussion on both the styles and the modern reception of the Chronographia and the History, see Francisco López-Santos Kornberger, ‘Reconciliando al genio crítico y al adulador cortesano: una revisión a la aproximación bipartita de la Cronografía de Miguel Pselo y la Historia de Miguel Ataliates’, Estudios Bizantinos 7 (2019), 55-84. 7 Anthony Kaldellis recently assessed the credibility of the existing written sources for the creation of a new history of the Byzantine tenth and eleventh centuries. He concluded that the Synopsis constituted a particularly credible source, ‘as a lot of what Skylitzes reports if fairly

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The same point has been assumed for the Continuation, as Skylitzes seemingly stayed faithful to his promise to avoid partial accounts. Most of the Continuation closely follows Attaleiates’ History, sometimes drawing from other sources such as Psellos’ Chronographia. Once we analyse Skylitzes’ account against its main source, it becomes apparent that he removed much of what he could have identified as overly dramatic or improper for his understanding of history. For instance, the dramatic passage from the History where Attaleiates narrates the blinding of Romanos IV Diogenes, defined by scholars such as Inmaculada Pérez Martín as the dramatic climax of the book, was mostly omitted from the Continuation, becoming something more of a dry summary of the event.8 It is also unsurprising that the encomiastic sections at the end of the History appear largely summarised in the Continuation – page-long eulogies become, in Skylitzes’ account, an overview of Botaneiates’ first political measures which, nevertheless, follows Attaleiates’ narrative structure.9 Thus, a view has prevailed that the Continuation essentially constitutes a ‘reworking’ of Attaleiates’ History.10 That may be the main reason why the Continuation remains one of the most understudied eleventh-century Byzantine historical accounts. If the Continuation is just a copy, why bother studying it when its main source is available to us? There are plenty of reasons, however, to undertake such a study. Firstly, not all of the details conveyed in the Continuation can be traced back to surviving sources.11 Secondly, despite Skylitzes’ explicit reproach of ‘partial’ narratives, banal, lacking elaboration and some of it can be confirmed by foreign sources’: Anthony Kaldellis, ‘The Manufacture of History in the Later Tenth and Eleventh Centuries: Rhetorical Templates and Narrative Ontologies’, in Smilja P. Marjanović-Dušanić (ed.), Proceedings of the 23rd International Congress of Byzantine Studies, Belgrade 22-27 August 2016, Plenary Papers (Belgrade, 2016), 293-306, 304; Psellos’ Chronographia, a more detailed account but (to some) less trustworthy due to its subjectivity, has been considered a paradigmatic example of the Byzantine ‘classicising’ historical accounts. The Chronographia has been met with distrust by historians from the very moment when its only surviving manuscript was discovered: Michael Jeffreys ‘Michael Psellos and the Eleventh Century: A Double Helix of Reception’, in Marc D. Lauxtermann and Mark Whittow (eds), Byzantium in the Eleventh Century: Being in Between, Publications of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies (Oxon, New York, 2017), 19-31, 20. 8 Michaelis Attaleiatae Historia, ed. Eudoxos T. Tsolakis (Athens, 2011), 175-9/135.7-139.4, henceforth History; since Tsolakis’ edition is relatively recent, references to the History will first indicate the page from its first edition (as customary), followed by the page number and lines from Tsolakis’ edition; John Skylitzes, Continuation, 154.1-155.5; Inmaculada Pérez Martín, Miguel Ataliates: Historia, Nueva Roma, Bibliotheca Gaeca et Latina Aevi Posterioris 15 (Madrid, 2002), xliii. 9 In particular, one may compare these two passages, which come after Botaneiates’ arrival to the throne and the defeat of the rebel Nikephoros Bryennios: History, 303-22/233.3-248.5, Continuation, 184.22-186.20. 10 Alexander P. Kazhdan, ‘Skylitzes Continuatus’, in Alexander P. Kazhdan (ed.), Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (Oxford, 1991), III 1914. 11 The reader will find a useful analysis of Skylitzes’ sources for his Continuation in E. McGeer and J. Nesbitt, Time of Troubles (2020).

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it becomes apparent to the reader of his accounts that his authorial choices and his selecting of materials were neither random, nor impartial. More specifically, I will suggest that some of the ‘plot-twists’ found in the Continuation are related to the author’s political agenda, namely the praise of his main patrons, the Komnenian family, led by the emperor Alexios Komnenos. Holmes’ analysis of Emperor Basil II’s (976-1025) depiction in the Synopsis remains crucial for our analysis of both of Skylitzes’ accounts. Holmes argues that we should look at the representation of the emperor Basil II through the lens of late eleventh-century politics, the context in which the Synopsis was likely composed. If we date the completion of the Synopsis to the early 1090s, the account would be contemporary with Alexios Komnenos’ attempts to consolidate his rule by winning over the support of other aristocratic houses.12 According to Holmes, the depiction of Basil’s reign in the Synopsis leads the reader to conclude that some of his major achievements, including the famous conquest of Bulgaria, happened only because certain characters (many of them related to the powerful houses from the late eleventh century) supported his endeavours. That would be a message Alexios Komnenos could use in order to persuade his fellow aristocrats: if they sided with him, supporting his policies, victory and common prosperity would follow.13 Although Holmes’ work did not discuss the sections of the Synopsis that follow the death of Basil II in detail, I would like to suggest that Skylitzes’ subtle propaganda of the Komnenian regime far exceeds the date of 1025. Although I do not suggest that either the Synopsis or its Continuation were composed with the sole purpose of praising Alexios Komennos, his family and allies, it becomes apparent that Skylitzes had his expected Komnenian audience in mind while editing his sources.14 For this reason, it becomes especially relevant to analyse Skylitzes’ treatment of the first emperor of the Komnenian family, Alexios’ uncle and the husband of Empress Aikaterine Isaak I Komnenos (1057-1059). Since Empress Aikaterine’s presence in Skylitzes’ oeuvre orbits around the story of her husband Isaak, I will further analyse Skylitzes’ representation of the emperor. Isaak’s reign was rather atypical: he reached the throne a usurper, and was forced to hand over the crown to Constantine X Doukas (1059-1067) and retire to a monastery before his third year as emperor concluded. Isaak’s usurpation took place immediately after the last member of the ‘Macedonian dynasty’, the empress Theodora Porphyrogennete (1042-1056) expired. Her successor, Michael VI Stratiotikos (1056-1057) had been pushed onto the throne by some 12

On the date of composition of the Synopsis, see note 3. C. Holmes, Basil II (2005), 183-238, esp. 222, 228, 230, 238. 14 Skylitzes, for instance, reminded the reader of the unfair punishment suffered by Nikephoros Komnenos during the reign of Constantine VIII (1025-1028), as discussed by Anthony Kaldellis, Streams of Gold, Rivers of Blood: The Rise and Fall of Byzantium, 955 A.D. to the First Crusade (New York, Oxford, 2017), 155; Synopsis 371.54-8. 13

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members of the Constantinopolitan court, and did not enjoy the sort of legitimacy displayed by Theodora and her eleventh-century predecessors.15 Isaak’s own situation as emperor was equally precarious, to say the least: he seized the throne violently, his political measures were remembered as rather drastic and divisive, and these culminated with the controversial exile of the patriarch Michael Keroularios in 1058.16 Skylitzes’ Synopsis ends with the narration of Isaak’s successful rebellion, an episode where Aikaterine is almost completely absent as a character.17 Shepard’s recent article convincingly argued that Skylitzes took most of his account on Isaak’s rebellion, along with other stories from previous reigns, from a nowlost memoire commissioned, or written, by the general Katakalon Kekaumenos, who rebelled alongside Isaak against Michael VI.18 Although Shepard argues that this ‘K source’ depicted Isaak as a hesitant and even a cowardly leader (possibly as a way to underline Kekaumenos’ leading role in the rebellion),19 I still believe that Skylitzes’ choice of that source for his own Synopsis may count as pro-Komnenian propaganda, as no other contemporary account legitimises Isaak’s usurpation so consistently. As João Vicente de Medeiros Publio Dias recently argued, the Komnenoi may have find significant parallels in both Isaak’s and Alexios’ usurpations in 1057 and 1081 respectively. Thus, they might have valued positively an historical account sympathetic towards Isaak’s rebellion, even if they would also like to find certain flaws in Isaak’s character that somewhat explained the brevity of his reign.20 The account of Isaak’s deeds as a ruler belong to the Continuation and, for the most part, constituted an edited version of Attaleiates’ History. In opposition to Dimitris Krallis’ reading of the History, I would suggest that Attaleiates’ depiction of Isaak Komnenos is consistently negative – and yet Skylitzes managed to transform it in an overall positive, though not encomiastic account, achieving a nuanced vindication of Isaak’s rule.21 As Attaleiates underlined in 15

A. Kaldellis, Streams of Gold (2017), 216. Chronographia, 7.51-67: Psellos criticised Isaak’s pace in implementing radical reforms, and recognised that the patriarch’s exile constituted a somewhat controversial matter; other authors’ treatment of the reign of Isaak will be discussed below. 17 Synopsis, 481-500; see note 29 below. 18 J. Shepard, ‘Memoirs as Manifesto’ (2018), 185-214. 19 Ibid. 199-201; even Psellos’ Chronographia included some criticism of Isaak’s decision to rebel against the legitimate emperor: Chronographia, 7.29-30. 20 João V.M.P. Dias, ‘A reação imperial a tentativas de usurpação e a percepção legal do rebelde no longo século XI bizantino (1025-1118)’, in Andrea V. Neyra and Victoria C. Gerhold (eds), Sociedad, cultura y religión en la plena edad media (siglos IX al XIII) (Buenos Aires, 2019), 111-38. 21 Dimitris Krallis, ‘Sacred Emperor, Holy Patriarch: A New Reading of the Clash between Emperor Isaakios I Komnenos and Patriarch Michael Keroularios in Attaleiates’ History’, Byzantinoslavica 67 (2009), 169-90; an in-depth engagement with Krallis’ arguments on Attaleiates’ political views would require a separate publication. Here Attaleiates’ depiction of Isaak will be 16

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his account, Isaak was acclaimed in Constantinople thanks to the patriarch Keroularios’ political manoeuvres. Attaleiates’ depiction of the relation between emperor and patriarch is fundamental for understanding the pace of his story: Isaak’s indebtedness to Keroularios is made explicit at the beginning of his rule, as he is depicted receiving the crown from the patriarch’s hands and granted privileges to the church of Hagia Sophia in return for the patriarch’s aid.22 However, the following account on the patriarch’s exile represented Isaak as merciless and vile towards the very man who made his rule possible. 23 Shortly after, some ominous signs seemed to announce divine rage against the emperor – Isaak, in fact, contracted a severe illness and was forced to stand down and retire to a monastery, where he died.24 One can note the relevance of the patriarch’s exile in Attaleiates’ characterisation of Isaak not only by following its narrative arch, but also by measuring the relative weight of the episode. The patriarch’s story occupies 825 words in Attaleiates’ History, roughly 40% of the total account on Isaak’s reign (2036 words counting from his accession to the throne). Of these 825 words, only seventy-one describe the patriarch’s insolent attitude towards Isaak, namely the only section that somewhat legitimised Isaak’s decision to exile Keroularios.25 That constitutes a small number compared with the size of the remaining sections, dedicated to describing the plot arranged by the emperor in order to capture the patriarch, the latter’s praiseworthy attitude during the episode, Isaak’s reluctance to admit his wrongdoing, and the pseudo-hagiographic depiction of Keroularios’ death, together with the proclamation of the new patriarch Constantine Leichoudes. After the death of Isaak, moisture appeared in the emperor’s sarcophagus, which was interpreted as some sort of sign. Attaleiates used the miracle as an opportunity to evaluate the reign of Isaak negatively, using the moisture as proof of divine rage.26 About three quarters of Skylitzes’ Continuation roughly follows Attaleiates’ account – and yet, the story changes substantially as the patriarch’s role in the account shrinks. The story of Keroularios’ exile is reduced to 504 words (about a quarter of Skylitzes’ 2015 word account). Even further, the only sections from the story that grow in Skylitzes’ version are those that legitimise or praise mentioned only as a brief introduction to the arguments displayed in the Continuation and the representation of Isaak’s wife, the empress Aikaterine. 22 History, 59/47.28-48.3, 60/48.12-21. 23 Isaak’s depiction resembles other emperors from the History, such as Michael V Kalaphates (1041-1042): both emperors reached the throne thanks to a powerful benefactor – the empress Zoe Porphyrogennete became Michael’s adoptive mother while Isaak honoured the patriarch as a father – and later acted crudely against them, which provoked some sort of super natural force to shorten their rule: Ibid. 10-7/8.22-14.16 for Michael Kalaphates’s reign, 62-6/49.30-53.12 for the story of Keroularios’ exile. 24 Ibid. 66-70/53.13-56.10. 25 History, 62/49.30-50.6 for the account on Keroularios’ insolent attitude towards Isaak. 26 Ibid. 69-70/65.18-66.10.

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Isaak’s decision, namely the description of Keroularios’ arrogant attitude towards the emperor and Isaak’s rightful decision to appoint the virtuous Constantine Leichoudes as new patriarch. It seems unlikely that Skylitzes’ editions were not meant, at least, to nuance Attaleiates’ outright negative depiction of Isaak. The significance of Skylitzes’ editions can also be deduced from rather small details in the text. For instance, when alluding to Isaak’s renunciation of the throne, Skylitzes copied Attaleiates’ words almost verbatim, but added some positive remarks himself, here represented in italics: After battling the illness for some days, he resigned himself to an imminent demise. To appease God, then, he embraced a state of repentance and the imperial power, seized unlawfully, he lets it go willingly, doing this well; he exchanges it for the simplicity of monastic life, amending his former glory and luxury with voluntary submission and moderation. What gave further proof that he sincerely and with his whole soul repented for the actions he had taken was that he did not appoint emperor his own brother John…27

In sum, Skylitzes took Attaleiates’ depiction of Isaak – the story of a man who sinned and was punished – and edited it in a way so that Isaak’s sins did not seem so terrible, and whose expiation seemed to be sufficient to appease the divine. The later sections of Skylitzes’ account on Isaak mostly part ways with Attaleiates story, including new data on the emperor’s ideal life as a monk, together with some of his sayings and ideal representations of his family.28 That final section of Isaak’s account resembles some sort of biography, or even an enkomion in the sense that it stops the narrative and revolves around the depiction of Isaak as an ideal man, his virtues and his equally praiseworthy relatives. Aikaterine and the representation of contemporary female characters That is the moment when the empress Aikaterine, Isaak’s wife, enters the scene. With the exception of an early allusion to her arrival in Constantinople at the beginning of the narration, Aikaterine’s presence in Skylitzes’ Continuation belong to the later sections of Isaak’s reign.29 None of her ‘cameos’ 27 Continuation, 108.12-8: Νοσημαχήσας δὲ ἐφ’ ἡμέρας τινὰς τὸν μόρον ἐκαραδόκει καὶ διὰ τοῦτο πρὸς ἐξιλέωσιν τοῦ θείου ἀσπάζεται τὴν μετάνοιαν καὶ τὴν βασιλικὴν ἐξουσίαν, ἧς παρανόμως ἐδράξατο, ἑκοντὶ μεθίησι, τοῦτό γε καλῶς ποιησάμενος, καὶ τὸν μοναδικὸν ἀσπάζεται βίον, τὴν πρὶν εὐδοξίαν καὶ τρυφὴν ὑποπτώσει ἑκουσίᾳ καὶ μετριότητι διορθούμενος. Ὃ δὲ μᾶλλον δείκνυσιν ὡς εἰλικρινῶς καὶ ψυχῆς ἐξ ὅλης μεταμεμέληται ἐφ’ οἷς ἔπραξε, βασιλέα προχειρίζεται οὐ τὸν ὁμαίμονα αὑτοῦ Ἰωάννην…; related to History, 69/55.7-10. As my colleague João Vicente de Medeiros Publio Dias remarked, this passage also justifies Isaak’s crucial decision to name a member of the Doukas family his successor, instead of his own brother. 28 Continuation, 108.23-111.9 barely relates to anything represented in the History, with the exception of the account concerning the miracle on Isaak’s tomb: Continuation 109.19-110.5. 29 Skylitzes’ earliest mention of Aikaterine in the Continuation (103.16-7) concerns the moment when she is brought from the fortress of Pemolissa to Constantinople. This mention

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correspond to an adaptation of Attaleiates’ materials, who made no comments on the empress’ life and deeds. Aikaterine is depicted as she comforts Isaak during his tonsure, alluding to the joys of Heaven that would come to Isaak as a result of his decision to step down as emperor.30 Later on Aikaterine and her children are depicted in relation to an anecdote concerning Isaak’s chastity: even though the doctors suggested that he have an intercourse with some woman as a remedy for a severe infection, Isaak again alluded to the importance of attaining God’s kingdom. The depiction of the empress and her daughter Maria as virtuous women follows: they would later join the ascetic life and Aikaterine would adopt the monastic name of Xene in reference to her Bulgarian origin.31 These details are followed by the aforementioned description of a miracle related to Isaak’s tomb, a detail drawn from the History.32 Right afterwards, the empress returns to the scene as a prominent character: Skylitzes describes in detail how Aikaterine, now a widow and a nun, arranged the commemorations for Isaak’s name, and even predicted her own death when she brought the gifts for the following year’s commemoration in advance. Skylitzes also mentioned the site of Aikaterine’s burial, and the way in which she and Isaak had decorated the church of Prodromos.33 In a manner that recalls some instances from the Synopsis where Skylitzes had greatly shortened pre-existing, more detailed sources, the narrator concluded that describing the couple’s contribution to the church of Prodromos ‘would be a Herculean task’.34 What follows that section is a description of Isaak’s character and a collection of sayings from both him and Aikaterine. Probably reminding the audience of Aikaterine’s non-Roman origins and later capture by the troops of the emperor Basil II, Isaak is represented saying that he had emancipated her from slavery.35 Then Aikaterine, again recalling her foreign origin and in reference to her later arrival into God’s kingdom, said that ‘nothing strange had befallen her in exchanging one kingdom for another’.36 Aikaterine’s words constitute the end of Skylitzes’ account on Isaak’s reign; both he and his wife abandon the scene as the account on the following emperor Constantine X Doukas begins. shows remarkable continuity with respect to Synopsis, 492.50-4: Aikaterine’s only mention in that account is precisely related to Isaak’s decision to keep her in the fortress of Pemolissa during the war. 30 Continuation, 108.26-109.2. 31 Ibid. 109.6-18. 32 See note 28 above and, concerning Attaleiates’ account on the same event, see note 26. 33 Continuation, 110.6-19. 34 Ibid. 110.18-9: ἃ καταλέγειν καὶ κατὰ λεπτὸν διεξιέναι ἆθλος Ἡράκλειος; the importance of this expression is already mentioned in the forthcoming monograph by E. McGeer and J. Nesbitt, Time of Troubles (2020). 35 Continuation, 111.4-5. 36 Ibid. 111.7-8: Ἔλεγε δὲ καὶ ἡ βασιλὶς Αἰκατερῖνα μηδὲν ξένον ἐπ’ αὐτῇ γεγενῆσθαι βασιλείαν ἀλλαξαμένη.

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In order to understand the significance of Aikaterine’s insertion in the story, we must first consider what is expected from middle Byzantine historical accounts concerning female characters. Byzantine society has been described as patriarchal by different researchers in previous decades.37 In the words of Leonora Neville: Among the most pervasive and foundational cultural values of Byzantine society was that authority naturally resided with men, and that support for masculine authority contributed to the proper and natural social order … virtuous femininity was expressed through submission to masculine authority.38

The public sphere, as well as history writing, were primarily the domain of men.39 Consequently, Byzantine historical accounts are largely devoted to discussing the life and deeds of elite men. On the relatively few occasions when female characters enter the scene, their presence is usually justified as an excuse to speak further about their male counterparts. Patristic authors criticised men associated with women lacking enough self-restraint to address their stereotypical feminine weakness.40 In the genre of historical writing specifically, Empress Theodora, perhaps the most renowned female character of all Byzantine history, is remembered for her active role during the Nika riots (532), as registered in Prokopios of Kaisarea’s Wars.41 Theodora’s encouraging speech to her husband Justinian and other court members has often been remembered as the keystone of the rebellion: after this, the emperor resolved to supress the upraise at any cost.42 However, Leslie Brubaker’s examination of Prokopios’ account suggests that Theodora’s initiative was portrayed with the purpose of underlining her husband’s passivity, linked to his lack of masculinity and capacity to rule.43 Something similar could be argued concerning Prokopios’ depiction of both Theodora and Justinian in the Anekdota: representations of powerful women are usually framed in a 37 Dion C. Smythe, ‘Women as Outsiders’, in Liz James (ed.), Women, Men and Eunuchs: Gender in Byzantium (London, New York, 1997), 149-67, 149; also Liz James, ‘Men, Women and Eunuchs: Gender, Sex and Power’, in John Haldon (ed.), The Social History of Byzantium (Malden, Oxford, 2009), 31-50, esp. 35. 38 Leonora A. Neville, Anna Komnene: The Life and Work of a Medieval Historian (Oxford, 2016), 16. 39 L. James, ‘Men, Women, and Eunuchs’ (2009), 35-7. 40 Elizabeth A. Clark, ‘Ideology, history and the construction of “woman” in late ancient Christianity’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 2 (1994), 155-84, 166. 41 Prokopios’ Wars or De Bellis can be found in Procopii Caesariensis opera omnia, ed. Jakob Haury, rev. Gerhard Wirth (Leipzig, 1962-1964), I 24.33-8; L.A. Neville, Heroes and Romans (2012), 142-5 also brought up Theodora’s example for discussing Psellos’ representation of the empress Aikaterine in the Chronographia. 42 See, for instance, George Ostrogorsky, History of the Byzantine State, trans. Joan Hussey, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1968), 73. 43 Leslie Brubaker, ‘The Age of Justinian: Gender and Society’, in Michael Maas (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian (Cambridge, 2005), 427-47.

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male-centric narrative, and therefore are meant to criticise a particular man’s lack of ideal manliness.44 Centuries later, the historiographical landscape does not differ greatly. Women were generally not expected in a genre mostly devoted to manly deeds. Female characters were sometimes introduced for either providing an ‘unmanly’ counterpart for a male character or (by displaying a virtuous behaviour) in order to underline contemporary men’s lack of masculinity. In Attaleiates’ History, for example, we do not only find sparse references to women, but these are usually placed in secondary roles, often linked to undesirable corruption and turmoil. A woman named Vatatzina, for instance, was depicted as an ambitious yet feeble leader of an illegitimate rebellion. 45 In contrast, the empress Eudokia is sometimes depicted as a pitiful character, tormented by unfair men such as her son Michael VII Doukas (1071-1078) and protected by praiseworthy individuals such as Michael’s predecessor Romanos IV Diogenes (1068-1071), and his successor Nikephoros III Botaneiates (1078-1081).46 It is in this context that the comparatively prominent and positive depiction of Aikaterine becomes puzzling to the reader. Certainly, the Continuation expanded our knowledge of Byzantine imperial women; but Skylitzes’ additions in that respect are often shorter, and depict women in a negative light.47 One may ask why Skylitzes, not yet satisfied with his account on Isaak based on the History, included a substantially lengthy diversion at the end of his account, largely devoted to the depiction of the emperor’s virtuous wife. We may look around for clues, perhaps in contemporary historical accounts other than the History. Psellos’ Chronographia does mention Aikaterine, albeit from a very different perspective than in the Continuation. In the Chronographia, Isaak’s decision to renounce the crown is problematized: what is going to happen to his family once he is no longer emperor? Should Isaak try to save his soul through asceticism, or should he remain in power and care for his family’s security instead?48 Psellos presents Isaak’s renunciation as a good 44 Leslie Brubaker, ‘Sex, Lies and Textuality: The Secret History of Prokopios and the Rhetoric of Gender in Sixth-Century Byzantium’, in Leslie Brubaker and Julia M.H. Smith (eds), Gender in the Early Medieval world, East and West, 300-900 (Cambridge, 2004), 83-101. 45 History, 244-9/188.11-192.2. 46 Ibid. 168-9/130.6-26 (on Eudokia’s exile); on the more positive relation between Eudokia and the emperors Romanos IV and Nikephoros III: Ibid. 101/80.9-12 and 304/233.22-234.8. 47 Skylitzes’ depiction of the empress Eudokia may require a separate analysis: the empress is depicted as particularly prone to ‘womanly pleasures and indulgences’ (τινας θρύψεις γυναικείας καὶ ἀκκισμούς): Continuation, 142.11-3. Eudokia’s marriage to Romanos Diogenes, and her positive reception of Nikephoros Botaneiates’ marriage proposal, can easily be read as proof to the audience of her lack of self-restraint: Ibid. 123.1-124.3, 181.28-182.5; other members of the different imperial families, such as Nikephoros Botaneiates’ niece Synadene, are mentioned only briefly: Ibid. 185.23-6. 48 Chronographia, 7.82-3.

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decision, and provides a solution for Isaak’s family conundrum. He suggested that Isaak renounce the throne and invest his friend, Constantine Doukas, as new emperor. He would take proper care of the empire and of the other members of the Komnenos family, Psellos argued.49 Aikaterine’s representation in the Chronographia fits the stereotype of an emotional – and thus irrational – woman. Psellos’ Aikaterine is tremendously worried about her own situation and her family’s, to the point that she openly criticises Isaak’s decision (and Psellos’ involvement) in an overly-dramatic lament. Leonora Neville’s recent analysis convincingly argues for such a reading of the passage. Aikaterine’s ranting went against common logic and provoked the irritation of her husband Isaak.50 He referred to his wife as ‘this one’ using the feminine form of the demonstrative pronoun οὗτος (αὕτη), a detail underlined by Psellos himself as betraying Isaak’s mood.51 In sum, the empress’ depiction becomes instrumental to Psellos’ version of events: he represented himself as a mediating figure between husband and wife. Finally, the election of Constantine as new emperor was agreed by all.52 Psellos’ narration served as inspiration for a later historical account: the Material for History by Nikephoros Bryennios the Younger. This account has been analysed in depth by Neville. She dates its composition to around the decades of 1120-1130, during the reign of John Komnenos, Alexios Komnenos’ son. We are almost certain that the patron Bryennios referred to in his work, the person that encouraged him to write his account, was the empress Irene Doukaina, the widow of Alexios Komnenos.53 Bryennios’ narrative displays a different version of the story of Isaak’s renunciation, although its similarities with the Chronographia are anything but a coincidence. As noted by Barbara Hill and Neville, Bryennios’s account was

49

The fact that Psellos recommended Constantine for the throne is hardly surprising since the Doukai had become one of the main patrons of Psellos in previous years; in the second part of the Chronographia, Psellos portrays himself as the decisive person in persuading Isaak to retire, making his loyalty to his Doukas patrons clear to the reader: Ibid. 7a.8-12; see also F. LópezSantos Kornberger, ‘Reconciliando al genio crítico y al adulador cortesano’ (2019). 50 L.A. Neville, Heroes and Romans (2012), 148-9; Chronographia, 7.82.5-19. 51 L.A. Neville, Heroes and Romans (2012), 146-7; Chronographia, 7.82.3. 52 Chronographia, 7.83. 53 L.A. Neville, Heroes and Romans (2012), 25; Elizabeth Jeffreys, ‘Nikephoros Bryennios Reconsidered’, in Vassiliki N. Vlyssidou (ed.), The Empire in Crisis (?) Byzantium in the Eleventh Century, Διεθνή Συμπόσια 11 (Athens, 2003), 211-3, argued that Nikephoros’ account may have been written in the period following Anna’s attempted coup; Anna Komnene argued that her mother Irene had encouraged Nikephoros to write an account on Alexios’ deeds: Annae Comnenae Alexias, ed. Diether R. Reinsch and Athanasios Kambylis, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae, Series Berolinensis 40 (Berlin, 2001), prooimion 3; Nikephoros himself alluded to a certain ‘wise woman’ as his commissioner: Nicephori Bryennii Historiarum libri quattuor (Nicéphore Bryennios: Histoire), ed. P. Gautier, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae 9 (Brussels, 1975), prooimion 11.1-3, henceforth Material for History.

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inspired by Psellos’ narrative structure.54 Following Isaak’s decision to renounce the crown on behalf of Constantine, some woman from Isaak’s family protested against such a decision, posing a problem to the male protagonists. However, that woman was not the empress Aikaterine, but Isaak’s sister-inlaw, Anna Dalasene.55 Differently from Psellos, Bryennios wrote his account fully aware of Alexios’ later ascension to power. Thus, the episode’s main character is not Isaak, but Alexios’ father John; and instead of representing Aikaterine tempting Isaak to stay in power, Bryennios depicted Anna persuading John to ask his brother to name him the successor. Bryennios’ depiction of Isaak’s retirement was definitely inspired by Psellos’ account concerning the role division, but swapped the name of the characters in order to tell a story more focused on later events. According to Neville, one of Bryennios’ main argumentative lines in his account is to praise those men who resisted the urge to grasp power unlawfully, or contrary to their own capabilities. John did not desire the throne, nor he felt capable to bear such a responsibility, and thus he is praised for his decision not to dispute Constantine’s election despite his wife’s persuasive arguments. Neville also brought to our attention another detail concerning Anna’s depiction in Bryennios’ Material for History: once her son Alexios grows older, Anna seems to exert an undesirable influence over him. Alexios was already in his early adulthood, the moment when a man of his condition was expected to break free from his mother’s influence. However, Bryennios has Anna ‘mothering’ Alexios at different moments of the Material for History. Rather than representing an invention from Bryennios, Neville argued that Alexios’ depiction as a young man controlled by his mother could respond to what many among his audience would remember of Alexios’ rule.56 Aikaterine’s presence in the Continuation – for whom? After this detour, we shall return to the Continuation. Out of all the possible narrative ‘tricks’ Skylitzes could have used for ending his account on Isaak, he chose an odd one. Therefore, I will conclude by suggesting some possible explanations for Aikaterine’s inclusion in the account as a philanthropic empress, a pious woman and a loyal wife, using the information available to us. 54

Barbara Hill, Imperial Women in Byzantium 1025-1204: Power, Patronage and Ideology, 2 ed. (Abingdon, New York, 2013), 61, argued that Bryennios had ‘copied’ Psellos’ materials; Neville’s conclusions are more nuanced: L.A. Neville, Heroes and Romans (2012), 148. 55 Material for History, 1.4-5. 56 L.A. Neville, Heroes and Romans (2012), 156-7; other apparitions from Anna could belong to family anecdotes or to the now-lost memoirs of the Caesar John Doukas: Leonora A. Neville, ‘A history of Caesar John Doukas in Nikephoros Bryennios’ Material for History?’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 32.2 (2008), 168-88. nd

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Just as Bryennios mirrored Psellos’ representation of Aikaterine in his own depiction of Anna Dalassene, Skylitzes’ inspiration for including Aikaterine in the Continuation might be traced back to the Chronographia as well. Some elements from the narrative structure of the Continuation point in that direction. Skylitzes’ depiction of the following reign – that of Constantine Doukas – is again structured as a summary of Attaleiates’ History. There again, Skylitzes included some additional materials at the end; just like in the case of Isaak’s account, these additions concern some memorable sayings of the emperor Constantine himself. What is new in this case is that a significant portion of the additional materials are traceable to the Chronographia.57 Skylitzes’ depictions of these two emperors have something in common: they belong to the earlier, shorter section of the Continuation, before the story moves on to the more detailed and multi-layered depiction of the reigns of Romanos IV Diogenes (1071-1078), Michael VII Doukas, and Nikephoros III Botaneiates. There is a chance that similarities between the two earlier, briefer sections of the Continuation did not end there. Perhaps Skylitzes elaborated both by rephrasing and summarising Attaleiates’ account first, adding some additional material (somewhat inspired by Psellos’ own endings for each emperor) afterwards.58 However, most of what Skylitzes added at the end of Isaak’s reign is not related to Psellos’ account at all, beyond their decision to introduce Aikaterine as a character. Any attempt to trace back Skylitzes’ additional materials to an existing source based on their contents seems problematic to say the least. For instance, Skylitzes has both Isaak and Constantine engaging in rather uncommon considerations on servitude and slavery, one of these references coming from the Chronographia. However, Psellos’ reference used the term ἀργυρώνητος, while the sayings of Isaak and Aikaterine use a number of terms derived from the broader concept δοῦλος – perhaps the thematic coincidence is just that.59 Looking at Skylitzes’ expected audience, however, might prove to be a more fruitful endeavour. Beyond the broad assumption that different members of the Komnenian family would be amongst the Continuation’s expected audience, one may wonder who would approve Aikaterine’s insertion in the story. A couple of theories could be argued from the perspective of the account’s expected audience. Aikaterine’s representation as a virtuous empress, woman, 57

Continuation, 118.18-119.4; Chronographia, 7a.29. It must be noted that Skylitzes did not edit the transition between Romanos IV Diogenes and Michael VII Doukas the same way: the source used by Skylitzes there belongs to the History: Continuation, 153-5, corresponding approximately to History 176-80/136-9; the transition between Michael and Nikephoros Botaneiates does not follow the earlier scheme that combines a summary of Attaleiates’ materials plus some later additions either: Continuation, 178, corresponding to History, 270-1/207.8-208.16, approximately. Therefore, such a narrative structure seems to be characteristic of Skylitzes’ depiction of Isaak and Constantine. 59 Continuation, 111.1-5, 118.18-21; Chronographia, 7a.29.5. 58

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and wife could be regarded as an effective lip-service addressing female court members contemporary to the composition of the Continuation. These women would receive indirect praise by having Aikaterine depicted in the Continuation, aiding her family and performing philanthropy as they did a couple of generations later.60 Alexios’ wife Irene Doukaina, in particular, was an active literary patron.61 She led the celebration of literary theatra, and possibly promoted the composition of Bryennios’ Material for History. Additionally, she participated in the foundation of monasteries, which Barbara Hill framed as a method for gaining power and prestige as imperial patrons.62 Following the contributions of Margaret Mullett and Barbara Hill, it becomes apparent that the female side of the leading families in the empire had increased during the first years of Alexios’ reign, a development which, albeit short-lived, had an impact in contemporary literature addressing the Komnenos family.63 Therefore, Skylitzes’ insertion of Aikaterine’s character may have constituted either an implicit or an explicit lip service for a significant section of his expected audience. By praising Aikaterine’s philanthropic endeavours, Skylitzes may have contributed to the celebration of Irene’s role at court. We could even imagine Skylitzes receiving a more detailed source on the virtues of both Isaak and Aikaterine from the hands of one of his patrons, just as Psellos’ patron Michael VII offered him some materials (favourable to him and his

60 That would resemble earlier situations, such as the use of Empress Helena as model for elite ‘matronage’ during the fourth and fifth centuries. As Brubaker noted, Helena’s memory was ‘preserved through stories and, especially, objects that recreated her’: other elite women linked their activities and commissions to Helena’s, evoking ‘a more distant, and sometimes purely metaphorical, female ancestor’: Leslie Brubaker, ‘Memories of Helena: Patterns in Imperial Female Matronage in the Fourth and Fifht Centuries’, in Liz James (ed.), Women, Men, and Eunuchs: Gender in Byzantium (London, New York, 1997), 52-75; esp. 56-7; for a more recent contribution to Helena’s multi-faceted representation across Byzantine history, see Andriani Georgiou, The Cult of Flavia Iulia Helena in Byzantium: An Analysis of Authority and Perception through the Study of Textual and Visual Sources from the Fourth to the Fifteenth Century (Birmingham, 2013) [Phil. Diss.]. In an eleventh-century context, authors such as Psellos and Attaleiates promoted themselves in their accounts, not praising their own persona directly, but praising characters that share a link with them, in the manner that Attaleiates indirectly praised his patron Botaneiates by praising his ancestors: History, 213-38/164.7-183.7; see also R.J. Macrides, ‘The Historian’ (1996). 61 On Irene as promoter of literary theatre, see Margaret Mullett, ‘Aristocracy and Patronage in the Literary Circles of Comnenian Constantinople’, in Michael Angold (ed.), The Byzantine Aristocracy, IX to XIII centuries, British Archaeological Records, International Series 221 (Oxford, 1984), 175-6. 62 Barbara Hill, ‘Alexios I and the Imperial Women’, in Margaret Mullett and Dion Smythe (eds), Alexios I Komnenos (Belfast, 1996), I 45. 63 Alexios based his legitimacy on the female side at the beginning of the reign, but later reached out towards the male line: Margaret Mullett, ‘Alexios Komnenos and Imperial Renewal’, in Paul Magdalino (ed.), New Constantines: The Rhythm of Imperial Renewal in Byzantium, 4th-13th Centuries: Papers of the Twenty-sixth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, St. Andrews, March 1992 (Aldershot, 1994), 259-67; see also B. Hill, Imperial Women in Byzantium (2013), 10, 78-9.

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family) to conclude his Chronographia.64 Skylitzes would have summarised some of the contents, particularly the description of the embellishments in the church of Prodromos. All of this, however, is a purely speculative reasoning, loosely based in the internal coherence of Skylitzes’ additions and the uncertain allusion to a larger account on the couple’s philanthropic activities.65 It could also be argued that Aikaterine’s representation also benefitted the male side of the court, particularly Emperor Alexios. Perhaps Bryennios’ aforementioned depiction of the emperor as overly influenced by certain women at court preceded his emperor’s death: some members of Skylitzes’ audience may have been familiar with pejorative depictions of the emperor as a passive ruler controlled by women, particularly his mother and his wife.66 If that were the case, Skylitzes’ account could not only be meant to please those women at court to whom Aikaterine’s depiction would resonate: it would also help to legitimise any perceived strong feminine presence at court, by retroactively depicting Aikaterine as a particularly active empress, a bastion of her family through her philanthropic activities and political manoeuvres. Furthermore, we could also read Skylitzes’ depiction of Aikaterine as a legitimisation of the Komnenian seizure of power, insomuch as it heavily relied in the collaboration of his family members instead of seeking support among the pre-existing powerful groups at Constantinople. As Dias recently suggested, the Komnenoi may have perceived Isaak’s reliance in figures such as Keroularios as a political mistake, corrected in Alexios’ ascension to power in 1081. Therefore, in the Continuation, Keroularios’ role as a pillar of Isaak’s reign vanishes whereas the emperor’s wife becomes a central character.67 Finding a definite explanation concerning Skylitzes’ decision to expand Isaak’s account by including a relatively detailed depiction of his wife has proven to be a complex task. What we can analyse with some more precision is the ‘final product’, here meaning the text transmitted in the manuscripts, which we can analyse nowadays. That text conveys a narrative in which not only Isaak’s figure is introduced as a pious and virtuous man, but the empress Aikaterine is also described in a positive light due to her actions on behalf of philanthropy and her family. Skylitzes’ narrative inspires sympathy towards 64 Chronographia, 7c.11; see Efthymia Pietsch, Die Chronographia des Michael Psellos: Kaisergeschichte, Autobiographie und Apologie (Wiesbaden, 2005), 111-28. 65 As seen in note 34 above, in Continuation, 110.18-9, Skylitzes summarised that it would be a ‘Herculean task’ (ἆθλος Ἡράκλειος) to describe the works on the church at their full extent: that is a catchphrase used in the Synopsis for summarising longer accounts, as noted by E. McGeer and J. Nesbitt, Time of Troubles (2020). The quest for this now-lost source may resemble Neville’s discovery of a pre-existing account embedded in Bryennios’ Material for History, focused on the deeds of the Caesar John Doukas: L.A. Neville, ‘Caesar John Doukas’ (2008). 66 See note 56 above; Mullett ‘Imperial renewal’ (1994), 265 discussed the conflicting views on Irene Doukaina’s role as empress among twelfth-century historians. Anna’s apologetic depiction of her mother sharply contrasted with more negative portraits crafted by Zonaras and Choniates. 67 J.V.M.P. Dias, ‘A reação imperial’ (2019).

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such a character and such a relationship between emperor and empress, differently from the accounts of Psellos and Bryennios, where Komnenian female characters are used as negative examples. It constitutes yet another example of how Byzantine authors were able to bend the narrative and gender conventions, inherited from both the Classical and Christian tradition, in order to pursue different literary or political purposes, based on a context we are still aiming to describe with increasing accuracy.

THEOLOGIZING PERFORMANCE IN THE BYZANTINE TRADITION

edited by Damaskinos OLKINUORA

Performing the Symphony of Salvation: Liturgical Mysticism in a Hymn by Romanos the Melodist Andrew MELLAS, St Andrew’s Greek Orthodox Theological College, Sydney College of Divinity, Australia

ABSTRACT This article reimagines the liturgical performance of Romanos the Melodist’s second hymn on the Nativity of Jesus Christ, a hymn that meditates on the events following Jesus’ birth but does so in a way that suspends the history that divides and orders the narrative of salvation and its scriptural characters, blurring time and place, and inviting the faithful to become part of the salvific mystery unfolding before them. It argues that the hymnography of Romanos the Melodist theologises performance and suggests Romanos’ hymn served as an affective script for the congregation, teaching them how to feel amidst the mysticism of worship. The performativity of Byzantine hymns could open a liminal space where the faithful could glimpse Creation, Fall, Incarnation and Passion. Indeed, Romanos’ hymnography evokes the thought of Irenaeus of Lyons who, a few centuries earlier, in Against the Heresies, proclaimed that it is God who harmonises the human race to the symphony of salvation. According to Irenaeus, the Creator sketched out the construction of salvation before the ages as a mystery that would only be revealed with the Incarnation and Passion of Christ. This article explores how Romanos’ hymnody performed this mystery, inviting the congregation to become protagonists in the sacred drama of salvation.

The liturgical performance of hymnography in Byzantium betokened the enactment of a sacred drama that interwove feeling and mystery in the hearts of the faithful. This affective and mystical encounter between humanity and the divine emerges in the sixth-century hymns of Romanos the Melodist. Romanos’ hymnody evokes the thought of Irenaeus of Lyons who, a few centuries earlier, proclaimed that it is God who harmonises the human race to the symphony of salvation.1 According to Irenaeus, the Creator sketched out the construction of salvation before the ages as a mystery that would only be revealed with the

1 Against the Heresies 4.14.12. This text is hereafter abbreviated as AH. For the critical edition of the text, see Rousseau et al., Irénée de Lyon: Contre les Hérésies, Books I-V, SC 263-4, SC 293-4, SC 210-1, SC 100, SC 152-3 (Paris, 1969-82). For a contextual study of Irenaeus, see John Behr, Irenaeus of Lyons: Identifying Christianity (Oxford, 2013). Wherever possible, I have used Behr’s English translations of AH.

Studia Patristica CXXX, 335-351. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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Incarnation and Passion of Christ. After all, it is the death of God that redeems the faithful from the nightmare of history in the economy of salvation. This article will explore how one of Romanos’ songs echoes this theme, embodying a theology of performance that dissolves the limits of history, breaks the bounds of Scripture and suspends the divide between the congregation and the poetic universe of hymnody. It will argue that the performativity of hymnody could open a liminal space where the faithful could glimpse Creation, Fall, Incarnation and Passion. Hymnody, homilies and sacred space staged the liturgical narrative of salvation for the Byzantines and these texts were the ‘scripts for the performance of feeling’ enacted by the faithful, turning listeners into spectators and protagonists.2 I will examine Romanos’ second hymn on the nativity of Christ, which meditates on the events following Jesus’ birth but does so in a way that blurs time and place, asking the faithful to play a role in the mystery unfolding before them. Before turning to Romanos’ hymn, I will briefly explore how the performativity of hymns invited the congregation to experience divine mystery, and I will unpack the notion of liturgical mysticism. Performativity Hymnody is intimately linked to its liturgical context. It is the ritual performativity of hymns, especially their musical and spatial contexts, that brought these texts to life. John L. Austin is often cited as elaborating the notion of performative speech as words that engender a new reality by performing an action.3 John Searle, Jacques Derrida and Judith Butler have since invoked, appropriated and developed Austin’s ideas with varying effect.4 But it was Victor Turner’s conception of the human person as homo performans (‘a self-performing animal’) that was a watershed moment for performativity and the theory of ritual.5 Turner saw ritual performances not merely as the phenomena of a society but as a liminal space, which constructs and mediates culture rather than simply reproducing it.6 Despite this significant shift in the understanding of ritual performativity, the link between performance and ritual became a popular yet contentious topic. For example, whereas Edward L. Shieffelin sees this 2 Sarah McNamer, Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion (Philadelphia, 2010), 12. On affective scripts, see also Robert Kaster, Emotion, Restraint and Community in Ancient Rome (Oxford, 2005), 3-12, 66-83. On liturgical emotions, see Andrew Mellas, Liturgy and the Emotions in Byzantium: Compunction and Hymnody (Cambridge, 2020). 3 John Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Oxford, 1975). 4 John R. Searle, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (London, 1969); Jacques Derrida and Julian Wolfreys, The Derrida Reader: Writing Performances (Lincoln, 1998); Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York, 1990). 5 Victor Turner, The Anthropology of Performance (New York, 1986), 81. 6 Id., The Ritual Process: Structure and Antistructure (Chicago, 1969).

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relationship as the dramaturgical enactment of symbols and their meanings, Richard Schechner and Willa Appel argue that ritual performance has transformative power.7 However, it is difficult to neatly reconcile these modern approaches to performance with those of the medieval era and a Byzantine liturgical context. Hymnody intertwined mystery and feeling, enacting the affective encounter between humanity and the divine. Christ’s love for humankind and the nuptial desire of creation for its Creator framed the project of hymnography and its liturgical context: καθ’ ἣν μακαρίαν καὶ παναγίαν κοίτην τὸ φρικτὸν ἐκεῖνο τῆς ὑπὲρ νοῦν καὶ λόγον ἑνότητος μυστήριον ἐπιτελεῖται, δι’ οὗ μία σὰρξ καὶ ἓν πνεῦμα, ὅ τε Θεὸς πρὸς [τὴν Ἐκκλησίαν,] τὴν ψυχήν, καὶ ἡ ψυχὴ πρὸς τὸν Θεὸν γενήσεται· ὦ πῶς σε Χριστέ, θαυμάσω τῆς ἀγαθότητος, οὐ γὰρ ἀμυνῆσαι φάναι τολμήσω, ὁ μήτε πρὸς τὸ θαυμάζειν ἀξίως ἀρκοῦσαν ἔχων τὴν δύναμιν· Ἔσονται γὰρ οἱ δύο εἰς σάρκα μίαν· τὸ δὲ μυστήριον τοῦτο μέγα ἐστίν· ἐγὼ δὲ λέγω εἰς Χριστὸν καὶ τὴν Ἐκκλησίαν, φησὶν ὁ θεῖος Ἀπόστολος.8 It is in this blessed and most holy intercourse that is accomplished this awesome mystery of a union transcending mind and reason by which God becomes one flesh and one spirit with the Church and thus with the soul, and the soul with God. O Christ, how shall I marvel at your goodness? I shall not presume to sing praise because I have not enough strength to marvel in a worthy manner. For, ‘they shall be two in one flesh,’ says the divine Apostle; ‘this is a great mystery, I speak of Christ and the Church’.9

Maximus argued that knowledge of God divorced from passion could become an intellectual exercise rather than a transformative encounter. Although the relationship between religious practices and ritual is not a new field of inquiry, research into the link between ritual and emotion has recently experienced a revival.10 Rituals can manage or regulate emotions as much as they can seek to stir emotion in participants.11 However, when the ritual in question is a sacred drama and a complex cultural construct, it should not be reduced to modern conceptions of ritual or confused with dramatic theatre.12 7 Richard Schechner and Willa Appel, By Means of Performance: Intercultural Studies of Theatre and Ritual (Cambridge, 1990); Edward L. Schieffelin, ‘Performance and the Cultural Construction of Reality’, American Ethnologist 12.4 (1985), 707-24. 8 Maximus the Confessor, On Ecclesiastical Mystagogy, chapter 5, ed. Christian Boudignon, Maximi Confessoris Mystagogia, CChr.SG 69 (Turnhout, 2011), 29-30. 9 My translation is based on George C. Berthold, Maximus Confessor: Selected Writings (New York, 1985), 194. 10 See, for example, Merridee L. Bailey and Katie Barclay (eds), Emotion, Ritual and Power in Europe, 1200–1920: Family, State and Church (Basingstoke, 2017). 11 Renato Rosaldo, ‘Grief and the Headhunter’s Rage’, in Stuart Plattner and Edward Bruner (eds), Text, Play and Story: The Construction and Reconstruction of Self and Society (Washington, DC, 1984), 178-98. 12 See Robert F. Taft, Through Their Own Eyes: Liturgy as the Byzantines Saw It (Berkeley, 2006), passim.

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While Christianity cultivated liturgical practices that invited the faithful to ‘ritualize and ‘perform’ their faith as dramatis personae in the theatre of the divine economy’,13 it is important to elucidate this notion of theatricality and examine what these rituals signified for the Byzantines. It is not possible to view ‘the drama of the Eucharistic liturgy’ as akin to a Shakespearean play when its symbolic, cosmic and mystical significance was how the faithful could ‘find their own place within the universal, salvific scheme’ of the divine economy.14 Christian ritual in Byzantium was post-theatrical.15 While Christianity spurned the histrionic arts and decried the theatre, in choosing to create a new mode of performance, it did not hesitate to bring elements of the theatre ‘into captivity to the obedience of Christ’.16 While it is tempting to portray liturgical practices as theatrical reenactments of the biblical narrative of salvation, the Byzantine rite was not an attempt to elicit the aesthetic appreciation of an audience: For all the visual and aural splendour of the Divine Liturgy, Orthodox ritual shows clear signs of an anti-theatrical aesthetic; especially in the wake of Byzantium’s iconoclastic crisis in the eighth and ninth centuries, the Church paid special attention to how it realized the visibility of the sacred and achieved a unique aesthetic rooted as much in classical theories of optics as in traditional Orthodox theology.17

Liturgical hymns were not simply a remembrance of biblical events or a theatrical display of divine things; they enacted a sacred drama that created a space of participation for the faithful in the mystery of salvation. The ritual dynamics of liturgy and its hymns embodied the faith of the Byzantines in a holy milieu. Therefore, when I refer to a hymn dramatising a biblical narrative or enacting the drama of salvation, I do not suggest that this performance should be viewed as a theatrical spectacle. The liturgical world of Byzantium staged a theological drama that transcended the mimetic art of theatre and showed forth the reality of Christ’s sacrifice.18 The performativity of Byzantine hymns is not equivalent to that of the ancient histrionic arts. A ‘rupture between theatrical and ritual performance practices’ emerged in Byzantium as ‘Orthodox ritual established a presence distinct from the theatrical culture in which it operated’.19 Therefore, rather than imposing a 13 Paul M. Blowers, Drama of the Divine Economy: Creator and Creation in Early Christian Theology and Piety (Oxford, 2012), 315. 14 Ibid. 348 and 335 respectively. 15 Andrew Walker White, Performing Orthodox Ritual in Byzantium (Cambridge, 2015), 5. 16 2Corinthians 10:5. 17 Ibid. 9. 18 On the Divine Liturgy as a theological rite, see Archimandrite Vasileios, Hymn of Entry: Liturgy and Life in the Orthodox Church, trans. Elizabeth Briere (New York, 1984), 57-79. 19 A.W. White, Performing Orthodox Ritual (2015), 9.

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second-order discourse on Byzantium and its liturgical performances, I investigate the Byzantine notion of performativity. To some extent, the modern understanding of performativity was already apparent in the lux fiat of creation and Christ’s miraculous speech-acts.20 However, the mystical dimension of worship betokened a symbiosis between materiality and the metaphysical. The performance of the Divine Liturgy was an iconic enactment of divine presence that sought to elicit the participation of the faithful: … ‘performative’ engages the spatial and temporal aspects of the liturgical ritual of in-spiriting and recognizes the synergistic role the viewing/participating subject plays in engendering the perceived animation of the inert.21

Liturgy animated image, building, sound and light. The sacred space of liturgical action came to life through the interaction of the faithful with art, architecture and song.22 The faithful themselves were portrayed as icons in this performance by a central hymn of the Divine Liturgy. The Cheroubikon, which accompanied the processional entry with the Holy Gifts in sixth-century Byzantium, begins thus: Οἱ τὰ Χερουβεὶμ μυστικῶς εἰκονίζοντες, καὶ τῇ ζωοποιῷ Τριάδι τὸν τρισάγιον ὕμνον προσᾴδοντες…23 We who in a mystery represent the Cherubim and sing the thrice-holy hymn to the lifegiving Trinity…24

However, the translation could also be: ‘We who in this mystery are icons of the Cherubim’, which has profound implications: An icon, as already noted, is much more than a bare copy or exterior imitation; it implies participation, and so if the earthly worshippers are ‘icons of the cherubim’, this means that they share directly in what the cherubim are doing in heaven.25

20

Adam G. Cooper, Holy Eros: A Liturgical Theology of the Body (Tacoma, 2014), 32. Bissera V. Pentcheva, ‘Performing the Sacred in Byzantium: Image, Breath and Sound’, Performance Research 19 (2014), 120-8, 120. See also Pentcheva’s more recent monograph, Hagia Sophia. Sound, Space and Spirit in Byzantium (University Park, PA, 2017). 22 B.V. Pentcheva, The Sensual Icon: Space, Ritual, and the Senses in Byzantium (University Park, PA, 2010), 9, 45, 155; Hagia Sophia (2017), 18-44. 23 Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain, The Divine Liturgy of our Father among the Saints John Chrysostom (Oxford, 1995), 22. On the history and performance of the Cheroubikon in Hagia Sophia, see Robert F. Taft, The Great Entrance: A History of the Transfer of Gifts and other Preanaphoral Rites of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, OCA 200 (Rome, 1978), 53-89; Neil Moran, ‘The Choir of Hagia Sophia’, Oriens Christianus 89 (2005), 3-6. The twelfth-century historian George Kedrenos suggests Justin II introduced the singing of the Cheroubikon during the Great Entrance in 573/4. See I. Bekker (ed.), Georgius Cedrenus, Ioannis Scylitzae Ope (Bonn, 1838), 685 (lines 3-4). 24 The Divine Liturgy (1995), 21. 25 Kallistos Ware, ‘The Meaning of the Divine Liturgy for the Byzantine Worshipper’, in Rosemary Morris (ed.), Church and People in Byzantium (Birmingham, 1990), 11. 21

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It is in this liturgical context that the performative dimension of hymns emerges as a phenomenon connected to the sacred rite of the Eucharist. The sacramental meaning of τελείωσις, which usually means perfection or sanctification, is also associated with the eucharistic mystery: the ‘consecration of elements [bread and wine]’ or the Eucharist as the ‘consummation of other sacraments’.26 The verbal form of this word – τελειόω – means to ‘perform’.27 An example of how this word was imbued with theological meaning is Theodore the Studite’s Homily on the Birth of the Holy Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist,28 where the homilist and the faithful ask the unborn John to reveal how he, a babe in a womb, can hear, understand and leap with joy: How do you see? How do you recognise? How do you theologise? How do you leap from joy? How are you full of elation? Answer us, tell us, you who are worthy of wonder. ‘The mystery being performed,’ he says, ‘is great and the drama is beyond human comprehension (Μέγα, φησίν, τὸ τελούμενον μυστήριον, καί ἔξω ἀνθρωπίνης καταλήψεως τὸ δρᾶμα). I am justified in going beyond what is natural, for the one who is about to go above nature … I am jumping for joy, since I sense the Creator of all is becoming human. I am joyful since I ponder that the Saviour of the world is taking on flesh. I am revealing to you,’ he says, ‘the beginning of the entrance of God in the world and his arrival in body. I am running ahead of his coming and, in some way, I am beginning the song of praise in front of you’.29

In the homily, the unborn baby senses and ponders the great mystery that is being performed. However, this performance is the drama of salvation, a drama which, in a hymn by Romanos the Melodist on Noah, becomes the performance that the righteous builder of the ark enacts, but a drama that the people see and do not understand: Συνετῶς ὁ ἐκλεκτὸς πληροῖ τὸ ἔργον· ἀσυνέτων δὲ λαὸς ὁρῶν τὰ ἔνδον ἔγνω τὸ τελούμενον καὶ τὸ δρᾶμα ἀκούσαντες ἔδοξαν φαντασίαν ὁρᾶν.30 With understanding, the chosen one completes the task; but the people, being without understanding, seeing what was within, believed that the performance they watched and drama they heard was an illusion.

In homilies and hymns, the history of salvation becomes far more than a theatrical performance; it is an initiation into divine things and the enactment G.W.H. Lampe, Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford, 1961), 1383-4. On icons and τελείωσις, see B.V. Pentcheva, The Sensual Icon (2010), 2-3, 40, 64-5, 128, 189-91. 27 G.W.H. Lampe, Patristic Greek Lexicon (1961), 1382. 28 For the Greek text of the homily, see PG 99, 748-57. 29 Ibid. 756. The English translation is my own. 30 Strophe 5. For the Greek text of the hymn, see Romanos le Mélode, Hymnes. Tome I: Ancien Testament, ed. José Grosdidier de Matons, SC 99 (Paris, 1964), 102-26. The English translation that follows is my own. 26

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of ‘the final mystery’31 – a mystery that invites the faithful to make their entrance. Liturgical Mysticism Although the mystical dimension of Christian worship is apparent from its very beginnings, the language of ‘mystery’ was often reserved for such things as the unknowability of God, the hidden mysteries of Scripture and theology itself.32 Nevertheless, the Byzantine liturgical experience was also conceived as a mystery that escorted the faithful beyond an intellectual philosophy of God to a transformative encounter and mysterious communion between the human and the divine. This vision of the liturgy is apparent as early as the fifth-century Ecclesiastical Hierarchy of Dionysios the Areopagite, but it emerged even earlier in the writings of Gregory of Nyssa, who envisaged liturgical worship as a mystery replete with divine action – psalmody, memory and drama – and even in the last chapter of Clement the Alexandrian’s Exhortation to the Greeks, which employed the terminology of mystery in relation to the process of Christian initiation.33 The mysticism of Eastern Christianity should not be ‘confused with the later western interest in subjective religious experience or in detailed itineraries for the spiritual journey’.34 Emotions formed part of the desire for and experience of the divine mystery in Byzantium. However, they were transformed together with the whole of human nature in this mystical experience, which entailed repentance before the face of God.35 In this sense, liturgical mystagogy is a more apt expression than liturgical mysticism. It betokened a ‘metamorphosis of the passions’, which emerges in commentaries on the Song of Songs by Origen in the third century and Gregory of Nyssa in the fourth century.36 In this 31 The fourteenth-century Life in Christ by Nicholas Cabasilas described the Divine Liturgy as ‘the final mystery’ since beyond this mystery ‘it is not possible to go, nor can anything be added to it’. PG 150, 548B. Quoted in K. Ware, ‘The Meaning of the Divine Liturgy’ (1990), 7. 32 See the definitions for μυστήριον in Lampe, Patristic Greek Lexicon (1961), 891-3. 33 Clement of Alexandria, The Exhortation to the Greeks, the Rich Man’s Salvation, and the Fragment of an Address Entitled to the Newly Baptised, ed. and trans. G.W. Butterworth, Loeb Classical Library 92 (Cambridge, MA, 1960), 250-63. See also Jean Daniélou, ‘Le Mystère du Culte dans les Sermons de Saint Grégoire de Nysse’, in Anton Mayer and Johannes Quasten (eds), Vom Christlichen Mysterium (Dusseldorf, 1951), 76-93, 76. 34 Philip Sheldrake, ‘Mysticism: Critical Theological Perspectives’, in Julia Lamm (ed.), Blackwell Companion to Christian Mysticism (Oxford, 2012), 533-49, 535. See also Patricia Dailey, ‘The Body and its Senses’, in Amy Hollywood and Patricia Z. Beckman (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism (Cambridge, 2012), 264-76. 35 Vladimir Lossky, Essai sur la Théologie Mystique de l’Église d’Orient (Aubier, 1944), 237. 36 Niklaus Largier, ‘Medieval Mysticism’, in John Corrigan (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Emotion (Oxford, 2008), 366.

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exegetical tradition, the Song was an allegory that exemplified the encounter between the human and the divine. In the New Testament, John the Evangelist and Paul the Apostle interpreted the ostensible eroticism in the nuptial imagery of the Song of Songs as the love of Christ (the bridegroom) for the Church (the bride).37 However, Origen and Gregory of Nyssa went further than this interpretation. The passion of the lovers in the Song of Songs was not only the love between Christ and the Church; it was the love of Christ for the human person made in his image.38 It was faithful who were the church in this nuptial metaphor and it was the liturgy that sealed them with the sweet oil of the Holy Spirit, which the perfume poured out at the beginning of the Song of Songs prefigured.39 Not unlike how the sensuality of holy ritual invited the faithful to gaze into divine beauty, the performance of hymns sought to lead the faithful to what Gregory of Nyssa described as ‘the divine and sober drunkenness,’ where there is no difference between the impassioned words of the Song of Songs and the ‘mystagogic instruction given to [Christ’s] disciples’.40 Romanos the Melodist’s hymn On the Holy Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ Romanos’ hymns represent a unique fusion of classical rhetoric, the Syriac poetry of Ephrem and the Christian discourse of the Cappadocian Fathers.41 They were performed as part of the ritual of nocturnal worship known as the night vigil (παννυχίς), which was celebrated in anticipation of the major feasts in the liturgical calendar. Romanos’ songs amplified the stories of Scripture, endowing them with poetry and melody. His hymns usually followed liturgical cycles and lectionary readings, encouraging reflection on scriptural celebrations, and inviting the faithful to consider their place in the sacred narrative of salvation. His use of dramatic dialogue also marked the ‘emergence of biblical epic in the context of Christian worship’.42 This dramatic device takes an extraordinary turn in the hymn I am exploring which, in a sense, takes place off the stage. 37

John 3:29; Ephesians 5:23-7. Origen, The Song of Songs: Commentary and Homilies, trans. R.P. Lawson (New York, 1957), 21; Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on the Song of Songs, trans. Richard A. Norris, Jr. (Atlanta, 2012), 399-411. 39 Paul Meyendorff (ed.), St Germanus of Constantinople on the Divine Liturgy (Crestwood, NY, 1984), 56. 40 Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on the Song of Songs (2012), 325-7. 41 See the two recent studies of Romanos the Melodist: Sarah Gador-Whyte, Theology and Poetry in Early Byzantium: The Kontakia of Romanos the Melodist (Cambridge, 2017), esp. 1-18; Thomas Arentzen, The Virgin in Song: Mary and the Poetry of Romanos the Melodist (Philadelphia, 2017), esp. 1-32. 42 Georgia Frank, ‘Romanos and the Night Vigil in the Sixth Century’, in Derek Krueger (ed.), Byzantine Christianity: A People’s History of Christianity (Minneapolis, 2006), 59-78, 76. 38

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Romanos’ hymn On the Holy Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ43 ponders the events surrounding the nativity of Christ, but it does so in a way that destabilises the historical and geographical divisions that arrange the narrative of salvation and its scriptural characters. The poet takes the faithful to the days after the birth of Christ and paints a scene where Mary holds the newborn baby in her arms and warbles a sweet song of praise to her child. But a strange thing happens – Mary’s song is heard in Hades by Eve and the slumbering Adam. The first-created humans shed tears at the feet of Theotokos who is portrayed as the spiritual paradise from which Christ – the new Adam – blossoms. Mary feels compassion and entreats the child who is God before the ages to give Adam and Eve life. It is only then that Christ reveals to the Virgin his desire from eternity for the Passion. It is worth reflecting briefly on the musical dimension of this hymn, which would saturate the sacred space where it was performed with the sounds of the holy and shape the liturgical experience of the faithful. Each of Romanos’ kontakia44 was composed in one of the eight modes of Byzantine music. In the case of On the Holy Nativity, the manuscript tradition indicates that it was composed in the plagal second mode and was an idiomelon (a unique melody, not a contrafactum). The liturgical expression of the sixth-century kontakion privileged text over music. Romanos’ music was probably syllabic, enhancing the rhetoric of the hymn and encouraging the congregation to sing the refrain. His refrain formed an intrinsic part of the cognitive ecology of his hymns, creating an emotive universe where the human heart could dwell in a liturgical world.45 The refrain’s melody would have embellished the text’s rhetorical effect, marked its emotional turns and enriched its dramatic resonance. The refrain’s choral character would not have simply facilitated the participation of the congregation in the singing of the hymn, it invited the faithful to step into a liturgical world wherein biblical events, scriptural characters, and God interacted in the economy of salvation. The focal point of this hymn’s refrain (ἡ κεχαριτωμένη – the highly favoured one) is the Mother of God. As we will see, while the refrain invites the audience to dwell on Mary in the days after she gave birth to Christ, it also invites the congregation to suspend personhood inasmuch as the Theotokos embodies the flesh of humanity. Moreover, it invites one to identify with Eve who beseeches Mary to act on her behalf in the hymn – an action which echoes the words of 43

For the Greek text of the hymn, see Romanos le Mélode, Hymnes. Tome II: Nouveau Testament, ed. Grosdidier de Matons, SC 110 (Paris, 1965), 88-110. All quotations are from this edition and the English translations are my own. 44 On the kontakion, see Elizabeth M. Jeffreys, ‘Kontakion’, in Alexander P. Kazhdan (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (New York, 1991), 1148. 45 On the significance of the refrain, see Thomas Arentzen and Ophir Münz-Manor, ‘Soundscapes of Salvation: Resounding Refrains in Christian and Jewish Liturgical Poems’, Studies in Late Antiquity 3.1 (2019), 36-55, esp. 51-5.

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Irenaeus in Against the Heresies: ‘And if [Eve] did disobey God, yet the latter was persuaded to be obedient to God, in order that the Virgin Mary might become the patroness of the virgin Eve’.46 According to the manuscript tradition, the liturgical context of On the Holy Nativity was the vigil for 26 December, though in some manuscripts it is sung during the vigil for the Sunday after Christmas. On 26 December, according to the Typikon of the Great Church, which is a collection of liturgical notes for the cathedral rite of Constantinople, the scriptural passage prescribed for the liturgy is Matthew 2:12-23, which narrates Herod’s desire to kill Jesus, the escape to Egypt and the return to Nazareth.47 However, there is no mention of these events in Romanos’ hymn. The song of the Melodist does not strictly follow or amplify this biblical passage or any other particular biblical passage. It draws on several biblical characters but it is not, as the audience might expect, simply a discourse between Mary and Jesus or Mary and Joseph that ensues. It is a dramatic dialogue that also invites the voices of Adam and Eve to traverse the narrative space of the hymn. So, given this hymn alludes to various biblical stories, it required the faithful to recall multiple scriptural narratives and their characters, allowing them to come together on ‘the stage of the mind’.48 Romanos begins his hymn by evoking the imagery of a vineyard, portraying Mary as the vine and Christ as the fruit produced without natural labour. This is what the faithful heard and sang: Τὸν ἀγεώργητον βότρυν βλαστήσασα ἡ ἄμπελος ὡς ἐπὶ κλάδων ἀγκάλαις ἐβάσταζε καὶ ἔλεγεν· «Σὺ καρπός μου, σὺ ζωή μου, σὺ ἀφ’ οὗ ἔγνων ὅτι καὶ ὃ ἤμην εἰμί, σύ μου Θεός, τὴν σφραγῖδα τῆς παρθενίας μου ὁρῶσα ἀκατάλυτον, κηρύττω σε ἄτρεπτον Λόγον σάρκα γενόμενον. Οὐκ οἶδα σποράν, οἶδά σε λύτην τῆς φθορᾶς· ἁγνὴ γάρ εἰμι, σοῦ προελθόντος ἐξ ἐμοῦ·»49 Having produced the grape without natural labour, the vine carried it in her arms like on branches and said: ‘You my fruit, you my life, you from whom I know that I am what I was, you my God: when I see the seal of my virginity everlasting, I proclaim you as immutable Logos that became flesh. I know not procreation, I know you as deliverer from corruption, for I am pure, though you came forth from me.’ 46

AH 5.19.1. Juan Mateos, Le Typicon de la Grande Église: Tome I, Le Cycle des Douze Mois (Rome, 1962), 162. Of course, it is uncertain whether this was the biblical passage heard during Romanos’ lifetime. The Typikon of the Great Church is a tenth-century synaxarion that included rubrics for the cathedral rite of Constantinople. 48 Uffe Holmsgaard Eriksen, ‘Drama in the Kontakia of Romanos the Melodist: A Narratological Analysis of Four Kontakia’ (Ph.D. diss., Aarhus University, 2013), 248. 49 Strophe 1. 47

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Mary’s words are filled with hope and joy. They sing of the miracle of God becoming human and transforming her ‘poverty’, the poverty of mankind, and exalting the human race. Indeed, in the next strophe she underlines the cosmic significance of this event by asking earth and heaven to rejoice with her and calling on all earthborn people and creatures to put aside their sorrows. However, the image of Mary as the vine, her arms as the branches and Christ as the grape is a curious one. Romanos inverts the image of Christ as the ‘true vine’ and the Apostles as the branches in John 15. In the third strophe, it is Mary who is the vine and whom Eve speaks of as the rod of Jesse bringing forth a branch she can feed on without dying. Although this typology of Mary as the vine emerges in Middle Byzantine hymnography and is found in the seventh-century Life of the Virgin attributed to Maximus the Confessor, it is quite rare before the sixth century. Romanos presents Mary as the tree in the centre of a new paradise, juxtaposing her with the tree of Eden and portraying her as a tree of life that reverses what happened at the beginning of history. It is an intimate image of how the flesh of the Virgin becomes the flesh of Christ and how the Incarnation of the Logos is a union with human nature. Later, Adam touches on this notion when he sings: ‘Behold, I am at your feet, O Virgin, unblemished mother, and through me the whole race lies at your feet. Do not overlook those who brought you forth’.50 Just as God made Adam and Eve from virgin earth, Christ’s virgin birth, his blossoming from the tree of life, recapitulates ‘the ancient formation’ of the human person and the tree of Eden.51 Romanos’ portrayal of the Virgin as vine and Christ as grape is also a eucharistic image that points to the Passion. When Mary later pleads with Christ, saying ‘O my grape-cluster, let not the lawless crush you’,52 she laments his forthcoming death, but also alludes to the wine that comes from the crushing of grapes. Indeed, Eve’s desire to eat from the branch that the Virgin has brought forth is also suggestive of the Eucharist.53 Similarly, the economy of salvation in Irenaeus is a eucharistic experience of transformation. Just as grain and grapes become the body and blood of Christ, so does the death of God give us life.54 The Symphony of Salvation There are various characters who sing songs in Romanos’ hymn: Mary sings to Christ and is heard by Adam and Eve; the swallow sings at dawn; Adam and Eve sing a song of lamentation to Mary; and then, as mediatrix, Mary sings to Christ. However, it is only at the end of the hymn, when Christ sings a song 50 51 52 53 54

Strophe 8. AH 3.20.10. Strophe 17. Strophe 3. AH 5.2.3.

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of revelation to Mary, that the various notes and disparate melodies come together to form a pregnant harmony. Adam, Eve and even Mary do not fully understand the revelation of God in the person of Jesus Christ, because they only hear fragments of the melody. Adam hears the song of Mary but is filled with suspicion: «Γλυκεροῦ ἀκούω κελαδήματος, τερπνοῦ μινυρίσματος, ἀλλὰ τοῦ μελίζοντος νῦν ὁ φθόγγος οὐ τέρπει με· γυνὴ γάρ ἐστιν, ἧς καὶ φοβοῦμαι τὴν φωνήν· ἐν πείρᾳ εἰμί, ὅθεν τὸ θῆλυ δειλιῶ·»55 ‘I hear a sweet song, delightful warbling, but the melodist’s sound no longer gladdens me. For it is a woman and I fear her voice, For I have known and am afraid of womankind.’

He fears the deceit he experienced in paradise and now weeps bitterly in Hades. Eve begs Mary to listen to her prayer and ‘scare away [her] shame’.56 She feels nostalgia for the bliss of Eden but is more concerned with being unable to endure the reproaches of Adam. Mary is moved to compassion. She tells Adam and Eve: ‘dismiss your tears and receive me as your mediatrix to him who is from me’.57 She intercedes on their behalf, saying: «Ἐπειδή με, ὦ τέκνον, ὕψωσας τῇ συγκαταβάσει σου, τὸ πενιχρὸν γένος μου δι’ ἐμοῦ νῦν σοῦ δέεται. Ἀδὰμ γὰρ πρός με ἤλυθε στενάζων πικρῶς· Εὔα δὲ αὐτῷ ὀδυνωμένη συνθρηνεῖ· ὁ δὲ τούτων αἴτιος ὄφις ἐστὶν τιμῆς γυμνώσας αὐτούς·»58 ‘O Child, since you exalted me through your condescension, my impoverished race implores you now through me. For Adam came to me groaning bitterly, and Eve, feeling pain, joins him in lamentation. The cause of this is the serpent that stripped them naked of honour.’

But she does not fully understand the economy of salvation that is unfolding before her eyes, and that her role as mediatrix ordains her as the second Eve. For, as Irenaeus argues, ‘it was necessary for Eve to be recapitulated in Mary, that a virgin might become an advocate for a virgin, might undo and destroy 55 56 57 58

Strophe Strophe Strophe Strophe

5. 9. 11. 12.

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the virginal disobedience by virginal obedience’.59 The wisdom and providence of creation is, according to Irenaeus, impossible to comprehend unless we can ‘harmonize [the story of salvation]’ and hear it ‘with right reason’.60 When the narratives and the characters of Scripture are heard as fragments, they are ‘mutually opposite and inharmonious’, however, when they come together to form ‘one unbroken melody’, a mysterious harmony is revealed.61 Irenaeus concedes that we cannot hear this unbroken melody because we are imprisoned by history, we have ‘received grace only in part’ and therefore are unable to ‘experience or form a conception of all things as God does’.62 How could Adam, Eve or even Mary perceive that in the act of creation God desired before the ages to be united with his creation? And so, when Christ sings to Mary, it is a song of divine desire that knows no beginning, but which is perceived at the end of all things: ἑρμηνεύων τὰ ἐσχάτως, φησίν· «Ὦ μῆτερ, καὶ διὰ σὲ καὶ διὰ σοῦ σῴζω αὐτούς. Εἰ μὴ σῶσαι τούτους ἠθέλησα, οὐκ ἂν ἐν σοὶ ᾤκησα, οὐκ ἂν ἐκ σοῦ ἔλαμψα, οὐκ ἂν μήτηρ μου ἤκουσας·»63 Expounding the end, he says: ‘O Mother, both for you and through you I save them. Unless I wanted to save them, I would not have dwelt in you, I would not have shone forth from you, you would not have been called my mother.’

But here Christ only sings of his Incarnation and birth, and the salvific significance of these events for the whole of his creation. It is only at the end of the next strophe that he begins to sing of his Passion: ‘And if, holy lady, you would also learn what else I must do for their sake, the event will shake you with all the elements…’64 Mary does not immediately perceive what Christ foretells, and so she asks him: Ὃ μέλλεις τελεῖν τί ἐστι θέλω νῦν μαθεῖν· μὴ κρύψῃς ἐμοὶ τὴν ἀπ’ αἰῶνός σου βουλήν· ὅλον σε ἐγέννησα· φράσον τὸν νοῦν ὃν ἔχεις περὶ ἡμᾶς, ἵνα μάθω καὶ ἐκ τούτου…65 I want to learn now that which you must accomplish. Do not hide from me your will from eternity. I gave birth to you wholly; tell the purpose you have concerning us, that I may learn from this too… 59 60 61 62 63 64 65

AH 5.19.1. AH 2.25.1. AH 2.25.2. AH 2.25.3. Strophe 13. Strophe 14. Strophe 15.

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Christ softens the blow to Mary’s heart by saying: ‘I am conquered by the longing I have for humankind’,66 but then he unveils that his love for humanity will be consummated through crucifixion and death: Ὅλων δὲ τούτων ἐν πείρᾳ βουλήσει μου γενήσομαι, καὶ πάντων τούτων αἰτία διάθεσις γενήσεται ἣν ἐκ πάλαι ἕως ἄρτι πρὸς τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ἐπεδειξάμην ὡς Θεός, σῶσαι ζητῶν.67 ‘I will bring all this to pass by my own will, and the cause of all shall be the affection that as of old until now I have shown as God to humankind, seeking to save them.’

Mary cannot bear such a fate for her son and begs him not to let her see the slaughter of her child. But Christ tells her: ‘Mother, cease weeping for what you do not understand. Unless this is accomplished, all those you plead for will perish’.68 God’s desire from eternity for the salvation of his creation emerges as a key theme in Irenaeus’ Against the Heresies: Thus God, from the beginning, fashioned the human being for his munificence; and chose the patriarchs for the sake of their salvation; and formed in advance a people, teaching the uneducated to follow God; and prepared the prophets, accustoming the human being on the earth to bear his Spirit and to have communion with God; he himself, indeed, having need of nothing, but granting communion with himself to those who stood in need of it.69

It is striking how Irenaeus portrays this relationship between creator and creation as a dynamic one. While salvation is a free gift, it is also acquired by those who desire it, those who wish to play a role in the performance of salvation history and, in a sense, those who wish to give birth to God. When Irenaeus writes that God accustomed the human being to bear his Spirit and have communion with God, he suggests there is a reciprocity in the gift of salvation and the role the faithful play in this symphony. As John Behr has argued, the ‘temporal unfolding of the economy is enacted in two registers’.70 There is the biblical narrative of salvation, the story that unfolds with the passage of time. Irenaeus of Lyons beautifully depicts this movement in the image of God sketching out like an architect the construction of salvation for those that pleased him. But there is also the song of the human race and the hymn of every person who begins to sing in this symphony and is 66 67 68 69 70

Strophe 16. Strophe 17. Ibid. AH 4.14.12. J. Behr, Irenaeus of Lyons (2013), 189.

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harmonised to ‘the symphony of salvation’.71 The symphony unfolds from the beginning as ‘prophetic visions, the diversity of graces, his ministries, the glorification of the Father’ but it unfolds ‘compositely and harmoniously’ and it does so ‘at the appropriate time … For where there is a melody, there is a composition; where there is a composition, there is appropriate time; and where there is appropriate time, there is advantage’.72 Across space and time, the symphony brings creation closer and closer to its creator, until the fullness of time comes and the human race, embodied in the Virgin, can become the garment and dwelling of the Logos. An underlying tension between paradisal nostalgia and the eschaton emerges in the hymn On the Holy Nativity. Romanos begins with a moment in the history of salvation but his textual strategy steps beyond this, giving his audience a panoramic view of the divine economy. He takes the faithful back to Paradise, plunges them into Hades, snatches them to Golgotha and then gives them a glimpse of the mystery of Pascha: ‘After these things you will see me bringing new life and renewing the earth and those of the earth’.73

Conclusion Performativity is not an anachronistic concept for Byzantine hymnody when it is viewed though the lenses of theology and liturgy. Hymns by Romanos – and other hymnographers – evoke a theology of performance, where sacred drama reimagines history, rewrites Scripture and crosses the divide between the faithful and the poetic universe of hymnody. The performativity of hymnody could open a liminal space where the faithful could behold a polytemporal vision of the Creation, the Fall, the Incarnation and the Passion, and become protagonists in this mystery unfolding before them. The passage of time collapsed into different moments in the history of salvation, placing the individual at the centre of a cosmic drama. Hymns were not merely a remembrance of biblical events – sacred song interlaced scriptural figures and events from the past and the future into the liturgical moment of performance. According to Dionysios the Areopagite, the liturgical world of Byzantium embodied ‘the harmonious habitus that was ordered toward divine things’ and it was there that heaven and earth converged in the hearts of the faithful.74 71

AH 4.14.2. AH 4.20.7. 73 Strophe 18. 74 Dionysios the Areopagite, The Celestial Hierarchy 1.3. The Greek text is from Günter Heil and Adolf Martin Ritter (eds), Corpus Dionysiacum II: Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita. De Coelesti Hierarchia, De Ecclesiastica Hierarchia, De Mystica Theologia, Epistulae (Berlin, 2012), 9. The English translation is my own. 72

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Liturgy was the song of theology where the faithful experienced the concord of divine things, their selves and others as one harmonious choir. The performance of Romanos’ hymns during various occasions throughout the liturgical calendar often invited his congregation to fuse their personhood with that of the protagonist.75 In the Lenten hymn on the prodigal son, Romanos bids us to identify with the protagonist and emulate his repentance. On Holy Wednesday, he asks the faithful to follow the footsteps of the harlot who became a wise woman and search her mind. In this particular hymn on the Holy Nativity, the invitation is far more subtle. In singing the refrain, and hearing the dramatic dialogue of the poem, the faithful contemplated the highly favoured one, the Virgin. However, in doing so, they also sang the refrain as Adam and Eve, imploring her to be their mediatrix, but also discovering the greater mystery that is emerging. The moment they sang the refrain from the vantage point of the first-created humans, the parallel between Eve and Mary – and even Adam and Christ – which Irenaeus introduced into Christian thought,76 became all the more poignant. The disobedience of Eve and the obedience of Mary represented the dialectic of human freedom in history, and several Byzantine hymns allegorised the Theotokos as the ‘spiritual paradise’ from which ‘Christ the new Adam’ blossoms.77 Similarly, church fathers such as Irenaeus and Gregory of Nyssa portrayed Christ as the second Adam. The Nyssen’s depiction is particularly striking: ‘Once [God the Logos] took dust from the ground and shaped man, then he took the dust from the Virgin, and did not simply shape man, but shaped him round Himself’.78 Romanos’ hymn touches on this theme when Christ tells Mary: Μητέρα σε ἐκτησάμην ὁ πλαστουργὸς τῆς κτίσεως καὶ ὥσπερ βρέφος αὐξάνω ὁ ἐκ τελείου τέλειος· τοῖς σπαργάνοις ἐνειλοῦμαι διὰ τοὺς πάλαι χιτῶνας δερματίνους φορέσαντας, καὶ τὸ σπήλαιόν μοι ἐράσμιον διὰ τοὺς μισήσαντας τρυφὴν καὶ παράδεισον καὶ φθορὰν ἀγαπήσαντας·79

75 Derek Krueger, Liturgical Subjects: Christian Ritual, Biblical Narrative and the Formation of Self in Byzantium (Philadelphia, 2014), 157. 76 John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes (New York, 1983), 146-9; Jaroslav Pelikan, Mary Through the Centuries: Her Place in the History of Culture (New Haven, 1996), 39-54. 77 Christian Hannick, ‘The Theotokos in Byzantine Hymnography: Typology and Allegory’, in Maria Vassilaki (ed.), Images of the Mother of God: Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium (Aldershot, 2005), 69-76, 75. See also 1Corinthians 15:45. 78 The translation, which I have slightly modified to render χοῦν as ‘dust’, is by Stuart G. Hall in Johan Leemans and Matthieu Cassin (eds), Gregory of Nyssa. Contra Eunomium III. An English Translation with Commentary and Supporting Studies (Leiden, 2014), 82. 79 Strophe 14.

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‘I, the fashioner of creation, acquired you as mother and like an infant I grow, I who am perfect from him who is perfect. I am wrapped in swaddling clothes through those who long ago wore tunics of skin, and the cave is for me desirable through those who hated the delight and paradise and who loved corruption.’

