Severian of Gabala (fl. ca. 398 AD) was the enemy of John Chrysostom. A popular preacher at the court of Constantinople, where he preached in a pleasant Syrian accent, and favoured by the empress, he was among the various people slighted or snubbed by John Chrysostom’s officials. In consequence he became an enemy, and was one of those responsible for driving Chrysostom into exile, and ultimately to his death.
His works, ironically, have been preserved under Chrysostom’s name. They consist of exegetical sermons. Most famous among them are the six – possibly seven – homilies on Genesis 1-3, in which he takes an odd position, later advanced by Cosmas Indicopleustes. I translated homily 1 and placed it on my site; but never got any further. His position is sometimes described as “extreme literalism”; whether this is really so seems doubtful to me.
I discovered today that an upcoming English translation by Robert C. Hill was in fact published back in 2010, and is available here, at a price that seems entirely reasonable by comparison with some volumes that I have seen lately. I hope to review this volume at some point.
It has been my ambition for some time to get some of his other homilies translated. In particular I have made a number of attempts to commission a translation of De pace, “On peace”, delivered after the end of Chrysostom’s first exile and at a time of reconciliation. I have this week made another attempt at this.
But it isn’t trivial simply to know what works Severian wrote. For my own reference, therefore, I have started a Word document with a list, basing it on the Clavis Patrum Graecorum. The file is here:
I will work on this some more and revise it and add more material.
But there are quite a few homilies there which are only 3-4 columns of Migne. Is there anyone interested in and capable of translating them for me, from Greek into English, for money? If so, please drop me a line, using this form here.
The 6th century Greek writer, John the Lydian, composed a work in 4 books on the Roman months (De mensibus). The work is full of antiquarian information, which makes it a fascinating source for Roman time. Book 4 consists of 12 chapters, one for each month.
In a very timely way, Mischa Hooker has now translated the chapter on May for us all. Here it is:
Today I came across this picture here, clearly of a model, of the “Circus of Caligula / Circus of Nero” on the Vatican. Whether the two circuses were indeed the same I do not know. But the model-maker was clearly aware of the construction of a large circular building on the spina of the circus in the Severan period, which tooks terribly out of place in the model. The ground level was artificially increased by something like 15 feet, and apparently the circular church of St Andrew had a basement level.
Anyway I thought that I would share the image with you. I wonder where it comes from?
And a 1911 map of Rome by Platner from here, showing the supposed location of the circus:Note that I have now found an account of the modern excavations, by F.Magi, from which the “modern” plan of the circus derives, here.[1]
[1]John H. Humphrey, Roman Circuses: Arenas for Chariot Racing, University of California Press, 1986, p.545 f.; on p.683 n.29 the article is given as F. Magi, “Il circo Vaticano in base alla piu recenti scoperte, il suo obelisco e i suoi ‘carceres’, Rendiconti della Pontificia Academia Romana di Archeologia 45, 1972-3 [1974], 37-73. This also gives the “Castagnoli” reference: F. Castagnoli, “Il circo di Nerone in Vaticano”, RendPontAcc 32 (1960), 97-121. The Humphrey book can be read with difficulty at the UC Press website here.↩
Bryson Sewell has finished making a new translation of the three sermons De diabolo temptatore (CPG 4332) by John Chrysostom. These are now available here:
And I hope they will become available also at Archive.org in due course, but their uploader seems to be having an off-day.
The sermons are really quite interesting and relevant, and there are useful pointers to the Christian in them.
These were commissioned by mistake. There is already an existing translation in the NPNF series, a mere 150 years ago. This is the peril of commissioning material late in the evening after a long, tiring day, when you are not as alert as you might be! But an updated translation is well worth having anyway, and Bryson has also translated the Latin introduction by Bernard de Montfaucon for us. The text used was, inevitably, the Patrologia Graeca.
The Vatican hill is famous today for the great basilica of St Peters, constructed in the third decade of the fourth century by Constantine, and demolished and rebuilt in the 16th century. A collection of essays on this building appeared in 2013, edited by R. McKitterick,[1] which contains various interesting snippets.
