Author: Roger Pearse

A hagiographer confesses: “I made it up”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

We sometimes wonder just how hagiographical texts came into being.  It’s obvious that the majority are a form of folk-story, rather than accurate narrative.  But wouldn’t it be nice if we actually had some information from the author of such a text?

Today I came across an interesting passage in an otherwise tedious and annoying book by C. W. Jones on Nicholas of Myra.[1]  It concerns a certain Agnellus of Ravenna (born around 805 AD).  My source tells us that he was ordered to write the Lives of all the bishops of Ravenna for eight hundred years.  Part way through, he becomes a bit self-conscious – for his work would naturally be first read aloud to his fellow monks, remember – and writes:

If by any chance you readers should find the treatment in this part of the book vague and should be moved to ask, “Why didn’t he depict the deeds of this pontiff as he did his predecessors?” listen to my reasons: I, Agnellus, likewise called Andrew, lowly priest of my holy Church of Ravenna, have put together this book which covers nearly eight hundred years or more from the time of the death of the blessed Apollinaris, by inquiry and research among the brothers of the see. Wherever I found material that they were sure about, I have presented it to you; and anything that I have heard from the elderly gray-beards I have not withheld from you.

Where I could not uncover a story or determine what kind of a life they led, either from the most aged or from inscriptions or from any other source, to avoid a blank place in my list of holy pontiffs in their due order according to their ordination to the see one after the other, I have with the assistance of God through your prayers invented a Life for them. And I believe that no deception is involved; for they were chaste and almsgiving preachers and procurers of men’s souls for God.

If any among you should wonder how I was able to create what I have written down, you should know that a picture taught me. Images were always made in their likeness in their lifetime. To anyone who may raise a question about whether a picture is sufficient warrant for a description, St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan, in his Passion of the Blessed Martyrs Gervase and Protasius, says of the description he drew of blessed Paul the Apostle, “A picture taught me his features.”

Deeply dubious, of course: but very interesting.

Jones tells us that he translated this from “MGH, Scriptores Rerum Langobardicarum, p.277” which (thankfully) is online at the Bavarian Staatsbibliothek here (and it is possible to download the whole work in PDF).  The text, “Agnelli liber pontificalis ecclesiae Ravennatis”, begins at that page number, but that doesn’t give us the passage above.  It is in fact to be found on p.297, in chapter 32:

Et si aliqua aesitatio vobis hunc Pontificalem legentibus fuerit, et volueritis inquirere dicentes: ‘Cur non istius facta pontificis narravit, sicut de ceteris praedecessoribus’? audite, ob hanc causam: Hunc praedictum Pontificalem, a tempore beati Apolenaris post eius decessum pene annos 800 et amplius, ego Agnellus qui et Andreas, exiguus sanctae meae huius Ravennatis ecclesiae presbiter, rogatus et coactus a fratribus ipsius sedis, composui. Et ubi inveni, quid illi certius fecerunt, vestris aspectibus allata sunt, et quod per seniores et longaevos audivi, vestris oculis non defraudavi; et ubi istoriam non inveni, aut qualiter eorum vita fuisset, nec per annosos et vetustos homines, neque per haedificationem, neque per quamlibet auctoritatem, ne intervallum sanctorum pontificum fieret, secundum ordinem, quomodo unus post alium hanc sedem optinuerunt, vestris orationibus me Deo adiuvante, illorum vitam composui, et credo non mentitum esse, quia et horatores fuerunt castique et elemosinarii et Deo animas hominum adquisitores. De vero illorum effigie si forte cogitatio fuerit inter vos, quomodo scire potui: sciatis, me pictura docuit, quia semper fiebant imagines suis temporibus ad illorum similitudinem. Et si altercatio ex picturis fuerit, quod adfirmare eorum effigies debuissem: Ambrosius Mediolanensis sanctus antistes in Passione beatorum martirum Gervasii et Protasii de beati Pauli apostoli effigie cecinit dicens: ‘Cuius vultum me pictura docuerat’.