And this inversion of his omnipotence has salvific significance: ‘[Christ] descended to earth so that they may have life … bringing new life and renewing the earth and those of the earth’.80 But the hymn transforms this concept into a personalising narrative that resonates in the hearts of the faithful. It is they who are Adam and Eve, it is they who entreat Mary, and it is they who desire to be Mary. Romanos’ symphony of salvation brought Eve and Adam into dialogue with Mary, showing how the Logos assumed human nature through the Virgin and bridged the chasm between Creator and creation. This textual synchronicity between the Old Testament and the Gospel weaves a fascinating dialogue between a world before the birth of Christ and the new creation inaugurated by the Incarnation, and consummated in the Passion. Romanos suspends the causality that might be associated with a linear view of salvation history. His hymn stages a divine drama in liturgical time through sacred song and holy ritual, interweaving biblical figures and events from the past and the future into the performance, and inviting the faithful to be protagonists in a sacred play that promises a salvific dénouement.

80

Strophes 14 and 18.

Byzantine Liturgical Commentaries and the Notion of Performance Fr Damaskinos (OLKINUORA) of Xenophontos, Mount Athos, Greece

ABSTRACT Much scholarly attention has been drawn to the most important Byzantine commentaries of the Divine Liturgy, especially after René Bonert’s influential work Les commentaires byzantins de la divine liturgie du VIIe au XVe siècle in 1966. However, much more work remains to be done on the commentaries – apart from the critical study of the source texts, much more discussion on their theology awaits to be conducted. The aim of the present article is to provide a new reading of four important source texts: commentaries written by Pseudo-Dionysios the Areopagite, Maximos the Confessor, Germanos of Constantinople, and Nicholas Kabasilas. It explores the above-mentioned liturgical commentaries through the notion of performance, aiming at a ‘reconciliation’ between the fathers’ allegorical understanding of the liturgy and the way liturgical performance is seen, simultaneously engaging in a dialogical way with previous scholarship. The author discusses the functions of a liturgical performance space, especially the patristic idea of the performative space being embodied by the audience and performers. Moreover, as the commentaries suggest, the Divine Liturgy is a dramatic narrative, a performative re-enactment of salvation history, in which the mimetic activity of the clergy and laity plays a critical role. As the author argues, based on the reading of the source texts, the performative roles and even the functions of performance become intertwined and overlapping in the liturgical context. The article also discusses the importance of liturgical movement and the ‘roles’ of the performance, setting these notions into the wider patristic framework.

The study of the performative aspects of Byzantine liturgy, from a more theoretical rather than practical point of view, has begun only in recent years and much remains to be done. Partly this lack is due to the reluctance of several liturgical theologians to see liturgy as a performance: it is seen as a concept in opposition to prayer, and emphasizes too much the clergy or choir as ‘performers’ and the laity as ‘audience’, transforming the prayerful meeting with divinity into a concert or theatrical performance. However, I am convinced that such an approach is based on a flimsy knowledge on the broader scholarship on performance theory. In order to fill in this gap on my part, in some of my recent publications I have discussed hymnography, preaching, and monastic foundation documents

Studia Patristica CXXX, 353-370. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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from the point of view of performance theory.1 In the first two we deal with texts that are performed as such; we can approach their performative aspects by looking at the texts themselves, and the way they were performed. My focus in those studies has been the question of the ‘roles’ of performance: what is being performed, who is performing and to whom? The monastic foundation documents, on the other hand, describe how these performances should be organized by giving detailed instructions about role-casting and its functions. For the sake of completing this examination of different textual sources related to Byzantine liturgy from the point of view of performance studies, in the present article I shall concentrate on liturgical commentaries. These texts have received some scholarly attention,2 but as far as I am aware, they have never been extensively discussed from the point of view of performance theory: only Andrew White refers to them, even though only in passing, in his monograph on performing ritual in Byzantium,3 and Terence Cuneo and Christina Gschwandtner discuss them, again in passing and not primarily from a performative point of view, in their philosophical examinations of the Eastern Orthodox liturgy.4 From the point of view of a patristic scholar, one must also be cautious with their readings of liturgy in the modern Orthodox context, not 1 See Fr Damaskinos (Olkinuora) of Xenophontos, ‘Interaction between the Preacher and His Audience in Middle Byzantine Preaching: Andrew of Crete and John of Damascus’, in Anni Maria Laato, Serafim Seppälä and Harri Huovinen (eds), Homilies in Context, Studia Patristica Fennica 9 (Helsinki, 2020), 78-114; Hieromonk Damaskinos (Olkinuora) of Xenophontos, ‘Performance Theory and the Study of Byzantine Hymnography: Andrew of Crete’s Canon on Lazarus’, Ortodoksia 59 (2019), 7-31; Hieromonk Damaskinos (Olkinuora) of Xenophontos, ‘Visible and Invisible, Audible and Inaudible, Chant Performance in Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents?’, Journal of the International Society for Orthodox Church Music 4/1 (2020), 1-13; Fr Damaskinos (Olkinuora) of Xenophontos, ‘Byzantine Hymnography: Spiritual Ekphrasis?’ (forthcoming). In recent years, there have been numerous studies published on experiencing, feeling and sensing liturgy: see, for example, Andrew Louth, ‘Experiencing the Liturgy in Byzantium’, in Claire Nesbitt and Mark Jackson (eds), Experiencing Byzantium: Papers from the 44th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Newcastle and Durham, April 2011 (London, 2016), 79-88; Bissera Pentcheva, ‘Performing the Sacred in Byzantium: Image, Breath and Sound’, in Performance Research 19/3 (2014), 120-8; Béatrice Caseau, ‘Sensing the Sacred’, in Cambridge World History of Religious Architecture (forthcoming). 2 A foundational study of these commentaries is René Bornert, Les commentaires byzantins de la divine liturgie du VIIe au XVe siècle (Paris, 1965), even though much more research has been done on the topic since: see, for example Robert Taft, ‘The Liturgy of the Great Church: An Initial Synthesis of Structure and Interpretation on the Eve of Iconoclasm’, in DOP 34 (1980-1), 45-75, and Hans-Joachim Schulz, Die byzantinische Liturgie: Glaubenszeugnis und Symbolgestalt, 3rd ed. (Trier, 2000). The commentaries are not always seen in a positive light in the context of liturgical theology, either; for an influential view among the Byzantine Orthodox churches, see Thomas Fisch (ed.), Liturgy and Tradition: Theological Reflections of Alexander Schmemann (Crestwood, 1990). 3 Andrew Walker White, Performing Orthodox Ritual in Byzantium (Cambridge, 2015). 4 Terence Cuneo, Ritualized Faith: Essays on the Philosophy of Liturgy (Oxford, 2016); Christina M. Gschwandtner, Welcoming Finitude: Toward a Phenomenology of Orthodox Liturgy (New York, 2019).

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exclusively in the Byzantine way of understanding the liturgy. Cuneo, especially, bases some of his observations on modern North American practices rather than historical sources. Since one article cannot cover the whole richness of Byzantine liturgical life, and since I have discussed non-eucharistic offices in my previous contributions, I shall concentrate exclusively on the eucharistic office. It would be likewise impossible to examine all possible texts that could be understood as liturgical commentaries. Therefore, I have restricted myself to analyzing four Byzantine liturgical commentaries: the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy by Pseudo-Dionysios the Areopagite,5 the Mystagogy of Maximos the Confessor,6 and the commentaries by Germanos of Constantinople7 and Nicholas Kabasilas.8 While we possess excellent critical editions of the two former texts, the commentary by Germanos, as well as the one by Kabasilas, need extensive textcritical examination; however, this cannot be fitted into the scope of this article and it is not a crucial question for its content, either. Instead, my main aim is to examine how these works describe the performative aspects of liturgy and how we could verbalize this dynamic in a way that does not remove it from its theological framework. Simultaneously, I wish to keep this discussion constantly in dialogue with modern theorists of performance studies. In other words, my wish is to build a bridge between these different fields to the extent it is possible. At the same time, the present contribution is a response to and a critical assessment of earlier scholarship on the topic. Since in such a short space an exhaustive examination or analysis based on the historical practices of liturgy each commentary describes is likewise beyond the scope of this paper, my discussion must be seen more as a methodological reflection rather than a systematic treatise. Is the eucharistic office a performance? Before entering the source texts properly, a few theoretical considerations coupled with views of previous scholarship should be offered. Earlier in performance studies, liturgy has been most usually examined from the point of 5 For a critical edition of the text, see Corpus Dionysiacum, vol. 2, ed. Günter Heil and Adolf M. Ritter, Patristische Texte und Studien 36 (Berlin, 1991), 61-132. The English translation used here is Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, trans. Colm Luibheid (New York, 1987). 6 For a critical edition of the text, see Maximi Confessoris Mystagogia, ed. Christian Boudignon, CChr.SG 69 (Turnhout, 2011). The English translation used here is Maximus the Confessor: Selected Writings, trans. George C. Berthold (New York, 1985), 181-226. 7 The Greek text (originally edited by N. Borgia) and its English translation used here is St Germanus of Constantinople: On the Divine Liturgy, trans. Paul Meyendorff (Crestwood, 1984). 8 For the Greek text, see Nicolas Cabasilas: Explication de la divine liturgie, SC 4 bis (Paris, 1967). The English translation used here is Nicholas Cabasilas: A Commentary on the Divine Liturgy, trans. J.M. Hussey and P.A. McNulty (Crestwood, 1960).

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view of theatre; many performance theorists, such as the influential Richard Schechner, see an inextricable link between ritual and theatre,9 but this has been criticized by some, most notably in the context of Orthodox liturgy by White, who is cautious in calling liturgy ‘theatrical’ or ‘dramatic’. Instead, he suggests it should be seen primarily as a rhetorical act. White argues that the divine liturgy is ‘a new mode of performance based on post-theatrical, rhetorical models’, and ‘what we fail to notice is that its [the divine liturgy’s] character is non-mimetic’.10 In the following, I wish to nuance White’s understanding of the liturgy being exclusively rhetorical: I am convinced, based on the liturgical commentaries, that the idea of liturgy being a purely spiritual performance with no dramatic or mimetic elements is not by any means tenable. However, we need to refine our understanding of what the notions of ‘dramatic’ and ‘mimetic’ actually mean here. The first point to bear in mind is that when we speak of liturgy as a performance, we should not let this term lead us automatically to assume it is synonymous with theatrical, even if this is the way many performance theorists have approached the question (and even if the liturgy might include some dramatic elements). Instead, we should also take into account the other semantic field of the term as an accomplishment of a task.11 If we approach the question from the point of view of performance studies, we could examine the criteria set by Schechner for defining a performance and compare them with the analogous aspects of Byzantine liturgy.12 First, as Schechner summarizes, a performance has its own concept of time. In the liturgy, this is particularly significant because the Byzantine liturgy refers to three conceptions of time – as Bornert points out in his study of the Greek liturgical commentaries, ‘comme la lettre scripturaire, la célébration liturgique est le mémorial d’un événement passé, l’image d’une réalité présente et l’annonce d’un accomplissement futur’.13 The second aspect is the use of objects meant to be used performatively; this is the clear role of liturgical vessels, censors, etc. The liturgical commentaries examined here are quite limited in discussing these, but in some other treatises they acquire a more prominent role.14 9

See, for example, Richard Schechner, Performance Theory, 2nd ed. (New York, 2003), 112-69. A.W. White, Performing (2015), 5. 11 One should also note that the understanding of the notion is highly dependent on the language of scholarship. In Greek, ‘performance’ can be translated as ἐκτέλεσις or ἐπιτέλεσις: the former carries the semantics of performing a task or performing a piece of art, while the latter term is used also in liturgical contexts for the liturgical act of commemorating a saint or an event. In my native Finnish, however, the Latin-based word ‘performanssi’ has a highly specialized meaning, referring to a certain kind of aesthetic performance: additionally, the word has no semantic dimension of referring to the performance of a task. The scholarship on performance studies is mainly in English, but it has, for a great part, neglected this linguistic effect on the whole theory. 12 See R. Schechner, Performance Theory (2003), 8-19. 13 R. Bornert, Les commentaires (1965), 36. 14 For an examination of the different functions of censing in Byzantine and Syrian liturgical commentaries, see Serafim Seppälä, ‘Suitsuttamisen merkitysulottuvuuksia bysanttilaisissa ja 10

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The third aspect Schechner brings forth is non-productivity in the material sense. This is also true for the liturgy; it is an act that does not produce anything material and is per se of no material benefit for its participants (except for the small amount of sustenance in the form of holy communion, but even this, despite being also material, is referred to as ‘heavenly sustenance,’ thus elevating it to an anagogical existence). These last two aspects are related to the regulative set of rules that characterize a performance, found in liturgical rubrics, and a separate performance space meant for the particular performance; for this we have the church building, only meant for liturgical use (even though today this principle has been blurred, and churches are used as concert halls or venues for public lectures – this was clearly not the case in Byzantium, apart from sermons). But even when these criteria are met by liturgy, it does not yet make it explicitly theatrical. Such a notion of performance is not exclusively a modern one, naturally with a certain amount of variation in different contexts, and one can also see support for the use of this notion in conjunction with the liturgy in the patristic tradition, even if verbalized differently. Maximos’ commentary is entitled Mystagogy, which is a common word used in Byzantium for the eucharistic service. One of the meanings of this term could be translated as ‘performance of the sacred action’:15 Kabasilas, in particular, emphasizes the moment of accomplishment of a task – the sanctification of the bread and wine.16 But there are certainly also some aspects of an aesthetic spectacle in the liturgy: it is an aesthetic performance rich in its non-verbality, including gestures, spatial elements, images, movements, experience, scents and tastes.17 Schechner says a ritual is ‘not simply a doing but a showing of a doing. Furthermore, this showing is both actual – and symbolic.’18 This is certainly the case in the divine liturgy; even though White claims the eucharistic office is non-mimetic, it is symbolic – and also mimetic through symbols. We shall return to the question of mimesis later in this article. It must also be noted that the eucharistic rite is unique among divine offices. Other services are dominated by recited psalms and hymns and they include syyrialaisissa liturgiakommentaareissa’, in Jussi Junni (ed.), Näkökulmia varhaisen kirkon liturgiaan, Studia Patristica Fennica 6 (Helsinki, 2017), 81-106. 15 See R. Bornert, Les commentaires (1965), 29. 16 Explication de la Divine Liturgie, 174: Τούτων δὲ ηὐγμένων καὶ εἰρημένων, τὸ πᾶν τῆς ἱερουργίας ἤνυσται καὶ τετέλεσται καὶ τὰ δῶρα ἡγιάσθη καὶ ἡ θυσία ἀπηρτίσθη (‘when these words have been said, the whole sacred rite is accomplished, the offerings are consecrated, the sacrifice is complete’: Commentary on the Divine Liturgy [1960], 70). 17 As we saw in footnote 1, bibliography on this topic has been emerging in the recent years. In my doctoral dissertation, published under my lay name, I examined liturgical worship through the lens of ‘intermediality’ and argued strongly for an ‘intermedial’ reading of any liturgical text; see Jaakko Henrik Olkinuora, Byzantine Hymnography for the Feast of the Entrance of the Theotokos: An Intermedial Approach, Studia Patristica Fennica 4 (Helsinki, 2015), especially 19-22. 18 R. Schechner, Performance Theory (2003), 114-5.

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very few liturgical movements; there is an extensive hymnography that allows (and encourages) believers to concentrate on the rhetorical performance. But the eucharistic service is different, since apart from the sermons, the act of performing is very different: there are many movements, many different roles, and a sacrament to be performed with concrete elements (bread and wine). The eucharistic office is the most multi-sensory of all the services: Germanos points out the sweet joy and the fragrance of the Holy Spirit that the censer demonstrates.19 Participation of the energies of the divinity is concretely experienced through receiving bread and wine that are, at that moment, the body and blood of Christ. The uniqueness of the divine liturgy requires that its understanding as performance differs from that of other groups of theological texts, used in other offices. In the following, I shall bring up four main themes from the commentaries. First, I shall discuss the church as a performance space; second, I shall analyze the dramatic structures of the divine liturgy; third, I shall examine the movements in liturgy, something that is quite unique for the eucharistic office; and fourth, I shall discuss the intriguing question of the roles of a liturgical performance. Performance space White is convincing in noting that the use of the basilica as the space for divine services manifests a clear discontinuity between the spatial practices of the pagan theatre and the Christian temple (despite the suggestions of earlier scholars, most importantly Marios Ploritis). Instead, the basilica seems to be connected with the imperial court. White does admit, however, that a theatrical element preserved in the church space is the curtain. Gradually, the tripartite structure became prominent in churches, that consisted, according to the standard, of the sanctuary (altar), the church hall itself (ναός), and the second hall (νάρθηξ), in which some minor services were celebrated (this structure is still retained in modern Athonite church buildings). This development also brought together with it the templon or iconostasis, which provided a visual barrier between the sanctuary and the faithful; this should be borne in mind when reading the liturgical commentaries.20 It is true that the church building is not a theatre, and some of the commentators had a different view of the space. But the liturgical space is separate from the rest of the public sphere, and the question of spatiality is related to a broader philosophical tradition. Maximos describes the building itself as an image of God, expounding on the etymology of ekklesia, congregation: the divinity, 19 20

See On the Divine Liturgy (1984), 78-81. A.W. White, Performing (2015), 30-41.

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treasuring the divine and uncreated logoi of beings in itself, ‘makes them [the created beings] converge in each other by the singular force of their relationship to him as origin’ (τὰ κατὰ φύσιν ἀλλήλων διεστηκότα κατὰ μίαν τὴν πρὸς αὐτόν, ὡς ἀρχήν, σχέσεως δύναμιν ἀλλήλοις συννενευκότα ποιεῖ). The church is, in other forms of contemplation, an image of the world composed of visible and invisible substances, but also an image of the sensible world and an image of man and his tripartite soul.21 In different parts of the liturgy, the space transforms. Maximos points to the closing of the doors as but one example; if we see the altar area as a spatial allegory for the Kingdom, the closed doors clearly echo visually the ‘terrible judgment and the entrance of those who are worthy into the spiritual world, that is, into the nuptial chamber of Christ, as well as the complete extinction in our senses of deceptive activity’ (ἡ δὲ - - γινομένη κλεῖσις τῶν θυρῶν τῆς ἁγίας τοῦ θεοῦ ἐκκλησίας, τήν τε τῶν ὑλικῶν δηλοῖ πάροδον καὶ τὴν γενησομένην, μετὰ τὸν φοβερὸν ἐκεῖνον ἀφορισμὸν καὶ τὴν φοβερωτέραν ψῆφον, εἰς τὸν νοητὸν κόσμον ἥτοι τὸν νυμφῶνα τοῦ Χριστοῦ τῶν ἀξίων εἴσοδον καὶ τὴν ἐν ταῖς αἰσθήσεσι τῆς κατὰ τὴν ἀπάτην ἐνεργείας τελείαν ἀποβολήν).22 So, in the liturgy there are intentional moments of invisibility; the visually perceptible actions of the clergy are hidden from the eyes of the faithful. As in a Greek tragedy, the most dramatic acts happen off-stage, and the audience only hears about it. It is notable, however, that in reality invisibility that surpasses the sensory world is not something that we see (or not see) with our bodily eyes. But even this invisibility is manifested in the divine liturgy through visibility; the faithful do not close their eyes when they try to enter this cloud of darkness, but they instead see things with their physical sense of seeing – the doors being closed and the holy gifts covered. In this same sense, somewhat paradoxically, Nicholas Kabasilas interprets the deacon’s order ‘The doors, the doors’ meant for closing the church doors (which is soon after followed by the closure of the ‘beautiful gate’) as this entrance into the invisible realm through sensible things. So, the exhortation ‘doors’ does not refer to closure but opening of the senses in a situation where it is proper: ‘– the priest asks us to open all the doors–that is, our mouths and ears. Open the doors in this wisdom, he says, proclaiming and listening to these high teachings constantly; not inattentively but eagerly, devoting all your minds to it’ (- - κελεύει πάσας ἀναπετάσαι τὰς θύρας, τὰ στόματα ἡμῶν, τὰ ὦτα ἡμῶν. Ἐν ταύτῃ, φησίν, ἀνοίξατε τῇ σοφίᾳ, 21 This is the topic of chapters 1-5; see Mystagogia (2011), 10-31; quote on p. 11 (English translation in Maximus the Confessor [1985], 186). For an extensive study on the notion of space (and time) in Maximos’ Mystagogy, see Pascal Mueller-Jourdan, Typologie spatio-temporelle de l’ecclesia byzantine : La Mystagogie de Maxime le Confesseur dans la culture philosophique de l’antiquité tardive, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 74 (Leiden, 2005). 22 Mystagogia (2011), 44-5 (Maximus the Confessor [1985], 201).

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ταῦτα διηνεκῶς καὶ λέγοντες καὶ ἀκούοντες, καὶ τοῦτο οὐ ῥᾳθύμως, ἀλλὰ σπουδαίως ποιεῖτε καὶ προσέχοντες ὑμῖν αὐτοῖς).23 Even though I have been cautious with connecting the church and her liturgy with theatre, we must also admit that the dramatic aspects of the performance space are by no means absent from the commentaries, either. Germanos’ commentary, in addition to these cosmic images, connects different parts of the church with different parts of Christ’s life. The apse corresponds to the cave in Bethlehem; the holy table corresponds to the spot in the tomb where Christ was placed, but it is also the throne of God; the ciborium represents the place of crucifixion and the ark of the covenant (the latter is derived from the etymology of the ciborium); the altar as a whole corresponds to the tomb of Christ.24 This staging, if one could use this word, gives a new context for interpreting the priest’s movements and gestures. The liturgy is a procession from Christ’s birth cave to his tomb – in other words the space also creates a narrative of His life. It is this dramatic continuity of the liturgy we now turn our attention to. The ‘dramatic structure’ of the liturgy White strongly criticizes some performance theorists’ views on the inextricable link between ritual and theatre. He also opposes the dramatic reading of the commentaries of the divine liturgy and claims that such readings ‘erase evidence of more abstract, spiritual interpretations rooted in the Liturgy’s higher purpose’.25 However, in the light of liturgical commentaries, White’s view is one-sided. He claims that ‘liturgy was not conceived as a drama, it was not performed as one, and the record shows clearly that the Fathers and their successors intended the laity to have a primarily spiritual experience through their work, not an aesthetic one’.26 This juxtaposition between a ‘spiritual’ and ‘aesthetic’ experience seems unjustified, since the liturgical commentaries as well as the broader patristic tradition are clear about these two worlds coinciding and not contradicting one another. White also notes that ‘there is a difference between a brief appeal to a familiar motif, done to engage novices, and a thorough delineation of the rite’s ultimate meaning’.27 But among some other scholars, however, the narrative of the eucharistic rite seems to be something much more than ‘a brief appeal to a familiar motif’: Terence Cuneo notes that ‘the activity of reenacting central elements of the core narrative figures so prominently’ in Eastern 23 24 25 26 27

Explication de la Divine Liturgie, 168 (Commentary on the Divine Liturgy [1960], 67). See On the Divine Liturgy (1984), 58-63. A.W. White, Performing (2015), 52. Ibid. Ibid.

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Orthodox liturgy.28 Why these contradictory statements? Is the liturgy dramatic or not? Looking for the answer in liturgical commentaries, one cannot avoid noting that Kabasilas is quite explicit about the dramatic structure of the liturgy and the narrative therein. He sees it as ‘the whole scheme of the work of redemption’ (ἡ οἰκονομία τοῦ Σωτῆρος): this scheme is expressed both verbally (‘in the psalms and readings’, ἐν τοῖς ψαλμοῖς καὶ ταῖς ἀναγνώσεσι) but also through imitation in actions (‘as in all the actions of the priest throughout the liturgy’, καὶ πᾶσι τοῖς ὑπὸ τοῦ ἱερέως διὰ πάσης τῆς τελετῆς πραττομένοις).29 The priest ascends to the throne of God, accomplishes the rite and, in the end of the liturgy, descends back to the faithful, echoing the PseudoAreopagite’s understanding of the Church’s hierarchy bestowing divine gifts to the faithful through this ascent in contemplation.30 The whole service is seen by Kabasilas as a continuation: ‘the first ceremonies of the service represent the beginnings of this work; the next, the sequel; and the last, its results - - The celebration of the mystery is like a unique portrayal of a single body, which is the work of the Saviour’ (τὰ μὲν πρῶτα αὐτῆς, τῶν πρώτων τῆς ἱερουργίας δηλούντων, τῶν δὲ δευτέρων, τὰ δεύτερα, τῶν δὲ τελευταίων, τὰ μετ΄ ἐκεῖνα - - Καὶ ἔστι ἡ πᾶσα μυσταγωγία καθάπερ τις εἰκὼν μία ἑνὸς σώματος τῆς τοῦ Σωτῆρος πολιτείας).31 He notes later on that, even if the original meaning of psalmody was not the salvific work of Christ, in this context it is interpreted as a part of the whole. Even the antiphons sung at the beginning of the liturgy have an inner narrative logic, unfolding the mystery of Christ’s incarnation: ‘Because of the selection which has been made, and the order in which the passages are arranged, they have another function [than sanctification of the faithful]: they signify the coming of Christ and his work - - Not only the chants and readings but the very actions themselves have this part to play’ (Ὅτι δὲ τοιαῦτα ἐξελέγησαν καὶ οὕτως ἐτάχθησαν, καὶ τὴν ἄλλην δύναμιν ἔχουσι καὶ ἀρκοῦσι πρὸς σημασίαν τῆς τοῦ Χριστοῦ ἐπιδημίας καὶ πολιτείας - Ἐπεὶ οὐ μόνον τὰ ᾀδόμενα καὶ ἀναγινωσκόμενα, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰ τελούμενα τοῦτον ἔχει τὸν τρόπον).32 Further on, he distinguishes between two categories of action: those that have both a practical and a spiritual meaning, and those that only have a spiritual meaning.33 In other words, there is no action or movement in the liturgy, in Kabasilas’ thought, which lacks allegorical meaning that would constitute a part of the sacred narrative.

28

T. Cuneo, Ritualizing Faith (2016), 66. Explication de la Divine Liturgie, 60 (Commentary on the Divine Liturgy [1960], 26). 30 See, for example, Corpus Dionysiacum (1991), 65-6. 31 Explication de la Divine Liturgie, 60-2 (Commentary on the Divine Liturgy [1960], 26-7). 32 Explication de la Divine Liturgie, 62 (Commentary on the Divine Liturgy [1960], 27). 33 See Explication de la Divine Liturgie, 62-4 (Commentary on the Divine Liturgy [1960], 27-8). 29

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I noted above that White is emphatic about the eucharistic office being nonmimetic. This is, it seems to me, not fully tenable if we examine the liturgical commentaries; and the key question here, I think, is how we understand the mimetic quality of the liturgy. This has been recently examined in a paper by Christina M. Gschwandtner, who also refers to Maximus’ Mystagogy,34 and Terence Cuneo, who uses the term ‘reenactment’ rather than mimesis and suggests that the Byzantine liturgy commentators ‘find liturgical reenactment at nearly every turn in the liturgy, interpreting actions of all sorts as signifying actions depicted in the core narrative’.35 Discussing the philosophical background of mimesis and transformation, and providing counterpoints to observations of earlier scholarship, including White and Cuneo, Gschwandtner argues that liturgy is simultaneously mimetic and transformative; the aim of the liturgy is to create what she calls a ‘fit’ between the corporeal and incorporeal, the body and the soul, the visible and the invisible. The invisible and eternal realm can be partaken of only ‘if it becomes instantiated in space and time, in bodies and materiality’. So, she concludes that ‘earth does not just mirror heaven in the false sense of mimesis as mere shadow or deceptive imitation, but it becomes imbued with it as the two are transformed in a union without confusion where they match up, where the “feasting above” is entirely comingled with and occurs in the “feasting below”’.36 Cuneo suggests a theoretical framework to articulate this conception of participatory mimesis: he calls it the immersion model.37 Indeed, the commentaries do speak for a kind of mimesis that is not false or pretentious but genuine and true and effects actual participation of the divine. Nicholas Kabasilas notes in his discussion of the prothesis that the movements the priest does are ‘a narrative in action’ (πρακτικὴ διήγησις) of Christ’s passion: All his actions, those dictated by necessity as well as those which are consciously symbolic, are made to fit into this framework; thus they are all, as it were, a dramatization of Christ’s sufferings and death. This practice of demonstrating, exhorting or prophesying by means of actions is very ancient. - - In the same way, the priest expresses in words or represents by gestures all that he knows of the solemn sacrifice. Καὶ πάντα ὅσα ποιεῖ, τὰ μὲν κατὰ χρείαν, τὰ δὲ ἐπίτηδες εἰς τὴν σημασίαν ταύτην βιάζεται. καὶ ἔστι τὰ γινόμενα τηνικαῦτα τῶν σωτηρίων παθῶν καὶ τοῦ θανάτου πρακτικὴ διήγησις. Τοῦτο δὲ ἀρχαῖον ἔθος ἦν καὶ πρακτικῶς ἐνίοτε καὶ διηγοῦντο καὶ παρῇνουν καὶ προεφήτευον. - - Καὶ ὁ ἱερεὺς ταῦτα φαίνεται ποιῶν, ἃ περὶ τῆς θυσίας οἶδεν ἐκείνης, καὶ λόγοις διηγούμενος, καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ἔργων δεικνύς.38

34 Christina M. Gschwandtner, ‘Mimesis or Metamorphosis? Eastern Orthodox Liturgical Practice and Its Philosophical Background’, Religions 8/92 (2017). 35 T. Cuneo, Ritualizing Faith (2016), 68. 36 C. Gschwandtner, ‘Mimesis or Metamorphosis’ (2017), 22. 37 T. Cuneo, Ritualizing Faith (2016), 66-87. 38 Explication de la Divine Liturgie, 80-2 (Commentary on the Divine Liturgy [1960], 34-5).

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The liturgy is not a sacred play; the eucharistic sacrifice is true, since it is not just bread and wine that would depict Christ’s body and blood. They are physically consumed by the believers, uniting them spiritually with Christ. This kind of liturgical mimesis is not the pure Aristotelian understanding of the word as manifested in the dramatic works of the antiquity;39 there is a distance between the ceremony performed by the priest and the sacrifice performed by Christ, but the latter is truly present in the previous. There is also an aspect of imitation by the believers to become saints; we shall return to this question in conjunction with the ‘role-casting’ of liturgy. The fear of sacred plays and pretentious imitation is also linked to the emotional landscape of the liturgy. In patristic spirituality, emotions can be dangerous things and lead a believer astray – shouldn’t one avoid emotions in liturgy, then?40 However, Kabasilas is emphatic that the liturgy is also an act that has an emotional impact (or, literally, it induces ‘blessed passions’, μακάρια πάθη) on its audience. He notes that the divine liturgy naturally does not induce these noble sentiments [in those who already have faith], but it preserves, renews, and increases what already exists; it makes the believers stronger in faith and more generous in devotion and love - - That is why it was necessary that actions of this sort, capable of inspiring such feelings in us, should find a place in the ordering of the liturgy. It was necessary, not only that we should think about, but also that to some extent we should see the utter poverty of him who possesses all - - it is not enough once to have learned of those things which are Christ’s and to have retained the memory of them; we must at this moment behold and contemplate these things with the eyes of the mind. - - τὰ μακάρια ταῦτα πάθη οὐκ ἐντίθησι μὲν αὐτοῖς, ἐγκείμενα δὲ συντηρεῖ καὶ ἀνακαινίζει καὶ αὔξει. καὶ βεβαιοτέρους μὲν περὶ τὴν πίστιν, θερμοτέρους δὲ περὶ τὴν εὐλάβειαν καὶ τὴν ἀγάπην αὐτοὺς ἐργάζεται - - Διὰ τοῦτο ἐχρὴν τὴν ταῦτα ἡμῖν ἐνθεῖναι δυναμένην θεωρίαν ἐν τῇ συντάξει τῆς ἱερουργίας σημαίνεσθαι, ἵνα μὴ τῷ νῷ λογιζώμεθα μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ βλέπωμεν τοῖς ὀφθαλμοῖς τρόπον δή τινα τὴν πολλὴν τοῦ πλουσίου πενίαν - - Οὐ γὰρ ἀρκεῖ πρὸς τὸ τοιούτους γενέσθαι τότε τὸ 39 However, it must be noted that Aristotle’s notion of mimesis is not systematically presented in his works, a fact which has probably influenced the various ways his notion of mimesis has been interpreted, often as a counterpart for Platonic understanding of mimesis. It seems, however, that the Aristotelian notion of mimesis is inherently deceptive, which is certainly not the case in liturgy. For more discussion on this question, see Paul Woodruff, ‘Aristotle on Mimesis’, in Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (ed.), Essays on Aristotle’s Poetics (Princeton, 1992), 71-95. As Woodruff (pp. 74-8) notes, modern scholarship often treats the Platonic understanding of mimesis as something false or pretentious, even though Plato himself describes mimesis to be deceptive only in certain cases. For example, in Timaeus (47bc), mimesis marks the ‘logical’ relation, one would say, between the divine reality and its logical representation in thoughts or words. In this way, the thought of liturgical mimesis also is a form of true representation. See also Andreas Andreopoulos, ‘Liturgical Dialogues: Clergy and Laity Concelebrating. An Analysis of the Christian Liturgy through Aristotle’s Poetics’, in this volume, p. 385-401. 40 On the negative stance toward emotionalism in the patristic tradition, see Kallistos T. Ware, ‘The meaning of “Pathos” in Abba Isaias and Theodoret of Cyrus”, SP 20 (1989), 315-22.

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μαθεῖν ποτε τὰ Χριστοῦ καὶ εἰδότας εἶναι. ἀλλ΄ ἀνάγκη καὶ τηνικαῦτα τὸν ὀφθαλμὸν τῆς διανοίας ἔχειν ἐκεῖ καὶ θεωρεῖν αὐτά.41

This almost kathartic understanding of the liturgy, in the Aristotelian meaning of the word, should not be underestimated. The emotional impact of liturgy is linked with its effectiveness and the way memory works.42 ‘Forgetfulness is a great tyrant’ (Πολλὴ τῆς λήθης ἡ τύραννις),43 Kabasilas notes, and elsewhere adds that in order to benefit most fully from participation in the liturgy, one must avoid distractions: ‘For our dispositions are regulated by the thoughts which occupy us at the time, and the feelings we experience are those which such thoughts are calculated to arouse in us’ (Πρὸς γὰρ τοὺς τότε κατέχοντας λογισμοὺς διατιθέμεθα, καὶ τοιαῦτα πάθη πάσχομεν οἷα δρᾶν ἐκεῖνοι δύνανται). The aim of such a dramatic structure is to influence our souls the more easily thereby; not merely to offer us a simple picture but to create in us a feeling, for the very good reason that an idea is more deeply impressed upon us if we can see it depicted. This goes on throughout the liturgy, in order that it may not be forgotten, and our thoughts be not distracted by anything else before it has led us to the holy table - ἵν΄ ἐκείνῳ μὲν εἰς τὰς ψυχὰς εὐκολώτερον δράσῃ, καὶ οὐ θεωρίᾳ ψιλὴ μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ πάθος ἡμῖν ἐντεθῇ, ὡς ἂν τῆς φαντασίας διὰ τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν ἐναργέστερον ἡμῖν τυπουμένης. ἐκείνῳ δὲ μὴ δῷ τῇ λήθῃ χώραν, μηδ΄ ἐάσῃ πρὸς ἄλλο τι τρέψαι τὸν λογισμόν, ἕως ἐπ’ αὐτὴν ἀγάγοι τὴν τράπεζαν - -44

This emotional change, which is not sentimentalism but fundamental transformation and true participation in the divine, leads to the reception of Holy Communion. And, as Gschwandtner points out, the repetition day after day, year after year, liturgy after liturgy, each time offers a new possibility for the participants of the liturgy to become transformed through sacred imitation.45 Liturgical movements The divine liturgy, indeed, is much about actions, according to its commentators: there are moments when audible elements are secondary and seem to accompany a visible act. Even if the commentaries discuss the words that are said in the liturgy, they are also concerned (and not only marginally) about the movements of the clergy and the faithful. White argues that the liturgy is 41

Explication de la Divine Liturgie, 66-8 (Commentary on the Divine Liturgy [1960], 29). For an enlightening introduction to the Byzantine understanding of memory, see Amy Papalexandrou, ‘The Memory Culture of Byzantium’, in Liz James (ed.), A Companion to Byzantium (Malden, 2010), 108-22. 43 Explication de la Divine Liturgie, 150 (Commentary on the Divine Liturgy [1960], 60). 44 Explication de la Divine Liturgie, 68 (Commentary on the Divine Liturgy [1960], 30). 45 C. Gschwandtner, ‘Mimesis or Metamorphosis’ (2017), 16. 42

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primarily a rhetorical performance, but it is inevitably also a performance performed by and with human bodies – bodies that transform during the liturgy.46 This is why Kabasilas exhorts the faithful to kiss the priest’s hand at the end of the liturgy, because this hand has been a necessary instrument in the completion of the sacrament.47 Many of the movements and gestures play a fundamental role in the way the narrative of salvation is understood. The question of movement is, again, linked to the way we understand the notion of mimesis. Gestures and movements are not ‘pretending’ to do what Christ did: through them, the faithful become part of the eternal movement of salvation history, with an eschatological focus. Moreover, it must be born in mind that in all the examined commentaries, the whole notion of movement (and its counterpart, stillness) is linked with Christianized Neoplatonic cosmology.48 The paradoxical eschatological state of ‘ever-moving stillness’, especially promoted by Maximos, is manifested in the liturgy through the dynamics between its narrative movement but also its repetitive elements that stand for stillness. The divine liturgy is, indeed, a repetitive performance, almost exactly the same (excluding biblical readings and some hymns) whenever it is celebrated. It is not surprising, like a theatre play seen for the first time: there is always a familiarity in it (except in the cases of liturgical reforms, but as we know, they have caused and still cause often uproar among the congregation). The Byzantines, however, insisted on expressing this stillness rather through repetition and familiarity than vocal silence or lack of any movements (such as is the case among the Quakers, for example), knowing the weakness of men to control their mind in such a simplistic setting. And indeed, Byzantine ‘dramatic’ stillness expressed through the repetitive aspects of liturgy, according to Pseudo-Dionysios, is not meaningless. He states that ‘we imitate as much as we can their abiding, unwavering, and sacred constancy, and we thereby come to look up to the blessed and divine ray of Jesus himself’ (τῇ κατὰ δύναμιν ἀφομοιώσει τοῦ μονίμου τε καὶ ἀνεξαλλάκτου τῆς αὐτῶν ἱερᾶς ἱδρύσεως καὶ ταύτῃ πρὸς τὴν μακαρίαν Ἰησοῦ καὶ θεαρχικὴν αὐγὴν ἀναβλέψαντες).49 46 There is still much work to be done on the role of body in liturgy. For this purpose, a thematic free communication carrying the title ‘Embodied Mystagogy’ will be convened for the International Congress of Byzantine Studies in Italy, 2022. For brief discussions of this topic in recent scholarship, see B.V. Pentcheva, ‘Performing the Sacred’ (2014), 120-8, and Ruth Webb, ‘Spatiality, Embodiment and Agency in Ekphraseis of Church Buildings’, in Bissera V. Pentcheva (ed.), Aural Architecture in Byzantium: Music, Acoustics, and Ritual (London, New York, 2018), 163-75. 47 Explication de la Divine Liturgie, 62 (Commentary on the Divine Liturgy [1960], 119-20). 48 For Pseudo-Dionysios, the triad of procession (proodos), reversion (epistrophe), and remaining occupies a central role; for more extensive discussion on this topic in relation to non-Christian Neoplatonic philosophy, see Sarah Klitenic Wear and John Dillon, Dionysius the Areopagite and the Neoplatonist Tradition: Despoiling the Hellenes (Aldershot, Burlington, 2007), especially pp. 53-6. 49 Corpus Dionysiacum (1991), 64 (Pseudo-Dionysius [1987], 195).

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The constancy, as Fr Andrew Louth has also pointed out, is manifested later on by the circular movements in censing.50 The stillness is, however, not only circular but also linear, directed at one direction; toward the East. Germanos notes that this is an apostolic tradition and its explanation is that we expect the sun of righteousness. Stillness is also expressed by the practice of not kneeling on days that are linked with resurrection.51 But, naturally, movements are also seen as actual movements and not only as symbols of stillness. In the Neo-Platonic understanding of Christianity, for Pseudo-Dionysios the movements of the clergy are a visual allegory of an ontological reality of procession and return. He notes: We must look attentively upon the beauty which gives it so divine a form and we must turn a reverent glance to the double movement of the hierarch when he goes first from the divine altar to the far edges of the sacred place spreading the fragrance and then returns to the alter. For the blessed divinity, which transcends all being, while proceeding gradually outward because of goodness to commune with those who partake of him, never actually departs from his essential stability and immobility. - - He returns to his own starting point without having any loss - -. Δεῖ δὲ οὖν ἡμᾶς - - τὸ νοητὸν τοῦ πρώτου τῶν ἀγαλμάτων ἀπογυμνώσαντας εἰς τὸ θεοειδὲς αὐτοῦ κάλλος ἐνατενίσαι καὶ τὸν ἱεράρχην ἐνθέως ἰδεῖν ἀπὸ τοῦ θείου θυσιαστηρίου μέχρι τῶν ἐσχάτων τοῦ ἱεροῦ μετ΄ εὐοσμίας ἰόντα καὶ πάλιν ἐπ΄ αὐτῷ τελειωτικῶς ἀποκαθιστάμενον. Ἥ τε γὰρ ὑπὲρ πάντα θεαρχικὴ μακαριότης, εἰ καὶ ἀγαθότητι θείᾳ πρόεισιν εἰς τὴν τῶν μετεχόντων αὐτῆς ἱερῶν κοινωνίαν, ἀλλ΄ οὐκ ἔξω τῆς κατ΄ οὐσίαν ἀκινήτου στάσεως καὶ ἱδρύσεως γίνεται - - καὶ - - εἰς τὴν οἰκείαν ἀρχὴν ἀμειώτως ἀποκαθίσταται - -.52

The ordered movements of the liturgy, according to Maximos, manifest once again the unity of the congregation: ‘[God] leads all beings to a common and unconfused identity of movement and existence, no one being originally in revolt against any other or separated from him by a difference of nature or of movement’ (εἰς ταυτότητα κινήσεώς τε καὶ ὑπάρξεως ἀδιάφορόν τε καὶ ἀσύγχυτον ἄγεται τὰ πάντα, πρὸς οὐδὲν οὐδενὸς τῶν ὄντων προηγουμένως κατὰ φύσεως διαφορὰν ἢ κινήσεως στασιάζοντός τε καὶ διαιρουμένου).53 Elsewhere, in the tropological commentary on the first procession of the liturgy, he adds that the soul of any believer, after having fled the passions, ‘comes as into a church to an inviolable shelter of peace in the natural contemplation in the Spirit, and how free of any fighting or disorder it enters it together with reason and before the Word and our great and true High Priest of God’ 50 Andrew Louth, ‘Space, Time and the Liturgy’, in Adrian Pabst and Christoph Schneider (eds), Encounter between Eastern Orthodoxy and Radical Orthodoxy: Transfiguring the World through the Word (Farnham, 2009), 215-31. 51 See On the Divine Liturgy (1984), 62-5. 52 Corpus Dionysiacum (1991), 3 (Pseudo-Dionysius [1987], 211). 53 Mystagogia (2011), 11 (Maximus the Confessor [1985], 186).

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(ὥσπερ εἰς ἐκκλησίαν καὶ ἄσυλον εἰρήνης ἀνάκτορον τὴν ἐν Πνεύματι φυσικὴν θεωρίαν τὴν ἄμαχον καὶ πάσης ἐλευθέραν ταραχῆς μετὰ τοῦ Λόγου τὲ καὶ ὑπὸ τοῦ Λόγου τοῦ μεγάλου καὶ ἀληθοῦς ἡμῶν θεοῦ καὶ ἀρχιερέως εἰσερχομένην).54 The liturgical commentaries provide a rich set of typological schemes for the movements and gestures – since space does not allow for an exhaustive study of all of these, I shall mention here only the example of the opening procession. At the beginning of the liturgy, as it was practiced in the seventh century, there was an entrance into the church led by the bishop. According to Maximos, this ‘is a figure and image of the first appearance in the flesh of Jesus Christ – in this world’ (Τὴν μέν οὖν πρώτην εἰς τὴν ἁγίαν ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ ἀρχιερέως κατὰ τὴν ἱερὰν σύναξιν εἴσοδον, τῆς πρώτης τοῦ Υἱοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν Χριστοῦ διὰ σαρκὸς εἰς τὸν κόσμον τοῦτον παρουσίας τύπον καὶ εἰκόνα φέρειν);55 this view was also adopted by Germanos in his commentary.56 Moreover, the bishop’s ascent to the throne is an image of Christ’s ascension: Germanos interprets this, in conjunction with the blessing by the bishop, as Christ leaving his peace with the disciples.57 Likewise, the entrance of the faithful marks, according to Maximos, the ‘conversion of the unfaithful from faithlessness to faith and from sin and error to the recognition of God as well as the passage of the faithful from vice and ignorance to virtue and knowledge’ (τὴν ἐξ ἀπιστίας εἰς πίστιν καὶ ἐξ ἀγνοίας καὶ πλάνης εἰς ἐπίγνωσιν θεοῦ ἐπιστροφὴν τῶν ἀπίστων καὶ τὴν ἀπὸ κακίας καὶ ἀγνωσίας εἰς ἀρετὴν καὶ γνῶσιν μετάθεσιν τῶν πιστῶν).58 The concrete act of entering the temple, then, marks both a narrative of salvation history and a repetitive conversion from vice to virtue: it is both a mimetic and a transformative movement, a common decision to start climbing up the stairs of spiritual struggle set by Christ’s ascension and the uplifting of human nature. This brings us to the question of ‘roles’ in the performance of divine liturgy. Roles in performance I have discussed elsewhere the role of chanters and their audience in Byzantine liturgy,59 so I will concentrate here on the roles I have not explored thus far – those of the clergy and the faithful. Nowadays, even if pastoral considerations move us to encourage the faithful not to see themselves as an audience as much as active participants, the commentaries are more nuanced in this view. 54 55 56 57 58 59

Mystagogia (2011), 50 (Maximus the Confessor [1985], 204). Mystagogia (2011), 36 (Maximus the Confessor [1985], 198). See On the Divine Liturgy (1984), 72-5. See ibid. 76-7. Mystagogia (2011), 38 (Maximus the Confessor [1985], 198). See footnote 1.

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Kabasilas separates different roles in the service (‘those who are present at these ceremonies have before their eyes all these divine things’ [Καὶ ἔξεστι τοῖς ταῦτα ὁρῶσι πάντα ἐκεῖνα πρὸ τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν ἔχειν]60) – in other words, they are the audience, who follows the performers (the actions of the priest, dressed in vestments that, according to Germanos, imitate Christ, and the vocal commentary of the chanters). But we should not remain content with such a simplified view of performers and audience. The liturgical ‘role-casting’, if such an expression is allowed, is naturally based on Pseudo-Dionysios’ understanding of hierarchy, in which the same, simple and divine energy works through all the levels of the hierarchy: only its manifestations (what we could here perhaps call as ‘roles’) and the ability of each level of the hierarchy to perceive divine glory differ from one level of the hierarchy to the other. According to Pseudo-Dionysios, the human hierarchy is seen ‘pluralized in a great variety of perceptible symbols lifting us upward hierarchically until we are brought as far as we can be into the unity of divinization’ (τὴν καθ΄ ἡμᾶς δὲ ὁρῶμεν ἀναλόγως ἡμῖν αὐτοῖς τῇ τῶν αἰσθωτῶν συμβόλων ποικιλίᾳ πληθυνομένην, ὑφ΄ ὧν ἱεραρχικῶς ἐπὶ τὴν ἑνοειδῆ θέωσιν ἐν συμμετρίᾳ τῇ καθ΄ ἡμᾶς ἀναγόμεθα).61 The definition of hierarchy is ‘the arrangement of all the sacred realities’. Pseudo-Dionysios mentions the hierarch, priests, the deacons, the catechumens, possessed and penitents, and the hymn-singing congregation (the ‘general crowd’). ‘Others perform tasks appropriate to their order’ – everyone present in the space, apart from the groups of catechumens, possessed and penitents, are performers, but all performing the role that has been reserved to them in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. As the Dionysian author notes, the catechumens ‘are yet being incubated by the paternal scriptures. They are being shaped by those life-giving depictions toward the first life and first light’ (ἔτι πρὸς τῶν πατρικῶν λογίων μαιευόμενοι καὶ ζωοποιοῖς μορφώμασι διαπλαττόμενοι πρὸς τὴν ἐκ θεογενεσίας ἀρχίζωον καὶ ἀρχίφωτον καὶ μακαρίαν προαγωγήν).62 On the other hand, the performers are themselves their own reflective audience: it is up to their own attempt to strive towards sanctification whether or not they can perceive the divine glory that radiates through the different parts and performers of the liturgy. In other words, the performance, the vision, is excluded even from those who fail to live according to the standards. This coupling of personal spiritual struggles with the structures of the liturgy brings us, again and again, to the key notion of liturgical mimesis. Derek Krueger brought attention to the way Byzantine hymns form a penitential self by inviting the faithful to imitate the models they are provided with.63 The eucharistic rite includes much less of such didactic imitation – instead, it invites the faithful 60

Explication de la Divine Liturgie, 62 (Commentary on the Divine Liturgy [1960], 26). Corpus Dionysiacum (1991), 65 (Pseudo-Dionysius [1987], 196). 62 Corpus Dionysiacum (1991), 85 (Pseudo-Dionysius [1987], 214). 63 Derek Krueger, Liturgical Subjects: Christian Ritual, Biblical Narrative, and the Formation of the Self in Byzantium (Philadelphia, 2014). 61

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to the most ontologically true way of participation. This is what Cuneo calls the immersion model: the priest does not pretend to be Christ, but he does things on behalf of Christ and tries to become like Christ. Cuneo suggests that the liturgy commentators ‘found something like the dramatic representation theory, with its emphasis on role-playing, to be the natural interpretation of important elements of the liturgy.’64 But it is important to point out that these roles are not ‘pretense roles’ but ‘target roles’ – something we should try to become through our own activity in the liturgy.65 This idea of transformative mimesis is shown in the whole setting of the liturgical performance. It requires, as the Areopagite tells us, preparation, which together with it brings exclusivity. But this exclusivity, which makes apparent the unity of the faithful, also hides the inclusivity of the whole world in it, as we saw in the question of performance space. The exclusivity is manifested during the liturgy by the removal of the catechumens from the church in the middle of the service. The Areopagite emphatically states ‘knowledge is not for everyone’ (Ἔστι γὰρ - - οὐδὲ πάντων - - ἡ γνῶσις),66 and even in this exclusivity not everyone perceives liturgy similarly. He adds that men should imitate angels in the way their hierarchies draw the lower classes towards the divinity: Christ ‘assimilates them [the higher heavenly powers], as much as they are able, to his own light’ (πρὸς τὸ οἰκεῖον αὐτὰς ἀφομοιοῖ κατὰ δύναμιν φῶς),67 and draws a parallel by noting on the role of the hierarch that ‘while the general crowd is satisfied to look at the divine symbols he [the hierarch], on the other hand, is continuously uplifted by the divine Spirit toward the most holy source of the sacramental rite and he does so in blessed and conceptual contemplations, in that purity which marks his life as it conforms to God’ (τῶν πολλῶν μὲν εἰς μόνα τὰ θεῖα σύμβολα παρακυψάντων, αὐτοῦ δὲ ἀεὶ τῷ θεαρχικῷ πνεύματι πρὸς τὰς ἁγίας τῶν τελουμένων ἀρχὰς ἐν μακαρίοις καὶ νοητοῖς θεάμασιν ἱεραρχικῶς ἐν καθαρότητι τῆς θεοειδοῦς ἕξεως ἀναγομένου).68 In the same spirit, Maximos divides the congregation according to his tripartite theory of spiritual ascent. The functions of the liturgical performance depend on the capability of the faithful to perceive it. In his comment on the Trishagion, he describes how the hymn is to signify for the faithful, the theological rivalry with the angels in faith; for the active ones, it symbolizes the splendor of life equal to the angels, so far as this is possible for men, and the persistence in the theological hymnology; for those who have knowledge, endless thoughts, hymns, and movements concerning the Godhead which are equal to angels, so far as humanly possible.

64 65 66 67 68

T. Cuneo, Ritualizing Faith (2016), 75 (see also 73-4). See ibid. 78. Corpus Dionysiacum (1991), 67 (Pseudo-Dionysius [1987], 198). Corpus Dionysiacum (1991), 64 (Pseudo-Dionysius [1987], 195). Corpus Dionysiacum (1991), 81 (Pseudo-Dionysius [1987], 210).

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- - τῶν μὲν πιστῶν τὴν πρὸς ἀγγέλους κατὰ τὴν πίστην θεολογικὴν ἅμιλλαν, τῶν δὲ πρακτικῶν τὴν ἰσάγγελον ὡς ἐφικτὸν ἀνθρώποις κατὰ τὸν βίον λαμπρότητα καὶ τὴν εὐτονίαν τῆς θεολογικῆς ὑμνολογίας, τῶν δὲ γνωστικῶν τὰς ἰσαγγέλους κατὰ τὸ δυνατὸν ἀνθρώποις περὶ θεότητος νοήσεις τὲ καὶ ὑμνήσεις καὶ ἀεικινησίας.69

What is typical for liturgy is that the performing clergy are not merely performers: they are also invited to transformation. If they wish to uplift their subordinates to the divine reality, they have to become images of the divine. The bishop is imago Christi; he deems himself unworthy for the service, as Christ in his humility did. But he is also the narrator of salvation history, both verbally and visually: ‘He offers Jesus Christ to our view’ (ὑπ΄ ὄψιν ἄγων Ἰησοῦν τὸν Χριστόν),70 the Areopagite says, through exposing the Gospel, the bread and the wine. This action discloses all the aspects of Christ’s incarnation in it. The hierarchy of the divine vision is also expressed through the successive order of receiving communion; first the hierarch, then the clergy, then the faithful. Conclusion Even though an exhaustive study of all liturgical commentaries remains a task for the future, we can still conclude after this short examination that the Byzantine liturgical commentaries offer a much more ‘dramatic’ explanation of the liturgy than some scholars have recently claimed. The key hurdle is that we understand these mimetic and dramatic aspects as the authors intended them to be understood: not as something pretentious, distanced (in the Aristotelian, dramatic sense), or unreal, but as something that draws the faithful of the liturgy towards an invisible world – not by ignoring what our senses experience and witness to, but precisely through what it is they experience, being able to provide spiritual dimensions to sensual things. Even though some criticize the concept of ‘time-traveling’ in liturgy, yet the commentaries suggest that the liturgy happens somewhere else: the priest ascends to the throne of God and then descends again to the faithful. This reclaiming of the narrativity and dramatic interpretation of the liturgy also has pastoral consequences for today, and it is something we that act as clergymen should also take into consideration. In a world full of pretentious entertainment, the participation in the true, divine drama is a possibility not to be wasted.

69 70

Mystagogia (2011), 64 (Maximus the Confessor [1985], 210). Corpus Dionysiacum (1991), 93 (Pseudo-Dionysius [1987], 221).

Logos prophorikos in Middle Byzantine Thought Vessela VALIAVITCHARSKA, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

ABSTRACT The division of logos into endiathetos and prophorikos, present in the thought of philosophers from Philo to John of Damascus, is important to the late antique and early Christian anthropology of language. It appears also in the middle Byzantine period as part of the wider intellectual vocabulary. However, in contrast with the predominantly Neoplatonic understanding of late antique philosophers, Byzantine thinkers no longer see a dichotomy between logos endiathetos, pure thought, and logos prophorikos, its fleshly shadow; rather, they offer a development, moving from the idea of logos prophorikos as ‘messenger of the thought’, to logos prophorikos as an active participant in the object of speech. Logos prophorikos receives attention also from the Byzantine teachers of rhetoric. Unlike their late antique counterparts, who adopt the sharp Neoplatonic dichotomy, rhetoricians John Siceliotes and John Doxapatres speak of both kinds of logos as a sort of rhetoric – but a distinct, purified form of rhetoric. Logos prophorikos, the enunciated, performed human logos, born by the movements of the reasoning faculty of the soul and perfected by art, is a material procession, a flowering of the energies of the soul and a mystērion, through which human beings participate in divine creation and in the divine life. This emphasis on the spiritual weight of the performed logos responds to a more general emphasis on logos prophorikos as a material activity – with implications for the performance of liturgical texts in Byzantium.

A conspicuous but little-studied feature of liturgical performance comes to mind when we think of the Byzantine liturgy: the extraordinary number of repetitions, whether they be short prayers and invocations, hymnic verses and refrains, or larger structures, such as entire litanies and doxologies. What, one might think, is the value of so many verbal reiterations? J.L. Austin’s speechact theory of verbal performance – with its tripartite division into locutionary act, that is, the act of uttering a meaningful string of sounds, illocutionary act, or utterances that express a directive or an actionable attitude, and perlocutionary acts, or rather, the effects of either explicitly or implicitly communicated intentions – could perhaps be of some use here, but is rather limited by the communal setting, the prescribed, repeated, yet changing text and music, and the sheer complexity of the act. How are we to think of the forty repetitions of ‘Lord, have mercy’? In a broader sense, is there a significance to the iterative performance of verbal acts? Perhaps in order to address this question, we ought

Studia Patristica CXXX, 371-384. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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to look, more generally, at the Byzantine understanding of the ‘ontology’ of spoken discourse. What is enunciated speech and what kind of relationship does it create between the speaker and the referent? Here I attempt to articulate an account of logos prophorikos and its implications for verbal performance as it appears in middle Byzantine rhetorical commentaries in a post-iconoclastic theological and intellectual context. The late antique philosophical distinction between logos endiathetos and logos prophorikos, for the most part, assumed a sharp division between mental discourse and enunciated speech, in which logos prophorikos is, more or less, an external sign from which to infer the quality of one’s soul. After Iconoclasm, the distinction, although retained, appears conceptually modified. Both kinds of logos are articulated as a sort of rhetoric – but a rhetoric of a distinct and purified form. The enunciated logos becomes both an icon of the soul, with all attendant nuances, and an activity of the soul that participates in the subject of conversation and, by applying language as it properly belongs, contributes toward a ‘more perfect vivification and fulfillment of the soul’. The implication is that the enunciated, performed logos contributes toward shaping the soul into the likeness of the subject of discussion. Discussions of the performative function of language, although not particularly detailed, appear in rhetorical treatises from late antiquity onward. In a commentary on the treatise On Stases by Hermogenes, the fourth-century philosopher and sophist Sopatros sets out to explain what logos is and what its constituent parts are: it is, he says, the unique sign of a human being, an invention of the gods yet a mark of humanity, a sign of the quality of a soul, according to which the soul’s activities (ἐνέργειαι) are brought forth. There are two kinds of logos: that which is in the mind (ἐνδιάθετος) and that which is enunciated (προφορικός). Sopatros will go on to clarify that mental logos is a ‘disposition of the human soul’, which is active also when we are silent or when we sleep, and distinguishes human beings from other creatures, making them rational. By contrast, the enunciated logos is subject to the twin arts of grammar and rhetoric; grammar imparts to it knowledge of rules, while rhetoric makes it beautiful and vigorous.1 The division into endiathetos and prophorikos, first attested in the writings of Chrysippus, is by no means restricted to Stoicism,2 but seems to have been 1 C. Walz, Rhetores graeci: ex codicibus Florentinis, Mediolanensibus, Monacensibus, Neapolitanis, Parisiensibus, Romanis, Venetis, Taurinensibus, et Vindobonensibus, vol. 5 (Stuttgart, 1833), 1-3. 2 Although the earliest reference is attested in Stoic writings (R. Volkmann, Die Rhetorik der Griechen und Römer, in systematischer Übersicht [Leipzig, 1885], 12), the distinction seems to have been produced in the context of a vigorous debate between Stoics and Platonists on the rationality of animals, and it may even be Platonic in origin (C. Chiesa, ‘Le problème du langage intérieur chez les Stoïciens’, Revue internationale de philosophie 178 [1991], 301-21, and C. Chiesa, ‘Le problème du langage intérieur dans la philosophie antique de Platon à Porphyre’,

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adopted as part of the common philosophical idiom of antiquity. Thinkers as diverse as Philo, Porphyry, Olympiodorus, Meletius of Antioch, Nemesius of Emesa, John Philoponus, and John of Damascus mention the same division, whether in relation to the place of speech in divine revelation, in offering an allegorical interpretation of Scripture, an account of the anthropology of language, or simply in detailing the various meanings of the word logos. Thanks to its appearance in Philo’s exegesis, the concept was also taken up by Hippolitus, Justin Martyr, and Tatian. Subsequently, its unqualified use in Trinitarian debates proved problematic and did not survive the opposition of Athanasius of Alexandria, until its literal application to the first two persons of the Trinity was condemned in the Synod of Sirmium (in 351 AD).3 Restricted from then on to the understanding of human language, this twofold distinction4 continued to live as part of the wider intellectual vocabulary. At the end of the ninth century, for example, outside of discussions of rhetoric or grammar, we find it in a letter written by the imperial envoy Leo Choerosphactes to the Bulgarian ruler Symeon I (ca. 895-96), in which Leo, under the guise of explaining to the Greek-educated Symeon the difference between the logos of the mind and the enunciated logos, implicitly accuses the Bulgarian of duplicity. The fifth-century commentary on the Phaedrus by Hermeias brings up the distinction between logos endiathetos and prophorikos in the context of discusing how Socrates sets out to cure young Phaedrus of his infatuation with the specious beauty of Lysias’ motivated, misleading speech. Hermeias draws a parallel between a doctor’s knowledge of the different medical qualities of food and Socrates’ understanding of the usefulness of a speech. Just as a doctor, he says, is able to distinguish between good and harmful food, so is Socrates able Histoire Épistémologie Langage 14.2 [1992], 15-30). The concept has received renewed attention in the last thirty years, with Adam Kamesar discussing its appearance and allegorical use in the D-scholia to the Iliad (‘The Logos Endiathetos and the Logos Prophorikos in Allegorical Interpretation: Philo and the D-Scholia to the Iliad’, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 44 [2004], 163-81), with Max Muhl (‘Der λόγος ἐνδιάθετος und προφορικός von der älteren Stoa bis zur Synode von Sirmium 351’, Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 8 [1962], 7-56) and Rui Duarte (‘Logos endiathetos e prophorikos na formação da cristologia patrística’, Philo of Alexandria in the Origins of Western Culture [Faculty of Letters of Lisbon. 24 March 2011], available on http:// lisboa.academia.edu/RuiDuarte, accessed 10 January, 2020) tracing its participation in theological debates during the first three centuries, and Claude Panaccio (Mental Language from Plato to William of Ockham [New York, 2017]) offering a history of logos endiathetos between Chrysippus and Aquinas. 3 R. Duarte, ‘Logos endiathetos e prophorikos’, https://www.academia.edu/3570726/Logos_ endiathetos_e_prophorikos_na_forma%C3%A7%C3%A3o_da_cristologia_patr%C3%ADstica, accessed 10 January, 2020. 4 Human logos receives a tripartite division in John of Damascus: the first is a natural product of the mind, the second, endiathetos, the third, prophorikos (τοῦ νοῦ φυσικόν ἐστι γέννημα ἐξ αὐτοῦ ἀεὶ φυσικῶς πηγαζόμενον, ὁ δεύτερος δὲ λέγεται ἐνδιάθετος, ὁ δὲ τρίτος προφορικός, Expositio fidei 13); see C. Panaccio, Mental Language (2017), 47-52. Nonetheless, it is the bipartite division that appears more frequently in late antique texts, especially rhetorical commentaries.

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to tell true speech from deceitful speech; the one leads the soul up, while the other one leads it down and astray. The best medicine against perversion of thought is sound judgment, says Hermeias. But in what way is it possible for the wise to impart their good judgment to those who are being deceived? One person’s thought (logos) is not able to be mixed with another’s because of the fleshly grossness which envelops human souls. This is why, he says, we have been given enunciated speech: it allows us to judge the quality of another’s discourse, and from that, the state of their soul.5 We know well, he says, that the rational principles (logoi) of all external things are hidden and that the divine images (ἀγάλματα) are only revealed in their true glory internally. Just as the created cosmos is the work of the gods and is a plaything (παίγνιόν ἐστι) in relation to things heavenly, divine, and noetic, so is the external and enunciated logos a plaything in relation to the internal, noetic logos.6 Hermeias seems to have in mind a kind of relationship in which the enunciated logos is a sort of shadow image of the inner logos, a sign of a soul’s quality and knowledge of the truth. It is a ‘plaything’ in the sense that it does not afford direct access to the truth, but is helpful in that it is available as an expression, and allows the wise an opportunity to infer some of the truth and weed out deception. Without a verbal articulation, it would be impossible to judge anyone’s opinions. Enunciated logos, in other words, is useful because it could indicate what the state of one’s soul is, and, although it is described as a ‘product’ of the soul, it is sharply differentiated from internal logos. Olympiodorus (a student of Hermeias’ son Ammonius) goes further to add that the enunciated logos is only logos by homonymy.7 It would be valuable for a philosopher, he says, to understand how spoken logos works, in order to acquire a sense of how the different technai use the word ‘logos’ to mean either word or phrase modification, as in grammar, or embellishment, as in rhetoric.8 As with Hermeias – and even more so – there appears to be a sharp division between internal logos and external expression. Internal logos is made up of the perceptions and opinions of the soul; while enunciated logos is subject to the arts of grammar and rhetoric, from which it receives order and embellishment.9 Ultimately, as Hermeias says, the external logos does not really matter, since 5 C. Lucarini and C. Moreschini, Hermias Alexandrinus: In Platonis Phaedrum Scholia, Bibliotheca Teubneriana (Berlin, 2012), 22-4, at Phaedr. 227c. At another place in the same scholium, Hermeias again says that enunciated speech proceeds through the mouth, a product of the soul as it were (γέννημα). 6 C. Lucarini and C. Moreschini, Hermias Alexandinus (2012), 254-78, at Phaedr. 254, 274c, and 278b. 7 A. Busse, Olympiodori prolegomena et in categorias commentarium (Berlin, 1902), 80. 8 A. Busse, Olympiodori prolegomena (1902), 87. 9 Similar views about logos prophorikos are expressed earlier by the second-century philosopher Albinus (Introductio ad Platonem 2.2), by Theon of Smyrna (De utilitate mathematicae 73), and even by some more rhetorically minded philosophers, such as Sopatros (C. Walz, Rhetores graeci, vol. 5 [1833], 1-2).

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it is merely a shadow of things as they truly are. One cannot help but relate this idea to Plotinus’ radical apophaticism, which denies any applicability of human language to the One – implying that enunciated logos is removed from the truth several times (Ennead 5.3.13) and is therefore something to overcome, an obstacle on the way to true reality.10 The period between the seventh and ninth centuries, marked by the intellectual and spiritual turmoil of the iconoclastic controversy, seems to have brought new developments in the undestanding of the relationship between mental speech and enunciated speech, developments that appear in a clearly articulated form in the rhetorical commentaries of the tenth and eleventh centuries. The remarks we find there about logos endiathetos and prophorikos are best understood in the context of the iconophile theology of the preceding two centuries. Rhetoric, the art of the well-ordered language, is associated with both logos endiathetos and logos prophorikos. For example, the Anonymous Commentary of the so-called P-Scholia to Hermogenes11 defines endiathetos as ‘the human thought according to which one considers or debates with oneself what to say or what to do (διάνοια ἀνθρώπου ἐν τῷ διαλογίζεσθαι, τί λέγειν ἢ πράττειν δεῖ)’.12 It is said to be a distinguishing mark of humanity in that, even if one loses the physical ability to speak or – like Pythagoras – labors for years in silence, one is no less human or less rational (logikos) than those who do possess that ability. Logos prophorikos, by contrast, is defined as ‘the entechnic 10 I do not mean to suggest that this radical separation into endiathetos and prophorikos is uniformly characteristic of late antique thought. C. Panaccio (Mental Language [2017], 28-100) has demonstrated much nuance in the development of the concept of endiathetos and has argued for the presence of a ‘linguistic’ idea, which appears in St John of Damascus, and is taken up also (surprisingly) by the scholastics and Aquinas in the west. The fourth-century bishop Nemesius (De natura hominis 14.71) defines logos endiathetos as τὸ κίνημα τῆς ψυχῆς τὸ ἐν τῷ διαλογιστικῷ γινόμενον ἄνευ τινὸς ἐκφωνήσεως, a ‘movement’ toward internal dialogue, and logos prophorikos as having its energy or activity in ‘the voice or modes of expression [of a person]’ (ἐν τῇ φωνῇ καὶ ἐν ταῖς διαλέκτοις τὴν ἐνέργειαν ἔχε); see also Panaccio’s fascinating analysis (Mental Language [2017], 50-1). For the most part, however, logos prophorikos has not been studied extensively, other than as a way of pointing out the material dimensions of logos. 11 So named on the basis of the two Paris manuscripts that contain the earliest extant copies, Grec 1983 and Grec 2977 of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, dated between the late tenth and eleventh centuries; see M. Patillon, Anonyme: Scolies au traité sur L’Invention du PseudoHermogène, Corpus rhetoricum III 2 (Paris, 2012); R. Duarte, Comentários ao tratado sobre os Estados de causa de Hermógenes de Tarso por autor anónimo (Lisboa, 2006), which I have not had an opportunity to consult; R. Duarte, ‘The Transmission of the Text of the P-Scholia to Hermogenes’ Περὶ στάσεων’, Revue d’histoire des textes, n.s. 5 (2010), 25-42. Patillon and Duarte offer an excellent overview of the transmission history; older scholarship includes H. Rabe, ‘Rhetoren-corpora’, Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 67 (1912), 321-62, and Hermogenis opera, Rhetores graeci II (Leipzig, 1913); S. Glöckner, ‘Quaestiones rhetoricae’, Breslauer philologische Abhandlungen 8.2 (1901), 1-115; and S. Glöckner, Über den Kommentar des Johannes Doxapatres zu den Staseis des Hermogenes, Wissenschaftliche Beilage zum Jahresbericht des Königlichen Gymnasium zu Bunzlau, Bd. 1 (Kirchhain, 1908) and Bd. 2 (Kirchhain, 1909). 12 Cf. Nemesius, De natura 14.71.

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articulation of the human thought in voice’; ‘entechnic’ here means practiced and artful expression.13 With this commentator, endiathetos logos is not restricted to inner thought, but is ‘the ability to consider or debate within oneself what to say or what to do’ – with the emphasis on the activity of the thought process.14 John Doxapatres in the eleventh century offers a similar discussion. In answer to the question which of the two types of logos, external or internal, qualify rhetoric as a logikē technē, Doxapatres says, ‘Both’: Ἀλλ’ ἵνα πρὸς τὸ ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἐπανέλθωμεν, τοσούτων τῶν σημαινομένων ὄντων τοῦ λόγου, ζητεῖται, ἀπὸ ποίου τούτων λογικὴ τέχνη παρωνόμασται ἡ ῥητορική, ἀπὸ τοῦ προφορικοῦ ἢ τοῦ ἐνδιαθέτου, ὅθεν καὶ ὁ ἄνθρωπος λέγεται λογικός· κατὰ γὰρ τὸν ἐνδιάθετον πάντες ἡμεῖς λεγόμεθα λογικοί, εἴ γε καὶ καθεύδοντες καὶ σιωπῶντες λογικοὶ λεγόμεθα, καὶ ὁ Πυθαγόρας δὲ λογικὸς ἐλέγετο τοσοῦτον χρόνον σιωπὴν ἀσκήσας. Φαμὲν οὖν, ὅτι ἑκατέρωθεν ἡ ῥητορικὴ λογικὴ τέχνη λέγεται, ἀπό τε τοῦ προφορικοῦ καὶ τοῦ ἐνδιαθέτου· ἀπὸ μὲν τοῦ ἐνδιαθέτου καθὸ κοσμεῖ αὐτὸν κατὰ τὴν εὕρεσιν τῶν ἐπιχειρημάτων καὶ τῶν νοημάτων, εἴ γε ὁ ἐνδιάθετος τὴν τούτων ἐκλήρωσεν εὕρεσιν, ἀπὸ δὲ τοῦ προφορικοῦ, καθὸ καὶ αὐτὸν κοσμεῖ χαριζομένη τὸ εὐφραδῶς καὶ εὐρύθμως λέγειν, εἴπερ καὶ αὐτὸς τὴν τῶν λέξεων συνθήκην καὶ εὐρυθμίαν ἐκλήρωσε· τὸν αὐτὸν δὲ τοῦτον λόγον κοσμεῖ καὶ ἡ γραμματικὴ τὸ ἄπταιστον αὐτῷ παρέχουσα, δι’ ἧς τοὺς βαρβαρισμοὺς καὶ σολοικισμοὺς ἐκφεύγομεν.15 But in order to go back and start from the beginning – since there are so many meanings of logos – the question is: from which one of these is rhetoric named a logikē technē, from the prophorikos or from the endiathetos, from which also a human being is named logikos? For it is according to the endiathetos that we are all called logikoi, even if we are in a state of sleep or silence, just like Pythagoras was still logikos while laboring for so long in silence. We affirm then that rhetoric is called logikos on account of both: of the endiathetos, inasmuch as it orders it with the invention of thoughts and epicheiremes, and inasumuch as their invention falls to the endiathetos; and of the prophorikos, inasmuch as it orders it with beautiful phrases and rhythms and thus makes rhetoric speak gracefully, and inasmuch as the composition of phrases and rhythms falls to the prophorikos. Grammar too puts logos in order, imparting to it flawlessness – which is why we avoid barbarisms and solecisms.

Like Anonymous, Doxapatres explains that the endiathetos logos gives human beings the name logikoi, even if we are in a state of sleep or silence. But rhetoric belongs to both: to the internal logos, ‘inasmuch as it orders it with the invention of thoughts and epicheiremes, whose invention falls to the endiathetos; and to the external logos, inasmuch as it adorns it with beautiful phrases and rhythms and thus makes rhetoric speak gracefully, as the composition of

13

H. Rabe, Prolegomenon sylloge, Bibliotheca Teubneriana (Leipzig, 1931), 184-5. Perhaps consistent with the tripartite division of logos of St John of Damascus (C. Panaccio, Mental Language [2017], 78-100). 15 H. Rabe, Prolegomenon sylloge (1931), 123. 14

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phrases and rhythms falls to the prophorikos’.16 Both logoi are, in a sense, a kind of activity. Like the anonymous commentary, Doxapatres affirms that the function and value of rhetoric is in its action: φαμὲν δή, ὅτι δι’ ἐκεῖνά ἐστιν ἡ ῥητορικὴ τὰ ὄντως θεῖα καὶ θαυμαστά, καὶ δι’ ὧν τὸν θεὸν αὐτὸν μιμεῖσθαι πεπλουτήκαμεν, φημὶ δὴ διὰ τὸ τῶν μὲν καλῶν προτρέπειν ἀντέχεσθαι, τῶν δὲ κακῶν ἀπέχεσθαι, ἔτι διὰ τὸ τοὺς μὲν φαύλους τιμωρεῖν, τοὺς δὲ ἀγαθοὺς στεφανοῦν, πρὸς ἐπὶ τούτοις καὶ διὰ τὸ τοὺς μὲν πονηροὺς ψόγων ἀξιοῦν, τοὺς δὲ χρηστοὺς ἐγκωμίων.17 We affirm that, on account of these things, rhetoric is truly divine and marvelous, and that through them we have been enriched to imitate God Himself: what I mean is the exhortation to hold fast to the virtues and turn away from the vices, and besides also to punish the wicked and crown the good, and moreover, to blame the depraved with invective and praise the virtuous with encomium.

Both logoi, according to Anonymous and Doxapatres, are a form of activity; with Doxapatres they have a clear ethical orientation. In a broader rhetorical context, the notion that logos is an activity of the soul is explicitly discussed in the late ninth to early tenth century by Nicetas David Paphlagon in his Encomium of Gregory of Nazianzus: καὶ γὰρ ὥσπερ ὁ νοῦς οἷά τις πηγὴ τοῦ ἐν ἡμῖν ἐνδιαθέτου χρηματίζων λόγου, ὁ αὐτὸς αἴτιος καὶ τοῦ προφορικοῦ καὶ εἰς τὴν αἴσθησιν φθάνοντος καθίσταται, ἀλλὰ τὸ ἐννόημα μὲν καθάπερ ἑαυτοῦ ζῶσαν εἰκόνα μυστικῶς ἀπογεννᾷ, εἰκόνα δὲ τοῦ νοήματος αὖθις ἔξω προβάλλεται τὸν λόγον, οὕτως ὁ νοῦς ὁ ἀνεννόητος καὶ πρῶτος – ὡς ἔστιν εἰκάσαι τὰ μέγιστα διὰ βραχέων – ὡς ἄλλον μὲν ἑαυτὸν τὸν ἔμφυτον τίκτει καὶ οὐσιώδη πρὸ τοῦ αἰῶνος λόγον, ὡς ἄλλον δὲ λόγον τὸ πνεῦμα πάλιν ἤτοι τὸ ῥῆμα τῆς αὑτοῦ προβαλλόμενος δυνάμεως ἐν αὐτῷ πᾶσαν τελεσιουργεῖ τὴν κτίσιν.18 Just as the nous is a sort of spring of the endiathetos logos in us, being itself at once the cause of the logos prophorikos and coming to rest in physical perception, yet begets the thought mystically, a living icon of itself as it were, and this icon of the thought is afterward sent forth as speech, likewise the nous, which is primary and beyond concept – for it is possible to conceptualize large things from small – naturally begets, on the one hand, the Logos before the ages of its own essence and, on the other, the Spirit, that is, the utterance of its ability to send it forth, in which all creation is perfected.

In this passage Nicetas compares the human logos to the divine Logos in the context of a discussion about the Trinity. Aside from the Trinitarian dimension of the comparison, what is interesting is that in elaborating on the division into endiathetos and prophorikos, Nicetas foregrounds the idea of movement. Nous 16

Ibid. 123. Ibid. 124-5. 18 J.J. Rizzo, The Encomium of Gregory Nazianzen by Nicetas the Paphlagonian, Subsidia Hagiographica 58 (Brussels, 1976), 31 = Laudatio in Gregorium Theologum 6.70-9. 17

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is the spring of mental logos, which produces thought and arrives at physical perception; thought, in its turn, produces utterance. Moreover, the utterance is described as an icon of an icon: nous begets thought as an icon of itself, which begets enunciated logos as an icon of mental logos. Enunciated logos – made harmonious and beautiful by the art of rhetoric – is compared to a moving icon also in the late tenth- to early eleventh-century commentary on Hermogenes’ treatise On Ideas by the rhetoric teacher John Siceliotes: ἀλλ’ ἐπειδὴ χρεία ψυχῆς ἀρεταῖς ἀστραπτούσης εἰς ἐναργεστέραν κίνησιν τῆς ζωοπλαστίας καὶ ζώωσιν, ἐμπνέει τῷ ὀργάνῳ καθάπερ τις θεὸς καὶ ταύτην, ὃς ἔπρεπεν εἶναι τοιούτων δημιουργός, τὴν εἰκόνα σῴζουσαν καὶ ὁμοίωσιν τῆς ἀρχετύπου προϋποστάσεως, οὐχ ὡς ἄν τις κατεσπουδασμένος ὑπόθοιτο τὰς μερικὰς ἰδέας, αἷς οἱ κατ’ αἴσθησιν λόγοι χαρακτηρίζονται, Λυσιακοί τινες ἢ Ἰσοκρατικοὶ καὶ ὅσοι καθ’ ἕκαστον, ἀλλὰ τὴν τούτων περιεκτικὴν καὶ συνεκτικὴν καὶ τοῦ παντὸς καθ’ ἑαυτὴν ἰδέαν καὶ φράσιν, καθ’ ἣν ἕκαστος τῶν ἐκκρίτων ψυχοῖ τὸν αὑτοῦ λόγον καὶ τῶν ὁμοιοειδῶν τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ χαρακτηριστικοῖς ὑπεξίσταται. ὥσπερ γὰρ ἡμῶν ἡ λογικὴ ψυχή τε καὶ νοερὰ κατὰ μὲν τὸν οὐσιώδη λόγον μία τίς ἐστι καὶ ἀδιάφορος, κατὰ δὲ τὰς τῶν καθ’ ἕκαστον γνώμας καὶ κράσεις διαπεφόρηται, οὕτω κἀνταῦθα· ταύτης γὰρ ὥσπερ οὐσίας τινὸς ὑποστάσεις αἱ νῦν ἰδέαι καλούμεναι διαμορφοῦσι τὸν τῶν ἀρετῶν λόγον ὡς πρὸς ψυχὴν σῴζουσαι μέρη μὲν ἔχουσαν τὰ ῥητορικὰ εἴδη δυνάμεις τε γνωστικὰς ἀντὶ μὲν νοὸς τὰς ἐννοίας ταῖς αὐτῆς παρέχουσαν ἀρεταῖς, ἀντὶ δὲ δόξης τὴν μέθοδον παραδειγματικοῖς αἰτίοις ἀλλ’ οὐκ εἰδικοῖς ἢ ποιητικοῖς ἢ τελικοῖς καὶ ὡς τὸ γεγραμμένον ζῷον τοῦ ὄντος, ἀντὶ φαντασίας τὰς συνθήκας, σχήματα δὲ καὶ ῥυθμοὺς ἀντ’ αἰσθήσεως·19 But since a soul shining with virtues need realize an ever more vivid movement of creation and vivification, it breathes forth, like a god to whom it befits to be a creator of such things, through the organ of the mouth, also rhetoric, which preserves the icon and likeness of the underlying hypostasis of the archetype; not as if someone were to put together in a belabored way the particular types of style which characterize discourse, belonging, ostensibly, to Lysias or Isocrates, or any other particular writer, but as someone would ensoul and make alive his own speech by selecting the most appropriate and inclusive of each form and expression, and bring out those characteristics most like him. For just as our rational and intelligent soul is one and undifferentiated according to its essential ‘formula’, but is differentiated according to the judgments and temperaments of each individual soul, so it is here as well. As if hypostases of a single nature, here the so-called ‘forms’ give different shapes to the discourse in accordance with the virtues, retaining, as in relation to the soul – which has parts – the rhetorical genres as its discerning abilities; supplying, in the place of meaning, the thoughts for the soul’s virtues; in the place of belief, the rhetorical method for inductive reasoning from causes (yet not in the sense of formal or efficient or final cause); and, as a painted animal is to a living one, in the place of image, word arrangements; and figures and rhythms in the place of sensation.20 19

H. Rabe, Prolegomenon sylloge (1931), 399. With much gratitude to Carole Monica Burnette for her generous help with the translation of this passage. 20

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The passage deploys theological terminology to discuss the relationship between internal thought and external, entechnic speech. The parallel between iconophile discourse on images and Siceliotes’ comparison of speech to a painted animal and its prototype is clear. External speech is like an icon of the soul; the relationship between one’s speech and one’s soul is like the relationship between the painting of an animal and its prototype. There is also a strong allusion to the image of God (‘the soul breathes forth speech, like a god, to whom it befits to be a creator of such things’). Moreover, in the course of creating speech, the soul finds its fulfillment, that is, it realizes ‘an ever more vivid movement of creation and vivification’. The Hermogenic ideas or types of style serve as properties (in Porphyry’s terminology), which individuate and differentiate in concrete hypostases the logos of a certain nature as well as give it material flesh – not in terms of the Aristotelian formal, or efficient, or final cause – but as an icon is related to its prototype. Speech – and, by extension, rhetoric – is, on the one hand, an icon of the thought which produces it, and on the other, a material flowering and fulfillment. The passage is intentionally equivocal, or rather, intentionally polysemic. It implies at least three different movements: the movement of the soul toward a more perfect vivification, the movement of a living animal, the movement of a speech though time. In another passage in the same commentary, Siceliotes discusses the rhythm of a speech by comparing its periods, clauses, and phrases to the limbs of a living animal. Just as a well-shaped body of an animal has members of proportionate length, he says, so will a harmonious composition have proportionate members. The beauty of the body’s movement hangs on the shape, length, and motion of its members.21 Again, there are the multiple references to icon and prototype or archetype: speech is an icon of the soul, it relates to the soul as a painted eikōn of an animal relates to the animal. Enunciated speech is a moving icon of sorts. The strong parallel between image/icon and speech/language has its roots in the intellectual momentum of Iconoclasm, in addition to theological developments from the preceding century. Strictly speaking, the debates focused on the nature, function, and use of icons in worship; however, they also carried certain implications about the nature and function of language as a symbolic activity. In brief, the iconoclasts condemned images for their failure to truly represent the divine nature of the Son of God by depicting His human nature only. Moreover, they said, the earthly medium of paint and wood, with its material and human artifice which belongs to the ‘things below’, is only a distraction from appropriate contemplation of the transcendent God. Their position privileged language as the only appropriate medium of divine revelation and knowledge. In so far as visual representation is concerned, they argued that the cross is the only acceptable one – because it is not a representation but a symbol of the 21

C. Walz, Rhetores graeci, vol. 6 (1833), 118 and 139.

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divine incarnation, just like the language of Scripture.22 The iconophiles responded by drawing a strong functional parallel between words and images. Just as words point to divine realities –without circumscribing or ‘representing’ them – so images indicate their prototype by means of a symbolic relationship, without circumscribing or ‘representing’ them. In his Life of Euthymius of Sardis, Patriarch Methodius points out the symbolic nature of the language of Genesis. How is it, he asks, that God ‘spoke’ creation into being? In what sense did He speak? Did any sound literally leave His ‘lips’ to strike the air and travel through it before air even was? Moreover, when He made man according to His own image and likeness, did He make him rational but bodiless?23 The point Methodius is making is that words do not ‘represent’ – in the sense of creating a complete likeness to the referent or ‘standing in’ for the referent – but indicate and manifest meanings symbolically; the same is true for images. That is why it is possible for Scripture to say that visible man was made in the image of the invisible God. Therefore, Methodius concludes Εἰκὼν γὰρ ὁ λόγος, καὶ λόγος ἡ εἰκὼν καὶ ἔστιν καὶ διαδέδεικται διεξοδικωτέραις ταῖς ὑφηγήσεσιν· ἐξ οὗ καὶ ἡ γραφομένη εἰκὼν τῷ διὰ στόματος λόγῳ ἴση πέφυκεν. Εἰ μὲν γὰρ ἁγίων καὶ ἀληθείας, προσκυνητὴ ὡς τὰ δικαιοσύνης ῥήματα, εἰ δὲ ψεύδους καὶ αἰσχρότητος, ἀναξία καὶ καθορᾶσθαι καὶ στυγητὴ διὰ τὸ βλαπτικὸν τῆς μιμήσεως.24 Logos is image and image is logos, which has been proven by means of detailed interpretations; from this it follows that the painted icon (lit., written) is equal to the logos enunciated with the lips. For if the icon is an image of holy and true things, it ought to be venerated as the words of righteousness, but if it is an image of lies and shame, it is unworthy even to be looked upon and is to be despised on account of the harm of its imitation.

