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An English translation of Mar Zay‘a: The Saint of Jilu, out soon from Gorgias Press

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An email from David Wilmshurst, who has continued his work on texts relating to the Church of the East.  He’s got another book coming out, around the end of October, through Gorgias Press.  This contains an English translation of the hagiographical Life of Mar Zay‘a, a legendary saint of Palestine who supposedly belonged to the 4th century AD.  The book is titled “Mar Zay‘a: The Saint of Jilu”.

He writes:

Mar Zay‘a was a legendary saint of Palestine who supposedly flourished in the 4th century.  The Syriac text of his Life, probably written by a bishop or priest of Jilu in the 18th century, was published by Bedjan in 1890 in Volume 1 of his Acta Martyrum et Sanctorum.  Although it is one of the more readable saints’ lives in Bedjan’s collection, it has remained for more than a century without an English translation.

I have now produced the first English translation of this intriguing text.  It was obviously written to extol the church of Mar Zay‘a in the large village of Matha d’Mar Zay‘a in Jilu.  Besides telling a good story, it contains much interesting topographical information of the kind which delights scholars of ecclesiastical geography like me.  … I have also supplied a substantial commentary which discusses the evidence for the early settlement of the Hakkari region in southeast Turkey by Christians of the Church of the East.

The French Dominican missionary Jean-Maurice Fiey was the first scholar to discuss the early Christian history of Hakkari, in his 1964 article ‘Proto-histoire chrétienne du Hakkari turc’.  It used to be believed that there were no Christian settlements in the Hakkari region before the 1390s, when large numbers of Christians fled from the Mosul lowlands and took refuge in the Hakkari mountains to escape the depredations of Timur Leng.  Fiey argued vigorously against this view and demonstrated that there were Christians in Hakkari at least as early as the 5th century, when the region was divided between the East Syriac dioceses of Dasen and Beth Bgash.

I have been able to use a wider range of sources than Fiey had at his disposal, and the new evidence I present in this book strengthens Fiey’s contention that the Hakkari region was a vigorous site of Christian activity long before the ‘flight to the mountains’ towards the end of the 14th century.

As in my previous books, my reconstruction of the early history of Christian Hakkari draws largely upon the prosopographical and topographical evidence provided either by Syriac manuscript colophons or by references in saints’ lives (including the Life of Mar Zay‘a) and other sources.  I have also profited from my growing familiarity with the history of the Greek Orthodox and Armenian Churches to set the history of the East Syriac Christians of Hakkari in a wider regional perspective.

He’s also sent a copy of the cover:

… a rather splendid image of Mar Zay‘a slaying the Angel of Death (who looks rather like a Himalayan yeti to my eyes)!

I have suggested in my commentary that the appearance of the Angel of Death may have been inspired by the ferocious bears which used to roam the Hakkari mountains.  My partner Diyah (an Indonesian Muslim) tells me that in Islamic thought the Angel of Death is believed to appear to those about to die.  Did the Christians of the Middle East have a similar belief? I wonder.

This is probably the most famous image of Mar Zay’a, yet the Life which I have translated does not mention the Angel of Death (although at one point Zay’a raises a king’s son from the dead).

The little that is known about Demetrius of Cyzicus… part 1

Posted on by Roger Pearse

In my first post about Demetrius of Cyzicus (fl. ca. 1028) I wrote that the Greek work against the Jacobites etc.,…

… was composed between 1026-28 by the deeply obscure Demetrius, Metropolitan of Cyzicus. What little is known about him can apparently be found in H.G. Beck, Kirche und theologische Literatur im Byzantinischen  Reich (Munich, 1959), p.532, although I have not looked.

Well, I have now located this volume, and others, and I find that I was misled by my reference, and rather more is known.  But anyway, let’s start with the Beck paragraph, and then give a ChatGPT translation of it.

Ein Günstling des Kaisers Konstantinos VIII. und besonders des Kaisers Romanos Argyros war der Metropolit von Kyzikos, Demetrios. 1028 ist er durch seine Unterschrift unter ein Synodaldekret bezeugt. 1037 ließ er sich ohne Glück in eine Konspiration gegen den Patriarchen ein. Wahrscheinlich ist er der Verfasser einer „Ἔκθέσις κατ’ ἐπιτομὴν τοῦ τῶν Ἰακωβιτῶν δόγματος“, die er im Auftrag des Kaisers Konstantinos verfaßt haben will und ihm widmet. In addition to the Traktates you can read, you will be able to leave them in a very thick place. Mit der vieldiskutierten Narratio de rebus Armeniae hat der Traktat nichts zu tun, ebensowenig Demetrios mit der Abfassung der einem Isaak zugeschriebenen Invektiven gegen die Armenier (S. 533 u. 628). If these are the versions of literary products in which they are published, they are included in the unglücklichen bibliographischen Umständen zu verdanken.

Demetrios is also the Kanonist hervorgetreten. Wir kennen eine Μελέτη über die Verwandtschaftsgrade und einen kanonischen Bescheid über einen Sonderfall der Verwandtschaftsgrade. Fünf, vielleicht sechs Logoi über verschiedene juristische Fragen sind noch unediert.²

  • Gegen die Jakobiten: PG 127, 878–885 (unter dem Namen des Philippos Monotropos), der fehlende Anfang und Schluß: G. Ficker, Die Erlasse des Patriarchen Alexios Studites, Kiel 1911, 22–23; – die μελέτη: PG 119, 1097–1116 and Rhalles-Potles V 354–366; – Bescheid: PG 111, 1116–1120 and Rhalles-Potles V 366–368.

