While creating a basic Wikipedia article on the Arian bishop Patrophilus of Scythopolis I stumbled across the fact that someone has placed a scanned version of Wace’s Dictionary of Christian Biography to the end of the Sixth Century in Wikisource. This is invaluable for obscure patristic writers, as every statement tends to be referenced to the primary sources. The article on Eusebius of Emesa was useful; all the ‘E’ writers are here.
Armenian sermons of Severian of Gabala … or Eusebius of Emesa?
In a post a few days ago I mentioned that I had discovered an English translation of a sermon by Severian of Gabala on the sufferings and death of our Lord, and placed it online. The sermon was translated from an 1827 publication of sermons in Armenian — probably from the parallel Latin text, rather than the Armenian, I fancy! — and I have since discovered the book online here. I also noted that the sermon was not listed among the works of Severian in the Clavis Patrum Graecorum.
While I was scanning the text, I came across various examples of allegorical interpretation. This is not quite what I associate with Severian. Looking at the table of contents in the Armenian, at the end around p. 449, I am struck by the vagueness of the titles. Severian is called bishop of Emesa, for instance. 15 sermons are edited. Here are the last three:
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XIII. B. Severiani Episcopi in Ficulneam arefactam. – 415
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XIV. B. Emesensis Episcopi in Passionem Christi – 429
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XV. B. Eusebii (lege, Seberiani) Episcopi in idem mysterium (de Juda traditore) – 443
The last entry is the most interesting: “Of the blessed Bishop Eusebius (read: Severian) on the same mystery (of Judas the traitor)”. The lege is added by the modern editor, of course. But should we agree? Or do the last two sermons both truly belong to Eusebius of Emesa (d. 359)?
Eusebius of Emesa is listed in CPG 2, nos 3525-3543. #3525 is a list of sermons extant in Latin translation and discovered in the Codex Trecensis which also preserves works of Tertullian and was unknown until a century ago. Among these is De arbore fici; we might wonder whether ‘Severian’ XIII is the same work.
Listed in #3531 is “Armenian sermons”. These have been edited by N. Akinian, Die Reden des Bischofs Eusebius von Emesa, in Handes Amsorya 70 (1956), 71 (1957) and 72 (1958). This is a collection of homilies under the name of Eusebius of Emesa. The first eight are by Eusebius; the other five are by Severian of Gabala (CPG 4185, 4202, 4210, 4246, 4248)! Sermon 2 is De passione Christi (Akinian, l.c. 70, pp.385-416) — is this our baby? Well, no.
Because sermon 5 De passione, ed. vol. 71, p.357-80, is listed in the CPG as being the same as the sermon XIV of Aucher, starting on p.428, and continuing as Aucher’s sermon XV. And fragments of it are indeed found in the Butyaert Latin text.
I will therefore update the page I uploaded with the necessary details.
Chrysostom “In Kalendas” translation progress
Notes on the Theodosian Legal Code (438 AD)
I’ve been reading the French translation by Elisabeth Magnou-Nortier of book 16 of the Codex Theodosianus, the law book compiled under Theodosius II from rescripts or letters issued by preceding emperors. A couple of passages struck my eye, and I translate these here with a few of the footnotes:
Under the empire, custom (mos) continued to play a role as a creator of law. The emperors naturally also created law. The jurisconsult Gaius distinguished three forms of imperial intervention, although there were in fact four in the early Empire.
Edicts (edicta), similar to those issued by the magistrates of the Republic, were formal laws, which had to be posted up in public places. Mandates (mandata) were addressed to functionaries, especially governors of provinces. Decrees (decreta) were judgments given by the emperor in court cases that came before him, either directly or as the last resort of appeal.
Rescripts (rescripta, epistulae) were responses written by the emperor to functionaries who had particular problems on points of law. It has long been thought that “constitutions” were the normal legislative activity of the emperors. But today a re-evaluation has concluded that “the source which is quantitatively the most important of imperial legislation … is not the general law …. but the rescript, a reply from the emperor to a question on a precise point, mostly arising from judicial activity. The editorial methods of the imperial chancellery give these ad-hoc responses a general character; the reply of the emperor never includes … either the name of the person, nor the place concerned. This voluntary reticence contributes to place in high relief the juridical solution, which alone is important.” [1] …
[Despite the conversion of Constantine to Christianity] material continued to accumulate in the imperial chancellery, often self-contradictory. The rupture introduced by the conversion of Constantine into the legislative activity of the emperors is so perceptible that none of the laws gathered in the Theodosian code is earlier than 312 AD.