St Peter’s basilica in Rome in the early sixth century
Few today are familiar with the layout of the church, so the diagram at the side is useful. A flight of steps led up to a gatehouse, behind which was a courtyard. This later contained the immense bronze pine-cone now in the Vatican museum. Behind this was the church proper, with a nave and two aisles. The transept gave access to two circular structures, the mausoleum of Honorius (which was turned into the chapel of St Petronilla during the early Dark Ages) and the chapel of St Andrew.
Around the church were all sorts of structures, not depicted on this diagram. The church was the constant resort of beggars, seeking alms, and doubtless many of the dwellings were hovels. Theodoric ordered the distribution of grain to them in the late 5th century; Pope Symmachus had shelters constructed for them near the church, and the Dialogues of Gregory the Great record a crippled girl who more or lived in the church until she was healed by a miracle.[2]
A plan of the church by Alfarano, who had been associated with the church since the 1540’s, was published as an etching by Natale Bonifacio in 1590, when construction on the western end of the new basilica was well advanced. It shows the new construction as a ghost under the old.
Tiberio Alfarano drew the plan in 1571, and the hand-drawn original, known as the Ichnographia, is extant in the archive of the Reverenda Fabbrica di San Pietro. Comparison shows that the printed version tinkered with the original in various ways, and that not every architectural feature on the drawing appears in the etching.[3]
1590 plan by Alfarano of Old St Peters
On the south side of the basilica were two circular structures, the chapel of St. Petronilla, actually the Mausoleum of the emperor Honorius; and the chapel of St. Andrew. Beyond these was the obelisk which now dominates St Peter’s square.
The function of the structure as a mausoleum was remembered as late as the 8th century, but thereafter forgotten until 1458 when a splendid late Roman burial was discovered under the floor, possibly of Galla Placidia and her child. Another was found in 1519, and finally in 1544 the intact sarcophagus of the empress Maria, wife of Honorius, complete with 180 precious objects in two silver chests, all of which were dispersed or melted down. The depiction of the basilica in the Nuremberg chronicle of 1493 depicts a round, squat building, which was doubtless the mausoleum.
The structure to the east of it, labelled “Vatican rotunda” in the plan, must predate the basilica as it appears in a gem of the 3rd century. It was converted by Pope Symmachus in the 5th century into a chapel of St Andrew.[4]
Plan of the mausoleum of Honorius.
I have also seen a paper suggesting that the “mausoleum of Honorius” was itself a 3rd century tomb, as was the Rotunda di Sant’Andrea. The mausoleum was demolished during the building of New St Peter’s, but the Rotunda remained until the 18th century, becoming the church of Santa Maria della Febbre. A 1629 painting of it, still behind the obelisk (which was surely moved by then?) and with New St Peter’s half-built behind it is available online:
Rotondo di Sant’Andrea, Vatican, Rome. 1629
And another 18th century drawing by Piranesi[5] shows it nestling next to the basilica, when it was used as a sacristy[6]:
18th century Piranesi drawing.
The obelisk is an interesting feature, since it is quite unlikely that it was placed there by Constantine. We learn from Pliny’s Natural History that Caligula erected an obelisk from Heliopolis on the spina of his Circus, in the Horti Agrippinae on the Vatican.[7] There is apparently consensus, among interested scholars, that the only certain fact about the location and orientation of the circus is that this obelisk was in the centre of it.[8].
