Tag: Gospel of Nicodemus

Identifying “an ancient homily for Holy Saturday”, on the Harrowing of Hell

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Today is Easter Saturday.  I happened to see an interesting tweet from none other than Eduard Hapsburg, the Hungarian ambassador to the Vatican, here.

The link to the English translation is here.

This text is apparently the second reading for Easter Saturday in the Roman Catholic Church – not sure how I would verify that – but there is often no reference to the source.

Fortunately on this site I found a text: “PG 43, 439, 451, 462-463”.  This is the edition of the Greek text used for the homily.  The material in the reading is not the complete homily, but rather extracts.

Looking up this reference to the Patrologia Graeca, I find that these extracts are all taken from a homily attributed by the editor to Epiphanius of Salamis.

A look in the Clavis Patrum Graecorum shows that the text is listed there.  It’s CPG 3768, “Homilia in divini corporis sepulturam”; or, at more length in the Patrologia Graeca (=PG), “Epiphanii episcopi Cypri oratio in divini corporis sepulturam Domini et Servatoris nostri Jesu Christi, et in Josephum qui fuit ab Arimathaea, et in Domini in infernum descensum, post salutarem passionem admirabiliter factum. Sancto et magno Sabbato.”

The Greek text of the complete homily is printed in PG volume 43, columns 439-464, with a Latin translation.  As usual with the PG, this is a reprint of an older text, in this case the text of Petau (Paris, 1622).  A more modern edition of the Greek exists, by Dindorf, Epiphanii episcopi Constantiae opera, Leipzig (1859-62), vol. 4, part 2 (here); Pseudo-Epiphanii homiliae, p.9-29, and Annotationes p.90-101.  But this is not a critical edition: merely the Petau text, with improvements from a comparison with the 9th century Escorial manuscript.

But other ancient versions of the text also exist.  The text exists in Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Georgian and Arabic; and in two different Old Slavonic versions.  The latter was edited, with parallel Greek, and a French translation of the Old Slavonic, by A. Vaillant, “L’homélie d’Épiphane sur l’ensevellissement du Christ, Texte vieux-slave,Texte grec et traduction française,” Radovi Staroslavenskog instituta 3 (Zagreb, 1958), pp.7-101, and is online at the journal website here and at Alin Suciu’s blog here.

The text is not by the very solid Epiphanius of Salamis, of course.  Vaillant identifies a later Archbishop of Cyprus, also named Epiphanius, who attended the 6th council of Trullo in 691, who is the most likely author.  The style of the work is witty, full of word-play, and characteristically Byzantine.  The content derives from the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, composed in 424-5, in which Jesus, after his death and before his resurrection descends into hell, liberates the righteous, and rescues Adam and Eve.

Update: A kind correspondent has pointed me to the website of the Holy Cross Monastery where a complete English translation of the homily may be found here.  This states that it has been translated from the Greek text printed by Vaillant.

Vaillant’s Greek text is provided on facing pages only as a help to the Old Slavonic text.  The notes are concerned with additions and omissions in the Slavonic text, or with biblical passages.  No Greek apparatus is provided.  Vaillant himself does not indicate the source of his Greek text.

I compared the first page of Vaillant’s Greek with Dindorf’s text and with the PG text.  Vaillant follows the capitalisation, punctuation and sentence division, and the opening title of the PG fairly exactly.  I saw only one definite difference between Vaillant and both others, and this semed to me likely to be a typo or emendation.  From this limited comparison, I would infer that Vaillant mainly reprinted the standard PG text.

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Further notes on the “Cura Sanitatis Tiberii”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Yesterday I wrote some notes on this curious Latin apocryphal text.  There is a whole cycle of medieval texts about what happened to Pilate after the gospels, often attached to the Gospel of Nicodemus in Latin versions, of which the Cura Sanitatis Tiberii is one.

Today I discovered a few more bits of information, especially that Z. Izydorczyk’s The Medieval Gospel of Nicodemus: Texts, Intertexts and Contents in Western Europe (1997) is online here.  It contains some interesting information.

