Chrysostom homilies which I just can’t access

There are a couple of homilies by Chrysostom in the Patrologia Graeca which do not seem to exist in English, and which ought to be interesting.  They were delivered after he returned from his first exile, and attempted a reconciliation with his enemy, Severian of Gabala, who had been needlessly alienated by the arrogance of John’s staff.

Back in 2010 I found that in Migne there were three sermons; De Regressu Sancti Joannis (PG52, col. 421-424), De Recipiendo Severiano (col. 423-426), and Severian’s reply De Pace (col. 425).  All three are given in Latin, and all seemed far too short to be full versions.  Some time ago I learned that the Greek of the Severian existed, in a much longer version.  It needs to be translated into English, but that project went nowhere.

At the time I asked a scholar specialising in Chrysostom whether Greek texts existed for the Chrysostom homilies.  I got the less than precise reply, “look in the CPG vol. 2, after #4438, and also its supplement.”

This evening, two years on, I have finally managed to do it!  And … well … it’s not #4438.  De Regressu is CPG 2, 4394, and De recipiendo Severiano is 4395.  4396-4401 are further sermons concerned with his various exiles, 4401 being his last sermon.

The complete Greek text of De Regressu does exist.  It was published by A. Wenger, L’Homelie de saint Jean Chrysostome “a son retour d’Asie”, in Revue des Etudes Byzantines 19 (Melanges R. Janin), 1961, p.110-123.  This doesn’t seem to be online.  The Latin text printed by Migne is assigned doubtfully to Annianus of Celeda.

The Greek text of De recipiendo Severiano is lost.  All we have is Migne’s Latin, again doubtfully assigned to Annianus of Celeda.

Apparently Andre Wilmart, La collection des 38 homilies latines de saint Jean Chrysostome, JTS 18, 1918, 305-327; p.324 n. 36 talks about the former, and in n.24 about the latter.  But this too I have been unable to access.

And the supplement to the CPG indicates that there is discussion of the mss and editions of the Latin version in W. Wenk, Zur Sammlung der 38 Homilien.[1]  And that is offline too.

Hmm.

UPDATE: But I spoke too soon!  Wenger’s text of De Regressu is at Persee.fr, here!  I did search Persee.  But only Google picked up the match.  Evidently the search engine at Persee is useless!

UPDATE2: I discover that De Regressu has been translated into English as part of Pauline Allen’s John Chrysostom (1999).  There is a Google books preview here.  Apparently the Sources Chretiennes were bringing out an edition of Chrysostom’s letters at that point.

Share
  1. [1]Wolfgang Wenk, Zur Sammlung der 38 Homilien des Chrysostomus Latinus : mit Edition der Nr. 6, 8, 27, 32 und 33, Wiener Studien, Beiheft 10, Wien, 1988.

Leave a Reply