² Ehrhard 79, 1. 89; – DTC IV 264–265 (L. Petit); – LTK III 202 (A. Michel); – DHGE XIV 208–210 (J. Darrouzès); – G. Garitte, Narratio de rebus Armeniae, Louvain 1952 (im Kommentar ausführliche Diskussion des gesamten Zuteilungsproblems mit kritischer Sichtung der Literatur).

Running this through ChatGPT gives us:

A favourite of the emperor Constantine VIII, and especially of the emperor Romanos Argyros, was Demetrius, metropolitan of Cyzicus. In 1028 he is attested by his signature on a synodal decree. In 1037 he became involved, unsuccessfully, in a conspiracy against the patriarch.

He is probably the author of an “Abbreviated Exposition of the Doctrine of the Jacobites,” which he claims to have composed at the commission of the emperor Constantine and dedicated to him. From the conclusion of the treatise it emerges that he had already previously delivered an opinion on the same subject.  Note that the treatise has nothing to do with the much-discussed Narratio de rebus Armeniae , nor does Demetrius have anything to do with the composition of the invectives against the Armenians attributed to Isaac (pp. 533 and 628). The fact that these three different literary works were brought into connection with one another is due solely to unfortunate bibliographical circumstances.

Demetrius also distinguished himself as a canonist. We know of a Meletē (=study/treatise) on degrees of kinship, and of a canonical ruling concerning a special case involving degrees of kinship. Five, perhaps six, logoi (=discourses) concerning various legal questions are still unpublished.²

  • Against the Jacobites : PG 127, 878–885 (under the name of Philippos Monotropos); missing the beginning and ending: G. Ficker, The Decrees of Patriarch Alexios Studites , Kiel 1911, 22–23; the meletē : PG 119, 1097–1116 and Rhalles–Potles V 354–366; the canonical ruling: PG 111, 1116–1120 and Rhalles–Potles V 366–368.

² Ehrhard 79, 1. 89; DTC IV 264–265 (L. Petit); LTK III 202 (A. Michel); DHGE XIV 208–210 (J. Darrouzès); G. Garitte, Narratio de rebus Armeniae , Louvain 1952 (with a detailed discussion in the commentary of the entire problem of attribution, with a critical review of the literature).

Note that the abbreviations in the above are:

This article is a start.  It is shorter than it needs to be, as is perhaps inevitable in so wide a survey of authors.  It clearly draws upon the old DGHE article which goes into much more detail.  It is also notable for the sheer age of the material referenced, even allowing that Beck’s article itself is now seventy years old.  The vague “bibliographical circumstances” are simply the accident that the three texts all appeared one after another in one manuscript and the first editor ascribed them all to Demetrius.  

A kind commenter drew my attention to an interesting article by Zachary Chitwood in GRBS 54 (2014) (online here, pp.300-301) which manages to cover a lot of the background to Demetrius’ anti-Jacobite text in a footnote: 

The introductory and closing paragraphs of the text are printed in Ficker, Erlasse 22–23, while the rest of the text corresponds to PG 127.880–884. The text printed in PG is erroneously ascribed to “Philippus Solitarius” instead of Demetrios of Kyzikos (the likely author); see Dagron, TravMém 6 (1976) 201 n.108; Ficker, Erlasse 23; an analysis of the text and a German translation in Benner, Die syrisch-jakobitische Kirche 123–136.

Abbreviations again: TravMém = G. Dagron, Travaux et Mémoires.  Ficker = G. Ficker, Erlasse des Patriarchen von Konstantinopel Alexios Studites (Kiel 1911).  The Benner item is a thesis, from 1990, which exists in PDF but curiously is not on Academia or somewhere like that.

So we now know something.

A poem addressed to Demetrius, Metropolitan of Cyzicus

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Our obscure 11th century Greek cleric, Demetrius, Metropolitan of Cyzicus, had the good fortune to have a poem addressed to him by Christopher of Mytilene.  The latter was a contemporary poet who wrote a collection, Various Verses, of which this poem is number 22.  Even more fortunately the collection then had the good fortune to be edited and translated in the excellent Dumbarton Oaks series:

  • Floris Bernard and Christopher Livanos, eds. and trans., The Poems of Christopher of Mytilene and John Mauropous, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 50 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018).

This reprints the 1903 Kurtz edition with an English translation and commentary.1

Christopher’s verses do not seem to have been popular.  As the editors remark:

Only one manuscript transmits the collection in its entirety: Grottaferrata Z.α.XXIX, which was copied in the thirteenth century, in a milieu of Greek-speaking poets in southern Italy. This manuscript is heavily damaged, because, as Christopher himself seems to have foreseen in poem 103, mice ate away at the book. As often in Byzantine manuscripts, the verse lines were laid out in two columns, to be read from left to right. Since the lacunas often extend over more or less one column, in many poems every other verse is lost. Fortunately, there are some Byzantine poetic anthologies that include dispersed poems of Christopher (mostly not, or wrongly, attributed), which help to reconstruct the complete text. However, those poems transmitted only in the Grottaferrata manuscript remain in their sorry state.