Given the absence of concern for textual integrity and definitive textual boundaries in manuscript culture, it is hardly surprising that the Gospel of Nicodemus provided both a source and a point of gravity for a host of minor, often derivative compositions. Known collectively as the cycle of Pilate, those texts are quite diverse in form and content, and include private and official letters, reports, narratives, and legal pronouncements. What links them all is the emphasis on the person of Pilate, textual and thematic links to the GN, and frequent co-occurrence with the GN in manuscripts (in fact, they are sometimes fully integrated with it). Most of them were originally written in crude Greek or Latin and later translated into various Eastern and Western languages.

The notion of the cycle of Pilate is rather loose and has never been unambiguously defined. There is no absolute agreement as to which texts should be included in it and which should not, but there is a general consensus that the cycle constitutes the immediate textual milieu for the AP. Since the Pilate cycle will occasionally enter the discussions of the apocryphon in this book, it may be worthwhile to mention its main texts here….

He then gives a useful list, with a short summary of the contents of each.  He indicates that his list is derived from Mauritius Geerard, Clavis apocryphorum Novi Testamenti, Corpus Christianorum. Series Apocryphorum (Tumhout: Brepols, 1992), no. 64 onwards.

Cura sanitatis Tiberii: Tiberius is miraculously healed by an image of Christ, Peter confirms the truth of Pilate’s report on Jesus, and Nero exiles Pilate, who commits suicide. The work was composed in Latin, possibly in northern Italy, between the fifth and the eighth centuries.

A more detailed discussion appears on p.57-9, in which the date of the piece is given as between the 5-8th centuries; the latter being the date of the first extant manuscript, while the former is the date of the Latin translation of the Gospel of Nicodemus, to which the Cura is “textually indebted.”

The CANT indicates that the Cura is CANT 69 (BHL 4218-4220), that there are two recensions, and the edition is by Dobschutz, as we saw yesterday.  I learn from Izydorczyk that an Old Czech version of the Cura exists; and Old English, Middle English, and German versions.  A google search informs me of a volume of Old French and Middle French versions of Pilate texts, including the Cura.[1]

It is curious, tho, that no modern translation exists.  It seems clear that a volume which edits the entire cycle, with translations, would be very useful to have.  Would it be so hard to do?

Update (24 April 2022): Since this was written, an English translation by Tuomas Levänen has appeared and is online here.

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  1. [1]A.E. Ford (ed.), La Vengeance de Nostre-Seigneur, 1993. ISBN: 978-0-88844-115-7. Info from Brepols here.↩

The death of Pilate: a text and some notes on the “Cura Sanitatis Tiberii”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A correspondent enquired whether I knew of a translation of a text named the Cura sanitatis Tiberii.  Never having heard of this text, I looked into it.  Here is what I found.

In the medieval Greek and Latin manuscripts, there are preserved a whole cycle of fictional stories known as the Gospel of Nicodemus, the Acts of Pilate, and various other texts connected to Pilate, including letters, and accounts of his death.  Both J.K. Elliot in his Apocryphal New Testament[1] and W. Schneemelcher[2] group this material together, rather hopelessly; and those who read through it, to get an overview of the corpus, will find their patience strained.  The texts were all published originally Tischendorff[3] and both Elliot and Schneemelcher refer to the pages of his edition using abbreviations like “Ea.”

The literature contains three different accounts of the death of Pilate, taking different views of his attitude to Christianity.  All are medieval.  Schneemelcher mentions them on p.530 and 532-3.

The first of these is the Paradosis or Handing over of Pilate (text in Ea. pp. 449-455), which is found appended to another text, the Anaphora, which itself is an appendix to the Acts of Pilate.  The Paradosis treats Pilate as a saint, and has an eastern origin.  It is translated by Schneemelcher (p.530-532), and Elliot (p.208-211) with an extensive list of other translations.