The MGH editor helpfully adds that the reference to Ambrose is a Passion of Saints Gervase and Protasius, the text of which may be found in the Acta Sanctorum 19. Jun., III, 821 (I apologise for the lunatic organisation of the Acta Sanctorum series by saint’s day, volume – many volumes for each day – and then page number), but which “is falsely set forth under the name of St Ambrose”.

It is useful to know of at least one example of a dark ages writer who honestly admits to inventing the stuff.

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  1. [1]Charles W. Jones, Saint Nicholas of Myra, Bari and Manhattan, p.48.↩

The Annals of Eutychius of Alexandria (10th c. AD) – chapter 16 (part 5 and last)

Posted on by Roger Pearse

This next portion of the Annals of Eutychius of Alexandria (10th c.), also known as Sa`id ibn Batriq, starts with three theological paragraphs.  Since I don’t actually understand the points at issue here, even in English, it isn’t possible for me to translate them; and I doubt many of us are interested in them.  The three paragraphs appear to be interpolated by an editor.

18. Sa`īd ibn Batriq, the doctor said: “It seemed appropriate here to refute the Jacobites and show the falsity and absurdity of their doctrine. … [Also 19 and 20].

21. But let us return to the point in the history where we stopped.  When Severus, Patriarch of Antioch, died, there was made patriarch of Antioch Paul.  He held the office for five years and died (In another text it says “for two years”).  After him there was made patriarch of Antioch Ifrūsinūs.  He held the office for five years and he died.  That was in the twentieth year of the reign of Anastasius, king of Rum.  In the twenty-third year of his reign, that is, after Elias, Patriarch of Jerusalem, had been deposed, the people of Palestine and Jerusalem met serious afflictions: famine, pestilence, a great epidemic, [an invasion of] many grasshoppers and death, and it did not rain for five years.  In the fifth year of the drought the shortage of water in Jerusalem was so great that the spring of Siloam dried up, and the population began to dig everywhere without finding a bit of water.  There was a terrible earthquake in Antioch, many houses collapsed and many people perished.  Five years after Elias, Patriarch of Jerusalem, had been exiled to the city of Aylah, the superiors of the monasteries, including Saba, went to the Patriarch Elias in the city of Aylah.  The Patriarch Elias welcomed them with great joy, and they stayed with him for seven days.  Then he said, “The king Anastasius has just now died.  I will join him in ten days, and contend with him in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  Ten days after, the Patriarch Elias died, at the age of eighty-eight, after being Patriarch for twenty-four years.  It is said that St Saba kept in mind the time [specified by Elias], and then having asked about the king Anastasius, the answer was that at that moment there fell on Constantinople lightning, followed by a terrible thunder from which the King Anastasius reported a discomfort in his brain: clutching his head in his hands, crying and asking for help and running from apartment to apartment, he received God’s punishment, and it killed him.  Before dying, the king Anastasius had written a letter, [found] in his possession, to remove St. Theodosius, the founder of the monastery of ad-Dawākis, from Jerusalem.  But the king Anastasius died before sending the letter to Jerusalem.

22. After him there reigned over Rum Justin, from the province of Thrace, for nine years. This happened in the thirty-second year of the reign of Qabād, son of Firuz, king of the Persians.  King Justin was of the Orthodox faith, a believer in the truth.  He ordered restored to their own places everyone that the king Anastasio had exiled and he sent an edict to Jerusalem in which he set forth his faith.  The monks were reunited with cries of joy, and made publicly available the edict of the king, which they celebrated with a magnificent feast and they confirmed the fourth council of six hundred bishops who had gathered at Chalcedon.  In the fifth year of the reign of Justin there was made patriarch of Rome, John.  He held the office for two years and died.  In the seventh year of his reign there was made patriarch of Rome Felix.  He held the office for four years and died.  In the second year of his reign there was made patriarch of Alexandria Theodosius.  He was a Jacobite and a Katib.  He held the office for three years and was deposed.  In his place there was made patriarch of Alexandria Ghābiyūs.  He was a Manichean and archdeacon.  He held the office for two years and was deposed.  Then Theodosius was reinstated in his office.  He held the office for five years, was deposed and died.  In the first year of his reign he was told that Antimus, the patriarch of Constantinople, was a Jacobite.  He removed him and in his place he made Menna Patriarch of Constantinople. He held the office for eighteen years and died.  In the fifth year of his reign Ephrem was made patriarch of Antioch. He held the office for eighteen years and died.  John, Patriarch of Jerusalem, who had taken the place of the deposed Elias, held the office for seven years and he died.