Here is the translation of the poem:

22. To Demetrios, the metropolitan of Kyzikos, on his gout

Why do you moan about everything so long and so often?
It is your feet that suffer, gout that consumes you.
Up against these pains, hold the garlands
woven for you by the long-lasting diseases,
whose bitter afflictions you endure—
a disciple of Job, the long-suffering.
Raise your spirits with hopes of trophies,
and do not, do not appear, by the very Trinity,
to be lesser than petty sufferings, you winner of all!
The man proven greater than any passion of the soul,
who has overpowered the principalities and powers of darkness,
and erected a great victory monument in his life,
that man . . .
And where is the sharp mind of Demetrios?
. . .
Let faith be the razor-sharp blade
. . .
let hope be the shield, and divine protection the spear
. . .
. . .
the malicious disease that has attacked you
. . .
and shoots its arrows one after the other
. . .
the vile one, not tolerating those who trample upon him,
. . .
but you should firmly trample on him once more.
. . .
and shatter him; and even if he bites again.
. . .
if you endure the scratches until the end
. . . for praise,
looking at the future and ignoring the present.

Rather outside our period, but interesting to see, and especially to learn about the effect that mice can have on a manuscript of poetry.

  1. E. Kurtz, Die Gedichte des Christophoros Mytilenaios, Leipzig: Neumann (1903), p.13 (poem 22). [↩]

Demetrius, Metropolitan of Cyzicus, “Expositio Breuiter Doctrinae Iacobitarum” – Full Greek text edited

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Independent scholar Alex Hourani tells me that he has created a Greek text  from manuscripts of a largely unpublished medieval text.  The anti-heretical work, which is referred to under various titles, was composed between 1026-28 by the deeply obscure Demetrius, Metropolitan of Cyzicus. What little is known about him can apparently be found in H.­G. Beck, Kirche und theologische Literatur im Byzantinischen Reich (Munich, 1959), p.532, although I have not looked.1  A page at Dumbarton Oaks tells us that Demetrius was appointed syncellus in 1029, and later made oikonomos of the Great Church, sometime before April 1032.

His Greek text is here:

The text is there entitled “Expositio Breuiter Doctrinae Iacobitarum” (ἔκθεσις κατ᾿ ἐπιτομὴν τοῦ τῶν Ἰακωβιτῶν δόγματος καὶ τῶν ἀλλων ὧν ποιοῦσι παρὰ τὴν ἐκκλησιαστικὴν καὶ ὀρθόδοξον πίστιν τε καὶ παράδοσιν, “An exposition in summary form of the doctrine of the Jacobites and of the other things which they do contrary to the ecclesiastical and orthodox faith and tradition, written by Demetrios, Metropolitan of Cyzicus“).

However it is also referred to sometimes as “Liber de rebus Armeniae (contra Iacobitas),” and a shortened version of it appears under that title in Patrologia Graeca 127, cols. 880-84, where it is wrongly attributed to Philippus Solitarius. The text was printed from MS. Paris gr. 1315.2

The old McClintock and Strong article on Philip the Solitary mentions the work, and an AI search tells me that the 1648 Combefis editio princeps labelled it “De Fide et Coeremoniis Armeniorum, Jacobitarum, Chatzitzacriorum et Romanorum seu Francorum”.3.

A list of manuscripts appears in the Pinakes database here.  Hourani’s text is from MS Real Biblioteca Escorial R. I. 15, MS Sinai Greek 1795, and MS Heidelberg Cod. Pal. Graec. 356, ff. 129-132v. These include a preface indicating that it was composed at the request of Constantine VIII (1025-1028).

There is a discussion and summary of the text in German, see T. H. Benner, “Die syrischjakobitische Kirche unter byzantinischer Herrschaft im 10. und 11. Jahrhundert” (PhD diss., Marburg, Philipps­Universität, 1989), 123–26; see also Z. Chitwood, “The Patriarch Alexios Stoudites and the Reinterpretation of Justinianic Legislation against Heretics,” GRBS 54 (2014): 300–301.4

The work is of interest as the first text to explain the term “Melchite”.  Dr H. has also drafted an interesting article on the origins of the term which is on Academia here.  Here is the relevant passage (I have slightly revised the translation which is very literal):

4.  τοῦ τοίνυν δηλωθέντος Ἰακώβου τὸ τοῦ Εὐτυχοῦς δόγμα πεπαῤῥησιασμένως κηρύττοντος, σχίσμα γέγονεν ἐν τοῖς Σύροις. καὶ οἱ μὲν Ὀρθόδοξοι οἰ τῇ συνόδῳ καὶ τῷ βασιλεῖ Μαρκιανῷ ἀκολουθήσαντες, ἐκλήθησαν Μελχῖται· ὡς φρονοῦντες τὰ τοῦ ὀρθοδόξου βασιλέως. ἐπεὶ μελχὶ λέγεται καθ’ Ἐβραίους καὶ Σύρους ὁ βασιλεὺς. οἱ δὲ Εὐτυχιανισταὶ καὶ ἐπὶ τούτοις Μονοθελῆται, οἱ τῷ μοναχῷ Ἰακώβῳ τῷ εὐτελεῖ καὶ ἀνωνύμῳ Σύρῳ πεισθέντες, ὠνομάσθησαν Ἰακωβῖται. καὶ ἔκτοτε μέχρι τοῦ νῦν, οὕτως ἀπ’ ἐκείνου καλοῦνται.