The next account is the Mors Pilati or Death of Pilate (text in Ea. pp.456-458).  In this the Emperor Tiberius is sick.  He sends out an envoy, Volusianus, and is cured by the Veronica.  Pilate is punished.  This is a very late western text, based by Tischendorff on a 14th century manuscript.  Elliot (p.216-7) gives only a summary plus a list of editions and translations.  The English translations are: Cowper, 415-19[4]; Walker, 234-6[5]; Westcott, 131-5.[6]

The final account is, so Schneemelcher says, the Cura sanitatis Tiberii or Cure of the illness of Tiberius (text in Ea. 471-486), and summarises it (p.532-3).  But at this point confusion creeps in.  For there are two texts involved here, related but different.  For Schneemelcher also refers to the Vindicta Salvatoris or Vengeance of the Saviour, as if it was the same text.  This is also discussed by Elliot, but without reference to the Cura.  Elliot gives a summary and translation of the Vindicta (p.213-6), and lists the modern translations as Cowper, 432-47; Walker, 245-55; Westcott, 146-59; and M.R. James, 159-60 (summary).

A real modern critical edition of the Latin Cura sanitatis Tiberii is to be found in E. Dobschütz, Christusbilder: Untersuchungen zur christlichen Legende (Leipzig, 1899)[7], in the second volume with the curious page numbers 157**-203**.  Examining this, it is clear that the text translated by Walker is not the same work as that published by Dobschütz.

The text edited by Dobschütz is based on a range of manuscripts, from th 8-15th centuries.  He dismisses the 14th century date – for obvious reasons – and suggests that this text is in fact the earliest witness to the legend of the Veronica, the piece of cloth with which Christ wiped his face while carrying his cross.  He states that the Vindicta is not the same text; and that Tischendorff simply ignored the Cura, in favour of the Vindicta and the Mors, which he discovered and described as older.[8]

An edition of the Cura was given by Schoenbach in Anzeiger für deutsches Altertum II 1876 (= Zeitschrift XX) p.173-180, based on a younger manuscript.  Dobschütz sneered at this edition for using a smoothed, modern text, rather than grappling with the difficulties of 8th century Latin and reproducing its orthography.  (I confess, after OCRing Dobschütz’s effort, so that I could read what the text said, I found myself short of sympathy for his point of view).

I thought that I would end by giving the Latin text, as best I could, from Dobschütz, stripped of his apparatus.  Here it is:

Anybody fancy making a translation?

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that a paper on the Cura sanitatis Tiberii and the Vindicta Salvatoris is accessible online: Remi Gounelle, « Les origines littéraires de la légende de Véronique et de la Sainte Face: la Cura sanitatis Tiberii et la Vindicta Saluatoris », dans A. MONACI CASTAGNO (éd.), Sacre impronte e oggetti « non fatti da mano d’uomo » nelle religioni…., Turin, Edizioni dell’Orso, 2011, p. 231-251.  It’s good stuff!

UPDATE: See link at bottom of the following post for a translation.

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  1. [1]J.K. Elliot, The Apocryphal New Testament, Oxford, 1993.  The “Pilate cycle” begins on p.164.  See esp. p.216.↩
  2. [2]W. Schneemelcher, Tr. Wilson, New Testament Apocrypha, vol. 1, 1991.  The material of interest to us begins on P.501 ff.  See esp. p.530, 532.↩
  3. [3]C. Tischendorff, Evangelia Apocrypha, Leipzig, 1876.↩
  4. [4]B. H. Cowper, The Apocryphal Gospels and Other Documents relating to the History of Christ (Edinburgh and London, 1867).↩
  5. [5]A. Walker, Apocryphal Gospels, Acts and Revelations (Edinburgh, 1870) (= A. Roberts and J. Donaldson (eds.),Ante-Nicene Christian Library 16).  This is the ANF translation.↩
  6. [6]A. Westcott, The Gospel of Nicodemus and Kindred Documents (London,1915).↩
  7. [7]Online here.↩
  8. [8]Giving as reference the Ea., 2nd edition, 1876, p.LXXXII and seq.↩