Two different circus plans appear online. I don’t know the source of the second one.[9]
What can be said with certainty is that material from the circus was found during excavations in St Peter’s square, some 5 metres down.[10]
Somewhere nearby, in all this, is the temple of Cybele and Attis, the Vatican Phrygianum. That such a temple existed in 160 A.D. is recorded by an inscription from Lyons which reads:
Taurobolio Matris d(eum) m(agnae) I(daeae) / quod factum est ex imperio ma tris deum /pro salute imperatoris Caes(aris) T(iti) Aeli Hadriani Antonini Aug(usti) Pii p(atris) p(atriae) / liberorum eius /et status coloniae Lugdun(ensium) / L(ucius) Aemilius Carpus IIIIIIvr Aug(ustalis) item / dendrophorus / uires excepit et a Vaticano trans/tulit ara(m) et bucranium /suo inpendio consacrauit / sacerdote / Q(uinto) Samnio Secondo ab XVuiris /occabo et corona exornato / cui sanctissimus ordo Lugdunens(ium) perpetuitatem sacerdoti(i) decreuit / App(io) Annio Atilio Bradua T(ito) Clod(io) Vibo / Varo co(n)s(ulibus). [11]
Various inscriptions from the end of the 4th century consist of dedications to Cybele by the last holdouts of the pagan aristocracy, suggesting that perhaps the temple was still in use in this period, and recording that the ritual of the taurobolium – being bathed in bulls’ blood – was taking place here.
Pensabene states that the 1959-60 excavations by Castagnoli – I don’t have a reference for these – revealed that there were major works in this area during the Severan period. The ground level was artificially raised by several metres and a large circular building was constructed whose foundations were contiguous with the obelisk. The foundations of this building contained Severan stamps from the first quarter of the 3rd century A.D. The suggestion is that this was to allow the building of a new Phrygianum, and that this was done under Elagabalus, who was enthusiastic for the cult.
The text is accompanied with a very poor quality image which appears to suggest that the Rotonda di Sant’Andrea stands on the site of the Phrygianum, and that the building was originally circular, with a south-facing portico:
My Italian is not good enough to work out whether Pensabene is suggesting that the Rotondo was, in fact, the carcase of the Phrygianum, stripped of its portico and reused for something else. But if so, this would certainly be very cramped, next to the basilica, and the presence of the vile eunuch priests and their revolting sacrifices right by the south door sounds rather unlikely to me. Even if it was a state cult, which Constantine might have been unwilling to interfere with, this seems improbable.
[1]R. McKitterick, Old Saint Peters, (British School at Rome Studies), 2013. “Look Inside” on Amazon here.↩
[2]For these details I am indebted to Paulo Liverani’s paper “St Peter’s and the City of Rome” in the McKitterick volume, of which I was able to read parts via the Amazon “Look Inside”. The material may be found on p.26; Gregory, Dialogues I, 3.25.1, 108; Life of Symmachus, 53, c. 7, in the Liber Pontificalis I 262; Theodoric in Procopius, Anecdota 26.29.↩
[3]These details appear in the front matter of the McKitterick book, whose footnotes were sadly inaccessible to me.↩
[4]Meaghan McEvoy, “Chapter 6: The mausoleum of Honorius” in: R. McKitterick &c., p.119 f. Accessible via Google Books preview here.↩
[7]Plin. NH XVI.201; XXXVI.74; CIL VI.882 = 31191. All these references I owe to a remarkable discussion in the Ancient Coins forum here.↩
[8]Patrizio Pensabene, “Culto di Cibele e Attis tra Palatino e Vaticano”, Bollettino di Archeologia 2010, Online at http://www.archeologia.beniculturali.it/pages/pubblicazioni.html; except that, at the time of writing, this is offline and I was only able to access the article via the Google cache. UPDATE: Later I found it at Academia.edu here.↩
[9]The first is from R. Lanciani, Pagan and Christian Rome, 1892, and appears on Wikimedia Commons here. Both have been copied from here.↩
[10]Or so it claims on this website; it would be interesting to have proper details of these excavations.↩
In my last post, I noted that Peter Head pointed out that we have a forger active among us, who knows how to play to the predispositions of scholars.
I have just seen a very sound post by Roberta Mazza, discussing the supposed discovery of a bunch of interesting papyri from mummy cartonnage – papyrus reused to stuff the packing of mummies, and make up the coffins etc in the late period. No doubt cartonnage contains much of interest.