4.  This Jacob preached the doctrine of Eutyches outspokenly, and a schism happened among the Syrians. The orthodox, who followed the synod and the emperor Marcian, were called Melchites, as if they held to the opinions of the orthodox emperor, because a king is called “melchi” according to the Hebrews and the Syrians.  The Eutychianists and also the Monothelites who were persuaded by Jacob, the worthless monk and nameless Syrian, were called Jacobites. Since that time, and until now, they are called as such after him.

Here’s a DeepSeek output for the first section of the text:

An exposition in summary form of the doctrine of the Jacobites and of the other things which they do contrary to the ecclesiastical and orthodox faith and tradition; written by Demetrios, Metropolitan of Cyzicus; at the prompting of the Christ-loving lord Constantine, the purple-born emperor; in which there is also (a section) concerning the Chatzitzarioi:—

(1) Since God has bestowed upon the world your nature, that transcends nature and is truly most kingly as a choice possession, O good-loving lord; and having granted to your might the readiness in all things; in you alone of all men He wondrously mingled things that cannot be mingled: kingship and teaching; the flower of the purple and the power of words; and for this reason you have already turned many of the Hebrews from the error handed down from their fathers; and you have refuted no few of the Athinganoi and Paulicians; and you yourself have been deemed worthy to become the mouth of God, according to the divine oracles; for He who brings out, it says, the worthy from the unworthy, “as my mouth shall he be”.

But now the great and burning zeal for God has stirred you up also to the refutation of the Jacobites; so that these too, holding distorted and blasphemous doctrines, may not escape notice, creeping in under the guise and skin of sheep as wolves, and falsely calling themselves orthodox. In clear and concise language I shall set before your majesty the matters concerning their heresy from the books of the Fathers; adding also the matters concerning the Chatzitzarioi, just as you commanded. And the affairs of the Jacobites stand as follows. …

The “Chatzitzarioi” or Staurolatrians5 seem to be an Armenian cross-worshipping judaising group of the period.

Always interesting to see bits like this.

The seal of Demetrius of Cyzicus
  1. James Morton, “Law and Orthodoxy under the Komnenoi”, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 76 (2022), 145-162, p.151, n.32.  Online here.[↩]
  2. Bernadette Martin-Hisard, “Le discours des Georgiens sur leur orthodoxie: les heretiques Armeniens et Pierre le Foulon (VIIe-XIIe S.)”, in: Rivista di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici 47 (2010) 195-264, p.243, n.204.[↩]
  3. François Combefis, Novum Auctarium Graeco-Latinae Bibliothecae Patrum, Volume 2, columns 261ff, Paris, 1648, but I have been unable to access the book.[↩]
  4. Morton, q.v., n.33.[↩]
  5. Andreas Rhoby, “Byzantine Greek Words in English Vocabulary?” online here.[↩]

The texts of critical editions under French law are not subject to copyright?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An interesting post on Twitter by Gregory Crane of the Perseus project leads to some interesting finds:

The Scaife viewer build on work by @PonteIneptique. It would be easy to import the texts into gitlab.inria.fr/almanach/cllg/ from @ThesLingGraecae. We have chosen not to do so but there is no copyright at play. Here are the biggest 20 not yet in Perseus….

Thibault Clérice seems to be the main man here.  Inria seems to be doing some very useful things.   The Corpus Liberatum Linguae Graecae site at gitlab:

The CLLG Freed Corpus is a free XML-TEI corpus of Ancient Greek texts derived from the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG) E CD-ROM.
It has been transformed using Diogenes and enriched with Dapytains-compatible citation structures.

The corpus is developed within the CLLG project, funded by the Programme Inria Quadrant at Inria.

The corpus is tested with HookTest.

With the interesting postscript:

Texts are distributed under French law, which holds that the texts of critical editions are not subject to copyright protection, as they do not constitute an expression of the editor’s personality (CA Paris, Pôle 5, 2ème Ch., 9 June 2017, no. 16/00005).

The Cour d’appel de Paris judgement is here, but I have not tried to read it.  It seems to be a case where a publisher, Libraire Droz, sued another publisher, Libraire Classiques Garnier.  Droz lost.  AI Overview:

In CA Paris, Pôle 5, 2ème Ch., 9 June 2017, no. 16/00005, the Paris Court of Appeal confirmed that a publisher cannot claim copyright protection over public-domain medieval texts when the transcription involves no original creative input.

Lack of Originality: The court held that Librairie Droz did not perform a creative or transformative editorial adaptation on the underlying medieval texts. Transcribing, retranscribing, or applying standard paleographic methods (like fixing punctuation or abbreviations) to public domain material does not imprint the work with the author’s personality.

Copyright Infringement Rejected: Because the texts lacked the originality required to qualify as works of the mind (œuvres de l’esprit), the infringement (contrefaçon) and damages claims by Librairie Droz were dismissed.

