The Greek fragments of Methodius translated in the Ante-Nicene Fathers series

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Most of the works of Methodius of Olympus (d. 311) are preserved only in Old Slavonic.  His Symposium exists in Greek, and was translated in the mid-19th century, and appears in the Ante-Nicene Fathers series in volume 6.  A modern translation by Musurillo also exists.

Three short works exist in Old Slavonic only; a fourth, De Lepra, also has some Greek fragments.  Two long works extant in Old Slavonic, De resurrectione and De autexusio, likewise have substantial Greek fragments.

As I consider commissioning a translation of these two long works, I have to decide what to do about the Greek fragments.

I had originally intended to commission a translation of these also.  But I am still having difficulty getting a satisfactory version of De lepra together.  Obviously it helps to have someone who knows both Slavonic and Greek to do both sides; but this I do not have.

Instead I have two translators working independently, a process that masks the correspondences between the two versions.  But the Greek is often fuller than the Slavonic; so one can’t just ignore it.

Recently Andrew Eastbourne courteously drew my attention to the fact that the ANF translators also translated the fragments extant in Greek.  This I had either not known, or had forgotten.  I need to see what is there; and this post will document that.

The ANF series is an American pirate edition of the Ante-Nicene Christian Library series commissioned by the Scottish firm of T. & T. Clarke in the 1860’s.  A list of the volumes is here, and so I learn that Methodius was vol. XIV, which is accessible at Google Books here.

Looking at the ANCL volume, I find more information than is included in the ANF.  The translator was Rev. William Clark, M.A., vicar of St Mary Magdalen in Taunton, and he includes a preface to Methodius, seemingly omitted from the ANF (or at least the online OCR of it), which I reproduce here:

INTRODUCTION.

METHODIUS, who is also called Eubulius,[1] was first of all bishop simultaneously of Olympus and Patara, in Lycia, as is testified by several ancient writers.[2] He was afterwards removed, according to St Jerome, to the episcopal see of Tyre in Phoenicia, and at the end of the latest of the great persecutions of the Church, about the year 312, he suffered martyrdom at Chalcis in Greece. Some consider that it was at Chalcis in Syria, and that St Jerome’s testimony ought to be thus understood, as Syria was more likely to be the scene of his martyrdom than Greece, as being nearer to his diocese. Others affirm that he suffered under Decius and Valerian; but this is incorrect, since he wrote not only against Origen long after the death of Adamantius, but also against Porphyry, whilst he was alive, in the reign of Diocletian.

Methodius is known chiefly as the antagonist of Origen; although, as has been pointed out, he was himself influenced in no small degree by the method of Origen, as may be seen by his tendency to allegorical interpretations of Holy Scripture. The only complete work of this writer which has come down to us is his Banquet of the Ten Virgins, a dialogue of considerable power and grace, in praise of the virginal life. His antagonism to Origen, however, comes out less in this than in his works On the Resurrection, and On Things Created. The treatise On Free Will is, according to recent critics, of doubtful authorship, although the internal evidence must be said to confirm the ancient testimonies which assign it to Methodius. His writings against Porphyry, with the exception of some slight fragments, are lost, as are also his exegetical writings.

For the larger fragments we are indebted to Epiphanius (Haeres. 64), and Photius (Bibliotheca, 234-37).

Combefis published an edition of his works in 1644; but only so much of the Banquet as was contained in the Bibliotheca of Photius. In 1656 Leo Allatius published for the first time a complete edition of this work at Rome from the Vatican MS.  Combefis in 1672 published an edition founded chiefly upon this; and his work has become the basis of ali subsequent reprints.

The following translation has been made almost entirely from the text of Migne, which is generally accurate, and the arrangement of which has been followed throughout. The edition of Jahn in some places rearranges the more fragmentary works, especially that On the Resurrection; but, although his text was occasionally found useful in amending the old readings, and in improving the punctuation, it was thought better to adhere in general to the text which is best known.