In the third year of the reign of Justin, Peter, a native of Bayt Gibrīh, was made patriarch of Jerusalem.  He held the office for ten years and died (In another text it says, “for twenty years and died”).  King Justin sent an edict to all countries, providing that everyone should profess the faith promulgated by the Chalcedonian council.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m now on a much needed holiday, and I have been disposing of various minor tasks.  My long-serving inkjet failed at the weekend – well, it was 12 years old! – and had to be replaced, so that I could fulfil an order for a CD of the Additional Fathers collection.  This CD needs revising and modernising, but not right now.

I have prepared an electronic text of the Latin of John the Deacon’s Life of St Nicholas; but I find that I really can’t find any enthusiasm for doing a translation at the moment.

Jones’ “biography” of St Nicholas of Myra has arrived, but likewise I don’t feel like opening the covers at the moment.  I was amused, however, by the bookseller, who called himself “Caveat Emptor”!

My next priority is to avoid as many tasks as possible, and get out into the open air!

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Did Constantine put the Jews to death at Passover? A passage in Eutychius

Posted on by Roger Pearse

In a comment here on an old post, an interesting question is raised:

Hi, do you have a translation of Patrologiae Graeca 111, pages 1012-13 where Eutychius talks about how Constantine killed the Jewish Christians on Passover?

http://books.google.com/books?id=ZSNKAAAAcAAJ&vq=1012&pg=RA2-PA1004

The link is to column (not page) 1012 in PG 111.

Doing a google search for a source for this claim – which it is always prudent to do -, I found this Israeli page which said the following:

“From the late account of Eutychius (Patrologia Graeca 111, 1012-13) that, just at this time [333 C.E.], the faithful while they were leaving the church on E*aster day, were forced to eat pork under pain of death. We know how the Judeo-Christians refused this in order not to transgress the Mosaic law to which they held they were bound” (Bagatti, p. 14).

Bellarmino Bagatti, The Church from the Circumcision (Yerushâlayim, Franciscan Press 1971), pp. 13-14.

I found it quite interesting that Bagatti was published by Franciscan Press, as they published the translation of Eutychius into Italian, and I bought my own copy of it from their bookshop in Jerusalem.

Now Eutychius of Alexandria was the Melkite patriarch of Alexandria in the 10th century AD and wrote his Annals in Arabic.  It was translated into Latin in the 17th century by Edward Pococke; and Migne has reprinted Pococke’s translation.

The passage does, of course, appear in Bartolomeo Pirone’s modern Italian translation of the Annals.  Rather than translate Pococke’s Latin, based on who knows what text, let’s look at Pirone’s Italian, chapter 11, section 20, p.203:

20. Il re Costantino diede disposizione che nessun giudeo abitasse a Gerusalemme né che vi transitasse e ordinò inoltre di mettere a morte tutti coloro che si fossero  rifiutati di farsi  cristiani (58). Moltissimi pagani e Giudei abbracciarono allora la fede cristiana ed il cristianesimo prese ovunque piede. Fu poi riferito al re Costantino che i Giudei si erano fatti cristiani per paura di essere uccisi ma che continuavano a seguire la  loro religione. Il re disse: “Come potremo saperlo?”. Paolo, patriarca di Costantinopoli, gli disse: “La Torah proibisce Idi mangiarel il maiale ed è per questo motivo che i Giudei non ne mangiano la carne. Ordina quindi di far sgozzare dei maiali, che ne vengano cotte le carni e siano date da mangiare ai membri di questa comunità. In tal modo si potrà scoprire che sono ancora legati alla loro religione tutti coloro che si rifiuteranno di mangiarne”. Il re Costantino replicò. “Ma se la Torah proibisce il maiale, come mai è invece lecito a noi mangiarne la carne e farla mangiare agli altri?”. Il  patriarca Paolo gli rispose: “Devi sapere che Cristo, nostro Signore, ha abrogato tutte le disposizioni della Torah e ci ha dato una nuova Legge che è il Vangelo. Egli ha detto nel santo vangelo: “Non tutto quello che entra per la bocca contamina l’uomo (ed intendeva  dire: ogni cibo). Quello che contamina l’uomo è solo quanto esce dalla sua bocca” (59), ossia la  stoltezza e l’empietà e tutto quanto è a ciò simile. Anche l’apostolo Paolo ha così detto nella sua prima lettera ai Corinzi: “Il cibo è per il ventre e il ventre è per il cibo, ma Dio distruggerà entrambi” (60).  Ed è anche scritto nella Praxis: “Pietro, capo degli Apostoli, si trovava nella città di Giaffa (61) in casa di un conciatore di nome Simone. All’ora sesta del giorno salì sulla terrazza di casa per pregare, ma un sonno profondo cadde su di lui e vide il  cielo aprirsi. Dal cielo vide scendere fino a toccar terra un manto in  cui c’era ogni specie di quadrupedi, di bestie feroci, di mosche e di uccelli del cielo, e sentì una voce che gli diceva: “O Pietro, alzati, uccidi e mangia”. Pietro rispose: “O Signore, non ho mai mangiato alcunché di immondo”.  Ma una seconda voce gli disse: “Mangia, ciò che Dio ha purificato tu non ritenerlo immondo”. La voce lo ripetè per tre volte. Poi il  manto fu riportato in cielo” (62). Pietro ne restò meravigliato e si chiedeva perplesso cosa potesse significare l’accaduto. Ma per quella visione e per ciò che Cristo nostro Signore ha detto nel santo vangelo, Pietro e  Paolo ci  hanno ordinato di mangiare la  carne  di ogni quadrupede e perciò ci è lecito mangiare carne di maiale e di ogni altro animale”. Il  re allora ordinò di ammazzare dei maiali, di cuocerne le carni e di farle mettere alle porte delle chiese in tutto il suo regno nella domenica di pasqua. A chiunque usciva dalla chiesa veniva dato un boccone di carne di maiale e chi si rifiutava di mangiarlò veniva ucciso. Fu cosÌ che molti Giudei furono uccisi in quella circostanza. Costantino fece erigere un muro attorno a Bisanzio e la chiamò Costantinopoli. Ciò avveniva nel suo trentesimo anno di regno. Elena, madre di Costantino, morì all’età di ottanta anni. Costantino regnò  per trentadue anni e morì. Era vissuto in  tutto sessanta cinque anni: Lasciò tre  figli.  Al maggiore aveva dato il suo nome, Costantino, aveva chiamato il secondo con il  nome di suo  padre, Costanzo, ed  il  terzo  l’aveva  chiamato Costante (63).  A Costantino assegnò  la  città di Costantinopoli, a Costanzo Antiochia, la Siria e l’Egitto, e a Costante Roma.

This I translated here:

20. The King Constantine gave orders that no Jew should live in Jerusalem or pass through it, and he also ordered to put to death all those who refused to become Christians (58). Many pagans and Jews then embraced the Christian faith and Christianity took root everywhere.  It was then told to king Constantine that the Jews had become Christians for fear of being killed but that they continued to follow their religion.  The king said: “How will we know?” Paul, the patriarch of Constantinople, said: “The Torah forbids [eating] pork and it is for this reason that the Jews do not eat meat. Order that the throats of pigs be cut, that the meat should be cooked, and fed to the members of this community.  In this way you will find that all those who refuse to eat are still tied to their religion.” King Constantine replied. “But if the Torah forbids the pig, why is lawful for us to eat its flesh and make others eat it?”. Patriarch Paul replied: “You must know that Christ our Lord, repealed all provisions of the Torah and gave us a new law which is the Gospel. He said in the Holy Gospel: “Not everything that enters the mouth defiles a man (and he meant any food). What defiles a man is just what comes out of his mouth” (59), i.e. folly and wickedness, and all that is similar to this. The apostle Paul said so in his first letter to the Corinthians: “Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, but God will destroy both” (60). And it is also written in the Acts: “Peter, chief of the Apostles, was in the city of Jaffa (61) in the house of a tanner named Simon. At the sixth hour of the day he went out on the terrace of the house to pray, but a deep sleep fell upon him and saw the sky open. From the sky he saw a mantle descend to earth in which there was every kind of quadruped, wild beasts, flying things and birds of the air, and he heard a voice saying: ‘O Peter, get up, kill and eat.’ Peter replied: ‘O Lord, I have never eaten anything unclean.’ But a second time the voice said: ‘Eat, what God has cleansed you must not consider unclean.’ The voice repeated it three times. Then the mantle was taken back into heaven.” (62) Peter was amazed and wondered what it meant. Because of that vision and because of what Christ our Lord said in the Holy Gospel, Peter and Paul ordered us to eat the flesh of every quadruped and therefore it is not wrong to eat pork or any other animal.”The king then ordered him to kill the pigs, cook the meat and put it at the doors of the churches in all his kingdom on Easter Sunday.  To everyone coming out of the church a bite of pork was given, and those who refused to eat it were killed.  Thus it was that many Jews were killed in that circumstance.  Constantine erected a wall around Byzantium and called Constantinople.  This was in his thirtieth year of the reign.  Helena, mother of Constantine, died at the age of eighty years. Constantine reigned for thirty-two years and died.  He lived in all for sixty-five years. He left three children.  The first was given his name, Constantine, he had called the second with the name of his father, Constantius, and the third was called Constans (63).  To Constantine he gave the city of Constantinople, to Constantius Antioch, Syria and Egypt, and Rome to Constans.

The historical value of this anecdote, complete with “he said, he said”, is probably nothing, at a distance of 7 centuries.  Constantine did not force pagans to become Christians, and indeed paganism remained the state religion for another 50 years.

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A challenge for Greek language nerds! What do you make of *this*?!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

One of the texts for St Nicholas of Myra is a beast and a monster.  No matter how good your Greek is, it is bafflingly hard.  Part of the problem is that it is written in a poetic style – the editor, Anrich, even marks the cadences with <> marks!  The opening section is highly rhetorical and windy; even the narrative portion, telling the tale of the three virgins for whom Nicholas found dowries, is difficult.

David Miller had a go at it, and has produced the following: but if you reckon yourself a Greek whizz, then why not see if you can work out what’s going on with the text?  David writes:

Anyway, speed of work on this was about twice as slow as on the previous ones, even with leaving seven places where I have had to take a guess from the context at meanings which were out of my reach.  I suggest that, as it’s only for your blog, you could put this bit up, complete with my notes about those seven places, and invite anyone who knows more to contribute their solutions.

Here’s the page images from Anrich’s edition:

And here is David’s final version of the translation, after much discussion in the comments.  Any further comments are very welcome!

David’s first encounter with the text produced the following email, which I reproduce for the benefit of others who may walk this way:

Now, as for Methodius ad Theodorum:

I’ve reached, in rough, halfway through para.2 (“Heimat”) – far enough to try a bit of it out on you, to see if it really is the sort of stuff you want.

Note first that, as the bit of Greek embedded in Anrich’s introduction reveals, it is designed as a poem (ποιημα).  The angle brackets that disfigure the text passim are the cadences, marked by Anrich in accordance with Meyer’s Sentence-end Law (intro. para.2), and therefore, I suggest, nothing whatever to do with us, even if I could reproduce them.

The whole of the first paragraph is the sort of wordy grovelling that you see in the preface of 17th/18th cent. English treatises, designed to flatter the dedicatee;  it expresses the author’s intention to please him by giving up writing encomia, and writing narrative instead.

Here’s the start of para.2:

“O Nicholas, God’s servant, vessel containing the perfume of the [all-holy and lifegiving] Spirit;  flower, shoot and root of the Myrans, and their fragrance, lily-white in pre-eminence, adorned like a violet in public life, red as a rose in truthfulness, greener even than the buds in self-control, and with your head crowned in grey; you have toiled to the uttermost at your work, making light of the body but keeping the spirit tightly strung, bedewed with purity and alive [lit. “foaming”] with zeal ….”  [incidentally we have yet to reach a verb – I stuck in “you have toiled” in place of the participle because I could hold out no longer – and I should probably be putting “thou” for “you”, in an attempt to reach the distant heights of Methodius’ language, which he claimed in par.1 was going to be plain and clear]

It all sounds very, um, Byzantine!