Even more interesting is CoMMA:

…a large-scale corpus of medieval manuscripts produced through automatic text recognition. The corpus contains around 2.5b tokens drawn from more than 23,000 digitized manuscripts in Latin and Old French, harvested via IIIF. Unlike other resources, it is made of raw, non-normalized text enriched with layout analysis in various formats.

A PDF describing this is here.  It does say:

For medieval manuscripts in Western languages, recognition accuracy is increasingly limited, not by models but by the availability of ground-truth data, with current error rates often below 10%.

10% is a big error rate, tho.  Even 1% is painful in OCR.  But it’s a massive step forward.

I see other projects which are bootlegging the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae.  The TLG is run by the excellent Maria Pantelia, who relies on subscriptions to hire people to transcribe texts.  So I have very mixed feelings here.  The TLG is wonderful and necessary.  It needs that revenue stream until the project is complete.

Much as I want to see everything available to everyone freely, I agree with Gregory Crane.  I’m not going to do things that might injure the TLG.  Nobody else should do so either.  Let Dr Pantelia carry out her mission.  The world will not end if we have to manage for a few more years until she’s done.

In general, if there are people out there producing stuff that promotes the classics, patristics, the ancient world, let them enjoy the income from their labour.  Heaven knows there isn’t huge money to be made.  A few PDFs for use by the poor people, of books that are sold at hundreds of dollars; that is one thing.  That won’t affect the publisher revenue stream.  But let’s not wreck projects like the TLG.

Update (26 Sep 2026): I learn from a twitter post by Gregory Crane that “the EU allows nations to copyright editions for up to but not more than 30 years.”

The regulation in question is article 5 of the EU Copyright Term Directive (Directive 2006/116/EC, originally 1993/98/EC) (Download PDF here).   The regulation is optional, however.  Relevant extract:

An AI search (caution!) tells me that only Germany – inevitably – and Estonia have implemented it.  No doubt the German government – which seems to be completely subservient to the publishing industry – drew up this foolish clause.

From My Diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I have a pile of things to write about on my desktop, but domestic trivia keep getting in the way.

I need to decide what to do about the letters of Aeneas of Gaza, now that I know these are at roman-letters.org, with the Greek and an AI-assisted translation from it.  I intended to translate the Italian translation, and took some steps towards it.  What now?

A couple of articles and theses deserve short articles.  One is on the Septizonium in Rome, something always dear to my heart.  Who knew that detailed plans existed of all three levels of the monument?

I need to do something about Coptic texts, and the White Monastery.  I read a lot about this, and it ought to be written up.  There’s some translations in the Liturgy of the Hours that deserve attention.  And so on.

As the days draw in, these all will become easier to work on.  Although I find that I have already booked my Christmas meal, and that this no longer seems very far away.  How the days rush past!

More importantly, I’m also preparing for a short holiday by the sea in a couple of weeks.  As ever, the preparations for the holiday take longer than the holiday itself.  They will no doubt consume most of the intervening time.

The plans are more complicated this year.  Usually I drive to the destination, which means that I can take a car-full of things with me.  But I have  recently discovered that I now cannot drive more than a couple of hours without starting to become dizzy.  I have no idea why.  Is it connected to my new car, perhaps, acquired only in February at a time when I definitely did not have this problem?  Or is it me, little health niggles turning into something more serious?  Whatever the case, this is a new problem, unwelcome, and a bit worrying.  It means that a five hour drive is out of the question.  So this time we are going to take the train, and then hire a car for the last hour of the journey.  More expensive by a mile, but safer.

However it is a long time since I took the train anywhere.  So next week, I shall carry out a reconnaissance.  I will buy a day return covering the first part of the route, just to ensure that I have no problems doing that, and to spy out the facilities – toilets, food, etc – along the way.

Other tasks proliferate, and absorb time with urgent tasks that matter nothing once complete. Other things are more important.  All of them seem to take longer these days.  This afternoon vanished, for instance, getting my car valeted, and steam-cleaned internally.

Four years ago, I moved out of my house to a rented bungalow in the country.  This proved to be in poor repair in important ways – it had a leak in the roof! – and it was damp.  None of this was apparent in high summer when I took it.  So I was obliged to return.  My books were thoroughly jumbled by being packed and unpacked twice.  I did not expect to remain here long, so I took various short-cuts and double-banked the books.  But this had the consequence that I could never find anything.  A week or two back, I finally gave in, brought two book cases back into the house, and un-double-banked the books.  I had not expected this, but I found that I was remarkably pleased to see them all at last!  You can only be temporary for so long, and four years is too long.

Another task left over from the move was to connect up my parents’ hi-fi system.  I keep it because all the LPs from my college days live underneath, stored more conveniently than they could be anywhere else.  But I have never plugged it in since I returned, because I never use it.  All my music is on MP3 these days.  Anyway, that too is done, and after a day of struggle, I managed to play CDs, LPs, cassettes and tune to the radio once more.  Although it is remarkable how awful analogue hi-fis were, and are.

This has led me to look at the three boxes of cassettes that I still have.  Most of these are things recorded from LP at college, to save money.  Such albums I have long since purchased on CD.  But a few of them are unique.  There are demos from two bands that never “made it”, but that I cherish in memory.  There are a few bootlegs on cassette.  These I need to transfer to digital format.  This is fighting me mightily, but I intend to prevail.