A writer who was pronounced by St Epiphanius[3] to be ανὴρ λόγιος καὶ σφόδρα περὶ τῆς ἀληθείας ἀγωνιστάμενος, and by St Jerome, disertissimus martyr,[4] who elsewhere speaks of him as one who nitidi compositique sermonis libros confecit,[5] cannot be altogether unworthy the attention of the nineteenth century.

1. St Epiph., Haeres. 64, sec. 63.

2. St Hieronymus, De viris illust. c. 83.

3. Epiph. Haer. 64, sec. 63.

4.  Hieron. Comm. in Dan. c. 13.

5. Id. De vir. ill. c. 83. Many more such testimonies will be found collected in the various editions of his works in Greek.

Now this is very useful to me, because it identifies the texts used.  The Migne edition is the Patrologia Graeca volume 18 and the Jahn edition of 1865 is online also.  The PG edition starts with an introduction to Methodius, in Latin, followed by a collection of testimonia.  Both were clearly used by Mr Clark as the source for his own remarks.

The fragments begin on column 239 (p.125 of the PDF above), rather than the 229 of Migne’s table of contents, and it looks as if Mr Clark simply translated from the top.

The first item in sequence is fragments of De libero arbitrio (= De autexusio = On free will), col.239-266, based on three chunks: material from Meursius; Photius codex 236; and then material from Sirmond.  The Meursius and Sirmond material is no doubt from Greek miscellaneous manuscripts.

The ANCL translates exactly this in order on p.120-138.  On p.136 is a significant note, however:

The whole of this work, as preserved, is in a very fragmentary state. We have followed Migne in general, as his edition is most widely known, and but little is gained by adopting Jahn’s, which is somewhat more complete.—Tr.

For the ANCL little may be gained; but for us, we will need those extras; and potentially the modern edition, in the GCS series, will have more again.

Looking at Jahn, I find that the volume has no table of contents, in common with other volumes produced in that period for the convenience of the editor rather than the reader.  De autexusio appears on p.54 f. Variants for De autexusio appear on p.117 (!).  It looks as if Jahn has essentially used the same materials, but run them together.  There might be additional sources used, it’s hard to tell.  In fact Migne is far clearer, in his pre-critical edition, on what he is using and from where, than Jahn is.

De resurrectione appears on Migne col. 266, ANCL p.139, and p.64 of Jahn.

A fragment on Jonah is next, from Combefis (Migne 327, ANCL 174).

Then we have fragments from De creatis, derived from Photius (Migne 331, ANCL 176).

Then extracts from Methodius work against Porphyry, On the Martyrs, and on Simeon and Anna  (Migne, ANCL 183), and then various other fragments and supposed works, most of them omitted by Jahn.

What are we to make of this?

My first impression is, frankly, to revise my project and simply leave the Greek alone.  The only value in translating both Greek and Slavonic together is to indicate the parallels by means of translating the same word in each language in the same English way; and this is the one thing that I can’t do, since I don’t have a translator who knows both.  So what value is there, in translating the Greek again, even if we add a few more fragments?  Why not just translate the Old Slavonic, and leave the Greek?

Much of the material is from Epiphanius Panarion; so not merely do we have the ANCL translation, but we have the new Williams translation of the whole work.  We are spoiled for English translations of this material.

I will have to mull this over, but at the moment I must ask: Is it worth it?  I don’t aim to make something for scholars; I want to make something for ordinary people.  In what way will they benefit?

Much to think about over lunch today!

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The sack of Constantinople in 1453 (Part 2)

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A commenter queried the outcome of an investigation that I began in The sack of Constantinople in 1453, and asked whether the “quote” with which I started was, or was not, found in Critobulous.

Here is the Riggs’ translation of the passage describing the sack of Constantinople, which must be the passage in question (p.71 f.):

§ 237. Then a great slaughter occurred of those who happened to be there: some of them were on the streets, for they had already left the houses and were running toward the tumult when they fell unexpectedly on the swords of the soldiers; others were in their own homes and fell victims to the violence of the Janissaries and other soldiers, without any rhyme or reason; others were resisting, relying on their own courage; still others were fleeing to the churches and making supplication – men, women, and children, everyone, for there was no quarter given.