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The legends of St Nicholas of Myra, or Santa Claus, became known in the West through a Life composed by a certain John the Deacon, probably in the 9th century.  It was based on Greek models, especially – as it says in the prologue – on the letter of Methodius to Theodorus which has given translators so much pain lately.

A few days ago I wrote a post about the Latin text of John the Deacon.  I can find no sign of a modern edition of this text.  The text listed in the Bibliotheca Hagiographia Latina is the 18th century edition of Falconius.  But the BHL makes clear that Latin manuscripts contain any number of recensions and reworkings of this.

It seems to me that John the Deacon should exist in English.  Being medieval Latin, it should be possible for me to translate it.  In order to use my various electronic tools, I need an electronic Latin text; so today I have been at work, OCRing the 15 pages of Falconius.

I haven’t tried to OCR a Latin text for years.  It’s been a nostalgic experience, in a way.

It was always awful to OCR Latin, because none of the OCR programmes supported Latin.  So you ended up making corrections on every line.

This is no longer the case.  Abbyy Finereader 12 does support Latin.  It is making a very fair fist of the page images of Falconius.  These were downloaded from Google books and are by no means speckle free or perfect.

On the other hand, I am still correcting pretty much every line.  Why is this?

Well, Falconius is an 18th century writer.  This means that he uses the “long s”, which is a bit like “f” – “God ſave the king!” – and also that “ct” is ligatured.  Neither is recognised by Finereader.

This is rather disappointing.  Back in the early 2000’s, Abbyy was given quite a bit of German taxpayers’ money to develop OCR for “Fraktur”, the “gothic” typeface much used in Germany until Hitler banned it.  This also handled both of these features of older printed texts.  But … the resulting product was not added to Finereader!  Instead a separate product was created, unaffordable by normal people.  And so, even today, the public cannot do Fraktur OCR.  One can only wonder at the imbecility of German politicians in allowing this.

So … it’s back to manual correction.

All the same, it’s still far, far better than it ever was.  I would have killed for OCR of this quality in 1997!  On the other hand, I wish I had the eyesight that I did back then.

I also need to work out where I might find a dictionary of medieval Latin.

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“Non licet esse vos” – a modern politician’s wife writes…

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Sometimes you see something so outrageously false in the press that it becomes amusing, and so it was today.

Sarah Vine, better known as the wife of British Conservative politician Michael Gove, wrote an article in the Daily Mail today: Why Islam is a feminist issue: Most Muslims lead decent lives. But, ignored by the PC brigade, mass migration and multi-culturalism have encouraged, among some, a deeply worrying contempt for women.  Much of this was a brave attempt to state some obvious facts unpalatable to those who control the state.

Unfortunately in such papers any criticism of Islam must be “balanced” by some “all religions are the same” jeer at Christianity.  So she felt obliged to add the following:

Of course Islam is not the only religion built on misogyny. Christianity, and in particular Catholicism, has historically had a warped attitude to women at its heart.

We venerate the Virgin as the only truly good woman who ever lived, a woman who conceived a male saviour in chastity to deliver us from the actions of Eve, that wicked, weak-willed temptress whose lust and betrayal brought misery upon the world.

When you think about it, that’s pretty anti-women.

But the key difference between the misogyny in the Bible and that in the Koran is that no one in their right mind would interpret the former word for word.

Those who do — Christian fundamentalists — are rightly seen as bonkers by the rest of the Christian community, a remnant of a bygone age.

It took hundreds of years for feminists — male and female — to extricate society from the clutches of the medieval Church.

The efforts of the Suffragettes and the work of 20th-century feminism was the culmination of that lengthy process, bringing about a permanent change in cultural, legal and social attitudes, and a shift in the balance between the sexes from one based on the innate superiority of men to the present uneasy state of equality.

Of course there are huge numbers of other errors in these words, and not merely the horrible old fallacy of the false equivalence.