I think that I do need that holiday.  It’s too easy to turn life into a treadmill.

Translations at Luke J. Stevens

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Luke J. Stevens is an independent researcher who is publishing interesting material in the JTS, JECS and other significant journals.  Thankfully this is all accessible through his personal website, and also at Academia.

But even better than this, he has made accessible some draft translations of some unusual patristic texts.  (I’ve added CPL numbers where I could find them)

The Dionysius bar Salibi is from the CSCO Latin translation rather than direct from the Syriac, but none the worse for that.

Everyone should do this with their draft translations.  Grab them while they’re hot!

Did Pierius sacrifice?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The Acts of St Phileas record the events of 305 AD during the Great Persecution under Diocletian.  An ancient Latin translation exists, but in the 20th century two Greek versions of the Acts were discovered.  These  are in the Bodmer papyrus 20 (= Bo), and a different version in the Chester Beatty papyrus 15 (= Be).

The Bodmer version Bo begins as follows.  The translation us by H. Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (1972), pp. 330-1:

1. The defence speech of Phileas, bishop of Thmuis and ruler of Alexandria, when he appeared for the fifth time in court and was thenceforth consummated.

Now at the time of his first defence, after many insults on the part of the prefect, much disturbance, and rackings by the legionaries even beyond the fourth peg, he was cast [into prison? ] at Thmuis for two days. Then going about in chains and with bare feet . . . he came to Alexandria and was cast into prison…

2. Though insulted and beaten, he did not flinch. Similarly at his third and fourth appearances, after many insults and blows, Phileas was told: ‘You have killed many men by not sacrificing. Pierius saved many by submitting.’ (Πιέριος πολλοὺς ἔσωσεν ὑποταγείς.)

Summoned for a fifth time, together with the clergy who were with him to the number of twenty, Phileas was asked by the prefect: ‘Can you now be reasonable?’

Phileas answered: ‘I am always reasonable, and I exercise myself in good sense.’

‘Sacrifice to the gods,’ said the prefect.

‘I will not,’ said Phileas.

Culcianus said: ‘Why? .. .’

Now Jerome tells us of a famous biblical scholar of the name of Pierius in  his De Viris Illustribus c.76:

Pierius, presbyter of the church at Alexandria in the reign of Carus and Diocletian, at the time when Theonas ruled as bishop in the same church, taught the people with great success and attained such elegance of language and published so many treatises on all sorts of subjects (which are still extant) that he was called Origen Junior. He was remarkable for his self-discipline, devoted to voluntary poverty, and thoroughly acquainted with the dialectic art. After the persecution, he passed the rest of his life at Rome. There is extant a long treatise of his, On the prophet Hosea which from internal evidence appears to have been delivered on the vigil of Passover.

Eusebius in his Church History book 7 c. 32 mentions him:

Among those nearest our times, we have known Pierius, of the presbyters in Alexandria, and Meletius, bishop of the churches in Pontus, – rarest of men. The first was distinguished for his life of extreme poverty and his philosophic learning, and was exceedingly diligent in the contemplation and exposition of divine things, and in public discourses in the church. Meletius, whom the learned called the “honey of Attica,” was a man whom every one would describe as most accomplished in all kinds of learning; and it would be impossible to admire sufficiently his rhetorical skill. It might be said that he possessed this by nature; but who could surpass the excellence of his great experience and erudition in other respects? For in all branches of knowledge had you undertaken to try him even once, you would have said that he was the most skillful and learned. Moreover, the virtues of his life were not less remarkable. We observed him well in the time of the persecution, when for seven full years he was escaping from its fury in the regions of Palestine.

He is also mentioned by Photius (Bibliotheca 119), who had ten of his homilies  before him, and who quotes him.  There is also something among the fragments of Philip of Side.  Palladius in the Lausiac History cc. 12 and 143 tells us that the hermit Ammonius, in the Nitrian desert recited numerous passages of his writing, and St Silvia of Aquitaine on her pilgrimage to the Holy Land studied his commentaries.

Further details can be found in the article by G. Fritz in the old Dictionaire de théologie catholique 12.2 (1935), col. 1744-6 (Online here).  This suggests that Pierius may indeed have spent his final years at Rome, either to avoid the very long and severe persecution at Alexandria, or else to avoid the “decidedly anti-Origenist” Patriarch Peter I, who had succeeded the more tolerant Theonas in 300 and who travelled rather than be martyred.  When the DTC article was written, the Bodmer papyrus was still unknown, so it is interesting to see this opinion.

The discovery of the Bodmer papyrus therefore alters our perception of this man.  In Barns and Chadwick, “A letter ascribed to Peter of Alexandria” JTS NS 24 (1973) 443-455 (JSTOR), we find:

It was natural for the church to remember with pride the names and ‘birthdays’ of the martyrs who had died in the great persecution, and equally natural that the names of apostates were not recorded. Lapse, whether by preference or by weakness, had taken them out of the community, and there could be nothing but grief and embarrassment in the later recall of their concession to diabolical forces. No one had a motive for advertising their number or even existence. There was every reason to hush up the awkward facts, especially if the apostate had been a divine of some eminence like Pierius.2 Poor Pierius had to leave Alexandria and spend the rest of his days in quiet obscurity somewhere in Rome, which was a large enough place to get lost in.