Here Methodius asserts the equality of words and images: the painted icon is an image of its prototype just as much as the spoken word is an icon/image of its prototype. This prototype can be the person who speaks the words or the object of speaking. In another passage Methodius again says that ‘logos is an image of the thought, inasmuch as it shows forth what is being thought; likewise, the icon is a word of the prototype, proclaiming its characteristics by means of a drawing’.25 In the first case, logos is the image of the one who 22 C. Barber, Figure and Likeness: On the Limits of Representation in Byzantine Iconoclasm (Princeton, 2002), 83-106. 23 Methodius, Vita Euthymii Sardiani, BHG 2145, 33 = J. Gouillard, ‘La vie d’Euthyme de Sardes. Une œuvre du patriarche Méthode’, Travaux et mémoires 10 (1987), 1-101. 24 Methodius, Vita Euthymii Sardiani, BHG 2145, 35. 25 ὡς γὰρ ὁ λόγος εἰκὼν τοῦ νοήματος – τὰ γὰρ ἐννοηθέντα ὑποφαίνει καὶ διαδείκνυσιν – οὕτως ἡ εἰκὼν λόγος τοῦ πρωτοτύπου καθίσταται διὰ γραφῆς βοῶσα τοῦ ἀρχετύπου τὰ ἰδιώματα. Οὐκοῦν λόγος ἡ εἰκών, καὶ λογικοὶ οἱ εἰκάζοντες, ὡς ἄλογοι ἐξ ἀναγκαίου, κἂν εἰ μὴ βούλοιντο, καί εἰσιν καὶ καλοῖντο οἱ ἀνεικόνιστοι. Ὅτι μὲν γὰρ εἰκὼν ὁ λόγος καὶ τὸ ἔμπαλιν λόγος ἡ εἰκών, ἐκ τῆς γραφῆς πεισθεῖεν οἱ ἀπειθέστατοι οἱ τῇ γραφῇ προσβλέπειν μὴ

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speaks, in the second case – of the object spoken of, in this case, the divine realities of Scripture. We see a similar interchange as in Siceliotes’ passage above. Methodius’s predecessor the Patriarch Nicephorus makes a similar point: images are to be regarded as pointing to ‘paradigms and archetypes’ – not in the sense of representing or reflecting an essence, but in the sense of indicating by means of symbols. Images and words, he says, stand in a mutually beneficial relationship and even inform and animate each other: ἐπισφραγιζέτω δὲ τὸν λόγον πάλιν ὁ μέγας Βασίλειος ἐν τῷ εἰς τοὺς ἁγίους Τεσσαράκοντα μάρτυρας ἐκγωμίῳ τοιάδε διεξιών· Ἐπεὶ καὶ πολέμων ἀνδραγαθήματα καὶ λογογράφοι πολλάκις καὶ ζωγράφοι διασημαίνουσιν, οἱ μὲν τῷ λόγῳ κοσμοῦντες, οἱ δὲ τοῖς πίναξιν ἐγχαράττοντες, καὶ πολλοὺς διήγειραν εἰς ἀνδρείαν ἑκάτεροι· ἃ γὰρ ὁ λόγος τῆς ἱστορίας ὑπέγραψεν, ταῦτα γραφὴ σιωπῶσα διὰ μιμήσεως δείκνυσιν, πρόδηλον δὲ ὡς τῆς αὐτῆς ἐφ’ ἑκατέρων ἱσταμένης ὑποθέσεως καὶ τῷ αὐτῷ κοινωνούσης λόγῳ. […] πῶς δὲ ἀνεύθυνος τοῦ τοιούτου ἐγκλήματος αὐτὸς ὁ μέγας κατασταθήσεται Βασίλειος ἐπί τισι ποτὲ μάρτυσιν τὰ ὅμοια δρῶν καὶ ὡς ἐξ εἰκόνων οἷα παραδειγμάτων τινῶν καὶ ἀρχετύπων ἐπὶ τοὺς λόγους μετάγων τὸν λόγον καὶ ταύτῃ ἐναργεστέρους καὶ οἷον ἐμψύχους ἐργαζόμενος εἰκόνας, ὥσπερ ἐν τῷ εἰς τοὺς ἁγίους Τεσσαράκοντα μάρτυρας ἐγκωμίῳ διέξεισιν ὡς ἐν γραφῇ λέγων τὰς τούτων ἀριστείας προδεικνύειν;26 Let also Basil the Great confirm this argument in his encomium on the Forty Holy Martyrs, where he says the following things. Since both speech-writers and painters frequently depict bravery in war, adorning it in words or committing it to canvas, they both have aroused many to bravery. What the logos of historians describes, painting reveals through imitation, even if it is silent, as clearly as if the subject itself is placed upon each and partakes by means of the same logos. […] How is the great Basil himself to be held innocent of this charge, since he accomplishes similar things by means of some such witness, and from the icons, as from paradigms and archetypes how he moves his discourse toward words? And by means of it how he makes the icons more vivid and as if living, as he did in the encomium to the Forty Holy Martyrs, saying that their virtues are shown forth as if in writing?

Nicephorus’ point is that the image of the Forty Holy Martyrs serves not as a ‘stand-in’ but as a point of departure. It inspires Basil the Great to lend a voice, figuratively speaking, to the martyrs and to make their icon ‘more vivid and as if living’, and in that sense the image animates the spoken words.27 But μελετήσαντες πώποτε καὶ ὅποι γράφει περὶ εἰκόνος ἐπαποροῦντες ἡμᾶς, ὥσπερ οἴονται. (BHG 2145, 32). 26 J. Featherstone, Nicephori Patriarchae Constantinopolitani refutatio et eversio definitionis Synodalis Anni 815, CChr.SG 33 (Turnhout, 1997), 108. 27 Similar positions about the analogous – but also mutually complementary – function of words and images are expressed also by Germanus of Constantinople (Epistle 1, PG 98, 152C; Epistle 2, PG 98, 160B), John of Damascus (PG 94, 1339D), Nicephorus (Antirrh. III, PG 100, 380C), and Photius (Homily 17, 170-1, ed. Laourdas). On the concept of ‘visual Scripture’ in Germanus, see S.V. Zaplatnikov, ‘Kontsentsiia zritel’nogo Pisaniia v tridakh Germana I konstantinopol’skogo’,

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more importantly, image and words both indicate and even partake of the same subject. In another treatise Nicephorus argues that they belong to the category of relative concepts (pros ti): words are always about something and images are always images of something or someone; they cannot be conceived of separately, but only together with the entity they depict or refer to: οὐκ ἄκαιρον δὲ οἶμαι ἐν τῷ παρόντι, καὶ τοῦτο προσθεῖναι τῷ λογῷ, ὅτι ἡ εἰκὼν σχέσιν ἔχει πρὸς τὸ ἀρχέτυπον, καὶ αἰτίου ἐστὶν αἰτιατόν· ἀνάγκη οὖν διὰ τοῦτο καὶ τῶν πρός τι εἶναι τε ταύτην καὶ λέγεσθαι· τὰ δὲ πρός τι, αὐτά ἅπερ ἐστίν, ἑτέρων εἶναι λέγεται, καὶ ἀντιστρέφει τῇ σχέσει πρὸς ἄλληλα· ὥσπερ ὁ πατήρ υἱοῦ πατήρ, καὶ ἔμπαλιν ὁ υἱὸς πατρὸς λέγεται υἱός, ὡσαύτως καὶ φίλος φίλου, καὶ δεξιὸς ἀριστεροῦ, καὶ ἔμπαλιν ἀριστερὸς δεξίου· ὁμοίως καὶ δεσπότης δοῦλου δεσπότης, καὶ ἔμπαλιν, καὶ εἴ τι τούτοις προσόμοιον· οὕτως οὖν καὶ ἀρχέτυπον, εἰκόνος ἀρχέτυπον· καὶ εἰκών, ἀρχετύπου εἰκών·καὶ οὐκ ἄν τις ἄσχετον εἰκόνα τοῦ τινος είκόνα φαίη·28 It would not be inappropriate here to add this to the discourse: that the image/icon has the same relation to the prototype as the effect to the cause. It is necessary, therefore, that the image is considered one of the relatives and spoken of as such. Relative concepts such as these are said to be relative to each other and reciprocal to each other in terms of their relation. So too the father is father of a son, and, again, the son is said to be the son of his father; the friend requires a friend, and the right side a left side and vice versa; the master is a master of a slave, and similarly with suchlike concepts. Likewise, the archetype is an archetype of an image, and the image is an image of an archetype. And no image unrelated to someone can be called an image.

This kind of reasoning is not original to iconophile thought, but has its precedent in the thought of Maximus the Confessor, for whom all concepts are relational. A thought is a natural synthesis of the one who thinks it and the object of thinking, and is, therefore, an ‘intermediary relationship of extremes’.29 And by virtue of that relation, both concepts and symbols not only indicate but also participate in the original, as Theodore the Studite argues: Οὕτω καὶ ἐν εἰκόνι εἶναι τὴν θεότητα εἰπών τις οὐκ ἂν ἁμάρτῃ τοῦ δέοντος· ἐπεὶ καὶ ἐπὶ τύπου σταυροῦ τῶν τε ἄλλων θείων ἀναθημάτων, ἀλλ’ οὐ φυσικῇ ἑνώσει· οὐ γὰρ σὰρξ ἡ θεωθεῖσα· σχετικῇ δὲ μεταλήψει. ὅτι χάριτι καὶ τιμῇ τὰ μετέχοντα. (Theodore the Studite, Sermones adversus iconoclastas (ed. Dalkos 2006, 1.12)

Vestnik Pravoslavnogo Sviato-Tikhonovskogo gumanitarnogo universiteta. Seriia I. Bogoslovie, filosofiia, 42.4 (2012), 97-110. 28 Nicephorus, Antirrh. I.30 (PG 100, 277C-D). This passage appears also in Christophe Erismann (‘Venerating Likeness: Byzantine Iconophile Thinkers in Aristotelian Relatives and Their Simultaneity’, British Journal of the History of Philosophy 24.3 [2016], 405-25), who has discussed the question of the simultaneity of relatives in iconophile thought. On Nicephorus’ understanding of the image as a symbol in more general terms, see P. Alexander, Patriarch Nicephorus I: Ecclesiastical Policy and Image Worship in the Byzantine Empire (Oxford, 1958), 244. 29 J.D. Wood, ‘Both Mere Man and Naked God: The Incarnational Logic of Apophasis in St. Maximus the Confessor’, in S. Mitralexis, G. Steiris, M. Podbielski and S. Lalla (eds), Maximus the Confessor as a European Philosopher (Eugene, OR, 2017), 110-30, 121.

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If anyone then will say that the divinity is present in the icon, he will not deviate from the truth; indeed, it is also present in the representation of the cross and in all other divine implements; yet not by means of a natural union – indeed, they are not the flesh that is deified – but by virtue of a relational participation, where the participation happens in terms of grace and honor.30

The ‘union’ between a word or an image and its relative is not ‘natural’, that is, physical, yet their relationship is much more than that of a free-floating signifier to its referent. It is, in fact, not the relationship of a signifier to a concept, but of a symbol to a real entity (both of which somehow animate each other). In this respect, the honor accorded to an image truly transfers to its prototype – in a way unexpectedly and startlingly real. In the context of the strong parallel between images and words, the implications for language – as an activity involving symbols – are clear. Performed discourse somehow participates in its referent. Thinking back to Siceliotes’ comparison of a speech to an icon and a painted animal, one could see how his richly layered language works. Performed discourse, the material deployment of language, is considered nearly divine (‘the soul breathes forth speech, like a god, to whom it befits to be a creator of such things’). In the course of creating speech, the soul finds its fulfillment, that is, it realizes ‘an ever more vivid movement of creation and vivification’. Siceliotes places an equal emphasis on movement and activity – articulated in terms of creation – as appears in the Anonymous Commentary and in Doxapatres. As to the Hermogenic forms, they serve as the properties that individuate and differentiate in concrete hypostases the formula of a certain nature as well as give it material flesh – not in terms of the Aristotelian formal, or efficient, or final cause – but as an icon is related to its prototype. (Material cause, omitted from Siceliotes’ list, may be implied.) The context and the logic are that of the Incarnation, a key concern for the iconophiles. Enunciated logos is, on the one hand, an icon of the soul which produces it, and on the other, its material flowering and fulfillment. At the same time, it acts as an intermediary, uniting the thought with the object of speaking. Yet logos prophorikos is a flowering and a fulfillment of the energies of the soul only inasmuch as it speaks the things of God or ‘imitates God Himself’, as Doxapatres puts it, by exhortation to hold fast to the virtues and turn away from the vices. In other words, language participates in the life of its referent only when the speaker applies words as they ought to be applied, that is, as 30 Translation T. Cattoi, Theodore the Studite: Writings on Iconoclasm (Mahwah, NJ, 2015), 56. See also C. Erismann, ‘Venerating Likeness’ (2016), 416-22, as well as Torstein Tollefsen on relation in Theodore the Studite (St. Theodore the Studite’s Defense of the Icons: Theology and Philosophy in Ninth Century Byzantium [Oxford, 2018], 98-125): Theodore suggests that either a beholder is brought toward the prototype of the image or that the image itself is brought to the prototype, that is, the image offers or raises the beholder to Christ by virtue of its likeness or that the image is somehow carried towards Him. An icon performs both an epistemological and an ontological function (ibid. 116).

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they properly belong – which creates a distinctly different type of discourse, purified, perfected, flowering with the material affordances of figures and sounds. Both Siceliotes and Doxapatres identify ‘rhetoric’ with this type of discourse. Doxapatres does not even consider what happens when a rhetor engages in lies and deception. In commenting on Plato’s dialogue Gorgias, where Plato criticizes rhetoric by comparing it to cosmetics and cookery, Doxapatres says that Plato conflates rhetoric with sycophancy and lying.31 He simply denies that deceptive rhetoric is actually rhetoric. What is more, Siceliotes will ambiguously refer to rhetoric, the enunciated and performed speech that partakes of the virtues, as εὐλογία, a blessing, an enfleshed thought that partakes of its object and unites the noetic with the material.32 Siceliotes and Doxapatres will even take the radical step of calling it a μυστήριον, mystery or sacrament – not in order to confuse it with the actual sacraments, but to underscore the gravity of languaging activity, if I can put it this way, and to emphasize its role in uniting the spiritual with the actual material medium of enunciation. The presence of these ideas in rhetorical commentaries – even in teaching material meant to introduce the subject to teenage students – indicates that the iconophile attitude toward symbolic activity in general and language in particular was by no means restricted to theological discourse, but lived as part of the wider intellectual life. What it implies for the understanding of the performativity of speech is clear: its true role is to magnificently ‘describe’ the Divine and its rational order – but not in the sense of circumscribing or representing an essence, nor in the restricted sense of a ‘speech-act’, an utterance that either implies an actionable attitude or commits the speaker to a referenced action, as in Austin, but in a way that is ‘symbolically mimetic’, as Fr. Damaskinos Olkinuora points out in his essay for this cluster. The ultimate goal of human language would be to apply those contingent, material, human symbols that point to the divine logoi as they properly belong, or ‘to speak the Divine’, so to say. In that sense, the liturgy presents an expression of the best and most fitting application of language – an act of communion with God and fellow human beings, in which the Divine is both spoken and partaken of, in a perfect flowering and fulfillment of a human soul.

31 32

H. Rabe, Prolegomenon sylloge (1931), 121. Ibid. 399.

Liturgical Dialogues: Clergy and Laity Concelebrating. An Analysis of the Christian Liturgy through Aristotle’s Poetics Andreas ANDREOPOULOS, University of Winchester, Winchester, UK

ABSTRACT The formative influence of Greek and Roman drama on the development of the Christian liturgical practices has been explored to some extent, although there are several aspects of this relationship that can still be illuminated. Ancient Greek tragedy and the Christian Eucharistic service are considered here as distinct, yet similar expressions of the primordial mystery play. In order to illustrate the similarity between tragedy and Liturgy, the Eucharistic service is analyzed here through the Poetics of Aristotle, more specifically his definition and analysis of the tragedy.

Although in the 20th century we have seen a surge of interest in liturgical studies, both within a Western and an Eastern context (a list that would include people such as Dom Gregory Dix, Paul Bradshaw, Bryan Spinks, Eamon Duffy, Robert Taft, Alexander Schmemann and Paul Meyendorff among many other scholars), there is relatively little that has touched on the reception and the formation of the liturgy from a dramatic point of view. The bulk of liturgical analyses has largely concentrated on texts, with little use for the understanding of the Liturgy as an event that incorporates movement, recitation, music, and what is generally implied by ‘smells and bells’. The main reason for the present state of research is probably the pre-eminence of the Biblical text as the privileged post-Reformation area of theological thought in Western Christianity. Without needing to touch on the specifically Western question of Bible vs Magisterium (the ultimate authority of Scripture, as opposed to the ultimate authority of the clergy), we may simply identify here a methodological problem that has to do with the reception of the Liturgy and the Bible. It is arguable, at least from the vantage point of a liturgically rich tradition such as the Orthodox, that, in addition to the contributions of the several schools of Biblical interpretation that focus on the text, its historical and cultural context, and even the theological meaning one may expect to find between the lines, it is necessary to also consider the liturgical context in which the Biblical text was formulated, crystallizing the oral narratives of the ‘Jesus story’ in the early Christian communities, so that it could serve these early communities in their liturgical gatherings: the Bible was not written so that

Studia Patristica CXXX, 385-401. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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people could take it home and study it individually at the comfort of their own study at home, but so that a congregation of faithful would hear it, within a setting of common prayer and worship: to ignore this is a methodological error tantamount to reading the text of Romeo and Juliet and ignoring that it is a play instead of a novel or a philosophical treatise, meant to be acted in a theatre, in front of an audience.1 This becomes even clearer when we discuss the formation, the development and the reception of Liturgy. To extend the previously mentioned metaphor on Romeo and Juliet, we would not dare try to understand that play only based on its text, without a reference to the space for which it was written or where it may be performed, the requirements for the actors, the direction, the style of the delivery of the lines, or the effect that this play had on its audience at the end of the 16th century when it premiered, or the effect it may intend to have through a modern reinterpretation for a modern audience. The Divine Liturgy, likewise, has a dramatic structure, and for this reason it needs to be considered within its wider performative context, historically and theologically. In addition, while the Jewish background of Christian liturgical practices is generally understood,2 even at the level of the ritual play of Moses – here we need to acknowledge the work of Richard Courtney who looked into the dramatic background of the ancient Jewish tradition as it is reflected in the several redactions of the Old Testament3 – perhaps because of the negative attitude of early Christian Fathers towards theatre, the connection between Christianity and ancient Greek drama had been discouraged from the beginning – here we need to acknowledge the work of Christina Schnusenberg who explored the formative relationship of the liturgy and the Roman theatre,4 and more recently, the work of Andrew Walker White, which examines ancient liturgical space in terms of its dramatic meaning and context5 – although there is some literature on the influence of liturgical plays and Christian rites in the emergence of modern theatre.6 Of course, the Fathers had in mind mostly the theatre of 1 Cf. Andreas Andreopoulos, ‘The Gospel as an Image of the Kingdom: A Eucharistic Reading of the Bible in the Orthodox Tradition’, in Angus Paddison (ed.), Theologians on Scripture (London, 2016), 7-22. 2 There is a great number of publications that develop this approach, but perhaps a turn towards this direction in liturgical studies may be seen with Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (London, 1945). Dix made a connection between Christian Eucharistic practices and practices at a Jewish ritual meal, moving away from an analysis of the Biblical text alone. 3 Richard Courtney, The Birth of God: The Moses Play and Monotheism in Ancient Israel (Frankfurt a.M. a.o., 1997). 4 Christina Catharina Schnusenberg, The Relationship Between the Church and the Theatre (Chicago, 1988), and The Mythological Traditions of Liturgical Drama: The Eucharist As Theater (New York, 2010). 5 Andrew Walker White, Performing Orthodox Ritual in Byzantium (Cambridge, 2015). 6 Cf. O.B. Hardison, Christian Rite and Christian Drama in the Middle Ages: Essays in the Origin and Early History of Modern Drama (Baltimore, 1965).

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their day. When Fathers such as Tertullian, Gregory of Nazianzos, Ambrose of Milan, Augustine, Cyril of Jerusalem7 or especially John Chrysostom8 denounced theatre as a demonic spectacle that excited sinful passions, they referred to the popular Roman theatre of their time, and not to classical drama. This is evident in the critique of John Chrysostom, as while he voiced one of the strongest oppositions against attending the theatrical spectacles of his day, at the same time he referred to the Christian liturgy as an ‘uncreated and spiritual theatre’,9 suggesting that at the same time he was strongly opposed to the Roman spectacle, he was still recognizing the dramatic quality of Christian liturgy. Therefore, while it may be useful to consider the development of Christian liturgy in the context of the wider ritual dramatic culture in the Roman Empire, which is the central area of the work of Christina Schnusenberg, this exploration will try to focus on the deeper level of dramatic continuity between ancient Greek drama and the Christian Liturgy, and explore a conceptual and structural formative influence between them, rather than a practical one. It will try to explore just how far we can take the relationship between liturgy and drama, and it will try to approach the Divine Liturgy using some of the terms and expectations of a dramatic structure, against the context of the Aristotelian definition of the tragedy. It has to be noted that while this connection may be drawn for all Christian liturgy, since it is rooted in the same tradition that is informed by Eastern Mediterranean ritual practices, as well as by Roman, and especially Greek drama, for the intent of this exploration, the Eastern form of liturgical Eucharistic service will be used. Following perhaps the inner dimension of the liturgy as the ‘uncreated, spiritual theatre’, in his book The Sacred in Life and Art, Philip Sherrard writes: The liturgy is similar to a mystery play or an ancient Greek drama which leads the spectator stage by stage and act by act towards its climax. In this case the climax is represented by the central Christian mystery, the sacrament of the Eucharist, in which the worshipper is also asked to participate. The liturgy then, is designed to lead the worshipper towards this participation in the sacrament. The various stages and acts of the liturgy, the various liturgical forms, are means to this end. They act as a preparation for the approach to the central mystery. They prepare the psychological ground, so that the worshipper will be in the right frame of mind when the climax of the liturgy is reached.10

7

Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Orations 19:6. John Chrysostom, Against the Games and the Theatres, PG 56, 263-70. Also cf. Blake Leyerle, Theatrical Shows and Ascetic Lives: John Chrysostom’s Attack on Spiritual Marriage (Berkeley, 2001), especially chapter 3, ‘John Chrysostom’s View of the Theater’, 42-74. 9 ‘Το θέατρον το ἀπλαστον, το πνευματικόν’, John Chrysostom, PG 56, 264. 10 Philip Sherrard, The Sacred in Life and Art (Limni, 2007), 73. 8

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The ‘mystery play’ that Sherrard mentions here, gives us part of the conceptual background of the Christian liturgical life. While we can identify several strands that shaped the Christian liturgy, which originate in the Jewish tradition, such as the Thanksgiving, or the use of the Psalms, and while, as mentioned above, it is possible to explore the idea of the religious narrative play in the Jewish tradition, Sherrard has something else in mind here. He talks directly about classical Greek drama, but the idea of the sacrament as a ‘mystery play’ is even more ancient, more archetypal. In the ancient Greek tradition, μυστήριον has an unequivocally ritual dimension, through its connection with μύστης and μυέω, and it points to an initiation to a knowledge that is common to all (at least in the case of the Athenians and the rites of Eleusina), yet it consists of things that cannot be expressed in words, that it is illegal to talk or write about them and to commit them to words – it is not accidental that in understanding τὰ μυστήρια τῆς Εκκλησίας, the sacraments, this description evokes at the same time the ancient ritual past, as well as the experience of St Paul in the ‘third heaven’ (2Cor. 12). But the relationship between drama, liturgy and the mystery play suggests that we may think of the ritual mystery play as the common ancestor of both liturgy and drama. Nevertheless, we do not have a lot of information about the performative aspects of the early liturgy. Music or movement notation is a relatively recent concept, but even if this were not the case, notation on its own would not be very reliable, as there is much that is not captured by it. In the age of mechanical reproduction, we have heard recordings of the same musical piece by different ensembles who play the same notes, and yet may arrive at very different interpretations. At any rate, it is sufficient to note that music and movement, seen in a precise and strictly ritual way, are constituent elements of both the ancient drama and the Christian liturgy. The scenic arrangements of drama and liturgy are remarkably similar, with a broadly tripartite separation of the space. There is much to suggest the concept of the church space as an extension of the Temple of Solomon, but since the Temple was a conceptual rather than experiential or functional influence on early Christian communities, it is not too convincing to think of it as the only source of inspiration for the buildings that housed Christian worship. To begin with, it seems plausible to see a correspondence between the arrangement of theatrical space into audience-orchestra-skene and the church space arrangement of narthex-nave-altar, something that probably made sense in the seventh century, in the way Maximos the Confessor in his Mystagogy describes the church building and its symbolism, when the narthex was still used liturgically. Since this is not the case anymore, it is more accurate to compare the space of audience-orchestra-skene with the church space of nave-soleas-altar, since most of the dialogue between the priest and the people takes place in the soleas, between the Holy Doors and the cantors. Nevertheless, the emergence of the high iconostasis has, despite the best theological intentions and arguments,

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separated rather than united the nave and the altar in practice,11 and has therefore changed the space dynamics since early Christianity. Even so, in our comparison between the ancient skene (literally the building behind the orchestra and the proskenion, where the action took place) and the altar, it is interesting to consider the similarity of two spaces that are not open to the gaze of the people. Whereas the altar is the place where the most meaningful liturgical acts take place, the skene kept the most important or horrific acts from the eyes of the audience – we never see gruesome murders or suicides in the ancient drama, as such acts are taking place behind the proskenion. Whether too holy for the eyes of the laity, or too gruesome for the eyes of the audience, the skene/altar controls what may be visually accessible to the people. The iconostasis itself, bears some similarity to the proskenion: in both of them there is a central gate or entrance, flanked by two smaller ones, each one of them with its distinct meaning and role. The central gate (or Holy Doors) in the church is the place from where the Word is given to the people (and therefore it is no accident that the icon that usually adorns it is the Annunciation, the giving of the Word), and also where the priest addresses the people, in sermon or in liturgical dialogue, but it is also the entry to the Holy of Holies, reminiscent in this case of the Temple of Solomon. Nevertheless, the Holy Doors also stand for the entry to the mystical mountain of ascent to God, as well as for the descent of God and his presence among the people. This refers to the ascent of Moses to Sinai, an exemplar of the ascetic ascent of the soul in Philo of Alexandria, which developed into a model of the spiritual and sacramental life of the Church among Christian authors such as Gregory of Nyssa and Dionysios the Areopagite, without losing its ascetic character. It is especially in the Mystical Theology of Dionysios the Areopagite that we can start seeing the parallel between the journey of Moses to Sinai, his ascent on the mountain, his entry to the dark cloud of the hidden divinity, his encounter with God, and his return with the word of God (the tablets of the Law), and the priest, who likewise enters the place where there is a mystical union with God, in the cloud of incense, only to emerge in order to give the people the word of God (the Gospel), and later also the very presence of God (the Eucharistic sacrament). The whole narrative of the ascent of the one person (Moses or the priest) who steps into the unknown for the sake of the people who wait for him outside so that he brings heavenly illumination to them, 11 There are several views about this, and perhaps the most classical defence of the high iconostasis remains Pavel Florensky’s Iconostasis (New York, 1996). Nevertheless, the overwhelming experience of lay people, especially in congregations where the curtains are still drawn for the anaphora, is not one of connection, but one of separation and exclusion. This, furthermore, compromises the concelebration between clergy and laity, as this visual separation renders meaningless some of the liturgical phrases that are shared between the clergy and the people in the anaphora.

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may echo the Hebrew priesthood, but the Christological drama and the aspect of the ascent or sacrifice of the one person for the people, also echoes, quite strongly, the ascent and punishment of Prometheus, as dramatized by Aeschylos in Prometheus Bound. The structural similarity between the church and the theatre has been noticed by historians and by dramatists alike, but, as Andrew Walker White has observed, it has perhaps misled some of the latter towards an over-interpretation of the sanctuary as a theatre.12 White points to a study by Marios Ploritis13 and he criticizes it correctly for its lack of historical robustness. Nevertheless, the long dramatic background of Ploritis, who may be thought of as one of the pillars of Greek drama in the 20th century, allowed him to discern the strong functional similarities between the two. Therefore, although White’s criticism for Ploritis’s lack of historical argumentation is justified, there is, nevertheless, much value in Ploritis’s observations about the functional similarity of the liturgical and the theatrical space. In addition, White, who is not in principle unsympathetic to the idea of the proximity between the theatre and Christian culture, points out also that the early Christians chose the basilica (or imperial hall) as the model for their rituals, instead of the theatre, a choice that makes sense in the context of the development of the church building, which reflects different spatial dynamics than those of the theatre.14 This observation certainly acts as caution against oversimplification. There is certainly much nuance in the relation between the two realms, which may be seen in the aforementioned view of John Chrysostom, who recognized the dramatic foundation of the liturgy at the same time he was attacking the theatre of his time. But in the end, while it may be too naïve to hold on to the view that the liturgical space was a direct descendant of the theatrical space, it is equally naïve to deny their formative connection. But even Ploritis’s main argument on the relationship between the two was simply that the Church enriched its liturgical life with practices directly taken out of the dramatic tradition. After this brief consideration of the space of the liturgy, let us turn our attention to the more direct comparison between tragedy and liturgy. Aristotle, in his Poetics, defines tragedy in these words: Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions (Poetics, 1449b).

12 13 14

A.W. White, Performing Orthodox Ritual in Byzantium (2015), 8. Marios Ploritis, Το Θέατρο στο Βυζάντιο (Athens, 1999). A.W. White, Performing Orthodox Ritual in Byzantium (2015), 10.

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This definition gives us a few specific points to consider in our comparison of liturgy and tragedy: ‘imitation’; a ‘serious, complete action of certain magnitude’; ‘artistic language’; ‘separate parts’; ‘pity and fear’; and finally ‘catharsis’. To these points, we may also add the main steps of the tragedy as Aristotle mentions them subsequently in his Poetics: the καταστροφή (catastrophe), the περιπέτεια (peripeteia – reversal), and the ἀναγνώρισις (anagnorisis – recognition). The requirement of the ‘language, embellished with each kind of artistic ornament’ is certainly consistent with the language of liturgical services. Here we can recognize the entire tradition of hymnography, from the early Christian hymns that may be inferred from the poetic language of the Gospels, to the kontakia of Romanos the Melodist, the introduction of the canon by the Studite monks, all the way to the composition of modern offices. This point however does not go much deeper than an external similarity that is shared by virtually all forms of artistic expression that use words. If there is one thing here that informs our exploration, is that language, in both tragedy and liturgy, is not the same as that used in everyday life, i.e. practical, calculative, or even rational, as the language of mathematics and philosophy. It appropriates and uses artistic freedom, stepping away from practical realism. The reference to the ‘several kinds being found in separate parts of the play’ suggests a variation of tone and style, a structural articulation similar to the different parts of a symphony, which are expected to have a different character. In classical theatre this normally points to the three-act structure, and when this formal structure this is not followed in modern theatre, such as in the one-act play, the event tension that corresponds to different acts is still internalized in some way in the simpler structure.15 In other words, this formal articulation simply reflects the need to maintain a certain complexity as the play develops its story. We can clearly recognise the articulation of distinct parts in the Divine Liturgy: a number of litanies, processions, readings, the anaphora, the communion of the clergy and the people, are distinct parts with their distinct dramatic character. In a larger way it is also possible to consider the Divine Liturgy as consisting of two parts or acts, the Liturgy of the Word (from the beginning until and including the reading of the Gospel) and the Liturgy of the Sacrament, where the focus shifts from the readings towards the Eucharistic Body. In the Eastern form of the Divine Liturgy it is also possible to consider another part, the Liturgy of the Preparation of the Eucharist. This simply reminds us that the Divine Liturgy is a dramatic act, ‘in the form of an action’, consisting of parts that need to be absorbed separately, and not simply a linear recitation of a text. If that were the case, and if meaning in the worship gathering were derived exclusively from the text, the structure of the service would simply be like the structure of a lecture, or a biblical seminar. 15

Cf. Cindy S.A.M. Caine, ‘Structure in the One-Act Play’, Modern Drama 12 (1969), 390-8.

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One of the paradoxes of the Divine Liturgy is that it makes a connection between historical time and the time of God. There may be several historical reasons for the formulation of the first proclamation of the Divine Liturgy (“Blessed is the Kingdom”), but it nevertheless sets a tone of timelessness. At any rate, there are several points in the Liturgy that betray a nuanced understanding of time, against the linear historical memory of the past. The tense of most hymns, for instance, is almost always set in the present: ‘Saint of God, intercede for us!’ or ‘Today is hung on a cross, the one who hung the earth among the waters!’ and ‘The Virgin gives birth today to the one who is above being!’ There is no past time here – although the central hymn of the Resurrection, as an exception to this rule, is given in its affirmation of the historical truth (Christ is risen/rose from the dead). Nowhere is this seen more clearly however, than in the central part of the liturgical sacrifice, the offering or oblation, which brings together the priest, the clergy and all the people, in an act that transcends all history and all time. The first thing we notice in the anaphora is that the commemoration of all the things that have been accomplished for our salvation includes the Second Coming of Christ – as if it has already taken place. This means that we can only understand the offering, and the entire Eucharistic act, from the perspective of the Kingdom of Heaven beyond time. If we stayed at the level of the text alone, we could see this offering as the Aristotelian ‘imitation’, as a rehearsal of life in the Kingdom. Nevertheless, because of the gathering of the people and because of the implied presence of the Holy Spirit, this is much more than an ‘imitation’, it is an act that starts in historical time and is completed into the time of God: this offering is taking place ‘according to all and in all’, so that Christ will be all in all, which is the way Paul described the Kingdom of Heaven at the end of time (1Cor. 15:28; Col. 3:11; Eph. 1:10 and 1:23). The way this phrase is shared between the priest and the people shows that the offering, and the entire Eucharist, is a concelebration between the clergy and the laity. As Fr Alexander Schmemann has argued, and Fr Nicholas Loudovikos has developed further more recently,16 although there is a clear distinction between the ones who celebrate the sacraments and the ones to whom the sacraments are administered (similar to the distinction between the actors and the audience, as we have seen before), there is no sharp ontological and spiritual divide between clergy and laity, the participants of the liturgy, all of whom are transformed mystically into the Body of the Lord. The roles break down at this stage, because sacramentally and mystically we are already in the Kingdom of Heaven. Moreover, the Church as Body of Christ consists of distinct roles and distinct gifts (it is enough for this point to remember Paul’s description of the Church as Body of Christ and the distinct gifts of the Holy 16 Nikolaos Loudovikos, Church in the Making: an Apophatic Ecclesiology of Consubstantiality (New York, 2015).

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Spirit in 1Cor. 12), that nevertheless cannot operate separately. Although there has always been a distinction of roles in terms of liturgical celebration since the early Church, and therefore not everyone is (or can be) a bishop or a priest, in the end the priestly role of Christ is something that involves the entire Church as a unity, and not just the clergy. In other words, although the priest and the bishop hold the role of the actors, the dramatis personae, the sacramental, yet real presence of Jesus Christ can only be fulfilled by the collaboration, concelebration, consent and active participation of the chorus – the people. This concelebration makes sense where the ranks are transcended (rather than cancelled), and the entire congregation emerges from the liturgy with a renewed sense of their personal and ecclesial immortality, in the equivalent of the tragic catharsis. Catharsis here does not mean a personal psychological reflection, but a collapse of the self into the corporate Body of Christ. The Aristotelian imitation of the serious, complete and great action here has an even deeper, and more problematic meaning than in the ancient tragedy, but this touches on one of the most ancient and fundamental controversies about the Christian faith. Is the way of Christianity an imitatio Dei, an attempt to become a good person (in which case a historical reading of the Liturgy is most appropriate), or is it a meeting of human and God at the ontological level, whereby personal sin may be an obstacle and a setback, but not a criminal action that needs to be justified by an at least equal amount of punishment? Christianity is still divided on this fundamental problem, and although some denominations may emphasize one over the other, there is no such thing as a pure institutional denomination on this. To proceed with something more challenging in our comparison of liturgy and tragedy, the parts of the Aristotelian definition that are more important for tragedy, are the ones that refer to the ‘serious and complete action of a certain magnitude’, the incidents that arouse ‘pity and fear’, which will lead to a ‘catharsis’, and also the ‘imitation’ of the action that is represented here.17 It is an interesting question in this dramatic exploration of the Liturgy, to consider what is the ‘serious and complete action’ in the Christian context – or perhaps a slightly different way to ask this question is who exactly is the main character in the liturgical drama. Probably the easiest answer to this may be to point to the Christological drama. The focus in this case would be the life of Jesus Christ, his Incarnation, Death and Resurrection. A secondary narrative would be the question of how, through those commemorated events, the Church leads the faithful to the Kingdom of God. This view is supported by the Gospel accounts which were formulated by the oral tradition of the Jesus narrative. Nevertheless, while the Christological drama is the central ‘hypothesis’ or plot of the Gospel narrative, the development of Jesus Christ as a dramatic character culminated much later, in the Western 17

A good introduction to this is Stephen Halliwell, Aristotle’s Poetics (Chapel Hill, 1986).

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medieval passion plays.18 The ‘Jesus play’ allows us to talk about Christology in terms of dramatic action. Aristotle’s definition of the tragedy speaks about an imitation of an ‘action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude.’ The ontological dimensions of the Incarnation, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection make the Jesus narrative, considered as an ‘action’, fit the bill of the Aristotelian definition of a most important action, accomplished in several distinct parts. In this way the Christological dramatic narrative may be also considered in the context of the Aristotelian καταστροφή (catastrophe), the περιπέτεια (peripeteia – reversal) and the ἀναγνώρισις (anagnorisis – recognition), largely corresponding to the Incarnation, the Passion and the Resurrection of Jesus. Here, however, the strict Christological approach begins to fail. If we consider Jesus Christ the protagonist of this drama, we fail to see the inner trajectory of change that brings about the final catharsis, since it is not he who needs to be redeemed, but the people of God. The hypothesis of Jesus Christ as the protagonist of the Christological drama, which saves those who share it liturgically has some support in the Gospel narrative, specifically in John 3:14, the passage where Jesus himself compares his work of salvation with the healing of the bronze snake of Numbers 21:4-9. In both these cases salvation or healing is provided to the ones who will look at (and presumably recognize) the bronze serpent that Moses put on a pole, or the crucified Jesus, and therefore salvation is provided by the spectacle, in what is apparently not a very active role of participation for the onlookers. Nevertheless, a key element in the ancient tragedy as well as in the Christian liturgy is participation, we may expect to see something else there, what is usually known as the eschatological hermeneutic approach.19 We may find more clarity about the contrast between history and eschatology, if we also consider the other Aristotelian concept that refers to action, namely ‘imitation’. Certainly this concept is complex. Μίμησις in the Aristotelian tradition usually refers to a different, yet equally original manifestation of the same archetype, in contrast to the Platonist view of μίμησις, which expresses a certain distance from the archetype. In the Aristotelian sense, an image of an object is not necessarily a second order object, removed by one level of reality from its prototype as a Xerox copy is from its original, but a separate expression of the archetype that both the object and its image try to manifest.20 In dramatic terms, what takes place at the altar is at the same time an image of 18 It is interesting that the same dramatic focus on Jesus Christ as the central character returns much later, in film. Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004) is based on Anne Emmerich’s writings rather than on the text of the Gospel, and it continues the sensationalist dramatization of the early passion plays in our days. 19 Cf. Thomas Rausch, Eschatology, Liturgy and Christology (Collegeville, 2012). 20 Cf. the discussion of mimesis in Stavros Tsitsiridis, ‘Mimesis and Understanding. An Interpretation of Aristotle’s Poetics,4.1448b4-19’, Classical Quarterly 55 (2005), 435-46.

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the Incarnation, the Passion and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, but also an equally real manifestation of his actions, which leads to the confirmation of his real presence in the Eucharistic sacrament. This is generally familiar to liturgists: what we have here is the stepping out of ordinary time and reaching into liturgical time, where we access the archetype itself, in a real, unmediated encounter, not limited by time or place. The historical and the eschatological approach have been explored among liturgists for a long time. According to the historical approach, which we see with people such as Theodore of Mopsuestia, Germanos of Constantinople and Symeon of Thessaloniki, the entire service reflects historical truth and it corresponds to the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. Therefore, the preparation of the bread and the wine in the prothesis conch usually is taken to correspond to his Nativity, the Great Entrance to the Entry to Jerusalem, and the emergence of the priest with the Communion Chalice corresponds to the Resurrection of Jesus. If we were to understand the liturgy as an imitation of the Christological drama, this would be a somewhat narrow application of the concept of imitation, one which does not stand up to the manifestation of an archetype, but rather to a formal repetition of the external elements of the life of Jesus. The aforementioned Passion plays give us perhaps an even more clear image of this imitation, as they offer an exposition of historical Christology, without making a claim on the real presence of the Eucharistic body. This gives us an interesting theological insight: the collapse of liturgy into a memory of a historical past gives up the claim for the sacramental presence of the Holy Spirit and the Body of Jesus Christ in the here and now, since the entire narrative is placed in the distant past, where things have been accomplished once and for all. If there can be any claim of the continuous action of God in the here and now, and therefore any transformation of the bread and wine into the real presence, it may only happen if linear historicity is transcended. In this case, ‘imitation’ cannot be understood as a historical re-enactment, and the ‘serious and complete action’ cannot be limited to the historical ministry of Jesus Christ only. A very different school of thought sees no distinct or meaningful historical reflection in the liturgy. Perhaps the most extreme proponents of this view are the Lash brothers, Nicholas and Ephrem, according to whom the liturgy is not much more than Bible study followed by a meal.21 The liturgy may indeed reflect the format of a Jewish Passover seder, which is what the Last Supper was. Ephrem Lash, in addition, arguing this point further, saw nothing in the liturgy that could possibly symbolize the Crucifixion, although the preparation of the Bread in the prothesis, where most of the prayers and references when that happens point specifically to the Crucifixion, certainly seems to tick that box. Although the benefit of this approach is that it alleviates the weight of historical 21 Ephrem Lash, ‘Translation of church services into modern languages’, posted on 15 March 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8eApcHcZqU.

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symbolism and the attempt to find a close correspondence between liturgical acts and historical Christological events, if taken to its extreme, it leads to an understanding of the Bible as a book with not much ritual context, and therefore of mostly moralist use. In addition, this is a quite reductionist view in terms of the dramatic appreciation of the liturgy. There is a different approach, which we find in Maximos the Confessor. When he is talking about the meaning of the Divine Liturgy in his Mystagogy, he notes that the liturgy includes a historical recapitulation of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, but only until the reading of the Gospel. After that, everything that follows is an expression of the eschaton made present, and a reflection, or perhaps a shining forth (in the Aristotelian sense of the image manifesting its prototype as another original), of the Celestial Liturgy. In this view, while much of the text of the anaphora refers to the historical past (such as the words of institution, understood as a memory of the words Jesus used at the Last Supper), the perspective from which that past is remembered is trans-historical, as the perspective of God, beyond the confines of time and space. This trans-historical perspective may be seen in several places of the liturgical text itself. There is a number of expressions that refer to the fulfilment of the liturgy in the context of the eschata made present (and therefore in the collapse between historical time and the time of God), such as the opening proclamation (‘Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’), as opposed to the opening prayer of other services (‘Blessed is our God’, a phrase with a less obvious eschatological reference), although there are additional, historical reasons why this was established as the opening prayer of the Divine Liturgy. Nevertheless, if we follow Schmemann’s perspective on the eschatological dimension of the liturgy, such liturgical phrases, given beyond any possible limitations of time (‘now and forever, and to the ages of ages’) challenge our expectation of the narrative and the drama that is going to follow. It says that what follows is in the Kingdom of God – in all places and not tied to one place – and it is, as God himself, the same now as it always has been, and it will always be, something that resonates with the first revelation of God to Moses at the Burning Bush in Exodus 3:14: the name that God gave to Moses (‘ehyeh asher ehyeh’ in Hebrew, or ‘Ο Ων’ in the Septuagint) points to his existence beyond time, especially in the Hebrew version. The strongest eschatological elements however, may be found in the anaphora. The prayer of the commemoration includes a reference to the Second Coming of Jesus, as if it has already taken place (‘Remembering therefore this our Saviour’s command and all that has been done for us: the Cross, the Tomb, the Resurrection on the third day, the Ascension into heaven, the Sitting at the right hand, the second and glorious Coming again…’), signifying the collapse of the division between historical time and the time after the Parousia. This division is, however, dynamic: this phrase, which is shared between the priest and the people, in an example of what Alexander Schmemann called concelebration of

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clergy and laity, is concluded with a mysterious clause (‘according to all and for all’), which echoes the eschatological expectation of Paul in Col. 3:11 and in Eph. 1:10 and 1:2322 as well as in other places, and it connects the action of the liturgical gathering (‘we praise you, we bless you, we give thanks to you, O Lord, and we pray to you, our God’) with the eschata. Be this as it may, perhaps we are simply talking about a balance between the historical and the non-historical approach here, both of which are accommodated in the Liturgy itself, which in the end touches on how much and in what way the congregation participates in the Eucharistic drama. The problem with a historical narrative, as a narrative of events that took place at a certain time and place in the past, without our consent or our participation, and as past events there is nothing that could possibly change their course or outcome, which is known from the start, is precisely that because of the ‘settled’ nature of the represented events, there is no margin for an inner movement in the person who watches them. In front of a historical re-enactment, the congregation witnesses the drama from a distance, in the same way we would watch a documentary from our couch, not anticipating that what we watch has any direct relevance to us personally. Such a removed spectacle would not fulfil the final and perhaps most important expectation of the Aristotelian definition of tragedy: the catharsis. Whether we talk about dramatic catharsis, which implies a revisiting of the archetypal myth of the tragedy in order to come back with a renewed social, political and/or psychological balance,23 or about salvation through a clear movement of the self towards the liturgical sharing of the body and the blood of Christ, we are talking about something whose effectivity relies completely on the extent of the personal participation of each member of the congregation or audience. Strictly speaking, either in the context of the ancient tragedy or in the Christian liturgy, there cannot be a thing such as a non-participating audience. This brings us to the heart of the matter. The transformation of the self or of the community in the psychological and social ritual that was expressed through the tragedy was eventually overtaken by the non-participating spectacle. What is the real difference between a classical tragedy and a spectacle on stage, is that while the latter may impress and entertain, and may even make some points about social or political issues, the tragedy presupposes an audience who may not be actively responding to the events on the stage (and therefore we are not talking about an interactive play), but for which the events on the stage resonate at a personal level, and take the audience through a psychological trajectory with 22 Andreas Andreopoulos, ‘“All in all” in the Byzantine Anaphora and the Eschatological Mystagogy of Maximos the Confessor’, SP 68 (2013), 303-12. 23 On Aristotle and drama as the political basis of the polis cf. John von Heyking, The Form of Politics: Aristotle and Plato on Friendship (Montreal, 2016), especially ch. 3, ‘Political Friendship as Storytelling, Practical Wisdom through Mimesis’, 57-96.

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a social and metaphysical reference. The story of Oedipus, to take the most celebrated example, the model tragedy as far as Aristotle was concerned, is not merely a story of intrigues and role reversals that keeps us on our toes, but also, or rather primarily, a reflection of a certain stage in our own personal psychological development. For most people it may not take the form of patricide and incest, but through the archetypical significance of the resistance to the authority of the father and the pursuit of the pleasure provided by a comforting mother, mutatis mutandi, it reflects the way we learn to engage with authority and assume our social role, the way we identify with a gender, and ultimately the way we take responsibility for our lives, all this acted out in such a way that we may be able to face and come to terms with our dark and hidden self. The catharsis at the end of the tragedy had the sense of a renewal, a return to the realm of ordinary life, after the plunge into the depths of the darkness of our inner life and our inner self, to which the audience was led by the dramatis personae: but now the audience has returned with a new wisdom. This certainly means participation of the audience at some level, even if the dramatic roles are acted out only by the actors on the stage, without any apparent interaction with the audience. It is misleading to think of ancient drama as a mere spectacle that the audience followed from a distance. When Aeschylos explored the fate of Orestes, as he was pursued by the Furies, and when the goddess Athena, at the end of the Eumenides, convinced them to mitigate their anger in exchange of a share in the government of the city, using the context of a ritual festival of renewal, he brought to the surface a tacit social convention, making the citizens aware of and responsible for this internalization of guilt and revenge, and their incorporation to the system of social government. To attend such a journey, either psychological as in the case of Oedipus Rex, or social/ political as in the case of the Eumenides, even from the marble seats of Epidaurus, implies to share this journey. The Liturgy is similar to this trajectory. It is a shared, ritual experience, that allows the congregation to dive into the deepest level of the human condition – the condition of death – only to re-emerge with a participated sense of resurrection and eternity, which is ‘acted out’. The difference here is that while catharsis at the end of the tragedy expresses a social, political and psychological renewal, the Liturgy is an ontological renewal, based on the Christological and eschatological drama, a journey whose trajectory is nothing less than the transition from the way of death to the way of life, based on the once-for-all, ongoing event of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Here we need to say something about the non-participatory dynamics of a historical re-enactment, and the distinction between the active participation of the actors or celebrants, and the passive participation of an audience or a congregation. While there is a clear distinction between the actors and the audience, ultimately all of them share the same trajectory of psychological and political or social renewal. With this in mind, we may consider the lack of

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active participation in several ritual traditions (such as the Orthodox Christian tradition), in contrast to other, more active ritual styles (such as several charismatic traditions), in the context of the formative influence of Greek drama. Dramatic continuity from the tragedy to the liturgy, would suggest that the active part of the congregation follows in the tradition of the active part of the dramatic audience: the people who sit quietly during the reading of the Gospel or the singing of the hymns in church, may, indeed, not participate in a very visible way, although they respond visibly to many of the things that happen at the altar: they kneel, they cross themselves, they lower their heads, and they receive the Eucharistic body. This is, to be sure, not an argument that should be taken too far. To remember Andrew Walker White’s aforementioned observation about the choice of the basilica instead of the theatre, as the most appropriate space of the Christian liturgy,24 we can start seeing some of the reasons for this choice. The theatrical space does not allow for any direct participation of the audience, not even for the simplest act of kneeling. Here we can see how the Christian understanding of participation placed additional demands on the liturgical space, compared to the ancient Greek one. Nevertheless, we cannot ignore completely the similarity of the parameters of participation and what it meant in the context of watching a tragedy – participation by resonance. Passivity should not be confused with lack of participation here. The concept of participation is quite fundamental in Christian liturgy, but here too we may find differences in the way it was understood. Almost all ancient references to the Christian Eucharist stress participation (of the clergy and the people) and the gathering of the entire congregation in one place, as what legitimizes the Church as the Body of Christ (following Matthew 18:20 ‘where two or three gather in my name, there I am with them’). Theologically, this means that we cannot separate Christology from Ecclesiology sharply: If Christology refers primarily to the historical revelation of Jesus Christ, and if Ecclesiology, likewise, refers primarily to the Christian community in the way it gathers for the first time after the exit of Jesus Christ from history (in his Ascension) and the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, after Pentecost we can speak about the presence of Jesus Christ only through the presence of the Holy Spirit, in a community that gathers in his name. The Christian community chose to call itself ‘ecclesia’ rather than ‘synagogue’ because while the term ‘synagogue’ literally means any gathering of people (with the implication that they gather in order to pray together), the term ecclesia, which was a political term that referred to the gathering of all free citizens, expressed a fullness of the entire community that could gather around the Eucharistic chalice – even if that fullness is only notional.

24

A.W. White, Performing Orthodox Ritual in Byzantium (2015), 8.

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In the first few centuries this sense of community was quite strong: apostolic writers such as Justin Martyr, the author of the Didache, the author of the Epistle to Diognetos, and Ignatios of Antioch, stress the connection between the gathering of the people and the Eucharist. The very word that was often used in early Christianity to denote the Divine Liturgy, synaxis, means precisely the gathering of the people. Nevertheless, in the 4th century, in the Great Catechetical Oration of Gregory of Nyssa, we find for the first time an extensive analysis of the sacramental presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharistic Bread and the Body, without a single reference to the community that gathers in his name. The community and its participation here are downplayed. Addressing the difficult problem of the simultaneous presence of the body of Christ in every single Eucharistic chalice in every gathering of the Christian world, the solution that Gregory gave depended only on the participation of the Holy Spirit who transforms the Bread and the Wine, without a reference to the presence and participation of the people. There is no clear reason here why the communal basis of the Eucharist would weaken the argument of the simultaneous presence, although we may imagine a few possibilities. One possibility was that Gregory wished to stress the connection between sacramental theology and the theology of the Holy Spirit, in the context of the emerging Cappadocian Trinitarianism. In this way it would be possible to offer a solid sacramental reason for the argument of the divinity of the Holy Spirit, which is what the Cappadocians intended to stress at the time. A more practical possibility for this departure from a community-based sacramentalism towards a reification of the sacrament is that the social circumstances were changing: when Christianity was persecuted, and when it was a revolutionary way of life, it was easier for the master and the slave to stand next to each other in prayer, and embrace each other in the spiritual fellowship that we may see as early as in Paul’s Epistle to Philemon. After all, early communities were strongly eschatological in character, and that meant that there was little concern for class divisions. However, when Christianity rose from the catacombs and became part of the social order, it quickly became part of the establishment, and in this way it was more difficult to maintain the sense of a spiritual community that transcended social boundaries. In other words, while early Christian churches operated as eschatological communities, where masters and slaves had accepted the temporality of their social roles, it was not easy to maintain this sense of equality when Christianity became an imperial cult, and started reflecting secular rather than eschatological structures. Regardless of the particular reasons of Gregory of Nyssa, the significance of community-based sacramental transformation (and therefore also the significance of participation) declined after the fourth century. The concept of gathering however, becomes a logical impossibility in the Christian liturgical context, because it includes the aspect of gathering across time, or exploring God’s existence, beyond Kantian limitations. The liturgical

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experience of time is a direction with no direct equivalent in classical drama, but it is a central component of the way both Christology and Ecclesiology are understood.25

25 There is much literature on liturgical time (rather than early Christian eschatology) in the last few years, such as Emma O’Donnell, Remembering the Future: the Experience of Time in Jewish and Christian Theology (Collegeville, 2015); John Baldovin, ‘The Future Present: the Liturgy, Time and Revelation’, Liturgy 31 (2016), 19-25; Ben Quash, Holy Seeds: the Trisagion and the Liturgical Untilling of Time (Cambridge, 2006). Much of this literature is based on the work of Alexander Schmemann, especially his Introduction to Liturgical Theology (New York, 1966), and his posthumously published Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom (New York, 2003).

Performing Acclamation in Tenth-Century Byzantium: De Cerimoniis between Roman Practice and Christian Theory Erik Z.D. ELLIS, Universidad de los Andes, Santiago, Chile

ABSTRACT The Byzantine De Cerimoniis, compiled by emperor Constantine VII in the tenth century as part of a comprehensive project to recover the Roman past, contains the texts and rubrics for a large number of acclamations for both ecclesiastical and civil ceremonies, presenting these acclamations in a context that demonstrates a fusion of the Roman inheritance and Christian theology. Among the numerous ceremonies recorded in De Cerimoniis, the acclamations for the inauguration of the emperor provide an ideal point of entry for exploring this synthesis and examining how these two traditions interacted to produce parallel accounts of imperial coronation and clerical ordination. Christianizing Roman acclamation practices that originated in republican times, tenth-century Byzantines and their predecessors considered their rites of inauguration to be effective in reality and not merely formal recognitions of already existing conditions, enacting a process that transformed men into emperors and united the destiny of the Roman Empire with the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God. Likewise, the reliance of Christian theologians on Roman legal terminology and Hellenistic political philosophy in their explanations of the rites of ordination shows the debt of these thinkers to their Roman past. Proceeding from Constantine VII’s De Cerimoniis, this paper examines how echoes and reflections of Pseudo-Dionysios and Maximos the Confessor interacted with the heritage of Roman practice before influencing later scholastic theories of ordination. ὁμογλώττους ἐν πίστει τοὺς ἀλλογλώσσους ἑλκύσῃ … ἡ χαρὰ καὶ ἀνέγερσις τῶν Ῥωμαίων. May … the joy and exaltation of the Romans draw those who speak different languages to speak the same language in faith.1

Memorialized here in the third acclamation of the Blue Faction of the Hippodrome in Constantinople, the feast of Pentecost – with its focus on the gathering of nations and the divine establishment of a universal dominion – provided 1

DC R59. References to De Cerimoniis are according to the Greek edition of the Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae (Bonn, 1829), as reprinted in Ann Moffatt and Maxeme Tall (trans.), Constantine Porphyrogennetos: The Book of Ceremonies, 2 vol. (Canberra, 2012).

Studia Patristica CXXX, 403-425. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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an appropriate occasion for the public presentation and ritual enactment of an apostolic empire headed by a divinely appointed emperor. These Byzantine acclamations, chanted at stations spanning the width of Constantinople by various corporate groups, year in and year out following the liturgical calendar as well as at the greatest state occasions, gave the emperor, the people, and the Church opportunities to assert and perform a complex Roman and Christian identity that was embedded within a narrative that united salvation history with the mission of the Roman polity. De Cerimoniis,2 a compilation produced by the emperor Constantine VII in the middle of the tenth century, is the most extensive witness to the Byzantine practice of acclamation, which carried on a Roman tradition pointing back to Roman times and continues even today to play a significant role in Christian ordination rites.3 Combining texts and descriptions from many periods and organized around a calendar that unites the liturgical and imperial celebrations, Book I of DC also includes a preface wherein Constantine VII explains his belief that ceremony both reflects and enacts heavenly order on earth. The emperor’s language is both Roman and Christian, drawing on concepts and terminology found in Roman law, Platonic philosophy, and Christian liturgical commentary. This discussion examines De Cerimoniis as a nexus of these diverse influences and a primary example of the cultural synthesis of Roman tradition and Christian theology.4 Due to their structural and stylistic affinities, comparison 2 For a synopsis of the editorial history of the text, see A. Moffatt and M. Tall, Constantine Porphyrogennetos (2012), vol. 1, xxiv. Detailed information on the MSS can be found in Michael Featherstone, ‘Preliminary Remarks on the Leipzig Manuscript of De Cerimoniis’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 95 (2002), 457-79; see also Michael Featherstone, Jana Grusková and Otto Kresten, ‘Studien zu den Palimpsestfragmenten des sogenannten ‘Zeremonienbuches’ I. Prolegomena’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 98 (2006), 423-30. For a recent consideration of the preface and the purpose of the compilation, see András Németh, The Excerpta Constantiniana and the Byzantine Appropriation of the Past (Cambridge, 2018), 137-44. 3 So far, work on De Cerimoniis has focused on ritual reconstruction, chronology, and source criticism. These tendencies are well represented by Francophone scholars, among whom the most notable are Albert Vogt, Le livre des cérémonies, 2 vol. (Paris, 1935) and Nicolas Oikonomidès, Les listes de préséance byzantines des IXe et Xe siècles (Paris, 1972). The best study in English considering the ideological and social aspects of the surviving Roman texts is Gregory S. Aldrete, Gestures and Acclamations in Ancient Rome (Baltimore, 1999). 4 For many years, scholarly literature on the practice of acclamations in the Roman and Byzantine empires has focused on their sociological rather than ritual aspects. Scholars have generally been interested in highlighting how political ceremonies act as ordering mechanisms in socioeconomic hierarchies. Overall, historical accounts depict a process of Liturgiesierung, whereby originally secular ceremonies were transformed into Christian rituals. This account is incomplete. As ritual phenomena, Roman acclamations present features of liturgical realism and anamnesis, long appreciated in the study of Christian liturgy but virtually absent from accounts of Roman religion. When properly contextualized, Roman acclamations emerge as ritual performances that were already religious and quasi-liturgical before the conversion of the Roman Empire, so that one would better speak of a process of Christianization than Liturgiesierung. For the history of this term and a criticism of its application, see Janet Nelson, Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (London, 1986), 263-4.

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of the Roman and Byzantine practice of acclaiming an emperor and the Christian rite of ordination provides an excellent opportunity for examining how the two phenomena developed through a process of mutual influence. Beginning with the liturgical commentaries of Pseudo-Dionysios and Maximos the Confessor and drawing comparisons with the later work of Peter Lombard, this study suggests that De Cerimoniis provides access to a Christian mentality and approach to ritual that both resonates with the Roman past and contributed to the formation of systematic accounts of sacramental theology in ways that continue to inform Christian ritual in both East and West. In their contemporary context, the acclamations are an integral component of the rediscovery and restoration of taxis undertaken by Constantine VII,5 which that emperor announced as the central purpose of De Cerimoniis, his most famous compilation. After more than a century of religious controversy centering on the role of icons in the devotional life of the Church, Constantine’s predecessors had worked to establish ‘The Triumph of Orthodoxy’,6 ushering in an age of artistic production and cultural renewal that has been dubbed the Macedonian Renaissance.7 Building on this essentially religious work, Constantine VII worked to recover and restore too the Roman heritage of his empire by producing manuals on history, statecraft, military campaigns, and court ceremony.8 In each case, Constantine sought to imitate the glorious past, both Christian and Roman, while positioning his empire as a reflection of the Kingdom of God that both prefigured its eschatological consummation and partially fulfilled its heavenly prototype. By aligning imperial and eschatological narratives in continuity with scriptural precedent in ceremonies that brought together Church and state on the most important feasts of the liturgical year through the practice of acclamation, renewing the Roman politeia and the Christian basileia. Studying the practice of acclamation in DC provides insight into the theoretical background of how worked to unite thought and word drawing on both traditions. Although no comprehensive manual like De Cerimoniis has survived from the ages preceding Constantine VII, inscriptions and literary evidence make it 5 For the importance of taxis in Byzantine political thought, see Hélène Ahrweiler, L’idéologie politique de l’Empire byzantin (Paris, 1975), 133-41. Ahrweiler considers taxis to be, along with oikonomia, one of the two fundamental concepts in Byzantine thought. In her interpretation, taxis is mostly the province of political power, oikonomia of the ecclesiastical. But taxis is important in theology, too. See Adam G. Cooper, The Body in St. Maximus the Confessor: Holy Flesh, Wholly Deified (Oxford, 2005), 57-64. That the word is multivalent and used in both political and theological discourse is a hinge in the argumentation of this article. 6 Historians now find this foundational component of the Macedonian narrative highly problematic. For a summary of these issues, see Leslie Brubaker, Inventing Byzantine Iconoclasm (London, 2012). 7 The term ‘renaissance’ is now also problematic when applied to the tenth-century Byzantine cultural renewal. For a discussion of the scholarship with regard to art history, see Kathleen Corrigan, ‘Iconography’, in Elizabeth Jeffreys, John Haldon and Robin Cormack (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies (Oxford, 2008), 67-76, 72. 8 See András Németh, Excerpta Constantiniana (Cambridge, 2018), 23-30.

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possible to form a solid idea of what Roman inaugurations were like.9 Acclamations were an essential component of these rights of inauguration. At the most basic level, an acclamation is addressed to someone, makes a hopeful exhortation or an apotropaic prohibition,10 makes requests, and delivers praise; it also usually includes a polychronion.11 As we shall see, these features are also present in Christian rites, which took on much of the Roman vocabulary and mentality while Christianizing pagan survivals and theologizing already religious ceremonies. While textual evidence, especially for later periods, is comparatively rich, it seems impossible to find a positive, theoretical account of acclamation from a Roman or Byzantine perspective. One might hope that recourse to the accounts of similar practices in the Christian liturgy would provide a more systematic treatment of acclamation, but one searches in vain for the sort of formal affirmations upon which one could build a comprehensive account of the Byzantine theory of acclamatory performance.12 This state of affairs necessitates the sort of indirect approach that Herbert Hunger applied to prefaces to imperial documents in order to delineate the contours of Byzantine political theory.13 In the East, despite its rich literature on Christological and Trinitarian controversies, there has never been much dispute over the nature of the eucharist.14 This had led to a wealth of liturgical catechesis but a dearth of systematic treatises on eucharistic theology. By contrast, the tradition of western theology from the twelfth century onwards developed a systematic sacramental theology and a variety of competing theories regarding the nature and efficiency of liturgical rites.15 Among the earliest systematic treatments of sacramental theology is that found in Peter Lombard’s Sententiae. This exposition builds on the earlier liturgical catechesis and presents concepts of ordo and officium that are 9 For a listing of this evidence, see the notes to pages G. Aldrete, Gestures and Acclamations (1999), 101-5. For an excellent theoretical discussion of some of problems facing would-be interpreters of the closely related phenomenon of triumphs in chapters 2 and 3 of Mary Beard, The Roman Triumph (Cambridge, 2007). 10 Martin Hinterberger, Phthonos: Mißgunst, Neid und Eifersucht in der byzantinischen Literatur (Wiesbaden, 2013), 53-4. 11 This is the term for forumulae such as ad multos annos or πολλὰ ἔτη that still form a significant part of Christian public ritual connected with ordination and inauguration. 12 Bornert laments, ‘La question du symbolisme et du réalisme eucharistique est un problème qui a été soulevé à propos de saint Maxime plus qu’il n’a été posé par celui-ci … les affirmations formelles sont rares et que, par consequent, il faut expliquer une pensée implicite.’ René Bornert, Les Commentaires byzantins de la divine liturgie du VIIe au XVe siècle (Paris, 1966), 117. Such questions, it seems, were never asked by Byzantine writers and, thus, never answered. 13 Herbert Hunger, Prooimion: Elemente der Byzantinischen Kaiseridee in den Arengen der Urkunden (Vienna, 1964). 14 With the exception of the questions of the epiclesis and the use of azymes, which became classical components of the discourse of East-West schism in the centuries following 1054. Nothing like the highly detailed, divergent, and systematic accounts of the precise nature of the eucharist produced during the Protestant Reformation have arisen in Latin-Greek (or Catholic-Orthodox) dialogue. 15 See Edward J. Kilmartin and Robert J. Daly, The Eucharist in the West: History and Theology (Collegeville, 2004), 127-54.

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still recognizably Roman. This study leverages these catechetical and scholastic accounts along with contemporary sacramental theology and performance theory to trace the outlines of the millennial development of Christian and Roman concepts of inauguration through acclamation. In both Christian liturgy and Roman ceremony, acclamation – whether of consecrated eucharistic elements or of a candidate for priestly ordination or imperial consecration – is vital not only in declaring a certain state of affairs but also in bringing that state into being. In liturgical or ceremonial texts, both ancient and contemporary, it is clear that their participants expect that their language is not so much conveying information as performing actions. This is a commonplace of Christian sacramental theology.16 In the fully developed western system, a sacrament is understood as consisting of form, (i.e. words), and matter. The utterance of a formula, accompanied by a proper disposition and matter, effects the identification of the eucharistic elements with the body and blood of Jesus Christ. In a similar way, the acclamation of the Roman people in some mysterious way makes a citizen or general into an imperator or basileus and, explicitly in the ancient pagan triumphs, a sort of temporary god.17 This process of divinization had deep roots in the Greek world, perhaps originating in the memorials of heroes who became gods when the community established shrines and offered worship in their honor. The Hellenistic kings, taking the regalia and ceremony of the oriental kingdoms they conquered,18 also began to demand proskynesis from their subjects and subtly became living gods. And by whatever means they got there, such processes were already deeply embedded in Roman culture in the republican period.19 In each case, it was the authority of the man, won through prowess, luck,20 or some combination of the two, that put him in a position to demand worship, but it was the people, in agreeing to offer worship, who made him a god. With the conversion of Constantine and the resulting Christianization of Roman institutions, the church had to find some way of reconfiguring the traditional prerogatives of an office that for centuries had conferred on its occupant the rights of a divine high priest. As is well known, Constantine demanded and received the title isapostolos,21 setting the stage for a millennial conflict in 16 See David Brown, ‘A Sacramental World: Why It Matters’, in Hans Boersma and Matthew Levering (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Sacramental Theology (Oxford, 2015), 609. 17 M. Beard, The Roman Triumph (2007), 85-92. 18 Brill’s New Pauly (Leiden, 2002), s.v. diadema. 19 Simon Price, ‘From Noble Funerals to Divine Cult: The Consecration of Roman Emperors’, in David Cannadine (ed.), Rituals of Royalty: Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies (Cambridge, 1987), 103-5. 20 Michael McCormick, Eternal Victory: Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium, and the Early Medieval West (Cambridge, 1986), 11-34. 21 For general background, see Georg Ostrogorski, History of the Byzantine State (New Brunswick, NJ, 1957), 2. For a specific discussion of the title, see Jonathan Bardill, Constantine, Divine Emperor of the Christian Golden Age (Cambridge, 2012), 373, 392.

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the West and less frequent but still intense contests between Church and State in the East.22 What unfolds throughout Roman history, Roman meant here in the widest possible sense, is a dialogue between the strongman who takes power and the community that has the right to confer legitimacy and define the limits of authority. For this reason, it is worthwhile once again to examine the process by which the Byzantines made their emperor and what their ritual understanding of that process might have been. On the one hand, there is a man who is but a man. He requests legitimacy from some representative body or bodies in the polity, is granted it, and then fulfills the function of his office. On the other hand, this process, despite the fact of infrequent de-acclamation, creates a tertium quid, the emperor, who is both more than the man and rises above the polity. How can two lesser things create something greater than themselves? When faced with such problems, cultures have historically had recourse to the divine. At great milestones – birth, marriage, death, and, significantly for our purposes here, ordination – human beings have sought to consecrate the mundane and somehow make it participate in the life of a higher reality. The rites by which lovers become spouses, children become legitimate members of the community, and individuals become capable of mediating between gods and men, seek to transform the humane through elision with the divine. The continuity of rulership between a king and his successor is a good example of the ontological claims of acclamation and its associated rites. Through acclamation, a man does not so much become an emperor as have his being changed into or joined to the state of ‘emperor-ness’. The English phrase, ‘The king is dead! Long live the king!’, derived from French and with analogues in most western European languages, succinctly expresses this paradox. At the passing of one sovereign and the accession of the next, this phrase, making use of ambiguous paradox, expresses the continuity of rule and the identity of man and office. Answering how this change was effected is best accomplished through recourse to developed, theological frameworks and comparison to practices inherited from the Roman, pagan, past. The chief danger of this theological approach, which it shares with Marxian and Straussian methods applied by other scholars, is that it channels a sea of possible meanings into a single, mainstream interpretation. Since the acclamations, from their origin in Rome through their elaboration in Byzantium, represent a fundamentally religious phenomenon, which does not preclude but rather encompasses the political and juridical, a theological and ritual framework seems the best tool for deepening appreciation of their cultural significance, if not in achieving a final, complete understanding of their meaning and function. 22 The first chapter of Pierre Manent, An Intellectual History of Liberalism (Princeton, 1994), which is entitled ‘Europe and the Theologico-Political Problem’, provides a summary analysis of these issues. In the reign of Constantine VII, the controversy of the tetragamia was still fresh and had been preceded by iconoclasm and the long christological struggles that produced the Henotikon.

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From a liturgical perspective, one can understand coronation, especially once it became Christianized with the addition of anointing and an identification of the sovereign with his Old Testament prototypes, as a sacramental. In many Christian traditions, sacramentals are understood as practices, objects, and rituals that share in and bring to mind the greater sacraments or mysteries of which they are a part. In the West, holy water has myriad uses as a reminder of baptism. In the East, where the division between sacraments and sacramentals is not defined and all are included in the category of mysteries, many thinkers consider life itself to be something like a liturgy.23 In the fully-developed sacramental system of the West, rituals such as baptism and ordination are thought to effect an ontological change on the baptized or ordained.24 The coronation ceremonies of European sovereigns, which include anointing and vesting, are analogous to ordination. With the increasing distinction between Church and State in the West from the year 1000 onwards along with the growth of absolutism, which emphasized the sovereign’s independence from the Church and sole reliance upon God for his dignitas, the sacramental aspect of kingship became obscured and the origins of ‘the secular’ were retrojected deeper and deeper into the past, with classical liberal thinkers tending to identify all monarchies with absolutist ideology and all historical polities as beset by the same political struggles that dominated European politics from the Reformation to the nineteenth century.25 Sidestepping these preoccupations, we may attempt to recover the more complex and essentially liturgical understanding of rulership that the medieval world inherited from antiquity and worked to Christianize in a project that lasted a millennium. One of the chief difficulties in making generalizations about Byzantine political thought is that many scholars feel that it does not exist. The standard narrative posits an unreflective, static, and untheorized body of ideas that was inherited from the Hellenistic kingdoms, given a Christian interpretation in the fourth century, and remained largely unchanged throughout the Byzantine millennium.26 Such narratives, slowly going out of fashion with reference to the medieval West, exert much influence on those both within and outside of the discipline of Byzantine studies and discourage fine-grained research and nuanced approaches to the evidence. This evidence is fairly extensive,27 but it 23 For modern Orthodox approaches to sacramental theology, see Meletios Webber, Bread & Water, Wine & Oil: An Orthodox Christian Experience of God (Chesterton, 2007); Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy (Yonkers, 1973). 24 Contemporary Roman Catholic formulations may be found in Catechismus Catholicae Ecclesiae (Vatican City, 1997), §1228, §1582. 25 Manent traces this trajectory throughout his work and gives a summary of the development from Hobbes to Rousseau in P. Manent, An Intellectual History of Liberalism (1994), 93-4. 26 D.M. Nicol, ‘Byzantine Political Thought’, in J.H. Burns (ed.), The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought c.350-c.1450 (Cambridge, 1988), 49-80. 27 Past scholars have focused on the ‘Mirrors of Princes’, written for the instruction of members of the imperial household, letters and orations addressed to sovereigns, a small corpus of

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is often characterized as being little more than a mass of self-conscious rhetorical exercises that is remarkable chiefly for its lack of originality and a cringing desire to please those in power. So understood, these works constitute ‘a genre, rather than a tradition of thought’.28 More and more, scholars have come to appreciate that this account of Byzantine political thought is an oversimplification. Continental European scholars present a much more nuanced account that explains how, despite an adherence to inherited forms and apparent uniformity of content, changes are significant enough to earn the name ‘development’.29 Continuity of genre and style, in the written word as much as in iconography, disguise the deployment of new ideas in old vesture.30 The articulation of the doctrine of translatio imperii and the renewed emphasis of romanitas in the tenth-century are instances of this phenomenon.31 That external continuity conceals such developments should rather excite our admiration of the Byzantines’ ingenuity than inspire indignation at their lack of originality. To theorize would be to highlight novelty. That Byzantines did not, apparently, theorize, does not mean that they did not think. The discovery of the development of Byzantine political thought from such uncooperative witnesses is a subtle business. But, in the tenth-century compilation literature, there is evidence that, while still implicit, tells us how the Byzantines enacted their political thought, or at least how they thought one ought to do so. De Administrando Imperio, Constantine VII’s manual of statecraft, with its unadorned style, apparently small circulation, and practical aim, has proven a useful source of such reflection for many scholars.32 De Cerimoniis is cast in a similar mold and gives a detailed explication of one of the chief instruments of Byzantine statecraft.33 If such works do indeed grant more direct access to Byzantine political thought and understanding of ceremony, they are political satires, and the prefaces of imperial legislation and compilation literature. This last source has been most famously examined in H. Hunger, Prooimion (1964). 28 D.M. Nicol, ‘Byzantine Political Thought’ (1988), 56. 29 H. Ahrweiler’s L’idéologie politique de l’Empire byzantin (1975) was among the first to present this more balanced view. Dimiter Angelov, Imperial Ideology and Political Thought in Byzantium (1204-1330) (Cambridge, 2007) shows how within certain unchanging parameters, Byzantine political thought showed a high degree of adaptability and flexibility, especially in the later period. For a recent discussion of the status quaestionis, see Paul Magdalino, ‘Forty Years on: The Political Ideology of the Byzantine Empire’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 40 (2016), 17-26. 30 Herbert Hunger, ‘On the Imitation (‘Mimesis’) of Antiquity in Byzantine Literature’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 23 (1969), 15; Hans-Georg Beck, ‘Res Publica Romana: Vom Staatsdenken der Byzantiner’, in Herbert Hunger (ed.), Das byzantinische Herrscherbild (Darmstadt, 1975), 379-414. 31 D.M. Nicol, ‘Byzantine Political Thought’ (1988), 59. 32 Preeminent among these are Romilly Jenkins De Administrando Imperio, vol. 2: Commentary (London, 1962) and Ihor Ševčenko, ‘Re-Reading Constantine Porphyrogenitus’, in Jonathan Shepard, Simon Franklin and Steven Runciman (eds), Byzantine Papers of the Twenty-fourth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Cambridge, March 1990 (Aldershot, 1992), 167-95. 33 As an indication of how highly Constantine VII regarded ceremony, among those things which the Byzantines are never to grant the barbarians in diplomatic negotiations, DAI gives equal

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still indirect and untheorized. The approach must be oblique and progress made through association, analogy, and assumption. We are left with plausible or even probable conclusions, while the thing itself remains enigmatic. Even in the absence of clear, programmatic statements to that effect, it is clear that coronations and other similar accession ceremonies modelled themselves on ordination rites and kept alive ancient conceptions of the priest-king. The fact that the Romans, at least to our knowledge,34 never produced anything like the rich tradition of Christian sacramental theology to explain their own rites should not prevent us from attempting to draw out the assumptions implicit in their ritual practices and of those of their Byzantine successors. As theologians worked to make explicit the implicit meanings of their ecclesiastical rites, there could not but be an instinct to understand the office of the sovereign as being something like that of a priest or bishop. Because ordination is a sacrament, the Christian tradition has understood the clerical state as a perduring, ontological category.35 In a similar and widespread way, the sovereign was no mere officeholder. It is for this reason and not merely for the political danger that they engendered, that deposed kings and emperors had to be killed, mutilated, or forced to enter the monastic state.36 Of the three, death is the most obvious, but tellingly not the most frequently sought option, especially in Byzantium. Apparently inspired by Old Testament conceptions of ritual purity, mutilation rendered a sovereign unfit to perform his duties.37 Reduction, or perhaps elevation, to the monastic state, created a canonical rather than a physical impediment. In either case, it was necessary to alter the being of the emperor, and this alteration was made necessary because of his quasi-ordained status as a particular manifestation of Alter Christus, Christus Rex.38 Although later theological reflection weight to Greek fire and imperial vesture. In the reception of legations in DAI 13, he stresses the need for proper ceremonial in ensuring a good diplomatic outcome. 34 There is considerable difficulty in discussing Roman religion and consequently widely conflicting interpretations among anthropologists. This is due to limited surviving texts, the hostile witness of Christians, and the ambiguous nature of archaeological evidence. See Christopher Smith, ‘The Religion of Archaic Rome’, in Jörg Rüpke (ed.), A Companion to Roman Religion (Malden, 2007), 33-6. 35 Among early sources for the development of this doctrine, Augustine’s interactions with the Donatists and other groups in North Africa are perhaps the most important. The language employed in my discussion is scholastic, which of course comes from a much later period. 36 The example of Richard II will perhaps be the most familiar to English-speaking readers of Shakespeare’s history plays. Relying on late medieval traditions, Shakespeare developed a narrative of pre-Tudor England that doomed Richard’s usurper to leprosy and England to defeat in France and civil war at home. The ‘original sin’ was the deposition and murder of an anointed sovereign. 37 For the influence of Old Testament imagery on Byzantine imperial ideology, especially its rising prominence through the reign of Herakleios, see Claudia Rapp, ‘Old Testament Models for Emperors in Early Byzantium’, in Paul Magdalino and Robert S. Nelson (eds), The Old Testament in Byzantium (Washington, DC, 2010), 175-97. 38 In the West this claim was made most forcefully in the so-called ‘Norman Anonymous’. For a discussion of the two ‘Christi’ in this text, see George Huntston Williams, The Norman Anonymous

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would reject the rites of king-making as a species of ordination, it never lost its status as a consecration, which rather than being a Christian imposition had been an inheritance from republican Rome.39 In both the East and the West such conceptions, blurry and untheorized though they may have been, resulted in the application of these solutions to the problems surrounding a deposed emperor from the seventh through the thirteenth centuries. The frequency of the Byzantines’ recourse to mutilation and forced conversion to the monastic state shows that the old Roman theory of acclamation and de-acclamation had been elaborated with a surrounding medium of Christian ritual precepts. But rather than a contaminating influence or a distracting appendage, the rites, words, and signs from all of these sources worked together and complemented one another to synthesize a Christian, Roman concept of basileia. Central to both Pagan and Christian understandings of legitimate authority was the old Roman term dignitas.40 According to Balsdon, dignitas and auctoritas were ‘very closely linked, the one static, the other dynamic’.41 Relying mainly on Cicero, the chief theorist of Roman republicanism, Balsdon states that power rests with people, auctoritas with the senate, and dignitas with the individual statesman. The legitimate exercise of the people’s power occurs by means of the auctoritas of the senate, to which the dignitas of senators entitles them. Greek writers had considerable difficulty in rendering these last two terms into their language and used ἀξίωμα for both.42 Balsdon uses the example of Caesar to show how in the last century of the republic, the Romans themselves became confused and somewhat anxious about the distinction. Dignitas, which signaled both a conqueror’s military prowess and a nobleman’s traditional qualities of culture, intellect, and prudence, likewise coalesced so that the possessor of one, at least notionally, became endowed with both. Historically, of course, the sword proved mightier than the pen, but even so, the successors of Caesar were concerned to shore up their claims to auctoritas by patronizing culture and monopolizing military glory.43 of 1100 A.D.: Toward the Identification and Evaluation of the So-Called Anonymous of York (Cambridge, 1951), 131-2 and Francis Oakley, The Mortgage of the Past: Reshaping the Ancient Political Inheritance (1050-1300) (New Haven, 2012), 15-41. The deep roots, broad distribution, and long life of the concept of the ‘priest-king’ and its reception in religious and political thought are examined at length in Jean Hani, La royauté sacrée du pharaon au roi très chrétien (Paris, 2010). 39 For the essentially religious character of pre-Christian (and pre-imperial) Roman ceremonial, see S. Price, ‘Noble Funerals’ (1987), 56-105. 40 Christian Gnilka, ‘Dignitas’, Hermes 137 (2009), 190-201. Gnilka focuses on the word’s extended uses in fields such as art and architecture. 41 J.P.V.D. Balsdon, ‘Auctoritas, Dignitas, Otium’, The Classical Quarterly 10 (1960), 45. 42 Ibid. 44. 43 This could be said to have started with Augustus, who relied on Agrippa to subdue his enemies and Maecenas to find and foster artists, using the deeds of his lieutenants to burnish his own image. For a recent discussion, see Peter Mountford, Maecenas (London, 2019), 25-6.