The emperors faced a primary difficulty. Since the 2nd century, the jurisconsults had produced a huge volume of legal material and commentary on case law which did not agree among itself. In order to put an end to this endless process, Constantine decided, in 321, to give full authority to the notes of Paulus and Ulpian on Papinian.[2] A still more profound reform was made by Theodosius II and Valentinian III in 426, in a law headed “On Citations”.[3] This law confirmed the authority of five jurisconsults; Papinian, Paulus, Ulpian, Modestinus, and Gaius. If these disagreed, the judge should follow the majority; if they were equally divided, the opinion of Papinian should be used.
An urgent need to intervene was becoming evident. The first collections of laws appear at the end of the 3rd century, with the Codex Gregorianus and at the start of the 4th century, the Codex Hermogenianus which contained the laws of Diocletian. The need for a precise law led Theodosius II to initiate in 429 an ambitious programme, which was cut short. He tried again in 435 in a more modest way. The work was completed on 15 February 438, when the Codex Theodosianus was published in the East. … It was divided into 16 books, the first 5 of which are unfortunately full of gaps where material has not reached us. …
The 16th book has been the subject of discussion by specialists. … Book 16 was composed in the years preceding the publication of the Code.
If we compare the imperial legislation concerning the heresies and sects with that which concerned itself with paganism, a difference of tone is apparent. The law against the first is striking in its density, certainty, indeed a pitiless harshness against those who directly menaced the spiritual unity of the Empire, such as Arianism, Donatism, or Manichaeism. But the laws of chapter 9 show only a limited ambition. They repeat the prohibition of blood sacrifices of animals during ceremonies, first at night and then day and night (364 and 382 AD), because all animal sacrifices for a Christian are as cruel as they are useless. Some prescribe the preservation of temple fabric (399), the upkeep of popular celebrations (399) or again the destruction of rural temples on the condition that this does not provoke trouble or disorder (399).
Certainly a law of 392 indeed prohibited, or more accurately attempted to prohibit, the domestic pagan rites, but we may doubt whether it had any real force. Others order the closure of all the temples, the destruction of sculptured images of the Olympic gods (392 and 395), suppress the privileges and incomes of the pagan priests (396), annex the property of the temples to the state treasury and the income in kind to the army (407). Leaving aside the statue of victory in the Senate … all historians agree that the destruction of the temples, above all in the East, such as Zeus at Apamea in 388, the Serapeum at Alexandria in 391, and numerous temples in Egypt, Phrygia, Cappadocia, and Syria at the end of the 4th and start of the 5th centuries, are the work of enterprising bishops and above all extremist monks. “The destructive zeal of the monks could go well beyond what was authorised, as when they burned in 388 the synagogue of Callinicum.” … The emperors and their counsellors quickly assessed the degree of alienation and resistance by the ancient cults, their rites and festivals, which they judged less threatening to the unity of the empire than the new heresies or the sects, since they were old and above because they could be reused by Christian activities, these offering numerous favourable opportunities to acculturate the new religion in the urban and rural population. However neither magic, nor occultism, nor divination ever disappeared from the socities which called themselves Christian.
[1] Magnou-Nortier, Le Code Theodosien, Cerf 2002, p. 16-17. This quotation is given from G. Giordanengo, “Le pouvoir legislatif du roi de France”, in Bibl. Ec. des Chartes, vol. 147, 1989, p. 288. Magnou-Nortier gives further references, although not directly to the statement of Gaius.
[2] Cod. Th. 1, 4, 1 (321).
[3] Cod. Th. 1, 4, 3 (426).
Some remarks about John Chrysostom’s homilies against the Jews
A. L. Williams useful book Adversus Judaeos was composed in 1935, well before modern political correctness or post-WW2 guilt. It is written to be of use to Christians considering missionary work among the Jews, and to advise them of older apologetic, which he suggests is mostly useless today.
Nearly a hundred writers are summarised, and the book is still of great value. Williams states plainly enough that his collection of writers cannot be comprehensive, since it omits works in manuscript only, and to which he had no access. But it has never been superseded.