But Dr Mazza is absolutely right in pointing out that we have NO previous examples of New Testament papyri from mummy cartonage; and noting the rather confused reportage coming out of the Green collection.
These are very sound questions. Failure to see that the “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” was too good to be true is what undid Karen King and Harvard.
A first century fragment of the New Testament? Exciting if true. But … too good to be true? Quite possibly. Particularly when we note that the recipient of the material is predisposed to believe that the material is genuine; just as the hapless Karen King was.
At the moment all we have is various bits of excited and not-too-knowledgeable comment from amateurs involved in helping in menial capacities. I think the Green collection are absolutely right to be open-access with their finds; indeed it is essential to bring all available talent to bear.
We have an enemy of learning active in the world at the moment, remember. Only a fool would neglect every precaution. Particularly when a find might be too good to be true.
I expect many of us have watched the story of a papyrus fragment purporting to reveal that Jesus had a wife. Coptologist Christian Askeland discovered clear proof of forgery, thanks to a bit of carelessness by the forger, and the story is now history.
He asks the sensible question: now that we have evidence of a forgery which passed the science lab tests, what can we learn for next time?
The article is full of good points, but the first paragraph makes an unusual, and very interesting point (I have over-paragraphed it):
It is possible for a forger to get hold of papyri, mix ink according to ancient conventions, compose a semi-plausible pastiche of a text, and mislead scholars, academic institutions, the media, and the public. Exactly what he (or she) hoped to gain from it is not clear, but if it was simply mischief, then he has probably far exceeded his wildest dreams.
Given this possibility it is important that if someone approaches you with an unpublished text which meshes in with your own academic interests, then critical skepticism rather than credulity should control your responses. Nothing is innocent until proven guilty in this scenario.
Also the forger will target a scholar who he thinks is persuadable, not a manuscript expert, and who has wider credibility to make the discovery known (remember that in this case Prof King at first didn’t respond to the invitation, but the forger didn’t go to some other scholar, he waited a year and then went back to reel in Prof King).
In patristics, fortunately, there is no money to be made. If someone turned up with “fragments” of Marcion’s Antitheses or a lost work by Justin Martyr, it is unlikely that it would atttract attention.
But one point is clear: we have a capable and determined forger out there, who is aware of what tests are likely to be applied, and how to fool them.
What can we tell about the forger?
He has some knowledge of Coptic, probably to undergraduate level, but is not an expert.
He has had a western education.
He has access to textbooks on Coptic (not too easy to obtain).
He has access to ancient papyri.
He has some sort of lab training.
He might be a Muslim – the forgery would be convenient to Muslim polemicists.
He is probably not a Copt – the forgery is a bit anti-Christian.
The motive was probably money; to create a sensation and then monetize it, as they say in the computer games industry. I infer, therefore, that this is not a rich man.
This text acquired quite a following. It nearly worked. So I think we must expect more attempts at forgery.
In this light, I do hope Harvard involve the police. This was an audacious fraud, and if it had succeeded would have garnered the author some real money, in sales,and with film rights, etc. It would be very useful to have the author behind bars where he can do no more harm.
UPDATE: All of which makes the questions that Roberta Mazza is asking about the supposed NT papyri from mummy cartonage very pertinent.
The hardback test copy of Origen of Alexandria: Exegetical works on Ezekiel (text and translation of the homilies and fragments) has arrived and is fine. This is the first time I have seen the hardback, and its cover, and it all looks very good! It’s a meaty volume and no mistake!
I’ve now pressed the buttons on the Lightning Source website to tell them to make it available, both hardback and paperback. They already have the pricing etc information from Nielsen, the ISBN people. So I don’t see that there should be much delay.
The next thing I have to do is to add information about the book to Amazon. This is not a pleasant process, as I recall, since Amazon don’t bother to make it so.
It will interesting to see when the Amazon site changes to say that it is available to purchase! (For I doubt that it will really be available before then, come what may).