For instance, we bible-believing literalist Christians are not exactly a tiny number.  I do quite believe that we are not found in whatever tiny circle of London socialites the author belongs; but perhaps she should get out more.

Likewise the statement of Catholic theology is horribly wrong; so why is it prefixed with “we”?

But none of this struck me so forcibly as the blindness of the author to what all men know, and what she herself believes.

Because we do have a word for the medieval attitude to women.  It’s called chivalry.

And this is the weekend of a medieval literalistic bible-believing Christian festival.  It’s called “Saint Valentine’s Day”.

We poor, benighted, fundamentalists created the treatment of women that Sarah Vine would be outraged to be denied.

Who can doubt that, if Mr Gove doesn’t take his wife out to dinner for that particular medieval ritual of Valentine’s Day tomorrow, and show plenty of that medieval attitude of chivalry, then he will find himself in very hot water!

Let us wish Miss Vine / Mrs Gove a happy Valentine’s Day, and a little more self-awareness.

UPDATE: Wrong husband’s name – fixed.

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Nicholas of Myra – the story of the generals, and of the three innocents – now online

Posted on by Roger Pearse

David Miller has kindly made us a translation of another of the legends of St Nicholas, a.k.a. Santa Claus.  This one is the Praxis de stratelatis, (BHG 1349z) which recounts how Nicholas dealt with three generals and also how the governor tried to execute three innocent men.  The narrative displays considerable knowledge of events of people of the reign of Constantine, so must be late antique.

Here’s the translation:

As ever this is public domain – do whatever you like with it!

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve got a translation of another legend of St Nicholas of Myra ready for release as soon as I can find some time.  This is a translation of De Stratelatis.  I’ve also commissioned a translation of the Encomium of Methodius ad Theodorum – it will be interesting to see if we have more luck this time.

I’ve also been looking at the Latin material about St Nicholas, ascribed to John the Deacon.  It looks quite doubtful that there is any decent text available of this.  I’ve also ordered a volume of material about the St Nicholas legends, which should arrive in a couple of weeks, and, I hope, will give me some more orientation on the material.

I’m pretty busy in my offline life at the moment, so I haven’t had the time to do anything on any of my projects.  The flak should stop flying in a couple of weeks, tho.  An old friend has invited me to an Italy trip in late April, but it probably won’t be convenient to do more than fly out for a weekend.

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Notes on the Life of Nicholas of Myra by John the Deacon

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Frequently listed among the important sources for the legends of St Nicholas of Myra is the Life written in Latin by John the Deacon.  This is not printed in Anrich’s collection of Greek sources, which is a nuisance.  Various versions of John’s text were created in the Middle Ages, and there is a translation of something into English online here.  But where to find John’s text?

Today I happened on some useful information.  The old Catholic Encyclopedia article on John the Deacon tells us:

(2) John, deacon of Naples, d. after 910. This deacon, or head of a diaconia at the church of St. Januarius of Naples, flourished towards the end of the ninth and the beginning of the tenth century, …. A biography of St. Nicholas of Mira (ed. Cardinal Mai in “Spicilegium Romanum”, IV, 323 sqq.) is not by this John but by another author of the same name.

The volume of Spicilegium Romanum is here, in a poor-quality scan.  This is indeed a different text to that translated above.  It is on p.323-339.  But surely so widely known a text as John the Deacon has been printed before this?

This leads me, of course, to a text that I have never consulted before: the Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina, whose volumes are online here: Vol. 1. A – I and Vol. 2. K – Z, although not to non-US readers because of the greed of German publishers. Thankfully a V1 is here and V2 can be found here.  On p.890 (=p.203 of the PDF), we find an entry for Nicholas of Myra.

In the BHL we find the Life of John the Deacon in first place (BHL 6104-9), and printed by Falconius in Sancti confessoris pontificis … Nicolai acta primigenia (Neapoli, 1751), 112-22, containing chapters 1-13, and also on p.126.  Falconius is here, and the text starts here.

After John’s work there follows in the BHL a mass of other Latin versions of the Life, too many to be of any interest.  But it might be interesting to translate John’s Life of Nicholas into English.

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