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In the later history of Greek engagement with Roman political structures, the two words ἀξία and ἀξίωμα became synonymous and, tracking Latin usage, came to encompass a wider and wider but still technical range of meanings.44 The Latin terms honos and officium were already invading each other’s semantic domains in the late republic and early empire, encouraging a certain confusion between abstract concepts and political office, or, at a later date, with titles that were once tied to the occupant of a particular office.45 In this milieu, sorting out whether dignitas makes one worthy of holding office, or holding office confers dignitas is likely an unsolvable problem.46 It seems that over time, as emperors became more and more sharers in a type rather than individuals,47 the latter theory came to predominate, insofar as the indirect evidence provided by art and practice indicate. In order to assemble something like a theory of emperor-making, then, we must take an indirect approach focusing on the use of Roman terminology and Hellenistic philosophy by Christian expositors of the liturgy. In perhaps equal measure to many Byzantinists’ aversion to developing a liturgical understanding of East Roman polity, contemporary theologians are largely uninterested in examining the imperial and royal underpinnings of ecclesiastical polity and the Christian sacramental system.48 Just as Byzantine political philosophy has received little attention, so the theology of ordination has inspired much less scholarship than baptism and the eucharist. Despite this, 44 For extensive references, see Emmanuel Kriaras, Λεξικό της Μεσαιωνικής Ελληνικής Δημώδους Γραμματείας 1100-1669 (Thessaloniki, 1968-). 45 C. Gnilka, ‘Dignitas’ (2009), 197-9 traces the development of dignitas, officium, and munus as terms indicating ritual actions, as in the English phrase ‘divine office’, which means the Christian liturgy of the hours. Once again, we see the inseparability of denotation and connotation and of secular and religious aspects of Roman governmental terminology. 46 A similar problem confronts the interpreter of Vergil’s ‘messianic’ eclogue, which some have seen to be almost in places a Latin paraphrase of Isaiah. 47 There is an extensive literature on the increasingly unindividuated ‘portraits’ of the emperors from the third century onward, from which time it seems that stereotyped depictions of bearded generals provided a symbol of continuity in the midst of a tumultuous crisis. On this phenomenon, see Mark Hebblewhite, The Emperor and the Army in the Later Roman Empire, AD 235-395 (London, 2017), 48-50. After the crisis had passed, emperors from the fourth century onwards retained many of the iconographic features, such as the heavenly gaze and hieratic postures, that became familiar in late antique and early medieval art. Julian ‘the Apostate’ famously sported facial hair, which some have seen as an attempt to capitalize on the association of beards both with the solider emperors and philosophers of the pagan past. See Eric R. Varner, ‘Roman Authority, Artistic Authority, and Julian’s Artistic Program’, in Nicholas Baker-Brian and Shaun Tougher (eds), Emperor and Author: The Writings of Julian ‘the Apostate’ (Swansea, 2011), 184-7. For theoretical approaches to this transformation of representation, see Jelena Bogdanovic (ed.), Perceptions of the Body and Sacred Space in Late Antiquity and Byzantium (Basingstoke, 2018). 48 Margaret Barker, Temple Themes in Christian Worship (London, 2008) is indicative of a recent surge of interest in positioning Christian worship in the context of the temple cult of ancient Israel, but the specifically Roman features of early Christianity have been mostly eclipsed since Odo Casel’s theories went out of fashion decades ago.

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it seems that it is precisely in ordination that the Roman and Christian sources of Byzantine thought come together. Foundational for reflection on the meaning of the liturgy for thinkers in both East and West is the mysterious (Pseudo-)Dionysios the Areopagite.49 In the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, the author arranges all of reality into a cosmic order whose existence becomes clear most especially in the context of liturgical celebration.50 This treatise, regarded as having quasi-apostolic authority, forms the basis for almost the entire later liturgical commentary tradition in both East and West. Separating the Christian from the Platonic in the Corpus Dionysiacum and interpreting to what extent the works contained therein constitute a rapprochement between the two traditions or something else entirely has occupied scholars for quite some time, and few matters are settled.51 What can be said is that the Celestial Hierarchy, although problematic from the perspective of later Orthodox tradition, established the genre of liturgical commentary for subsequent writers, most of whom, in sometimes admittedly superficial ways, acknowledged their debt to the reputedly apostolic author. The focus on light as a metaphor for knowledge, as well as the idea that ritual action unites the mundane and the celestial through mimesis, has certain echoes in the preface to De Cerimoniis as well as throughout the tradition of Byzantine philosophy. That these echoes are so widespread makes it difficult to argue for direct influence on any one author or work, but perhaps that is an indication of the success 49 For an orientation, see William K. Riordan, Divine Light: The Theology of Denys the Areopagite (San Francisco, 2008). For a critical edition, see Corpus Dionysiacum, ed. Beate Regina Suchla and Adolf Martin Ritter, 2 vol. (Berlin, 1990). For translations and commentary, see Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, ed. and trans. Colm Luibheid and Paul Rorem (London, 1987). For an extensive commentary with special reference to Pseudo-Dionysios’ reception, see Paul Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius: A Commentary on the Texts and an Introduction to Their Influence (New York, 1993). 50 The work follows the Celestial Hierarchy, which stresses in its second chapter the importance of symbols in the analogical approach to divine knowledge and its third chapter how it is fitting and proper that celestial essences are arranged in a hierarchy and transmit divine illumination in an unbroken chain from God to human beings. Pseudo-Dionysios’ works are more like visions than treatises. The assertions they contain have formed the basis for later, more systematic theological reflection, and connections to Byzantine political and ecclesiastical thought are numerous. Kazhdan probably underestimates the Dionysian influence on later Byzantine thought. A.P. Kazhdan, People and Power in Byzantium: An Introduction to Modern Byzantine Studies (Washington, DC, 1982), 89-91. If it is true, as Kazhdan believes, that Pseudo-Dionysios’ emphasis on hierarchy had limited appeal for the average ‘homo byzantinus’, the same cannot be said for the Byzantine élite, whose daily lives DC was intended to regulate and order. Nadine Schibille argues for considerable Dionysian influence on Byzantine aesthetics and the concept of mimesis in Nadine Schibile, Hagia Sophia and the Byzantine Aesthetic Experience (Farnham, 2014), 6-9. 51 See Rosemary A. Arthur, Pseudo-Dionysius as Polemicist: The Development and Purpose of the Angelic Hierarchy in Sixth Century Syria (Aldershot, 2016), 1-42. For an examination of the development of the Dionysian tradition, especially in the Latin West, see Stephen Gersh, From Iamblichus to Eriugena: An Investigation of the Prehistory and Evolution of the Pseudo-Dionysian Tradition (Leiden, 1978).

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of the Corpus Dionysiacum and the futility of attempting to isolate the Platonic from the Christian, the philosophical from the theological, and the Roman from the Christian. At any rate, later writers can be said to have corrected PseudoDionysios in emphasizing ‘a christocentric salvation history and eschatology and the belief in sacramental realism within the corporate reality of the church’.52 In both its preface and the acclamation cited at the beginning of this paper, Constantine VII can be said to have done something similar with his own concept of basileia, which includes both the empire and the Church in an eschatological Kingdom of God, that are brought together through acclamation. In the East, the most successful representative of the Dionysian tradition in the centuries before Constantine VII was the Mystagogia of St Maximos the Confessor.53 Maximos makes his debt to Pseudo-Dionysios clear in his preface and cites him throughout the remainder of the work.54 The Mystagogia has significant but little-studied connections to Neoplatonic political philosophy, which is itself an almost ignored but vitally important component of Byzantine political thought.55 While the work is complex, it is relatively short, and three of its themes seem particularly applicable to De Cerimoniis: synthesis of contraries, mirror as metaphor, and reciprocal signification. Furthermore, two features of Maximos’ preface resonate with similar themes in Constantine VII’s preface to De Cerimoniis: the ability of ceremony to transform reality. In perhaps his most effusive expression, Maximos states that ‘… the beaming ray of ceremonies, once grasped, becomes understood in proportion to them and draws to itself those who are seized by this desire’.56 Maximos, in describing the contemplation of his predecessor, which he considers to have been inspired by the Holy Spirit, explains that one who, like his teacher and the Areopagite, who both through long experience and divine illumination is able to pass on what he has learned ‘… like a mirror which is not obscured by any stain of the passions, [having] the power of both understanding and speaking about things which others could not perceive’.57 This reflection of heavenly reality in the rites of 52

P. Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius (1993), 124. Translation of Maximos here and below come from Maximus the Confessor, Selected Writings, ed. and trans. George C. Berthold (New York, 1985). The Greek text of the Mystagogia can be found in La mistagogia, ed altri scritti, ed. Raffaele Cantarella (Florence, 1931), 122-214. Following Cantarella, I cite column numbers from PG. 54 Maximos cites Dionysios in his introduction and conclusion and in his discussion of mirrors and reflection. Maximus the Confessor, Selected Writings (1985), 184, 213, 206. 55 For Maximos’ role in christianizing Neoplatonic notions of divinization along with its cosmic and political ramifications, see Dominic J. O’Meara, Platonopolis: Platonic Political Philosophy in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2003), 31. 56 δι’ ὧν συμμέτρως αὐτοῖς ἡ παμφαὴς τῶν τελουμένων ἀκτὶς κατανοουμένη καθίσταται γνώριμος καὶ πρὸς ἑαυτὴν κατέχει τοὺς πόθῳ περιληφθέντας. Myst. Proem (661A). Maximus the Confessor, Selected Writings (1985), 184. 57 καὶ τὸν λόγον ἑρμηνευτὴν ἀκριβέστατον τῶν νοηθέντων· καὶ ἐσόπτρου δίκην ὑπ’ οὐδεμιᾶς κηλίδος παθῶν ἐμποδιζόμενον, ἀκραιφνῶς τὰ ἄλλοις μήτε νοηθῆναι δυνάμενα. Myst. Proem (661C). Ibid. 185. 53

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the Church and its power to educate are just as essential to understanding Constantine VII’s approach to civic ceremonies as they are to Maximos’ liturgical theology. Leaving aside Maximos’ lengthy discussions of metaphysics, it suffices here to say that he divides reality into a series of opposites, the highest level of which are the distinctions intelligible/incorporeal and sensible/corporeal. According to Maximos, through the liturgy, uniquely, this dichotomy is reconciled, and all of reality achieves unity and finds its place in the cosmic order.58 … all things combine with all others in an unconfused way by the singular indissoluble relation to and protection of the one principle and cause. This reality abolishes and dims all their particular relations considered according to each one’s nature, but not by dissolving or destroying them or putting an end to their existence. Rather it does so by transcending them and revealing them, as the whole reveals its parts or as the whole is revealed in its cause by which the same whole and its parts came into being and appearance since they have their whole cause surpassing them in splendor.

This is the core of Maximos’ teaching not only of how liturgy functions, but also of how God relates to creatures, how meaning works, how unity may be found in diversity, how causes and ends become one, and how the past and future unite to form a present that comprehends ‘myriads of differences’ in a ‘universal relationship’.59 As in Constantine VII, ceremony is the means by which the mundane is transformed into something that participates in a heavenly reality. Throughout the individual chapters that follow his lengthy preface, Maximos engages in an interpretive method that can be termed ‘reciprocal signification’. In his first chapter, he argues first that the church (i.e., the building), is an image of man, before arguing that man is also an image of the church, identifying architectural divisions with body parts.60 Thereupon, he says that the Church (i.e., the institution) is an image of God. At the very end of the Mystagogia, Maximos explains how the Church and its liturgy include the faithful and the world in the process of theosis, where God and man unite, and that-which-ismade-in-His-image becomes divine.61 Throughout, Maximos seems determined to upset any attempt at analysis at the expense of synthesis. He provides more of a framework than can be gleaned from Dionysios’ ecstatic vision, but he 58 πάντων πᾶσι κατὰ τὴν μίαν τῆς μόνης ἀρχῆς καὶ αἰτίας ἀδιάλυτον σχέσιν τε καὶ φρουρὰν ἀφύρτως συμπεφυκότων, τὴν πάσας τε καὶ ἐπὶ πᾶσι κατὰ τὴν ἑκάστου τῶν ὄντων φύσιν θεωρουμένας ἰδικὰς σχέσεις καταργοῦσάν τε καὶ ἐπικαλύπτουσαν, οὐ τῷ φθείρειν αὐτὰς καὶ ἀναιρεῖν καὶ μὴ εἶναι ποιεῖν, ἀλλὰ τῷ νικᾷν καὶ ὑπερφαίνεσθαι, ὥσπερ ὁλότης μερῶν, ἢ καὶ αὐτῆς αἰτία τῆς ὁλότητος ἐπιφαινομένη, καθ’ ἣν ἥ τε ὁλότης αὐτὴ καὶ τὰ τῆς ὁλότητος μέρη φαίνεσθαί τε καὶ εἶναι πέφυκεν, ὡς ὅλην ἔχοντα τὴν αἰτίαν ἑαυτῶν ὑπερλάμπουσαν. Myst. 1 (665A). Ibid. 186. 59 τὴν τὰς πολλὰς καὶ ἀμυθήτους περὶ ἕκαστον οὔσας διαφοράς. Myst. 1 (667B). Ibid. 187. 60 Myst. 1-5 (664C-684A). Ibid. 186-95. 61 Myst. 24 (701A-717D). Ibid. 206-13.

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does not provide a conceptually articulated account of how this process works. While one can lament this, one must be content with what Maximos gives us: insight into the formation of the Christian mentality. His work had wide diffusion and a long reception history in both Greek and Latin.62 That the Latin tradition of Maximos starts near the beginning of the tenth century and with imperial sponsorship is surely a sign of the popularity of Maximos’ Mystagogia in the East.63 As an iconodule confessor with strong connections to Old Rome,64 Maximos held strong appeal for the Macedonian dynasty and Constantine VII,65 and the verbal and conceptual echoes we find between the prefaces to the Mystagogia and De Cerimoniis should come as no surprise. One ought, then, to regard the Mystagogia and the wider tradition in which it participates as important sources for uncovering the sometimes implicit and never fully theorized account of the means and end of ceremony in Constantine VII’s compilation. If it is true that the development of theology proceeds not from systematic reflection but rather from the practical need to define orthodoxy and heresy, it should not be surprising that eastern Christian clergy of whatever theological persuasion did not write much of a theoretical nature on ordination. Unlike the West, controversies concerning the sacramental system of the Church and its connections to the clergy have not been hotly contested. Even in the West, questions and answers on these matters did not excite much theological reflection until the sixteenth century.66 Our sources for the theory of ordination are 62

R. Bornert, Les Commentaires byzantins (1966), 123-5. The Corpus Dionysiacum arrived in the West by means of a manuscript sent by Michael II to the court of Charlemagne. Two generations later, Charles the Bald commissioned Latin translations of Maximos’ Dionysian commentaries. For further details, see Deno John Geanakoplos, ‘Some Aspects of the Influence of the Byzantine Maximos the Confessor on the Theology of East and West’, Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 38 (1969), 153-5. For an extensive study of the manuscript tradition and influence of Maximos in the West and the career of his translator, Anastasius, see Bronwen Neil, ‘A Critical Edition of Anastasius Bibliothecarius’ Latin Translation of Greek Documents Pertaining to the Life of Maximus the Confessor, with an Analysis of Anastasius’ Translation Methodology, and an English Translation of the Latin Text’ (Ph.D. diss., Australian Catholic University, 1998). 64 For Maximos’ period in Rome and his association with Pope Martin I, see Pauline Allen, ‘Life and Times of Maximus the Confessor’, in Pauline Allen and Bronwen Neil (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Maximus the Confessor (Oxford, 2015), 3-18. 65 For Maximos’ reception in Byzantium, see Andrew Louth, ‘Maximus the Confessor’s Influence and Reception in Byzantine and Modern Orthodoxy’, in Pauline Allen and Bronwen Neil (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Maximus the Confessor (Oxford, 2015), 502-4. Louth identifies Photios as the first Byzantine to engage deeply with Maximos’ works. From there, it is not difficult to argue for the influence of Maximian thought on the Macedonians, given the close association of Photios with several of the works produced under the names of Basil I and Leo VI. 66 In fact, the episcopate was not defined as an ordo until Vatican II. For the historical development of the concept in the West see the commentary on Can. 1009 § 1 in Ernest Caparros, Michel Thériault, Jean Thorn and Helene Aube (eds), The Code of Canon Law Annotated (Montreal, 1993), 633. 63

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therefore neither particularly eastern nor particularly ancient. Outside of a few lines in scripture and early examples of what would become canon law, the sources are ritual or liturgical.67 Bradshaw, whose work on the topic is fundamental, argues that despite their wide textual variance, the sources present ‘a common ritual pattern’.68 This pattern includes the presentation of the ordinand and his pronouncement of as ἄξιος by the people, a prayer that God will supply him with the faculties he needs to carry out the duties of his office, prayers by the people and the consecrating bishop, the sign of the cross, the exchange of a ritual kiss, the celebration of the eucharist, and, in the case of a bishop, the traditio instrumentorum, or the handing over of the symbols of office to the ordinand.69 Many of these features are present also in the rite for the coronation of an emperor as described in De Cerimoniis,70 and the resemblance between these two forms of inauguration is strong enough to argue that they are the products of a common mentality, even if they do not spring from a common source. Dagron has provided a reconstruction of the tenth-century rite of coronation, essentially an expanded and glossed version of the ceremony described in De Cerimoniis.71 With his usual candor, Dagron says of the ceremony that, ‘it is all very disappointing’ and ‘valuable chiefly for the critique it inspires’.72 Dagron had wanted evidence for the reconstruction of a Byzantine theory of secular or civic power, and instead Constantine VII provided him with a bare account of a ceremony that Dagron considers to have been wholly taken over by the Church. Perhaps what Dagron was looking for never existed, or at least was not of interest to Constantine VII. If one does look at the structure of the rite, one sees not only similarities but direct verbal echoes. For instance, both the ordination and the coronation center on the pronouncement of the candidate as ἄξιος, and both have the repetition of the polychronion, the ancient acclamation for the Roman emperor. The word ἄξιος (lat. dignus) has a curious connection with the anaphora of the eucharistic liturgy and its analogue in the Roman Rite, the preface. During this prayer, which precedes the celebration of the eucharist proper, the celebrant makes a series of proclamations and then invites the people to approve his statements, which they do with the word ἄξιον/dignum. Thereupon, the choir chants the triple acclamation ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’, which in Latin is called the Sanctus, and in Greek bears the significant name, ἐπινίκιος ὕμνος, or ‘hymn of victory’.73 Dagron notices 67 The handiest exposition of this material is in Paul F. Bradshaw, Rites of Ordination: Their History and Theology (Collegeville, 2013), 82-105. 68 Ibid. 83. 69 Ibid. 83. 70 DC R191-95. 71 Gilbert Dagron, Emperor and Priest: The Imperial Office in Byzantium (Cambridge, 2003), 54-5. 72 Ibid. 55. 73 For a discussion of the connection between the Byzantine triumph ritual and epinikia, see M. McCormick, Eternal Victory (1986), 195-6.

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the chanting of the Sanctus, but he does not attempt to connect it with a wider liturgical understanding of the rite. He is more interested in charting how the word ἅγιος came to be closely associated with the imperial office and, in his view, came to mean something like ‘legitimate’,74 and in itself not so different from Kaldellis’ interpretation of the meaning of the pair ἄξιος/ἀνάξιος.75 While Dagron is certainly correct that granting or withholding the title ἅγιος to a Byzantine emperor has something to do with his legitimacy, he seems rather to underestimate the ritual importance of the term. When he does discuss it, he links ἅγιος to unction and an Old Testament conception of kingship, arguing against any particularly Christian meaning for the term. In the context of the tenth-century ceremony described in De Cerimoniis, there can be no connection to unction, since this practice appears to have been adopted from the West sometime after 1204.76 That the Sanctus appears so closely tied to the practice of acclamation, the proclamation ἄξιος, and the act of consecration,77 whether of the eucharistic gifts or of a new emperor, is surely sufficient to argue that the term had also a Christian meaning in the rite of coronation. So far, we have given some indication of how knotty the problem of mutual influence in the imperial and ecclesiastical rites of inauguration is and how we must be content with finding resonances rather than proving formal descent. At any rate, for the middle Byzantine period, in the case of both the ordination of clergy and the rite of coronation, what evidence we have is ritual. To discover what the theology of ordination was in the first millennium, scholars must analyze rites rather than treatises. Likewise, to understand how medieval East Romans understood the office of the emperor, Byzantinists must look at ceremonies rather than positive statements. In the relatively small literature devoted to ordination in general one finds little concern to situate the ‘data,’ that is the textual witnesses that have come down to us, in their historical context. When writers, whether ancient or modern, look outside of the Christian tradition, they seek to find continuity with Jewish worship.78 While this emphasis has fostered a tradition of typological reflection 74 A note to G. Dagron, Emperor and Priest (2003), 55 directs the reader to a discussion of the use of the term on 155-6. 75 See A. Kaldellis, The Byzantine Republic (2015), 135, 149. For a critique of Kaldellis, see Nicholas Matheou, ‘City and Sovereignty in East Roman Thought’, in Nicholas S.M. Matheou, Theofili Kampianaki and Lorenzo M. Bondioli (eds), From Constantinople to the Frontier: The City and the Cities (Leiden, 2016), 50-9. 76 See Ruth Macrides, ‘Trial by Ordeal in Byzantium: On Whose Authority’, in Pamela Armstrong (ed.), Authority in Byzantium (Farnham, 2013), 33-4. 77 Dagron’s point of view is particularly surprising in light of the fact that a little later in his discussion, he refers to the ‘cheirotoneia’ of the emperor, which he is careful to translate as ‘consecration’. G. Dagron, Emperor and Priest (2003), 57. 78 For example, Alceste Catella positions the New Testament and Jewish/Old Testament background of the rite but does not discuss the Roman background. Alceste Catella, ‘L’evoluzione dei modelli rituali della liturgia di ordinazione’, in Le liturgie di ordinazione: atti della XXIV Settimana di studio dell’Associazione professori di liturgia, Loreto (AN), 27 agosto-1 settembre 1995 (Roma, 1996), 17.

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over the centuries, it perhaps has diminished or occluded the Roman dimension of early Christian worship.79 Especially in contemporary discussions of the early church, the Roman Empire is constructed as ‘other’, an antagonist and persecutor.80 For the many early Christians who called themselves Romans, and especially for those in both East and West who became Christian in the fourth century or later and continued to identify as Roman long after most contemporary historians would recognize the end of that empire, this animosity towards Rome would surely be perplexing. But they, doubtless unconsciously, remained Romans after their baptism, and went about baptizing Romanitas just as surely as they Romanized their Christianity. The rites of election, whether of a Christian priest or of a Roman emperor, have enough resemblance to be said to follow a common ritual pattern. In the absence of evidence, it is probably impossible to untangle the tightly woven textual strands of priority, ‘contamination’, and mutual influence, but the resemblance in both words and actions between the two rites is too close to be coincidental. Without bothering overmuch with questions of priority, it suffices to say that the rite of coronation in De Cerimoniis and the ordination rites of the Christian church are the products of a process of mutual enrichment, whereby ritual actions, political concepts, philosophical notions, and theological doctrines have been stitched together to form the texture of middle Byzantine ceremony. And yet, we still desire more clarity than a catalogue of similarities could provide. Bradshaw warns against ‘applying to the rites a completely Western and anachronistic sacramental theology’.81 But if we want some theoretical precision, we have no choice but to look for a later and western thinker whose thought, we hope, will not be completely alien to that of tenth-century Byzantium. In Peter Lombard’s treatment of the sacraments in Book IV of his Sententiae, he provides something like the first systematic exposition of ordination in the Christian 79

Students of the history of Christian liturgy have focused on the connections between the practice of the ancient synagogue while those more interested in symbolism look towards the temple. Both approaches sidestep the question of the Roman setting of early Christian worship. In the early twentieth century, Odo Casel helped to found what he termed Mysterientheologie, and sought to identify certain aspects of Christian worship with ancient mystery cults, but his approach has attracted comparatively few followers in the years since his death. For his work and its reception, see André Gozier, Odo Casel, Künder des Christusmysteriums (Regensburg, 1986). 80 Margaret Barker discusses the difficulty in early Christian thought of untangling the relationship between Jerusalem, Rome, the Whore of Babylon, and the New Jerusalem in the context of the destruction of the temple and the highly symbolic language of Revelation. Margaret Barker, Temple Themes in Christian Worship (London, 2007), 49-50. The question of Rome as persecutor becomes especially problematic after Constantine’s conversion and with the contests over the Roman past that raged at Rome and in Constantinople for the remainder of the fourth century. For them it was probably impossible to settle on just one set of meanings, identities, and loyalties, and it must be the same for students of these questions today. At least in the minds of imperial propagandists, by the early seventh century at the latest, the Roman Empire had become synonymous and coterminous with Christendom. 81 P. Bradshaw, Rites of Ordination (2013), 87-8.

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tradition.82 Peter Lombard draws on a wide variety of scriptural, patristic, and legal authorities, and his work became foundational for later scholastic theology. As such, the Lombard represents something like the middle term between the apologetic and didactic theology of the first millennium and the theoretical and systematic theology of the following centuries. Given a dearth of Byzantine models,83 we must rely on a western thinker to present an account of ordination that still breaths the air of the fathers in a milieu where scholasticism is still nascent and the schism between East and West has not entered into the discourse and identities of the Christian faithful. Peter Lombard’s most recent editor, Giulio Silano, situates the Lombard’s treatment of sacred orders as trinitarian, sacramental, and founded on a typological understanding of the Old Testament.84 Such a framework does not take into account the specifically Roman milieu that Peter Lombard’s repeated use of terms like dignus and officium produce; and yet, this is no doubt an accurate reflection of Peter Lombard’s way of thinking. All people suffer from confirmation bias, and the Christian mind has been trained to think in liturgical and scriptural terms, just as many historians have difficulty seriously considering aspects beyond the social and economic. That the Lombard’s theory of sacred orders may have been unconsciously Roman does not make it less Roman. In fact, that both the Lombard and his modern editor do not remark on it is a good argument for the thorough domestication of Roman governmental structures and concepts as essential elements of ecclesiastical polity. Peter Lombard’s theory is briefly that a cleric is chosen by lot,85 receives tonsure to mark his passage into the clerical state, and obtains dignity, office, 82 At least as far back as Jerome, understanding Christian orders as being fulfillments of and in continuity with the clergy of the Jewish temple had been common (Ep. 146.2). So already, there is the elision of the Roman in favor of the Semitic. This is similar to the ‘Donation of Constantine’, which famously attempts to appear Roman but mistakenly casts the emperor’s retinue as temple priests and oriental satraps derived from Old Testament accounts. Further, Jerome states that ‘You see then that the blessedness of a bishop, priest, or deacon, does not lie in the fact that they are bishops, priests, or deacons, but in their having the virtues which their names and offices imply’ (Contra Iovinianum 1.35.). This is essentially identical with the understanding of the power of offices and titles to confer dignitas that we observed in an ever-increasing way from the Roman republic through the imperial period. 83 Yury Avvakumov, ‘Sacramental Ritual in Middle and Later Byzantine Theology: NinthFifteenth Centuries’, in Hans Boersma and Matthew Levering (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Sacramental Theology (Oxford, 2016), 249-66. Avvakumov speaks about the problems in producing a (neo)scholastic account of Byzantine sacramentology but shows that the Byzantines themselves were reluctant ‘to engage in constructing an academic sacramentology’. As in the case of Byzantine political philosophy, it is not that there was no thinking; it is that their thinking was less systematic than students of western theology and philosophy suppose it should have been. And yet, the urge for us to systematize today remains strong. 84 Giulio Silano (ed.), The Sentences, Book 4: On the Doctrine of Signs (Toronto, 2010), xxxviii-xliv. 85 Peter Lombard cites the book of Acts through Isidore, ‘Mathias electus est sorte’ (Sent. 4.3).

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and power from God which then becomes indelible and independently operative. This is not so different from the Roman and Hellenistic theories of election by τύχη/felicitas.86 In fact, it aligns well with Bradshaw’s account of ordination, the rite of coronation as described by Constantine Porphyrogennetos, and Kaldellis’ discussion of the Byzantine theory of elective monarchy.87 This last term is problematic because the term χειροτονία used for ‘election’ in classical Greek means ‘ordination’ in medieval and contemporary Christian usage.88 To say that χειροτονία is what makes a man into a cleric or emperor does not clear up whether one is speaking of the democratic process of voting or of the hieratic practice of laying on of hands. Even if we accept that something like ‘election’ is meant in either context, we must be wary of ascribing present conceptions of democracy to a past culture. Bradshaw cautions: The important place accorded to the election of a candidate for ordination in early Christianity should not be understood as pointing to some notion of the ideal of democracy, nor, at least at first, to the principle that congregation had the right to choose its own ministers. Nor was it seen as in any way opposed to the divine calling of a minister, but on the contrary it was understood as the means by which God’s choice of a person for a particular ecclesiastical office was discerned and made manifest. As both patristic writings and the prayers of in the rites themselves make clear, it was always considered that it was God who chose and ordained the ministers through the action of the church. There was thus no dichotomy between actions ‘from below’ and ‘from above’.89

The election and acclamation ratifies a choice already made in Heaven. Vox populi, vox dei. Perhaps the spilling of one category into the other is intentional. Peter Lombard goes so far as to refer to the tonsure as a royal coronation,90 and he was by no means alone in interpreting the rite in this manner. The difficulty that both the Roman-Hellenistic theory of kingship and the Christian theory of ordination encountered was in explaining how lesser beings could create a greater, i.e., how the ruled could confer the right to rule on their ruler. In the later, western 86 For the development of the concepts sacramentum, virtus, and felicitas from the first to fourth centuries with special reference to the imperial office, see Paul Stephenson, Constantine: Roman Emperor, Christian Victor (New York, 2010), 73-4. 87 For Kaldellis’ understanding of basileia, see A. Kaldellis, The Byzantine Republic (2015), 114. 88 Bradshaw argues that the ambivalence of the term inspired the elaboration of the rite. Significantly, he draws a parallel to the use of ordo and ordinare in the Latin West. Paul F. Bradshaw, Ordination Rites of the Ancient Churches of East and West (New York, 1990), 34. For the development of these terms, see Pierre van Beneden, Aux origines d’une terminologie sacramentelle: ordo, ordinare, ordinatio dans la littérature chrétienne avant 313 (Louvain, 1974) and Pierre van Beneden, ‘Ordo. Über den Ursprung einer kirchlichen Terminologie’, Vigiliae Christianae 23 (1969), 161-76. 89 P. Bradshaw, Rites of Ordination (2013), 83-4. 90 ‘Corona regale decus significat’.

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tradition, the sacraments were understood as being instruments of ‘dispositive grace’.91 In this conception, a sacrament, offered by human hands to human beings, channels the divine and puts the recipient in the proper disposition to receive grace while acting as the medium through which the grace is communicated from the divine to the human. There are many instances already in classical Latin where dignitas is used as a synonym for natura and proprietas.92 It seems even more fitting then, that the rite should serve as the tertium quid that bridges an otherwise insurmountable divide, making emperors, kings, and priests out of common men by supplying them with dignitas and altering their natura. The concept of dignitas is central to Peter Lombard’s discussion of ordination. The words dignus, digne, decet, decus, indignus, and indigne appear frequently, as do terms such as rex and regere.93 Christians are wont to place this discourse in the typological framework of Melchisedech, temple worship, and the royal priesthood of Jesus Christ, but in doing so they may miss the Roman background that provides the terminology for the discourse. Peter, though a medieval Christian and a ‘Lombard’, writes about the authority and legitimacy of the clergy in antique, Roman terms. Nor is this phenomenon limited to the Latin West. Even today, during the ordination rite in eastern Christian churches, the congregation acclaims the ordinand as ἄξιος. Precisely the same word is used by the people to greet the emperor on his taking of power in De Cerimoniis.94 It would be highly tendentious to attempt to untangle the relationship and decide if here we have the ‘liturgification’ of an imperial ceremony or the ‘imperialization’ of an ecclesiastical rite. What does seem certain is that in the context of the Christian Empire, there was parallel development and mutual enrichment in the ceremonies of both Church and State, the elements of which would be less meaningful if removed from their synthetic context. In returning to the coronation described in De Cerimoniis, it is striking that the emperor is referred to as βασιλεύς before he is crowned, and that throughout this chapter (DC R191-6), Constantine VII or his compiler uses the terms δεσπότης, αὐτοκράτωρ, and αὔγουστος indiscriminately. Furthermore, the emperor is referred to as νεοχειροτόνητος, which the English translators render as ‘newly appointed’, but that in the context of coronation of course could mean ‘newly elected’ or ‘newly consecrated’, depending on which of this multivalent term’s meanings best suit an interpreter’s favored discourse. In both cases, there is a perhaps intentional interruption of expected temporal relationships. Calling the emperor an emperor before his crowning implies that the 91 See Charles J. Cronin, ‘The Causality (Dispositive) of the Sacraments’, American Ecclesiastical Review 25 (1901), 33-46, especially 42-3. 92 C. Gnilka, ‘Dignitas’ (2009), 195-6. 93 Sent. 4.24. 94 DC R191-6.

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coronation, at least in the mind of the author of De Cerimoniis, is a recognition of an already existing state rather than the process whereby the state is enacted. The piling up of near synonyms from across the history of the Greek language along with this temporal dislocation has the effect of blurring the succession of events. The adjective νεοχειροτόνητος is interesting both semantically and syntactically. In an ecclesial context, the same word would be translated ‘newly ordained’.95 The -τος ending, often confused with the so-called ‘Greek gerundive’ in -τέος, can function as perfect passive but often connotes possibility or futurity.96 Even in a meta-ritual text, such as De Cerimoniis, distinctions between the eternal and the temporal along with the civic and ecclesial fade into the background. Returning to mundane time, the action of the rite, though still in the church, shifts to the people. They now proclaim the emperor as ἄξιος and then continue with a series of acclamations. If one were to permit some anachronism and import later, western, scholastic conceptions of consecration into the tenth-century Byzantine milieu, it appears that ἄξιος is the word that effects the change and makes a man into an emperor. Whenever and however the process of emperor-making began, it is now indisputably over, and the emperor, crowned by God’s own hand in the person of the patriarch, having received the obeisance of civil and military elites, and the approbation of the people, assumes his place at the head of this and all future ceremonies. How does the utterance of ἄξιος create this new state of affairs? In recent times, words that perform a function have been termed ‘speech acts’.97 Speech acts can be mundane or sublime and play a key role in ritual language. The traditional English marriage service provides a ready example with the short phrase ‘I do’, which, when uttered by two consenting and unimpeded adults, results in their sacramental transformation into spouses. After this ceremony, the state has the newlyweds perform a second, inaudible speech act when they sign their marriage license, and they become legally entitled to the rights, duties, and privileges of the married state. A question immediately arises as to whether utterances actually do something. Are they merely ceremonies, empty rituals that are quaint survivals of a more primitive time that have somehow retained a footing in an age of disenchantment? Is all human action economic, taking shape within social hierarchies, and any claims to spiritual cause and effect mere ideological posturing? For many scholars, it would seem so. But even in the most secular civil marriage proceeding, ritual considerations are paramount. The theatrical mise-en-scène of the courtroom, the ritual procession and acclamation of the bailiff, and even the vestments of the presiding judge Compare χειροτονία, the word for Christian ordination. See Herbert Smyth, Greek Grammar (Cambridge, MA, 1956), § 471-2. 97 J.L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words: The William James Lectures Delivered at Harvard Univ. in 1955 (Cambridge, 1962) is the classic in the field and has given rise to a rich tradition of scholarship. 95 96

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are not simply window dressing but are essential features of the enactment of a ceremony that has real legal consequences, affecting the distribution of wealth and power of both the individuals involved and society as a whole. Although it is impossible to measure materially the difference between a single person and a married one, it is indisputable that the invisible action of the ritual speech acts that result in the married state, whether performed in a church or a courtroom, have real and measurable effects. In his preface to De Cerimoniis, Constantine VII says that his goal is to recover taxis by using ceremony to restore orderly government and human flourishing to his empire.98 It seems that it would be difficult to settle quantitatively whether Constantine was successful, but at least one scholar has pointed to the increase in the celebration of triumphs and of imperial ceremonies in general in the decades following Constantine’s reign as evidence of the success of the project.99 It is probably impossible to make a quantitatively verifiable link between the great military success and economic expansion that Byzantium enjoyed in the following century and this restoration, but their coincidence suggests that ritual taxis and military nike had something more than an accidental relationship. The Christianized practice of inauguration, as recorded in Constantine VII’s De Cerimoniis, is a primary locus for observing the interaction of the Roman and Christian elements in Byzantine culture. Standing chronologically at the midpoint between the conceptual development of liturgical catechesis and an articulated liturgical theology, De Cerimoniis reveals that Christians became Romans just as Romans became Christians. Having explored the redeployment of Roman terminology to describe Christian ordination while documenting the echoes of Christian thought in tenth-century celebrations of Roman practices, we see that the Byzantines, in continuity with both strands of their tradition, understood acclamations to have real power to effect a transformation of individuals and society as a whole into something greater than themselves as participants in the millennial history of Rome and partakers in the fulfillment of a prefigured eschatological kingdom.

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DC R5. M. McCormick, Eternal Victory (1986), 175.

NACHLEBEN

Grace or Joy? Chrysostom’s Contradictory Reception by Calvin in his Commentary on 2Cor. 1:15 and Phlm. 1:7 Jeannette KREIJKES, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands / KU Leuven, Belgium1

ABSTRACT John Chrysostom has been characterised as John Calvin’s (1509-64) exegetical tutor. Common arguments for this depiction include the fact that Calvin wrote a preface for his planned translation of several homilies of Chrysostom, as well as the fact that Chrysostom is the most frequently cited church father in Calvin’s New Testament commentaries. In the foreword, Calvin expresses his appreciation of the simplicitas that, in his observation, characterises Chrysostom’s exegesis. However, when he refers to Chrysostom’s understanding of biblical passages, Calvin’s knowledge of Chrysostom’s interpretations is often superficial. Moreover, Calvin regularly disagrees with Chrysostom’s conclusions. The two case studies, Chrysostom’s expositions of 2Cor. 1:15 and that of Phlm. 1:7, demonstrate both Calvin’s superficial knowledge of Chrysostom’s explanation of the Bible verses, as well as his inconsistent evaluation of Chrysostom’s work. In both verses, there is a text-critical problem. In 2Cor. 1:15, some manuscripts have χαράν (‘joy’) instead of χάριν (‘benefit’, ‘grace’). Also, Chrysostom and Calvin use different text variants of Phlm. 1:7. Chrysostom explicitly argues that χάριν in 2Cor. 1:15 means χαράν but does not question χαράν in his text of Phlm. 1:7. Calvin is not convinced by Chrysostom’s preference for χάριν over χαράν in 2Cor. 1:15 and argues that one should take χάριν as ‘benefit’ or ‘grace’. However, when he comments on Phlm. 1:7 – Calvin’s Bible has χάριν – the Reformer wants to explain χάριν as χαράν. He supports this choice by referring to Chrysostom’s interpretation of 2Cor. 1:15, where the church father also takes χάριν to mean χαράν. This essay shows that although Calvin wants the reader to believe that he engages with Chrysostom’s exegesis, he is not extensively dependent on it. Since Calvin, at best, only consults Chrysostom’s interpretations rather than devotedly following them, the prevailing view of Chrysostom’s position as Calvin’s exegetical tutor must be nuanced. Much like some of Calvin’s contemporaries, e.g., Erasmus, Calvin often merely mentions Chrysostom’s interpretations without demonstrating any evidence that he has deeply engaged with the church father’s exegesis. 1 The ongoing Ph.D. research on which this essay is based has received funding from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO, Doctoral Grant for Teachers, grant agreement number 023.004.106). In addition, I am grateful to Dr. Raymond A. Blacketer for his useful suggestions and comments on a previous version of this essay.

Studia Patristica CXXX, 429-434. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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1. Introduction How was John Chrysostom’s exegesis appropriated in the sixteenth century, more specifically, by Reformer John Calvin? Two case studies form the starting point to answer this question: Chrysostom’s interpretation of 2Cor. 1:15 and that of Phlm. 1:7. Many exegetes have pored over 2Cor. 1:15 (‘Because I was confident of this, I wanted to visit you first so that you might benefit [χάριν] twice’).2 In this verse, Paul explains a previous plan to visit Corinth so that the Corinthians ‘might benefit twice.’ Unlike Luke, Paul does not often use the word χάρις in the sense of ‘benefit’. An early solution was for a copyist to change χάριν (‘grace’) into χαράν (‘joy’).3 Χαράν appears as an alternate reading in the critical apparatus on 2Cor. 1:15 in NA28. On Phlm. 1:7 (‘Your love has given me great joy [χαράν] and encouragement, because you, brother, have refreshed the hearts of the Lord’s people’), the reverse is true: χάριν appears in the critical apparatus as an alternative for χαράν in the text. When he exposits 2Cor. 1:15, Chrysostom interprets χάριν (‘benefit’) as χαράν (‘joy’). Calvin does not follow Chrysostom in doing so.4 In his exposition of Phlm. 1:7, Chrysostom’s quotation of the Bible verse has χαράν. When Calvin explains Phlm. 1:7 – in Calvin’s version, the verse reads χάριν – he approvingly cites Chrysostom’s explanation of χάριν in 2Cor. 1:15 as joy.5 The main question this essay aims to answer is: which interests and contextual factors might have coloured Calvin’s inconsistent evaluations of Chrysostom’s exegesis? The following sub questions are subsequently addressed: 1) How does Calvin employ Chrysostom’s understanding of χάριν and χαρὰν in his comments on 2Cor. 1:15 and Phlm. 1:7, 2) Which interests and contextual factors contributed to Calvin’s different evaluations of Chrysostom’s position?

2. Calvin’s Use of Chrysostom’s Exegesis in His Comments on 2Cor. 1:15 and Phlm. 1:7 First, the question needs to be answered whether Calvin makes text-critical or interpretive assessments. These two issues are clearly interrelated, as this essay will further confirm. At first glance, Calvin seems to focus on the text-critical aspect when he states regarding χάριν in 2Cor. 1:15: ‘If anyone prefers to follow 2 Gordon D. Fee, To What End Exegesis?: Essays Textual, Exegetical, and Theological (Grand Rapids, 2001), 99. 3 Ibid. 100-1. 4 John Calvin, Comm. IICor. 1:15 (COR II/xv.25). 5 Id., Comm. Phlm. 1:7 (CO 52.443).

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Chrysostom and read χαράν [‘joy’] instead of χάριν [‘benefit’] I have no great objection but my own explanation is simpler.’6 Field’s rendering of Chrysostom’s explanation of 2Cor. 1:15 can be translated as: ‘What is a second benefit? That you might have a double benefit [χάριν], both the benefit from my writings and that from my presence. By “benefit” Paul here means joy [χαράν].’7 Thus, Paul uses the term χάριν but means χαράν. However, Calvin considers it simpler to understand χάριν in its proper sense (‘benefit’). Chrysostom’s explanation is not based on a variant reading but on his understanding of Paul. Calvin also focuses on the meaning of the word χάριν. This observation makes it more plausible that Calvin refers to Chrysostom for exegetical rather than for text-critical reasons. As for Phlm. 1:7, two modern English translations of Calvin’s explanation offer contrasting impressions of whether Calvin considers the choice of either χάριν or χαράν a text-critical question or a question of interpretation. The fact that Calvin assumes χάριν (‘grace’) instead of χαράν (‘joy’) to be the Greek original of Phlm. 1:7 is demonstrated by his Latin translation of the clause at issue: gratiam habemus (‘we have benefit / grace’).8 In the 1856 translation of Calvin’s Commentary on Philemon, Pringle clearly takes it as a text-critical issue. He translates Calvin’s statement as, ‘Although this reading is found in the majority of Greek copies, yet I think that it ought to be translated joy; for, since there is little difference between χάριν and χαράν, it would be easy to mistake a single letter. Besides, Paul elsewhere employs the word χάριν to mean “joy”; at least, if we believe Chrysostom on this matter.’9 This translation implies that, although the majority of texts have χάριν, Calvin interprets it as χαράν. Pringle’s translation suggests that Calvin thinks χάριν has slipped into the text as a copyist’s mistake.

6 Id., Comm. IICor. 1:15 (COR II/xv.25); trans. T.A. Smail, The Second Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians and the Epistles to Timothy, Titus and Philemon, ed. David W. Torrance and Thomas F. Torrance (Grand Rapids, 1996 [reprint of 1964 ed.]), 18. 7 John Chrysostom, In 2Cor. hom. 3 (2Cor. 1:15), (Field: 1845, 36, D-E): Τί ἐστι, δευτέραν; Ἵνα διπλῆν χάριν ἔχητε, καὶ τὴν διὰ τῶν γραμμάτων, καὶ τὴν διὰ τῆς παρουσίας. Χάριν δὲ ἐνταῦθα χαρὰν λέγει.; trans. NPNF 1, vol. 12, 288, slightly modified. If Calvin derived the reference from a Latin translation the text would be similar. The sixteenth-century Paris edition of Chrysostom’s works (Divi Ioannis Chrysostomi Archiepiscopi Constantinopolitani Opera, 5 vol. [Paris, 1536], book 4, fol. 163r°, E) has: Porro gratiam hic appellat gaudium. See the Latin translation in PG, which has: Per gratiam porro hoc loco laetitiam intellegit (J. Chrysostom, In 2Cor. hom. 3.2 [2 Cor. 1:15] [PG 61, 408]). 8 See J. Calvin, Comm. Phlm. 1:7 (CO 52.443): Tametsi apud Graecos receptior est haec lectio: vertendum tamen censeo, gaudium. Nam quia inter χάριν et χαρὰν parum est discriminis, proclive fuit in una litera hallucinari:deinde alibi χάριν pro gaudio usurpat Paulus, si tamen Chrysostomo creditur. 9 J. Calvin, Comm. Phlm. 1:7 (CO 52.443); trans. William Pringle, Commentaries on the Epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon (Edinburgh, 1856), 351.

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Unlike Pringle’s translation, Smail’s rendition, first published in 1964, makes no mention of Greek copies, although the word ‘rendering’ can be understood as either the establishment of the text itself or as the translation. He translates the first sentence as follows, ‘Although the Greek prefers the rendering “grace”, I think we should translate it as joy. For there is little difference between χάριν and χαράν, and it would be easy to change a single letter by mistake. Besides this is not the only passage in Paul in which χάριν means joy, at least, if we follow Chrysostom on this matter.’10 Thus, in Smail’s translation, the reference to Chrysostom is a matter of interpretation: both χάριν and χαράν can be translated as ‘joy’. Given that both the translations of Pringle and Smail can be defended, Chrysostom’s exegesis helps us to understand Calvin’s statement. Chrysostom’s focus on interpretation becomes clear from his quotation of Phlm. 1:7 as presented in Field that has χαράν.11 Chrysostom expounds this verse as follows: ‘Nothing so shames a person into action than to bring up the favours they have done for others, and especially when one is more worthy of respect than they are. And he did not say, “If you do something for them, do much more for me”. But he hinted at the same thing, though he used a different, gentler method. That is, “You have given me confidence by means of the things you did for others”’.12 Calvin, whose text has χάριν, does not seem to have been aware of Chrysostom’s assumption that the text of Phlm. 1:7 reads χαράν. Calvin’s unawareness of Chrysostom’s text variant indicates that Calvin did not have the Greek text or even a Latin translation13 of Chrysostom’s exposition of Phlm. 1:7 in front of him when he was making reference to Chrysostom’s exegesis. He might have cited Chrysostom’s position from his earlier reference to Chrysostom on 2Cor. 1:15. Therefore, Calvin’s reference to Chrysostom on Phlm. 1:7 has mainly to do with interpretation. Given that the border between interpretation and text-critical issues is porous, the observation that an interpretation question is at stake does not necessarily exclude any reflection by Calvin on the Greek text itself. Instead, acknowledging that the text argues for the translation ‘grace’, Calvin briefly and implicitly considers the possibility of a text-critical problem. However, Chrysostom’s 10 J. Calvin, Comm. Phlm. 1:7 (CO 52.443); trans. Smail, The Second Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, 395. 11 J. Chrysostom, In Phlm. hom. 2 (Phlm. 1:7), (Field: 1856, 336, F): Χαρὰν γὰρ ἔχομεν καὶ πολλὴν παράκλησιν ἐπὶ τῇ ἀγάπῃ σου, ὅτι τὰ σπλάγχνα τῶν ἁγίων ἀναπέπαυται διὰ σοῦ ἀδελφέ.; trans. NPNF 1, vol. 13, 550, slightly modified: ‘For we have [I had] great joy and consolation in your love, because the bowels [hearts] of the Saints are refreshed by you, brother.’ 12 J. Chrysostom, In Phlm. hom. 2 (Phlm. 1:7), (Field: 1856, 336, F); unpublished trans. Raymond A. Blacketer. 13 The Latin translation in PG (J. Chrysostom, In Phlm. hom. 2.1 [Phlm. 1:7] [PG 62, 709]) has Gaudium enim habemus, which corresponds to the translation in the sixteenth-century Chevallon edition available to Calvin (CHEV, book 4, fol. 291r°, B).

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explanation of 2Cor. 1:15 now helps him to solve the problem in the most natural way: interpreting χάριν as ‘joy’ instead of as ‘benefit’, despite his earlier reluctance to use Chrysostom’s exegesis of 2Cor. 1:15. Unlike Erasmus, who obviously pondered different text variants, Calvin does not openly reflect on which textual variant was received by various interpreters throughout history. Without mentioning Erasmus, Calvin’s observation that Paul also uses χάριν in another passage to mean ‘joy’ corresponds to one of Erasmus’ arguments. Erasmus claims to have made an annotation elsewhere to the effect that, in Paul’s writings, χάριν can also be understood as χαράν.14 Explaining 2Cor. 1:15, Erasmus states that χάριν can be understood as χαράν and refers to Chrysostom.15 The striking parallel between Calvin’s and Erasmus’ references to Chrysostom illustrates that Chrysostom’s explanation was, or at least could be, commonly known in Calvin’s context. Furthermore, Calvin was familiar with Erasmus’ Greek text of Phlm. 1:7 and his translation of χάριν as gaudium (‘joy’) in his Novum Testamentum.16 It is plausible that, therefore, Calvin saw no need to look for further arguments for a translation of χάριν as χαράν in Phlm. 1:7. ‘Joy’ was generally accepted. 3. Contributing Factors to Calvin’s Rejection and Acceptance of Chrysostom’s Interpretation The fact that Chrysostom’s understanding of the meanings of χάριν and χαράν was commonly known and accepted offers a plausible explanation for Calvin’s brief references to Chrysostom’s interpretation. It is hard to discern Calvin’s rationale for rejecting Chrysostom’s explanation in one passage and accepting it in another. The argument Calvin offers for his translation of χάριν as ‘benefit’ in 2Cor. 1:15 is that his own explanation is ‘simpler’, without clarifying why. Calvin appears simply to rely on his intuition rather than to seriously engage with Chrysostom’s argument. When dealing with Phlm. 1:7, Calvin does accept Chrysostom’s more complex interpretation, without carefully explaining his sudden esteem for an interpretation that he rejected before. Again, Calvin’s intuition seems to be 14 M.L. van Poll-van de Lisdonk (ed.), Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi VI-10: Annotationes in Novum Testamentum (Pars sexta) (Leiden, 2014), 222. 15 Id. (ed.), Opera Omnia Desiderii Erasmi VI-8: Annotationes in Novum Testamentum (Pars sexta) (Amsterdam, 2003), 336. 16 See, for example, Novum Testamentum omne: una cum Annotationibus recognitis, ac magna accessione locupletatis … Addita sunt in singulas Apostolorum epistolas, Argumenta per eundem / tertio iam ac diligentius ab Erasmo Roterodamo recognitum, non solum ad Graecam veritatem, verumetiam ad multorum utriusque linguae codicum, eorumque veterum simul & emendatorum fidem… (Basel, 1522), 469; R. Ward Holder, ‘The Pauline epistles’, in Donald K. McKim (ed.), Calvin and the Bible (Cambridge, 2006), 224-56, 239-40.

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decisive: ‘I think we should translate it [viz. χάριν] as joy’, followed by the possibility of a scribal error and his reference to Chrysostom. Contrary to the received wisdom that Chrysostom was Calvin’s exegetical tutor,17 Calvin does not seem to seriously engage with Chrysostom’s exegesis when dealing with 2Cor. 1:15 and Phlm. 1:7. Calvin’s citations of Chrysostom do not prove extensive dependence on or even serious consideration of Chrysostom’s exegesis. However, citing Chrysostom may serve Calvin’s purpose of demonstrating that he engages with the church fathers even if, on closer inspection, that engagement is superficial. 4. Conclusion The source texts of Calvin’s references to Chrysostom on both 2Cor. 1:15 and Phlm. 1:7 reveal that what seem to be text-critical points, are matters of interpretation actually. Calvin uses Chrysostom’s exegesis to defend his own, either by slightly disagreeing (2Cor. 1:15) or by agreeing (Phlm. 1:7) with him. If Chrysostom’s exegesis fits his own, Calvin accepts it; if not, he either uses it after a slight modification or rejects it. This practice indicates that Chrysostom’s exegesis is significant enough for Calvin to mention, but it does not imply that Calvin is particularly devoted to following Chrysostom’s lead. If Calvin considered Chrysostom a genuine conversation partner, he would probably have paid more attention to the precise interpretive process Chrysostom followed to expound these verses. By referring to Chrysostom, Calvin can create the impression that he engages with the church fathers. These references have an important apologetic goal, in light of the Roman Catholic charge that the protestants neglected the fathers. The way in which Calvin introduces Chrysostom’s exegesis serves the additional purpose of demonstrating the principle that, exegetically speaking, the fathers are servants to be consulted, not masters to be obeyed. This correlates precisely to what Calvin says in his address to King Francis I prefaced to his Institutes: But we do not despise the fathers; in fact, if it fit with my present purpose, I could effortlessly demonstrate that most of what we say today meets their approval. Nevertheless, we study their writings in such a way that we always remember that all things are there to serve us, not to have dominion over us and that we belong to Christ alone and must obey him in everything without exception (1Cor. 3:21[-3]).18 17 See, e.g., Jack B. Rogers and Donald K. McKim, The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible: An Historical Approach (Eugene, 1999), 114; John R. Walchenbach, John Calvin as Biblical Commentator: An Investigation into Calvin’s Use of John Chrysostom as an Exegetical Tutor (Eugene, 2010). 18 J. Calvin, Praefatio ad Regem Gall. (OS 3, 17-8); unpublished trans. Raymond A. Blacketer.

Eusebius of Caesarea as a Source for Federico Borromeo Davide DAINESE, Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna, Bologna, Italy

ABSTRACT In this article I wish to explore the use Federico Borromeo makes of Eusebius of Caesarea and, more precisely, his account on the Emperor Constantine in his treatise De concionante episcopo (1632). In my analysis I will take into account two of Federico Borromeo’s handwritten notebooks that testify to his comprehensive and methodical reading of several of Eusebius’ works, among which De vita Constantini, De laudibus Constantini and the Oratio ad sanctorum coetum, alongside the Historia ecclesiastica – these notebooks are the manuscripts Observationes historicae (BAMi Z. 84 sup.) and Indice (BAMi G. 21 inf., n. 5), two parchment-bound codices of which the second is an index where the contents of the first are included, organized by points, and written in calligraphy and therefore the result of subsequent drafting. Furthermore, I will demonstrate how Borromeo used his patristic readings dating back to the end of the 16th century to forge his later ideal of the post-Tridentine bishop.

Introduction Federico Borromeo is one of the most significant figures in the geopolitical, ecclesiastic and intellectual sphere of early 17th-century Italy. At the beginning of the 17th century, Lombardy was a linchpin in the international arena. Together with the Balkans, the Baltic Sea and northwest Europe, northern Italy soon became an area of constant conflict.1 Its importance was due to the strategic geographic position of the so-called Spanish Road, as well as to the interest of the Empire and kingdoms of France and Spain in events relating to succession in the House of Gonzaga in the midst of the Thirty Years’ War. 1 See Karl O.F. von Aretin, Das Reich. Friedensordnung und europäisches Gleichgewicht 1648-1806 (Stuttgart, 1986), 76-163; Andreas Wendland, Der Nutzen der Pässe und die Gefährdung der Seelen. Spanien, Mailand und der Kampf ums Veltlin (1620-1641) (Zürich, 1995); Robert Oresko and David A. Parrott, ‘Reichsitalien im Dreißigjährigen Krieg’, in Klaus Bußmann and Heinz Schilling (eds), 1648 – Krieg und Frieden in Europa. Katalog zur 26. Europaratsausstellung Münster/Osnabrück 1998 (München, 1998), I 141-60; Toby Osborne, Dynasty and Diplomacy in the Court of Savoy. Political Culture and the Thirty Years’ War (Cambridge, 2002). See also for more information Randolph C. Head, Early Modern Democracy in the Grisons. Social Order and Political Language in a Swiss Mountain Canton 1470-1620 (Cambridge, 1995).

Studia Patristica CXXX, 435-448. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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As it were, secular power and ecclesiastic discipline were entangled in remarkable ways. The government of the Milanese diocese during the years of Federico Borromeo is marked by a powerful episcopate. The bishopry still held firm control over all diplomatic, pastoral, and judicial activities.2 This is also reflected in the legacy of his cousin Charles’ era.3 Indeed, it was a substantial legacy that Federico had appropriated through prominent educational-cultural action4 involving the library, art gallery, and – initially on a minor scale – academy that would become the Ambrosiana some centuries later5. 2 For a recent study, see Danilo Zardin (ed.), Federico Borromeo vescovo (Roma, 2003). In general, on several details I am alluding to in these few lines one should refer to: Mario Bendiscioli, ‘Politica, amministrazione e religione nell’età dei Borromei’, in Storia di Milano, X, L’ età della riforma cattolica (1559-1630) (Milano, 1957), 3-350, 332; Massimo C. Giannini, ‘Politica spagnola e giurisdizione ecclesiastica nello Stato di Milano: il conflitto tra il cardinale Federico Borromeo e il visitador regio Don Felipe de Haro (1606-1607)’, Studia Borromaica 6 (1992), 195-226; Gianvittorio Signorotto, ‘La scena pubblica milanese al tempo del cardinal Federico e del conte di Fuentes’, in Maria Luisa Frosio and Danilo Zardin (eds), Carlo Borromeo e il cattolicesimo dell’Età Moderna. Nascita e fortuna di un modello di santità (Roma, 2001), 25-71; Paolo Pissavino and Gianvittorio Signorotto (eds), Lombardia borromaica. Lombardia spagnola, 15541659 (Roma, 1995); Angelo Turchini, La fabbrica di un santo. Il processo di canonizzazione di Carlo Borromeo e la controriforma (Casale Monferrato, 1984), 20, 36; Giuseppe Alberigo, ‘Da Carlo Borromeo all’episcopato post-tridentino’, in Giuseppe Alberigo and Hubert Jedin (eds), Il tipo ideale di vescovo secondo la riforma cattolica (Brescia, 1985), II 139-67, 164-5 and Umberto Mazzone, ‘Momenti della ricerca storiografica su Federico Borromeo come vescovo’, in Massimo Marcocchi and Cesare Pasini (eds), Federico Borromeo. Fonti e storiografia (Roma, 2001), 22746, 230-1. On the concepts of ‘pastor’ and ‘discipline,’ see Gianvittorio Signorotto, Inquisitori e mistici nel Seicento italiano. L’eresia di Santa Pelagia (Bologna, 1989), 17-8 and Wietse De Boer, The Conquest of the Soul: Confession, Discipline, and Public Order in Counter Reformation Milan (Leiden, Boston, 2001). 3 Marco Rosci held that Federico’s mystical inclination should be placed within the framework of St Charles’ era. See Marco Rosci, ‘Storie del popolo lombardo: realtà di S. Carlo e metafora aristocratica di Federico Borromeo’, in Il Seicento lombardo: saggi introduttivi (Milano, 1973), 49-59, 50. 4 I am referring to Wolfgang Reinhard, ‘Was ist katholische Konfessionalisierung’, in Wolfgang Reinhard and Heinz Schilling (eds), Die katholische Konfessionalisierung: Wissenschaftliches Symposion der Gesellschaft zur Herausgabe des Corpus Catholicorum und des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte 1993 (Münster, 1995), 419-52, 426. On Milan see Angelo Turchini, ‘Bayern und Mailand im Zeichen der konfessionellen Bürokratisierung’, in ibid., 394-404; Claudia di Filippo Bareggi, Chierici e laici nella Chiesa tridentina: educare per riformare (Milano, 2003). 5 Cf. Storia dell’Ambrosiana, I, il Seicento (Milano, 1992) as well as the more recent (listed by relevance): Cesare Mozzarelli (ed.), Federico Borromeo principe e mecenate (Roma, 2004); Franco Buzzi and Roberta Ferro (eds), La Biblioteca Ambrosiana tra Roma, Milano e L’Europa (Roma, 2005); Michela Catto and Gianvittorio Signorotto (eds), Milano, l’Ambrosiana e la conoscenza dei nuovi mondi (secoli 17.-18.) (Roma, 2015). I see as relevant also Marie Lezowski, L’Abrégé du monde. Une histoire sociale de la bibliothèque Ambrosienne (v. 190-v. 1660) (Paris, 2015) (see pages 67-120), who locates the cultural project which is the framework to the Ambrosiana Library within the building process of a Milanese identity in concurrence to Rome (as was previously stated by Cesare Mozzarelli, ‘Milano seconda Roma. Indagini sulla costruzione dell’identità cittadina nell’età di Filippo II’, in José M. Millán (ed.), Felipe II [1527-1598]. Europa y la Monarquía Católica (Madrid, 1990), I 531-56.

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This current essay presumes this framework. It springs from studies carried out by Marzia Giuliana,6 which in turn were the result of the well-established, systematic and collective approach that Paolo Prodi called for thirty years ago in highlighting the need for research that brought to light ‘l’attività quotidiana di questo vescovo-filosofo, di questo pastore-letterato’,7 emphasizing the difficulty in mastering the ‘stato delle fonti federiciane, così ricche e tanto inesplorate da far sorgere quasi un senso di vertigine al pensiero delle potenzialità offerte da possibili esplorazioni sistematiche’.8 There is a close relationship between Federico Borromeo’s unique pastoral activity and his cultural designs. It entails a link between humanism and a disciplinary attempt at confessionalization.9 The pastoral and cultural features of Borromeo’s project must be understood with a third element, the devotional sphere. In this regard, I believe that some research has already been done.10 I refer to Borromeo’s development of the liberalization of the cult of sacred images – a relevant topic for both the weight that iconoclasm had on the wellstudied age of the Reformation and the fact that it is deeply rooted in the scholarship of conciliar history because, after all, it is the Tridentine variant of what was first regulated at the time of Nicene II.11 From this perspective, it is now clear that in Federico Borromeo there was a forceful and conscious solution of continuity between the theology of the oration, sacred iconology and spiritual life on one hand, and on the other between Jesuitism and those tendencies that would later inform quietist spirituality and Oratorian tradition. Despite, however, the vastness of Borromeo’s literary production, there are 6 Marzia Giuliani, Il vescovo filosofo. Federico Borromeo e I sacri ragionamenti (Firenze, 2007). 7 Paolo Prodi, ‘Interrogativi ai futuri biografi del card. Federico Borromeo’, in Accademia di San Carlo. Inaugurazione dell’VIII anno accademico (Bologna, 1986), 15-28, 26. Also Paolo Prodi, Borromeo, Federico, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, XIII (Roma, 1971). 8 U. Mazzone, ‘Momenti della ricerca storiografica’ (2001), 229. 9 This link prompted Prodi to see the need to re-examine the relation between Borromeo’s notions of the active life and the contemplative life, which he had elaborated a dozen years earlier. See P. Prodi, ‘Interrogativi ai futuri biografi’ (1986), 21-2. In my view these intuitions are then confirmed by Giuliani (see note 6). U. Mazzone, ‘Momenti della ricerca storiografica’ (2001), 238-9. On these themes see also I. Fernández Terricabras, Felipe II y el clero secular. La aplicación del concilio de Trento (Madrid, 2000). 10 Cf. Marc Fumaroli, La scuola del silenzio. Il senso delle immagini nel XVII secolo (Milano, 1995) and Pamela M. Jones, Federico Borromeo and the Ambrosiana. Art Patronage and Reform in Seventeenth-century Milan (Cambridge, 1993) (see also U. Mazzone, Momenti della ricerca storiografica [2001], 238-40). Cf. also C. Mozzarelli (ed.), Federico Borromeo principe e mecenate (2004), in particular the essays by J.W. O’Malley, A. Rovetta, P.M. Jones, S. Vecchio, P.C. Marani, M.C. Terzaghi. 11 Decree De invocatione, veneratione et reliquiis sanctorum, et [de] sacris imaginibus, s. XXV, 3-4/12/1563 (see Giuseppe Alberigo † and Alberto Melloni, The Oecumenical Councils of the Roman Catholic Church. From Trent to Vatican 2 (1545-1965), Corpus Christianorum, Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Generaliumque Decreta 3 [Turnhout, 2010], 149-51).

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many unanswered questions and gaps in knowledge concerning Federico’s spirituality. Moreover, the persistent difficulty in casting a comprehensive gaze over what has been done and what remains to be done in terms of the corpus of printed works and the entirety of Federico Borromeo’s manuscripts has actively hindered a full understanding of Borromeo’s religiosity in light of the multifaceted complexity of Italian Catholicism in the early Modern Age. Viewed in this context, between the 16th and 17th centuries we detect the ferment of a highly diversified religious substrate that eludes the gaze of those focused solely on the theological-political dimension of the so-called Counter-Reformation in Rome.12 Exploration of this variegated ferment must go beyond solely understanding whether and how Federico Borromeo anticipated the outbreak of the quietist crisis.13 It is, instead, a matter of comprehending Borromeo’s almost uncontrollable insistence on the importance of writing, both in terms of his works and – above all – those writings to be understood as spiritual conversation between souls.14 Within this outlined framework, my intention is to clarify a highly detailed feature of Borromeo’s spirituality. As I have pointed out elsewhere,15 thorough comprehension would necessitate systematic study of his works or treatises16 that, according to the parameters of an authoritative historiographic tradition, 12 David S. Peterson, ‘Out of the Margins: Religion and the Church in Renaissance Italy’, Renaissance Quarterly 53 (2000), 835-79. As for the problematic concept of the Counter-Reformation, see Paolo Prodi, Il paradigma tridentino (Brescia, 2010), 31-41. 13 Moreover, it was a context in which ‘la separazione, anzi la contrapposizione tra ascetismo ed esaltazione di un ruolo attivo da un lato, misticismo e passività dall’altro, non era così netta’, Gianvittorio Signorotto, ‘Gesuiti, carismatici e beate nella Milano del primo Seicento’, in Gabriella Zarri (ed.), Finzione e santità tra medioevo ed età moderna (Torino, 1991), 177-201, 193. It appears that Mario Rosa, starting from Signorotto’s research, was authoritative on the issue at hand – on which historiography has long since lingered. Dealing with the relationship between Oratorian spirituality at the beginning of the 17th century and the inquisitorial predicament of the end of the 17th century, Rosa states that the attempt to connect these two religious facts, in their cultural and institutional complexity, is the ‘ribaltamento di una categoria dottrinale, teologicopolemica […] col risultato di creare una tipologia di fenomeni mistico-contemplativi, ricchi invece, pur nei contatti e nelle interferenze reciproche, di sostanziose diversità’, Mario Rosa, ‘Spiritualità mistica e insegnamento popolare. L’oratorio e le scuole pie’, in Gabriele De Rosa and Tullio Gregory (eds), Storia dell’Italia Religiosa, II, L’Età Moderna (Roma, Bari, 1994), 273-302, 282. In any case, the fundamental text on this issue is Franco Molinari, ‘Federico Borromeo (1564-1631) e il quietismo’, in Problemi di storia della Chiesa nei secoli XVII-XVIII (Napoli, 1982), 333-51. 14 Cf. P. Prodi, ‘Interrogativi ai futuri biografi’ (1986), 25. 15 See Davide Dainese, ‘L’uso di alcuni Padri della Chiesa nell’Età della Controriforma: contemplazione, meditazione e costruzione dell’ideale del vescovo in Federico Borromeo’, in Isabella Adinolfi, Giancarlo Gaeta and Andreina Lavagetto (eds), L’anti-Babele. Sulla mistica degli antichi e dei moderni (Genova, 2017), 281-318. 16 I am referring to Ragionamenti spirituali, the Letters to the Caustrals, De naturali ecstasi, De ecstaticis mulieribus, Vita di suor Caterina monaca convertita and the works on contemplation;

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can be defined as mystical.17 As we shall see, it is in this context that we find Borromeo’s reading of the Constantine of Eusebius. In any case here, I am now mainly interested in better understanding certain aspects of this figure, of the ideal ‘bishop’, in the context of the so-called Counter-Reformation – albeit in its peculiar Milanese articulation in the post-Tridentine era. In concrete terms, I will examine Federico’s use of Eusebius of Caesarea in De concionante episcopo, adhering as closely as possible to what we know of Federico’s modus procedendi18. More precisely, I will focus on two handwritten notebooks that bear witness to Borromeo’s comprehensive and methodical reading not only of De vita Constantini (v.C.), but also of De laudibus Constantini (l.C.) and of oratio ad sanctorum coetum alongside the historia ecclesiastica. These notebooks are manuscripts Observationes historicae (BAMi Z. 84 sup.) and Indice (BAMi G. 21 inf., n. 5), two parchment-bound small codices (21.5 and 20.5x14 respectively) of which the second is an index where the contents of the first are included, organized by points, and written in calligraphy and therefore the result of subsequent drafting.19 Allow me one final note by way of introduction. It is essential to pay attention to Borromeo’s use of sources. Indeed, Borromeo is a firsthand reader of every auctoritas he cites and does not limit himself to Possevino’s selection.20 He does, of course, refer to the Latin translations whenever available. Specifically, as far as Eusebius is concerned, Borromeo employs John Christopherson’s (Christophorsonus) edition from 1549 (the original text was published by Robert Estienne [Stephanus] in 1544). In any event, it is entirely possible – especially for the works by Church Fathers that he read during his stay in Rome – that Borromeo had access to manuscripts in the Vatican Library.

The treatise De concionante episcopo The treatise De concionante episcopo is a work by Federico Borromeo in three books printed posthumously (although its publishing was at least planned that is, the two treatises De actione contemplationis from 1621 and De vita contemplativa from 1630, along with I tre libri de’ piaceri della mente Christiana from 1625. 17 For the meaning of the term ‘mystic’ I refer to the definition by De Certeau (Michel de Certeau, ‘Mystique’, in Encyclopaedia universalis, vol. XI [Paris, 1968], 522). For a discussion on the topic, see the essay by Marco Rizzi, ‘Il luogo della mistica in Clemente Alessandrino’, in I. Adinolfi, G. Gaeta and A. Lavagetto (eds), L’anti-Babele (2017), 117-28, where ‘mystic’ refers to the passive experience of bewilderment by the subject in the divine. 18 As shown by Marzia Giuliani, cf. M. Giuliani, Il vescovo filosofo (2007), 53-110. 19 As for the codicological data, see the catalogue Carlo Marcora, Catalogo de manoscritti del card. Federico Borromeo nella Biblioteca Ambrosiana (Milano, 1988), 54-5 and 90; as far as the notebook titles are concerned see M. Giuliani, Il vescovo filosofo (2007), 405-9. 20 See M. Giuliani, Il vescovo filosofo (2007), 327-8.

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before, in 161921). It was released one year after Borromeo’s death, who had been the Archbishop of Milan from 1595 to 1631 and one of the most important figures in the post-Tridentine age. Borromeo’s works and positions were significantly conditioned by readings of the Church Fathers.22 Another important fact deserves further attention. The De concionante episcopo is a prescriptive treatise on the figure of the post-Tridentine bishop. Together with the first two books of I sacri ragionamenti and the five of De sacris nostrorum temporum oratoribus,23 this work contributes to a sort of prescriptive trilogy of the functions of the post-Tridentine bishop. More specifically, in De concionante episcopo, Borromeo interprets and implements the conciliar dispositions relating to episcopal preaching,24 matching ars concionandi with cura animarum. Furthermore, if compared with the other two works – especially for the analogue in terms of the issues discussed, the De sacris nostrorum temporum oratoribus, which makes its sources explicit only in the fifth book – the De concionante episcopo primarily seeks to offer auctoritates variaque testimonia et exempla.25 As a consequence, given the importance that Borromeo placed on the Church Fathers, his patristic citations are of particular interest. In particular, two writers stand out and are the only ones mentioned in the introduction: Clement of Alexandria and the description of Constantine by Eusebius found in the vita Constantini. I intend to examine the latter.

21 Its manuscript version is mentioned as early as the first version of Meditamenta manoscritti and also appears in its 1619 edition. It is therefore reasonable to consider that it was drafted, or at least planned, around the 1620s. 22 See Marzia Giuliani, ‘«Lectiones Familiares». L’attualità dei Padri e la spiritualità borromaica fra Cinque e Seicento’, in Franco Buzzi and Maria Luisa Frosio (eds), Cultura e spiritualità borromaica tra Cinque e Seicento (Roma, 2006), 117-43 and Marzia Giuliani, ‘Cum eruditis viris. Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, Federico Borromeo e gli scritti di Agostino Valier presso la biblioteca ambrosiana’, in Danilo Zardin and Maria Luisa Frosio (eds), Milano borromaica atelier culturale della controriforma (Roma, 2007), 229-65. In specific, it is remarkable how the profile of the Constantine of Eusebius in Federico Borromeo’s notebooks fits the manner that the archbishop of Verona – Cardinal Agostino Valier – conveyed the myth of Charles Borromeo to his cousin, Federico. I will return to this shortly, but it is useful to note at the outset that the two booklets that Valier addresses to young Federico Borromeo for this purpose (De cauta imitatione sanctorum episcoporum, and De occupationibus diacono cardinale dignis) depict Charles as a close reader of the Church Fathers. 23 For this work, see Samuele Giombi, ‘L’oratoria sacra di Federico Borromeo e il suo trattato De nostrorum temporum sacris oratoribus (1632)’, in Ginetta Auzzas, Giovanni Baffetti and Carlo Delcorno (eds), Letteratura in forma di sermone. I rapporti tra predicazione e letteratura nei secoli XII-XVI (Firenze, 2003), 159-87. 24 See: s. V, 17/6/1546, cap. 9, decr. 2 (and s. XXIV, 11/11/1963, can. 4 of reform, G. Alberigo † and A. Melloni, The Oecumenical Councils of the Roman Catholic Church [2010], 20-23, 135-36). 25 This is what Federico states on the libri ordo, cf. Federico Borromeo, De concionante episcopo (Milano, 1632), 4.

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The Constantine of Eusebius in Federico Borromeo’s notebooks and in the De concionante episcopo In terms of Constantine of Eusebius, the account of interest to Federico Borromeo is entirely evident from his early notebooks (1593-1595), where he summarizes many of Eusebius’ writings and collects the primary sources that he would later use to draft his work. As for Borromeo’s thought, these notebooks are a valuable source because he marks and preserves the passages deemed relevant and necessary to keep in consideration. That being said, it is easy to observe that Borromeo extrapolates three features from the mythical figure of the first Christian emperor: 1) his state of being a preacher (concionator), or at least ‘educator’, we might say: a severe teacher of pietas in an imperial palace transformed into ecclesia for the benefit of his soldiers, his court and his bishops, but at the same time also an attentive listener of the conciones of others – when, according to v.C. IV 33, Eusebius speaks; 2) his pietas, which is closely linked to the first treatise; 3) although in lesser measure (and, for this reason, we might exclude its analysis here), his being a combatant and defensor fidei with the banner of the cross. In the following schema I have included an articulation of the first two themes (I will list them as ‘1’ and ‘2’) as they emerge from Borromeo’s notebooks26, where they appear within three macro areas (which can be recognized by the letters ‘a,’ ‘b’ and ‘b1’27): 1-2a) v.C. IV 15-21. Transformation of the imperial palace into a church as a location where the Constantinian pietas is performed and where Constantine pronounces his orations:28 26 For future identification I shall refer to these as 1-2a), 1-2b), 1-2b1) – in this last case I wish to emphasize the thematic continuity in comparison with the second grouping. 27 As ‘b1’ is basically a variant of ‘b’ – both of them deal with Constantine as a preacher. 28 In general, all of Borromeo’s writings reported here are diplomatic transcriptions of excerpts from Borromeo’s manuscripts or works indicated alongside each quotation. In specific terms, this means that the underlines correspond to analogous underscores made by Borromeo. Moreover, the reader will find certain passages, which are taken from the manuscripts, introduced by the symbol ‘+’, which was placed by Borromeo himself on the margins of these excerpts and indicates that they have been used for a specific writing/work (see M. Giuliani, Il vescovo filosofo [2007], 53-110). That being said, in order to reduce the confusion that different registers of abbreviation would have entailed, I have decided to abbreviate De vita Constantini according to current editorial criteria (v.C.) and not according to the abbreviations used inconsistently by Borromeo (also consider l.C. for De laudibus Constantini). Hence the use of square brackets. However, the indication of the corresponding passage of Eusebius, where I have indicated, are to be understood as noted by Borromeo himself. A final remark: as the content of the manuscripts Observationes historicae (Z. 84 sup.) and Indice (G. 21 inf., n. 5) are identical, I have reported the transcription of just one notebook below, the Observationes historicae.

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[Observationes historicae (Z. 84 sup.) f. 12:] Intra Palatii aedes Constantinus ecclesiae formam instituit, ubi praecibus, et lectione se exercet, v.C. IV 17 || [Observationes historicae (Z. 84 sup.) ff. 2-3:] et in palatio, in Ianuis, in tabellis pingebatur sursum in coelum contemplans et precantis forma manum sursum tollens. Ibi ecclesiam instituit intra suas aedes Constantinus ubi precibus et lectione se exercet [ibid.] || [Observationes historicae (Z. 84 sup.) ff. 16-17:] + Constantinus in ipsis Regiis, ecclesiae Dei formam instituit, populo in ecclesia congregato, ipse studiose exordiens: sumptis enim in manum libris, vel sacrarum litterarum contemplatione diligenter animum adhibebat, vel constitutas cum universo Ecclesiae coetu preces reddebat [v.C. IV 17 e 21]. 1-2b) Constantine concionator in v.C. IV 29. This text is relevant for its frequent reoccurrence, and on a thematic level for the De concionante episcopo, as well as for I Sacri Ragionamenti: [Observationes historicae (Z. 84 sup.) f. 4:] + Forma concionandi Constatini [v.C. IV 29] || [Observationes historicae (Z. 84 sup.) f. 8:] De Constantino legimus quod loquebatur de Dei Tribunali, quod genus sermonis maxime ferire videbatur audientes, cum severe reprehenderet raptores, v.C. IV 29 || [Observationes historicae (Z. 84 sup.) f. 6:] + Constantinus sermonibus suis familiares quasi flagellabat, cogebatque aliquando sua ipsorum conscientia perculsos, humi oculos deflectere, cum eis clara voce contestaretur, et praedicaret, actionum suarum omnium rationem Deo daturos esse, v.C. IV 29 [rectius 30]. 1-2b1) v.C. IV 55-57. Constantine concionator – an important issue for its frequency in the notebooks and of particular relevance for the De concionante episcopo: [Observationes historicae (Z. 84 sup.) ff. 15-16:] + Constantinus usque ad summam senectutem orationes conscribebat more consueto, solitos cum amicis congressus faciebat, et dignas homine Christiano disciplinas auditoribus suppeditabat [v.C. IV 55] || [Observationes historicae (Z. 84 sup.) f. 3:] Cum celebritas Paschatis ageretur, Constantinus cum caeteris pernoctans, vota, praecesque Deo persolvebat [v.C. IV 57].