The footnote reads:

2. His lapse is now certain from the Bodmer papyrus of the Acts of S. Phileas. At his trial Phileas was told ‘You have killed many men by not sacrificing: Pierius saved many by submitting’. See Herbert Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (1972), pp. 330-1. Jerome (de vir. inl. 76) says that ‘after the persecution Pierius lived the rest of his life in Rome’. In view of Pierius’ lapse it is remarkable that there was a church named after him at Alexandria, mentioned in the list given by Epiphanius (Panarion 69. 2. 4. Ill p. 153 Holl). Perhaps the existence of this church (perhaps a house-church that was originally the private property of Pierius himself?) may have made possible the later legend that Pierius was martyred in the persecution, attested in the Latin martyrologies of Ado (PL vol. 123, col. 390, for 4 Nov.) and Usuard (p. 335 Dubois) and also in Photius (Bibl. cod. 118 and 119).

That sounds rather plausible, but does the evidence stack up?  Reducing the claim to bullet-points, we end up with this:

  1.  One version – only – of the Acts of Phileas says a certain Pierius “conformed”.  We may reasonably assume this means “sacrificed.”
  2. This Pierius must be the famous one.
  3. Jerome tells us that the famous Pierius left Alexandria and spent the end of his life in Rome.

That’s a wee bit feeble for my liking.

Everything depends on whether we think that the “Pierius” must be the exegete, and whether the editor of the Acts had this information, or whether it was inserted for other reasons.  I find it hard to think of Jerome endorsing someone who sacrificed without mentioning it.  The bitter Origenist disputes, which started from 400 onwards, might put Pierius, as “Origen the Younger”, very much in the cross-hairs.  Jerome was an anti-Origenist.  The editor of the Bodmer version of the Acts of Phileas may have been also, depending on when this version was created.

I suspect that a single word in a single edition of a later hagiographical text is perhaps not enough evidence to show that Pierius did sacrifice.

Can you, must you for your own safety, keep a slave if you are an ascetic and renounce all your possessions?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A truly interesting and very well-written article has appeared in Early Medieval History this month.  Fortunately it is open-access.  The article is

T. Dailey & Justin Piggott, “Ascetics, slaves, and necessity in Late Antiquity: renouncing all wealth, but for a single slave”, Early Medieval Europe 34 (2026); https://doi.org/10.1111/emed.70055

It can be found online here.  Unfortunately the page numbers do not seem to be given on the website.  Here’s the abstract:

Slave owners in Late Antiquity viewed the possession of at least one slave to be a necessity and a defining mark that distinguished the dignified social classes from the poor. Ascetics who shared this perspective faced a choice when renouncing all worldly possessions in pursuit of spiritual perfection, one not merely about luxury, but also about status and perhaps even survival. Hagiographic literature and monastic rules reveal that the embrace of the ascetic life, in eremitic and coenobitic contexts alike, was often assumed to accommodate the retention of a single slave as a personal attendant.

That is the argument: that asceticism did not exclude having a slave, and indeed for elite people, required it as a signifier of social status.

The article is very well written and compelling, and the illustrations are also interesting.  Here is an excerpt.

High-status individuals of the late Roman world regarded the ownership of at least one slave as a necessity. Indeed, the ephemeral appearance of slaves in hagiographic narratives indicates that their literary function secured the high social status of their protagonist. By retaining one slave, an ascetic addressed the fear that total renunciation might destabilize their social status, in a manner distinct from other forms of wealth.8

Such sentiments appear in a story about the mistreatment of Fructuosus. According to his seventh-century Life,9 when he became separated from his entourage while praying in a secluded place in the woods, Fructuosus found himself confronted by a passing peasant. Alone, dressed in humble clothing, and with no other visible markers of his status, he was taken to be a runaway slave. The peasant shouted abuse and even struck the saint, who faced the risk of enslavement in a society that had particularly strong laws on the reclamation of runaway slaves.10

The Life, however, presented the peasant as behaving irrationally, under demonic influence, and the tension in the scene ended when the saint exorcized his assailant, who was miraculously restored to his senses. Divine intervention thus rescued Fructuosus from the unthinkable fate of equivalent treatment to a slave.

9. Life of St Fructuosus, c. 11, ed. M.C. Díaz y Díaz, La vida de San Frutuoso de Braga. Estudio y edición crítica (Braga, 1974).