When we read modern opinions about Chrysostom’s sermons against the Jews, we are always uncomfortably aware that those writing may not feel able to sound “anti-semitic”. Works held dear but which violate political correctness are liable to be misdescribed; works hated may get the same misdescription in the opposite direction.
Williams’ comments are therefore refreshingly interesting. As a man with no interest in the politics of our day, what does he think Chrysostom was doing and meant? —
Chrysostom’s Homilies against the Jews are glorious reading for those who love eloquence, and zeal untempered by knowledge. The Golden-mouthed knew little of Judaism, but he was shocked that his Christian people were frequenting Jewish synagogues [2], were attracted to the synagogal Fasts and Feasts, sometimes by the claims to superior sanctity made by the followers of the earlier religion, so that an oath taken in a synagogue was more binding than in a church, and and sometimes by the offer of charms and amulets in which Jews of the lower class dealt freely. We cannot blame Chrysostom therefore for doing his utmost to prevent apostasy, partial or complete, and we cannot but praise him for the straightness of his speech, and his passionate desire that every one of his hearers should not only refrain from religious intercourse with Jews, but also do his utmost to keep his brethren in the same Christian path.[4] Sometimes also there are direct appeals to Jews to turn to the true faith.
But that is all that can be said. Chrysostom’s sermons were intended almost entirely for his Christian listeners, and only exceptionally for Jews. How could it be otherwise? We gather from these Homilies that the Jews were a great social, and even a great religious, power in Antioch, but that Chrysostom himself had had no direct intercourse with them worth mentioning, and knew nothing of their real reasons for refusing to become Christians. Far more serious still than his ignorance is his lack of a real evangelistic spirit in his relation to them. There is no sign that he felt the slightest sympathy with them, much less a burning love for the people of whom His Saviour came in the flesh, or, indeed, that he regarded them in any other way than as having been rightly and permanently punished for their treatment of Christ, and as still being emissaries of Satan in their temptation of Christians. But that is not the way to present Christ to the Jews, or even to speak of them when preaching to Christians [2].
The notes are also interesting:
2. The tendency of professing Christians to frequent synagogues is not peculiar to Chrysostom’s time and place. M. Isidore Loeb in his illuminating essay on La Controverse religieuse entre les Juifs au moyen age en France et en Espagne tells us that in the Middle Ages the semi-Christianised peoples found it difficult to distinguish between Judaism and Christianity, or, at least, to see where one left off and the other began. They knew that Christianity had its roots in Judaism, and that the weekly day of rest, Easter, and Pentecost, were taken from the Jews, and the mother religion had fascination for them. At Lyon they used to go to the synagogue, pretending that the sermons were better than those of the Christian priests. In 1290 in Provence and the neighbouring countries Christians made offerings in the synagogue, and paid solemn respect to the roll of the Law (Revue de l’histoire des religions, 1888, xvii. 324 sq.).
4. This is the key-note of each of the Homilies.
2. Chrysostom’s hatred of the Jews is not confined to these eight Homilies, as may be seen from the countless references to them scattered throughout his works, covering more than seven columns in Montfaucon’s Index.
This is plain speaking. Williams has no hesitation in describing “Chrysostom’s hatred of the Jews”, nor in describing the sermons as “glorious reading for those who love eloquence”, feeling no need for apology. But his judgement is “Chrysostom’s sermons were intended almost entirely for his Christian listeners, and only exceptionally for Jews.”
We may, I think, agree with him safely on this, then. As with so much else in the later Roman Empire, Christianity had become a badge of a community, rather than the means of salvation. Chrysostom was merely defending the “turf” of the group who had elected him their bishop.
Chrysostom “In kalendas” progress
Why Severian of Gabala is famous
Apparently he was a flat-earther. Wikipedia has no article on him in English (which I may rectify tomorrow). But there is a French article, and a German one, as well as a rather dense BBKL article.
The Wikipedia flat-earth article quotes Severian thus:
The earth is flat and the sun does not pass under it in the night, but travels through the northern parts as if hidden by a wall.