Therefore, as we can see, the figure of Constantine found in Federico Borromeo’s early notebooks combined the figure of the optimus praedicator forged in Trent in the spring of 1546 with the myth of his cousin, the future St Charles, which the Bishop of Verona Agostino Valier had conveyed to Federico through three booklets, all dating back to the time when Federico was in Rome (the De cauta imitatione sanctorum episcoporum, the De occupationibus diacono cardinale dignis, and the Quatenus fugiendi sint onores).29 Valier is certainly not an isolated case in this mythopoeic operation. It is part of a well-known process that makes Charles the object of a multitude of hagiographies, among which – in addition to those mentioned by Valier – those of Gian Francesco Bonomi, Giovanni Battista Possevino, Carlo Bascapè, Giovanni Pietro Giussani, and Antoine Godeau.30 For this current essay, it is important to underscore that 29

See note 22 above. In addition to note 2, consider also that the construction of the figure of Charles Borromeo has an iconographic side (see Francesco Frangi, ‘Tra “vero ritratto” e fervore devozionale. Riflessioni sull’iconografia di san Carlo in Lombardia nel tardo Cinquecento e nel primo Seicento’, in M.L. Frosio and D. Zardin [eds], Carlo Borromeo e il cattolicesimo dell’Età Moderna [2001], 30

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Valier’s contribution in the broad and extensive course of constructing the myth of Charles Borromeo, which culminated in his canonization in 1610, involves seeking to demonstrate how erudition in Charles was functional to the practice of the praecipuum munus of the Tridentine bishop: preaching, the ars concionandi. As such, Federico’s Constantine follows the model of Valier’s Charles. Now, if this is the Constantine that emerges from Federico Borromeo’s notebooks, which he compiled while in Rome, in the later De concionante episcopo, the figure of the first Christian emperor is employed in two ways: a) as an example of the effectiveness of the bishop (Eusebius), who was able to touch the heart of sovereigns (Constantine) in the incipit of the entire work, in reference to v.C. IV 33 (the episode where Eusebius speaks to Constantine, who he remained standing and attentive to the words of the Bishop of Caesarea); b) as a model for the bishop-preacher, which to my mind is a noteworthy trait. In this light, v.C IV 29 is central, as mentioned above (in the 1-2b1 grouping). Federico Borromeo is explicit in this regard: Summus hic et piissimus Imperator incredibili quodam sacrarum litterarum studio tenebatur, modumque, et ordinem, quo res sacras dicendo tractabat, Eusebius hisce verbis docet: [followed by extensive citation of v.C. IV 29]31 […] Nostrae aetatis concionatores meminisse eorum oportet, quae a nobis iam antea demostrata fuere. [Borromeo refers to what Constantine had said in the section that Eusebius reports in v.C. IV 55]. […] Communes praeterea hominum plausus laudesque populares animi quadam altitudine adspernabatur Constantinus, ut Christiani oratores sese ad ipsius exemplum conformarent. […] Ordo ipse concionum, singulaeque ipsarum partes summum oratorem fuisse Constantinum, eumque absolutissimum indicabant.32

In the turning point between the 16th and 17th centuries, and especially before Federico, this use of the figure of Constantine was substantially a hapax: the use of the Emperor Constantine as a symbolic instrument to express one of the primary tasks of the bishop that does not appear to correspond in any other circumstance as of yet.33 211-74 and S. Coppa, ‘Icone “parlanti”: stampe, immagini e libri illustrati al servizio della devozione e del consumo collettivo’, in M.L. Frosio and D. Zardin [eds], Carlo Borromeo e il cattolicesimo dell’Età Moderna [2001], 155-74) as well as a theatrical one (see R. Carpani, ‘Percorsi della cultura biblica e modelli di santità nel teatro e nella spettacolarità lombarda nell’età di Federico Borromeo’, in F. Buzzi and M.L. Frosio [eds], Cultura e spiritualità borromaica [2006], 351-91). Instead, in terms of the concrete ecclesiastic context in which Charles’ reception occurs and in which Federico’s governing also enters into play, see D. Zardin, ‘San Carlo e la tradizione milanese del Seicento. Osmosi, identità civica e conflitti’, in F. Buzzi and M.L. Frosio (eds), Cultura e spiritualità borromaica (2006), 145-63. 31 F. Borromeo, De concionante episcopo (1632), 150. 32 Ibid. 152-3. 33 See Alberto Melloni, Emauela Prinzivalli and Silvia Ronchey (eds), Costantino I. Enciclopedia costantiniana sulla figura e l’immagine dell’imperatore del cosiddetto editto di Milano 3132013 (Roma, 2013), III 5-232.

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In order to fully understand the reasons that brought the ‘Roman’ Federico Borromeo to turn to a study of De vita Constantini, we must also take into account the revival of the figure of Constantine in Rome at the end of the 16th century. It is known that a sort of anti-Protestant ‘Constantine-ization’ of Henry III of Navarre was being promoted in Rome to encourage his conversion to Catholicism. This, in turn, was taking place amid a new Constantinian season, so to speak, evidenced by the spread of an unusual example of iconography first commissioned by Gregory XIII (1572-1585) and then Sixtus V (1585-1590).34 The work was made by Cesare Nebbia and other artists and was facilitated by the Latin translation and printed circulation of Eusebius’ work. It was aimed at linking Constantine to the Eusebian myth of the emperor of the edict of tolerance and to the anti-Arian emperor (the one who had called the Council of Nicaea). Nevertheless, Federico Borromeo and the Roman Curia were operating from significantly different ecclesiological perspectives. Borromeo, due to Charles’ heritage, did not share the same centralizing and verticalizing view of the Curia. They would also diverge on the merit of promoting Henry III of Navarre’s conversion. In all likelihood, the intent to construct the ideal model of a bishop-emperor is backed mainly by the contrast between polycentric ecclesiology (the hidden heir of the conciliaristic crisis of the late 15th century) and the monocentric and centripetal ecclesiology of the Roman Counter-Reformation focused on the figure that Paolo Prodi defines the ‘sovereign pontiff’.35 In short, we must broaden our view and see within the mythopoesis of the figure of the bishop elaborated by Federico Borromeo an attempt to compete not so much with the figure of the preacher developed in the context of the Reformation, but rather to compete against that silent and pervasive Roman process of creating an image of a new power, to which the myth of Constantine clearly had much more to give. Constantine as a Mystic Federico Borromeo’s De concionante episcopo does not merely contain the traces of the profound conflict between ecclesiologies taking place entirely within post-Tridentine Catholicism. Indeed, by exploring Borromeo’s interest 34 I refer to the restructuring of St John’s Square in Lateran. Note that the path that Gregory took was not a new one. Indeed, Leo X’s commissioning of Raphael (but completed by Giulio Romano) to paint the frescoes in a Constantinian theme in the so-called Hall of Constantine in the Vatican is the clearest example. See the essay by L. Biasiori, ‘Costantino e i re della prima Età moderna (1493-1705). Imperatore cristiano o re sacerdote?’, in A. Melloni, E. Prinzivalli and S. Ronchey (eds), Costantino I. Enciclopedia costantiniana sulla figura e l’immagine dell’imperatore del cosiddetto editto di Milano 313-2013 (Roma, 2013), III 17-30. 35 See Paolo Prodi, Il sovrano pontefice. Un corpo e due anime: la monarchia papale nella prima età moderna (Bologna, 1982). For this interpretation, see Davide Dainese, ‘L’uso di alcuni Padri della Chiesa nell’Età della Controriforma’ (2017), 294-8.

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in the Constantine of Eusebius we are presented with a myriad of complex facets. If these complexities are read in light of other writings that are roughly contemporary to De concionante episcopo, those texts lead to a clearer understanding of how Borromeo makes use of the figure of Constantine in his treatise. More precisely, behind the ideal figure of Constantine-preacher there is Constantine-contemplative. This can be seen in the following table, which shows the use of the first group of references to Constantine in the notebooks (the transformation of the imperial palace into a church) in a work from 1621 dedicated to contemplation (De actione contemplationis). In the left column I have placed the passages from the group of excerpts from Borromeo’s notebooks that I denominated above as ‘1-2a)’, while in the right column I have included their recurrence in the 1621 treatise on contemplation: v.C. IV 15-21: passages which deal with the Uses in the De actione contemplationis transformation of the imperial place into a church as a place where Constantinian pietas is practiced and where Constantine pronounces his orations in Observationes historicae (Z. 84 sup.) [Observationes historicae (Z. 84 sup.) f. 12:] Intra Palatii aedes Constantinus ecclesiae formam instituit, ubi praecibus, et lectione se exercet, v.C. IV 17 || [Observationes historicae (Z. 84 sup.) ff. 2-3:] et in palatio, in Ianuis, in tabellis pingebatur sursum in coelum contemplans et precantis forma manum sursum tollens. Ibi ecclesiam instituit intra suas aedes Constantinus ubi precibus et lectione se exercet [ibid.] || [Observationes historicae (Z. 84 sup.) ff. 16-17:] + Constantinus in ipsis Regiis, ecclesiae Dei formam instituit, populo in ecclesia congregato, ipse studiose exordiens: sumptis enim in manum libris, vel sacrarum litterarum contemplatione diligenter animum adhibebat, vel constitutas cum universo Ecclesiae coetu preces reddebat [v.C. IV 17 e 21].

pp. 18-21, although it refers to IV 15: since, as stated on p. 18, inter nobiliores corporis partes, oculi sunt illi, qui magnum cum animo commercium habent, Federico concerns himself with the way in which these are held for contemplation: Ad meliore sensum Eusebius eam precandi formam descripsit eiuscemodi verbis; Tanta erat Imperatoris nostri pietas, et religio, ut percuti pecuniam voluerit sua ipsius imagine, quae brachijs apertis, et elatis in Coelum oculis procumberet. Imago autem ea sic efficta, et incisa per universi Imperij Romani fines propagata est. Palatij quin etiam foribus suspensa tabulae quaedam Imperatorem eundem praeferebant, intuentem Coelum, et manus extollentem, sicuti precantes solent. Sed ipsa quoque humani corporis figura videtur vocare nos ad hunc in precando gestum, oculosque tollendos. Vulgare dictum est, hominem plantam esse coelestem. In the same way, on p. 30 in reference to v.C. IV 21 and l.C. 5, in regard De oculis attollendis in Coelum (pp. 28-30): Et Constantini Magni summam humilitatem indicare volens Eusebius ita scripsit, Impoeratorem hunc supplici voce, in genua proiectum, humili vultu, et deiectis oculis a Deo petentem fuisse [corr. in petijsse].

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In the same way, on p. 36, in regard De manuum elatione (pp. 35-39) and again in explicit reference to v.C. IV 15: Haec veterum instituta Christianos postea ritus peperere, qui quidem adeo fuere communes, et inviolabiles, ut Constantinum ipsum exercitibus suis Magistrum fuisse precandi tradat Eusebius, eumque Principem in ea disciplina ita instituisse suos, ut in precando manus extollerent ad Coelum. Mirum sane dictu, et vix credibile, verum tamen inquit Eusebius. Imperator hic exercituum, hic novus Christi discipulus curam eam agit, quomodo milites ad precandum instituti sint, et quomodo placare Deum sciant ferocissime gentes [the reference is to l.C. without further specifications]. Idem Imperator, sicuti est apud Eusebium, precantis habitu depingi voluit inter aulae ornamenta, manum sursum tollens. Et homines solitarij, qui proximi fuere temporibus illis, quasi vinci nollent ab Imperatore tanto, magnopere contenderunt, ut pietate sua Mosen impsum referrent, atque imitarentur. In the same way, on p. 43, again referencing v.C. IV 15, in regard De manuum extensione (pp. 39-43): Eam vero attentionem eodem habitu quaesivisse Constantinus videtur, dum se sculpendum ita, et pingendum mandavit. Id enim ait Eusebius; Pertinebat idem ad corpus domandum, ex Climaci disciplina, qui conservandae castitati, vincendisque inimicis, qui eam pugnant, praesentissimum esse remedium ait expandere manus, et pectus ferire, diuque perseverare genibus flexis. In the same way, on p. 201, in v.C. IV 17, in regard De sola mentis oratione (pp. 200-201): Nobile exemplum Magni Constantini extat, Scriptorisque verba haec sunt; In ipsis Regijs, Ecclesiae Dei formam instituerit, Populo in Ecclesia congregato ipse studiose exordiens. Sumptis enim in manus libris, vel sacrarum litterarum contemplatione diligenter animum adhibebat, vel constitutas cum universo Ecclesiae caetu preces reddebat. In the same way, on p. 227, in IV 1721, in regard De claudendo ostio: Cuius instituti [he is speaking of the cult place] memor etiam Constantinus intra palatium suum, destinatam

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precationi cellam extructam habuit, traditque Eusebius, eum quoties precationi vacaret, in palatij penetralia secedere solitum fuisse. Sed Gentiles superstitiosa quadam erga res sacras suas reverentia, precari in occulto Deos instituerunt, sicut Iobi locus testatur.

Yet Borromeo does not see Constantine as merely a contemplative, as clearly demonstrated by this table, but rather a true mystic and receiver of an ecstatic experience. Indeed, he writes as much in the De ecstaticis mulieribus in 1616 on the legendary vision he has of which Eusebius speaks in v.C. I 22: Minime dubium est autem, quin satis clara, satisque memoranda fuerit Magni Constantini visio, qui sublimem in Coelo Crucem inusitato splendentem fulgore vidit.

Conclusion As for the image of Constantine that emerges from an exploration of Federico Borromeo’s reading of Eusebius of Caesarea, we can observe that Constantine is somehow a linguistic ‘signifier’ that has been emptied of the ‘significance’ that Eusebius had put and has now been filled with new meanings – a Constantine that, like any historical object, is not identical to itself in diachronically distinct moments, but instead is transformed. And more precisely, the Constantine of Eusebius is transformed into a double-faced figure: a model for the bishops as an orator, but an orator who is such because he is first a contemplative. To my mind, it is helpful to turn to Michel De Certeau’s Fabula mistica for aid in interpreting what has taken place. 36 De Certeau’s process of the emancipation of mysticism appears to find confirmation. Mysticism – or contemplation, in the case of Federico Borromeo – begins to be understood as a sort of science, endowed with its heroes and acquiring autonomy and a statute of its own. It takes its place alongside other disciplines. In Federico Borromeo’s view, contemplation becomes the perfect discipline for his notion of the post-Tridentine bishop. This interpretation was bound to become a minority in the face of the deep-rooted process that Paolo Prodi explained by means of the ‘two souls’ of his ‘sovereign pontiff’ – that is, the process of secularization of the Church and the clericalization of the State. That being said, examination of the context of the Milan of the two Borromeos is an important step to underscoring the transition to a later age, which was destined to lose certain features of its past. It is a passage free from the conundrums that 36

Michel De Certeau, La fable mystique. XVI-XVII siècle (Paris, 1982).

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some years later would stir the passions of Fénelon and Bossuet – to refer back to De Certeau’s account – eventually leading to the quietist controversy. It is a historical process of transformation where the employment of ancient theologians, whose works are the watermark of 16th-century writers, represents not only a unit of assessment but also a touchstone.

The Patristic Sources of ‘Rigans montes’, of Saint Thomas Aquinas Inês BOLINHAS, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Lisbon, Portugal

ABSTRACT The thought of Aquinas has a significant debt to Patristics; nevertheless, this debt is not always highlighted. Our contribution shows this very debt in one of Thomas early writings: the First Part of his Inaugural Lecture as Magister in Sacra Pagina, in the Spring of 1256. St Thomas chose as motto the verse of the Psalm 104 (103:13): ‘Rigans montes de superioribus’ – which is the title of the first part of Aquinas’ lesson. We can find in Rigans montes some of the main themes that the Dominican master will develop later in his career.

Introduction The topic of this brief study is the presence and the relevance of Patristic sources in the First Part of the Inaugural Lecture (or Principium I)1 of Saint Thomas Aquinas, when he started his activity as Magister in Sacra Pagina.2 1 We follow the critical edition of the Latin text prepared by Michael Estler (see Michael Estler, Rigans montes (Ps. 104, 13). Die Antrittsvorlesung des Thomas von Aquin in Paris 1256 [Stuttgart, 2015], 83-91). Since the First Part of the Inaugural Lecture is brief, we chose not to refer the pages of quotes or references in footnote. We are grateful to Professor Ana Margarida Abrantes (Universidade Católica Portuguesa – Faculdade de Ciências Humanas), whose kindness and excellent knowledge of the German Language allowed us to consult and quote the research made by Michael Estler. In February of 1256, the young Thomas Aquinas received (with Bonaventure) his licentia docendi from Aimeric Veire, Chancellor of the University of Paris. Therefore, he had to prepare his Inaugural Lecture (see M. Estler, Rigans montes [2015], 32). Inaugural Lectures should be brief and brilliant. According to the rules, the ceremony was divided in two parts. The first part of the Lecture, vesperis, was the highest moment; it was given in the afternoon of the first day; the second part of the Lecture, that in Paris was designated aula, was given in the morning of the following day. Aquinas’ Principium I, or vesperis, is Rigans montes; his Principium II, or aula, is Hic est liber (see the critical edition of the Latin text prepared by Michael Estler also in ibid. 92-108). The authenticity of the Principium I has never been an issue. The text and its context are well known (see ibid. 33-4; see also Jean-Pierre Torrell, Initiation à saint Thomas d’Aquin. Sa personne et son œuvre [Paris, 2002], 73-80). 2 Thomas was unwilling to perform this task. On one hand, it was a demanding ceremony. On the other hand, he knew that he had to face the resistance of the secular masters, which would be present and didn’t want another Dominican to occupy a second chair position at the University

Studia Patristica CXXX, 449-457. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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Thomas chose for his motto3 the verse of the Psalm 104 (103:13) ‘Rigans montes de superioribus’. His commentary focuses the communication of spiritual gifts – particularly, the communication of the divine wisdom. Aquinas is often regarded as an Aristotelian in the strict sense. However, this identification is reductive. In fact, Aristotle is not even mentioned in Rigans montes. The main precedent trends converge in the thought of Saint Thomas: Aristotle, of course, not forgetting Boethius, along with Jewish and Muslim Philosophy. Major scholars, from Marie-Dominique Chenu to Jean-Pierre Torrell, emphasize the relevance of the Neoplatonic tradition in Aquinas: particularly, Pseudo-Dionysus and Augustine are highly considered by the Dominican Master. The Church Fathers are also widely quoted by St Thomas; like St Augustine, St. Gregory the Great is one of the most cited authorities.4 The Principium I is brief. Besides the sacra pagina, four authors are mentioned in the text, by the following order: Dionysus, Augustine, John Damascene and Gregory the Great. Aquinas’ appeal to the authority of these thinkers concerns to key issues of his own doctrine, issues that he will develop later in his maturity writings. In this way, we can see the Principium I as a kind of programmatic speech.5 of Paris. The two days ceremony happened between 3rd March and 17th June 1256. In fact, even after being approved in this demanding academic examination, and despite the support given by pope Alexandre IV to mendicants (in a bull dated 3rd March 1256), Aquinas’ admission as a new master was formally denied by the other masters until 15th August 1257 (see M. Estler, Rigans montes [2015], 34-6). 3 M. Estler, according to the words of Bernard Gui, defends that this biblical verse is more than a motto: it is the very centre and aim of Aquinas’ labour (see ibid. 33). We tend to agree with this interpretation. Indeed, the pedagogical concern about an effective transmission of knowledge pervades the Corpus Thomisticum. The phrase of Saint Thomas Aquinas – that later became the motto of the Dominican Order – contemplata aliis tradere is a mirror of the Lecture Rigans montes and has strong roots in the ideal of imitatio Christi. In fact, the Angelic Doctor states in Summa Theologiae: ‘vita contemplativa simpliciter est melior quam activa quae occupatur circa corporales actus, sed vita activa secundum quam aliquis praedicando et docendo contemplata aliis tradit, est perfectior quam vita quae solum contemplatur, quia talis vita praesupponit abundantiam contemplationis. Et ideo Christus talem vitam elegit’ (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, III, q. 40, a. 1, ad. 2; latin text of the Leonine Edition reproduced in Suma Teológica, vol. VIII [São Paulo, 2002], 583). 4 Dionysus is quoted no less than 1700 times in the Corpus Thomisticum (see M. Estler, Rigans montes [2015], 137). Jean-Pierre Torrell in his study ‘Saint Thomas et l’Histoire’ includes a concise review of the results of the work of main scholars about the references made by Saint Thomas to other authors. Gregory the Great is quoted 2470 times; Augustine, 9381 (more than Aristotle: 6139). See Jean-Pierre Torrell, ‘Saint Thomas et l’Histoire. État de la question et pistes de recherches’, in J.-P. Torrell, Nouvelles Recherches Thomasiennes (Paris, 2008), 130-75; especially 159-61 (these pages also include the references to Jewish and Muslim philosophers). In what refers to John of Damascus, the Index Thomisticus of Roberto Busa (available at https:// www.corpusthomisticum.org/it/index.age) shows us 821 records. 5 Michael Estler even proposes an original and innovative reappraisal of the structure of Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae, in comparison with the Inaugural Lecture Rigans montes (see M. Estler, Rigans montes [2015], 328-32).

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Our text is divided in two sections. In the first, we present a concise summary of the Lecture Rigans Montes; in the second, we stress the importance of the four quoted authorities. We cite Dionysius and John Damascene in Latin, since this is the language in which Aquinas read their texts.6 1. The Inaugural Lecture Rigans montes – summary presentation of its structure and content 1.1. Structure The Lecture has a prooemium, four parts and an epilogue. The prooemium identifies the main theme: the communication of spiritual gifts, in particular, the communication of divine wisdom. It also announces the four parts of the speech (‘Sic igitur in uerbo proposito quatuor possumus considerare’): (1) the height of the spiritual doctrine (‘spiritualis doctrine altitudinem’); (2) the dignity of its teachers (‘doctorum eius dignitatem’); (3) the condition of those who listen (‘auditorum conditionem’); (4) the order of the communicating process (‘communicandi ordinem’, that later in the text in also named as ‘ordo generationis’). The Lecture closes with an epilogue that reinforces the idea that all gifts come from above and, for this reason, declares that having hope and pleading to God (‘debet petere a Deo’) for wisdom is an indispensable requisite to receive the very wisdom. 1.2. Summary The proemium declares that God created a law concerning the communication of perfections. This law establishes that the communication of gifts must reach the lowest levels of being through the mediation of intermediaries. To affirm it, Thomas appeals to Dionysus. This law refers both to spiritual and corporeal gifts. Therefore, the Dominican Master notes that (1) uncouth bodies are regulated by the highest bodies and that (2) bodies are ruled by rational life. The young Doctor relies on St Augustine on these two conclusions. The verse of the Psalm ‘Rigans montis de superioribus suis’ is seen by Saint Thomas as metaphora of this divine law, symbolizing the communication of spiritual wisdom through the following image: clouds water the mountains, and therefore originate rivers, the earth is filled by these rivers, becoming fruitful. God is referred to by the expression ‘de superioribus’; the minds of the doctors of the sacra doctrina are those mountains that receive water from above; the 6

The Corpus Areopagitum that was received by the scholars of the 13th century was composed by the translations of Hilduin (Abbot of St Denis), John Scotus Eriugena and John Sarrazin. The three different translations of the Corpus were transmitted altogether (see ibid. 137).

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ministry of the doctors is represented by the water courses; and so, the water is taken to the earth, that is, to the minds of the listeners. Then, Aquinas exposes each of the four parts of the Lecture: the height of the spiritual doctrine; the dignity of those who communicate it; the condition of those who listen; the order of communication. He states that the grandeur of the spiritual doctrine results from three factors: its origin, its subtlety and its end. Its origin is supra-human, is divine. Its subtlety is articulated with the difficulty of the subjects and comes from two main reasons: (1) although the knowledge of God is inscribed in everyone’s mind (as John Damascene affirms), the adequate comprehension of many of its themes require training and studying; (2) besides this inscribed knowledge, the sacra doctrina also refers to other matters that totally transcend the natural light of human reason. One must notice that under the designation of sacra doctrina Thomas understands all the knowledge revealed by God – it embraces the Bible and the teachings of the Church Fathers. Finally, its end is the highest, the most sublime to which human being can aspire, for eternal life is the highest aim and desire. The second part of the Lecture concerns the dignity of the doctors who teach the sacra doctrina. Given its height, they should be high in dignity. The three duties of the Master in Theology, legere, disputare et praedicare, are exposed by analogy with the mountains. Mountains rise from the earth towards the sky; similarly, sacri doctores are those who disfavour earthly goods and favour heavenly goods, because they aspire to heaven – and so should they preach. Mountains receive the first beams of light; likewise, sacri doctores receive the first beams of divine wisdom – illuminated by reading, they become able to teach effectively. Mountains are a barrier, defending the land from the enemy; equally, sacri doctores shall defend the faith against errors – they have the duty to refute errors disputing with those who spread them. The third part of the Lecture concerns to the condition of the listeners. This section has no appeal to the authority of Patristic authors; it is exclusively based on the Bible. The condition of the listeners is interpreted by analogy with the earth; the earth and the listeners share three characteristics. The first of them is humbleness. Just as the earth is, by nature, infima, listeners should nurture humilitas, in order to acquire sapientia. Humility is required in learning by ear, once it is necessary to accept and recognize that one needs guidance from others. The second is firmness. The stability and firmness of the earth is an example to listeners, who shall become righteous and able to discern. Finally, and like the earth, listeners become fruitful, for the good listener multiplies in deeds the precepts of wisdom that he heard. As we see, there is a progression. The basic condition to progress in wisdom is humility, which is the very basis of rectitude; in turn, rectitude allows the multiplication of the fruit. The fourth part of the Principium I concerns the ordo generationis. This order involves three things: the order of the (ontological) communication process;

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the amount; the power. This whole part can be summed up in one word: participation. In what refers to the order of communication, God is the owner of wisdom. He communicates it to His ministers, doctores, who receive it. Therefore, they become participants of the divine wisdom. Subsequently, they communicate it to their listeners. As they receive divine wisdom through doctores, listeners become participants of it, just like the earth receives and absorbs the water that drains from the mountains. Considering the modum habendi, God possesses wisdom plentifully, infinitely and in the most perfect way. Ministers, in their turn, do not possess it integrally; they receive it from God, becoming therefore participants. So, their mode of having divine wisdom can never be equal to the mode in which God possesses it. They have it in a smaller scale. On the other hand, their participation is superior to the participation of the listeners. The teaching of the ministers makes listeners participants of the divine wisdom. So, listeners participate of the divine wisdom through the mediation of the ministers; they unquestionably participate in divine wisdom, although in a smaller degree. Finally, the Dominican Master exposes the ordo generatione in what refers to the power (virtus). The virtus of the process of communication of divine wisdom is also explained within the frame of participation. God communicates wisdom by His own power. On their turn, ministers communicate divine wisdom participating in God’s power in order to transmit it. One can say that they are causae secundae. Later, in the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas will state that nothing can be efficient cause of itself.7 Similarly, we can affirm that the mountain does not water itself; and that the ministers are not the efficient cause of the process through which they receive divine wisdom. On their turn, ministers are efficient causes of the communication process of God’s wisdom to listeners. In fact, the minister is causa secunda in the transmission of divine wisdom. This is in accordance with what the Angelic Doctor will present in Summa Theologiae, when stating that God handed the government of the world to causae secundae, so that they could participate in the dignity of being cause.8 God, by His own power, communicates wisdom to sacri doctores who, in their turn, are enabled to transmit it to their listeners that, in this way become participants. Nevertheless, virtus, as well as sapientia itself, belongs to God. So, Saint Thomas concludes this fourth part stating that the fruit of the earth should not be attributed to the mountains, but to the water poured from above. As we can see, this designation is close to Dionysian theology. In other words, the fruit of the teaching of the sacri doctores should not be attributed to them; this fruit must be attributed to God. 7 This is, indeed, crucial in the second way to demonstrate the existence of God, as it is exposed in Summa Theologiae, I, q. 2, a. 3, co (see Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, latin text of the Leonine Edition reproduced in Suma Teológica, vol. I [São Paulo, 2001], 167). 8 See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 22, a. 3, co (2001), 446.

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Closing the Principium I, in the epilogue, the Doctor Communis reinforces the idea that a minister is a minister by gift and not by his own strength. Then, he points out four fundamental features for the right performance of the duty. Good ministers must be innocentes, intelligentes, ferventes, and obedientes. They must walk righteously in life, seeking innocence in their way of living. They must be intelligent, in order to be useful to the Lord. Ferventes, so they can perform their duty with ardour. And finally, they must be obedientes, so they have an open heart, willing to do God’s will. No one has, from within himself, neither the power to be a minister, nor the power to perform this duty properly. Thus, spes in God becomes crucial and one must ask Him for wisdom. 2. Patristic Authorities 2.1. Pseudo-Dionysus Dionysus is quoted in the Proemium, in the second sentence of the Lecture, immediately after St Thomas has enunciated the law: ‘Rex celorum et Dominus hanc legem ab eterno instituit, ut prouidentie sue dona ad infima per media pervenirent’. The quotation belongs to De ecclesiastica ierarchia: ‘Lex Dei sublimis sacratissima est et per prima media adducentur ad sua divinissimam lucem’. It is part of Book V, which concerns sacerdotal consecrations and contemplation. We underline four things about this quote. First. Influenced by Dionysus, Thomas understands the communication of light as the image of the communication of the first good. In this text, the light symbolizes God and spiritual gifts – particularly, wisdom. Second, Thomas and Dionysus both see Creation as a whole, ordered hierarchically, constituting an ontological scale, a scale that proceeds from the most perfect to the least perfect. This hierarchical construction is characterized by continuity; there are no gaps in it. Third, Thomas agrees with Dionysus that God established an order: in the hierarchy of Creation, the highest beings, closest to God, carry the divine light to the most remote beings. Angels are a crucial part on this order; they frequently mediate the communication of wisdom. St Thomas includes them in the second causes, through which God rules the world.9 Fourth, specifically, in what refers to the communication of wisdom to humankind, ministers are also second causes. God accomplishes His providential plan through them. 2.2. Saint Augustine The Bishop of Hippo is also quoted in the Proemium, in the fourth sentence of the Lecture. Thomas appeals to his authority to clarify the scope of the law 9

See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 22, a. 3-4 (2001), 445-8.

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that he just stated. According to this law, God wants His gifts to reach the most remote beings through the intermediate beings. The Dominican Master relies on St Augustine to clarify that this law concerns to the totality of creation, spiritual but also corporeal. Thomas could have made this clear by continuing the quotation from Dionysus. However, he chose to continue his argument with St Augustine’s help. He quotes De Trinitate: ‘Quemadmodum igitur crassiora et infirmiora per corpora subtiliora et potentiora quodam ordine reguntur, ita omnia corpora per spiritum uite rationalem’.10 St Thomas quotes St Augustine just after quoting Dionysus. Through this sequence, he sustains their agreement on the ontological hierarchy of Creation and on the communication of gifts. In this chapter of De Trinitate, Augustine argues that there is an ontological continuity between the degrees of the scale of the Creation, in which the power and action of the superior over the inferior is implicated. The ontological scale presented by the Bishop of Hippo is well known. It proceeds from the least perfect to the most perfect: esse, vivere, intelligere.11 These three ontological degrees advance from the beings that least participate of God, those which merely exist, ascending to something that exists and lives, finally reaching the highest degree: not something, but someone who exists, lives, and thinks. This claim is articulated with ontology and with teleology. St Thomas will use St Augustine’s authority in several passages of his works to assert that all that is, is good because it results from God’s creative action, understood as bonum diffusivum sui. God, communicating being, communicates good. St Thomas also relies on Saint Augustine to affirm the ontological goodness of every creature and, on the other hand, to harmonize this statement with the presence of evil in the world. Everything is organized by Divine Providence, which is perfect, in a degree incomprehensible and ineffable to us. In this perspective, the presence of evil in the world is far from being a denial of the divine goodness or even an obstacle to His omnipotence. Divine Providence organized his work harmoniously; evil is only permitted to the extent that a greater good can be attained from it (ex: the death of the animal allows the life of the lion; the wicked persecution of tyrants allows the glorious patience of the martyrs12).

10 Saint Augustine, De Trinitate, III 4, 9; latin text established by Arnaldo Espírito Santo in Santo Agostinho, Trindade. De Trinitate (Lisboa, 2007), 238. 11 Saint Augustine, De libero arbitrio, II 3,7; latin text established by Goulven Madec, reprinted in Santo Agostinho, Diálogo sobre o Livre Arbítrio (Lisboa, 2001), 238: quia cum tria sint haec, esse uiuere intellegere, et lapis est et pecus uiuit, nec tamen lapidem puto uiuere aut pecus intellegere; qui autem intellegit, eum et esse et uiuere certissimum est; quare non dubito id excellentius iudicare cui omnia tria insunt quam id cui uel unum desit. 12 See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q.22, a.2, ad.2 (2001), 443. Aquinas quotes Augustine’s Enchiridion de Fide, Spe et Charitate (3,11).

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Aquinas quotes Damascene in the First Part of the Lesson, about the height of the spiritual doctrine, particularly in what concerns to the subtlety of its matters. After confirming in the Scripture (Sir. 1:5) that wisdom comes from the word of God in the skies (‘fons sapientie uerbum Dei in excelsis’) and the subtlety of the sacra doctrina (Sir. 24:7), St Thomas points out that there are some truths about God that everyone can reach, even imperfectly. He cites De Fide Orthodoxa: ‘cognitio existendi Deum naturaliter omnibus est inserta’.13 There seems to be no continuity here between the position uphold in the Lesson and his later thinking. In fact, in the Summa contra Gentiles as well in the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas repudiates any possibility of intuitionism. There is not an immediate way of the human mind to God. Therefore, the path is always mediated: from the effects to the First Cause. For this reason, the Thomistic ways of demonstrating the existence of God are a posteriori. The truth is that St Thomas interprets the statement of John Damascene ‘cognitio existendi Deum naturaliter omnibus est inserta’ as referring to a diffuse knowledge, mainly related with the notion of happiness. It is a natural knowledge that comprehends a natural desire, since no one desires something that absolutely ignores. Human beings seek happiness and God is the very happiness of human being. However, both knowledge and desire are unclear – for this reason, many erroneously seek happiness (their ultimate end) elsewhere and not in the Creator. So, in Question 2 (concerning the human knowledge about the existence of God) of Part I of the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas says: ‘sicut dicit Damascenus in principio libri sui, “omnibus cognitio existendi Deum naturaliter est inserta”. Ergo Deum esse est per se notum’14. Then he refutes the claimed evidence and clarifies the sense of Damascene’s quote: ‘cognoscere Deum esse in aliquo commune, sub quaedam confusionem, est nobis naturaliter insertum, inquantum scilicet Deus est hominis beatitudo: homo enim desiderat beatitudinem, et quod naturaliter desideratur ab hominem, naturaliter cognoscitur ab eodem’15. Thomas concludes that this is the reason why many people think that true happiness can be found in the fruition of wealth and pleasure. 2.4. Saint Gregory the Great In Rigans montes, Thomas refers twice to Gregory the Great. The first, about a moral issue. The second, about an issue that covers pedagogy and pastoral concerns. The first reference is a citation in the Second Part of the Lecture, 13 14 15

John of Damascus, De Fide Orthodoxa, I, 3, in PG 94, 793C. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q.2, a.1, ob.1 (2001), 161. Ibid. ad.1, 163.

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about the dignity of doctors. After stating the three functions of the Masters in Theology (by analogy with the mountains), he says they must pursuit a righteous life for in order to achieve an effective preaching. Then Aquinas quotes Gregory,16 to show the importance of the agreement between words and action: ‘Cuius vita despicitur, necesse est ut eius predicatio contempnatur’. The second time St Gregory is mentioned, it is not a quotation but a reference. It is made in the Fourth Part of the Lesson, which concerns the order in the communication. St Thomas refers to Gregory’s comment on Job 26:8, that says about God ‘qui ligat aquas in nubibus suis ut non erumpant pariter deorsum’. In Moralia in Iob, St Gregory recommends to the doctor not trying to preach everything he knows, as he himself ignores much about the divine mysteries (in their deepness, mas also their very number). The chapter is a masterpiece of pedagogical concern. We only cite a brief section in order to clarify the consonance between Saint Gregory and Saint Thomas: ‘Ut vero auditores rudes non inundatione scientiae, sed moderata praedicationis distillatione foveantur, ligat Deus aquas in nubibus’.17 Water makes the land fertile. However, if its amount is so large that the earth cannot absorb the rain, it becomes harmful, with devastating floods and torrents. Similarly, spiritual food helps to strengthen the soul and so must be dosed in the right amount. This pedagogical concern is central in Aquinas’ work. That is why, in the Prologue of Summa Theologiae, St Thomas announces that he will expose the issues related with the sacra doctrina in an orderly and appropriate manner for those who are less advanced.18 3. Final remark The Inaugural Lecture of the young Dominican Master is a speech fully coherent with what he will develop throughout his work. We would say today – as a teacher, a researcher and a preacher, Aquinas retains great appreciation for the four authors cited, integrating them in his own personal synthesis.

16 As Michael Estler notices, the text is not Regulae Pastoralis but Homiliarum in Evangelia 12,1 (see M. Estler, Rigans montes [2015], 87, footnote 26). 17 Gregory the Great, Moralia in Iob, XVII, 26, in PL 76, 37. 18 See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, ‘Prologus’ (2001), 135.

Meister Eckhart Reading Augustine Marie-Anne VANNIER, Université de Lorraine, Metz, Institut Universitaire de France, France

ABSTRACT Eckhart appears to be one of those authors who deeply understood Augustine. Throughout history, some authors have been called a second Augustine, to name but two: St Anselm of Canterbury or St Bonaventura. Although Eckhart did was not granted this title, he nevertheless remarkably understood the basic lines of the Bishop of Hippo’s thought, adopting and quoting Augustine as no other of his authorities, yet without becoming a disciple of Augustine or displaying an Augustinism that distorted his thought. When Eckhart refers to Augustine, it is because the latter is an outstanding commentator of Scripture, a summary of patristic thought and a preparator of the medieval Quaestiones. Augustine often deals with core theological topics that were still relevant for Eckhart’s times, with creation through the Logos, with the question of the reach of reason, with questions of essence, anthropology, Trinity and Christology in apologetics and in preaching.

Within the ANR-DFG funded project TEAPREA: Teaching and Preaching with Patristic auctoritates: Meister Eckhart in France and Germany, past and present which aims at revealing the Patristic foundations of Eckhart, this important bridge builder, St Augustine is particularly important, because Eckhart quotes him alone more than 2.000 times in his Latin work alone, as shown by the Index of the critical edition. Augustine is of such importance that sometimes when quoting an anonymous authority, as in the beginning of his Sermon 101 (9*)1, the quotation is attributed to Augustine by the editors, whereas in fact it comes from Origen. But it is not only a matter of quantity, in fact Eckhart appears as one of those authors who deeply understood Augustine. Throughout history, some authors have been called a second Augustine like St Anselm of Canterbury or St Bonaventura. Although Eckhart did was not granted this title, he nevertheless remarkably understood the basic lines of the Bishop of Hippo’s thought, adopting and quoting 1 The numbers in brackets refer to the new numbering of Eckhart’s homilies in liturgical order as found in Meister Eckhart, The German Works. 64 Homelies for the Liturgical Year. 1. De tempore, ed. Loris Sturlese and Markus Vinzent (Leuven, 2019), English translations are taken from this work and the second volume: Meister Eckhart, The German Works. 56 Homilies for the Liturgical Year. 2. De sanctis, ed. Loris Sturlese and Markus Vinzent (Leuven, 2020).

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Augustine as no other of his authorities, yet without becoming a disciple of Augustine or displaying an Augustinism that distorted his thought. When Eckhart refers to Augustine, it is because the latter is an outstanding commentator of Scripture, a summary of patristic thought and a preparator of the medieval Quaestiones. Augustine often deals with core theological topics that were still relevant for Eckhart’s times, with creation through the Logos, with the question of the reach of reason, with questions of essence, anthropology, Trinity and Christology in apologetics and in preaching. Two statements by Eckhart show how much he understood the meaning of Augustine’s work: his reference to the Retractationes and his Sermons for the Feast of St Augustine. In Sermon 89 (11*), Eckhart highlights the importance of the Retractationes, this unique book in the history of thought where, taking up one by one all his works, Augustine specifies what to retain or modify in them. The Thuringian recalls that ‘Saint Augustine produced many books. At last, he also produced a small booklet, in which was written everything that one was able to understand in the others. This he always carried with and close to him, and it was the dearest to him’. Not only does this book provide Eckhart with a list of Augustine’s works, independently of Possidius’ Indiculum, but above all, it gives him the spirit and method, which is none other than perpetual conversion, a method that is not without influencing the Thuringian, even if in the 14th century conversion does not have the same importance as in the 4th and 5th centuries and if he himself does not write Retractationes, or at least we have not such a book. In fact, Eckhart sees Augustine as a precursor and considers him as the reference auctoritas, as shown in his keynote speech, his Sermon for the Feast of St Augustine, entitled: Vas auri solidum ornatum omni lapidi pretioso (A solid golden vase, decorated with all kinds of precious stones), commenting Ecclesiasticus 50:10, which was the epistle of the feast, in the Dominican Missal of the time, which he delivered at the University of Paris, either on 28 August 1302 or on 28 February 1303, during his first teaching stay at the university of Paris. In this text, the Thuringian shows that Augustine excelled in three parts of ancient philosophy: physics, logic and ethics, that he constitutes a model of ancient culture, that he reached Wisdom. He says he ‘was a good theorist, a remarkable logician, and the most eminent moral philosopher’. Moreover, he was able to articulate culture and faith remarkably well in the knowledge he had of God, he experienced ‘the fulfillment of virtue in action’.2 As for the third point, weight, it ‘expresses the strength of love’. Thus, in this sermon, Eckhart presents Augustine as the Christian scholar, both theoretically and practically, while showing that he is even more the doctor of charity. 2

See on this homily Markus Vinzent, ‘Eckhart’s Early Teaching and Preaching in Paris’, in Dietmar Mieth, Marie-Anne Vannier, Markus Vinzent and Christopher M. Wojtulewicz (eds), Meister Eckhart in Paris and Strasbourg, Eckhart: Texts and Studies 4 (Leuven, 2017), 209-66.

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This last component is even more evident in the German Sermon 16b (88*), which Eckhart pronounced another year for the feast of St. Augustine. The Bishop of Hippo immediately appears as the figure of the noble man, the achieved man, the one who lived the birth of God in him. This achievement, the divine filiation, which is the climax of Eckhart’s work, Augustine truly experienced this and the part of Eckhart’s Latin Sermo die b. Augustini in Parisius habitus shows that Augustine has gone through the seven degrees of spiritual life, as expressed, for example, in the De quantitate animae or in the De vera religione. St Augustine is therefore for Eckhart both a Lebemeister and a Lesemeister. It is therefore understandable that he refers so frequently to him. To study the relationship between Eckhart and Augustine, two approaches are available: either to take up all of Augustine’s works that Eckhart quotes and specify in what way, or to consider the main topics and note the analogies and differences. The first approach is interesting, but it requires a lot of time and asks to specify on the one hand, which works of Augustine were available in the 14th century,3 at a time when not having an complete edition like that of the Maurists, the Thuringian had only partial copies of Augustine’s works, and to know, on the other hand, whether Eckhart knew them directly or if he read extracts from them, for example in the Catena aurea or in other works. This work will be carried out in our research project, taking into account the status of auctoritates, who, in the Middle Ages, were not quoted in the same way as today. But, in this article, we will choose the second approach, which will lead us to study successively the topics of anthropology, Trinitarian theology, Christology and soteriology, which testify to Eckhart’s remarkable penetration of Augustine’s thought, without forgetting to preach, which is fundamental for both authors. The relationship between Eckhart and Augustine has been subject to earlier studies, though it is still far from being covered: it has been the topic of two Conferences, so far, one of the Meister Eckhart Gesellschaft in 20074 and another in Metz in May 2019 and some studies, but the first scholars who studied Eckhart’s work, particularly Josef Koch5 and Kurt Ruh,6 showed the importance of Augustine, although they had not the technical means at the time to carry out a complete research. As the critical edition has come to completion, the harvest of Augustine’s traces in Eckhart promises to be abundant and we will be able to give only a brief overview in this paper. 3 See Claire Angotti, Gilbert Fournier and Donatella Nebbiai (eds), Les livres des maîtres de la Sorbonne. Histoire et rayonnement du collège et de ses bibliothèques du XIIIe siècle à la Renaissance (Paris, 2017), 217, 275, 286, 320. 4 Regina D. Schiewer and Rudolf K. Weigand (eds), Meister Eckhart und Augustinus, MeisterEckhart-Jahrbuch 3 (Stuttgart, 2009). 5 ‘Kritische Studien zum Leben Meister Eckhart’, in Josef Koch, Kleine Schriften, vol. I, (Rome, 1973), 247-347. 6 Kurt Ruh, Geschichte der abendländischen Mystik, Vol. 3. Die Mystik des deutschen Predigerordens und ihre Grundlegung durch Hochscholastik (Munich, 1996), 216-353.

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Anthropology Augustine and Eckhart draw their anthropology primarily from the Scripture and focus on showing that the human being, who is created, is constituted and fulfilled in and through his relationship with his creator. Creation: from theological ontology to anthropology First, creation is a topic which was decisively emphasized by Augustine and Eckhart, though for different reasons. In patristic times, the affirmation of creation was essential to highlight the originality of Christianity in relation to a surrounding paganism. In the 14th century, the reference to creation also had its importance, but because of the Latin Averroism that had been introduced at the University of Paris by Siger of Brabant and which advocated the eternity of the world. Nevertheless, that Augustine and Eckhart give such an importance to this topic, it is for other reasons as well: during his conversion, Augustine discovered himself as a being created and recreated by God (Conf. VII 10, 16), and, after having left Manicheism, he endeavored to highlight the meaning of creation, and the relationship with the creator, which led him to present the human being as an esse ad, a being oriented towards God, from there, he developed an original theological ontology and anthropology. For Eckhart, the situation is different in methodological terms: in the Prologue to the Tripartite work, when he has to account for the nature of God, he explains that the category of being, even if it is the highest, is still insufficient, which makes him say, not that God is being, but that ‘being is God’7 and that he is the Creator. It is on his activity, on his action that he emphasizes and presents creation as a collatio esse, as a gathering of the being and the human being as a created being who finds his fulfilment by constantly receiving his life from his Creator, which leads him to propose an onto-theology before its existence and an anthropology, close to Augustine. It was by commenting Scripture in all its depth, and more precisely the first two chapters of Genesis, that Augustine and Eckhart came to their conclusions. Moreover, the bishop of Hippo shaped by Scripture and the Magister in Sacra Pagina that is Eckhart did not content themselves with a single commentary on Genesis, but they did it several times: Augustine five times,8 going from allegorical to literal exegesis to find the hebraica veritas, Eckhart having a similar goal, which he tries to reach, by going from literal to parabolic exegesis, in order to ‘discover golden apples in silver nets’ (according to Prov. 25:11). 7

Prologus generalis, n. 12. In De Genesi contra manichaeos, De Genesi ad litteram liber imperfectus, Confessions XIXIII, De Genesi ad litteram and De Civitate Dei XI. 8

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Both authors then took account of the Creator God in their interpretations. It is the core of Augustine’s thought that Eckhart has retained: the Idipsum,9 the very Being that is fundamentally life, which he will express through the metaphors of bullitio and ebullitio: the uninterrupted outpouring of life in God and the ebullitio of creation. Like Augustine, Eckhart completes his reflection by referring to the metaphysics of Exodus, but he also goes further than Augustine, which he re-reads through Origen and Jewish mysticism, St Thomas Aquinas and others, to evoke the dynamism of divine life and the power of divine action, while clearly distinguishing, like Augustine, between an intra-trinitarian life (ad intra): bullitio and creation (ad extra): the ebullitio. The light It is in terms of light that Augustine and Eckhart refer to creation. In Sermon 19 (24*), Eckhart speaks of ‘the light of the soul, in which creatures receive their being’. More broadly, both authors, although they are not Orientals, give a central place to light. Augustine had clearly distinguished between lux (light) and lumen (the means of lighting), focusing essentially on the light that is God, the source of all knowledge.10 Eckhart does not take up this distinction. In accordance with his time, he distinguished, in the Latin Sermon XXXVI, n. 370, three lights: natural light, that of the intellect11 and divine light, to which he gave the most important place. Augustine’s first experience of light was that of reverberatio, a term that is difficult to translate, which refers to a unique experience he had of light, as he mentions in Book VII of the Confessions (10, 16): I entered and with my soul’s eye, such as it was, saw above that same eye of my soul the immutable light higher than my mind – not that light of every day, obvious to anyone, nor a larger version of the same kind which would, as it were, have given out a much brighter light and filled everything with its magnitude. It was not that light, but a different thing, utterly different from all our kinds of light.

It transcended my mind, not in the way that oil floats on water, nor as heaven is above earth. It was superior because it made me, and I was inferior because I was made by it.12 It is a relationship of creation that Augustine then experienced. On the contrary, Eckhart does not speak directly of his experience, although it must have 9 See Marie-Anne Vannier, Creatio, conversio, formatio chez S. Augustin (Fribourg, 1991; 2nd ed. aug. 1997), 102-5. 10 See Marie-Anne Vannier, ‘Lumen/Lux’, in Cornelius Mayer (ed.), Augustinus Lexikon, vol. 3, 7/8 (Basel, 2010), 1065-70. 11 In Sermon 75 (Sermon 96* Sturlese/Vinzent), he adds the light of grace. 12 S. Augustine, Confessions, translated by H. Chadwick (Oxford, 1992), 123.

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been strong, but it appears in Sermon 71 (66*), where he identifies the experience of light with that of Paul on the way to Damascus. This experience is, like Augustine’s, an experience of light, a theophany. But Eckhart does not realize, insofar as he is a created being, the very nature of God. However, the Thuringian shows a deep understanding of Augustinian’s reverberatio. He analyses it, researches its nature and highlights its stake, which allows him to move from the existential dimension, as found in Augustine, to the following explanation in Sermon 75 (96*): My natural intellect must be moved out by a light, that is beyond it. As if my eye were a light, and so strong as to receive the light of the sun in its power and become one with it; it would not only see by its [own] power, but would rather see by the light of the sun as it is in itself. So it is with my intellect. If I turn the intellect, which is a light from all creatures directly to God, since God without interruption is flowing out with grace, my intellect is enlightened and united with love; and this knows God and loves God as He is in himself. This teaches us how God is flowing out into the intellectual creatures by the light of grace, how we are moved out of ourselves and ascend into a light that is God himself.

Even if he values the intellect, we see here how Eckhart emphasizes its limits to show that the source of light and love is in God, and more precisely in the Son. Thus, he explains, in Sermon 75 (96*), that ‘the Son is a light that has eternally shone in the paternal heart’. And he adds: ‘If we shall come in this, we must ascend from natural light into the light of grace and within we grow into the light that is the Son himself. There we are loved by the Father in the Son with the love that is the Holy Spirit, who has eternally originated there and flourished in his eternal birth’. Like Augustine, he identifies light with Christ, especially in his Commentary on the Gospel of St John. A whole study needed to be done on this topic, but we can not do it here. We can only note that throughout his preaching, both Latin and German, Eckhart invites us to go to the source of light that is the eternal light, ‘the divine light, which shines unceasingly’.13 Even if he does not often comment on the Transfiguration, it seems that the experience of the Transfiguration directs his preaching to recognize the eternal light and live in it, what Augustine expresses in terms of illumination and what Eckhart will take up as the birth of God in the soul, that is to say : the divinization, as we see in Sermon 72 (107*, n. 8), where he says: ‘He ascended to the mountain and was transformed before them’.14 The soul must be transformed and impressed in the image and reflected15 in the image that is the Son of 13

Sermon 78 (71*). See Matt. 17:1-2: (1) Et post dies sex assumit Iesus Petrum, et Iacobum, et Ioannem fratrem eius, et ducit illos in montem excelsum seorsum: (2) et transfiguratus est ante eos. 15 J. Quint ad loc. translates ‘widerslagen’ with ‘eingeprägt’ (‘impressed’). 14

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God. The soul is formed in the image according to God;16 but the masters say17 that the Son is an image of God, and the soul is formed according to this image. But I say more: the Son is an image of God beyond an image; He is an image of His hidden Godhead. Where the Son is an image of God and where the Son is informed, according to this the soul is formed. In the same way where the Son takes [His form], there also the soul takes hers. And then, where the Son is emanating from the Father, there the soul does not remain stuck; she is beyond an image. Fire and heat are one and yet they are far from being one. Taste and colour in an apple are one, and yet they are far from being one. The mouth learns the taste, but the eye can not add anything to it: the eye learns the colour, of which the mouth knows nothing. The eye longs for light, while the taste quite works in the darkness. The soul knows nothing except being one, she is beyond image.

From the outset, Eckhart highlights what is at stake in the Transfiguration for the soul, which is none other than the birth of God in the soul. It is an expression of the eternity, in which he finds himself. Morning and evening knowledge To better reflect this and develop Augustine’s thought, Eckhart starts from the creation of the human being in the image of God to show, like him, that, by his free choice, he realizes or destroys himself. Thus, the Thuringian refers to the Augustinian dialectic of morning knowledge (the moment when the creature turns to God) and of evening knowledge (the moment when it turns away from him), which corresponds to the conversio ad Deum or the aversio a Deo, to which, on the contrary, he does not refer explicitly, but whose idea he keeps. His point of view is different: If Augustine sets up, in an original way, the dialectic of aversio a Deo and conversio ad Deum, from his first commentary on Genesis: De Genesi contra manichaeos, in 388-389 and if he then develops it in the last three books of the Confessions and in De Genesi ad litteram that Eckhart read, it is to account, against the Manicheans, the status of the created being and the importance of freedom in the constitution of the subject and his creation in the image of God, which makes him an esse ad, a being oriented towards God, a being who is not achieved by himself, but who is constituted by the combination of freedom and grace in conversion itself. Eckhart has a similar perspective, but less focused on conversion. 16 See Gen. 1:26-7: (26) et ait: Faciamus hominem ad imaginem, et similitudinem nostram ... (27) Et creavit Deus hominem ad imaginem suam. 17 See Th. Aqu., Summa theologiae I q. 3 a. l ad 2: Ad secundum dicendum quod homo dicitur esse ad imaginem dei, non secundum corpus, sed secundum id quod homo excellit alia animalia; ibid. I q. 88 a. 3 ad 3: Ad tertium dicendum quod, si anima nostra esset perfecta imago dei, sicut filius est perfecta imago patris, statim mens nostra intelligeret deum. Est autem imago imperfecta. Unde ratio non sequitur.

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Like Augustine, the Thuringian invites us to go back to the origin, to the source of light. He repeats and reinterprets the Commentary of Psalm 58 (s. 1:18, CChr.SL 39, 742) of Augustine, where he stated that the soul has no light by itself, it has no strength by itself. All that is beautiful in the soul is power and wisdom (virtus and sapientia); its wisdom is not its own, its strength is not its own, it is not its own light and it is not its own power. There is an origin and a source of power (origo fonsque virtutis), there is a root of wisdom (radix sapientiae), there is, so to speak, if I must add, a region of immutable truth (regio incommutabilis veritatis). When the soul moves away from it, it is obscured, when it approaches it, it is illuminated. ‘Come closer to him and be enlightened’.

This is a sketch of the conversio ad Deum and the aversio a Deo. Eckhart adopts a more noetic perspective, as seen in the Sermon of the Noble Man, where he specifies that knowledge is a light of the soul and, by nature, all men desire knowledge, for even the knowledge of evil things is good. The masters say that when one knows creatures in themselves, that is a ‘evening’ knowledge, for then one sees the creatures in images of varied distinctions, but when one sees creatures in God, that is called a ‘morning’ knowledge and then one sees creatures without all distinctions, stripped of form and deprived of all ‘likeness’, in the One that God is himself. This too is the ‘noble man’ of whom Our Lord said: ‘A noble man’ went out: noble because he is one and because he knows God and the creature in the One.18

Not only does Eckhart, unlike Augustine, move from the existential level to that of knowledge, but he also moves from man to God. It is not so much the complementarity of freedom and grace that he seeks to highlight as the fourth and ultimate point of his preaching program:19 the puritas essendi, which implies the overtaking of images,20 the passage from time to eternity. But the fact remains that they both start from the Hebrew conception of day and night. But, whereas for Augustine, morning knowledge, the moment when the created being turns to his Creator, is fundamental, for Eckhart it is almost a state, if we refer to Sermon 9 (86*), where he says that we are an adverb, an ad verbum, oriented towards the Word, but, even more radically, this morning knowledge is an horizon towards which we tend and which implies the passage to eternity. These analogies and differences raise the question of whether there is not an analogy in Eckhart and Augustine’s experience of God, and then an interpretation according to culture and society in which it operates, which explains the anthropological and non-cosmological orientation chosen by both authors 18 The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart, ed. Maurice O’C. Walshe (New York, 2009), 562. 19 As presented in Sermon 53 (74*). 20 Cf. Wolfgang Wackernagel, Ymagine denudari. Éthique de l’image et métaphysique de l’abstraction chez maître Eckhart (Paris, 1991), 75, 87, 162-4.

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for their reflection on creation. It even seems that with morning knowledge Eckhart somehow takes over the Augustinian acies mentis. Acies mentis There may be a common ground in Neoplatonism for both authors,21 but Augustine uses the expression acies mentis to describe his spiritual experience, both in Book VII of the Confessions (10, 16; 17, 23; 20, 26) and at the time of Ostia’s vision (IX 10, 23-6). By taking up the three types of vision, which he presented in Book XII of De Genesi ad litteram, Augustine refers to the acies mentis as the highest vision, the intellectual vision, the direct vision of God, which corresponds in Eckhart to the puritas essendi. The terms are different, because of the different times in which both authors write. In the 14th century, the Augustinian typology of visions, while still important, was not unique. Eckhart, who, like Augustine, appreciates the creation through the Logos, does not hesitate to take an image, that of morning knowledge and to surpass it in the puritas essendi to reflect it, not only in the Sermon of the Noble Man, but also in the Sermons 8 (105*) and 37 (22*). In Sermon 8 (105*), he explains that ‘when angels know creatures without God, it is a evening light, but when they know creatures in God, it is a morning light. When they know God as he is, pure in himself, it is the luminous midday’. Thus, it appears that, for Eckhart, as for Augustine, the acies mentis is above morning knowledge, it is a penetration into the heart of divine life. This is also clear in Sermon 37 (22*). One can also wonder if there is not an analogy between the Augustinian acies mentis and the Seelenfünklein or the Etwas in der Seele of Eckhart. Again, we are referred to a similar experience that Augustine and Eckhart seem to have had and which they report on in different terms. In Sermon 83 (62*), Eckhart sketches out an answer, seemingly identifying the two realities. Thus, he specifies that Augustine says that in the higher part of the soul, which is called mens or gemüte, God created with the soul’s being a power that the masters call a castle, that is a treasure trove of spiritual forms or formal images [‘ideas’]. This power underlies the resemblance of the soul to the Father. By His emanating Godhead, from which He has poured all the treasure through the diffusion of his Deity from which he poured all the treasure of his divine being into the Son and into the Holy Spirit with personal distinction, so the memory of the soul emanates the treasure of the form into the powers of the soul.22

In this reflection, Eckhart goes further than Augustine. He takes up the knowledge of his time and his own experience to show how deeply this power is rooted in the Trinity. M. Tardieu, ‘Ψυχαῖος σπινθήρ. Histoire d’une métaphore dans la tradition platonicienne jusqu’à Eckhart’, REAug 21 (1975), 225-55. 22 Eckhart, The German Works, 1. De tempore (2019), 811. 21

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In a kind of variation of morning knowledge, he underlines how important it is for this power to move to the puritas essendi in order to know ‘the one and pure unity with God’. In Sermon 2 (83*), Eckhart gives full scope to his reflection on the small spark of the soul. He does not refer explicitly to Augustine, but when you read it, we can see how he takes up and reinterprets the Augustinian acies mentis. The same is true for Sermon 11 (76*), where this time he clearly places the small spark of the soul on the side of eternity and explains that, despite appearances, he is close to Augustine. Time and eternity Indeed, this experience of eternity, Augustine and Eckhart have it in common, but in a way that is almost unique. Augustine takes account of this from Ostia’s vision,23 whereas Eckhart does not explicitly mention it, but this experience is for him a founding experience, as his disciple Jean Tauler reminds him: ‘He spoke from eternity and you understood him from time’ (Sermon 15). If Augustine speaks of this momentum intelligentiae, of this ‘moment of intelligence’ that he experienced, with his mother Monique in Ostia, Eckhart evokes, in a similar way, this ‘essential moment (wesentlicher nû)’,24 where time disappears to make way for eternity. Thus he says, in Sermon 10 (110*): ‘The day of God is the day when the soul is in the day of eternity, in an essential moment, and there the Father generates his only Son in an actual moment, and the soul is reborn in God. Each time this birth takes place, each time he generates the only Son’. Eckhart goes further than Augustine here, because he specifies that this moment of eternity is none other than the birth of God in the soul. But he nevertheless takes up Augustine’s essential contribution to the reflection on time: the present of the present that the Bishop of Hippo highlighted following Ostia’s vision. While time is characterized by negativity, by degradation (distentio), Augustine explained in Book XI of the Confessions that it can be summarized by consciousness, and that it then becomes intentio, with the present of the past that is memory, the present of the present that is action and the present of the future: the project. Eckhart focusing on the present of the present, which he calls the ‘now present’, says in Sermon 38 (6*): If anyone had the skill and the power to gather into one present now time and everything that ever happened during the time of six thousand years and what still is supposed to happen up to the end, that would be ‘the fullness of time’. This is the ‘now’ of eternity, when the soul in God knows all things in God as new and fresh and as joyous as I have them here now in the present. I recently read in a book – could anyone fully fathom it! – that God is making the world here now just as on the first 23 24

Confessions IX 10, 25. Sermon 11 (76*).

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day, when He created the world. Here God is rich, and this God’s richness. From the soul in which God is supposed to be born, time has to fail away and she has to fall away from time, and should lift up and stand gazing into the richness of God: there is breath without breath, expanse without expanse; there the soul knows all things and knows them perfectly.25

By rereading Augustine, Eckhart remarkably penetrates his thought, but at the same time he goes further, passing from the ‘present of the present’ to the ‘now present’, which is the one of divine action. Unlike Augustine, Eckhart does not take into account the role of consciousness, but of the ‘small spark of the soul’, this Etwas in der Seele, which is none other than the point of dialogue between human beings and God, where they are created in the image of God. As a good medieval theologian, he says in Sermon 2 (83*) that ‘in this power, God verdicts and blossoms absolutely in all his joy and all the honor that he is in himself. It is such a joy, such an inefficiently great joy that no one is able to express it fully. For the eternal Father unceasingly generates his eternal Son in this power’. Is it not the ‘now present’,26 the breakthrough into eternity, into the Trinitarian life? Eckhart frequently returns to this question, as in the rest of Sermon 2 (83*), where he says: If the spirit were always united with God in this power, the person could not age; for the now in which God made the first person inside, and the now in which the last person should die, and the now in which I speak, are the same in God, and they are but one now. Now you see, this person lives in a light with God; therefore in her there is neither suffering nor progression but the same eternity.27

There is here a true flesh that unites time and eternity, in this essential moment, the eternal ‘now’ of God’s presence, of divine action. Before Bergson, Eckhart refers to this ‘now of eternity’ in terms of outpouring. Does he not also re-read the vision of St Benedict who saw the world, gathered in a ray of light and made him say: ‘So little that she saw light from the Creator, all creation narrows for the soul. In the clarity of the inner vision the capacity of the soul widens; its expansion in God is such that it becomes superior to the world?’ Eckhart knows this text and refers to it at the beginning of Sermon 73 (70*). Moreover, it is the same dilation of the soul in the light of God that he evokes, and he adds to it the birth of God in the soul. It is therefore his experience that he re-reads in a filigree and which leads him to give such importance to the ‘now present’, in a masterful re-reading of Augustine, to such an extent that he acts as a relay between Augustine and Bergson, which has never been highlighted and which is nevertheless important for the genesis of 25 26 27

Eckhart, The German Works, 1. De tempore (2019), 141. Sermon 50 (20*). Sermon 2 (83*).

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the reflection on time and on the decisive role of the present which was hardly developed between the 4th, 14th and 20th centuries. Eckhart’s re-reading of an Augustinian scheme If Augustine and Eckhart give such importance to the present, it is to highlight the decisive role of divine action and its consequences for the human being, which leads them to propose two complementary schemes to reflect the constitution of the human being, as we have already stressed. In Sermon 125, Augustine proposes the creatio, conversio, formatio scheme, in Sermon 40 (72*), Eckhart opts for that of Bild, Entbildung and Überbildung. Through his scheme, Augustine had thematized his experience to show that a forma is given to the created being, at creation. However, this forma can become deformis forma by the aversio a Deo or, on the contrary, forma formosa by the conversio ad Deum. Conversion is therefore essential. Detachment: Entbildung, the first point of his preaching program, as presented in Sermon 53 (74*), takes the place of conversion for Eckhart, which in his time no longer had a decisive role, but the exercise of freedom is no less decisive. In creation, Eckhart immediately retains the central element for the human being: the image of God that is in him, the point of dialogue between the creator and the created being. Like the Bishop of Hippo, he emphasizes Einbildung, inner unification, but he also goes further than Augustine, emphasizing that accomplishment implies Überbildung, the paschal transitus of love. Through the scheme they propose, Augustine and Eckhart are precursors of the subject’s philosophies,28 insofar as the human being constitutes himself, through free choice, in and through his relationship to others and to the AllOther. If Eckhart was able to come to these conclusions, it was on the basis of his experience and an unceasing reading of Scripture, but it was also thanks to Augustine, who was the first to give the subject such a place and who was the first to have proposed the Cogito. So it is no coincidence that we have 397 explicit quotations from Augustine’s Confessions in Eckhart’s work. He constantly took up reading it again and as for the achievement of the subject in intersubjectivity. Unlike the philosophies of the subject, however, Augustine and Eckhart elaborate their reflection from the image of God in man, and it is a whole dialectic and verbal game that they propose from there.29 Starting from the contribution of Augustinian reflection on the image of God: its spiritual nature, 28 See on this now Markus Vinzent, ‘Monism and dividualism in Meister Eckhart’, in Martin Fuchs et al. (eds), Religious Individualisation. Historical Dimensions and Comparative Perspectives, 2 vol. (Berlin, Boston, 2019), I 363-82. 29 See Marie-Anne Vannier (ed.), Intellect, sujet, image chez Eckhart et Nicolas de Cues (Paris, 2014; 2nd ed., 2016).

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the equality30 it implies, the Thuringian gives an original definition in the Latin Sermon XLIX: ‘The image is a certain life, as if you imagined something expanding from itself and bubbling in itself, and without yet understanding a boil’. This is a remarkable way of highlighting the Trinitarian dimension of the image, and one may wonder whether the image he is talking about here is not rather the Son, according to Colossians 1:15, than the human being according to Genesis 1:26, according to the experience he has had of the Trinitarian life. Trinity There is a further difference between Eckhart and Augustine: whereas the Thuringian starts from the Trinitarian life that he was given to know almost immediately, Augustine sought to understand the Trinity during his conversion and this led him to record the fruits of his Trinitarian meditation in the De Trinitate that he would not have published if the work had not been stolen from him, which led him to elaborate it further. But here too, Eckhart went to the heart of the matter, he largely penetrated Augustine’s intuition, his understanding of the mystery of love that is the Trinity. Augustine reported on this from the central analogy of the lover, the beloved and love (amans, quod amatur, amor31). This analogy is taken up and developed by the Bishop of Hippo as the ‘structure of all love’ at the end of Book VIII of De Trinitate (10:14), where he writes: ‘Here are three things: the one who loves (amans), the one who is loved (quod amatur), and love itself (amor).32 This is the whole of the Trinitarian life, this circulation of love between the divine persons, each one being placed in his being by the loving gaze of the other, as we see, later and in a different context, in the icon of the Trinity by Andrei Rublev. Based on his experience, Eckhart takes up and reformulates this analogy in terms of generans, genitum and amor gignentis ad genitum et geniti ad gignentem, thus highlighting the importance of the birth and the Trinitarian anchoring. The Father is always the Principium, the principle without principle,33 but he is, Eckhart points out, not only in his Commentary on the Gospel of St John, but also in his German Sermons, the principium generationis, the principle of generation, both within the Trinity and for the birth of the Word in the soul. Thus he writes, for example, in Sermon 6 (103*): ‘The Father generates his Son in eternity, equal to himself (...). But I say more: He begat him in my soul’. 30

De diversis quaestionibus. De Trinitate IV, 5, 7. 32 Olivier du Roy, ‘Amour et intelligence de la foi trinitaire’, RAug. 2 (1962), 438. 33 See on this Christopher M. Wojtulewicz, Meister Eckhart on the Principle: An Analysis of the Principium in His Latin Works, Eckhart: Texts and Studies 5 (Leuven, 2017). 31

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He then speaks of eternal birth, to which he devotes Sermons 101 to 104 (9*, 13*, 15*, 16*). Unlike Augustine, the Thuringian immediately draws the consequences for the human being, in this case: the divinization of the human being, which is the work of the Trinity. But he does not use Augustinian analogies to reflect the Trinitarian dimension of God’s image in man, except in Sermon 83 (62*), where he retains the main Augustinian analogy of memory, intelligence and will and transposes it to the higher powers, which leads him to say: You must also have a gold ring in each of the higher powers. There are three higher powers. The first is called the retentive power: memoria. This power makes one link with the Father in the Trinity. Of this you should have a gold ring, namely retention, so that all of the eternal things are retained in you. The second is called understanding, intellectus. This power is compared to the Son. Even of this you should have a gold ring for namely, knowledge, so that you shall know God at all times. How? You should know Him without image, without medium and without likeness. But if I have to know God without medium, I have to simply become Him and He becomes me. I say more: God must simply become me, and I simply be God, so truly one that this ‘He’ and this ‘I’ become and be ‘one’, and in the beingness perform one work; for this ‘He’ and this ‘I’, that is God and the soul, are very useful. One unique ‘here’ or one unique ‘now’ and this ‘I’ together with the ‘He’ and this ‘him’ could never act or become one. The third power is called will, voluntas. This power one links to the Holy Spirit. On this, you should have a gold ring, that is: love, so that you shall love God. You shall love God without loveability. How then shall I love God is not loving, he is above all love and all attraction of loveability, i.e. not because He is loveable, because God is unloveable; He is above all love and loveability. How then should I love God: You should love God not spiritually, that is, that your soul should be non-spiritual and stripped of all spirituality, because as long as your soul is formed by the spirit, she carries images; as long as she carries images, she has a medium, she has no unity or unanimity; as long as she has not unanimity, she never loves God in the right way; because truly loving lies depends on unanimity.34

While Augustine had refused to identify memory to the Father, intelligence to the Son and will to the Holy Spirit, in order not to reduce the Trinitarian circumincession, by attributing a faculty to one or the other of the persons, while it is shared by the whole Trinity, Eckhart chooses to identify the powers, but only in terms of comparison and analogy. In fact, memory sends him back to eternity, intellect calls for his surpassing in the conformation to Christ and in pure love the will is expressed. Thus, Eckhart would be closer to the Franciscan perspective, which emphasizes will rather than the Dominican orientation towards intellect. But his purpose is elsewhere, all anchored in identification with Christ and in unification in love.

34

Eckhart, The German Works, 1. De tempore (2019), 815-7.

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Christology This is how Eckhart’s Trinitarian theology and his Christology are articulated. A new common point, negative this time, arises between Augustine and Eckhart: whereas for both authors, Christology is omnipresent, it is difficult to find a text that presents its synthesis. For Augustine, this text was rediscovered in 1990 at the Mainz Library, it is the Sermon Dolbeau 26, perhaps we will find a similar text by Eckhart, but we do not currently have one. Unlike Augustine, however, Eckhart placed no emphasis on Christ as mediator, which is understandable, since he did not have to fight against the Donatists and Christology was established in his time and he does not allow for any mediation between God and the human soul,35 because the soul is reborn in the Son. Once again, he is located in the eternity and refers to the Son as one of the Trinity. But, like Augustine, Eckhart chooses a Christology from above, emphasizing the divinity of Christ, whereas in his time there was more devotion to the humanity of Christ.36 In addition, he exhorts, in his preaching, to conform to the Forma omnium that is Christ. Thus he says in the Latin Sermon LII: ‘By the love of Christ, every Christian becomes inflamed and totally imbued with Christ, so that he is informed (informatus) by Christ to accomplish the works of Christ’, that in other words, he becomes an alter Christus. In Eckhart, as in Augustine, it is an ontological dimension: the Christian is informatus, that is, he receives his true form, which is none other than the new life through the Forma omnium that is Christ. It is both a theological ontology and a baptismal theology that they develop here. Another expression is found in the Latin Sermon XX, where Eckhart says that ‘no one is a Christian except by being in Christ and by the being of Christ’. It is not to an external imitation of Christ that he invites, but to a true conformation. Eckhart is in this very Augustinian, but his emphasis on baptismal theology, if inspired by the Fathers, is no less original for his time, when all are Christians, sometimes by tradition, he invites us to return to the source. Like the Bishop of Hippo too, the Thuringian says in the First Sermon on Ecclesiasticus that ‘the preacher of Christ must think only of Christ in his teaching, so that he can say (of himself): “My teaching does not come from me, but from him who sent me” (Jn. 7:16). It is Christ and the teaching of Christ that the Brother Preacher has to preach and, in truth, as someone who lives in Christ 35 Cf. M. Vinzent, ‘Mechthild von Magdeburg, Dietrich von Apolda und Meister Eckhart: Zur Konzeption religiöser Selbstbestimmung’, in Dietmar Mieth and Regina D. Schiewer (eds), Religiöse Selbstbestimmung. Anfänge im Spätmittelalter, Meister-Eckhart-Jahrbuch 5 (Stuttgart, 2020), 133-74. 36 See Bernard McGinn, The Mystical Thought of Meister Eckhart (New York, 2001), 115-6.

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and lives in the truth’37. Augustine and Eckhart were great preachers, who experienced life in Christ, which they formulated in different terms, but which express the same reality: the inner master in Augustine, the birth of God in the soul in Eckhart. Soteriology Eckhart shares the concern for the salvation of all, which was that of St Dominic. Thus, he came to develop a soteriology that was not without analogy with Augustine’s before the Pelagian polemic. It was, in fact, the Savior Christ whom Augustine met during his conversion, which led him to say in Book VII of the Confessions (20, 26): ‘If in Christ, our Savior, I had not sought your way, he is not a fine man, but soon a finite man that I would have been’. Eckhart does not evoke this existential dimension, but he nevertheless repeats that ‘the Father constantly presses so that the Son is born in me’,38 to become son in the Son. Surprisingly, Eckhart never considers salvation in terms of redemption, but always as divine filiation or divinization, which are continuous. However, he knew the texts that Augustine had written during the Pelagian polemic and which gave a restrictive vision of salvation, he also knew the Cur Deus homo, where Anselm of Canterbury presents salvation as redemption, he also knew the soteriology of Thomas Aquinas, which takes up, in part, that of Anselm, but he does not repeat these different theses. Like the early Augustine, he understands salvation as the fulfillment of creation, as formatio in the Forma omnium that is the Son, which may be astonishing for his time, but which is nonetheless meaningful for today. Undoubtedly Eckhart starts, there too, from the point of view of eternity, but he gives an optimistic vision of salvation, understood in terms of divinization. To explain this, we quote the famous phrase that Eckhart frequently uses: ‘to become by grace what God is by nature’. This sentence is generally attributed to Maximus the Confessor,39 but it seems to come from Augustine, from his Comments of the Psalms, in particular Psalms 81:6 and 49:6, where, when reading: ‘You are gods and the sons of the Most High’, Augustine comes to specify: ‘This is therefore manifest because he told men that they are divinized by his grace and that they were not born of his substance’.40 There is no kind of pantheism for Augustine or for Eckhart, but a clear distinction between created beings and God who divinizes them by grace. Moreover, Augustine continues 37 First Sermon on Jesus Sirach 24, in Meister Eckhart, Die deutschen und die lateinischen Werke. Die Lateinischen Werke II, ed. Heribert Fischer et al. (Stuttgart, 1992), 234. 38 Sermon 39 (102*), for example. 39 Question to Thalassios 22. 40 Enarratio in Psalmum 49, 2.

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his comment: ‘God is he who divinizes by himself and not by participating in another. He himself divinized, because he made his sons gods by justifying them (...). To become a son of God is to become gods; and yet we are such only by the grace of adoption, not by nature or by birth’. The text is clear, it is quoted in the same way in the City of God IX 23. Eckhart must have known these texts, in any case, he comes to similar conclusions to highlight the challenge of the admirable exchange of the Incarnation which aims to give the human being ‘to become by grace what he is by nature’. Augustine and Eckhart therefore developed a whole theology of grace in a different way, because Augustine had to respond to the Donatists, while Eckhart lived in a more serene context. But for Augustine and Eckhart, participation in divine life is at the heart of soteriology. Both are good theologians and point out that the ontological difference remains between created beings and God, but that divinization nevertheless occurs in silence, the silence which opens the cycle of Sermons on the birth of God in the soul of Eckhart, according to the text of Wisdom which is, then, commented on, the silence found, for example, in Augustine’s Against Adimante (93, 2), when he says : ‘For him to make men gods, this is to be understood in divine silence’. It is not known whether Eckhart read this text, but his experience is similar to Augustine’s and they come to similar conclusions. The difference between them is that Eckhart places more emphasis on divinization and gives it its full scope, also taking into account the contribution of the Greek Fathers, but Augustine, through his commentaries on Scripture, had traced the path for it.

Preaching It is mainly as preachers that they speak. Eckhart makes preaching the focus of his work: the Latin part constitutes the preparation, the German part the symphony. However, for the rhetorician Augustine, who became a Christian, preaching is also fundamental. Moreover, both start from an experience similar to that of St. Paul on the way to Damascus, but they report it differently. In the Seventh Homily on the Gospel of John 23 (BA 71, pp. 459-63), Augustine uses the image of Jacob’s ladder to evoke it. He writes: What did he see on the ladder? Angels going up and down. This is also what happens to the Church: the angels of God are the good preachers, those who preach Christ; this is what it means: they ascend and descend above the Son of Man. How do they get up and how do they get down? (...) Seek how far he ascended: ‘to the third heaven’. See how far he has descended: ‘to the point of giving milk to little children’ (...). If the Lord himself has ascended and descended, it is obvious that the preachers, likewise, ascend by imitating him and descend by preaching him.

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Before addressing the people of Hippo, Augustine lived the experience of God, the cognitio Dei experimentalis, ‘he is delighted until the third heaven’, then he can lead his listeners to live a similar experience. Augustine knew this experience, the experience of reverberatio, when he was converted, he reports it, as we have seen, in Book VII of the Confessions (10, 16), and he had to re-live it at other times in his life. Eckhart, on the contrary is more discreet about his experience, but it nevertheless emerges from Sermon 71 (66*), where he re-reads the experience of St Paul on the way to Damascus, and where he says that ‘through the light of heaven, we experience the light that is God, that the meaning of no man can reach’. This experience is of the order of the unspeakable, of the apophasis, but from there, preaching develops. Here again, Augustine and Eckhart agree in their conception of preaching in terms of continued creation. Thus, Augustine says in the Sermon Denis 2: ‘The Word comes out of me, it goes to you, but it has not withdrawn from me’. Like God, the Creator, the preacher’s word makes his listeners grow, but he himself loses nothing of it. Similarly, Eckhart says in Sermon 30 (80*) for the feast of St Dominic, the preacher par excellence: ‘Preach the Word, pronounce it, express it, produce it and bear the Word. It is a strange thing that something flows out and yet remains within, it is very strange; that all creatures flow out and yet remain within; that what God has given and what God has promised to give, it is very strange, it is incomprehensible and incredible’. Despite its strangeness, this mystery is that of contemplata aliis tradere, of transmitting to others the fruits of its contemplation from an ever-repeating reading of Scripture. Again, Augustine and Eckhart have similar perspectives, that of explaining Scripture through Scripture, while taking into account the achievements of Tradition. As for the purpose of preaching, it is the same, but expressed in different terms: Augustine speaks of the emergence of the Inner Master, Eckhart, of the birth of God in the soul, but for both of them, it is the conformation to Christ. Perhaps in its form, Augustine’s preaching is more continuous, since it is mainly addressed to the Hippo community, while Eckhart has diverse audiences, but Eckhart, who followed the Rule of St Augustine, also understood and took up the spirit of his preaching. * * * Without multiplying the topics, it must be noted that Eckhart remarkably penetrated Augustine’s intuitions, that he took them up and adapted them, conceptually, for his time and specially to report on his experience. This reference to Augustin also contributes to Eckhart’s actuality and the dynamism of his work.

Wisdom in St Augustine and Meister Eckhart Silvia BARA BANCEL, Université de Lorraine, France / Universidad P. Comillas, Madrid, Spain

ABSTRACT Analysing the notion of wisdom in Saint Augustine and in Meister Eckhart can serve as an example to discover their profound relationship, and, at the same time, to show the Eckhartian originality. As can be seen from the analysis of his Commentary on the Book of Wisdom of Solomon, Eckhart takes up and deepens Augustine’s words in relation to wisdom. First, Wisdom in Augustine and Eckhart refers to God (sapientia increata), His nature, or a divine property frequently related to Truth, and it is specially attributed to the Son (1Cor. 1:24). Second, for both authors, human wisdom (sapientia participata) always comes from God and is a participation of His Wisdom, an illumination and a grace. Virtues lead to purifying the soul, the image of God, for contemplation (Eckhart and Augustine). Unlike Augustine, Eckhart considers that it is already possible to know of God and reach the visio beatifica, as a birth of God in us and as a participation in the Trinitarian life; but it is, in fact, an unknowing, an ignorance, and happens beyond the human faculties, in the ground of the soul (Homily 101). As we shall see, Eckhart bases his peculiar thought on Augustine, but doing so he, in fact, goes beyond him, saying that humans are able to enjoy eternal bliss in the present life, for they are then away from this world in the present now of eternity.

Before approaching wisdom in Augustine and Meister Eckhart, it is necessary, first, to consider that both participate in the two traditions of wisdom: philosophical and biblical.1 Thus, the Greeks moved from a practical wisdom, attributed to artisans as ‘excellence of art’, to the search for philosophical knowledge. And Cicero will offer in Latin a definition of wisdom that summarizes ancient philosophical thought, which Augustine will adopt: ‘Wisdom is the science of divine and human things and their causes’.2 On the other hand, there is a whole sapiential current in the Old Testament, which is especially concentrated in the ‘sapiential’ books: Job, Proverbs, Kohelet, and some Psalms, in the Hebrew Bible, and also Jesus Sirach or Ecclesiasticus and the Wisdom of Solomon, transmitted by the Septuagint and the Vulgate – on both 1 See Maurice Gilbert, ‘Sagesse (des hommes et de Dieu), Ancien Testament’, DSp 14 (1990), 72-81; Jean-Noël Aletti, ‘Nouveau Testament’, DSp 14 (1990), 92-6; Aimé Solignac, ‘Sagesse antique et sagesse chrétienne’, DSp 14 (1990), 96-114. 2 Cicero, De officiis II 2, 5.