St Fructuosus was previously unknown to me, but he is one of the Visigothic saints, belonging to the early 7th century.  The critical edition referenced is not accessible to me, and indeed this article states that it is “quite difficult to access.”1

The “Life” itself is apparently BHL 3194; CPL 1293; old Latin text in PL 87, cols 459-70.  Fortunately an English translation exists in the TTH series by A. T. Fear, Lives of the Visigothic Fathers, Liverpool (1997), p. 123-144.  Chapter 11, p.133, with an interesting footnote:

…. But, as we have said, when he was on that part of his journey which passed through the lands of Idanha-a-Velha, it happened that all the companions of the blessed man went ahead of him a little way,47 while he stopped in a secluded place in the woods, hidden away in the thick forests, and prayed a short while. While he lay prostrate in prayer, the Ancient Enemy, ever envious of all good men, swiftly brought a boorish countryman possessed by madness to the place where the man of God was praying. When he had seen the man of God from afar, catching sight of him alone amongst the trees, dressed in poor clothes with unshod, naked feet, as he had a peasant’s mind he despised him for his poor clothing and because of his mad rashness drew closer. Thinking Fructuosus a runaway slave, the peasant abused him with shameless words and did not delay to insult him with all kinds of vile expressions.48 But when the man of God replied to him with a tranquil mind, ‘I am clearly not a runaway’, the peasant, thinking on the contrary that he certainly was one, goaded by the impulse of the devil, struck him a blow with the staff he was carrying in his hands. The man of God bore this patiently, but the other did not cease from striking him, so soon he made the sign of the cross to him. At once the demon left the woodsman and passed into the earth,49 dashing him prostrate before the feet of the holy man and wounding him to such a degree in its fury that after cruelly lacerating him it left him lying in a pool of his own blood. 50 However, the man of God at once prayed and restored him to his previous state of health without any difficulty.

48.  Part of the problem might have been Fructuosus’ unkempt appearance. This probably involved growing his hair long, which was the sign of a slave – see LV 9.1.5 where it is made an offence to cut a fugitive slave’s hair. There would have been a potential reward of at least a tremiss for the countryman had Fructuosus been an escaped slave, LV9.l.l4. The problem of runaways seems to have been a persistent teature of the Visigothic kingdom. Leovigild legislated on this matter (LV 9 .1.3) as did many of his successors. See King [1972] 162 ff.

50.  Demons characteristically injure their victims when forced from their bodies.

The article is online, 22 pages of it, and so I won’t try to summarise it.  As we all knew from our student days, the summary is at the end anyway:

Slave owners in Late Antiquity viewed the possession of at least one slave to be a necessity and a defining mark that distinguished the dignified social classes from the poor. Ascetics drawn from this background shared the same perspective, and their renunciation of all worldly possessions often stopped short of releasing every slave. In many situations, whether within a hermitage or a monastery, one personal attendant remained, perhaps under legal slavery or perhaps under a freed status that left the same asymmetrical architecture of their relationship in place while maintaining a nominal distinction. …

Slave ownership, especially in the form of personal attendance, functioned as more than an economically oriented relationship. It also marked the high status of the slave owner and defined the identity of the elite. The slave who ran away from Monegund, and the faithful Galienus who remained with Merovech to the bitter end, might have been opposites in terms of their loyalty to their owners, but they shared one essential quality: for their owners, their presence was a matter of life and death.

When late antique authors claimed, consistently and repeatedly, that one slave was a necessity for their own existence as a social elite, they revealed a rare glimpse into the ideological and practical limits of asceticism and renunciation.

So what do we make of this argument?  Argument from scattered examples always carries the risk of generalising as a universal rule what is instead a series of unrepresentative local examples.  But the claim does have the ring of truth.

In all times, members of the elite have always found ways to communicate their status, and always will.  In England social status is conveyed by accent and language rather than dress, a means of communication that can pass unobserved to those unaware of it.  For instance readers of John Wesley’s Diary will remember the scene where he is grabbed by a local landowner and marched off, “to serve his majesty” as a conscript.2  It is only when his captor draws breath that Wesley calmly points out, in elite language, and no doubt in an Oxford accent, that such conduct is illegal.  Whereupon his captor suddenly realises that his victim is not a labourer as he had thought, but a gentleman.  Consternation! –

Upon this Mr. B. lost all patience, and cried out with all his might, “Seize him, seize him! I say, seize the Preacher for His Majesty’s service.” But no one stirring, he rode up and struck several of his attendants, cursing them bitterly for not doing as they were bid.

Perceiving still that they would not move, he leaped off his horse, swore he would do it himself, and caught hold of my cassock, crying, ” I take you to serve His Majesty.” A servant taking his horse, he took me by the arm, and we walked arm in arm for about three quarters of a mile. He entertained me all the time, with the “wickedness of the fellows belonging to the society.”

When he was taking breath, I said, “ Sir, be they what they will, I apprehend it will not justify you, in seizing me in this manner, and violently carrying me away, as you said, to serve His Majesty.” He replied, “I seize you! And violently carry you away! No, Sir; no. Nothing like it. I asked you to go with me to my house, and you said you was willing; and if so, you are welcome; and if not, you are welcome to go where you please.”

I answered, “ Sir, I know not if it would be safe for me to go back through this rabble.” “ Sir,” said he, “ I will go with you myself.” He then called for his horse, and anotherfor me,and rode back with me to the place from whence he tookme.

The slave as a marker of status is quite an argument, and rather compelling.  It will be interesting to see the responses.

What struck me here was that I had never imagined that this might be the case.  It is salutary to be reminded that a few minutes time-travel to late antiquity would most certainly up-end our mental picture of that period in all sorts of ways.

  1. Hérold Pettiau, “La Vie de saint Fructueux de Braga quelques aspects de la relation entre l’ascète et la société en Espagne wisigothique”, L. Lemoine & B. Merdrignac (eds), Corona Monastica, Rennes (2004) p. 51-63.[↩]
  2. July 3, 1745.[↩]