A reference is given of “J.L.E. Dreyer, A History of Planetary Systems’, (1906)” which needs to be verified. A limited preview of it is here, and Severian is on p.211-2. (Update: the whole book is here). Here is what is said:
A contemporary of Basil, Cyril of Jerusalem, lays great stress on the necessity of accepting as real the supercelestial waters 1, while a younger contemporary of Basil, Severianus, Bishop of Gabala, speaks out even more strongly and in more detail in his Six Orations on the Creation of the World,2, in which the cosmical system sketched in the first chapter of Genesis is explained. On the first day God made the heaven, not the one we see, but the one above that, the whole forming a house of two storeys with a roof in the middle and the waters above that. As an angel is spirit without body, so the upper heaven is fire without matter, while the lower one is fire with matter, and only by the special arrangement of providence sends its light and heat down to us, instead of upwards as other fires do3. The lower heaven was made on the second day; it is crystalline, congealed water, intended to be able to resist the flame of sun and moon and the infinite number of stars, to be full of fire and yet not dissolve nor burn, for which reason there is water on the outside. This water will also come in handy on the last day, when it will be used for putting out the fire of the sun, moon and stars4. The heaven is not a sphere, but a tent or tabernacle; “it is He…that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in5“; the Scripture says that it has a top, which a sphere has not, and it is also written: “The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot came unto Zoar6.” The earth is flat and the sun does not pass under it in the night, but travels through the northern parts “as if hidden by a wall,” and he quotes: “The sun goeth down and hasteth to his place where he ariseth7.” When the sun goes more to the south, the days are shorter and we have winter, as the sun takes all the longer to perform his nightly journey1.
1 Catechesis, ix., Opera, Oxford, 1703, p. 116.
2 Joh. Chrysostomi Opera, ed. Montfaucon, t. vii. (Paris, 1724), p. 436 sqq. Compare also the extracts given by Kosmas, pp. 320-325.
3 I. 4.
4 II. 3-4.
5 Isaiah xl. 22.
6 Gen. xix. 23. The above is from the Revised Version, but Severianus (III. 4) has: “Sol egressus est super terram, et Lot ingressus est in Segor. Quare liquet, Scriptura teste, egressum esse Solem, non ascendisse.”
7 Eccles. i. 5.
1 III. 5.
Few of those familiar with Wikipedia will be surprised, then, to discover that the “quote” is in fact the words of Dreyer, not of Severian. Amusingly the “quote” has made its way, sans reference, into the French and German articles.
But the exciting part is that Dreyer clearly has read Severian, albeit in the Latin version, and so it should be possible to identify the material properly.
The French article tells us that a French translation exists of Severian’s six sermons on Genesis, plus one more. These are from Bareille’s 19th century translation of Chrysostom, and that in turn suggests that Bareille may have translated all of Chrysostom, if he was getting into the spuria as well.
Vatican library to digitise 80,000 mss
The story is here.
This project may be achieved over a span of 10 years divided into three phases, with possible intervals between them. In a preliminary phase the involvement of 60 people is planned, including photographers and conservator-verifiers, in the second and third phases at least 120. Before being able to initiate an undertaking of this kind, which is causing some anxiety to those in charge of the library (and not only to them!), naturally it will be necessary to find the funds. Moves have already been made in this direction with some positive results.
‘Severian of Gabala’ on the sufferings and death of our Lord
In 1827 J.B.Aucher published a set of sermons from Armenian at the press of the Mechitarist Fathers in Venice, Severiani sive Seberiani Gabalorum episcopi Emesensis homiliae nunc primum ex antiqua versione armena in latinum sermonem translatae, Venetiis, 1827. A homily on the sufferings and death of our Lord appears on p.428 of that edition. Unfortunately it is not listed among the sermons of Severian of Gabala in the Clavis Patrum Graecorum 2, so is perhaps pseudonymous [but see below].
A reader of these posts has discovered an English translation of this obscure text in S.C.Malan, Meditations on every Wednesday and Friday in Lent (1859). The book itself is a curiosity, printed using the long-s (which looks like ‘f’ without part of the cross-stroke) which had then ceased to be in use for more than a century. It is dedicated to Charles Marriot, the editor of the Oxford Movement Library of the Fathers translations.
This is Holy Week. I admit my own thoughts have been far from the sufferings of the Lord. But as I scanned this translation, I found myself moved by the words of this ancient writer. The sermon is a little long to post here, and I have left the English archaic as it was. If anyone has difficulty with this, I would like to know.
But here it is.
UPDATE (1/4/10). The Aucher publication is online here! It’s remarkable, really, what Google books now contains. After looking at the index of sermons, I must ask whether this sermon is really by Eusebius of Emesa, like the one that follows it? A look at the CPG reveals that, indeed, both are by Eusebius of Emesa.