Studia Patristica CXXX, 477-488. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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of which Meister Eckhart commented. Sapiential books speak, first, of human wisdom, a practical wisdom, but also of divine wisdom, which is superior to all wisdom of humans (Job 12:13). Finally, some sapiential texts personify wisdom, which appears distinct from God and the world (Job 28; Prov. 1-9; Sir.; Wis. 6-9) and the fathers of the Church will see in it an allusion to the Son of God (Origen, Augustine, etc.). The New Testament also shows the wisdom of Christ: the Gospels present Jesus as the wise man, and the Pauline tradition mentions him as the pre-existent Son of God, who is also the Wisdom by God. Paul calls the Christ ‘the power of God and the wisdom of God’ (Christum dei virtutem, et dei sapientiam) (1Cor. 1:24), a verse that Augustine and Meister Eckhart will quote. These two sources, philosophical and biblical, will be at the basis of the reflections on the wisdom of these two authors. And this is what Goulven Madec points out: ‘The structure of the Augustinian doctrine is firmly based on scripture: especially on Paul and John. But it is also inspired by philosophy’.3 Madec shows that the person of Christ, whom Augustine named ‘our science’ and ‘our wisdom’, is the principle of the coherence of his doctrine. Thus, ‘from the day of his conversion’, explains Madec, ‘Augustine identified the wisdom of the Hortensius and the divine intelligence of Platonism with the Word of John’s Prologue: Christ; and he realized that all his doctrine was based on Christ, Word-God and Word-flesh’.4 Some other studies have been done on this theme. As early as 1943, Fulbert Cayré showed the complexity of the question, pointing out thirty-one different meanings of wisdom in Augustine.5 The first scholar who takes it in depth is Anne-Marie La Bonnardiere, in her study on the Wisdom of Solomon in Augustine.6 For even though Augustine did not write a commentary on this book, as Eckhart did, he used it constantly throughout his work. Augustine interprets the Wisdom of Solomon as a prophetic book that speaks of a personified Wisdom: Christ, the Son of God, the Father’s Word, and Augustine will use these texts to elaborate his Trinitarian theology (especially Wis. 7:24-7). Finally, Gerd van Riel traces the quest for wisdom that animates the different phases of Augustine’s life and work. He highlights a progressive ‘externalization’ of wisdom in Augustine’s thought, i.e. the perfection of wisdom 3 Goulven Madec, ‘Christus scientia et sapientia nostra. Le principe de cohérence de la doctrine augustinienne’, RAug. 10 (1975), 77-85, 77. 4 G. Madec, ‘Christus Scientia et sapientia nostra’ (1975), 82. ‘Du jour où il s’est converti, Augustin a identifié la Sagesse de l’Hortensius et l’intelligence divine du platonisme avec le Verbe du Prologue johannique, le Christ ; et il s’est persuadé que toute sa doctrine se fondait sur le Christ, Verbe-Dieu et Verbe chair’. 5 Fulbert Cayré, ‘La notion de la sagesse chez saint Augustin’, Année théologique augustinienne 4 (1943), 433-56. See also Paul Agaësse, ‘Note complémenaire 37. Sapientia et scientia’, in Œuvres de Saint Augustin 16. La Trinité. Livres VIII-XV, ed. Paul Agaësse, BA 16 (Bruges, 1955), 620-3; and A. Solignac, ‘Sagesse antique et sagesse chrétienne’ (1990), 104-6. 6 Anne-Marie La Bonnardière, Biblia Augustiniana. AT. Le Livre de la Sagesse, Études Augustiniennes 5 (Paris, 1970).

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comes from an external source to man, and no one can procure his own wisdom. Augustine expressed it through the notions of participation and illumination and, in his late work, related it to his doctrine of grace.7 If we find many studies on wisdom in Augustine, the same cannot be said of Meister Eckhart, for almost nothing has been worked on this subject, except the deep, but short, reflections of Marie-Anne Vannier on wisdom in Eckhart,8 and the paper by Andreas Speer,9 who is the first to have addressed the question of wisdom in Eckhart in relation to Saint Augustine, but in a limited way. He focuses only on the two Eckhartian homilies for the feast of Saint Augustine (the Latin Sermo die b. Augustini in Parisius habitus and the German Homily 16b). Speer points out that Eckhart deepens the Augustinian notion of the abditum mentis, where God is present. Then, ‘by virtue of its rational nature, man participates immediately in divine Wisdom’.10 Therefore, the search for wisdom is a practical knowledge; it is addressed to ‘the inner man, who, by returning to himself, should find what he is by nature’, concludes Speer.11 I do not share this interpretation of Eckhart completely, and I would rather show that, to Eckhart, everything is grace, and wisdom always comes from God as His divine gift. Anyway, to approach wisdom in Meister Eckhart and in Augustine is of great interest because it shows how Eckhart inspires himself by the Augustinian tradition and, at the same time, he develops an original and suggestive thought. I will take special account of his Commentary on the Book of Wisdom (Expositio Libri Sapientiae, In Sap.) and the Sermons and lessons on Jesus Sirach (Sermones et Lectiones super Ecclesiastici cap. 24, In Eccli.), and the Latin homily Sermo die b. Augustini Parisius habitus.12 I will not deal here with the 7 Gerd Van Riel, ‘La sagesse chez Augustin: de la philosophie à l’Écriture’, in Isabelle Bochet (ed.), Augustin, philosophe et prédicateur. Hommage à Goulven Madec (Paris, 2012), 394-405. 8 Marie-Anne Vannier, ‘La place de la sagesse dans l’œuvre d’Eckhart’, in ead., Maître Eckhart prédicateur (Paris, 2018), 206-10 and 726. See also Donald F. Duclow, ‘Meister Eckhart on the Book of Wisdom: Commentary and Sermons’, Traditio 43 (1987), 215-35. 9 Andreas Speer, ‘Weisheit bei Augustinus und Meister Eckhart’, in Rudolf K. Weigand and Regina Schiewer (eds), Meister Eckhart und Augustinus, Meister-Eckhart-Jahrbuch 3 (Stuttgart, 2011), 1-15. On Augustine and Eckhart see, for example, the whole volume of Meister-EckhartJahrbuch 3 (Stuttgart, 2011); M.A. Vannier, Eckhart prédicateur (2018), 431-76; and Markus Vinzent, ‘Eckhart’s Lektüre von Augustins Bekenntnissen’, in Marie-Anne Vannier (ed.), Maître Eckhart, lecteur des Pères latins (Paris, 2020), 49-62. 10 A. Speer, ‘Weisheit bei Augustinus und Eckhart’ (2011), 13: ‘Kraft seiner Vernunftnatur hat er [der Mensch] unmittelbaren Anteil an der göttlichen Weisheit’. 11 Ibid. 15: ‘… das dem inneren Menschen gilt, der in der Rückwendung auf sich selbst das finden soll, was er seiner Natur nach ist’. 12 All the quotes follow the critical edition of Meister Eckhart, Die deutschen und die lateinischen Werke, herausgegeben im Auftrage der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft; Die deutschen Werke, ed. Josef Quint and Georg Steer [abbreviated: DW]; Die lateinischen Werke, eds. Ernst Benz, Karl Christ, Bruno Decker, Bernhard Geyer, Josef Koch, Heribert Fischer, Erich Seeberg, Loris Sturlese and Albert Zimmermann [abbreviated: LW]) (Stuttgart, 1936-), 10 vol. (almost completed). For the English translation of the homilies: Meister Eckhart, The German Works.

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question of wisdom in Augustine in all its fullness, but I will limit myself to highlighting the most important aspects, which are also significant for Eckhart. If we try to classify the notions of wisdom in Augustine and Eckhart, we can begin by distinguishing, as F. Cayré did, two main aspects: wisdom present in God and in men, i.e. Wisdom which designates God or his Son (Sapientia increata) and wisdom in humans (sapientia participata). 1. Wisdom that is God (Sapientia increata) Both share the conviction that Wisdom is, 1º God himself (Deus sapientia), His essence13 or 2º a divine attribute14 and, above all, 3º the Son, the Christ, ‘the power of God and the wisdom of God’ (dei virtus et dei sapientia) (1Cor. 1:24), with different tonalities. For Augustine the central category of divine wisdom is the Son.15 For Eckhart it is more difficult to specify, as he does not appreciate delimitations and divisions, and his affirmations on divine Wisdom can frequently be understood both as the Son and as the pure divine essence.16 However, he attributes wisdom to the Son, Christ, as Augustine and the Christian theological tradition did.17 64 Homelies for the Liturgical Year. 1. De Tempore, ed. Loris Sturlese and Markus Vinzent (Leuven, 2019) [abbreviated HLY 1]. (Volume 2. De sanctis [Leuven, 2020]). We keep the numbering of the homilies according to the critical edition. 13 See, for instance, Augustine, Soliloquia I 1, 3; and Eckhart, In Sap. n. 157 (ed. Josef Koch, LW II [Stuttgart, 1992], 293.7). 14 See Augustine, De Trin. VII 4, 6 (ed. M. Mellet, BA 15 [Bruges, 1997], 526): Et ideo sapientia pater, sapientia filius, sapientia spiritus sanctus; et simul non tres sapientiae, sed una sapientia; et quia hoc est ibi esse quod sapere, una essentia pater et filius et spiritus sanctus. And Eckhart, Homily 77 (ed. Josef Quint, DW III [Stuttgart, 1976], 341.3 and ed. Markus Vinzent, HLY 1 [2019], 115-6): ‘Because goodness, wisdom and what one can say of God, all of these are accidents of God’s naked being’. 15 See, for example, Augustine, De Trin. IV 20, 27, and also De Trin. XIII 19, 24 (ed. P. Agaësse, BA 16 [1955], 336): Scientia ergo nostra Christus est, sapientia quoque nostra idem Christus est. Ipse nobis fidem de rebus temporalibus inserit; ipse de sempiternis exhibet ueritatem. Per ipsum pergimus ad ipsum, tendimus per scientiam ad sapientiam; ab uno tamen eodemque Christo non recedimus in quo sunt omnes thesauri sapientiae et scientiae absconditi. 16 See Eckhart, Sermo LV n. 536 (ed. Ernst Benz, LW IV [Stuttgart, 1956], 451.3-7): ‘Neminem diligit deus, nisi qui cum sapientia inhabitat’ [Wis. 7:28], id est in filio; vel ‘cum sapientia’ filio patrem ‘inhabitat’; vel ‘cum sapientia’ creata deum ‘inhabitat’, qui est sapientia increata. Sapientia enim ‘candor est lucis’ [Wis. 7:26a] ‘et emanatio sincera dei omnipotentis’ [Wis. 7:25b] ‘et imago quaedam bonitatis dei’ [Wis. 7:26c]. 17 See Eckhart, In Ioh. n. 27 (ed. Karl Christ, LW III [Stuttgart, 1994], 21): Ista autem quae de imagine dicta sunt, aperte colliguntur Sap. 7, ubi dicitur de sapientia sive verbo dei quod est ‘speculum sine macula’ [Wis. 7:26b], ‘emanatio’ ‘dei sincera’ [Wis. 7:25b]. Item quod est ‘imago bonitatis illius’ [Wis. 7:26c], et quod ‘nihil inquinatum incurrit in illam’ [Wis. 7:25c]. Item quod est ‘vapor virtutis dei’ [Wis. 7:25a] et ‘candor lucis aeternae’ [Wis. 7:26a]. Per haec etiam exponuntur, ut dictum est supra, quasi omnia quae de divinitate filii scribuntur. And Eckhart, Sermo XXIV 1 n. 227 (ed. E. Benz, LW IV [1956], 212.9-10): Nota: salvator noster et exemplar, ‘fons sapientiae, verbum dei in excelsis’ [Eccli. 1 5].

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In his Sermons and Lessons on Jesus Sirach n. 6, Eckhart summarizes three characteristics of Divine Wisdom,18 and he develops them in his Commentary on the Book of Wisdom. First, it refers to ‘the purity without mixing the divine essence’ (divinae essentia impermixta puritas, In Eccli. n. 34). It is the Unity of God, his Goodness and his indistinction.19 As Augustine, Eckhart connect the verses Wis. 7:25c (‘nothing defiled gains entrance into the Wisdom’) and 7:24b (‘because of her pureness she pervades and penetrates all things’). Eckhart often quotes Augustine, when he explains that the purity of Wisdom ‘penetrates all things’ (Wis. 7:24b). Eckhart retains the profound meaning of Augustine in his De vera religione 52, 10120 and 39, 72,21 who finds the presence of beauty and truth in the world, as vestiges of God. A second characteristic of the Divine Wisdom is Her motherhood. Eckhart explains the verse Wisdom 7:12, that Augustine did not quote: ‘She is mother of all the goods’. And he says that ‘all created things not only come from God who actively creates, but also are in God, in the manner of containment (contentive) and conservation (conservative)’ (In Sap. n. 121).22 Eckhart justifies his assertion not only by the authority of Scripture, which says: ‘You have 18 Eckhart, In Eccli. n. 6 (ed. J. Koch, LW II [1992], 234.12-235.3): Hodie divina sapientia pro sua bonitate nos invitat in epistula dicens: ‘transite ad me omnes’ [Wis. 24:23]. Promittit in principio tria quae omnes amare solent, non plura, non pauciora nec alia. Sunt autem ista: amati puritas, plenitudo sive copiositas, tertium est ipsius suavitas. In a second homily on Wis. 24:27, In Eccli. n. 33 (ed. J. Koch, LW II [1992], 262.7-11), Eckhart points out five characteristics of the wisdom, that include the former three: purity (puritas), its property as the source of the universal good (universalis boni fontalis proprietas), its excellence (sublimitas), its perfection (perfectionis) and its sweetness (suavitas). 19 There are many different sources in Eckhart, he integrates Augustinian Platonism and Neoplatonism with Dionysian Neoplatonism, Proclus and the Liber de causis, Aristotle, Thomas, Avicenna, Maimonides, Origen, etc. See Loris Sturlese (ed.), Studie sulle fonti di Meister Eckhart, 2 vol., Dokimion 34 and 37 (Fribourg, 2008 and 2013). 20 Eckhart, In Sap. n. 138 (ed. J. Koch, LW II [1992], 476.3): Et hoc est quod Augustinus dicit De vera religione c. 100 [52, 101]. Loquens de veritate sive sapientia dei ait: ‘eam speciem mente contuebimur, cuius comparatione foeda sunt’ omnia ‘quae ipsius benignitate sunt munda’ – alia littera habet ‘pulchra’. 21 Eckhart, In Sap. n. 200 (ed. J. Koch, LW II [1992], 534.10-535.1): Et in hoc redit quod Augustinus De vera religione c. 67 [39, 72] ait: ‘ita sapientia dei pertendit a fine usque ad finem fortiter, ita per hanc summus ille artifex opera sua in unum finem decoris ordinata contexuit, ita illa bonitas a summo ad extremum nulli pulchritudini quae ab ipso solo esse posset invidit, ut nemo ab ipsa veritate deiciatur qui non accipiatur ab aliqua effigie veritatis’. Hoc Augustinus. 22 Eckhart, In Sap. n. 121 (ed. J. Koch, LW II [1992], 458.3-10): Notandum ergo quod ait: ‘bonorum omnium mater’ [Wis. 7:12]; non ait pater, quamvis et hoc verum esset, sed praeelegit dicere mater. Proles enim quamvis sit a patre active, est tamen in matre receptive, contentive et conservative usque in decimum mensem, ut dictum est supra. Vult ergo dicere sapiens quod bona omnia, sed et res omnes creatae non solum sunt a deo creante active, sed etiam sunt in deo contentive et conservative, Psalmus: ‘omnia in sapientia fecisti’ [Ps. 104(103):24] et iterum: ‘fecit caelos in intellectu’ [Ps. 135:5]; Gen. 1: ‘in principio creavit’ etc. Augustinus IV Confessionum [IV, 12, 18]: fecit deus omnia. ‘Non fecit atque abiit, sed ex illo in illo sunt’. […] [Rom 11:36] ‘ex ipso et per ipsum et in ipso sunt omnia’.

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done all things in Wisdom’ (Psalm 104[103]:24), and ‘with understanding’ (Psalm 135:5); but also by the authority of Augustine, who maintains in his Confessions IV, 12, 18 that ‘God made all things; but “he did not do it to abandon them, but because they come from Him, they are in Him”’ (In Sap. n. 121). Eckhart really appreciates this Augustinian idea; he uses it on 9 occasions throughout his work.23 God does not create all things ‘outside Him’, Eckhart says with Augustine, but ‘from Him and in Him’, because ‘what is outside God is outside being’ and there is nothing outside being, which God is. And he goes on: ‘this joins Romans 11 (36): All things are from Him, with Him and in Him’. Therefore, Eckhart shares here the notion of the continuous creation of God with Augustine.24 The third characteristic of Wisdom is Her sweetness, as the Wisdom of Solomon 8:1 says: ‘she disposes all the things sweetly’ (disponit omnia suaviter). Eckhart explains that God gives being to things and their ‘own forms and properties’ (formas et proprietates) (In Sap. n. 173), and, therefore, their natural inclinations are sweet for them, because there is an agreement between the act and the innate disposition, which gives rise to a sweetness, a delight. Eckhart refers to Book X 29, 40 of the Confessions of Saint Augustine, where he exclaims to God: ‘Give what you command, and command what you want’.25 Any action that comes from within, continues Eckhart, ‘is pleasant and gentle, because in it there is an agreement between the act and the aptitude (habitus)’.26 And it is a characteristic of life, because ‘what is alive moves by itself and from within’. And he adds: God, as the first cause and the last end, is interior (intimus) to all the things he sets in motion. From this comes the fact that all the operations, and only them, which God carries out in us and we in Him and for Him, as the most interior, are alive. But all the actions we do for something else besides Him – which is for us truly intimate, which 23

Eckhart, Prol. gen. n. 17, n. 20 and n. 21 (ed. Konrad Weiss, LW I/1 [Stuttgart, 1964], 161.6; 164.9; and 165.4); In Gen. n. 19 (ed. K. Weiss, LW I/1 [1964], 201.2); In Eccli. n. 49 (ed. J. Koch, LW II [1992], 278.2); In Sap. n. 121 (ed. J. Koch, LW II [1992], 458.8); In Ioh. n. 579, (ed. K. Christ, LW III [1994], 508.2; Sermo XXIII (ed. E. Benz, LW IV [1956], 207.14); and Homily 30 (ed. Josef Quint, DW II [Stuttgart, 1971], 101.1). 24 Eckhart also relies on Augustine to argue that God created ‘in such a way that he always creates’ (Prol. gen. n. 18). He explicitly quotes this sentence from Confessions I 6, 10: ‘All things of yesterday and the past, you will do them today’ (omniaque hesterna et retro hodie facies, hodie fecisti). 25 Eckhart, In Sap. n. 173 (ed. J. Koch, LW II [1992], 508.12-509.4): ‘disponit omnia suaviter’ [Wis. 8:1] : […] quia movet singula dando formas et proprietates inclinantes naturaliter et ob hoc suaviter in fines suos. Ubi notandum quod habitus in nobis nascuntur ex actibus adhuc dissimilibus, et ideo cum labore. Secus de habitu innato naturaliter vel a deo infuso, qui laborem nescit, sed parit delectationem ex convenientia actus et habitus. Propter quod Augustinus X Confessionum [X, 29, 40] loquens deo ait: ‘da quod iubes et iube quod vis’. 26 Eckhart, In Sap. n. 184 (ed. J. Koch, LW II [1992], 519.3-5): omnis actio ab intra procedens delectabilis est et suavis et vita est sive vivere, suavis quidem propter convenientiam actus et habitus, iuxta nomen suum intus entis.

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penetrates into the essence, as being – are dead, since in actions of this kind, it is not He who sets us in motion, but something external, like something dead, which is already no longer alive. For nothing outside of God penetrates our essence. […] If it is true that only these actions benefit us, it is because they are ours and divine, and because they come from within, and it is because in them it is our inner God at the highest level who sets us in motion, and nothing from outside or independent [from Him]. (In Sap. n. 184).27

In fact, it is God who has disposed by creation that He Himself be the most interior to us, and that our actions in Him and for Him be gentle, just as those He realizes in us. Thus, God’s desire and the ability to receive and love Him, and all our actions towards Him are therefore both ‘our own and divine’, the fruit of God’s action in us and of our nature that He has offered us. Basically, everything is a gift, everything is grace: the grace of creation, that gives us to be who we are, capable of God (In Ioh. n. 610); this is what Eckhart calls the ‘grace given graciously’ (gratia gratis data) in his Commentary of the Book of Wisdom (In Sap. n. 272). And also the gratia gratum faciens, the grace that makes us graceful and allows us to act spiritually (In Sap. n. 273).28 He notes that ‘all that God operates in the creature is grace and graciously given’ (In Sap. n. 272).29 But he emphasizes that grace acts in the essence, in who we are, but the operation is ours. ‘Grace, strictly speaking, does not initiate action, but concerns the being within, just as the very essence, as an essence, concerns the being only’ (In Sap. n. 273).30 That is why our actions are ours and, at the same time, divine as well. Eckhart further clarifies how this divine action is carried out gently in creatures. He uses Aristotelian categories there. It is through the ‘substantial form’ (forma substantialis) that they have received from him: ‘without murmuring, without contradiction, without resistance of matter, without intermediary’, the form ‘remains and informs matter gently’ (In Sap. n. 189). ‘Now God, Wisdom, 27 Eckhart, In Sap. n. 184 (ed. J. Koch, LW II [1992], 520.2-521.1): Deus autem, utpote causa prima et finis ultimus, intimus est omnibus quae movet. Hinc est quod illa opera omnia et sola, quae deus in nobis operatur et nos in illo propter illum, utpote intimum, viva sunt. Omnia vero opera, quae operamur propter quid aliud extra ipsum, qui solus vere intimus est nobis et essentiae illabitur, utpote esse, mortua sunt, eo quod in ipsis talibus operibus nos movet, sed movemur ab aliquo extra sicut mortuum et iam non vivum. Nihil enim citra ipsum deum essentiae nostrae illabitur. […] Illa siquidem opera sola nobis proficiunt, nostra sunt et divina, quae ab intus sunt et in quibus deus intimus movet et nihil foris aut extra. 28 Eckhart distances himself from Augustine regarding grace, since he does not associate it with sin, but rather it is a gift prior to human action. 29 Eckhart, In Sap. n. 272 (ed. J. Koch, LW II [1992], 602.2-8): De gratia ad praesens duo notanda sunt. Primum est quod omne, quod operatur deus in creatura, gratia est et gratis datur. […] Sic ergo gratis dat omnibus omnia. Et hoc est quod hic dicitur: ‘omnium nutrici gratiae tuae’ [Wis. 16:25]. Hinc est quod haec gratia dicitur, quia gratis data. 30 Eckhart, In Sap. n. 272 (ed. J. Koch, LW II [1992], 603.3-5): Hoc autem esse divinum dat gratia gratum faciens ipsi essentiae animae. Hinc est quod gratia non principiat proprie opus, sed esse respicit et ad intra, sicut ipsa essentia, ut essentia, solum esse respicit.

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is the actualization (actualitas) itself and the form of all acts and forms’. That is, it is in Him and from Him that all forms in things arise. Eckhart explicitly claims Augustine’s authority and follows De vera religione 18, 36: ‘Everything comes from God: what is formed, as formed, and everything that is not yet formed, as it can be formed’.31 2. Human wisdom, a participated wisdom (sapientia participata) 2.1. Wisdom is from God and through God in men Human wisdom, for both Augustine (De Trin. XIV 12, 15) and Eckhart (In Sap. n. 242) is at the same time God’s wisdom. We could say, using Van Riel’s expression, that the progressive externalization of wisdom, of which Augustine spoke, leads to the Eckhartian conviction that all wisdom, including human wisdom, belongs to God: ‘through Him’ and ‘in Him’. Thus, Augustine uses the notions of participation, enlightenment, as well as grace. Eckhart uses a conception of analogy, the so-called extrinsic analogy of attribution (In Eccli. nn. 52-3). That is to say that every being in creatures is a received being, which has no consistency in the creature, but only in God (In Eccli. n. 53).32 Eckhart relies on Augustine’s participation to explain analogy (In Eccli. n. 52;33 Prol. gen. n. 9).34 He uses the same example as Augustine to point out the relationship 31 In Sap. n. 189 (ed. J. Koch, LW II [1992], 524.10-525.4): sciendum quod forma substantialis non habet contrarium et secundum se nec est principium alterationis et transmutationis, sed sine murmure, sine contradictione, sine renisu materiae et sine medio inest et informat materiam suaviter et in silentio omnis alterationis. Deus autem, sapientia, ipsa est actualitas et forma actuum omnium et formarum. Augustinus De vera religione c. 35 [XVIII, 36]: ‘omne formatum inquantum formatum est et inquantum formari potest, ex deo’ est. Et hoc est quod hic dicitur: ‘disponit omnia suaviter’. 32 Eckhart, In Eccli. n. 53 (ed. J. Koch, LW II [1992], 282.1-3): analogata nihil in se habent positive radicatum formae secundum quam analogantur. Sed omne ens creatum analogatur deo in esse, veritate et bonitate. Igitur omne ens creatum habet a deo et in deo, non in se ipso ente creato, esse, vivere, sapere positive et radicaliter. 33 Eckhart, In Eccli. n. 52 (ed. J. Koch, LW II [1992], 281.1-12): Ens autem sive esse et omnis perfectio, maxime generalis, puta esse, unum, verum, bonum, lux, iustitia et huiusmodi, dicuntur de deo et creaturis analogice. Ex quo sequitur quod bonitas et iustitia et similia bonitatem suam habent totaliter ab aliquo extra, ad quod analogantur, deus scilicet. Et hoc est quod dicit Augustinus de ipso esse quidem I Confessionum circa medium [I 6, 10], quod nulla ‘vena trahitur aliunde a qua esse’ sit, praeterquam a deo, qui est summum et ‘summe esse’, ut dictum est supra in secunda expositione. De iustitia vero dicit idem Augustinus l. III Confessionum [III 7, 13]: iustitia ‘ubique et semper’, ‘non alibi alia nec alias aliter, secundum quam iusti’ sunt ‘omnes laudati ore dei’. De luce autem, vita et veritate frequenter idem dicit, ut patet super illo Ioh. 1: ‘lux vera illuminat omnem hominem’. 34 Eckhart, Prol. gen. n. 9 (ed. K. Weiss, LW I/1 [1964], 154.6-12): Augustinus VII De trinitate c. 1 [2] praedictis alludens dicit: ‘sapientia’ ‘sapiens est et se ipsa sapiens est’. Et ‘quaecumque anima participatione sapientiae fit sapiens si rursus desipiat, manet tamen in se sapientia, nec cum fuerit anima in stultitiam commutata, illa mutatur. Non ita est in eo qui ex ea fit sapiens,

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between ‘the wise’ (sapiens) and ‘wisdom’ (sapientia). The wise man, as such, participates in wisdom, which remains so even if the person goes mad. Eckhart will constantly use this relationship wise / wisdom or, more often, just / justice, to highlight, on the one hand, that what we are is given to us (therefore, the ‘externalization’ of wisdom in Augustine), but on the other hand, that once ‘just’ or ‘wise’, and as such, then man is ‘one’ with Justice and Wisdom, which belongs to God. He expresses it in this way: ‘He who is in Wisdom is wise, and he who dwells in Justice is just’ (Par. Gen. n. 10).35 This possibility is therefore a grace given graciously (gratia gratis data) during creation. Human beings are created in the image of God (Gen. 1:27) and this image makes them capable of God (capax Dei), a notion from Augustine that Eckhart often uses. For both, it is the highest and deepest dimension of the soul, the intellect, spiritu mentis (De Trin. XIV 19, 25), or acies mentis (De Trin. XIV 19, 26), to which Eckhart gives different names: ‘intellect’, ‘something in the soul’, a ‘little spark’, ‘the innermost of the soul’, ‘the ground of the soul’, but in fact ‘it is free of all names’.36 Furthermore, Eckhart deepens the Platonic notion that Augustine transmits (Cont. acad. III 17, 37), from two worlds or two regions: that of God, ideas, truth and wisdom; and that of corruptible things.37 This distinction does not mean for Eckhart (nor for Augustine) that there are two worlds physically separated, one above the other, but an ontological distinction and also the possibility of an orientation towards the High or toward what is distant from Him, what is separated and divided; for everything is ‘in God’, and ‘by Him’, as it appears in the notion of continuous creation. It may be that the process of leaving ‘this’ and ‘that’, which Eckhart uses in profusion, is based on his reading of De Trinitate VIII 3, 4,38 to go beyond what is ‘this’ and ‘that’ to situate himself in the region of species and forms, where he finds the pure Good, the Being, the One, Wisdom. There the soul can receive the divine gift of wisdom, quemadmodum candor in corpore quod ex illo candidum est. Cum enim corpus in alium colorem fuerit commutatum, non manebit candor ille atque omnino esse desinet’. 35 Eckhart, Par. Gen. n. 10 (ed. Loris Sturlese, LW I/2 [Stuttgart, 2015], 349.12): Quod enim in uno est, unum est. Sic qui est in sapientia, sapiens est, et manens in iustitia iustus est. 36 See, for instance, Eckhart, Sermon 2 (ed. Josef Quint, DW I [Stuttgart, 1958], 39.1-40.4). 37 Eckhart, In Gen. n. 78 (ed. K. Weiss, LW I/1 [1964], 239.8-11): Praemissis alludit quod dicit Augustinus Contra academicos [III 17, 37] ‘Platonem sensisse duos esse mundos: unum intelligibilem, in quo ipsa veritas habitat, alium sensibilem, quem manifestum est nos visu tactuque sentire; illum verum, hunc verisimilem et ad illius imaginem factum’. See also Eckhart, In Eccli. n. 10 (ed. J. Koch, LW II [1992], 240.5). 38 Eckhart, In Sap. n. 282 (ed. J. Koch, LW II [1992], 615.3-6): Rursus silent omnia divisim, quando silet animae hoc et hoc creatum et distinctum. Ubi notandum quod hoc necessarium est animae quae debet ipsum deum suscipere propter quattuor. […] Quarto, quia anima naturaliter fertur in bonum simpliciter et absolute. Nihil autem hoc et hoc est bonum simpliciter et absolute, ut dicit Augustinus VIII De trinitate [VIII 3, 4]; et hoc est quod idem Augustinus dicit I Confessionum [I 1, 1] loquens deo: ‘fecisti nos ad te, et inquietum est cor nostrum, donec requiescat in te’.

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‘a kind of tasty knowledge’ (quasi sapida scientia),39 which is none other than the union with God, as Augustine experienced in the reverberatio and Eckhart relates in his Latin Homily for the feast of Saint Augustine (Sermo die b. Aug. n. 5, and Conf. VII 10, 16). 2.2. Practical wisdom and virtues Both Augustine and Eckhart address the practical dimension of wisdom, and the practice of virtues, but Eckhart does not seek to propose degrees in virtues to achieve wisdom. He rather attaches himself, like Plato and Plotinus (which Eckhart explicitly mentions, In Sap. n. 263), to the fact that, at their highest degree, all virtues are united as communicating vessels, and the one who reaches one in fullness is because he also possesses the others (In Sap. n. 108). Virtues are both ours and also of God (as Augustine said of faith [spir. et litt. 34, 60]), because God gives us the form of virtues, but we have to actualize them. On the basis of the ‘smoothness of divine Wisdom’, that is, of its continuous creation which gives us to be what we are, it will, on the one hand, radicalize the ontological difference between God and the creature, between Being, Wisdom, and the beings ‘this’ and ‘that’, but at the same time it will give value back to the creature, especially to humans, who, by constantly receiving their beings from Him, and their capacity from Him, can have a divine and human action, if they freely choose to implement what they receive from God. 2.3. Birth of Wisdom Finally, Eckhart goes beyond Augustine, having received an inspiration from him, when he conceives wisdom as a birth of God in us and a participation in the Trinitarian life. The wise man, as such, is born as the son of Wisdom: The Father generates him in Him, ‘in the purest part’ of the soul, ‘in the ground, indeed, in the being of the soul’ (Homily 101),40 and this is accompanied by the enjoyment of love, of the Spirit. For this birth to take place, it is necessary to turn away from the world and these attachments, purify the spirit through detachment and virtues, and become more and more receptive. Eckhart relies on Augustine’s approach (Conf. IV 11, 16),41 who already mentioned the necessity 39

Eckhart, Sermo die b. Aug. n. 6 (ed. Bernhard Geyer, LW V [Stuttgart, 2006], 95.1): Haec cognitio scientia vel sapientia, quasi sapida scientia, quae aliquando intromittit hominem in affectum multum. 40 Eckhart, Homily 101 (ed. Georg Steer, DW IV [Stuttgart, 2003], 343.38-9) and the English translation (ed. M. Vinzent, HLY 1 [2019], 181): ez ist in dem lutersten, daz diu sêle geleisten mac, in dem edelsten, in dem grunde, jâ, in dem wesene der sêle. 41 See, for instance, In Sap. n. 280 (ed. J. Koch, LW II [1992], 613): Rursus in mentem venit sapientia, quando anima quiescit a tumultibus passionum et occupatione rerum mundialium,

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of silence and introversion, so that the Word speaks in the soul; and Eckhart takes up Augustine’s call to return inward and to find there the presence of God (interior intimo meo), where only God alone ‘penetrates’ (illabi) the soul.42 To be silent, to let the Word speak in us (Augustine, Conf. IX 10, 25); to be born in us (Eckhart, In Sap. nn. 279-85, Homilies 101-4; and Origen).43 Eckhart could admit, as Augustine did in his Revisions, that man is only able to attain the blessed life and perfect knowledge of God in eternity; but he considers that when one knows God it is because it already takes place in the present of eternity, beyond this world, as Augustine himself writes.44 Eckhart links two Augustinian quotations (De Trin. IV 20, 27-28, et De mor. eccl. 11, 19).45 Therefore, Eckhart relies on Augustine to transcend him and show that here and now we can already enjoy beatitude and receive the grace of knowing God,46 quando ipsi silent omnia et ipsa silet omnibus [Conf. IX 10, 25]. Et hoc est quod dicit Augustinus IV Confessionum c. 9 [Conf. IV 11, 16]: ‘noli esse vana, anima mea, obsurdescere in aure cordis a tumultu vanitatis tuae. Audi verbum ipsum”; “ibi est locus quietis imperturbabilis’, ‘ibi fige mansionem tuam’. Et IX l. [Conf. IX 10, 24] sic ait: ‘quid simile verbo tuo, domino nostro, in se permanenti atque innovanti omnia?’ Et sequitur: ‘si cui sileat tumultus carnis, sileant phantasiae terrae’ ‘et poli, ipsa sibi anima sileat et transeat se non se cogitando, sileant somnia et imaginariae revelations’, ‘et loquatur ipse solus’ ‘per se ipsum, ut audiamus verbum eius’. Hoc est ergo quod dicitur: ‘cum quietum silentium contineret omnia’ [Wis. 18:14]. 42 Augustin, Conf. III 6, 11 (ed. M. Skutella, BA 13 [Bruges, 1962], 382): Tu autem eras interior intimo meo et superior summo meo; Eckhart, In Ioh. n. 304 (ed. K. Christ, LW III [1994], 253.7): deus solus dicitur illabi animae ab Augustino; Sermo VI 1 n. 56 (ed. E. Benz, LW IV [1956], 55): sit intima deo anima et deus animae; Sermo XLV n. 452, LW IV, 376.8: Item ipse secundum Augustinum illabitur animae et est intimior animae quam ipsa sibi; Acta Ech. n. 129 (ed. L. Sturlese, LW V [2006], 244.6) and Proc. Col. II n. 129, LW V, 349.2: Sanctus Augustinus sic dicit: ‘deus est intimior animae quam ipsa sit sibi ipsi’; Homily 10 (ed. J. Quint, DW 1 [1958], 161.8): Als sant Augustînus sprichet: got ist der sêle næher, dan si ir selber sî. 43 Even if Eckhart attributes it to Augustine, he cites Origen when he proclaims, in his Homily 101 (ed. M. Vinzent, HLY 1 [2019], 179): ‘Saint Augustine says: “What does it avail me that this birth is always happening, if it does not happen in me? That it should happen in me is what matters”’. See Origen, Homiliae in Lucam 22 (ed. Max Rauer, GCS 35 [Leipzig, 1930], 144.12-5). 44 Eckhart, In Ioh. n. 286 (ed. K. Christ, LW III [1994], 240.1): Augustinus De moribus ecclesiae dicit: ‘toto mundo est omnino sublimior mens inhaerens deo’. Et De trinitate l. IV c. 20 sic ait Augustinus: ‘verbum caro factum est’; ‘cum ex tempore cuiusque perfecta mente percipitur’, et ‘mitti quidem dicitur, sed non in hunc mundum’, ‘quia et nos, secundum quod mente aliquid aeternum, quantum possumus, capimus, non in hoc mundo sumus; et omnium iustorum spiritus etiam adhuc in hac carne viventium, inquantum divina sapiunt, non sunt in hoc mundo’. 45 Eckhart repeats three times this association: In Ioh. n. 286 (ed. K. Christ, LW III [1994], 240.2); n. 450, 385.4; n. 469, 402.2; and summarizes it in Proc. Col. II n. 135 (ed. L. Sturlese, LW V [2006], 350.3). 46 Eckhart, Sermon 94 (ed. G. Steer, DW IV [2003], 147.57-64) and the English translation (ed. M. Vinzent, HLY 1 [2019], 773): ‘The knowledge of God is life that flows out from God’s and the soul’s being, because God and the soul have one being and are one in being; because all works so flow out from God that they still remain inside. Thus the soul knows God, when she is one in and with God’s being. And this is the true blessedness, when the soul has life and being with God. And this is knowledge of God, when all other knowledge and being falls off. The soul

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a knowing that is an ‘unknowing’ and an ‘ignorance’ (Homily 101),47 as it happens above our faculties, within ‘the ground’. Let us conclude with Eckhart’s words from his German Homily 112:48 There are two forms of wisdom [as Augustine already said49]. The first is natural, so that one can orient oneself according to time in changing things. In this a person has free will, so that he can turn wisdom towards God or towards transient things. The second wisdom [of which we are talking here] comes from the presence of God and the knowledge of God: this cannot be turned to anything but God. Wisdom is one of the greatest things God can give. Man becomes a participant by wisdom of the same bliss, which God Himself is and has. God’s bliss is that He knows Himself through and through, loves Himself and has pleasure in Himself. With the same bliss man is gifted by God in order to know God, love Him and enjoy His pleasure. […] When the soul gets to know this, a joy from above blossoms within her and the soul pours herself into all the limbs out of joy, and everything that he sees and hears from the outside becomes pleasant and entirely joyful for the person. This has not come to him from outside but has blossomed from within. That this may happen to us, may God help us! Amen.

does not know herself or any other thing, except herself in God and God in her and all things in Him’. 47 See, for instance, Freimut Löser, ‘Vom Nichtwissen Meister Eckharts. Eine Skizze’, in Marc Häberlein et al. (eds), Geschichte(n) des Wissens. Festschrift für Wolfgang E.J. Weber zum 65. Geburtstag (Augsburg, 2015), 41-58. 48 I am very thankful to Markus Vinzent for providing me with his English translation (see HLY 2 [2020], 551-2). 49 Eckhart does not insist on the distinction between wisdom (sapientia) and science (sciencia) developed by Augustine (De Trin. XIV 1, 3). But he introduces the distinction between ‘earthly wisdom’ and ‘eternal’ or ‘divine” wisdom’ (Homily 95) or, as here, between ‘natural wisdom’ and the ‘wisdom’ which ‘comes from the presence of God’ (Homily 112).

Knowledge and Reason versus Experience and Practice: Jonathan Edwards and the Patristic Doctrine of Deification Irene PETROU, Sydney, Australia

ABSTRACT Despite an absence of terminology for deification, in Jonathan Edwards’ writings, the Patristic doctrine of deification framed many aspects of his theology. Five key themes can be identified in his theology that show his engagement with the doctrine was based in Scriptural Tradition: the Christian’s participation in the divine nature; Christ’s descent and ascent; the Patristic idea of ‘recapitulation’; the Christian’s union with God/Christ; and the progression of the Christian soul in eternity. The doctrine functioned in Edwards’ soteriological anthropology to allow eschatology to inform on issues to do with Christian ethics and morality in the Christian’s present life. His adaptation of the doctrine enabled him to account for both the spiritual and earthly concerns of the Christian life bringing together the transcendent and immanent qualities of the work of grace in a way that is not antithetical to, or incompatible with, the Reformed doctrine of justification by faith. One result is that Christian issues to do with ethics and morality become a theocentric concern, not an anthropocentric one, which for Edwards allowed him to demarcate Christian moral theory from eighteenth century secular and philosophical moral theory. This can be seen to be the reason why the doctrine appealed to him in his eighteenth-century Enlightenment context. He perceived the ever-growing rationalism in Reformed Protestant thinking, which had imposed a dichotomy between knowledge and reason, and experience and practice, to be a false one – a tension that remains and continues to impact modern theological thinking today.

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) perceived the ever-growing rationalism in Reformed Protestant thinking, which had imposed a dichotomy between knowledge and reason, and experience and practice, to be a false one. Framing his theology of sin and grace, the patristic doctrine of deification was the mechanism which allowed him to draw attention to the necessity of Christian practice in light of the Christian’s salvation. Moreover, Edwards’ soteriological anthropology allowed eschatology to inform all types of issues to do with Christian ethics and morality in the Christian’s present life. One result is that Christian issues to do with ethics and morality become a theocentric concern, not an anthropocentric one, which for Edwards allowed him to demarcate Christian moral theory from eighteenth century secular and philosophical moral theory. Given Edwards’ Enlightenment context, his adaptation highlights an important

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early church soteriological application of the doctrine in how it functions to allow eschatology to bear and inform on ethical and moral issues in the Christian’s present life.

The Patristic Doctrine of Deification in Edwards’ Theology? Although, Pelikan1 recognised some decades ago that the patristic doctrine of deification characterised Edwards’ soteriology, it is only recently that Protestants have broadly agreed that Edwards engaged with the doctrine.2 Even so, Protestant theologians still embrace Edwards’ notion of deification with some reticence.3 The patristic doctrine has proved unpalatable primarily because Edwards is an eighteenth-century theologian from a Puritan background who was not adverse to the Enlightenment and its ideas.4 This reticence has caused some scholars to speak of the doctrine as a construction of Edwards’ soteriology.5 For example, Salladin6 prefers to use his own category of ‘special grace’ in referencing the doctrine, whereas others prefer to speak of the doctrine as a construction of Edwards’ soteriology, preferring terminology like ‘glorification’, ‘sanctification’ and ‘justification’.7

1 Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine: Christian Doctrine and Modern Culture (since 1700) (Chicago, 1989), V 161-2. 2 See Oliver D. Crisp, Jonathan Edwards on God and Creation (Oxford, 2012), 164-73; Oliver D. Crisp and Kyle C. Strobel, Jonathan Edwards: An Introduction to his Thought (Grand Rapids, 2018), 146-69; Stephen R. Holmes, God of Grace and God of Glory: An Account of the Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Grand Rapids, 2000), 58; Michael J. McClymond, ‘Salvation as Divinization: Jonathan Edwards, Gregory Palamas and the Theological Uses of Neoplatonism’, in Paul Helm and Oliver D. Crisp (eds), Jonathan Edwards: Philosophical Theologian (Hants, 2003), 139-60; Michael J. McClymond and Gerald R. McDermott, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Oxford, 2012), 410-23; James Salladin, ‘Essence and Fullness: Evaluating the CreatorCreature Distinction in Jonathan Edwards’, SJT 70 (2017), 427-44; Kyle Strobel, ‘Jonathan Edwards and the Polemics of Theosis’, HTR 105 (2012), 259-79; Kyle Strobel, ‘Jonathan Edwards’s Reformed Doctrine of Theosis’, HTR 109 (2016), 371-99. 3 See George S. Claghorn, ‘Related Correspondence: Introduction’, in Paul Ramsay (ed.), The Works of Jonathan Edwards: Ethical Writings (New Haven, 1989), VIII 633. See also Robert W. Caldwell III, Communion in the Spirit: The Holy Spirit as the Bond of Union in the Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Milton Keynes, 2006), 192; S.R. Holmes, God of Grace (2000), 58. 4 See Josh Moody, Jonathan Edwards and the Enlightenment (Lanham, 2005), 2-3, 155-6. 5 See O.D. Crisp and K.C. Strobel, Introduction (2018), n. 8, 149; K. Strobel, ‘Reformed Doctrine’ (2016), n. 6, 373. 6 J. Salladin, ‘Essence’ (2017), 428. 7 See J. Salladin, ‘Essence’ (2017), 428; Seng-Kong Tan, Fullness Received and Returned: Trinity and Participation in Jonathan Edwards (Minneapolis, 2014), 336, 342-3; Veli-Matti Karkkainen, ‘Deification View’, in James K. Beilby and Paul R. Eddy (eds), Justification: Five Views (Downers Grove, 2011), 219-64.

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Deification the other side of Justification Early church thinkers did not equate the doctrine of deification as identical to the redemptive doctrines of justification and sanctification. Some early theologians8 correlated their notions of deification with justification but none equated deification with justification. Whereas the doctrine of justification can be quantified or described in ‘concrete terms’ as drawing attention to a finite or complete action (Christ died for the sinner, Christ atoned for the sinner, the sinner is declared righteous), the doctrine of deification cannot be similarly quantified. The patristic doctrine concerns itself with what lies at the other side of the sinner’s justification as it shifts the focus to the meaning and shape of Christian salvation itself. Although the patristic doctrine may be presented as a counterpart of the doctrine of the incarnation, it is best to speak of both doctrines as ‘events’, because both doctrines speak to something that has not only happened but has ongoing consequences for the Christian life.9 The way to understanding the doctrine is to note the different ways the doctrine functions to capture the full soteriological ramifications of the ‘event’ of the incarnation.10 The reason why Protestants have been reluctant to acknowledge the doctrine in its own right is because the doctrine is almost always systematically categorised under the area of Christian mysticism.11 Theological notions placed under this category have proved difficult to conceptualise and technically quantify because they fall under the realm of the ‘abstract’, which can be difficult for technical and systemised exegetical study to apprehend and comprehend.12 Another difficulty is that deification or theosis are not words found in Scripture, which can make exegetical study difficult, requiring an understanding of the scriptural contextual basis that gave this soteriological notion its shape.

The Two Eastern Orthodox Definitions A stumbling block in contemporary scholarship over the doctrine’s relevance lies in how modern theology seeks to provide a definition of it that usually focuses on one or other of the emphases spawned by the historic theosis 8 See Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos 49.2, CChr.SL 38 (Turnhout, 1953), 8.575-76. See Maximus the Confessor, Mystagogia 24, ed. Christian Boudignon, CChr.SG 69 (Turnhout, 2011), 69.68. 9 See Andrew Louth, ‘The Place of Theosis in Orthodox Theology’, in Michael J. Christensen and Jeffery A. Wittung (eds), Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Traditions (Grand Rapids, 2007), 32-44, 34. 10 Ibid. 34. 11 See Vladimir Kharlamov, ‘Theosis in Patristic Thought’, TT 65 (2008), 158-68. 12 See Constantine R. Campbell, Paul and Union with Christ: An Exegetical and Theological Study (Grand Rapids, 2012), 59-61.

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tradition.13 This follows the trend in modern times to establish quantifiable and measured definitions of doctrines for the purpose of understanding as well as to establish credibility and refute heterodoxy. Some writers emphasise the communication of the divine attributes (the characteristics that apply to God’s being), whilst others focus on the participation in the relationship among the divine persons.14 These two emphases are apparent in the two technical definitions of deification developed by contemporary eastern Orthodox scholars. The first15 is the distinction made between God’s uncreated energies (ἐνέργεια) and God’s essence (οὐσία) through God’s uncreated energies.16 The second17 defines the doctrine in terms of the Christian’s participation in Christ’s hypostasis rather than specifically in the divine energies. Its Christological focus and ecclesiological utility, has found favour with both Catholics and Protestants.

13 Rowan Williams, ‘Deification’, in Gordon S. Wakefield (ed.), The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Spirituality (Philadelphia, 1983), 106-8. See Norman Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition (Oxford, 2004), 14. 14 R. Williams, ‘Deification’ (1983), 106. 15 See Vladimir Lossky, Orthodox Theology: An Introduction, trans. Ian and Ihita KesarcodiWatson (Crestwood, 1989), 72; Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Cambridge, 1944), 102. Lossky’s definition has been promoted by Georgios I. Mantzarides, The Deification of Man: St Gregory Palamas and the Orthodox Tradition, trans. Liadain Sherrard (Crestwood, 1984), 111-3. For a discussion on this definition see Roger E. Olson, ‘Deification in Contemporary Theology’, TT 64 (2007), 189-92. For an overview of the Palamite dispute see Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine – The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600-1700) (Chicago, 1974), I 261-70. On ‘hesychasm’ see Kallistos Ware, ‘Hesychasm’, in Gordon S. Wakefield (ed.), The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Spirituality (Philadelphia, 1983), 189-90. For a comparison between Palamas and Edwards see M.J. McClymond, ‘Salvation as Divinization’ (2003), 139-60. 16 The majority of western critiques are directed towards the first definition. Bruce McCormack argues that a ‘reformed’ doctrine of deification is impossible. See Bruce McCormack, ‘Participation in God, Yes, Deification, No: Two Modern Protestant Responses to an Ancient Question’, in Johannes Fischer, Hans-Peter Grossans and Ingolf U. Dalferth (eds), Denkwürdiges Geheimnis: Beiträge zur Gotteslehre. Festschrift für Eberhard Jüngel zum 70. Geburtstag (Tübingen, 2004), 347-74; Bruce L. McCormack, ‘Union with Christ in Calvin’s Theology: Grounds for a Divinization Theory?’, in David W. Hall (ed.), Tributes to John Calvin: A Celebration of his Quincentenary (Phillipsburg, 2010), 504-45. Others argue that a ‘reformed’ doctrine of deification is possible. See Myk Habets, ‘“Reformed Theosis?” A Response to Gannon Murphy’, TT 65 (2009), 489-98; Myk Habets, ‘Theosis, Yes; Deification, No’, in Myk Habets (ed.), The Spirit of Truth: Reading Scripture and Constructing Theology with the Holy Spirit (Eugene, 2010), 124-49; Gannon Murphy, ‘Reformed Theosis?’, TT 65 (2008), 191-212. 17 Other eastern scholars have noted the neglect of the doctrine’s Christological foundations. Christ is understood as the model of ‘true humanity’, so that Christians become ‘truly human’ in relation to God through Christ. See John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (London, 1985), 91; id., Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church (London, 2006), 30-1 n. 51, 243. Other proponents of the definition are John Behr, The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death (Crestwood, 2006), 176-77; Panayiotis Nellas, Deification in Christ: The Nature of the Human Person, trans. Norman Russell (Crestwood, 1987), 39

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A Reformed doctrine of Deification? Very recently, some Protestants have presented a case for a ‘reformed doctrine of theosis’ so as to connect Edwards’ version of the doctrine to a reformed western tradition.18 These Protestants want to distinguish the doctrine from contemporary eastern Orthodox accounts that focus on the communicable nature of the divine attributed through the divine energies (following Palamas’ theological construct), which they see as problematic.19 Hence, reformed accounts of theosis, as found in Edwards is a ‘partaking in the Sonship of the Son’, which articulates the relational side of the spectrum.20 Despite the merits of intent, the problem with this approach is that Protestant scholars show little understanding, if at all, of the nuanced theological Greek terminology that determines the arguments surrounding the two definitions offered by contemporary eastern Orthodox scholars. For example, both Crisp and Strobel21 take the communicable nature of the divine attributed through the divine energies (following Palamas’ theological construct) as the paradigm or accepted deification doctrine in the Eastern tradition, which is no longer the case. The other issue is, that preferring the ontological relational side of the spectrum (the Christian’s participation in Christ) also ignores the teleological qualities (design and purpose) that the doctrine has, which neither of the two eastern orthodox definitions adequately encapsulate. Moreover, the Protestant preference for the relational side of the spectrum is just as weighted by the metaphysical and ontological quality of the scriptural terminology (‘participation in Christ’; ‘union with Christ’), as both contemporary Orthodox definitions are with their concentration on the Greek terminology. A rendering of terminology devoid of theological context or the writer’s intent neglects the full spectrum of soteriological themes that gave life to the doctrine in the early church. Although Williams22 correctly noted that some early writers emphasise the communication of the divine attributes (the characteristics that apply to God’s being), whilst others focus on the participation in the relationship among the divine persons, an observation of differences or emphases in early thinkers is not tantamount to definition. Some scholars23 have drawn a distinction between deification themes and the ‘doctrine’ of deification, where a doctrine is spoken of in terms of ‘a well-defined 18 See O.D. Crisp, God and Creation (2012), 172-3; K. Strobel, ‘Reformed Doctrine’ (2016), 397-8; O.D. Crisp and K.C. Strobel, Introduction (2018), 148-9. 19 O.D. Crisp, God and Creation (2012), 170-1. 20 K. Strobel, ‘Reformed Doctrine’ (2016), 397-8. 21 See O.D. Crisp and K.C. Strobel, Introduction (2018), 149; O.D. Crisp, God and Creation (2012), 166. 22 R. Williams, ‘Deification’ (1983), 106-8. 23 See M. Habets, ‘Theosis, Yes’ (2010), 127-8; Gosta Hallonsten, ‘Theosis in Recent Research: A Renewal of Interest and a Need for Clarity’, in Michael J. Christensen and Jeffery A. Wittung

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complex of thought that centres on technical terms’.24 This definition of what a doctrine is, is an entirely modern construct and follows an anachronistic approach. In the early church context doctrines are beliefs, bodies of teachings or instructions that were inherently passed on via the church’s scriptural tradition, which usually began as metaphorical themes.25 Any perceived idiosyncrasies26 in the writing of early thinkers, should not be taken as contradistinctions27 with regard to a doctrine’s credibility. Scriptural themes worked to serve doctrinal teaching, and were never divorced from the doctrine. Adapting the Greek philosophical and theological vocabulary that an early writer used and transposing it into the present day has led to theological anachronisms, confusion, accusations of heterodoxy, and misunderstanding. In the end, neither contemporary rendering of the doctrine frees itself from a purely ontological view of deification or the believer’s union with Christ. Both definitions overlook the teleological value that the patristic doctrine serves within the soteriological scope of all that the incarnation achieves. The anthropological salvific aspect of the doctrine is overlooked, which is important to understanding how the doctrine operates as it speaks to the Christian life.28 A key anthropological function of the doctrine lies in its ability to allow eschatology to inform on issues to do with ethics and morality in the Christian’s present life by providing a way that allows the eternal new age (an ‘abstract’ concept) to speak directly to the present age. Thus making all kinds of Christian issues of practice to do with ethics and morality a theocentric concern, not an anthropocentric one. For Edwards the doctrines ability to achieve this proved significant as a corrective within his Enlightenment context. His engagement with the doctrine highlights how the doctrine operates to draw together Christian knowledge and practice in the life of the Christian as well as the corporate church. Issues that contemporary theology continues to struggle with today. Edwards’ adaptation of the doctrine allowed him to demarcate Christian moral theory from eighteenth century secular and philosophical moral theory. Eighteenth-century Protestantism had increasingly become uneasy with the classical doctrine of original sin, so that the doctrine was no longer assumed as (eds), Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Traditions (Grand Rapids, 2007), 281-93, 283-4. 24 G. Hallonsten, ‘Recent Research’ (2008), 283. 25 Janet M. Soskice, Metaphor and Religious Language (Oxford, 1985), 83. Metaphorical theological concepts, which began outside the standard lexicon, gradually became lexicalised over time due to changing theological needs. 26 See M. Habets, ‘Theosis, Yes’ (2010), 128. 27 See Vladimir Kharmalov, ‘Rhetorical Application in Theosis in Greek Patristic Theology’, in Michael J. Christensen and Jeffery A. Wittung (eds), Partakers of the Divine Nature (2007), 115-31, 115-6. 28 G. Hallonsten, ‘Recent Research’ (2008), 286. See Hugh Bowron, ‘Eastern Promises: Remedying the Pneumatological Deficits of Western Theology’, in Myk Habets (ed.), The Spirit of Truth: Reading Scripture and Constructing Theology with the Holy Spirit (Eugene, 2010), 107-23.

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a central tenet of Christian belief. The Enlightenment rejected an entirely pessimistic view of human nature. The increasingly dominant view amongst Protestants, influenced by new libertarian arguments, was that sin arose from individual choice not because the mind was itself naturally corrupt. The intellectual perspective of medieval thinkers was theocentric. They thought of God as the sovereign, transcendent creator who sustained the universe according to natural laws. By the sixteenth century, however, due to the new scientific discoveries and the emergence of the empirical and rational philosophers, the assumption that Scripture and theological inquiry were important for scientific and epistemological knowledge was no longer assumed. Although secular eighteenth-century moral philosophy was indebted to the Protestant thought of the preceding century, by the late seventeenth-century moral philosophers had begun the process of converting into secular and naturalistic terms crucial parts of the Christian heritage.29

The Cambridge Platonists Edwards drew significant elements of his spiritual thought from the Cambridge Platonists, who themselves drew on and engaged with ‘Neoplatonic thought’.30 Like Edwards they had held a deep aversion to the influence of materialistic empirical philosophy on theology and sought to connect the material/corporeal to the spiritual in their writings.31 For example, the Cambridge Platonists not only defended the term ‘deification’ in their writings, making it an idea central to their theological reflections, but appealed to 2Peter 1:4 as its proof.32 29

Norman Fiering, Jonathan Edwards’s Moral Thought and its British Context (Eugene, 1981), 60. 30 See Michael J. McClymond and Gerald R. McDermott, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Oxford, 2012), 413; Edmund Newey, ‘The Form of Reason: Participation in the Work of Richard Hooker, Benjamin Whichcote, Ralph Cudworth and Jeremy Taylor’, Modern Theology 18 (2002), 5-9. On the Cambridge Platonists see C.A. Patrides (ed.), The Cambridge Platonists (London, 1969), 19-23. See also Charles Stinger, ‘Italian Renaissance Learning and the Church Fathers’, in Irena Backus (ed.), The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West: From the Carolingians to the Maurists (Leiden, 1997), 473-510; Emily S. Watts, ‘The Neoplatonic Basis of Jonathan Edwards’ “True Virtue”’, Early American Literature 10 (1975), 179-89. 31 See E.S. Watts, ‘True Virtue’ (1975), 183. 32 See C.A. Patrides, Cambridge Platonists (1969), 70, 101, 148-9. Ralph Cudworth quoted the Alexandrian exchange principle referencing the principle to 2Pet. 1:4 in a sermon he gave to the House of Commons on March 31, 1647. John Smith also referenced the doctrine in many of his sermons. Both John Smith’s Select Discourses (1660) and Ralph Cudworth’s True Intellectual System of the Universe (1678) are included in Edwards’ Catalogue. See Jonathan Edwards, ‘Catalogue’, The Works of Jonathan Edwards Series, ed. Harry S. Stout (New Haven, 1957-), 1-73. See J. Edwards, Works XXVI 281-2, 269-74, 292, 300, 315.

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The link between Neoplatonism33 and the early church was an essential one.34 The spiritually renewed nature of the believers’ mind differentiated them from the mind of non-believers. Although believers experienced life in the created material world, as Spirit-filled beings they also shared Christ’s spiritual home. As a way to give validity to both earthly and spiritual realms where neither realm would compromise the other, early theologians drew on Neoplatonism due to the self-sustaining nature of its philosophical system. Neoplatonism’s world-view was not as severe in its dualism and its system did not deny the existence of the spiritual/immaterial and material/earthly aspects of the human being or the universe.35 Its metaphysics did not portray a severe dualistic system in that materiality was not understood to be an enemy of the body, rather, the training and discipline of the body was understood to aid the soul and mind to reach its divine source.36 As a metaphysical system it therefore allowed early theologians to resolve, communicate and bridge the gap between the spiritual and earthly realm of Christian existence. It assisted early theologians to frame, extrapolate and communicate both the spiritual and earthly realms of the Christian’s existence as an established whole in a way that did not compromise humanity’s and creation’s dependence on the Creator. The fundamental difference between Neoplatonism and the theologian who engaged with its metaphysics was that early Christian thinkers did not believe 33 ‘Neoplatonism’ is a term coined in modern times in order to identify the form of Platonism that had been inaugurated by Plotinus (AD 204-270), which lasted in its non-Christian form to the sixth century. It encompasses the teaching of Plato’s immediate disciples (the ‘Old Academy’) and the Platonism of the earlier Roman Empire (‘Middle Platonism’). ‘Neoplatonism’ was not solely informed by the Platonic dialogues but was greatly influenced by the doctrines and ideas of Aristotle, the Stoics and Epicureanism. The term ‘Neoplatonism’ is also frequently applied to later attempts in the west to revive the school’s leading ideas at the time of the Renaissance and in the seventeenth-century teaching of the Cambridge Platonists. On Neoplatonism, see Richard T. Wallis, Neoplatonism (London, 2002). On Neoplatonism in the late Roman Empire and Byzantine period, see Anne Sheppard, ‘Philosophy and Philosophical Schools’, in Averil Cameron, Bryan Ward-Perkins and Michael Whitby (eds), The Cambridge Ancient History: Late Antiquity: Empire and Successors, A.D. 425-600 (Cambridge, 2001), XIV 835-54. 34 See Ken Parry, ‘Reading Proclus Diadochus in Byzantium’, in Harold Tarrant and Dirk Baltzly (eds), Reading Plato in Antiquity (London, 2006), 223-35, 224-5; See also Elizabeth A. Clark, ‘Asceticism, Pre-Augustine’, in Allan D. Fitzgerald (ed.), Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia (Grand Rapids, 1999), 73; C.J. de Vogel, ‘Platonism and Christianity: A Mere Antagonism or a Profound Common Ground?’, VC 39 (1985), 1-62. 35 Like Christianity, Greco-Roman philosophy distinguished humans from animals, portraying them as rational beings that possessed free will. Its departure from Christianity lay in its assumption that because humans possessed reason and free will they were capable of attaining truth intellectually and achieve self-perfection. Christians however, insisted that the will was responsible for sin, although its freedom to act remained intact. The impact of sin upon human nature made humans incapable of shaping their lives in accordance with their ability to reason the truth, based on selfdetermination alone. See Carol Harrison, Rethinking Augustine’s Early Theology: An Argument for Continuity (Oxford, 2006), 167. 36 R.T. Wallis, Neoplatonism (2002), 9.

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the corporeal body to be an impediment to the soul/intellect.37 Although the human nature/person is beset by sin’s power, Christ restores the capacity of their whole person (mind and body) to obey God.38 The spiritually renewed nature of the mind of believers differentiated them from the mind of nonbelievers so that in some ‘realistic’ sense Christians can be said to share Christ’s spiritual home because they take on Christ’s mind. Holding the traditional Christian view that God’s creation of the corporeal world was good, Edwards, as the Church Fathers had done before him, affirmed that a direct participation in God involved the Christian’s body as well as their soul and intellect.39 Although Edwards does not use the words ‘deification’ or theosis in his writings, there are five key themes40 that show that he engaged with the patristic doctrine of deification. These are Christian participation in the divine nature, Christ’s descent and ascent, the patristic idea of ‘recapitulation’, the Christian’s union with God/Christ, and the progression of the soul into eternity. These themes spring from Edwards’ Christology because they are all a consequence of the incarnation’s work.41 Edwards used the themes to present a dynamic picture of the spiritually renewed nature of the mind of believers, which differentiated them from the mind of non-believers so that in some ‘realistic’ sense Christians can be said to share Christ’s spiritual home because they take on Christ’s mind.42 Christian participation and Union with God In his first published sermon, God Glorified in Man’s Dependence,43 Edwards extrapolated on the significance of humanity’s dependence on the Creator, 37 See David W. Dockrill, ‘The Heritage of Patristic Platonism in Seventeenth-century English Philosophical Theology’, in G.A.J. Rogers et al. (eds), The Cambridge Platonists in Philosophical Context: Politics, Metaphysics and Religion (Dordrecht, 1997), 60-4. See also M.J. McClymond, ‘Salvation as Divinization’ (2003), 142-3. 38 See Rom. 7:24-5; 1Cor. 2:16; 2Cor. 3:14-8. The training, perseverance and the self-discipline of the body and mind are necessary to the Christian life. See 1Cor. 9:24-7; 1Tim. 4:8, 15-6; 2Tim. 2:5; 2Tim. 3:16-7; Heb. 12:1-4. 39 See M.J. McClymond and G.R. McDermott, Theology of Jonathan Edwards (2012), 413, 416. 40 These themes are adapted from the four tenets of theosis, which were identified as characterising the soteriology of Jonathan Edwards, John and Charles Wesley and George Whitefield. See Kevin Schuler, ‘The Influence of Theosis on Early Evangelicalism’, MA, McMaster University, 2007. 41 See J. Edwards, Works XVIII 57, 155-6, 333-3, 364, 411-4, 419-22 (Miscellanies 487, 513, 624, 709, 738, 766-6, 772, 781). 42 See Rom. 7:25; 15:5-6; 1Cor. 2:16; 2Cor. 4:4 43 The sermon was delivered in Northampton in 1730 and later preached to a meeting of clergy in Boston on July 8, 1731, after which it went into circulation in New England and Britain as a pamphlet. Edwards cites 1Cor. 1:29-31 at the beginning of the sermon. Some of the themes from this sermon also reappear in his later work on the Trinity.

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given the incarnation’s salvific work. Although humanity remains dependent on God, God has saved humanity for a purpose. The purpose is to abide in the life of holiness, made possible only because of Christ’s fully divine and human natures: We are dependent on God’s power through every step of our redemption. We are dependent on the power of God to convert us, and give faith in Jesus Christ, and the new nature ... They are made ‘partakers of the divine nature,’ or moral image of God (2Pet. 1:4). They are holy by being made ‘partakers of God’s holiness’ (Heb. 12:10) … In these things the redeemed have communion with God; that is, they partake with him and of him.44

Christ’s descent and ascent Edwards’ picture of union with Christ also echoed the early church’s Christological theme of Christ’s descending so that humanity could ascend, a theme very much evident in the deification theology of early church theologians. Edwards writes: If the consideration of the greatness of Christ’s condescension in taking on him our nature, invites us to ascend high in our intimacy with him, and encourages us that he will condescend to allow us, and accept us in it, much more does his so condescending and humbling himself ... Christ will not descent lower, nor shall we ascend higher, in having Christ for us.45

Moreover, the theme of Christ’s ascent and descent echoes the Alexandrian ‘exchange formula’ which Edwards also drew on.46 Again Edwards wrote: Christ brings God and man to each other, and actually unites them together. This he does by various steps and degrees, which terminate in the highest step, in that consummation of actual union, which he will accomplish at the end of the world. First, he came into this world and brought God or divinity down with him to us; and then he ascended to God and carried up humanity or man with him to God. And from heaven he sent down the Holy Spirit, whereby he gives God to man, and hereby he draws them to give up themselves to God. He brings God to dwell with their souls on earth in their conversion, and he brings their souls to dwell with God in heaven at their death.47

44

J. Edwards, Works XVII 205, 208. J. Edwards, Works XVIII 368-9 (Miscellanies 741). See J. Edwards, Works XVIII 24-42 (Miscellanies 681). Compare with Augustine, sermones 294.10.10 (PL 38, 1341). 46 On the origins of the Alexandrian exchange formula see N. Russell, The Doctrine of Deification (2004), 99-115, 262. See also Vladimir Kharlamov, ‘Deification in the Apologists of the Second Century’, in Stephen Finlan and Vladimir Kharlamov (eds), Theosis: Deification in Christian Theology (Eugene, 2006), 67-74. 47 J. Edwards, Works XVIII 422 (Miscellanies 772). 45

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Recapitulation Edwards links the idea of Christ’s descent and ascent to the idea of Christ’s ‘recapitulation’.48 Christ’s descent undoes and reverses Adam’s sin and brings a new standing to believers, a new standing that has been recovered from the ruined world. In a Miscellany on the ‘Kingdom of Christ’ Edwards wrote: ‘consider that those who are saved by the gospel are doubtless advanced to a far greater happiness than Adam would have enjoyed’.49 He believed that Christ had brought a new standing to believers, a standing recovered from the ruined world: That the recovery of the world from confusion and ruin is by Christ … and that the first thing that was done in order to the recovery of the ruined world, was the giving of Jesus Christ to be the light of the world to put an end to its darkness and confusion … Christ was in a sense the first that rose out of the dismal darkness, ruin and death that was occasioned by sin (Acts 26:23; Col. 1:18; 1Cor. 15:20, 23; Rev.1:5).50

Heaven as a Perpetual Progress Believing that redemptive history progressed on earth, Edwards reasoned that it must also progress in eternity.51 He spoke of eternity as an endless progression into God’s divine life.52 As Christians developed the virtuous affections they reflected God’s character of holiness to the world, which gave them a greater spiritual appetite for spiritual things, something that would not cease in the resurrected life.53 Edwards wrote: ‘heaven is progressive and has various periods in which it has a new and glorious advancement, and consists very much in BEHOLDING the manifestations that God makes of himself in the WORK OF REDEMPTION’.54 Edwards created a picture of the never-ending asymptotic progress of the believer, ever getting nearer to God’s divine holiness and being, but never being subsumed into God’s being or ineffability. Edwards wrote: ‘What has 48 Ireneaus’ doctrine of Recapitulation related to the meaning of and effect of Christ’s salvific work where Christ is seen to be the new Adam and where he succeeds where the first Adam had failed. 49 J. Edwards, Works XIII 309 (Miscellanies 158). See J. Edwards, Works XX 153-4 (Miscellanies 894). 50 J. Edwards, Works XVIII 284-5 (Miscellanies 702). 51 See J. Edwards, Works XIII 478. 52 Paul Ramsey, ‘Appendix III’, 727. Ramsay notes the similarity between Edwards’ notion and that of Gregory of Nyssa (ca. 330-ca. 394 AD). See Patricia Wilson-Kastner, ‘God’s Infinity and His Relationship to Creation in the Theologies of Gregory of Nyssa and Jonathan Edwards’, Foundations 21 (1978), 305-21, 307-8. 53 J. Edwards, Works II 376. See J. Edwards, Works II 202. 54 J. Edwards, Works XVIII 427 (Miscellanies 777). See J. Edwards, Works XIII 478 (Miscellanies 421). Capitalised letters are Edwards’ emphases.

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been said shows that as all things are from God as their first cause and fountain; so all things tend to him, and in their progress come nearer and nearer to him through all eternity ... he who is their first cause is their last end.’55 The seventh-century Maximus the Confessor’s teaching on deification, holds affinities with Edwards idea of the believer’s deified perpetual progress in eternity because both spoke of the believer’s deification in eternity as never ending.56 Edwards teaches ‘a progressive principle of union at work, in which on account of Christ’s union with us in the incarnation, and on account of his atoning exchange for humanity, the believer’s union with God is not only possible but begins now in this life, and infinitely continues into eternity.’57 Given that Edwards’ engagement with the doctrine stems out of an early Enlightenment context, his engagement draws attention to how the doctrine does not separate cataphatic (positive) theology, what Scripture made known about God’s salvific work, from apophatic (negative) theology, what was communicated about Christian salvation by doctrines such as the Trinity, incarnation, Christian anthropology, pneumatology, soteriology and eschatology. Key to the doctrine is its ability to give meaning to a robust view of the Christian life, which points to, and is informed and in turn given meaning by, the Christian’s eschatological future, which simultaneously bears on the Christian’s current material life. In light of Christ’s restorative work, the Fathers had developed a triadic conception of the Spirit-filled Christian composed of body, soul/mind and Spirit.58 This triadic conception (the whole person of the Christian) bespoke of a new modality of life granted to Christians because of the Spirit’s dispensation and the new age Christ had established for them. The incarnation’s salvific work had restored God’s likeness to the believer, and the Fathers expressed this restoration using the terminology of deification. Given the apophatic context, the doctrine of deification drew absolute meaning from what Scripture affirmed about Christian salvation and taught about the nature of Christian living. In the modern context, the way to understand the doctrine lies not in the formation of specific terminology or definitions associated with a systematic process, but in discerning the contextual origins and soteriological themes which came to inform the doctrine in the early church.59 The doctrine conceives the final goal of Christian salvation as a comprehensive doctrine of soteriological themes that encompassed the whole economy of salvation, which function 55

J. Edwards, Works VIII 444. See Maximus the Confessor, Questions to Thalassius 22, CChr.SG 7 (Turnhout, 1980), 143. 57 Michael D. Gibson, ‘The Beauty of the Redemption of the World: The Theological Aesthetics of Maximus the Confessor and Jonathan Edwards’, HTR 101 (2008), 45-76, 62-63. 58 See Johannes Quasten, Patrology: The Beginnings of Patristic Literature (Utrecht, 1962), I 311. See also M. Habets, ‘Theosis, Yes’ (2010), 124. 59 See E. Newey, ‘Form of Reason’ (2002), 2; V. Kharlamov, ‘Rhetorical Application’ (2007), 115. 56

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together to bring meaning not only to the individual Christian life but to ecclesiological practice as well. The doctrine operates to bring together Christian knowledge and reason, experience and practice without compromise or negation of one or the other, and is the reason why Edwards engaged with the doctrine. The Enlightenment had imposed a severe separation between knowledge and reason, and experience and practice that had begun to impact Protestant thought and he believed this dichotomy to be false. Given that today’s western intellectual context stems from the Enlightenment, Edwards’ engagement with the patristic doctrine does not introduce a revised western Reformed version of the doctrine that belongs in western tradition. Rather his engagement shows the continuation of the soteriological depth of the patristic doctrine from its early church inception.60 Moreover, Edwards’ engagement with the doctrine highlights an important soteriological application that the doctrine has in its ability to allow eschatology to inform on all types of issues to do with Christian ethics and morality in the Christian’s present life. Having arisen out of apophatic theology, the locus for understanding the doctrine of deification lies entirely in the imparted ‘silence’ of the doctrines of the incarnation and the Trinity. The doctrines of the incarnation and Trinity were formulated out of the context of apophatic or negative theology, which is what makes them difficult to define in the modern context. For example modern attempts to define or create a metaphysical image of the doctrine of the Trinity inevitably results in its compromise and to accusations of heterodoxy. The Fathers developed their Trinitarian and Christological definitions by making use of Neoplatonic metaphysics and Greek philosophical vocabulary that served them as tools for communication. As such, the terminology they used should not be superimposed on the modern context as the technical definition of the doctrine. In the early church what gave meaning to doctrines, like the incarnation, the Trinity and deification, all doctrines that remain susceptible to modern attempts of technical definition was apophatic theology. It is the broad spectrum of soteriological teachings and themes that all inform and provide the pathway to cataphatic knowledge and revelation about God and the Christian life that are all encompassed within the doctrine of deification.61 Moreover, knowledge 60 See Carl Mosser, ‘An Exotic Flower? Calvin and the Patristic Doctrine of Deification’, in Michael Parsons (ed.), Reformation Faith: Exegesis and the Theology in the Protestant Reformation (Milton Keynes, 2014), 33-56, 56. See Irena Backus, ‘Calvin and the Greek Fathers’, in Robert J. Bast and Andrew C. Gow (eds), Continuity and Change: The Harvest of Late-Medieval and Reformation History: Essays Presented to Heiko A. Oberman on His 70th Birthday (Leiden, 2000), 253-76, 270, 275-6. 61 See J. Pelikan, The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (1974), 264-5. See also Andrew Louth, ‘The Cosmic Vision of Saint Maximos the Confessor’, in Philip Clayton and Arthur Peacocke (eds), In whom we Live and Move and Have our Being: Panentheistic Reflections on God’s Presence in a Scientific World (Grand Rapids, 2004), 184-96, 192-3.

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affirmed by the Scriptures was inclusive, not exclusive of the church’s sacramental theology (Baptism, the Lord’s Supper/Eucharist), so that the doctrine remained connected to ecclesiology.62 Informed by a broad spectrum of soteriological themes framed by the incarnation and the Trinity the doctrine provides structure and a rhetorical63 voice to both the spiritual and earthly concerns of the current human life and world, in a way that does not dichotomise or negate either of the spiritual and earthly realms of the Christian life, but treated both realms as an established whole. The validity of the patristic doctrine of deification lies not in gauging a technical definition for the word ‘deification’ (theosis) by which the doctrine is known, but in understanding how the doctrine drew together Christian knowledge and practice. Unlike its correlate soteriological doctrine of justification, the importance of the doctrine of deification does not lie in the name or ‘label’64 by which it is known. It lies in the broad spectrum of soteriological themes that inform it. Themes given meaning by the incarnation and the Trinity, which is the reason why Edwards was able to engage with the doctrine without needing to refer to it by name. In conclusion, given Edwards’ Enlightenment context, the doctrine allowed him to re-establish both the immanent and transcendent qualities of the Spirit’s work of grace, which had been inadvertently lost by the Protestant reformers. In the reformers’ counteractions of the Catholic emphasis on imparted/infused or ‘intrinsic’ grace in the Christian person, they had emphasised the ‘extrinsic’ nature of grace at work in the Christian life.65 Edwards’ adaptation of deification brought together the transcendent (extrinsic) and immanent (intrinsic) qualities of the Spirit’s work of grace in the Christian life. This had always been assumed in the writings of the Church Fathers. Edwards achieved this because of his incarnational and Trinitarian framework, in a way that was not antithetical or incompatible with the Reformed doctrine of justification by faith, and which did not treat grace in isolation from the life and disposition of God and his relationship with his creation.66

62

See Andrew Louth, ‘The Ecclesiology of Saint Maximos the Confessor’, IJSCC 4 (2004), 109-20; Adam G. Cooper, The Body in St Maximus the Confessor: Holy Flesh, Wholly Deified (Oxford, 2005), 1. 63 See V. Kharlamov, ‘Rhetorical Application’ (2007), 115-31. 64 G. Hallonsten, ‘Recent Research’ (2008), 287. See also M. Habets, ‘Theosis, Yes’ (2010), 124-49. 65 E. Newey, ‘Form of Reason’ (2002), 3. 66 K. Strobel, ‘Polemics of Theosis’ (2012), 279.

Schleiermacher, Sabellius, and Inter-Trinitarian Equality David KOMLINE, Western Theological Seminary, Holland, MI, USA

ABSTRACT This article examines the complex relationship between Friedrich Schleiermacher and Sabellius. At the end of the first edition of The Christian Faith, Schleiermacher argued that Christian doctrines of the Trinity have been inherently subordinationst and that, as a result, ‘the true method of representing the doctrine of the Trinity has not yet been hit upon or achieved in the common Symbols’. The first step towards better doctrine, Scheleiermacher argued, was to ask ‘whether, in order to escape the so-called Sabellian heresy, too much had not been done by the opposing party’, such that ‘a twofold nature was assumed in the Godhead itself’. Shortly thereafter, Scheleiermacher explored this question directly in an essay, published in English translation as ‘On the Discrepancy between the Sabellian and Athanasian Method of Representing the Doctrine of the Trinity’. His findings then worked their way into his final, and now standard, edition of The Christian Faith. Today some still accuse Schleiermacher of being a Sabellian. That designation, however, assumes an understanding of what Sabellianism is. This article first shows that Schleiermacher’s understanding of Sabellianism – which remained the standard interpretation through much of the nineteenth century – differs significantly from what most people today would classify as Sabellianism. Still, even assuming Schleiermacher’s definition, the article shows that while Schleiermacher found Sabellius’ doctrine alluring, ultimately the methodological restrictions basic to his own theological system kept him from following it.

Despite Friedrich Schleiermacher’s praise of the trinitarian dogma as the ‘copestone of Christian doctrine’,1 his own explication of this central theological locus has long attracted criticism. Perhaps some of these attacks have not been unwarranted. Schleiermacher’s discussion of the trinity in The Christian Faith lasts only nineteen pages and comes at its conclusion, leaving some to dismiss it as an ‘appendix’.2 As cursory as this treatment is, however, assaults harping on brevity fail to account for its concluding call for a ‘reworking of the doctrine’.3 If the doctrine of the trinity that Schleiermacher presents is 1 Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith: A New Translation (Louisville, 2016), II 2021. 2 Claude Welch, In this Name: The Doctrine of the Trinity in Contemporary Theology (New York, 1952), 4. 3 F. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith (2016), II 1037.

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inadequate, at least he is keenly aware of its shortcomings. The trinity, he says, needs to be rethought. While The Christian Faith does not do that rethinking, Schleiermacher does indicate where he thinks such rethinking should begin. Schleiermacher notes that the ‘ecclesial doctrine of the Triune God requires that we consider each of the three persons to be equal to the divine being and the reverse, also that we consider each of the three persons to be equal to the other’. But, he believes, the ecclesial presentations fail here. The creeds and confessions, Schleiermacher says, ‘represent the persons only in some kind of gradation’.4 As a path forward, Schelermacher asks whether the ‘Sabellian view’ or the ‘Sabellian hypothesis’ concerning the trinity might have just as much scriptural warrant as the ‘Athanasian hypothesis’ that the church affirms. If it does, Schleiermacher concludes in his last paragraph, ‘a reworking of the doctrine could easily be devised’.5 Based on this appeal, many have assumed that Schleiermacher himself was a Sabellian, often without doing any historical work to support this assumption. This paper thus asks the question: To what extent can Schleiermacher be considered a Sabellian? Testing Schleiermacher’s theology against Sabellianism would appear to be straightforward: one need only determine the essential elements of Sabellius’ thought and then compare these with corresponding elements in Schleiermacher’s theology. Unfortunately, in practice such a mechanical comparison presents fundamental difficulties. Sabellius is not easy to pin down. None of his writing, nor even that of any of his immediate followers, has survived. The scholar seeking to uncover Sabellius’ own views must wade through treatises authored by his opponents, many of which only mention Sabellius in passing. Most of these sources date to over a century after Sabellius’ death, further complicating the issue.6 Nonetheless, a fairly standard interpretation of ‘Sabellianism’ emerges from a survey of prominent histories of doctrine. Most presentations begin by introducing modalist monarchianism and its early teachers, Noetus of Smyrna and Praxeas; they then introduce Sabellius as the most sophisticated representative of this school.7 In general, these histories highlight three features of Sabellius’ thought. First, Sabellius used the term ‘Son-Father’ to refer to the Godhead. 4

Ibid. 1024. Ibid. 1036-7. 6 For the best recent attempt to tackle the thought of Sabellius himself, see Wolfgang A. Bienert, ‘Wer War Sabellius’, SP 40 (2006), 359-65. 7 The following three sources follow this pattern, in order of least to greatest detail with regards to their treatments of Sabellius: Justo L. González, A History of Christian Thought, 3 vol. (Nashville, 1970), 148; Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, 5 vol. (Chicago, 1971), 178-9; Reinhold Seeberg, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 4th ed. (Basel, 1953), 573-6. The following references refer to these books and pages. 5

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Second, the divine Godhead ‘widens’ himself to become Son and Spirit. Third, Sabellius used an analogy of a sunbeam to illustrate how this occurs. Most presentations do not venture far beyond this basic description. There is, however, one major exception to the general tendency to shy away from treating Sabellius’ thought in any detail. Schleiermacher himself wrote a lengthy essay in 1822 titled ‘On the Discrepancy between the Sabellian and Athanasian Method of Representing the Doctrine of the Trinity’.8 The treatment of Sabellius that he offers here is at odds with the standard account of Sabellius’ doctrine. In fact, Schleiermacher specifically argues against Athanasius’ statement that, for Sabellius, ‘the same God, who is one in substance, according to the various exigencies of the case assumed different forms; now as Father, then as Son, and again as Holy Spirit’ (49). To understand the extent to which Schleiermacher may be said to be a ‘Sabellian’, we need to look at Schleiermacher’s own presentation of Sabellianism. The key term in Schleiermacher’s presentation of Sabellianism, as with most presentations of Sabellianism, is ‘Son-Father’. The standard view of Sabellius’ use of the appellation ‘Son-Father’ is that it affirms God’s unity. Schleiermacher, however, runs in another direction with this term, asserting that it affirms the equality of the Father and Son, and arguing against the typical notion that, for Sabellius, the Son is identical with the Father. Instead, Schleiermacher appeals to the idea of the Divine Unity. There is for Sabellius, Schleiermacher asserts, ‘a distinction between the Godhead in itself considered’ (the Divine Unity) and the Father (43). Furthermore, the Father and Son are equal because they are both manifestations of the Divine Unity (44). Schleiermacher’s construal of Sabellius’ two other famous ideas (the idea of God’s ‘widening’ and the analogy of a sunbeam) are not nearly as unconventional as his interpretation of Son-Father, but they do stem from this more basic move. Schleiermacher contrasts broadening and expanding, which he finds to be helpful language with respect to the persons of the trinity, with dividing, which Schleiermacher thinks would introduce a hierarchy into the trinity. Broadening and expanding, he believes, maintains the equality of the persons of the trinity. 8 This article originally appeared in Friedrich Schleiermacher, ‘Über den Gegensatz zwischen der Sabellianischen und der Athanasianischen Vorstellung von der Trinität’, Theologische Zeitschrift V, no. 18 (1822). This article will quote from the English translation, published in two parts as Friedrich Schleiermacher and Moses Stuart, ‘On the Discrepancy between the Sabellian and Athanasian Method of Representing the Doctrine of the Trinity’, Biblical Repository and Quarterly Review 5 (1835), 265-353; Friedrich Schleiermacher and Moses Stuart, ‘On the Discrepancy between the Sabellian and Athanasian Method of Representing the Doctrine of the Trinity’, Biblical Repository and Quarterly Review 6 (1835), 1-116. A recent German publication to include the essay is Martin Tetz, Friedrich Schleiermacher und die Trinitätslehre, Texte zur Kirchen- und Theologiegeschichte 11 (Gütersloh, 1969).