§ 238. The soldiers fell on them with anger and great wrath. For one thing, they were actuated by the hardships of the siege. For another, some foolish people had hurled taunts and curses at them from the battlements all through the siege. Now, in general they killed so as to frighten all the City, and to terrorize and enslave all by the slaughter.

§ 239.  When they had had enough of murder, and the City was reduced to slavery, some of the troops turned to the mansions of the mighty, by bands and companies and divisions, for plunder and spoil. Others went to the robbing of churches, and others dispersed to the simple homes of the common people, stealing, robbing, plundering, killing, insulting, taking and enslaving men, women, and children, old and young, priests, monks-in short, every age and class.

§ 240. There was a further sight, terrible and pitiful beyond all tragedies: young and chaste women of noble birth and well to do, accustomed to remain at home and who had hardly ever left their own premises, and handsome and lovely maidens of splendid and renowned families, till then unsullied by male eyes-some of these were dragged by force from their chambers and hauled off pitilessly and dishonorably.

§ 241. Other women, sleeping in their beds, had to endure nightmares. Men with swords, their hands bloodstained with murder, breathing out rage, speaking out murder indiscriminate, flushed with all the worst things-this crowd, made up of men from every race and nation, brought together by chance, like wild and ferocious beasts, leaped into the houses, driving them out mercilessly, dragging, rending, forcing, hauling them disgracefully into the public highways, insulting them and doing every evil thing.

§ 242. They say that many of the maidens, even at the mere unaccustomed sight and sound of these men, were terror-stricken and came near losing their very lives. And there were also honorable old men who were dragged by their white hair, and some of them beaten unmercifully. And well-born and beautiful young boys were carried off.

§ 243. There were priests who were driven along, and consecrated virgins who were honorable and wholly unsullied, devoted to God alone and living for Him to whom they had consecrated themselves. Some of these were forced out of their cells and driven off, and others dragged out of the churches where they had taken refuge and driven off with insult and dishonor, their cheeks scratched, amid wailing and lamentation and bitter tears. Tender children were snatched pitilessly from their mothers, young brides separated ruthlessly from their newly-married husbands. And ten thousand other terrible deeds were done.

§ 244. And the desecrating and plundering and robbing of the churches – how can one describe it in words? Some things they threw in dishonor on the ground – ikons and reliquaries and other objects from the churches. The crowd snatched some of these, and some were given over to the fire while others were torn to shreds and scattered at the crossroads. The last resting-places of the blessed men of old were opened, and their remains were taken out and disgracefully torn to pieces, even to shreds, and made the sport of the wind while others were thrown on the streets.

§ 245. Chalices and goblets and vessels to hold the holy sacrifice, some of them were used for drinking and carousing, and others were broken up or melted down and sold. Holy vessels and costly robes richly embroidered with much gold or brilliant with precious stones and pearls were some of them given to the most wicked men for no good use, while others were consigned to the fire and melted down for the gold.

§ 246. And holy and divine books, and others mainly of profane literature and philosophy, were either given to the flames or dishonorably trampled under foot. Many of them were sold for two or three pieces of money, and sometimes for pennies only, not for gain so much as in contempt. Holy altars were torn from their foundations and overthrown. The walls of sanctuaries and cloisters were explored, and the holy places of the shrines were dug into and overthrown in the search for gold. Many other such things they dared to do.

§ 247. Those unfortunate Romans who had been assigned to other parts of the wall and were fighting there, on land and by the sea, supposed that the City was still safe and had not suffered reverses, and that their women and children were free-for they had no knowledge at all of what had happened. They kept on fighting lustily, powerfully resisting the attackers and brilliantly driving off those who were trying to scale the walls. But when they saw the enemy in their rear, attacking them from inside the City, and saw women and children being led away captives and shamefully treated, some were overwhelmed with hopelessness and threw themselves with their weapons over the wall and were killed, while others in utter despair dropped their weapons from hands already paralyzed, and surrendered to the enemy without a struggle, to be treated as the enemy chose.

The extremely vivid language of the original quotation is not, therefore, found in the original.  I suspect that it is a modern rewriting of Critobulos.  One would have to look at “Guerdan and Halliday” to see whether that text was theirs.[1]

UPDATE: I have ordered a copy of Guerdan, so we will find out.

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  1. [1]Byzantium: its triumphs and tragedy, by R. Guerdan, trans. by D. L. B. Halliday, Allen and Unwin (1954).↩

A Coptic fragment of Severian of Gabala on Penitence via Alin Suciu

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The excellent Alin Suciu has continued his trawl through uncatalogued Coptic papyri.  The lost papyri of Louvain have attracted his attention.  A post on his blog reports the discovery of parts of a Coptic version of CPG 4186, a homily by Severian of Gabala on penitence:

Under no. 48, Lefort published an unidentified papyrus fragment which he tentatively dated to the 6th or 7th century.[1] In fact, the text can be identified as a portion from a homily on penitence by Severian of Gabala (CPG 4186). Like all the other sermons of Severian, the Greek manuscript tradition transmitted this text under the name of John Chrysostom. It is thus no wonder that the homily can be found in different modern editions of Golden Mouth’s works. For example, in Montfaucon’s edition, which was taken over by Migne in his Patrologia Graeca, the text was printed as the seventh homily on penitence by John Chrysostom (cf. PG 49, coll. 323-336).

However, the attribution of this sermon to Severian was defended on good grounds by Charles Martin.[2] He pointed out that some Patristic catenae are quoting the text under the name of its real author: Severian of Gabala. Besides, it should be remarked that the style of the document does not conform to that of John Chrysostom, but rather contains many features proper to Severian.

The Coptic text published by Lefort corresponds literally to Migne PG 49, col. 325, lines 15-25. However, as the pagination of the Louvain fragment is lost and Lefort was not able to identify its content, he mixed up the recto/verso faces.

He goes on to give the edition of the Greek and Coptic.

This kind of work is immensely valuable to have online.  Well done, Dr S!

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Autumn has arrived very early this year, with its quota of draughts in the office, and consequent colds and chills and air-conditioner wars.  I am rather preoccupied with some work-related nuisance of just this kind, so don’t expect too much from me for a bit.  But things are moving slowly forward anyway.

I’ve been corresponding with Dr Mary B. Cunningham of Nottingham University, who has translated a number of pieces by Andrew of Crete.  I had hoped that she might translate Andrew’s Encomium on St Nicholas of Myra, but sadly she is otherwise engaged.  That is perhaps unsurprising at the start of a new academic year!

However she has given me the name of a gentleman who might be interested and qualified to do it instead.  So I have written this evening to offer a commission to him.  Let’s hope that it works out.  The work is about 11 pages of Anrich, so far from huge (thankfully).

I have also commissioned a translation of another piece by Severian of Gabala: CPG 4201, “In illud: Quomodo scit litteras (John 7:15)”, text in PG 59. 643-652 = Montfaucon; Savile edition, vol. 5, 752-761.  This is rather more meaty.  But I am hoping to use the translator for the Greek side of several works by Methodius of Olympus preserved in Old Slavonic, so I do need to know that she can handle the task.

The application for grant money to translate two large works of Methodius of Olympus from Old Slavonic (and Greek where it exists) is stalled until I have sorted out a Greek translator.  However one query on the form was resolved this week by a query to the grant body.  But I need to revisit the form entirely – my answers are rather waffly at the moment, and not especially focused on answering the specific question.

Methodius “on the Leech” is still on my hard disk, and the subject of some debate between the translators of the Greek and the Slavonic.  I will try to finalise this in a few days, depending on the crud at work.

A prediction of mine, that the availability of online PDFs would lead to libraries selling off their physical books, appears to be coming true.  A correspondent drew my attention to this item. A book dealer in Oxford is advertising a complete set of the printed 19th century Patrologia Latina, all 221 volumes of it (!), for £6,000 (about $9,000).  The source is “an English cathedral library”.  The volumes have apparently hardly been opened; probably the library never allowed clergy to look at them without onerous conditions.  Now … they’ve been sold off.  Clerical libraries have often been knocked down for cash in times of decay, such as our own, to the rage and chagrin of subsequent generations, and it seems those days have come again.