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Additionally, Schleiermacher takes issue with how many sources present the idea that for Sabellius, God ‘alternately expands and contracts himself’. Properly understood, Schleiermacher says, Sabellius’ idea of God expanding and contracting refers not to the trinity, but to the Son, who ‘could return back to the Unity and cease to exist any longer’ as a single delimited individual (52). Schleiermacher contends, however, that this is merely a ‘hypothetical declaration’, and is designed to maintain that ‘trinity was not essential to Godhead as in itself considered, but only in reference to created beings and on their account’. Thus Schleiermacher reads Sabellius’ statement about God’s expanding and contracting as reinforcing a deeper theme in his thought, but not as actually necessitating ‘that the Son ever returns to, and is absorbed by, the Godhead’ (52). Schleiermacher’s discussion of Sabellius’ use of the analogy of the sunbeam echoes this explanation of God’s widening. Specifically, it was Sabellius’ talk about God expanding and contracting that led to ‘the belief that Sabellius had compared the Son to a ray of light, which goes out from the sun and is reflected back again’. Schleiermacher asserts, however, that if Sabellius held this view, ‘he could regard the reception of Christ into heaven, only as a change of his human condition; not as if the relation of the divine in him toward the Godhead in itself considered, was thereby changed’ (52-3). Through his understanding of the three concepts most often associated with Sabellius, Schleiermacher interprets Sabellius in such a way that each manifestation of the Divine Unity has its own ‘objective content’. The manifestations are not, however, as Sabellius is traditionally understood to be saying, manifestations of the Father. Rather, they are manifestations of the Divine Unity. Schleiermacher thus summarizes Sabellius’ doctrine: ‘The trinity, therefore, is God revealed; and each member of the same, is a peculiar mode of this revelation. The Godhead, however, in each of these, is one and the same and not a different one; but still, it is never revealed to us as it is in itself, but as it is developed in the persons of the trinity’ (61). Schleiermacher’s discussion of Sabellius does not end here, but this is as far as we need to follow it. Schleiermacher’s basic understanding of Sabellius’ doctrine differs significantly from the classical interpretation of Sabellianism. The key point of divergence is the distinction Schleiermacher sees Sabellius making between the Divine Unity and its three manifestations as persons of the trinity. Whereas most histories of doctrine present Sabellius as positing that the Son and Spirit are manifestations of the Father, Schleiermacher argues that Sabellius’ Divine Unity is not identical with the Father, but rather is a more fundamental divine essence that stands behind the three manifestations.9 It is 9 Robert Jenson is one representative interpreter who has continued to miss this point, assuming that Schleiermacher says ‘we should take “the Father” as a name for [the] divine reality, and “the Son” and “the Spirit” as names for the manifestations’. See Robert W. Jenson, God According to the Gospel: The Triune Identity (Philadelphia, 1982), 134.

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this crucial difference that gives to Schleiermacher’s Sabellianism its key characteristic: it successfully upholds, according to Schleiermacher, the equality of all three members of the trinity. At this point we can begin to answer the question that we set out to address: To what extent can Schleiermacher be considered a Sabellian? Schleiermacher’s own undertanding of Sabellianism differs significantly from our use of that term today.10 If one compares Schleiermacher’s doctrine of the trinity to Sabellianism in its traditional guise, then one needs to acknowledge that Schleiermacher is not, nor would want to be, a Sabellian. If Schleiermacher were to set up the Father as the divine essence, and not as a distinct manifestation of the Divine Unity, then he would fall prey to the same error he accuses the Athanasian school of committing: not upholding the equality of the members of the trinity. Schleiermacher does not make this move and is therefore not, in the traditional sense, a Sabellian. But what about using his own standards? If Schleiermacher had in fact undertaken the ‘reworking of the doctrine’ of the trinity that he calls for in The Christian Faith, would he have followed Sabellius as he understood him? On the surface, it would seem like Schleiermacher’s theology aligns well with Sabellius as Schleiermacher has presented him. The concluding paragraphs of The Christian Faith seem designed to push the reader in this direction. More importantly, the way Schleiermacher constructs his own doctrines of the being of God in Christ and in the church is very similar to the corresponding doctrines that he attributes to Sabellius.11 Finally, Schleiermacher’s second edition of The Christian Faith, published in 1830/31, introduces some changes from the first edition – an edition published in 1820/21, just before Schleiermacher undertook his study of Sabellianism – that seem to designed to accommodate Schleiermacher’s system to his understanding of Sabellianism. 10 The multivalence of the term ‘Sabellianism’ is unfortunately overlooked in recent references to the possibility of Schleiermacher’s being a Sabellian; see for instance Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, ‘Schleiermacher’s Understanding of God as Triune’, in Jacqueline Marina (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Friedrich Schleiermacher (New York, 2005), 171-88. 11 Most sources that treat the relationship of Schleiermacher’s own doctrine to his exposition of Sabellius make even grander claims to similarity. In addition to the examples cited below in this paper, for instance, R.S. Franks says that Schleiermacher contorts Sabellius until ‘the “Sabellius” of Schleiermacher is just Schleiermacher himself transported to the third century’. See Robert Sleightholme Franks, The Doctrine of the Trinity (London, 1953), 169. Such interpretations, however, neglect the relationship of the Father to the Divine Unity, which, as this paper argues, is precisely the issue upon which Schleiermacher’s ultimate Sabellianism rests. Still, Schleiermacher’s conception of the being of God in Christ and in the Church do align with Sabellius’. Thus Francis Schüssler Fiorenza incorrectly asserts that these same doctrines show Schleiermacher to be ‘closer to the traditional filioque than … to Sabellian modalism’, insofar as Sabellius is understood according to Schleiermacher’s own view. See F.S. Fiorenza, ‘Schleiermacher’s Understanding of God as Triune’ (2005), 186.

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Still, even if the second edition of The Christian Faith seems designed to prepare the way for a Sabellian doctrine of the trinity, Schleiermacher himself neither drew attention to this possibility, nor took the further step of constructing such a doctrine. Why did Schleiermacher not more fully develop his account along the Sabellian lines he so admired? Paul Fredrich Mehl addresses this conundrum, conjecturing that Schleiermacher most likely did not incorporate these insights into his Glaubenslehre because of ‘Schleiermacher’s desire that his dogmatics have a churchly character, that is, that it be recognized as an expression of the piety of the Protestant Church’. Because the orthodox doctrine of the trinity was still commonly held, Schleiermacher did not attack it directly, but rather ‘contented himself with endeavoring to show, by the arrangement of his dogmatics, that what is essential to our Christian faith can be adequately expressed without any appeal to the traditional Church doctrine of the trinity’.12 Though convenient, this explanation collapses under further scrutiny. Before Schleiermacher released his second edition of The Christian Faith, he wrote to his friend Friedrich Lücke, noting that the original ‘first section of [his] doctrine of God’ ran against ‘the prevailing treatment’ of ‘church doctrine’. He did not alter this section in his second edition, however, but rather conserved it, ‘firmly convinced … that [his] position [was] an inspired heterodoxy that in due time will eventually become orthodox’. He thus ‘confidently [presented his] dogmatics … as a Christian doctrine of faith’.13 If Schleiermacher was willing to challenge the present doctrine in this instance, there is no reason to doubt his willingness to do so with the trinity. Mehl’s explanation is thus unsatisfactory, and the question of why Schleiermacher did not propose a more explicitly Sabellian doctrine of the trinity remains. My own answer to this question is that Schleiermacher did not appropriate Sabellius because his theological system allows no room for doing so. The key innovation in Schleiermacher’s presentation of Sabellius concerned the Divine Unity that he argued stood behind the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But Schleiermacher’s basic methodology builds on insights derived exclusively from ‘the relationship that exists between the feeling of absolute dependence and the sense-stirred self-consciousness’. Any way of describing God that does not stem from the feeling of absolute dependence, Schleiermacher says, lacks ‘dogmatic content’.14 Schleiermacher’s ability to point to anything stemming from the feeling of absolute dependence as affirming the reality of an unrevealed God 12 Paul Frederick Mehl, ‘Schleiermacher’s Mature Doctrine of God as Found in the Dialektik of 1822 and the Second Edition of The Christian Faith’ (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1961), 270. 13 Fridrich Schleiermacher and Friedrich Lücke, On the Glaubenslehre: Two Letters to Dr. Lücke, ed. James A. Massey, trans. James Duke and Francis Fiorenza (Atlanta, 1981), 53. 14 F. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith (2016), I 330.

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is questionable. As Schleiermacher says elsewhere in the Glaubenslehre, ‘we have no formulation for the being of God as such, distinct from the being of God in the world. Rather, any such formulation would have to be borrowed from the speculative domain and, as a consequence, would not be faithful to the nature of our discipline’.15 Thus while it is possible that, for Schleiermacher, an unrevealed God stands behind God’s three manifestations, Schleiermacher is incapable of positively articulating this possibility using only the dogmatic tools available to him, namely those deriving from the feeling of absolute dependence. Since Schleiermacher is unable to maintain the distinction between the unrevealed God and the members of the trinity, a distinction that is crucial for his understanding of Sabellius, he is also unable to uphold a Sabellian doctrine of the trinity, as Schleiermacher himself would conceive it. Schleiermacher’s theological system thus renders him incapable of being a Sabellian. For this reason, it also prevents him from using a Sabellian doctrine of the trinity to attain the feature he most prized in such a view: a securely grounded trinitarian equality.

15

Ibid. II 1032.

On the Patristic Roots of Reformed Theology: Herman Bavinck’s Reading of the Church Fathers on the Attributes of God Tommaso MANZON, University of Trento, Monza, Italy

ABSTRACT Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics stands as a landmark of Calvinist theology and a synthesis of reformed Christian thought. Nonetheless, and in spite of its markedly confessional character,1 Bavinck does not renounce to draw on sources predating the Reformation. Accordingly, his work is of an extremely ecumenical and irenic fashion, able to pay attention to the different traditions existing within the Christian Church. In particular, Bavinck is often eager to underline the Patristic roots of the doctrines and debates he is engaging with. Hence, his work carries the merit of tracing a clear connection between the standards of theological discussion laid down by Reformed theology, and their origins in the Church Fathers. This is particularly evident in the sections of the Reformed Dogmatics where Bavinck discusses the topic of the divine attributes. Presenting the classic Reformed distinction between communicable and incommunicable attributes alongside a number of alternative classifications, Bavinck argues for their common source in the Patristic distinction between positive and negative theology. Therefore, making particular reference to St Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius, Bavinck develops the notion that the Fathers’ way of theologizing by affirmation and negation set the background for theirs and any subsequent discussion of God’s attributes. The goal of this short essay is that of reconstructing Bavinck’s discussion of the topic of the Patristic origin of any classification of God’s attributes, together with a brief evaluation of his argument and analysis of the Church Fathers.

Introduction The work of Herman Bavinck ranks among the most consistent and influential expositions of the Christian faith and represents one of the peaks of the 1 As a matter of fact, it could be argued that the basic intention behind Bavinck’s theological work was that of producing a theological synthesis capable of refuting the modernist and non-reformed currents of thought in the Christian church. For a brief introduction to the relationship between Bavinck’s work and the theological setting of his days, see Cornelius Van Til, The New Synthesis Theology of the Netherlands (Phillipsburg, 1930), 28ff.

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protestant tradition of Christian theology. Dutch by birth, Calvinist by tradition and Reformed2 by church affiliation, Bavinck’s scholarly output stretches over around four decades between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Significantly Johan D. Tangelder, in a short essay reviewing the life of Bavinck, calls him ‘a great theologian with a childlike faith, a disciple of Christ, a willing student of the Word and a master teacher’.3 Bavinck was born in the Netherlands in the town of Hoogeveen in 1854; his father was a Protestant minister serving one of the churches of the Afscheiding4 and the young Bavinck was called to follow in his footsteps. After finishing high school, Bavinck spent time studying in Kampen – the seminary of the churches of the Afscheiding – and Leiden – which back in the days was a stronghold of liberal theology; the latter choice was met with great dismal by his co-religionaries – notwithstanding the fact that his father supported him – who were afraid that Bavinck could be co-opted by the professors at Leiden. In 1880 Bavinck obtained a doctorate in theology with a thesis on ‘The Ethics of Zwingli’, and became a minister in the city of Franeker. Quickly, at the young of age of 28, he was given a professorship at the Theological School of Kampen, where he will remain for the next 20 years, when he will succeed Abraham Kuyper5 to the chair of dogmatics at the Free University of Amsterdam.6 Other honours that punctuated Bavinck’s life were his induction into the Royal Academy of Sciences in 1906 and his election to the office of senator in 1911.7 2 Over the course of this article, I will employ the term Reformed in the way in which is employed by the branch of protestantism that developed itself as a distinct tradition within Calvinism – often in contraposition to Arminianism – and whose approach is expounded in texts such as the Canon of Dorts and the Westminster Confession. For reference, see Christian Reformed Church in North America, What it Means to Be Reformed (Grand Rapids, 2016). For a different approach, see Eberhard Busch, ‘Reformed Identity’, World Alliance of Reformed Churches 58 (2008), 207-18. 3 Johan D. Tangelder, ‘Dr. Herman Bavinck 1854-1921, “Theologian of the Word”’, https:// hermanbavinck.org/biography/ [accessed on 06/07/2020]. 4 The Afscheiding (‘separation’) was a split that took place in 1834 in the Dutch Reformed Church, resulting in a number of orthodox congregations leaving the state church under the lead of the pastor Hendrik de Cock. The new communion of churches which was thereby created exists to these days – with counterparts in the USA – under the name of Christelijke Gereformeerde Kerken (Christian Reformed Church, CGK). For more information concerning the history of the Afscheiding, see Free Reformed Churches, ‘FRC: Our History’, http://frcna.org/about-us/our-history [accessed on 06/07/2020]. 5 Abraham Kuyper was the other theological giant of 19th-century Dutch Protestantism. See James D. Bratt, Abraham Kuyper: Modern Calvinist, Christian Democrat (Grand Rapids, 2013). For the relationship between Bavinck and Kuyper, developed through the lenses of the categories of synthesis and antithesis, see Jacob Klapwijk, ‘Antithesis, Synthesis, and the Idea of Transformational Philosophy’, Philosophia Reformata 51 (1986), 138-54. 6 J.D. Tangelder, ‘Dr. Herman Bavinck’, https://hermanbavinck.org/biography/ [accessed on 06/07/2020]. 7 J.D. Tangelder, ‘Dr. Herman Bavinck’, https://hermanbavinck.org/biography/ [accessed on 06/07/2020].

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Famous beyond the Dutch borders for his strong scholarship, Bavinck travelled numerous times to the Americas, developing ties with ecclesiastical and scholarly bodies alike. Most famously, in 1908 he was invited to deliver the prestigious Stone lectures at Princeton Seminary; these lectures were later published in 1953 under the title of The Philosophy of Revelation.8 Thanks to the influence of his American disciple Louis Berkhof – who was professor of systematic theology and president of Calvin Theological Seminary between 1926 and 1944 – Bavinck attained a great level of popularity among Reformed and evangelical churches, his ideas being disseminated and received on a global scale. The ‘Reformed Dogmatics’ Bavinck’s most important and by far most influential work is his monumental Reformed Dogmatics, published in four volumes between 1895 and 1901. The Reformed Dogmatics is a comprehensive summary of the Christian theological tradition, articulated from the viewpoint of the Dutch Calvinist tradition.9 In order to understand the nature of this work, we should mention what concept of doctrine underlines Bavinck’s effort to produce a systematization of the whole lot of Christian theological teachings. In this respect, Bavinck carefully rejects the Kantian distinction between phenomena and noumena that – he thinks – leads inescapably to an understanding of dogmas as subjective productions ultimately grounded in religious feelings. In turn, Bavinck strongly affirms the descriptive power of the historic Christian doctrines, insofar as the latter are the product of God’s own self-revelation to humanity.10 In this respect, Bavinck held that the bible contained a system of truths produced by God as his own self-description, which the theologian – as a believer – has the duty to uncover and organize.11 By basing the Reformed Dogmatics on such presuppositions, 8 J.D. Tangelder, ‘Dr. Herman Bavinck’, https://hermanbavinck.org/biography/ [accessed on 06/07/2020]. 9 ‘Herman Bavinck’s Prolegomena is the work of an outstanding theological architect who devoted the best years of his life to designing and erecting one of the most imposing intellectual edifices in the whole Reformed tradition. When completed, the project consisted of the four massive volumes of the Gereformeerde Dogmatiek […].’ Donald MacLeod, ‘Bavinck’s Prolegomena: Fresh Light on Amsterdam, Old Princeton and Cornelius Van Til’, Westminster Theological Journal 68 (2006), 261. In turn, significant insights from Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics was received and employed by Louis Berkhof in order to compile his Systematic Theology, the distribution and translation of which contributed to the above-mentioned dissemination of Bavinck’s ideas – Wayne Grudem called Berkhof’s opus magnum ‘a great treasure-house of information and analysis […] probably the most useful one-volume systematic theology available from any theological perspective’. See L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, 1996); Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, 1994), 1225. 10 C. van Til, The New Synthesis (1930), 37-8. 11 C. van Til, The New Synthesis (1930), 40. Mutatis mutandi, one could trace a link between Bavinck’s approach to dogmatics and Karl Rahner’s dictum that the study of the Immanent Trinity

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Bavinck claimed to be in continuity with the Reformers, who rejected the scholastic approach by taking the Bible as their point of departure.12 Nonetheless, and notwithstanding its heavily confessional character, Bavinck’s work is marked by a strong ecumenism,13 fed by his own massive erudition.14 In this sense, Bavinck seems to consider Calvin’s thought – as well as that expressed by the tradition stemming from the work of the Swiss reformer – as a synthesis of the best that Christian theology has ever produced, rather than the product of an innovator detached and isolated from the broader Christian tradition.15 Accordingly, at every step of the way of his magnum opus he does not disdain to converse and engage with the positions of theologians from RomanCatholic and Orthodox backgrounds, as well as with figures from the wider Protestant family. Non-Christian philosophers such as for example Plato and Philo also figure prominently in Bavinck’s work.16 These external voices are far from being treated as straw men, or like simple sparring partners against which Bavinck is able to articulate his own perspective; in this respect, his attitude is free from tokenism. Rather, he often draws liberally and dialectically from the philosophical17 and the theological traditions he is conversing with, readily acknowledging merit where this is due. Retrospectively, we can borrow Jacob Klapwijk’s expression ‘synthesizing philosophy’18 in order to describe what is should be developed in connection with and on the ground of that of the Economic Trinity. See Karl Rahner, The Trinity (London, 2001). 12 C. Van Til, The New Synthesis (1930), 40-1. 13 See James D. Bratt, ‘The Context of Herman Bavinck’s Stone Lectures: Culture and Politics in 1908’, Bavinck Review 1 (2010), 5: ‘In the midst of writing a multivolume Gereformeerde Dogmatiek as an ecumenical theology from a Reformed point of view, Bavinck took the opportunity of this trip to explore some of the broader reaches of that holy catholic church’. 14 A similarly ‘broad’ approach is employed by Bavinck in his ethical studies; e.g. see his discussion of Imitatio Christi in John Bolt, ‘Christ and the Law in the Ethics of Herman Bavinck’, Calvin Theological Journal 28 (2010), 45-74. 15 With reference to this point, see Bavinck’s ‘John Calvin: A Lecture on the Occasion of his 400th Birthday, July 10, 1509-1909’, trans. John Bolt in Bavinck Review 1 (2010), 57-8, where he states that ‘the Reformation […] sought to reform the church of Christ in accord with the apostolic mandate’, and that Calvin ‘brought the two [Luther and Zwingli] together into a higher unity, systematized the ideas of the Reformation, and organized its labors’. Accordingly, we can see how Bavinck read the reformation as a return to the apostolic church, and how he thought of Calvin as somebody who was able to synthetize and give systematic form to the best of reformed thought. 16 For instances, as it is aptly outlined by Harry Fernhout, Bavinck’s understanding of human nature is developed in a dialectical dialogue with Plato. See Harry Fernhout, ‘Man, Faith, and Religion in Bavinck, Kuyper, and Dooyeweerd’, in Tydskrif vir Christelike Wetenskap 14 (1978), 76. 17 On the connections between Bavinck and Neo-Platonism, see Wolter Huttinga, ‘Herman Bavinck and Radical Orthodoxy: Elements of Participation in the Reformed Dogmatics’, Bavinck Review 2 (2011), 121-7. C. Van Til, discusses Bavinck’s approach to and rejection of Kant’s epistemology in The New Synthesis (1930), 38ff. 18 Jacob Klapwijk, ‘Epilogue: The Idea of Transformational Philosophy’, in Bringing Into Capitivity Every Thought, ed. J. Klapwijk, S. Griffioen and G. Groenewoud (Lanham, 1991), 24166 (8).

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at stake in the Reformed Dogmatics – that is, a summary of the best of Christian thought, forged in conversation with non-Christian philosophical categories. In the light of his efforts to bring Christian and non-Christian thought into conversation, Bavinck’s great disciple Cornelius Van Til claimed that his teacher was a truly modern theologian, in that he strove ‘to make the Christ of the Scripture speak to his age’.19 However, he tried to do so not in the vein of liberal theology – that is, by translating the historic claims of the Christian faith into formulas palatable to secular reason. Instead, Bavinck’s strategy was that of developing a formidable synthesis and re-formulation of his own tradition. At the same time, he did so in dialogue with science, modern philosophy, and other traditions of Christian thought.20 On this point, Van Til’s judgement echoes that of R.H. Bremmer, who claims that the lasting value of Bavinck’s contribution lies precisely in his capacity to trace the development of Christian thought in general, and Reformed systematic theology in particular – an ability that he matched with an uncommon courage and openness towards the position of secular culture.21 On the role of the Fathers in the ‘Reformed Dogmatics’ Certainly, among all the voices evoked by Bavinck, the Church Fathers are by far the ones that influence him the most, and those that he finds least 19 Cornelius Van Til, ‘Bavinck the Theologian: a Review Article’, Westminster Theological Journal 24 (1961), 1. 20 See C. Van Til, ‘Bavinck the Theologian’ (1961), 1-2: ‘[Bavinck] studied the development of modern philosophy and sience with great care. He knew that true unity of thought and harmony of life could come to man only if he made every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. But he also knew that those who did not center their life and thought in Christ had, in spite of this, much to teach him. As a true Protestant he learned much from Romanism and as truly Reformed he honored Luther. Bavinck’s magnum opus shows true catholicity of spirit as well as unswerving loyalty to the truth as he saw it’. 21 R.H. Bremmer, Herman Bavink als Dogmaticus (Kampen, 1961), 392. As a matter of facts, this posture was dictated first and foremost by Bavinck’s persuasion that it was theology’s own calling to preserve the connection between the Church and the world. See Bruce R. Pass, ‘Herman Bavinck and the Cogito’, Reformed Theological Review 74 (2015), 15. ‘If, in Dutch Reformed circles, Abraham Kuyper was the man who loved pomp and circumstance, then Bavinck was the man of quiet contemplation and encounter. In his memoir, Dr. G.C. Berkouwer described Bavinck’s aim in one word: catholicity. At that time, his dogmatic and philosophical work formed a new exposition of Christian belief in relationship to modern culture, whereby rather than the words heathenism and antithesis giving the relationship color, he used the words synthesis and catholicity … his spirituality is characterized by a great respect for both modern culture and the tradition of the Reformed Faith; within this context, he only used harsh words against the excrescence of pride, on the one hand, and narrow-mindedness, on the other. His spirituality could be called moderate, but it was based on a severe tension, which even today lurks within our culture, because how can one be a modern Westerner and also a disciple of the Crucified?’ – George Harinck, ‘“Something That Must Remain, if the Truth is to Be Sweet and Precious to Us”: the Reformed Spirituality of Herman Bavinck’, Calvin Theological Journal 38 (2003), 250.

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controversial – that is, with the exception of his own Calvinist forefathers. References to Patristic thought are numerous across the whole Reformed Dogmatics. Significantly, Bavinck builds the beginning of the section of the Reformed Dogmatics concerning the ‘Doctrine of God’ on those which he understands to be Patristic precepts. The parts of the Reformed Dogmatics concerning the Doctrine of God stands at a crucial intersection within the broader scheme of this work. Specifically, they occupy the first portion of the second volume, where the first volume is actually devoted to the exposition of the so-called ‘prolegomena’. Therefore, Bavinck positions the Doctrine of God at the proper beginning of the Reformed Dogmatics, once the preparation has been concluded and the author is ready to discuss the object of his text. The Doctrine of God sets out by discussing the idea of God’s incomprehensibility and unknowability, claiming that this doctrine is to be considered the point of departure of Christian theology.22 In fact, Bavinck argues that dogmatics as a discipline finds its ‘vital element’ in the ‘mystery’, a term by which Bavinck indicates the ‘truth which God has revealed concerning himself in nature and in the Scripture’.23 In this sense, it should be noticed that Bavinck’s rejection of the Kantian dualism between phenomena and noumena does not amount to a rejection of the idea that God is ultimately unknowable. Quite the opposite, he is clear that to reason on God as he is in himself means meditating on a truth that ‘far surpasses human conception and comprehension’.24 Nonetheless, the testimony of Scripture and nature allows us to receive sure knowledge concerning God’s nature and character; in this respect, it could be said that God reveals himself offering some positive, safe, and warranted knowledge concerning his nature and character. At the same time, these manifestations of the divine point to the utter transcendence and inexhaustibility of the entity from which they shine forth. From this it follows that at the very outset Dogmatics is confronted with the Incomprehensible. It begins with him, for of him are all things. But also in the other loci, when it descends to the study of creatures, it views the latter exclusively in their relation to God even as they are of and through and unto him. Hence, the knowledge of God is the only dogma, the sole content of the entire field of Dogmatics. All the doctrines treated in Dogmatics – whether in regard to the universe, man, Christ, etc. – are but the explication of the central dogma of the knowledge of God. Everything is treated with God as center and starting-point. Under him all things are subsumed. To him all things are traced back. 22

Bavinck, 21. Bavinck, 13. I shall not try to discuss Bavinck’s concept of revelation as it exceeds the scope of this paper. However, one valid starting point for diving into considerations concerning the Christian concept of revelation could be Laurence W. Wood’s ‘Defining the Modern Concept of Self-Revelation: Toward a Synthesis of Barth and Pannenberg’, The Asbury Theological Journal 41 (1986), 85-106. While this paper does not discuss directly the work of Herman Bavinck, his positions can be first approached through Wood’s remarks concerning the doctrine of inspiration held by ‘high orthodoxy’. 24 Bavinck, 13. 23

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It is ever God and God alone whose glory in creation and redemption, in nature and in grace, in the world and in the church, it must meditate upon and describe. It is the knowledge of him, of him alone, which it must display and show forth.25

Essentially, Bavinck is claiming that the whole of Christian dogmatics rests on the revelation of the essentially incomprehensible, that, insofar as it is such, always retains its halo of mystery. Even when dogmatics address finite and comprehensible entities, it does so inasmuch as they are illumined by their relationship to God. In this sense, insofar as dogmatics dictates how the Christian thinker should deal with any subject susceptible of theological interest, it should be clear that to Bavinck the mystery is indeed ‘the vital element’ not just of dogmatics, but of all of Christian theology. As I shall discuss below, the Patristic roots of Bavinck’s understanding of the foundations of Christian dogmatics are fully revealed in his discussion of God’s names/attributes. Nonetheless, throughout the whole of the Doctrine of God, Bavinck often makes reference to Patristic sources in order to corroborate his positions. Among these stand out the Letter of Barnabas, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria,26 Athanasius, Origen, Pseudo-Dionysius, Eusebius, John of Damascus and Augustine.27 The latter definitely stands out as Bavinck’s foremost Patristic influence,28 to the point that – commenting the development of early Christian dogmatics – he claims that ‘this entire dogmatic development in East and West culminated in Augustine’.29 Moreover, Bavinck double-proof his claim that God and knowledge of God is the foundation and chief end of dogmatics by remembering how ‘Augustine desired to know nothing else and nothing more than God and himself: “I desire to know God and my soul. Nothing 25

Bavinck, 13 Crucially, the above-mentioned relationship between theology and culture – with particular respect to the connection between theology and philosophy – is introduced by Bavinck with a quote taken from Clement of Alexandria – ‘[philosophy] prepares the way for the most royal teaching’ – Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 1, 607. 27 Bavinck, 21. 28 Of course, this is line with the broader Reformed and Protestant tradition. John Calvin famously claimed that was ‘wholly ours’ (totus noster) as in the title of J.M.J. Lange van Ravenswaay, Augustinus totus noster: Das Augustinverständnis bei Johannes Calvin (Göttingen, 1990). 29 Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 1, Prolegomena, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids, 2003), 136. I can appropriate Michael S. Chen’s claim that ‘Augustine has given Bavinck a language to search for truth’. See ‘Herman Bavinck and Augustine on Epistemology’, Bavinck Review 2 (2011), 97. In a telling passage, Bavinck writes concerning Augustine: ‘he is the universal teacher. Even philosophy neglects him to its own detriment. And because of his fascinating style, his refined, precise, highly individual and nevertheless universally human way of expressing himself, he more than any other church father, can still be appreciated today. He is the most Christian as well as the most modern of all the Fathers; of all of them he is closest to us’. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 1, 139. Elsewhere, Bavinck identifies Augustine as the originator of the concept of consciousness in Western philosophy. See B.R. Pass, ‘Herman Bavinck and the Cogito’ (2015), 30-1 and Herman Bavinck, The Philosophy of Revelation: The Stone Lectures for 1908-09, Princeton Theological Seminary, trans. Henry E. Dosker, Nicholas M. Steffens and Geerhardus Vos (New York, 1909), 63. 26

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more? No, nothing at all”’;30 he then proceeds to set Augustine in line with the best of the Reformed tradition by adding ‘hence, Calvin begins his Institutes with the knowledge of God and of ourselves. And hence, The Catechism of Geneva answers the first question: “What is the chief end of human life?” with “That men may know God, their Maker”’.31 Clearly, this neat transition from Augustine to Calvin and his Catechism for the Genevan church is fostered by the rich connections between the Reformed tradition and the bishop of Hippo.32 Crucially, this use of traditional sources is not extrinsic, but dictated by Bavinck’s own conception of the nature of Scripture. In polemics with certain attempts of building a purely ‘biblical’ theology, Bavinck claims that ‘Scripture is not a legal document’ but rather ‘a living whole’.33 From this view of Scripture, Bavinck deduces that the ‘full doctrine of faith […] has to be drawn from the entire organism of Scripture’ but not in such a way that ‘we should parrot Scripture] but that as free children of God we should think his thoughts after him’.34 However, concludes Bavinck ‘so much study and reflection on the subject is bound up with it that no person can possibly do it alone. That takes centuries. To that end the church has been appointed and given the promise of the Spirit’s guidance into all truth’.35 Hence, Bavinck’s dialogue with the broader church tradition is not dictated by his personal and arbitrary preference, but by his very beliefs concerning the nature of theology and the Bible. He believed that the tasks of theology and Biblical hermeneutic were ecclesial, communal, and performed within an ongoing conversation with the past. Right after discussing mystery as the living element of Christian dogmatics, Bavinck discusses how the incomprehensibility of God seems to be postulated even by many non-Christian philosophies. Most prominently, he makes reference to Plato’s rejection of anthropomorphic and anthropopathic descriptions of God drawing on passages from the Timaeus and the Republic. Subsequently, Bavinck holds that this idea was received by Philo and adapted to the context of Jewish thought; Philo claims that the God of Israel is not only above the imperfections present in finite creatures, but also above their perfections. In short, God is unknowable as to his being. Finally, Bavinck reads in Plotinus a radicalization of Plato’s philosophy: Plato ascribed many attributes to God. Philo complemented his negative theology with a positive in which he defines God as a personal, perfect, omnipotent Being. But according to Plotinus nothing can be said of God which is not negative. God is an 30

Bavinck, 14. Bavinck, 14. 32 See Graham Hill, ‘Augustine’s Influence on Calvin, Luther, and Zwingli’, https://theglobal churchproject.com/augustines-influence-calvin-luther-zwingli/ [accessed on 06/07/2020]. 33 Bavinck, 83. 34 Bavinck, 83. 35 Bavinck, 83. See also John Bolt, ‘Bavinck’s use of Wisdom Literature in Systematic Theology’, Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 29 (2011). 31

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absolute unity, raised above all plurality. Accordingly, he cannot be defined in terms of thought, goodness, or being, for all these descriptive terms imply a certain plurality. God, as pure unity, is indeed the cause of though, being, goodness, etc., but is himself distinct from any of these and transcends them all. He is unlimited, infinite, without form and so entirely different from every creature that even activity, life, thought, consciousness, and being cannot be ascribed to him. Our thought and language cannot attain to him. We cannot say what he is, but we can only say what he is not.36

To Bavinck, Platonism is the furthest that (non-)speech concerning God can go when unenlightened by the Bible – this with the exception of Gnosticism (see below) which in any case developed in conversation with the Platonic milieu.37 In this sense, Philo is an exception with respect to the Platonic mainstream inasmuch as he had access to the inspired books of the Tanakh. However, Bavinck seems to focus his analysis more on Plotinus, who – lacking any explicit reference to later neo-Platonist pagan thinkers – he identifies as a radicalizer of Plato apophaticism. The last non-Christian school of thought mentioned by Bavinck is Gnosticism: Gnosticism makes the distance between God and the creature even greater. Between the highest God and the world it posits an absolute separation. A revelation not of God but of eons only, was to be found in nature, in Israel, in Christianity. Hence, there could be no natural theology neither innate nor acquired, nor yet a revealed theology. For the one creature the highest God was absolutely unknowable and unattainable. He was “unknown depth, ineffable, eternal silence”.38

Bavinck interprets the quest for a theology unnourished by Biblical revelation as a descent in an even more radical apophaticisim – that is, once again, with the exception of Philo who, from the perspective of Bavinck is a non-Christian and yet thoroughly Biblical thinker. While this brings some resemblance with the approach took by Bavinck – insofar as it clearly defines the distinction between God and finite realities – non-Christian theologies seem to revolve around the unknowability of God, rather than his incomprehensibility. In other words, all they can say is that God is different from all that subsists at our level of existence; however, there is no sense of God shining forth some of his qualities, thereby giving us access to his nature and character. According to Bavinck, Christian theology took this stress on God’s unknowability as its point of departure: 36

Bavinck, 20. Of course, Bavinck’s work pre-dates the discovery of the library of Nag-Hammadi, and his sources for his knowledge of Gnosticism were severely limited with respect to those to our disposal. Nonetheless, it is interesting that he does not consider Gnosticism as a Christian heresy but as a thoroughly different school of thought. For a contemporary discussion of the relationship between Gnosticism and Neo-Platonism, see Richard T. Wallis, Neoplatonism and Gnosticism (New York, 1992). 38 Bavinck, 20. 37

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God’s revelation in creation and redemption fails to reveal him adequately. He cannot fully impart himself to creatures, inasmuch as in that case the latter must needs be God. Accordingly, adequate knowledge of God does not exist. There is no name that makes known unto us his being. No concept fully embraces him. No description does justice to him. That which is hidden behind the curtain of revelation is entirely unknowable. We cannot approach it by means of our thought, imagination or language.39

Following this quote, Bavinck produces a quick survey of the Fathers’ stance concerning this point. In doing so, he identifies two particular passages in the reception and re-elaboration of radical apophaticism by Christian thinkers. A first stage in the process of maturation of Christian theology was represented by the work of Clement of Alexandria, who argued that ‘God is “the One”. Whenever we eliminate from our thought everything pertaining to the creature, that which remains is not what God is but what he is not. It is not proper to ascribe him form, movement, place, number, attribute, name, etc. If, nevertheless, we call him the One, the Good, Father, Creator, Lord, etc., we do not thereby express his essential being but his power’.40 Bavinck remarks that Clement’s discussion of God is embraced by Athanasius, Origen, and Eusebius of Cesarea – among many other early Christian theologians.41 At the turn of the third century, this view is received and further refined by Augustine: With Augustine the concept of being is basic to the definition of God. He is the selfexisting One, even as his name Yhwh indicates. This is his real name, “the name that indicates what he is in himself,” all other names are “names which indicate what he is for us,” Serm. 6 n. 4; Serm. 7 n. 7. Hence when we say what he is, we are only stating what in distinction from all finite beings he is not. He is “ineffable”. “It is easier for us to say what he is not than what he is”. He is not earth, sea, heaven, angel, etc. He is nothing of all that which pertains to the creature, what he is not is all that can be said, Enarr. In Ps. 85 n. 12; De doctr. Chr. I, 6; De ord. II, 47. “Our thoughts tries to reach a nature than which nothing better or more sublime exists”, De doctr. Chr. I, 7. But we cannot think of him as he really is. He is far exalted above that which is corporeal, changeable, transient, tract 23 in Ev. John n. 9. “Who is there whose conception of God really corresponds to his being?” quaest in Jos. VI, 29. He is incomprehensible, and must needs be, “For if you comprehend him, he is not God”, Serm. 117, n. 5. If we wish to say anything about him, we struggle with language, “for God is more truly thought than expressed and exists more truly than he is thought”, De trin, VII, 4; De doctr. Chr. I, 6; cf. De doctr. Chr. I, 6. “Just as no intellect is able properly to conceive of God, so no definition is able properly to define or determine him”, De cogn. Verae vitae, 7. “God is known better when not known”, De ord. II, 44.42 39 40 41 42

Bavinck, Bavinck, Bavinck, Bavinck,

21. 21. 21. 21-2.

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A second and even more radical junction of the relationship between Christian theology and the tradition of apophatic theology inherited by the Platonic thinkers is provided by Dionysius the Areopagite:43 The Areopagite taught that there is no concept, expression, or word, by which God’s being can be indicated. Accordingly, whenever we wish to designate God, we use metaphorical language. He is “supersubstantial infinity, supermental unity”, etc. We cannot form a conception of that unitary, unknown being, transcendent above all being, above goodness, above every name and word and thought. We can only name him in accordance with his works, because he is the cause and principle of everything. Hence, on the one hand he is “without name”, on the other hand he “has many names”. But those positive names which we ascribe to God because of his works do not disclose his essential being to us, for they pertain to him in an entirely different manner than to creatures. Hence, negative theology is better than positive, for the former teaches us God’s transcendence above the creature. Nevertheless, even negative theology fails to give us any knowledge of God’s being, for in reality God is exalted above both “negation and affirmation”.44

The heritage of Augustine and Dionysius was subsequently received into the bosom of Western and Eastern Christianity – Bavinck here makes particular reference to Dionysius’s reception on the part of John of Damascus and Scotus Eriugena – and was thereby transmitted to the broader Christian tradition.45 Implicitly, Bavinck seems to draw two conclusions from his survey of the Fathers on apophaticism. First, their adoption of non-Christian strategies of thinking and talking about God – especially Platonic ones – is not the reflection of any undesired Hellenization of Christianity. Whatever the risks and/or damages undergone by Christian theology in the process, the Fathers employed the Platonic stress on transcendence and negative theology in order to make justice of God’s incomprehensibility-in-revelation testified by nature and Scripture. Second, the articulation of God’s incomprehensibility became the ‘point of departure and basic idea of Christian theology’ – that is, of all Christian theology. While following Bavinck’s train of thought in detail lies beyond the scope of this article, it is sufficient to say that the Dutch theologian looks to the reception and development of Patristic thought in the key stages and figures of Christian thought. In this respect, he shows how Scholasticism, Tridentine Roman Catholic theology, 43 Bavinck’s identification of the byzantine father as Pseudo-Dionysius shows his awareness of the recent breakthrough produced by the works of J. Stiglmayr and H. Koch, that showed the dependence of the Corpus Dionysiacum on the work of Proclus. For a recent summary and discussion of the figure of Dionysius – including a survey of the main hypothesis made around his true identity, one can make reference to Ernesto Sergio Mainoldi, Dietro “Dionigi l’Areopagita” (la genesi e gli scopi del Corpus Dionysiacum) (Roma, 2018); in the English language, Andrew Louth, Denys the Areopagite (London, 2001) and Paul Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius: A commentary on the texts and an introduction to their influence (Oxford, 1993). 44 Bavinck, 22-3. 45 Bavinck, 21-3.

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the Reformers, and a plethora of later thinkers articulated the theme of God’s incomprehensibility-in-revelation – oscillating between the radical Platonism of the father and more cataphatic stances as in the cases of Anselm, Albertus Magnus, and Thomas Aquinas.46 While cataphaticism as such is affirmed by Bavinck, I hold that he clearly argues in favour of a priority and stress upon the ‘negative moment’ over and above the ‘positive moment’. This is first signalled by the very order in which he discusses the two topics: as previously mentioned, his ‘Doctrine of God’ opens with a chapter on God’s incomprehensibility, and discusses God’s 46 While this is not the topic of our discussion, it should be noted how Bavinck’s reception and interpretation of the Fathers poses some critical questions to the way in which Protestant Theology (in its broadest sense) is often depicted and portrayed. Of course, Bavinck’s positions are not necessarily those of other Protestant thinkers; nonetheless, his status as a key theologian should make us pause for reflection. First of all, we should notice his stress on the unknowability of God’s essence coupled with the clear perception that God’s self-revelation pertains to the sphere of his works/acts – this point shall be further developed in the section on the divine attributes – where God’s acts are clearly to be considered of one piece with his own essence and thereby as being eternal in their unfolding. A similar view is normally attributed to the foremost Orthodox theologian St. Gregory Palamas under the guise of the essence/energies (acts/works) distinction. It would be interesting to discuss whether the accusation moved by subsequent orthodox theologians to the Christian west of confusing the essence of God with his energies do apply to Bavinck. Crucially, the orthodox objection to Latin Christianity is often formulated with reference to the notion of God as pure act as if it was ubiquitous in the Western tradition of Christian theology – e.g. Christon Yannaras: ‘The West confuses God’s essence with his energy, regarding the energy as a property of the divine essence and interpreting the latter as “pure energy” (actus purus)’ – a view that – to say the least – is highly disputable. The potential scholarly interest in comparing the Reformed and the Orthodox tradition on this point is further heightened by research in the Patristic roots of Palamas’ doctrine (in The Reformed Dogmatics there can be found some references to Palamas’ teachings, but these are often imprecise, indicating Bavinck’s scarse knowledge of the subject), something that point to a common heritage. Christos Yannaras, Orthodoxy and the West: Hellenic Self-Identity in the Modern Age (Brookline, 2007), 36; Costantinos Athanasopolous and Christoph Schneider (eds), Divine Essence and Divine Energies: Ecumenical Reflections on the Presence of God (Cambridge, 1991); Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (New York, 1983); Gregory Palamas, The Triads, ed. John Meyendorff (Mahwah, 1983); Torstein Tollefsen, Activity and Participation in Late Antique and Early Christian Thought (Oxford, 2012). A second point of interest that emerges from Bavinck’s words and that could open up interesting prospect of research, is his reckoning with the influence and importance of the Corpus Dionysiacum beyond the borders of Eastern Christianity and medieval Latin Christianity. In this respect, the relationship between Dionysius and the Reformation has arguably been influenced by Luther’s apparent dislike for this author and the use made by Johannes Eck of Dionysius at the Leipzig Disputation as a way of entrenching papal authority. However, Bavinck seems to argue that Dionysius, through his deep appropriation of some Neo-Platonic motives, expressed a Biblical pattern of thinking about God, thereby producing a blueprint significant for the entirety of Christian thought. On the Leipzig disputation, see Mickey Mattox, Richard J. Serina Jr. and Jonathan Mumme (eds), Luther at Leipzig (Leiden, 2019); for a critical discussion of Luther’s reception of Dionysius, I strongly recommend Johannes Zachhuber, ‘Martin Luther on Dionysius the Areopagite’, https://www.academia.edu/40808333/Martin_Luther_on_Dionysius_ the_Areopagite?sm=b [accessed on 07/07/2020].

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knowability in the second chapter. While I shall not dive into Bavinck’s discussion of the way in which we know God, I believe that the ordering he brings upon his material is indicative of his views: the way in which we know God can be fully discussed only having first clarified in what way in fact we cannot know God. In addition to this, Bavinck identifies the Reformers as supporters of a robust doctrine of God’s incomprehensibility – in opposition to the more overt cataphaticism of the Scholastics mentioned at the end of the previous paragraph. In this respect he writes: The theology of the Reformation did not bring about any change in this view [that is, the Patristic view that God is radically incomprehensible]. Luther in his work De servo arbitrio differentiated between “the hidden and the revealed God” between “God himself and the Word of God”. In his later years he preferred to speak of God as revealed in Christ. He did not teach, however, that the fulness of God’s being was revealed in Christ. On the contrary, there remains in God a dark, hidden depth, namely, “God as he is in his own nature and majesty, the absolute God”. This hidden depth is “unknowable, incomprehensible, inaccessible” […] Reformed theologians were in agreement with this view. Their deep abhorrence of every kind of deification of the creature led them to differentiate sharply at every turn between that which pertains to God and that which pertains to creature. More than any other theologians they emphasized the truth, “the finite cannot grasp the infinite”. Said Zwingly, “Of ourselves we are as ignorant with respect to the nature of God as is the beetle with respect to the nature of man”. Calvin deemed it vain speculation to attempt “an examination of God’s essence”. It is sufficient for us “to become acquainted with his character and to know what is conformable to his nature”.47

Therefore, I think that it is fair to say that Bavinck sees the Reformers as standing in the line of thought departing from Augustine and Dionysius – at least with respect to their emphasis on apophatic theology. Nonetheless, they also steer clear of the excesses of some of their successors – Bavinck quotes Polanus, who argued that nothing that is said of God actually reveal something concerning his nature – always correcting their own views with a sufficient dose of apophaticism – just as much as Scripture allows – arguing that what is testified about God’s character is a finite and yet truthful revelation of his personality and nature.48 Concluding this section, we could say that the whole of the Reformed Dogmatics sits on a Patristic foundation. That is, the formulation of and emphasis on God’s incomprehensibility as it was understood and promulgated by the Fathers and transmitted to later theologians. Of course, with an eye to the broader scheme of the Reformed Dogmatics, we should be led into the belief Bavinck uncritically accepted all that the Fathers have to say. In Michael S. Chen’s words, ‘Bavinck was never one for restoration but rather contextualization of 47 48

Bavinck, 25. Bavinck, 25.

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the best that Christian philosophy offers throughout history’,49 and even with respect to his favourite father – Augustine – this attitude translated into a rediscussion and re-balancing of the terms of Augustinian thought – for instance, transforming the epistemic relationship between the sense and the intellect.50 Nonetheless, it is clear that Bavinck understood the Church Fathers as an indispensable stepping stone for all later Christian thought. In his own terms, the Fathers provided Christian theology with the first coherent doctrinal articulation of God’s self-revelation in nature and Scripture; thereby they engaged with the mysterious knowledge of God and producing an indispensable toolkit for future generations of thinkers. The Church Fathers in Bavinck’s discussion of the divine attributes I want now to turn my attention to a specific passage in Bavinck’s doctrine of God, that is, his discussion of the divine attributes. This represents an even clearer example of his approach to the Church Fathers, and how his interpretation of the latter has helped forging the Calvinist synthesis of the Reformed Dogmatics. The discussion of the divine attributes is itself preceded by an analysis of the nature of the names of God.51 Bavinck argues that a divine name does not designate [God] as he exists in himself but in his manifold revelation and relation to the creature. Nevertheless, this name is not arbitrary, but God reveals himself as he is. Hence, God’s name stands for his honour, glory, excellencies, revelation, and divine essence … in Scripture “to be” and “to be called” indicate the same thing viewed from different angles: God is that which he calls himself, and he calls himself that which he is. Whatever God reveals of himself is expressed in certain definite 49

M.S. Chen, ‘Bavinck and Augustine’ (2011), 98. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 1, 233. 51 As a matter of facts, the translator indicates that in the original the section on divine names followed that on God’s incommunicable attributes (Bavinck, 113). The reason why he chose to change Bavinck’s ordering is left unmentioned. However, this indicates that for Bavinck the discussion of the divine names (which includes God’s proper names) is a part of the wider discussion of his attributes. Accordingly, in this paper I shall not distinguish between the doctrine of the divine names and that of the divine attributes. As a matter of fact Bavinck registers how the tradition of Christian theology quickly transitioned from talking of a doctrine of the names of God as concerning everything that can be said about God to a doctrine of the names of God as concerning only God’s proper names: ‘As stated in the preceding, whatever one was able to think or say about God was formerly subsumed under his names. But the ideas which were grouped under this heading soon became so numerous that organization of all this material became a necessity. Accordingly, the term “the names of God” was soon used exclusively to indicate the proper names; i.e., the names which we use to address God; e.g., God, Lord, etc. Furthermore, the doctrine of the trinity was soon treated as an independent unit, either before or after the doctrine of the attributes. It was given a terminology which distinguished it from the other doctrines. Again, the attempt to give a description of God made it necessary to place one definite virtue in the foreground (e.g., aseity, personality, etc.) and to treat it separately, so that at times a chapter bearing the heading God’s Essence and preceding the sections in which the other attributes would be discussed, was devoted to this single attribute’. Bavinck, 132-3. 50

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names. … The one name of God, as inclusive of his entire revelation both in nature and in grace, is for us resolved into many, very many names. Only in that way do we obtain a view of the riches of his revelation and of the deep significance of his name. … It is the one name, the full revelation, and in so far, it is the very being of God that places himself in a very definite relation to us.52

In order to make full sense of this passage, we have to say a few more words on Bavinck’s doctrine of revelation. In his opinion, the doctrine of revelation is not just one among the many pieces composing the mosaic of dogmatic theology. In turn, revelation is indeed the fundamental architecture of dogmatics, insofar as all knowledge concerning God is indeed revealed knowledge.53 In other words, God ‘reveals knowledge of himself through himself’.54 In this sense, if we go back to the axiom that mystery is the ‘vital element’ of dogmatics, we could say that revelation is the living framework of mystery, or the form in which the mystery unfold – keeping in mind that this is only a metaphor, and that there is no strong separation between form and content in Bavinck’s work. Therefore, Bavinck’s treatment of divine attributes and divine names is elaborated on the ground of the dialectic between God’s incomprehensibility and his act of self-revelation in Scripture. In his own words, Scripture contains many names whereby God is indicated, but never speaks about the being of God in the abstract, and never emphasizes one of God’s attributes at the expense of the others. Now the one, then the other attribute is placed in the foreground, but a perfect harmony exists among them all. Scripture strives to do full justice to each of God’s perfections. Just as the person of Christ does not represent a one-sided character or temperament though Christ is, nevertheless, a very real and living person, even so God ever unfolds and reveals all his virtues harmoniously. … Scripture never separates God’s ontological existence and his economical manifestation, even less does it represent these two as standing in antithetic relation to each other. God is what he reveals himself to be: in his names he himself becomes known to us. Though he is indeed exalted infinitely high above his creatures so that the knowledge which we have of him is analogical and not adequate, nevertheless, his several attributes exhibited by means of his revelation bring before our consciousness the fulness of his being, of which now one phase is displayed, then another.55

Therefore, Bavinck strongly denies that there is any dualism between God’s manifestation in his acts and his infinite essence, yet, these two can be conceptually separated insofar as human beings never have access to an adequate, i.e., complete and satisfying knowledge of the divine nature.56 Therefore, the single 52

Bavinck, 85. Robert S. Covolo, ‘Beyond the Schleiermacher-Barth Dilemma: General Revelation, Bavinckian Consensus, and the Future of Reformed Theology’, Bavinck Review 3 (2009), 37. 54 R.S. Covolo, ‘Beyond the Schleiermacher-Barth Dilemma’ (2009), 38 55 Bavinck, 114. 56 Nonetheless, Bavinck argues for a realist epistemology according to which there is no reason to doubt that our representations are grounded in reality. This is also a line of thought which Bavinck takes to be a continuation of Patristic – and specifically Augustinian – thought via 53

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act of divine revelation which unfolds in many different and yet coherent ways gave birth to the list of the so-called ‘divine attributes’, that is, a number of characteristics traditionally used by Christian theology to describe God’s character and features. Accordingly, the early Christian theologians used the term “names of God” as a summary of whatever was known concerning God. It was used to indicate not only the “proper names” but also – to use the terminology of a later period – the “attributes” and even the persons in the divine essence. Accordingly, God’s attributes were at once included in the idea of God. Augustine speaks, indeed, of God’s “essence”, but he views this essence as fulness of divine existence and as inclusive of all the attributes: simplicity, eternity, goodness, wisdom, etc. The Confessions often speak of God in the same manner, without any attempt to distinguish between being and attributes or to classify the latter.57

Hence, what started off as a discussion of the nature of God predicated on the use of a relatively undistinguished terminology, quickly underwent a process of specialization and developed its own technical vocabulary. In particular, the need to develop a classification of the different attributes quickly arose: the attempt to give a description of God made it necessary to place one definite virtue in the foreground (e.g. aseity, personality, etc.) and to treat it separately, so that at times a chapter bearing the heading God’s Essence and preceding the sections in which the other attributes would be discussed, was devoted to this single attribute. The division or classification of all the others which very readily suggested itself and which is also the oldest was that which referred to the attributes as negative and positive. Reflection upon the origin of the terms used to indicate the divine attributes resulted in the conclusion that they were derived from the realm of created objects either by way of negation or by way of excellence (or eminence) and causality.58

The genealogy that Bavinck offers with respect to the early classifications of the divine attributes closely mirrors his discussion of the theme of God’s incomprehensibility: We already meet with this classification and this two or threefold way or method of gaining knowledge concerning God in the works of Philo and Plotinus. The Church Fathers regarded God as both unknowable and knowable; unknowable in his essence, knowable in his revelation. Hence, it was held that on the one hand it is true that one can only say what God is not; but that on the other hand it is also true that something, be it ever so little, can be affirmed concerning God positively, though defectively and inadequately. Pseudodionysius, John of Damascus, and Eriugena constructed upon this idea a classification, a twofold theology: the negative and the positive.

the mediation of Thomas Aquinas. For more one this see Arvin Vos, ‘Knowledge according to Bavinck and Aquinas’, Bavinck Review 6 (2015), 9-36. 57 Bavinck, 115. 58 Bavinck, 133.

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In particular, Pseudodionysius, describing the three ways of gaining knowledge concerning God, uses the very terms already mentioned when he says that we attain to the knowledge of God “via the remotion or subtraction of all things [i.e., by describing God in terms that indicate that he is removed from all creaturely limitations; e.g., he is unchangeable], and via excellence or eminence [i.e., by removal of limits: ascribing to God in a supereminent degree those attributes of which there is a reflex in the creature] and by means of describing him as the cause of all things”.59

According to Bavinck, the systematization offered by Pseudodionysius enjoyed great success throughout Western Christianity: thanks to the mediation offered by the Scholastics, the “three ways” became a staple of Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed theologies.60 On his own part, Bavinck argues that the three ways can be reduced to two. In his own view, the way of ‘excellence or eminence’ basically overlaps with that of ‘causality’ and they can be simply referred to as the ‘way (method) of affirmation’ – as opposed to the third way which would then be the ‘way (method) of negation’.61 This two ways of doing theology converge in that to negate something concerning God is to ‘withhold from God … all imperfections which pertain to the creature’, something that ‘presupposes that we have a positive awareness of him and conceive of him as the absolute being’;62 at the same time ‘whenever we, “by way of affirmation” ascribe to him the excellencies which are found in the creature … we ascribe these excellencies to him only in a super-eminent sense; i.e., our very affirmation implies a negation, for we deny that these excellencies are present in God in the same sense in which they pertain to the creature’63. Bavinck concludes that this convergence of apophatic and cataphatic theology found great favour among the mystics; in particular, he points once again to Dionysius: ‘Pseudodionysius called God “the affirmation of all things and the negation of all things”, the cause or principle exalted above all affirmation and negation’.64 According to Bavinck, all following attempts at classifying the divine attributes find their source and inspiration in this two-fold way of talking about God. In particular, to the apophatic style of theology belong those attributes that can be described as negative; they describe God’s lack of imperfections: divine aseity, eternity, simplicity, etc. Conversely, from cataphatic theology spring the positive attributes, that is, those that describe God’s super-eminent virtues: justice, wisdom, goodness, etc. Once again, these two sets of attributes complement 59 60 61 62 63 64

Bavinck, Bavinck, Bavinck, Bavinck, Bavinck, Bavinck,

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one another, providing a complete picture of the character and nature of God as described in Scripture. In Bavinck’s own words, the classification of the divine attributes stands in close relation to these two ways of reaching God. This division of the attributes (into negative and positive) has a very ancient origin, was soon accepted everywhere, and is really presupposed by all other and later classifications. We already meet with it in the works of Philo, Plotinus, and the church-Fathers; of John of Damascus, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, Petavius, and many others. With Roman Catholic theologians this is the most usual representation, while some Lutheran and Reformed theologians have also adopted it.65

Therefore, on the basis of this classification, many others were introduced. Bavinck remarks that Augustine ‘already remarked that some attributes (names) belong to God “properly”, others “metaphorically”, and still others “relatively”’.66 This made later authors to distinguish the negative attributes between those that could be considered ‘properly negative’ and those that were ‘relatively negative’;67 in turn, the ‘positive attributes’ were divided into ‘proper and metaphorical’.68 Alongside the classification of the divine attributes into positive/negative, the Fathers were responsible for producing a second twofold classification, which also proved to enjoy an enduring popularity through the centuries. Also in this case, the Fathers strove to articulate in a Christian way certain elements which they had derived from the heritage of Platonic philosophy. Nonetheless, this time the decisive mediation was not provided by Pseudodionysius, but rather by Augustine. The latter took as his pivot Plato’s teaching that ‘God is good in and by himself while creatures are good by “participation”’.69 Bavinck writes that, this idea produced many fruits in Christian theology … over against Pantheism it was maintained that the essence of God is incommunicable, and that the soul was not a “particle of God”. But it was also maintained that all creatures are related to God and particularly that man is God’s image and likeness. Creatures resemble their Creator. This view led to the division of the attributes into “communicable and incommunicable”. At first these terms were used in the doctrine of the Trinity; for, the being or essence of God was “communicable”: by means of generation it was communicated by the Father to the Son; while the persons and personal attributes, e.g., “fatherhood” were “incommunicable”. These same terms were later on applied to the attributes in order that justice might be done both to God’s transcendence and to his immanence. Reformed theologians eagerly adopted this classification … nevertheless, all agree that the communicable attributes when taken in the absolute sense, i.e., as they exist in God, are as incommunicable as are the others.70 65 66 67 68 69 70

Bavinck, Bavinck, Bavinck, Bavinck, Bavinck, Bavinck,

135. 135. 135-6. 136. 136. 136.

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Therefore, also this second way of classifying God’s attributes found great favour among the Fathers’ theological and intellectual posterity. It should be noticed that the distinction of the divine attributes between communicable and incommunicable complements and does not exclude that offered by the “Dionysian line”. To use affirmative/negative theological speech in order to describe God means implicitly to speak of that is communicable/incommunicable to his creatures. God’s creatures have a share of his super-eminent wisdom – which God communicates to his creatures – and are different from him in that they are subject to time – that is, God does not communicate his eternity to creation. In conclusion, we could say that in Bavinck’s view the heritage of the Fathers – paradigmatically in the intertwining of Dionysius’ and Augustine’s legacies – provided the background for talking theologically about the features of the God of the Bible. Therefore, they produced the background and foundation to the very exercise of Christian theology in the west. Conclusion In order to draw this paper to a close, we can draw three conclusions: 1) Bavinck, correctly or not, argues in favour of the existence of a sort of Consensus Patrum concerning the fact that God is both knowable and unknowable. In this sense, in conversation with non-Christian philosophies, they developed a style of theology that rested on the double presupposition that God’s essence lies beyond the capacities of human knowledge, and yet that his character and nature were faithfully testified by the Bible. 2) Bavinck argues that out of the Patristic era emerged two intertwined ways of talking about God. One finds its classic exposition in the Corpus Dionysiacum, and develops around the double use of affirmative and negative language, by which God is positively described with respect to his super-eminent possession of certain virtues, and negatively described with respect to his lack of creaturely imperfections. The second classification was elaborated in particular by Augustine, and divided God’s attributes into communicable and incommunicable – that is, those that God shares with his creatures and those that he does not share with them. These two ways of classifying God’s attributes are complementary and call upon one another; both were widely received and elaborated upon by following generations of theologians. In particular, the communicable/ incommunicable classification was met with great favour by theologians belonging to the Reformed tradition – that is, Bavinck’s own. 3) In conclusion, Bavinck roots the whole discussion of God’s attributes along the lines of Patristic thought. By linking the Fathers to the conception of Christian theology as a discussion of the revealed mysterious knowledge of God, and to the development of the basic linguistic strategies to be adopted in

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theology, he identified them as the stepping stone necessary for all further theologizing. Accordingly, Bavinck understands the Fathers as providing the beginning and the guiding light of Christian theology, and in particular that of his own tradition of Reformed theologizing, which he arguably considers the utmost fruit of Christian thought. In line with a contemporary trend in Reformed and Protestant theology – a trend which no doubt he helped to foster – Bavinck gave great value to the heritage of Patristic thought, without renouncing to read the Fathers critically. Therefore, he steered clear of both diseases – which so commonly afflict Christian theology – of ‘patrolatry’ and ‘patrophobia’ (the latter being, unfortunately, very common in Protestant theologies of a liberal and neo-fundamentalistic persuasion).71

71 For my understanding of the terms ‘patrolatry’ and ‘patrophobia’, I am drawing on Leonardo De Chirico, ‘Letture Patristiche (II-III secolo)’, Studi di Teologia 54 (2015), 129-203, 135-6.

From Wittgenstein to Clement and from Clement to Wittgenstein. A Few Thoughts for a Literary Comparison Including Patristic Literature Antoine PARIS, Université Sorbonne-Université / Université de Montréal, Paris, France

ABSTRACT Clement of Alexandria’s Stromateis are presented by their author as comprising three parts: a part about ethics, a part about apologetics and a part about physics, divided into a critical review of dogmas and an epopteia. According to Pierre Nautin, the seven books of Stromateis that were kept are only the part about ethics, while the part about apologetics, consisting in other books of Stromateis, is only known in a fragmentary way and the part about physics (both the review of dogmas and the epopteia) had been written in another work, which is now lost, the Hypotyposeis. Our hypothesis is that the epopteia was not planned as a text, but as another way of reading the seven first Stromateis. The part about physics would consist in these seven books received as texts which say something, whereas the epopteia would be a way of reading them as texts which show something. We defend such a point of view by comparing Clement’s Stromateis to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus logico-philosophicus. Both texts say and show at the same time and their authors both describe their work as granting their readers, through a process described as an ascent, with a vision. Such a cross-analysis between two very distant works is, according to us, fully justified, as a way to avoid hermeneutical circles between each text and its immediate context or literary genre, to put into light specificities of both works, and to grasp the relationship between humans, reality and language, in a wide comparatism which makes new institutional frameworks necessary.

At the beginning of Stromateus1 I, II, IV and VI, Clement of Alexandria presents a program of his work. In a famous article, ‘La fin des ‘Stromates’ et les ‘Hypotyposes’ de Clément d’Alexandrie’,2 Pierre Nautin convincingly argued that these four passages are coherent in their presentation of a three-part plan of 1 The title used by Clement himself (see, for example, Stromateis IV 2, 4, 3) is οἱ Στρωματεῖς and the author characterizes each book as a Στρωματεύς (see, for example, Stromateis I 29, 182, 3). Therefore, we transliterate the title as Stromateis (like, among others, John Ferguson – see Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, Book 1-3, translation by John Ferguson, The Fathers of the Church 85 [Washington, 1991]) and call each book a Stromateus. 2 Pierre Nautin, ‘La fin des “Stromates” et les “Hypotyposes” de Clément d’Alexandrie’, Vigiliae Christianae 30 (1976), 268-302.

Studia Patristica CXXX, 531-537. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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the Stromateis: a part of ethics, a part of apologetics and, finally, a part about physics, that is divided into a critical review of ‘the significant groups’ dogmas’3 and a presentation of ‘the gnosis according to the epoptic contemplation’.4 If these four passages are considered as statements of purpose, Pierre Nautin’s analysis is flawless, but several problems arise when one tries to apply Clement’s declarations to the reality of the Stromateis. The almost only witness of this work, the Laurentianus V 3, presents seven completed books for the Stromateis, at the end of which Clement states that the part about ethics is finished.5 Pierre Nautin concludes from this statement and from an analysis of the fragments which follow, that the real end of the Stromateis was lost, that it comprised the planned apologetic part, and that the twofold part about physics was written in another work by Clement, the Hypotyposeis, which have been lost too. Such a conclusion could seem all the more strange because the second subpart about physics, the epopteia, is presented in the program as the goal of Clement. For example, in the beginning of the first Stromateus, a series of verbs beginning with the prefix προ- shows the rest of the work as preliminary parts to the epopteia, which appears consequently as the main topic of the book.6 Thus, if we follow Pierre Nautin’s conclusions, Clement would have postponed the main goal of the Stromateis to another work. We would suggest that the epopteia is not a final (missing) part of the Stromateis but another way of reading the seven Stromateis as they exist. For making this suggestion, we base on two quite different sets of arguments. 3 Τά τε παρὰ τῶν ἐπισήμων δογματιζόμενα αἱρέσεων παραθήσεται, καὶ τούτοις ἀντερεῖ πάνθ’ ὅσα προοικονομηθῆναι καθήκει… (Stromateis I 1, 15, 2). Every translation from the Stromateis is by us. 4 … ἡ κατὰ τὴν ἐποπτικὴν θεωρίαν γνῶσις (Stromateis I 1, 15, 2). 5 τοῦ ἠθικοῦ τόπου ὡς ἐν κεφαλαίῳ ὑπογραφέντος; ‘the speech about ethics having been sketched out in a summary way’ (Stromateis VII 18, 110, 4). 6 Τά τε παρὰ τῶν ἐπισήμων δογματιζόμενα αἱρέσεων παραθήσεται, καὶ τούτοις ἀντερεῖ πάνθ’ ὅσα προοικονομηθῆναι καθήκει τῆς κατὰ τὴν ἐποπτικὴν θεωρίαν γνώσεως, ἣ προβήσεται ἡμῖν κατὰ τὸν εὐκλεῆ καὶ σεμνὸν τῆς παραδόσεως κανόνα ἀπὸ τῆς τοῦ κόσμου γενέσεως προϊοῦσιν, ἀναγκαίως ἔχοντα προδιαληφθῆναι τῆς φυσικῆς θεωρίας προπαρατιθεμένη καὶ τὰ ἐμποδὼν ἱστάμενα τῇ ἀκολουθίᾳ προαπολυομένη, ὡς ἑτοίμους ἔχειν τὰς ἀκοὰς πρὸς τὴν παραδοχὴν τῆς γνωστικῆς παραδόσεως προκεκαθαρμένης τῆς γῆς ἀπό τε τῶν ἀκανθῶν καὶ τῆς πόας ἁπάσης γεωργικῶς εἰς καταφύτευσιν ἀμπελῶνος; ‘It [Clement’s work] will present the significant group’s dogmas and will oppose to them everything that needs to be set up before (προοικονομῶ) the gnosis according to the epoptic contemplation, which will progress according to the glorious and holy rule of the tradition [quote from Clement of Roma, First Letter to the Corinthians 7, 2], for us, who will go forward from the creation of the universe and it will have presented before (προπαρατίθημι) what must be understood in detail before (προδιαλαμβάνω) the physical contemplation and will have destroyed before (προαπολύω) the obstacles standing in the way of the coherent progress of ideas, in order to make ears ready for the reception of the gnostic tradition, because the earth will have been cleansed before (προκαθαίρω) from the thorns and from any weed, as a grower does for the plantation of the vine’ (Stromateis I 1, 15, 2).

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The first one is, so to speak, fully Clementine. It is the importance of viewing in the presentation of the second subpart of physics. It is described as a θεωρία, a ‘contemplation’,7 as an ἐποπτεία,8 which includes the root ἐποπτ‘to see’,9 and as a ἱεροφαντία,10 in which we find φαίνω, ‘to make visible’. In this way, the last step of the Stromateis is described less as something which should be read, than something which should be seen. In any case the physiology of the gnostic tradition according to the rule of truth, or rather the epopteia, depends on a discourse about cosmogony and, from there, it climbs to the theological eidos.11

It is true that the sentence is – maybe intentionally12 – not void of ambiguity. The characterisation of the last part of the Stromateis as a “physiology” (φυσιολογία) could support the traditional view of the epopteia as a λόγος per se. In the same way, the word εἶδος could be interpreted as referring to the “genre” of a stand-alone text.13 However, the characterisation as a “physiology” is straightaway corrected by ‘or rather’ (μᾶλλον δέ): the last part of Clement’s program is ‘rather’ a vision, an ‘epopteia’, which leads to understand εἶδος in this context as referring not to a ‘genre’ but, rather, to a ‘form’ or ‘aspect’, like 7

Stromateis I 1, 15, 2. Stromateis I 1, 15, 2 and IV 1, 4, 2. This term belongs to the vocabulary of mysteries, the use of which by Clement has been studied at length by Christoph Riedweg, Mysterienterminologie bei Plato, Philo und Klemens von Alexandrien (Berlin, 1987). 9 Moreover Clement uses several times the verb ἐποπτεύω ‘to see’, for example in the first Stromateus, where, after having interpreted the name ‘Jerusalem’ as meaning ‘vision of peace’ (ὅρασις εἰρήνης), he talks about οἱ εἰρηνικῶς ἐποπτεύσαντες ‘those who have an epopteia / a vision in peace’ (Stromateis I 5, 29, 4). 10 Stromateis IV 1, 3, 1. 11 Ἡ γοῦν κατὰ τὸν τῆς ἀληθείας κανόνα γνωστικῆς παραδόσεως φυσιολογία, μᾶλλον δὲ ἐποπτεία, ἐκ τοῦ περὶ κοσμογονίας ἤρτηται λόγου, ἐνθένδε ἀναβαίνουσα ἐπὶ τὸ θεολογικὸν εἶδος (Stromateis IV 1, 3, 2). 12 See, for example, Stromateis VII, 18, 111, 1-3, where Clement explains his veiled style as a way to safeguard the true knowledge from malevolent readers: Ἐοίκασι δέ πως οἱ Στρωματεῖς οὐ παραδείσοις ἐξησκημένοις ἐκείνοις τοῖς ἐν στοίχῳ καταπεφυτευμένοις εἰς ἡδονὴν ὄψεως, ὄρει δὲ μᾶλλον συσκίῳ τινὶ καὶ δασεῖ κυπαρίσσοις καὶ πλατάνοις δάφνῃ τε καὶ κισσῷ, μηλέαις τε ὁμοῦ καὶ ἐλαίαις καὶ συκαῖς καταπεφυτευμένῳ, ἐξεπίτηδες ἀναμεμιγμένης τῆς φυτείας καρποφόρων τε ὁμοῦ καὶ ἀκάρπων δένδρων διὰ τοὺς ὑφαιρεῖσθαι καὶ κλέπτειν τολμῶντας τὰ ὥρια, ἐθελούσης λανθάνειν τῆς γραφῆς. “The Stromateis do in no way look like those carefully arranged gardens, which are planted in rows to feast the eyes, but rather look like a shaded and wooded mountain, which is planted with cypresses and planes, with laurel and also with ivy, with apple trees together with olive trees and fig trees, where the planting of fruit trees and of trees without fruit is intentionally mingled because of those who dare to take off and steal the seasonal fruits, since my writing intends to remain hidden.” It is therefore not absurd to hypothesize that the indications which could present the epopteia as a text are in fact intentionally misleading. 13 See, among others, Isocrates, Against the Sophists (in Isocrates, Discours, I, ed. Émile Brémond and Georges Mathieu [Paris, 1929]), 13, 7: τὰ εἴδη τὰ τῶν λόγων “the genres of the speeches” and Pseudo-Aristotle, Rhetoric to Alexander (ed. Pierre Chiron [Paris, 2002]), 10, 1: τὸ ἐξεταστικὸν εἶδος “the genre of the inquiry speech”. 8

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in other passages of the Stromateis.14 In this way, the last part of Clement’s program appears less as a speech than as a vision. My second set of arguments is a parallel between the way Clement characterizes this epopteia and the distinction elaborated by Ludwig Wittgenstein between ‘saying’ (sagen) and ‘showing’ (zeigen) in his Tractatus logico-philosophicus.15 According to Ludwig Wittgenstein, the language says and shows at the same time. For example, the expression ‘XVIII. International Conference on Patristic Studies’ ‘says’ because it refers to a reality which doesn’t belong solely to language: an event which took place in Oxford in August 2019. But words also ‘show’, for two reasons. First, when terms like ‘XVIII. International Conference on Patristic Studies’ are written, they ‘show’ a number of signs: the Roman numerals for eighteen and the letters I, N, T., etc. Second, some words ‘show’, in the sense that they point to a reality which remains inexpressible, like, for example, one talks about morals.16 Starting from there, the goal of the Tractatus logico-philosophicus is to draw the line between what can and what can’t be said: Its whole meaning [the meaning of the Tractatus] could be summed up somewhat as follows: What can be said at all can be said clearly; and whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent. The book will, therefore, draw a limit to thinking, or rather – not to thinking, but to the expression of thoughts.17

Because of that purpose, the Tractatus is itself a book that says (it says the limits of language) but also a book that shows (by setting up the limits of language, it also points to what can’t be said): My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) He must surmount (überwinden) these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.18 14

Among others one could quote in Stromateus II a borrowing from Is. 53:3 (‘he had lost his appearance [εἶδος]’) (II 5, 22, 8), the affirmation that wives should adorn μὴ τὸ εἶδος, ἀλλὰ τὸ ἦθος; ‘not their appearance, but their habits’ (II 23, 143, 1) and in Stromateus VI a borrowing from Deut. 4:12 (‘his appearance [εἶδος], we didn’t see it, but his voice, we heard it’) (VI 6, 45, 1). The same expression τὸ θεολογικὸν εἶδος is also used by Claudius Ptolemy in his Mathematical Treatise to refer to “the form of the gods” (see Claudius Ptolemy, Syntaxis mathematica, in Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Claudii Ptolemaei opera quae exstant omina, vol. 1.1 [Leipzig, 1898], 7). 15 Ludwig Wittgenstein, ‘Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung’, Annalen der Naturphilosophie 14 (1921), 185-262. We quote the English translation by Charles Kay Ogden (Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus [London, 1990]). 16 See L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus (1990), 6.42, 6.421 and 6.423 (the Tractatus’ sections are numbered according to a system which Ludwig Wittgenstein explains in the only footnote of the book). Even the word ‘patristic points to a hard-to-express reality: the notion of ‘patristics’ remains debatable and debated. Nevertheless it ‘shows’ what it means. Even if every scholars wouldn’t agree on a common definition saying what patristics is, they can share a common intuition of what is shown through this word. 17 L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus (1990), Preface. 18 L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus (1990), 6.54.

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These sentences display several common points with the presentation of the epopteia by Clement. In both cases a book leads to something which should be seen: the ‘contemplation’ / ‘epopteia’ / ‘theological form’ in the Stromateis, the right vision of the world by the reader in the Tractatus. In both cases also, this vision is achieved through an ascension: ‘the epopteia […] climbs (ἀναβαίνω) to the theological eidos’;19 the reader who understands the propositions of the Tractatus ‘has climbed out through them (hinaufsteigen) […] He must surmount (überwinden) these propositions’. These parallels help understanding the place of the epopteia in Clement’s program and how it is related to the seven completed Stromateis. The epopteia is about something which is beyond language. Indeed, in Stromateus V,20 Clement explains that epopteia can be achieved ἀναλύσει ‘through dissolution’,21 that is to say in a process of subtracting (ἀφαιρῶ, περιαιρῶ22) and that this ‘epoptical mode’23 leads beyond what language is able to express: concerning the greatness of Christ, for example, it allows to understand ‘not what it is, but what it is not’.24 In the same way, one can know God only through an ‘epoptical’ progress: ‘God can’t be taught by humans nor said’.25 Those matters are accessible not through language but through manifestation: ‘It is why Moses says: Manifest yourself to me [Exodus 33:13]’.26 To borrow Wittgenstein’s terminology, in the Stromateis, the ethical speech (and maybe the apologetic one too) is said and, by being said, it is an epopteia as well because it shows what is beyond language and accessible only as a vision. As Clement puts it, There are also things that my writing will only allude to, and it will present the ones and only mention the others and it will try to speak by hiding, to manifest by veiling and to show by being silent.27

The epopteia, the last step of Clement’s program, is silent (because it was not put into writing, maybe intentionally) and by being silent it is shown through and beyond what is written. Considering that Ludwig Wittgenstein never mentions the Stromateis, to what extent is the way we followed legitimate?28 Isn’t it (at worst) a methodological 19

Stromateis IV 1, 3, 2 (quoted above). Stromateis V 11, 71, 2-3. 21 Stromateis V 11, 71, 2. 22 Stromateis V 11, 71, 2. 23 ὁ ἐποπτικὸς [τρόπος] (Stromateis V 11, 71, 2). 24 οὐχ ὃ ἐστιν, ὃ δὲ μή ἐστι (Stromateis V 11, 71, 4). 25 μὴ εἶναι διδακτὸν πρὸς ἀνθρώπων μηδὲ ῥητὸν τὸν θεόν (Stromateis V 11, 71, 5). 26 Διὰ τοῦτο καὶ ὁ Μωυσῆς φησιν ἐμφάνισόν μοι σαυτόν (Stromateis V 11, 71, 5). 27 Ἔστι δὲ ἃ καὶ αἰνίξεταί μοι γραφή, καὶ τοῖς μὲν παραστήσεται, τὰ δὲ μόνον ἐρεῖ, πειράσεται δὲ καὶ λανθάνουσα εἰπεῖν καὶ ἐπικρυπτομένη ἐκφῆναι καὶ δεῖξαι σιωπῶσα (Stromateis I 1, 15, 1). 28 Concerning the opposition between saying and showing, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s perspective share also common points with Plato’s idea of the philosophical speech as providing a vision (see, 20

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trick or (at best) a case of serendipity?29 Wouldn’t have the Tractatus logicophilosophicus been only an expandable shortcut30 to come up to a conclusion which could have been discovered without involving a philosophical treatise from the beginning of the twentieth century (moreover containing ideas which Ludwig Wittgenstein himself nuanced afterwards31)? It would be the case if we had chosen to study the Stromateis as a text of the second or third century AD, in the context of that time. But we wished to adopt here another perspective. We considered two texts, without taking into account the temporal distance between them and the fact that one existed before the other, in a strictly literary approach, similar to Adrian Marino’s theory of literary comparatism32 and to Pierre Bayard’s provocative idea of anticipated plagiarism.33 Clement of Alexandria and Ludwig Wittgenstein should, to our opinion, be studied side by side because they share a common threefold way of using language – as saying, as showing language itself and as showing beyond language. Concerning the presence at the same time of saying and showing beyond words, we would say that Clement’s Stromateis have more common points with Wittgenstein’s Tractatus than with other texts of the second or third century such as, for example, Irenaeus’ Against the Heresies.34 Which leaves two questions open. The first one is institutional. Such a perspective, at the borders between patristics, literature, philosophy, semiology and maybe anthropology demands an institutional framework which doesn’t exist now. The second one is its usefulness. What could such an approach bring that a more patristics-centred approach could not? And are its results useful for the academic world and for society? among others, Anne Merker, La vision chez Platon et Aristote [Sankt Augustin, 2003]) and with Augustine’s conception of the Christian preaching as achieving the same result (see Augustine, De doctrina christiana, ed. and trans. Roger P.H. Green [Oxford, 1995]), but the links between these two authors and the philosopher are less of an issue, since Ludwig Wittgenstein undoubtedly read them. That he read also the Stromateis is much more uncertain. 29 Serendipity is a fruitful discovery thanks to some happy chance or coincidence (on that concept, see, among others, Robert K. Merton and Elinor Barber, The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity (Princeton, 2004). 30 An expandable shortcut which I could or should not mention in a communication about patristic studies (or only briefly in a footnote)? 31 See notably Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical investigations (= Philosophische Untersuchungen), translated by Gertrude E.M. Anscombe, Peter M.S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte, 4th ed. (Oxford, 2009). The Philosophische Untersuchungen were first published in 1953. Concerning the differences and common points between the Tractatus and the Philosophische Untersuchungen, see notably Jose Medina, The Unity of Wittgenstein’s Philosophy: Necessity, Intelligibility, and Normativity (New York, 2002). 32 Adrian Marino, Comparatisme et théorie de la littérature (Paris, 1988). 33 Pierre Bayard, Le Plagiat par anticipation, Paradoxe (Paris, 2009). 34 See Irenaeus of Lyon, Against the Heresies, trans. Dominic J. Unger and John J. Dillon (New York, 1992-2012).

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We would argue that, among others, such a radically comparatist perspective allows to escape the hermeneutical circle between the text and its immediate historical context (which would explain, for example, the Stromateis by taking into account the Christian literate context of Alexandria, but also by reconstructing such a context not otherwise than from texts such as the Stromateis). It would also help avoiding an hermeneutical circle between the text and texts of the same time and area in a strict ‘positivist comparatism’35 (which would explain, for example, the Stromateis as belonging to a literary genre of miscellanies, while defining such a literary genre through an analysis of works such as the Stromateis). A more general and more literary comparatism – a ‘(really) comparatist poetics’36 – could put into light original features of the Stromateis, which no perspective starting from predefined concepts like Christianism or literary genre, would be able to grasp. Moreover, a comparison and cross-analysis between works as different at first sight as the Stromateis and the Tractatus could allow to study topics which are beyond (or, to put it otherwise, behind) any academic field of research: to what extent, beyond second and third-century Christianism and beyond twentieth-century philosophy and logics, can humans from any century say or/ and show reality; to what extent are they or are they not able to put the world into words. We think that such perspectives are worthy of investigation and that, because of that, imagining institutional frameworks consistent with their study would not remain fruitless.

35

Adrian Marino, Comparatisme (1988), 13 (our translation).  Ibid. 141 (our translation).

36

Hermann Dörries (1895-1977) – Patristics during the ‘Kirchenkampf’ Aneke DORNBUSCH, Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, Germany

ABSTRACT Patristic research in Germany during the 20th century was deeply shaped by the political changes in this country, of which the biggest was of course the rise and fall of National Socialism (1933-1945). The example of the German church historian Hermann Dörries (1895-1977) shows how Patristic research lost its appeal during the Nazi era, when different historic topics became fashionable, because they could be more easily connected to the current political debates. Before 1933, Hermann Dörries was deeply focussed on his research on the homilies of Macarius or the Apophthegmata Patrum. His work on these two topics not only decreased between 1933 and the beginning of World War II, but the works he did publish also convey a completely different idea of the purpose and methods of historical research than the publications before and after. The reasons for these extreme changes lay partly in the fact that with the rise of National Socialism new (pseudo-)historical debates had emerged, for example the question of the compatibility of a Germanic and Christian heritage. But it was not public pressure that led Dörries to partially give up his research and turn to these new questions but rather his personal conviction that it was his duty to engage in these debates and refute false opinions. The example of Hermann Dörries shows how the research of a young, seemingly focussed scholar was driven into new and unexpected directions after 1933 and how his work – even after 1945 – was shaped by the political situation he found himself in.

I. Introduction In 1959, the German church historian Hermann Dörries presented a paper called ‘The place of confession in ancient monasticism’ at the Third International Conference on Patristic Studies in Oxford.1 This paper was only one piece of a lifetime’s work on Patristics of this church historian. Hermann Dörries was born in 1895 in Hanover, Germany.2 His theology studies were 1 Hermann Dörries, ‘The Place of Confession in Ancient Monasticism’, in Frank Leslie Cross (ed.), Papers presented to the Third International Conference on Patristic Studies, held at Christ Church, Oxford, 1959. Pt. 3. Liturgica, Monastica et Ascetica, Philosophica (Berlin, 1962), 284311. 2 The only available assessments of Dörries’ live and work are Torsten-Wilhelm Wiegmann, ‘Hermann Dörries, ein Göttinger Theologe als Lehrer und Forscher in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus’,

Studia Patristica CXXX, 539-548. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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interrupted by the First World War, in which he was severely wounded. In 1929, he became professor of church history at Göttingen University at the Protestant faculty of theology, where he remained until his retirement in 1963. He died in Göttingen in 1977. Today Dörries is mostly known for his work on the homilies of Macarius of Egypt, but he was also an expert on ancient monasticism, Constantine the Great, the medieval central European mission and Martin Luther’s theology. During Hermann Dörries’ lifetime, Germany underwent massive political transformations, from the Kaiserreich (1871-1918) to Democracy (1919-1933) to Dictatorship (1933-1945) and to the Federal Republic, we know today (since 1949).3 Until now, it has not been examined how Dörries’ work has been influenced and shaped by these changes. Such a contextual analysis could not only shed light on the life and work of Dörries, but also on Patristic research in Germany during these decades as a whole. Unfortunately, the history of Patristics in Germany during the 20th century is still waiting for an overall assessment.4 But already a quick look into this time period proves how much Patristic research was influenced by political and social transformations, which were accompanied by revolutions of values and social rules. Here, I will only try to give some first thoughts on the following two questions: Which changes, turns and disruptions can we see if we explore Hermann Dörries’ work on Patristics from the 1920s to the 1960s? And how can these changes be explained? To answer these questions, I am going to focus especially on Dörries’ two main Patristic interests: Macarius’ homilies and the Apophthegmata Patrum. II. Patristics during the ages Hermann Dörries focussed on Patristic topics from very early on in his career as a church historian.5 In connection with his PhD on John Scotus Eriugena, he Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für niedersächsische Kirchengeschichte 91 (1993), 121-49 and Peter Gemeinhardt, ‘“Bekennende Kirche” in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Hermann Dörries’ Erleben und Deuten des “Kirchenkampfes”’, in Inge Mager (ed.), Überliefern, erforschen, weitergeben. Festschrift für Hans Otte zum 65. Geburtstag (Hannover, 2015), 343-60. My current PhD project is the creation of a comprehensive biography of Dörries. 3 Not to forget the German Democratic Republic (1949-1990), of which Dörries was however never a citizen. 4 Wolfram Kinzig, ‘Evangelische Patristiker und Christliche Archäologen im „Dritten Reich“’, in Beate Näf (ed.), Antike und Altertumswissenschaft in der Zeit von Faschismus und Nationalsozialismus. Kolloquium Universität Zürich, 14.-17. Oktober 1998 (Mandelbachtal, 2001), 535629 offers three exemplary biographies. Thomas Kaufmann and Harry Oelke (eds), Evangelische Kirchenhistoriker im “Dritten Reich” (Gütersloh, 2002), explore several church historians but without a specific focus on Patristics. 5 As a professor for church history at a German Protestant faculty of theology Dörries had to teach about all areas of church history but it was common to focus one’s research on a specific era.

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became interested in mystic sources, such as the homilies of Macarius of Egypt. Shortly after his dissertation, he started to collect manuscripts of these ancient homilies to eventually present an overview on the tradition of these texts.6 Already in his early years as a professor, when he moved from Tübingen to Halle in 1928, he was considered an expert on Patristics and the Middle Ages, even though he had not published much except the papers necessary for his degrees. A report on him says: ‘Recently he has turned to even more studies on Patristics, also supported by his knowledge of the ancient languages […]’.7 In 1931, he was asked to write the article on Macarius of Egypt in the Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, even though he had not yet published anything on this subject.8 But, in the small world of preWorld War II Patristics, everyone in Germany knew that he was working on something big. Dörries used this article to describe in detail, which documents of Macarius’ homilies could be found in which archives. The name Symeon of Mesopotamia does not yet appear – later, Dörries should become famous for attributing the homilies to this author – but he follows Louis Villecourt, who had located the homilies in Mesopotamia.9 Before Dörries could finish his long-term-project on Macarius, he found the time to draft a short essay on the topic of ‘Mönchtum und Arbeit’ (‘monasticism and labour’).10 This was in the year 1931, when Dörries already taught in Göttingen. The article explores how the attitude towards labour changed from the first monks to the times of Pachomius. Dörries presents the Apophthegmata Patrum as the prime source for this question. He remarks: ‘Finally, in the Apophthegmata Patrum sources are preserved, in which monasticism presents itself with the highest faithfulness. They are a standard, by which the reliability of the reports (Hist. Lausiaca, hist. monachorum, Cassian) and biographies (Vita Antonii) can be tested. The Apophthegmata […] must form the base of every portrayal of early Egyptian monasticism’.11 For Dörries, apparently without any second thoughts, the Apophthegmata represented historical facts. He writes: ‘There is no lack of statement about labour in even the oldest documents. […] The answers express the character of the different individuals and groups’.12 6

Dörries describes this in the foreword to his Symeon von Mesopotamien. Die Überlieferung der messalianischen ‘Makarios’-Schriften, Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur 55,1 (Leipzig, 1941). 7 See the report on possible new professors by the faculty of theology, 29.08.1927, Hermann Dörries’ Kuratoriumsakte Universität Halle, today Archive of the University of Göttingen Kur 10165. All quotes from German sources and texts were translated by me. 8 Hermann Dörries, ‘Makarios 1)-3)’, in Georg Wissowa (ed.), Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft 14 (Stuttgart, 1930), 625-8. 9 Ibid. 626. 10 Hermann Dörries, ‘Mönchtum und Arbeit’, in Walter Elliger (ed.), Forschungen zur Kirchengeschichte und zur christlichen Kunst (Leipzig, 1931), 17-39. 11 Ibid. 18. 12 Ibid.

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The essay itself is mostly a compilation of quotes and paraphrases of Apophthegmata. Dörries does not explicitly address the question of a possible difference between narrative and historic truth, even though he acknowledges that sometimes the Apophthegmata might only represent a wish or an ideal.13 This assessment was much influenced by William Bousset’s book on the Apophthegmata from 1923, in which he established the Apophthegmata as the prime source for early monasticism.14 For many decades to come, this conviction should remain the mainstream opinion in Apophthegmata research, until it was challenged by researchers such as Samuel Rubenson.15 So, in the year 1931, Dörries was working diligently with his patristic sources. Be it the Macarius’ homilies or the Apophthegmata, he was interested in their origin and their tradition because he wanted to gain a picture of history as accurate as possible. He actually planned to write an extensive study of early monasticism ‘soon’, as a footnote of the paper on monasticism and labour reveals.16 But this prospect changed almost overnight. In January 1933, Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany and Dörries, who had been a supporter of the Nazi-Party at least since the year before, joined the party in March 1933.17 However, this sympathy should not last long. In just a few months, Hitler turned democratic Germany into a dictatorship. His radical reforms did not exclude the churches: State officials and many members of the church aspired the formation of a protestant state church, which would be a pillar of support for the new state – and could also be controlled more easily. But other voices opposed this idea and endorsed the ideal of an independent church. The rift between these two groups ran through the different territorial churches and local communities. Over the next years, two rivalling parties formed: the Deutsche Christen (German Christians), who supported a strong national church closely linked to Nazi ideology, and the Bekennende Kirche (Confessing Church), which supported an independent church, only grounded in the gospel. The Nazis tried to control the situation in their interest, which among other measures led to the detainment of several church officials. The struggle between the two church parties and the Nazi state apparatus as a third party is today known as the Kirchenkampf (church struggle).18 Dörries, appalled by Hitler’s attempt 13

Ibid. 19. Wilhelm Bousset, Apophthegmata: Studien zur Geschichte des ältesten Mönchtums (Tübingen, 1923). 15 Samuel Rubenson, The Letters of St. Antony: Origenist Theology, Monastic Tradition and the Making of a Saint, Bibliotheca historico-ecclesiastica Lundensis 24 (Lund, 1990), 152-7. 16 See H. Dörries, ‘Mönchtum’ (1931), 18 n. 1. 17 In 1932 Dörries published an appeal to vote for the NSDAP on the front page of the local newspaper Göttinger Tageblatt, see Hermann Dörries, ‘Ein Appell an die Unentschlossenen’, Göttinger Tageblatt (22.4.1932), 1. His party membership card from 1933 bears the number 2372330, see NSDAP-Zentralkartei BArch R 9361-VIII Kartei/6601656. 18 A short account of the Kirchenkampf can be found in Matthew D. Hockenos, A Church Divided. German Protestants Confront the Nazi Past (Bloomington, IN, 2004), 15-41. Older but 14

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to control the church, became an opponent of Nazi church politics and published several works, which were implicit critiques of a state church.19 Correlating with this change in political opinion were Dörries’ changing research interests. In 1934, an acquaintance of Dörries wrote to fellow theologian Hans Lietzmann (1875-1942) that the book on Macarius would be finished in the following year.20 In the end, the book came out in 1941 and Dörries admitted in the foreword, that the work on Macarius ‘had had to step back behind daily business for some years’.21 What was this daily business, which distracted Dörries from his earlier interests? From 1933 to 1945, Dörries published an immense amount of smaller works on two topics, on which he had not written before at all: Martin Luther and the mission of the Germanic people.22 These two topics were closely linked to the political events of the decade: Luther played a prominent role in the discussion of the question of confession during the Kirchenkampf. Luthers doctrine of the two kingdoms became the most important argument in this debate. The other struggle that the church historians faced was a heated discussion between scholars of religious studies, church historians and members of the so-called New-Germanic religions. With the rise of National Socialism, several groups and individuals wanted to create a new state religion, which was based on the Germanic religion, the religion of the German elders so to speak. These ideas were a challenge for the churches because they casted doubt on the compatibility of Germanity and Christianity.23 That church historians commented on current political developments, especially, if they concerned the relationship between the state and the church, had not been unheard of before. The defeat in World War I, which was experienced still unsurpassed in its attention to detail is the unfinished study by Klaus Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich (London, 1987 and 1988). 19 E.g. Hermann Dörries, ‘Äußere Ordnung und lutherisches Bekenntnis’, Junge Kirche 5 (1937), 582–6. In 1935, Dörries might even have become a member of the Bekennende Kirche. This is suggested by the testimonial of Dörries’ close friend Hans Freiherr von Campenhausen in his memoirs, see Hans v. Campenhausen, Die ‘Murren’ des Hans Freiherr von Campenhausen. ‘Erinnerungen, dicht wie ein Schneegestöber’, edited by Ruth Slenczka (Norderstedt, 2005), 157, but until today no official document confirming his membership has been found. 20 Compare Einar Molland to Hans Lietzmann, 12.5.1934, in Kurt Aland (ed.), Glanz und Niedergang der deutschen Universität. 50 Jahre deutsche Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Briefen an und von Hans Lietzmann (1892-1942) (Berlin, 1979), Nr. 866. 21 H. Dörries, ‘Symeon’ (1941), V. 22 The most prominent publications are: Hermann Dörries, Luther und Deutschland, Sammlung gemeinverständlicher Vorträge und Schriften aus dem Gebiet der Theologie und Religionsgeschichte 169 (Tübingen, 1934); Hermann Dörries, ‘Germanische Religion und Sachsenbekehrung’, ZGNKG 39 (1934), 53-83; Hermann Dörries, ‘Germanische Nationalkirchen’, Junge Kirche 6 (1938), 8-23, 56-69. 23 The only study of this debate with a specific focus on the role of church historians is Hanns Christoph Brennecke, ‘Der sog. germanische Arianismus als “arteigenes” Christentum. Die völkische Deutung der Christianisierung der Germanen im Nationalsozialismus’, in T. Kaufmann and H. Oelke (eds), Evangelische Kirchenhistoriker (2002), 310-29.

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as an overall cultural shock in Germany, had prompted several developments in the whole field of theology, the most influential being the emergence of the Dialectical Theology. In the area of church history, Karl Holl’s (1866-1926) new reading of Martin Luther, later called the Lutherrenaissance, tried to find a new relevance of Luther’s theology specifically in a demoralised Germany.24 In the year 1920, Emanuel Hirsch (1888-1972), a student of Holl and later colleague of Dörries, published – as a church historian – a book with the title ‘Germany’s destiny’.25 When the political developments suddenly accelerated in 1933, many church historians saw the need to comment on the situation. This can be exemplified by the many speeches on Martin Luther, which were held during the year, which marked the 450th birthday of the Reformer.26 After the temporary wave of excitement in 1933, the ways in which church historians commented on the political situation with their works differed. They all had to form opinions concerning two major questions: They had to decide whether to oppose or support the Nazi state. And as Protestant theologians they were asked to speak about the inner-church controversies and about the question how closely related church and state should be. The individual positions varied immensely. Concerning the attitude towards the Nazi state, Wolfram Kinzig shows examples from ‘active opposition’ (Hans von Soden, 1881-1945) and ‘distanced-critical back room diplomacy’ (Hans Lietzmann) to ‘active support’ (Hermann Wolfgang Beyer, 1898-1942).27 Whatever the individual position was, it must have been clear to all church historians, that their publications could be interpreted as statements concerning the political situation, whether or not they wanted it. Hermann Dörries chose the active way and began publishing works that he intended to be seen as comments on current affairs. It seems obvious that with a work on early monasticism or Macarius, this effect could not be achieved. Instead, Dörries turned to studies about Luther or the Christianisation of Germany. Not only Macarius vanished from Dörries’ publication list, but also early monasticism and the 24 A short introduction into the Lutherrenaissance is Heinrich Assel, ‘Die Lutherrenaissance in Deutschland von 1900 bis 1960. Herausforderung und Inspiration’, in Christine Helmer and Bo Kristian Holm (eds), Lutherrenaissance. Past and present (Göttingen, 2015), 23-53. 25 Emanuel Hirsch, Deutschlands Schicksal. Staat, Volk und Menschheit im Lichte einer ethischen Geschichtsansicht (Göttingen, 1920). 26 These speeches have mostly been examined in biographical works of the respective church historians, e.g. Karl Heussi’s (1877-1961) speech in Peter Gemeinhardt, ‘Karl Heussi, der Nationalsozialismus und das Jahr 1933’, ZThK 104 (2007), 287-319 or Hanns Rückert’s (1901-1974) speech in Berndt Hamm, ‘Hanns Rückert als Schüler Karl Holls: Das Paradigma einer theologischen Anfälligkeit für den Nationalsozialismus’, in T. Kaufmann and H. Oelke (eds), Evangelische Kirchenhistoriker (2002), 273-309. Dörries’ speech on Luther from 1933 is – for this time – quite a clear rejection of the state’s efforts to control and remodel the protestant churches in Germany, see H. Dörries, Luther und Deutschland (1934), especially 13. 27 W. Kinzig, ‘Evangelische Patristiker’ (2001), 599.

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Apophthegmata.28 The extensive volume on early monasticism, which he had promised in 1931 and in which the Apophthegmata Patrum were supposed to feature prominently, was never published. The situation changed only after the outbreak of World War II. In 1939, Dörries published a small pamphlet called ‘Das Bruderwort’.29 The text was simultaneously published in the journal Junge Kirche,30 which was known for its closeness to the Bekennende Kirche. This article addresses the high value, which the word of someone close to you – a brother – can have in dark times. As the title suggests, this is in fact not a historical treatise but a work of pastoral care. One can imagine that in late 1939, when the first news of fallen soldiers came from the front, the need for such pastoral essays was evident. It is nevertheless surprising, that a church historian saw himself in the role of a pastoral carer. The essay itself is a collection of sayings and anecdotes that are supposed to give a moral uplift to the readers. The first paragraph is dedicated to the Apophthegmata. But Dörries is no longer interested in exploring the history of ancient monasticism. Instead, he now presents the Apophthegmata as a means of pastoral care. He frequently uses phrases like ‘it does still speak to us, if Antony, […] reminds us: “Life and death depends on the neighbour”. Because, if we win the brother, we win God. But if we scandalise the brother, we sin against God’.31 Or, ‘we need no explanation if the same [i.e. Antony] praises someone else with the words: “A true human, who can heal and save”’.32 So, Dörries has not only left the Apophthegmata behind for several years, he now has a completely different approach to them. No longer are they mainly a reliable witness of early monasticism, but they are now primarily a signpost for the Christian today; comparable to other edifying texts such as the bible. ‘Perhaps’, Dörries writes, ‘this remote district [i.e. the desert fathers] is not as foreign to us at it may first seem’.33 This change becomes even more evident if we look at Dörries’ work after the fall of Nazi Germany in 1945. Overall, the impression is that the years between 1933 and 1945 never happened.34 Dörries, no longer obliged to fight against Germanic propaganda, turned again to the Apophthegmata and early monasticism and now could dig deeper. In 1947, he published an article on the Bible in earliest monasticism, which in its style is similar to the one on labour from 1932.35 In 1949, he published a book on the Vita Antonii in which he 28

If you discount book reviews (s.b.). Hermann Dörries, Das Bruderwort (Göttingen, 1940). 30 Hermann Dörries, ‘Das Bruderwort’, Junge Kirche 7/8 (1939/1940), 858-930.2-8. 31 Ibid. 920, Antony 9 in the Migne Edition. 32 Ibid. Antony 29. 33 Ibid. 919. 34 This is not to say that Dörries had fallen silent about his life during the Nazi era after 1945, which he did not, or that he abandoned his newfound interests. In fact, Luther and the medieval mission remained topics he published on but not as frequently and especially not as politically as before. 35 Hermann Dörries, ‘Die Bibel im ältesten Mönchtum’, ThLZ 72 (1947), 215-22. 29

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wrote a lengthy paragraph on Antony’s Apophthegmata, which mainly repeated the arguments for their reliability.36 And in 1953, Dörries was asked to write the encyclopaedia article on the Apophthegmata Patrum in the new edition of ‘Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart’, which shows that he was considered an expert on this subject.37 Not to forget the paper on confession in ancient monasticism that Dörries presented at the Patristic conference in 1959, also largely based on the Apophthegmata.38 As to Macarius, it seems no coincidence that Dörries finally managed to publish his first monograph on the homilies in 1941. With the beginning of the war, almost everyone lost interest in the debates which had concerned theologians during the later 1930s. The church and theology as topics were ultimately marginalized, the student population dropped to one-digit numbers and some faculties were even closed.39 Under these circumstances, Dörries finally managed to secure a sabbatical semester and finished his book. After the war he was able to make the homilies his major focus. He collaborated with other historians and theologians and published several more works on the homilies.40 It is obvious that these collaborations just by their scale would not have been possible during the Nazi era. To summarize, it is evident, that with the beginning of the Nazi dictatorship there was a huge shift in Dörries’ work interests, which affected the choice of topics he worked on, how he did it, and to which aims. It is also evident that there was another shift after the war, even though one could also argue that the situation already changed during the war. The question that follows is how did this change come about? III. What influences a church historian? As I have already alluded to above, Dörries did not turn away from Patristics but rather gave up this area in favour of new topics. Most definitely, it was not state censorship or political pressure, which influenced Dörries in his research turns.41 36

Hermann Dörries, Die Vita Antonii als Geschichtsquelle, Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Philologisch-Historische Klasse 14 (Göttingen, 1949). 37 Hermann Dörries, ‘Apophthegmata patrum’, in Ernst Kutsch, Kurt Galling and Hans von Campenhausen (eds), Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart: Handwörterbuch für Theologie und Religionswissenschaft 1, 3rd ed. (Tübingen, 1957), 496. 38 H. Dörries, ‘The Place of Confession’ (1962). 39 See Kurt Meier, Die Theologischen Fakultäten im Dritten Reich (Berlin, 1996), 437-65. 40 Among them Hermann Dörries, Erich Klostermann and Matthias Kroeger, Die 50 geistlichen Homilien des Makarios, Patristische Texte und Studien 4 (Berlin, 1964); Hermann Dörries, ‘Urteil und Verurteilung. Ein Beitrag zum Umgang der Alten Kirche mit Häretikern’, ZNW 55 (1964), 78-94. 41 Of course, censorship took place and also affected Dörries: His article on Germanic Arianism, H. Dörries, ‘Germanische Nationalkirchen’ (1938), could not be printed as a reprint because the

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Indeed he would probably have gained less attention and criticism from Nazi authorities, if he had kept on working only on Patristic topics. He himself decided to enter new and current debates, which the new form of government had initiated, and was ready to delay his former projects. This thesis is underlined by the fact, that Dörries did indeed publish some book reviews on books about the Apophthegmata and early monasticism.42 He was still interested in Patristics, but he decided to use most of his time to work on publications about other periods. The motivation to contribute to current debates rooted deeply in Dörries’ self-understanding as a theologian. Already in 1932, he described the role of the theologian as an admonisher and counsellor to the politicians.43 And in 1933 he wrote: ‘Out of this grows the task for the universities to interpret the past, so that the great dead, unseen but nevertheless visible to us, can become counsellors and admonishers for their faithful grandchildren’.44 It was Dörries’ deep conviction, that he as a theologian and church historian could have an influence on the political debate and that he should use this influence to the benefit of the church and the Christian community. 1933 obviously marked a huge change in politics and society in Germany, especially concerning the role of the churches. Motivated by the wish to influence or even prevent some of these changes, Dörries began to purposely use history as arguments in a current political debate. Then in 1939, the situation changed again: On the one hand, the outbreak of war increased the demand of pastoral literature and Dörries, having been a soldier himself in World War I, saw it as his duty to step in and write texts like the ‘Bruderword’.45 On the other hand, with the beginning of the war, the debates about the Kirchenkampf and the Germanisation of Christianity began to become irrelevant. This gave Dörries time and space to focus again on his Macarius project. However, the Nazi era had shaped Dörries’ work interests for good: After 1945, he managed to combine his interests in Luther and the medieval mission with his works on Constantine, Macarius and monasticism. As a church historian in 1930s Germany, Dörries found himself in an area of conflict, in which it was not possible to remain neutral. A future thorough censors deemed it too critical of the idea of a state church. Dörries tried to intervene at the responsible ministry but was unsuccessful. His private correspondence reveals that he experienced this incident as a nuisance but not a threat. The documents of this process are preserved in Dörries’ estate in Bundesarchiv N 1271/69. 42 Hermann Dörries, ‘Rezension zu Karl Heussi, Der Ursprung des Mönchtums’, ThLZ 62 (1937), 101-3; Hermann Dörries, ‘Rezension zu Herwegen, Vätersprüche’, ThLZ 64 (1939), 175-6. 43 See Hermann Dörries, ‘An die Kritiker des Nationalsozialismus: Ein Schutzwort statt einer Kritik’, in Leopold Klotz (ed.), Die Kirche und das Dritte Reich. Fragen und Forderungen deutscher Theologen 2 (Gotha, 1932), 38-46, 44. 44 H. Dörries, Luther und Deutschland (1934), 3. 45 See letter from Dörries to Hans v. Campenhausen, 25.11.1939, estate of the von Campenhausen family, located at the Herder-Institut Marburg, nr. 1407a.

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investigation of the history of Patristics during 20th century Germany could show how the church historians of these days positioned themselves between the aspiration for historic accuracy, the ideological demands of the day and the wish to serve the church and their communities. This last question is also a question that we could ask ourselves today. In my view, Dörries’ example reminds us of always taking the political and social background of the individual into account when we assess the work of our predecessors.

Engendering Difference: Resonance and Dissonance in Approaches to Gender within the Writings of the Two Gregorys and Luce Irigaray Margaret GUISE, Chichester, UK

ABSTRACT According to Heidegger, each age has one issue to think through, and one only. Sexual difference is probably the issue in our time which could be our ‘salvation’ if we thought it through.1 Recent readings of the Cappadocian Fathers have brought to the fore some of the ways in which approaches to sexual difference were integral to their doctrinal, anthropological and soteriological hypotheses. Such studies have tended to reveal that the Cappadocians’ understanding of gender was frequently more subtle and complex than might be anticipated, and these findings will be supported here by a comparison between the two Gregorys’ accounts of the lives of their sisters, and between the Nazianzen’s funeral oration for his sister, and that which was given for his brother. These outcomes will lead me to posit, in addition, that, despite the apparent improbability of a ‘conversation’ between the Cappadocians and the twentieth- and twenty-firstcentury post Marxist, post-Freudian feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray, there is, in fact, considerable material for a mutually illuminating and fruitful dialogue between them on this topic – and to suggest that the results could support Irigaray’s contention that a deeper consideration of sexual difference might be our ‘salvation’ if we thought it through.

Introduction In the late Roman empire theological discourse came to constitute a central arena in which manhood was not only tested and proven, but also, in the course of events, redefined… Masculinity … was conceived anew, in terms that heightened the claims of patriarchal authority while also cutting manhood loose from its traditional fleshly and familial moorings.2

With this citation, which opens her essay ‘Gregory’s Women: Creating a Philosopher’s Family’, Susanna Elm embarks upon arguments concerning the 1 Luce Irigaray, An Ethics of Sexual Difference, trans. Carolyn Burke and Gillian C. Gill (New York, 1993), 5. 2 Virginia Burrus, ‘“Begotten, Not Made”: Conceiving Manhood in Late Antiquity’, cited in Susanna Elm, ‘Gregory’s Women: Creating a Philosopher’s Family’, in Jostein Børtnes and Tomas Hägg (eds), Gregory of Nazianzus: Images and Reflections (Copenhagen, 2006), 171-91, 171.

Studia Patristica CXXX, 549-561. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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way in which masculinity was deconstructed, and femininity reframed, through the embrace of asceticism during the late antique period. Nevertheless, the extent to which the Nazianzen himself, and the Cappadocians as a group, reflected or rejected such a re-evaluation of masculinity and femininity remains an interesting, and perhaps open, question. Elm notes that, despite his prodigious output, the Nazianzen ‘figures relatively rarely’ in studies on women and asceticism and that his presence in scholarly literature on issues of gender is scant – a fact all the more perplexing when the pioneering nature of his work on female hagiography (the funeral oration on his sister, Gorgonia) is taken into account. In contrast, Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of his elder sister, Macrina, and its companion treatise, On the Soul and Resurrection, have provided a rich seam for those exploring his subtle and complex approaches to gender typology – and the resultant studies have contributed significantly to a revision of assumptions concerning the misogyny of the Church Fathers. The following article therefore proposes, first, to compare the interplay of ambiguity and transcendence in relation to genre and gender in the writings of the two Gregorys as articulated through their accounts of their sisters’ lives, and then follow this with a consideration of the distinctions, in so far as these may be gender driven, between the funeral oration written by the Nazianzen for Gorgonia and that for his brother, Caesarius. The outcomes of these sections will then be reviewed in rapprochement with the work of Luce Irigaray, taking account of her insistence upon the alterities which pertain between the two genders and that a ‘culture of difference’ must be nurtured and maintained in order that each might find fulfilment. It will be suggested that the discrete interpretations of each of the two Gregorys resonate with, but also challenge, and are challenged by, the Irigarayan perspectives in illuminating ways which have the potential for making a significant contribution, not only to a re-appraisal of the Cappadocians’ approaches, but also to twenty-first-century perspectives on the role of gender within human salvation. Of Genre and Gender (i): the two Gregorys on their sisters The accounts of the lives of their sisters by the two Gregorys invite comparison on several levels. Viewed from a purely historical angle, both the funeral oration on Gorgonia and the Life of Macrina are among the earliest extant accounts of the lives of Christian women. The fact that the works treat of their sisters by brothers bearing the name Gregory, both of whom attained first episcopal and then saintly status, is but the most apparent of a raft of biographical resonances between the two women. Both were named after illustrious grandmothers; both hailed from wealthy, distinguished and devoutly Christian Cappadocian families; both were revered as models of faithfulness to their respective vocations – Gorgonia as wife and matron (and latterly ascetic), Macrina as

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consecrated virgin; both received answers to prayer in the form of miraculous healings; and finally both made ‘holy deaths’, passing, according to their brothers’ accounts, peacefully and prayerfully to that consummation for which their lives had been but a preparation. The last point is perhaps the most germane for, like the Gospels themselves, and subsequent early Christian martyrologies, both encomium and vita are ‘written from the end’ and stand firmly within what Andreas Spira has termed the ‘inseparable nexus of biography and ethics; the historical example seen as an incentive to virtue’.3 These are intended, in other words, to be ‘speaking lives’, and both Gregorys insist that their accounts will reflect, stylistically, the askesis which their sisters appropriated as a way of spiritual liberation and transcendence. The Nyssen, for instance, claims to tell Macrina’s story in a narrative which is ‘lacking in artifice’ and ‘simple’; and the Nazianzen begins his encomium with the expressed intention of ‘rejecting all daintiness and elegance of style’,4 the better to mirror Gorgonia’s ascetical endeavours – although he subsequently abandons this restraint by the middle of his panegyric as he portrays his sister’s progress from virtuous wife and mother to contemplative martyr and saint. With regard to their physical attributes, a contrast in the presentations is observable, since the Nyssen emphasizes from the outset Macrina’s attractiveness: The girl’s beauty could not be concealed in spite of efforts to hide it. Nor in all the countryside, as it seems, was there anything so marvellous as her beauty in comparison with that of others. So fair was she that even painters’ hands could not do justice to her comeliness… In consequence a great swarm of suitors seeking her in marriage crowded round her parents.5

The Nazianzen, on the other hand, provides only a privative account of Gorgonia’s outward aspect: She was never adorned with gold wrought into artistic forms of surpassing beauty, nor flaxen tresses, fully or partially displayed, nor spiral curls, nor dishonouring designs of men … nor costly folds of flowing and transparent robes.6

It is emphasized that Gorgonia’s aspirations are, from her youth, directed not towards outward show but towards the inner, moral and spiritual sphere:

3 Andreas Spira (ed.), The Biographical Works of Gregory of Nyssa: Proceedings of the Fifth International Colloquium on Gregory of Nyssa (Mainz, 6-10 September 1982), Patristic Monograph Series (Cambridge, 1984), 10. 4 Gregory of Nazianzus, Funeral Oration on His Sister Gorgonia, NPNF, vol. 7, 239. PG 35, 792C. 5 Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of St Macrina, trans. William Kemp and Lowther Clarke (Washington, 1916), 23. PG 46, 964A. 6 Gregory of Nazianzus, Funeral Oration on His Sister Gorgonia, NPNF, vol. 7, 241. PG 35, 800B-C.

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But though she was aware of the many and various external ornaments of women, yet none of them was more precious to her than her own character, and the brilliancy stored up within.7

Ultimately, as Gorgonia makes the transition from the cataphatic model of the ‘virtuous wife’ to the apophasis of extreme askesis, the contrast between this inner beauty and her outward appearance becomes more marked: O untended body and squalid garments, whose only flower is virtue! O soul, clinging to the body when reduced almost to an immaterial state through lack of food… O nature of woman overcoming that of man in the common struggle for salvation and demonstrating that the distinction between male and female is one of body, not of soul.8

In Macrina’s case, however, the inner beauty arising from her union with Christ, the heavenly Bridegroom, continues to shine forth, even as her final illness takes hold and she hastens towards the Beloved with ‘greater eagerness’: She (became) resplendent, even in the dark robe, divine power having added, as I think, this final grace to the body so that … rays actually seemed to shine forth from her beauty.9

In this concluding section of the Life, Macrina appears to return full circle, in a spiritual sense, to the ‘female’ bridal role which she had eschewed, in her youth, following the death of her fiancé. In between, the Nyssen presents his sister in an ambiguous way, in which both ‘male’ and ‘female’ images are used to demonstrate the range and depth of her character. Although heir, as was the Nazianzen, to the concept of the Hellenistic ‘male woman’ who grows towards perfection by transcending her femininity – that is, by adopting ‘manly’ virtues such as rationality in preference to ‘womanly’ characteristics regarded as synonymous with evil, imperfection and sensuality – the Nyssen does not appropriate this model in an unmodified way. A gradual transition is observable, it is true, from the conservatively ‘female’ context of Macrina’s early years, in which her education is described as consisting mostly of meditation upon, and recitation of, Scripture, and her occupations appear to be confined to household duties and attaining a ‘considerable proficiency in wool-work’, towards the more ‘male’ attributes which she begins to develop once she resolves to remain celibate and espouse the ‘philosophic’, or contemplative, life. At this later stage she is described as having become an ‘invincible athlete, in no wise broken by the assault of troubles’ as she copes with successive familial bereavements. Yet, even here, the Nyssen portrays Macrina as exhibiting a balance between ‘male’ and ‘female’ roles – for instance, in relation to their youngest brother, Peter, she is described as being both ‘father, teacher, tutor, mother of all good 7

Ibid. 241. PG 35, 800D-801A. Ibid. 242. PG 35, 805A-B. 9 Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of St Macrina, trans. William Kemp and Lowther Clarke (1916), 54. PG 46, 992D. 8

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advice’, and, as we have seen, the account closes with Macrina returning to the quintessentially feminine trope as bride of Christ – in which, paradoxically, both male and female distinctions are ultimately transcended. Like Macrina, Gorgonia is portrayed, as she, too hastens, in her final months and days towards ‘Him Who is … her love’ as transcending physical categories, including male : female distinctions, by flinging away the ‘fetters’ of mortality. Whereas it is not, perhaps, surprising that the askesis of consecrated virginity had, for Macrina, offered a path to union with the divine Beloved, the Nazianzen appears to suggest, counter-culturally, that, in Gorgonia’s case, earthly marriage, too, had proved a preparation for, rather than a bar to, this spiritual marriage. Little mention is made of Gorgonia’s spouse (the Nazianzen reports briefly ‘I do not know what more to say of him than that he was her husband’) but it is made clear that her petition that he might be ‘perfected’ was answered, leaving her free to be ‘consecrated to God in her body, and not depart half-perfected’.10 Thus Gorgonia’s apparent rejection, or surpassing, of the limitations of uxorial convention through the privations of askesis, paradoxically opens up the path of fulfilment both for herself and for her husband – a further example, it might be suggested, of the way in which ambiguity and nuance with regard to sexual difference are woven so tantalisingly together in these texts. Of Genre and Gender (ii): Gregory of Nazianzus on Gorgonia and Caesarius If ambiguity is an ineluctable element, then, in any interpretation of the two Gregorys’ approaches to sexual difference, as evinced within the lives of their two sisters, it is all the more interesting to compare the Nazianzen’s epiptaphios logos for Gorgonia with that which was composed but a year or two earlier for their younger brother, Caesarius. It is scarcely unexpected, given the patriarchal social context, that Caesarius’ life was the more public and outward-facing of the two, whereas Gorgonia’s influence tended to be exercised within the more inward-facing arena of marriage and family life. In this respect, both siblings conformed to the gender-specific roles which would have pertained within a ruling Christian family of their time. Thus, although there is praise for Gorgonia’s intellect, wisdom and knowledge of the things of God, there is no specific mention of her education, whereas it is made clear that Caesarius was prepared for adult life through a wide-ranging formation, for which he clearly demonstrated considerable aptitude: Bred and reared under such influences (ie those which pertained within the parental home) we were fully trained in the education afforded here (ie at Nazianzus), in which 10 Gregory of Nazianzus, Funeral Oration on His Sister Gorgonia, NPNF, vol. 7, 244. PG 35, 813A.

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none could say how far he excelled most of us by the quickness and extent of his abilities… The time came when it was decided that we should leave home … he went to Alexandria… What branch of learning did he not master, or rather in what branch of study did he not surpass those who had made it their sole study?11

Caesarius’ subsequent success in political life and his popularity at court, even with the Emperor Julian the Apostate (who barred all Christians from positions of influence, but sought to retain Caesarius with whom he had studied at Athens) were, however, sources of some disappointment to Gregory. The Nazianzen’s failure to recruit his intellectually brilliant younger sibling to the philosophic life is explicitly referred to in the funeral oration, although it is tempered by an insistence that his brother was unwavering in his Christian commitment, despite the opulence of his court surroundings: But, most important, neither by his fame, nor by the luxury which surrounded him, was his nobility of soul corrupted; for amidst his many claims to honour, he himself cared most for being, and being known to be, a Christian, and compared with this, all other things were to him but trifling toys.12

Caesarius is thus portrayed by Gregory in this context as the antetype of the ‘saint in the city’, the one who must witness to his or her faith amidst a myriad of preoccupations and activities. In reality, as demonstrated in his correspondence with his brother, Caesarius’ desire to remain within what Gregory regarded as the potentially corrupting environment of court life (particularly under the Emperor Julian) caused the Nazianzen considerable anxiety, as evinced by his letter to Caesarius, penned during a time when the Apostate was using the full force of his imperial power to discourage Christianity and restore paganism: I have had enough to blush for in you; that I was grieved, it is hardly necessary to say to him who of all men knows me best… Now a Bishop’s son takes service in the army; now he covets exterior power and fame; now he is a slave of money. Our venerable Father is very much distressed by all that he hears… But if our dear Mother were to hear about you (so far we have kept her in the dark by various devices), I think she would be altogether inconsolable.13

Shortly after receipt of this letter, the Emperor attempted, as Gregory had feared, to persuade Caesarius to renege on his faith. Caesarius, however, proved more ‘manly’ than Gregory had anticipated – and his determined refutation of pagan ‘sophistries’ and bold declaration of Christian adherence in the Emperor’s presence are described in highly coloured terms within the oration.14 Caesarius thereafter decided, nevertheless, upon a discreet ‘retirement’ to Nazianzus, 11 12 13 14

Gregory of Nazianzus, Panegyric, NPNF, vol. 7, 231. PG 35, 761A. Ibid. 233. PG 35, 767B. Gregory of Nazianzus, Epistle 7, NPNF, vol. 7, 457. PG 37, 32C-33B. Gregory of Nazianzus, Panegyric, NPNF, vol. 7, 233-4. PG 35, 772A.

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although this respite from public duty proved short-lived, for, under the Emperor Valens, he was appointed Quaestor of Bithynia. In 368 the city of Nicaea in Bithynia was almost completed destroyed by an earthquake; Caesarius’ miraculous escape, despite the loss of his house, provided the occasion for further pleas from Gregory (and, indeed, from their mutual friend, Basil) to forgo his secular occupations and to concentrate upon spiritual matters. Caesarius was this time minded to accept the advice and had only just been baptized when he died suddenly, of the plague which followed in the aftermath of the earthquake, in 369, aged only forty. When these two orations are compared, it is interesting to observe that Gregory makes it clear that it was Gorgonia, whatever the restrictions placed upon her by her gender-specific roles of daughter, wife and mother, who proved most able to transcend these through the adoption of an askesis which was so severe that her ‘nature of woman’ was able to overcome that of man ‘in the common struggle for salvation’. Paradoxically, it was she, rather than Caesarius, who proved the more capable of taking on the ‘manly’ self-discipline required in order to demonstrate that the distinction between male and female is ‘one of body and not of soul’. Her ‘absence’ from public life was thus used as an opportunity for a greater presence to the life of the Spirit. By contrast, although Gregory attempts to show that Caesarius’ highly active and engaged ‘presence’ at court and in political life was sustained by a firm inward Christian conviction, this is belied by Gregory’s private expressions of doubt concerning his brother’s ability to resist the religious machinations of the Emperor Julian, as well as by his repeated pleas concerning his ‘absence’, not only from home but also from the philosophic life which Gregory himself held dear. When put to the test in the matter of the Emperor Julian, Caesarius in fact proved himself more capable than Gregory had imagined of exercising the ‘manly’ virtues of courage and integrity but, again, paradoxically, it was his very attraction to, and ability for, a ‘male’ outward-facing public life which repeatedly prevented him from making progress in the ascetical life, of which his elder sister had become such a noted practitioner. His very ‘maleness’, it could be said, thus inhibited the development of ‘manliness’ understood as the askesis which leads ultimately to that transcendence in which there is ‘neither male nor female’. This comparison of the epitaphioi logoi of Gorgonia and Caesarius suggests that Gregory had certain views in relation to gender which both exemplified, but also transcended, those understandings of ‘maleness’ and ‘femaleness’ which pertained within the socio-historical context of fourth-century Cappadocia. He does not overtly challenge gender-specific social roles but makes it clear that gender alone neither need, nor should, either define or confine the Christian man or woman whose calling is ultimately not with ‘the flesh and temporal things’ but with ‘those things which are spiritual and eternal’. It would be a mistake, however, to assume, on this basis, that the Nazianzen adopts an unmediated Platonist view which devalues the body in relation to the soul; on

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the contrary, his insistence (which he shares with his Cappadocian namesake) upon the gradual divinisation of the body by the soul assumes the necessity of the former as a vehicle for theotic transformation. In the following passage it is clear that, for the Nazianzen, the transcendence of male and female in the resurrection of the flesh enables both men and women to ‘become one in Christ’ and to ‘bear … only the form of (the ungendered) God’: This is the great mystery, planned for us by God, who for us was made human and became poor, to resurrect the flesh and recover his image and refashion the human, that we might all become one in Christ, who became perfectly in all of all that he himself is, that we might no longer be male and female, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free (which are identifying marks of the flesh) but might bear in ourselves only the form of God, by whom and for whom we came to be, and be shaped and imprinted by him to such as extent that we are recognized by him alone.15

‘This Sex Which is Not One’: a ‘Conversation’ with Luce Irigaray? For each of the two Gregorys, then, albeit in ways that are discretely nuanced, gender differentiation is but one aspect of contingency, ultimately to be transcended. For Luce Irigaray, twentieth- and twenty-first-century feminist philosopher, and post-Marxist, post-Freudian psychoanalyst, such transcendence should be sought first and foremost through acceptance of that differentiation. In I Love to You: Sketch of a Possible Felicity in History she insists that the concept of human nature as ‘one’ is fundamentally flawed: The universal has been thought of as one… But this one does not exist… Before the question of the need to surpass nature arises, it has to be made apparent that it is two … No one nature can claim to correspond to the whole of the natural.16

Irigaray goes further, however, than a plea for the recognition of the distinctive, albeit equal, nature of ‘the feminine’ as a complement to the masculine imaginary. She wishes to move beyond the point at which femininity is viewed as merely the ‘shadow side’ of masculinity, and the ‘peaceful revolution’ which she envisages taking place within the context of social and political structures and ethical practice differentiates itself from certain ‘women’s liberation’ movements in that it eschews notions of ‘woman power’ – Irigaray is clear that such a reversal would issue simply in a ‘return to the same’ and would forfeit the very ‘otherness’ which she is seeking. Her concern is that, since femininity has not, to date, been defined other than as the atrophy, or lack, of 15 PG 35, 785C, cited in Verna Harrison, ‘Male and Female in Cappadocian Theology’, Journal of Theological Studies 41 (1990), 441-71, 459. 16 Luce Irigaray, I Love to You: Sketch of a Possible Felicity in History, trans. Alison Martin (London, New York, 1996), 35.

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the masculine, the ‘two-ness’ of gender differentiation has not been fully recognized or acknowledged: For one sex and its lack, its atrophy, its negative, still does not add up to two.17

What is required is not that women seek ‘salvation’ through assimilating themselves further to the male imaginary (which would constitute, under another aspect, a perpetuation of the virtuous ‘male woman’ of late antiquity), but that they forge a distinctive female imaginary, including the development of a ‘parler femme’ – a language which would more truly reflect the ‘two-ness’ of gender differentiation. Unexpectedly, however, despite her insistence upon the need for this ‘parler femme’, which would release women from their bondage to ‘muteness and mimicry’, Irigaray suggests that the process can best be fostered through a form of asksesis a contemplative regard for, and silence before, the other which acknowledges and respects difference. Some might aver that this appears to represent a form, precisely, of the ‘return to the same’ which Irigaray has been anxious to avoid, reducing women, yet again, to submission and inarticulacy. It is clear, however, that Irigaray’s intention in this respect is ‘wholly other’ the listening which is advocated is for both sexes and is a ‘holy listening’ which is preparatory to, and indicative of, a language and spirituality which take full account of otherness (however that otherness is manifested). Her plea in the twelfth chapter of I Love to You (‘A breath that touches in words’) for allowing ‘some silent time’ and giving the dialogue partner, in the truest sense, ‘breathing space’ is argued with a rhetorical cogency which is reminiscent, in certain respects of the two Gregorys’ own literary techniques: Breathing and speaking use breath in almost inverse proportion, at least in our tradition; at least for most of us. Usually our language, our dialogues and exchanges stifle breath more than they cultivate it… Yet the (holy) spirit supposedly comes of breath. It is therefore important to reflect upon the fact that a language, spirituality or religion that is founded on speech yet pays no heed to the silence and breath making it possible, might well lead to a lack of respect for life, for one’s own life, for the other’s life, for others’ lives.18

Irigaray argues that the intention here is, in part, to begin to overcome inherent differences in the way in which men and women use language. She notes that problems of communication arise between women and men, who use speech for different purposes and are thus ‘divided by a common language’: Regarding exchange, we have seen that women seek communication and especially dialogue. This question … does not meet with reciprocity. For men’s teleology implies

17 Luce Irigaray, ‘Questions’, in Janet A. Kourany, James P. Sterba and Rosemarie Tong (eds), Feminist Philosophies: Problems, Theories, and Applications (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1992), 372-7, 374. 18 L. Irigaray, I Love to You (1996), 122.

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rather an abandonment of immediate communication – of intersubjectivity and dialogue – in order to set off in quest of an oeuvre (in which they usually alienate themselves) and, among other things, a spiritual journey compelled by a transcendence appropriate to their ego.19

Irigaray points to Hegel’s development of the dialectic as a model for this process, in which the individual is estranged from sensible immediacy ‘for the sake of a spiritual becoming in which reciprocal communication is never considered a goal of spirituality’,20 and suggests that the Hegelian concept of ‘recognition’ could provide a way through what she perceives as an impasse: I recognize you means that I cannot know you in thought or in flesh. The power of a negative prevails between us. I recognize you goes hand in hand with: you are irreducible to me, just as I am to you… You are transcendent to me, inaccessible in a way, not only as an ontic being, but also as an ontological being (which entails, in my view, fidelity to life, rather than submission to death).21

In a further move which might be regarded as even more surprising, Irigaray insists that this process of recognition is to be fostered through the spiritual dimensions of virginity and maternity: Virginity must be rediscovered by all women as their own bodily and spiritual possession, which can give them back an individual and collective identity status… Women must develop a double identity: virgins and mothers. There’s no doubt we are born virgins. But we also have to become virgins, to relieve our bodies and souls of cultural fetters. For me, becoming a virgin is synonymous with a woman’s conquest of the spiritual… A lifetime isn’t too long to make this happen.22

These, and similar, statements have a peculiarly familiar ring when compared to many of those made on the subject of virginity and askesis by the two Gregorys, and the question which inevitably arises is whether Irigaray is here deliberately espousing these ‘late antique’ virtues in a way which would have been understood by the Cappadocians, or attempting to reframe them. Certainly, Irigaray tends to be eclectic in her use of sources (the deconstruction of classic texts within Speculum of the Other Woman draws variously upon Plato, Hegel and Freud) and she is willing to find support, albeit often implicitly, for her arguments from within the Christian soteriological tradition. Occasionally, for example, she refers directly to the process of deification: When I look upon you in the secret of my ‘soul’ I seek (again) the lost specularization, and try to bring my ‘nature’ back to its mirroring wholeness. And if ‘God’ had

19

Ibid. 100. Ibid. 21 Ibid. 103. 22 L. Irigaray, Je, Tu, Nous: Toward a Culture of Difference, trans. Alison Martin (London, New York, 1993), 116-7. 20

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already appeared to me with face unveiled, so my body shines with a light of glory that radiates it.23

The images of the soul as a mirror, and the human reflection of, and participation in, the divine light during the moment of the unveiling of God’s face, are familiar topoi from the spiritual treatises of the Cappadocians and their predecessors, but Irigaray, by the use of qualifying marks for ‘soul’ and ‘God’, makes it clear that she does not wish her readers to assume that she is reverting to the body: soul dualisms, or to the metaphysical assumptions, of traditional Catholic theology. Nevertheless, the process of transformation is effected, as in the two Gregorys’ writings, through human desire for the divine and mutatis mutandis of the divine desire for the human soul: Thus ‘God’ has created the soul to flare and flame in her desire. And if beyond this consummation He / she endures, it is because He / she is nothing but adoration of that warmth, passion for the heart that none can appropriate, light suited to that lone mirror. But such conceptions of the mind do not lead to ‘God’s’ finest excesses. For ‘God’ goes beyond all representation.24

Here, in a passage which echoes so closely many from the work of the two Gregorys, Irigaray, whilst using traditional nomenclature (‘He’ for the divine; ‘she’ for the soul), nevertheless points towards the transcendence of such nomenclature, and to an apophasis which both Cappadocians would surely have endorsed. Could it be posited, however, that Irigaray has merely succumbed, in this and similar texts, to a ‘return to the same’? In embracing askesis as a means for the soul to encounter the divine, is she perpetuating the idea that women must adopt ‘male’ virtues in order to make progress in the spiritual life? I would contend that this is not the case, and that Irigaray is proposing, instead, a new hermeneutic of virtue and one which, paradoxically, takes account of the very ‘weakness’ and ‘incompleteness’ which were viewed, in the late antique period, as barriers to progress. I shall consider the implications of this view in the concluding section. Conclusion And perhaps he has chosen her body to inscribe His will, even if she is less able to read the inscription, poorer in language … burdened with matter(s) that history has laid on her, shackled in / by speculative plans that paralyze her desire.25 23

L. Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. G.C. Gill (Ithaca, 1985, sixth printing 1994),

197. 24 25

Ibid. 197. Ibid. 198.

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In this passage, from Speculum of the Other Woman, Irigaray’s envisioning of a discrete spiritual vocation for women, which views the very ‘frailties’ of their gender as sources of strength, and which attract the divine vocation because of, not despite, those frailties offers, it could be posited, an illuminating and challenging complement to the two Gregorys’ portraits of their strong-willed and ‘invincible’ sisters. Here it is Irigaray, rather than the Cappadocians, who, in pointing to the ‘strength in weakness’ of a specifically female spirituality, appears to be drawing upon, or unconsciously echoing, biblical perspectives concerning the divine favour which rests, not on those who are most confident of their capabilities and virtues, but rather on the marginalized and poor in spirit.26 Irigiray’s critique of those within the feminist movement who recommend a pursuit by women of ‘male’ goals has already been noted and, based upon this and similar passages, it could be suggested that her understanding of a distinctive female spirituality is almost traditionally Marian. However, a caveat needs to be sounded in this respect, since elsewhere she expresses regret that women’s role in engendering the divine is, within Christian and other religious traditions, circumscribed: Women take part in the divine becoming, in the engendering of ‘God’. But that mediation is often forgotten. Women serve the apparition of the god but do not appear themselves as divine. As mothers of God, as servants of the Lord, yes. As consorts of the god, as incarnations of the divinity, no.27

The resonances between Irigaray’s philosophy and traditional Christian perspectives should therefore not be exaggerated, but her vision of spiritual (allied to ethical, political and psychological) progress for women makes a contribution to feminism which is distinctive in its allusiveness. It also exhibits, I would suggest, resonances and dissonances with the approaches to gender taken by the two Gregorys which are both surprising and illuminating. For example, Irigiaray’s espousal of a spirituality which eschews ‘male’ ideas of virtue challenges the Gregorys’ approach in certain respects; it is, perhaps, equally true, however, that the two Gregorys’ insistence upon the ultimate transcendence of gender, for both males and females, at the eschaton, offers a corrective to any view which upholds gender categories as final or irreducible. It could be argued that the battles which Irigaray joined on behalf of women in relation to social, political and linguistic agendas have largely been won, at least in the ‘developed’ world. And gender itself is now understood, from a biological or medical perspective, as a more complex issue than either ‘twoness’ or ‘one-ness’ might indicate. There are, however, even deeper issues at stake, and I would suggest that these are indicated in nuce in this rapprochement between Irigaray and the two Gregorys. For despite the patriarchalism 26 27

Luke 2:46-55; Luke 4:16-9 et passim. L. Irigaray, An Ethics of Sexual Difference (1993), 106.

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(however nuanced or subverted) inherent within the Gregorian texts, and despite Irigaray’s wariness in relation to traditional Catholic theology and metaphysical discourse (both of which she considers inextricably linked to the masculine imaginary), all three writers give expression to an apophatic understanding in respect of gender and alterity, which has profound implications for a renewed appreciation of the mystery of human personhood. To return full circle to Irigaray’s contention that a deeper consideration of sexual difference might be our ‘salvation if we thought it through’, I would suggest that this is true, but only partially so, and perhaps not entirely in the way in which Irigaray intended. To take forward what Sarah Coakley has described as ‘a more equitable representation of male and female creatureliness before God’28 there needs to be a deeper appropriation not only of the voices of Irigaray (and other feminists) concerning the ‘two-ness’, or even multiplicity, of gender, but also of those of the two Gregorys concerning the transcendence of gender viewed sub specie aeternitatis.

28

353.

Sarah Coakley, ‘Creaturehood before God: Male and Female’, Theology 93 (1990), 343-54,

Systematic and Historical Reading of the Fathers: The Case of Thomas F. Torrance Andrej JEFTIĆ, University of Belgrade, Faculty of Orthodox Theology, Belgrade, Serbia

ABSTRACT It has been noted that Thomas F. Torrance read and interpreted the Holy Fathers not as a patristic scholar, but as a systematic theologian. Furthermore, the point is made that we ought not to blame him for making occasional interpretations of the patristic texts that cannot be supported by strict textual evidence because his goal was never to engage in the historical endeavor but the systematic one. I argue that ‘systematic reading’ cannot be an excuse for arbitrary interpretations of the patristic texts and that every systematic reading must be firmly grounded in the historical explorations of the texts. I examine three cases in which Torrance’s reading of the patristic texts cannot be supported by patristic scholarship: development of what he calls ‘kataphysic mode of inquiry’ by Clement of Alexandria and Athanasius of Alexandria, and of the relational concept of space in Athanasius of Alexandria. I conclude by suggesting what might constitute the difference between the two approaches to patristic theology and the way the relation between the two might be developed.

Introduction Thomas F. Torrance is well known for being one of the foremost promoters of the dialogue between science and theology. He had written a substantial amount of work in this field. What makes him particularly interesting for patristic scholars is the fact that he understood the theology of the Church Fathers to be the basis for this dialogue. Although Torrance engages with the patristic theology in many ways and in many different contexts (e.g. trinitarian theology, eschatology, ecclesiology, etc.) in what follows I will focus on his reading of the Fathers in the context of theology and science dialogue. What makes his deployment of the patristic legacy in this context even more interesting is that he makes claims about the theology of certain Fathers and the meanings of specific texts which are historical in double sense. First, they entail a claim for the adequate representation of the meaning of the original texts. Second, he claims that these texts and figures made a huge impact in the history of the western mind and played major role in the rise of modern science. Therefore, the relationship between what is here called ‘systematic’ and ‘historical’ reading

Studia Patristica CXXX, 563-574. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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can be discerned in a more convenient manner by focusing on these claims which are historical in double sense. T.F. Torrance’ reading of the Fathers: status quaestionis Accounts of Torrance’s reading of the patristic texts can be arranged along a spectrum of different opinions. On one side of the spectrum are those who believe that, generally speaking, he distorts the meaning of the texts. Richard Muller claims that he is not allowing the Fathers to speak for themselves, as he claims to be doing, but rather makes them speak his mind. He accused Torrance of reading the history of patristic theology selectively through the ‘Barthian lens’ to the effect that opinions have been read into the texts which do not support them.1 On the completely other side of the spectrum are those who believe that although occasional inadequate interpretations are present, Torrance in general does not do injustice to the theology of the Church Fathers. So, Paul Molnar claims that in Torrance’s work patristic texts are in general terms well examined and adequately represented. What Torrance actually does, Molnar claims, is that he allows these distinct patristic voices to speak in the modern context.2 Between these extremes are scholars who admit that Torrance’s reading does not necessarily convey the original meaning of the texts, but nevertheless don’t think it is a bad thing. Matthew Baker claims that Torrance is doing justice to the ‘objective faith’ of the Fathers and that ‘narrow historicism’ should be overcome after all.3 Robert Louis Wilken remarked that Torrance reads the Fathers in a manner that they have always been read, ‘not as curiosities of a forgotten past, but as living voices of faith and teaching’.4 Most recently, Jason Radcliffe has argued that T.F. Torrance is neither a patristic scholar nor a historian, but rather a systematic theologian who attempted in a creative manner to produce the reformed and evangelical version of the patristic tradition which includes significant changes in both standard readings of the Fathers as well as his own evangelical tradition.5 1 Richard Muller, ‘The Barth Legacy: New Athanasius or Origen Redivivus? A Response to TF Torrance’, The Thomist 54 (1990), 673-704. 2 Paul D. Molnar, T.F. Torrance: Theologian of the Trinity (Farnham, Burlington, 2009), 326, 339. 3 Matthew Baker, ‘The Place of St. Irenaeus of Lyons in Historical and Dogmatic Theology According to Thomas F. Torrance’, Participatio: Journal of T.F. Torrance Theological Fellowship 2 (2010), 5-43. 4 Robert Louis Wilken, ‘Review of Divine Meaning: Studies in Patristic Hermeneutics by T.F. Torrance’, Theological Studies 57 (1996), 743-4. 5 Jason Radcliff, ‘T.F. Torrance in the Light of Stephen Holme’s critique of contemporary Trinitarian Thought’, Evangelical Quarterly 86 (2014), 21-38. He offers different names for Torrance’s use of patristic texts, calling it: ‘(re)construction’, ‘synthetic combination’, ‘imaginative

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A distinction is being made between ‘historical’ and ‘systematic’ reading of the patristic texts thus providing a justification for Torrance’s way of reading the patristic texts. Frances Young was the first one, to my knowledge, who pointed to this difference with regards to the work of the Scottish theologian and argued that he reads patristic texts in a systematic rather than in a historical manner.6 However, she also believes that the pure historical approach which neglects the hermeneutical discussions regarding the possibility of establishing an original meaning of the text is not satisfactory either. Therefore, she argued that we need to discover the third way, between what might be called two extremes. I will argue that although it is more accurate to characterize Torrance’s hermeneutical approach to patristic texts as systematic rather than historical, nevertheless, this does not justify his obvious misinterpretations of patristic authors and texts. In addition to that, I will argue that systematic reading must be also firmly grounded in the historical scholarship. I will offer three examples which demonstrate that Torrance’s interpretation of certain patristic authors and texts cannot be taken as doing justice to the original meaning and therefore cannot be justified by referring to his systematic approach. Patristic Theology and Modern Science Since we are dealing with his use of patristic theology in the contexts of theology and science dialogue, it is necessary to shed some light on this aspect of his theology. It is possible to distinguish three ways in which T.F. Torrance perceives the relationship between theology and science.7 He claims that theology: a) overlaps with the science in the formal sense because they both operate within the same epistemological framework; b) has historically contributed to the rise of modern-day natural science; reading’, ‘appropriation’ (ibid. 23-4). However, he goes even further claiming that Torrance maybe understood Fathers better than they were able to understand themselves. See ibid. 35; id., Thomas F. Torrance and the Church Fathers. A Reformed Evangelical and Ecumenical Reconstruction of the Patristic Tradition (Cambridge, 2015), 154-5. 6 She stated that in Torrance’s work ‘patristic texts are simply exploited to create and endorse a kind of classical doctrinal stance’ and that his ‘style is dogmatic, with no discussion about interpretation. Chronology seems not to matter’. Frances M. Young, ‘From Suspicion and Sociology to Spirituality: On Method, Hermeneutics and Appropriation with Respect to Patristic Material’, SP 29 (1997), 421-35, 424-5. 7 It is hard to fit Torrance’s way of relating theology and science in either of the models proposed famously by Ian Barbour, When Science Meets Religion: Enemies, Strangers or Partners (San Francisco, 2000). I believe that the ‘model of dialogue’ would be the second-best solution, although it should be noted that Torrance’s approach exhibits some features of the ‘model of integration’.

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c) overlaps with the science in the material sense because throughout its history it produced some of the concepts which were (later) proved/discovered by modern day science.8 Torrance can be listed among those scholars who argue that science has not progressed gradually over the course of time but that it had revolutionary beginnings.9 He also claims that the causes which led to its generation are not to be seen in the external factors – sociological and economic developments – but in the internal ones, i.e. in the intellectual mindset which was produced by the theology of the early Church.10 He credits early Christian theology with producing several concepts which laid down the foundations for the formation of the modern scientific mind later on.11 We should note that he argues that the scientific revolution did not occur simultaneously with the causes which led to it. Causes were laid down in the Christian theology of the first six centuries, but the main threat to science (dualism) had always prevented its emergence until the 17th century.12 It is only with the ‘new science’ established by Maxwell and Einstein that it has freed itself from the constraints of dualist thinking. 8 Dialogue between science and theology in Torrance’s thinking is perceived in a different fashion by Tapio Luoma, Incarnation and Physics: Natural Science in the Theology of Thomas F. Torrance (New York, 2002), 23-4, et passim. Here I follow the classification proposed by Mark Achtemeier, ‘Natural Science and Christian Faith in the Thought of Thomas F. Torrance’, in Elmer M. Colyer (ed.), The Promise of Trinitarian Theology: Thelogians in Dialogue with T.F. Torrance (Lanham, 2001), 269-302. 9 It is worth noting here that Torrance distinguishes between the ‘generation’ of the modern science and its ‘revolution’, i.e. between the ‘modern’ and the ‘new’ science. See Thomas F. Torrance, Transformation and Convergence in the Frame of Knowledge (Belfast, 1984), 80. The first took place in the time between Galileo and Newton, while the latter occurred with Maxwell and Einstein. See ibid. 64-5. 10 Torrance previously held that it was theology of the Reformation that is to be credited for the rise of modern science, but later on he held early Christian theology for this development, without denying the contribution of the Reformed theology. Thomas F. Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction (Grand Rapids, 1975), 62-75. 11 Thomas F. Torrance, Theological and Natural Science (Eugene, 2002), 121. Luoma believes that this shift in opinion (see note 10) came as a result of Torrance’s ecumenical endeavor. See T. Luoma, Incarnation and Physics (2002), 31. However, it seems plausible that at this time Torrance was influenced by Stanley Jaki’s ideas on the contribution of early Christian theology to the birth of scientific mind, as expressed in Stanley L. Jaki, Science and Creation: From Eternal Cycles to an Oscillating Universe (Edinburgh, 1974). Mark Achtemeier notes that Torrance was heavily influenced by Jaki. See M. Achtemeier, ‘Natural Science and Christian Faith’ (2001), 299, n. 17. Stoyan Tanev says that he was told by George Dion Dragash (student of Torrance) that Torrance admired Jaki very much. See Stoyan Tanev, ‘The Concept of Energy in T.F. Torrance and in Orthodox Theology’, Participatio: Journal of T.F. Torrance Theological Fellowship 4 (2013), 190-212, 206, n. 62. Luoma rightly notes, however, that Torrance’s approach differs from Jaki’s. Unlike Jaki who credits the Christian doctrine of creation for this fruitful input, Torrance claims that it is the octrine of incarnation that should be seen as the most important one in this regard. See T. Luoma, Incarnation and Physics (2002), 30. 12 T.F. Torrance, Transformation (1984), 2. He often exaggerates the difference between the science of the ancient Greeks and the modern one and at one point he admits that. See ibid. 64-5.

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What was this substantial accomplishment of the early Christian theology? A number of things. First and foremost, it is the doctrine of the incarnation. He believes that in itself it offered a new Weltanschauung which entailed different presuppositions necessary for the emergence of the empirical science. These are: 1) that the cosmos in itself is rational but not through participation in some transcendent reality (be it divine or realm of Platonic ideas) and therefore its rationality cannot be deduced from eternal principles but has to be approached through empirical research; 2) that it is intrinsically good since not only was it created by God, but it has also been ‘inhabited’ by his Son, and that therefore matter is not to be renounced or despised as being evil; 3) that early Alexandrian theology introduced what Torrance deems to be the quintessential scientific principle: that everything needs to be researched in accordance with its own nature (kata physin) and that therefore, epistemology follows ontology (and not the other way around) etc. In this respect, as previously mentioned, theology overlaps in its formal, epistemological aspect with the science. When it comes to the material overlap of science and early Christian theology, Torrance believes that the latter has produced certain ideas and concepts which were later confirmed and/or developed by modern science. He names a couple of those, such as relational concept of space which he attributes to St Athanasius, promoted much later by Einstein’s theory of relativity; John Philoponus’ theory of light, impetus and universe as a cohesive unity; and perichoresis as a concept of onto-relations (originated in St Athanasius, developed further by Gregory of Nazianzus and John Damascene) which later influenced and complemented Maxwell’s field theory. Kataphysic inquiry Torrance considers the kataphysic inquiry to be a major guiding epistemological principle shared both by science and theology and originally developed by the Alexandrian Fathers. One of the explanations what is meant by this reads: Really to know and understand something involves a way of thinking strictly in accordance with what it actually is, that is, in accordance with its nature (κατὰ φύσιν) as it becomes disclosed in the course of inquiry, and thus in accordance with what it really is, or in accordance with its reality (κατ’ ἀλήθειαν), and allow its nature (φύσις) or reality (ἀλήθεια) to determine for us how we are to think and speak appropriately of it.13 13 T.F. Torrance, Theological and Natural Science (2002), 100. See also Thomas F. Torrance, Reality and Scientific Theology (Edinburgh, 1985), 7-8. Somewhat incautiously, David Hardy remarks that with regards to this mode of inquiry Torrance claims that it is impossible to differentiate between the substance of that which is known and the way of knowing it. See Daniel Hardy, ‘T.F. Torrance’, in Rachael Muers and David F. Ford (eds), The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology since 1918 (Malden, 2005), 163-77, 167. But Torrance does

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He believes that this very principle is shared by both early church theologians (Clement of Alexandria, Athanasius of Alexandria and John Philoponus) and modern scientists (Maxwell, Einstein, Polanyi).14 He believes that it is directly opposed to the style of deductive logical reasoning which instead of ‘extracting’ knowledge from the thing itself, deduces it out of accepted logical presuppositions which are (in Torrance’s thinking, by definition) not in accordance with the nature of the thing that is known. A. Clement of Alexandria Torrance credits especially Clement of Alexandria with developing this method of kataphysic inquiry. Also, Torrance states that Clement’s notion of πρόληψις, being of great importance for this mode of inquiry, can be equated with Polanyi’s concept of ‘tacit foreknowledge’.15 However, if we take a closer look at Clement’s Stromata, and especially Book VIII, we will see that not only he does not juxtapose the logical and ‘kataphysic’ reasoning, but that he aims at demonstrating that Christian knowledge of God meets all the logical criteria and is therefore to be regarded as true knowledge. He distinguishes two types of demonstration: 1) apodeixis which denotes conclusions drawn from the self-evident and true premise which cannot be proven by referring to other premises and 2) syllogism which refers to the conclusions drawn from two or more premises which are not necessarily true.16 Only the first type of demonstration results in true knowledge, as Clement states. Therefore, he concludes by saying that Christians possess true knowledge that rests on faith which, just like the first principle of apodeixis from which conclusion is deduced, cannot be demonstrated by referring to more basic premises.17

not say that. He rather says that it is impossible to separate the substance of that which is known from the way that it is known. This is well noted by E. Colyer, How to read T.F. Torrance: understanding his Trinitarian & scientific theology (Eugene, 2007), 322. On the interplay between material content and the form of knowledge in Torrance’s work see Andrej Jeftić, ‘“Theoryladenness” in Thomas F. Torrance’s Epistemological Realism’, Philotheos: International Journal for Philosophy and Theology 15 (2015), 205-11. 14 See Thomas F. Torrance, ‘Thomas Torrance Responds’, in E.M. Colyer, The Promise (2001), 303-40, 330. 15 T.F. Torrance, Reality (1985), 83-4. See also Colin Weightman, Theology in a Polanyian Universe: The Theology of Thomas F. Torrance (New York, 1994), 215. 16 This differentiation is the same as the one that Aristotle makes between demonstrative (apodictic) and dialectic syllogism, except that Clement states that the apodeixis rests on only one premise. Cf. Silke-Petra Bergjan, ‘Logic and Theology in Clement of Alexandria. The Purpose of the 8th Book of the Stromata’, ZAC 12 (2008), 396-413, 405-6. 17 Matyáš Havrda, ‘Demonstrative Method in Stromateis VII: Context, Principles, and Purpose’, in M. Havrda, V. Hušek and J. Plátová (eds), The Seventh Book of Stromateis. Proceedings of the Colloquim on Clement of Alexandria (Olomouc, October 21-23, 2010) (Leiden, 2012), 261-75, 266. It is not quite clear if Clement believes that apodeixis produces new knowledge and represents a

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When it comes to πρόληψις, Clement states that it denotes the foreknowledge which is shared by all people and therefore can be regarded as a first principle out of which true knowledge can be deduced. One particular instance of such foreknowledge is the belief in providence. By identifying this providence with God’s miraculous actions testified in the Scripture and the faith in providence with the credo of the catholic Church, he secures the logical basis for Christian knowledge to be considered as true (scientific) knowledge.18 This concept is rather different than Polanyi’s understanding of the ‘tacit foreknowledge’ which denotes anticipating ignorance of the solution to the given research problem. Just like a name that has been forgotten and can be therefore regarded as ignorance regarding things we’re familiar with, scientist has a tacit foreknowledge of the solution to the problem he faces in his research.19 Therefore, there can hardly be any evidence for Torrance’s claim that Clement has posited ‘kataphysic inquiry’ as a new approach to scientific research which he confronted with the logical demonstration, or that he developed a notion of tacit foreknowledge similar to Polanyi’s. B. Athanasius of Alexandria The same mode of inquiry is further developed by Athanasius, Torrance claims. He supports his claim about the significance of the ‘kataphysic inquiry’ for Athanasius by stating that the Alexandrian Father uses the phrase ‘κατὰ φύσιν’ frequently in his writings. The phrase, says Torrance, signifies the principle that ‘to think in accordance with the nature of the things means to think truly (ἀληθῶς) of them’. Therefore, to know God ‘kata physin’, Torrance states, means ‘to know him in accordance with his own nature, it means to know him under the impact of his distinct divine energeia, i.e. know him through the empirical relationship determined by theosis’.20 On the other hand, according to Torrance, the kataphysic inquiry, when applied in theology, also negates any possibility of attaining a sort of ‘natural knowledge’ of God. Therefore, it excludes the possibility of natural theology. Torrance differentiates between two attitudes in theology. One starts with the Son born from Father’s nature and the other with what God created as entirely different from his nature – i.e. creation.21 Since kataphysic inquiry is the one method of inquire or whether it is a method of demonstrating the knowledge that is already attained. See S.-P. Bergjan, ‘Logic and Theology’ (2008), 401. 18 M. Havrda, ‘Demonstrative Method’ (2012), 268. 19 Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (London, 2005), 135-6. 20 Thomas F. Torrance, Theology in Reconciliation: Essays towards Evangelical and Catholic Unity in East and West (London, 1975), 248. 21 Thomas. F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church (Edinburgh, 1988), 50.

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conformed to the nature of the reality investigated, it is obvious that Torrance was keen to opt for the first one. Creation offers no ‘point of contact’ with the uncreated nature, nor it is in any way similar to it. Therefore, we cannot attain any real knowledge of God as he is by inferring from nature he created. The sole ‘point of contact’ that we have with divine reality is its self-revelation realized in Jesus Christ. It is impossible, Torrance, emphasizes repeatedly, to know God except in a way that he made himself known – through his Son.22 Since he seems to be quite aware of the fact that one could find many elements of natural theology (though not in the sense this was perceived in middle ages or afterwards) in Athanasius’ writings, Torrance focuses on a single paragraph from Contra Arianos to prove his point.23 This passage reads: Οὐκοῦν εὐσεβέστερον καὶ ἀληθὲς ἂν εἲ μᾶλλον τὸν Θεὸν ἐκ τοῦ Υἱοῦ σημαίνειν καὶ Πατέρα λέγειν, ἢ ἐκ μόνων τῶν ἔργων ὀνομάζειν καὶ λέγειν αὐτὸν ἀγένητον.24

At first glance, the passage seems to offer support to Torrance’s claim. We should not make an attempt to know or name God starting from his works (creation), but should rely on his self-revelation in Jesus Christ. But if we read the whole chapter carefully and take into consideration broader context, we find that Athanasius has something else in mind. His aim is not to dismiss some sort of natural theology but to dismiss the term ἀγένητος which Aetius used, since he deemed it to be both ‘unscriptual and suspicious’. That it is unscriptual it is quite obvious: while Jesus calls God ‘Father’, he never refers to him as ‘unoriginated’. But there’s more at stake. The term ‘unoriginated’ implies, as Athanasius states, that unlike Father who does not have a beginning, Son actually does. On the other hand, when it comes to the phrase ‘kata physin’, if we take a closer look at the texts in which it is used by Athanasius (and there are a few of them), we will notice that he uses it almost exclusively to emphasize that Son is God ‘by nature’ (kata physin). Athanasius uses the phrase to claim that Son’s nature is not different from the Father’s,25 that he is not a product of God’s will but that he is proper to Father ‘by nature’,26 that he’s not a creature ‘by nature’,27 that he became flesh ‘by nature’,28 that we also can become sons 22

T.F. Torrance, Reality (1985), 36. Torrance’s critique of the traditional form of natural theology and his development of his own ‘reformed’ natural theology has been a subject of a vast number of scholarly works. See most recent Alexander J.D. Irving, T.F. Torrance’s Natural Theology Understood in Its Intellectual Context: The Synthesis of Rational Structure and Material Content (PhD Thesis, University of Oxford, 2017). 24 Contra Arianos, 1.34; T.F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith (1988), 49. In English the passage reads: ‘Therefore, it is more pious and more accurate to signify God from the Son and call Him Father, than to name Him from His works only and call Him unoriginated’. 25 Contra Arianos, 1.27, 37; 2.31, 50, 58, 72. 26 Ibid. 2.2; 3.60; 4.41; De synodis, 52; De sententia Dionysii, 26; Ad Afros, 8. 27 Contra Arianos, 2.65. De sententia Dionysii, 23. 28 Contra Arianos, 2.70. 23

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of God albeit not ‘by nature’ (unlike Logos),29 that when we say that Father is the true God, we do not renounce his Son, but those who are not God ‘by nature’.30 Besides that, there is a single case when Athanasius uses it in a different context: to say that Antonius was not in his ‘natural’ state and therefore wasn’t of good health.31 Given that, it is quite hard to discern any sort of a specific mode of inquiry promoted by Athanasius and indicated by his use of this particular phrase. ‘Relational concept of space’ The language used by Nicene Fathers to explain the miracle of the God incarnated, Torrance states, was not only doxological. It was intrinsically conceptual and denoted an objective reality and not only the existential experience of God’s presence. Therefore, it was necessary to develop a concept of space which could adequately explain God’s presence in it.32 The existing concepts, as developed by Plato, Aristotle and Stoics, simply wouldn’t do. The space was understood as a container or a receptacle. It was thanks to the Nicene theologians and especially Athanasius of Alexandria that the proper concept of space was developed, suitable for expressing the mystery of incarnation. This concept is itself relational as it denotes both the ‘place’ the Son has in Father’s being and his indwelling in this world as a human being. This paradox of double indwelling could be expressed only by a relational concept of space.33 To substantiate his claim, he quotes Athanasius on numerous occasions, but the two most important passages for substantiating his claims are the following: Οὐ γὰρ αἱ λέξεις τὴν φύσιν παραιροῦνται: ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ἡ φύσις τὰς λέξεις εἰς ἐαυτὴν ἔλκουσα μεταβάλλει. Καὶ γὰρ οὐ πρόται τῶν οὐσιῶν αἱ λέξεις, ἀλλ` αἱ οὐσίαι πρῶται, καὶ δεύτεραι τούτων αἱ λέξεις.34 ὁ δὲ λέγων, καθως, οὐ ταυτότητα δείκνυσιν, ἀλλ’ εἰκόνα καὶ παράδειγμα τοῦ λεγομένου … πόῥῥωθεν δέ ἐστιν, οὐ τόπῳ, ἀλλὰ μόνη τῇ φύσει πάντα μακράν ἐστιν αὐτοῦ· καὶ, καθὰ προεῖπον, οὐ ταυτότητα, οὐδὲ ἰσότητα δείκνυσιν ὁ λέγων τό, καθώς, ἐπίῥῥημα, ἀλλὰ παράδειγμα τοῦ λεγομένου κατά τι θεωρούμενον.35 29

Ibid. 3.19, 25. Ibid. 3.9. 31 Vita Antoni, 14. 32 Thomas F. Torrance, Space, Time and Incarnation (London, 1969), 1-5. 33 Thomas F. Torrance, Divine Meaning: Studies in Patristic Hermeneutics (Edinburgh, 1995), 366-8. He states five principal points of Athanasius’ understanding of the relative concept of space. 34 Contra Arianos, 2.3. As it reads in English: ‘For terms do not take away from his nature, but rather that nature changes the terms while attracting them to itself. For terms are not prior to essences, but essences are first and terms second.’ 35 Ibid. 3.22; 3.23. 30

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The first passage illustrates, Torrance claims, that when attributed to God and human beings, terms have different meaning and therefore we are to interpret them in accordance with the nature to which they are applied. Therefore, they are inherently relational. The second passage, in which Athanasius interprets Jn. 17:21, is interpreted by Torrance in a rather dubious manner. He sees a special significance in the term παράδειγμα, used by Athanasius to denote the analogy Christ uses between him being one with the Father and humans being one amongst themselves. Παράδειγμα, states Torrance refers to an image which under the impact of the divine revelation is made to point beyond its creaturely form and content to the intended reality, without however transgressing the distance or rubbing out the difference between them. It has an objective and transcendental reference, but still is no more than an instrument enabling us to get some hold on the reality revealed and not one through which we capture this reality by conceiving of it. The image fulfils its function while making clear its inadequacy, and by pointing intelligibly to what is really apprehensible although ultimately beyond our comprehension. It succeeds in that function only insofar as we can understand the παράδειγμα itself in the light of the reality it serves.36

Moreover, these paradigms are not chosen by us, but are ‘forced upon us through the divine revelation’. They are here to bridge the gap between the divine reality and ourselves, making God known in forms conformed to his nature and intelligible for human understanding. From there on, Torrance transposes this concept and takes it to be fundamental for understanding the Nicene concept of space which is a sort of differential concept that is essentially open-ended, for it is defined in accordance with the interaction between God and man, eternal and contingent happening. This means that the concept of space in the Nicene Creed is relatively closed, so to speak, on our side where it has to do with physical existence, but is infinitely open on God’s side.37

However, this reading can be hardly upheld by the cited passages. What Athanasius aims to show is that Christ’s unity with God is by nature and that therefore he is to be regarded as his eternal Son, and not a creature like ourselves. That is why he puts emphasis on the particle καθώς, because it shows the difference in unity with God that exists between Christ who is his eternal Son and us, as his creatures. In addition to misinterpreting Athanasius’ basic intention, Torrance makes an unjustified jump from the linguistic to ontological level. Athanasius does state the difference between the unity as it is in God and the one amongst us which is desired by Christ. The first one is by nature and the second by mind and harmony of the spirit. The meaning of the term unity is relative to the 36 37

T.F. Torrance, Divine Meaning (1995), 370. Ibid. 371.

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context in which it is deployed. However, it does not follow that the we are dealing with some sort of a relational concept of unity. The same goes for the term ‘space’. Though we acknowledge the difference in the manner in which we speak about Christ’s ‘occupying space’ in Father and in this world, it does not follow that we are arguing for a relative concept of space. We are acknowledging a simple fact that the terms have different meanings when applied to different realities. Conclusion In the light of the discussion above, regarding Torrance’s reading of Clement and Athanasius, in terms of their contribution to the development of so called ‘kataphysic mode of inquiry’ and the development of the relative concept of space, I believe we can make following conclusions. First, Torrance’s insistence on the existence of a particular mode of inquiry in the Alexandrian theological tradition, which he calls ‘kataphysic method/ approach’ is impossible to prove with textual evidence. Neither Clement nor Athanasius give support to this sort of epistemological concept. Therefore, his main argument regarding the epistemological overlap between patristic theology and modern science seems to be questionable. Second, since he places great emphasis on the contribution of the kataphysic method to the rise of modern science, the lack of evidence for the existence of this very method undermines his thesis about the contribution of the early Christian theology to the rise of modern science. Third, his understanding of what he calls ‘relational concept of space’ in Athanasius is impossible to prove by textual evidence. Therefore, his thesis on the ‘material overlap’ of science and theology is also undermined. To conclude with a few observations. Exegesis of the patristic texts which is based on the ideals of the positivistic historiography which aims at reconstructing the original meaning, clear of our prejudices, is something that has been questioned by modern day hermeneutics. It seems that Frances Young’s observation that patristic scholars need to catch up with the biblical scholars in this regard still holds value. One might add Wilken’s comment that the historiographical approach in itself is not ‘patristic’, i.e. in accordance with the theology of the Fathers. However, the reading and appropriation of patristic texts should not be done without any hermeneutical limits and boundaries. The very act of appropriation should presuppose certain interpretational limits which mark the border-line to which a reader can ‘stretch’ the original meaning of the text. These limits seem even more important if historical claims about the original meaning of the text or its historical effects are made. One might claim that Torrance is justified in his attempt to enable the voice of the Fathers to resonate in the contemporary landscape. However, by making historical

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claims, which he does, he fails his own theology, that is, the principal objectivity. This principle states that every research (historical one as well) needs to be done in accordance with the nature of its distinctive object. Therefore, if we are to make historical claims about the meaning of certain texts or its later effects and reception, they have to be made on the basis of historical research. And this research has to be done in a manner appropriate to the nature of the ‘historical realities’. Therefore, the claim that he approaches patristic texts in a systematic rather than in a historical manner cannot be justified even within his own theological framework. It goes without saying that my aim is not to claim that systematic theology should not make any use of patristic texts. Neither that the difference between systematic and patristic theology should be dismissed altogether. Rather, I would claim that systematic reading of the Fathers, however creative and innovative, needs to be based on the readings of the Fathers which are plausible. To put it the other way around, systematic reading should at least not be made in a way which is clearly wrong. Not all in Torrance’s attempt at the creative appropriation of the patristic tradition is to be criticized. His interpretations often seem very accurate and when they are not they still serve other purpose. It seems that his and the creative and innovative interpretations of other systematic theologians have contributed to the patristic studies to a great extent – opening the new possibilities for interpretation which, however, many patristic scholars rush to close. Therefore, the creative and often inspiring systematic readings of the Fathers have actually fueled patristic scholarship – by providing patristic scholars with creative interpretation which they can argue about.

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