But did they get very much money for it?  Well, I myself once sold a load of patristic books to that bookseller. I can tell you that I got really very little money for them (but I did get the blasted things off the floor).  We may sure that the cathedral got much less than the sum demanded; probably a couple of thousand, if that.  Ten pounds per volume?

But we may wonder who might have the shelf-space for such an item?  And … considering that they are all online, why would anyone buy it?

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Notes on Andrew of Crete’s Encomium on St Nicholas of Myra

Posted on by Roger Pearse

In all the Methodius stuff, I have not forgotten that there are many untranslated hagiographical texts about St Nicholas of Myra, or Santa Claus, which are still on my hit list.  A correspondent has written to offer help with translating Greek texts, and I recalled that the Encomium by Andrew of Crete (BHG 1362, CPG 8187) might be a possible starting point.  The work dates to the beginning of the 8th century, so might be a little early for that translator.  But we will see.

Since I have to look this up, here’s some bibliography.

Greek text:

G. Anrich, Hagios Nikolaos, der Heilige Nikolaos in der Griechischen Kirche; Texte und Untersuchungen, 2 vols, Leipzig: Teubner, 1913-17. Volume 1, p.419-428.

Patrologia Graeca 97, col. 1192-1205, where the work is given as “oration 18” of Andrew of Crete.  With Latin translation.

Translations:

German translation:  L. Heiser, “Die Festrede des Andreas von Kreta,”  in idem, Nikolaos von Myra. Heiliger der ungeteilten Christenheit, Trier, 1978, p.80-89.  I do have a copy of this, it turns out.

Partial English translation: I find by looking online that someone has made an English translation of a slab of it here, although who and from what is not clear.  There is a link at the end to the PG text, so presumably that was used, or the Latin of it.

Let’s see what comes of this.

UPDATE: I came across a useful article on Andrew of Crete this morning, which gives us a little more information.[1]

The best study of Andrew and his work is apparently S. Valhé, “Saint André de Crete“, Echos d’Orient 5 (1902), 378-87.  There are some modern articles in Greek also.  Also M.-F. Auzépy, “La carriere de André de Crete”, BZ 88 (1995) 1-12.

The Encomium may not, in fact, be by Andrew of Crete.  It seems that Anrich expressed doubts on this (154-60, 339-56) which were endorsed by N. Sevcenko in The Life of St Nicholas in Byzantine Art, Turin, 1983, p.26.  Apparently Auzépy fails to mention this question, tho.

UPDATE: Now translated.

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  1. [1]Mary B. Cunningham, “Andrew of Crete: a high-style preacher of the eighth century”, in: M. Cunningham and P. Allen, Preacher and His Audience: Studies in Early Christian and Byzantine Homiletics, 1998, 267-294.↩

From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I have just spent four hours on an application for grant funding.  I ache as much as if I had been doing manual labour!  Why is this process so awful?  I did smile, though, at the assurances that the process is not intended to be a barrier to applicants – an assurance contained in a PDF guide to applying which was itself 57 pages long!

The application is for money to translate from Old Slavonic Methodius’ De resurrectione and De autexusio, plus the Greek fragments of each, plus whatever remains of other works in Greek.  The price tag is a lot more than I can afford to spend, and the work does need doing.

After all, nobody is ever likely to translate Methodius into English again.  An academic would need Greek and Old Slavonic, and that isn’t such a common combination.  And, as we all know, the way that research funding is set up, just making a translation is not “research”.  So how does it ever get to happen?

Anyway I thought I’d see if anyone might fund the work.

It’s slightly daunting to realise that the timescale for the project is 18 months of my life!  Ouch!  I just wish I could think of some way to get some money out of it myself.  A good project is one that profits everyone.

I’ve produced a combined version of De Lepra, and I’ve today had back some comments from Ralph Cleminson on the differences between the Old Slavonic and the Greek.  I hope to work on this later today, and I hope to get it out of the door.

I rather grudge the time on that application.  I had so much useful to do, and that time is all gone.  Rats!  And I know that I need to reread that application and make sure it explicitly answers the questions asked, rather than rambling.

It’s probably all time wasted.  But I do have to try.

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Thinking about Methodius, De resurrectione and De autexusio

Posted on by Roger Pearse

This evening I combined the English translation of the Old Slavonic text of De Lepra with the translation of the Greek fragments of the same work.  The latter were considerably fuller, where I had both, and sometimes with startling differences.  However I hope to have this completed before too long.

This will complete the four short works of Methodius, leaving some Greek fragments, but also two large works: the De resurrectione and the De autexusio (On Free will).  The latter has a French translation by Vaillant.

I’ve worked out the price of translating both, and it is far beyond my means.  If it is to be done, it must be done by a grant.  Fortunately I have such a body in mind, so this evening I have been doing some calculations.

It is relatively straightforward to work out a price for the Old Slavonic of both works, based on the page count of the manuscript.  That said, Vaillant did edit the Old Slavonic text, so in this case we do have an edition to work from.

But working out a price for the Greek is much harder.  It turns out that there is an awful lot of Greek extant for these works.  The total for the Greek is 50% of the total for the Old Slavonic!

A further issue came to my attention when skimming through Vaillant’s preface.  It seems that the Old Slavonic translation is often almost unintelligible.

The reason for this, says Vaillant, is that the translator simply substituted for each Greek word the equivalent term in Old Slavonic, without bothering much about whether the resulting sentence made sense!  In fact he says that often the best thing to do is to reverse the process – to work out what Greek word lies behind each Slavonic word, and then see what the sentence actually originally meant in the Greek!

If we are to take this seriously – and translators are known to exaggerate the difficulty of their achievement sometimes, at the behest of their publishers – then this would mean that only a translator fluent in both Greek and Old Slavonic could make a translation of Methodius.  Only a native English speaker fluent in Greek and Old Slavonic could make an English translation.  Does anyone know of such a prodigy?

But I suspect that this is a tall tale.  Doubtless this may sometimes be the case; but I don’t think that I should abandon the effort of getting a translation made for such a reason.

It is late now, tho, so the application process will have to wait until another day.

One other point caught my eye.  Interestingly Vaillant refers to an unpublished French translation of an Armenian recension of De autexusio.  I wonder where that is now?

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Methodius of Olympus, On the Leech – now online in English

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The third of the short works by Methodius of Olympus, On the leech (De sanguisuaga) is now available online, thanks once again to Ralph Cleminson who has translated it from Old Slavonic for us all.  It’s an explanation of a couple of passages from the Old Testament.

Here are the files:

I have also uploaded them to Archive.org here.

As usual, I make these files and their contents public domain.  Use them in any way you like!

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A list of translations of the Orations of Libanius, at Antiochepedia

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Libanius lived in 4th century Antioch, and he knew everyone who was anyone.  His very voluminous works have not received much attention from translators.  This is probably because his works are rather dull.  Nevertheless they contain valuable data on late antique culture.  But even finding what translations exist can be a challenge.

A useful item, this, at the Antiochepedia website:

Listing of sources for translations of Libanius’ Orations

A very thorough summary of the translations of the Orations by Libanius has been prepared by Christine Lund Koch Greenlee, a graduate student at St Andrews University.

The pdf is available here.

Grab it while it’s hot!

UPDATE: The link seems a bit unreliable: here’s a mirror:

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Work is continuing on Methodius of Olympus.  There has been no progress for just over a week, thanks to a contaminated sandwich purchased at a garage, and then some other trivial but time-consuming difficulties.  It would be nice, sometimes, to be a man of independent means!

However a translation of Methodius “On the Leech” has arrived, and will appear as soon as I can edit it.

The translation of De Lepra was done a little while ago, but we have been waiting for a translation of the Greek fragments of this work.  This has arrived, but I have not been able to look at it yet.

I’m hoping that I shall be able to deal with both soon.

Before I fell ill, I had located a possible source for a grant to translate the two major works of Methodius extant in Old Slavonic.  These are sufficiently lengthy that the price is a little beyond my own purse, but it looks highly likely that a grant may be possible.

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