Sacris Erudiri

The present contribution offers the first critical edition of the Passio Pollionis (BHL 6869). The accompanying historical-literary introduction treats succintly Pollio’s hagiographical dossier, the Passio’s compositional context and its place in Pannonian hagiography. The text relates the martyrdom of Pollio, a lector in Cibalae (nowadays Vinkovci, Croatia), during the Great Persecution. It was written during the last decades of the 4^th century, in Pannonia. The terminus post quem is inferred from the text itself (the mentioning of Valentinian I, probable allusions to Sextus Petronius Probus). The terminus ante quem is deduced from external evidence: on one hand, the 5^th century Passio Donati, Venusti et Hermogenis (BHL 2309), which quotes from the Passio Pollionis; on the other hand, the celebration of Pollio’s cult in Ravenna in the last decade of the 4^th century. The introduction also discusses the existence of a Greek version and the relationship with the Passio Irenaei Sirmiensis (BHL 4466). As far as textual transmission is concerned, the Passio Pollionis is extant in thirteen manuscripts, ranging from the 11^th to the 15^th century. They are classified in three families, identified through philological and chronological criteria. The present edition is based on a member of the second family, namely the 12^th century Clm 4531, preserved at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München.

This paper is a close reading of Gregory Nazianzen’s Oration 39, devoted to an exposition of the baptism of Jesus and of its connection to Christian baptism. It is one of two homilies by Gregory devoted entirely to the topic of baptism. The paper argues Gregory’s theology of baptism both constructs and is constructed by a larger web of Christian theological ideas, including Christology, soteriology and hamartiology. In so doing, Christian theology becomes personal to every recipient of baptism. In other words, baptism accomplishes more than simply uniting the baptizand formally and publicly to the Christian Church. It functions as a tutor into the ways of thinking like a Christian about God, the world and about what God is doing in the world. Indeed, Gregory’s understanding of the connection between Jesus’ baptism and Christian baptism supports his larger point that the closer one draws to Christ, the greater one’s receipt of illumination from God. Baptism sets the Christian aright on the road leading to the light of God. Consequently, the baptized person emerges with a more correct understanding of God and of God’s love for humanity made manifest in the life, particularly the baptism, of Christ. For the baptized Christian, this new insight contributes to a more theologically-rich experience of worship.

In his De sacramentis, a work of mystagogical catechesis, Ambrose of Milan († 397) introduces the newly baptized to, among other things, the meaning of the baptismal ceremony’s concluding rite, that is, the sealing with the Holy Spirit. Ambrose’s comments on the spiritual seal (spiritale signaculum) may be found in, among other places, sacr. 6.2.6-9. Taking this rite as an example, he demonstrates that the divine Trinity cooperates in the administration of the sacrament. On the basis of 2 Cor 1:21-22, he shows God and Christ to be the common bestower of the Spirit. The unity of Christ and the Spirit Ambrose underlines by way of a quotation from the Song of Songs (8:6), which he considers to be a typological annunciation of the spiritual sealing that takes place in baptism. Ambrose is the fi rst church father to draw a typological connection between the seal of the Song of Songs and the spiritual seal of baptism. Also original is his interpretation of this rite in connection with Rom 6:3-11.

A comparison of the catechetical addresses in sacr. with Ambrose’s treatise De spiritu sancto reveals numerous diff erences in both form and content. So in sacr. 6.2.6-9, the Spirit is seen as a gift from God and Christ to the baptizands, while in the corresponding passage from spir. (1.6.78-80), it is the Spirit’s own sealing work on the baptizands that is emphasized. That is the means by which God’s Spirit would imprint the image of Christ on the hearts of the baptizands.

Ambrose is thus responsible for introducing the concept of the spiritale signaculum to Latin theology. After discovering it in Greek (πνευματικὴ σφραγίς) in Cyril of Jerusalem (catech. 5.6), Ambrose most likely translated it into Latin and then gave it the meaning described above.

John Chrysostom was ordained a presbyter by bishop Flavianus in Antioch in 386, thereby also accepting the office of a preacher at a time when the Arian controversy was at the close. The origins of the Neo-Nicene theology are believed to lie in Chrysostom’s community in the early 360s, i.e. with its former bishop Meletius. This article seeks to analyse to what extent Neo-Nicene theology is mirrored in the homilies which Chrysostom delivered during his time in Antioch. Before dealing with this question in three consecutive steps, a brief overview of Chrysostom’s work De sacerdotio will be given, in which he addresses the connection between preaching and Trinitarian theology in a theoretical manner. After that, John Chrysostom’s catechetical sermons, most notably Homilia catechetica 3/1, will be surveyed in a first step. In doing so, the authenticity of this sermon will be discussed and H.-J. Vogt’s approach examined critically. In a second step, the article will focus on the homilies against the Anomoeans, and the question will be raised to what extent Chrysostom uses Neo-Nicene terminology in response to Neo-Arianism. In a last step, the question will be raised whether Chrysostom’s homilies take issue with the Ultra-Nicene community of Antioch led by Paulinus and Evagrius. This article holds that John Chrysostom, who very clearly associates himself with the Neo-Nicene community of Antioch in an ecclesio-political respect, shows very little interest in using distinct Trinitarian terminology in his sermons. Chrysostom is, above all, concerned with the identity and the behaviour of his audience.

What did the Christian community of Constantinople look like around 400 AD? Is it even possible to arrive at a reasonably trustworthy picture of the Christians in question, including their religious practices, everyday life, and socio-cultural environment? Which questions occupied them and their bishop?

In the homilies on Acts, we possess a portion of John Chrysostom’s extensive oeuvre that enables a rather unvarnished picture of the preacher and his audience. That is so because the homilies have been transmitted in an unedited state, as Chrysostom delivered them, because they were delivered successively during the course of half a year (400-401 AD), and because we know the political situation in Constantinople at that time quite well.

Acts has a special place within the New Testament not because its subject is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus directly, but rather because it is where Luke the Evangelist relates the origins of the Church and, in particular, how the disciples of Jesus began to proclaim and live out their faith.

When a cohesive series of sermons takes this biblical book as its subject, that series is bound to mirror something of the faith and life of the community that hears the homilies, and of the bishop who delivers them. This thesis will be tested using several texts from the homilies on Acts. It turns out that the person of Peter, as he is known to us from Acts, is the model for the community leader, bishop, and preacher, and that the first community in Jerusalem is fashioned into a model for the Christians in Constantinople, especially with regard to their moral comportment. This “mirror,” then, provides us with a view of the metropolitan community: it consists predominately of Christians from the rich, educated upper class, who take their Christianity seriously enough to attend religious services daily. The task of bishop John Chrysostom is so to influence their practical life, by means of concrete guidance, that more of the Kingdom of God becomes visible in the Christian community.

This paper investigates Innocent I’s early-fifth-century Epistula 23 to Boniface in order to explore Boniface’s position. It shall be argued, from an examination of the historical context of John Chrysostom’s exile, that, while a number of references in Innocent’s letters are concerned with this episode, we have no evidence to conclude, as E.G. Weltin did, that Boniface was a permanent papal representative in Constantinople. Papal legates are an important feature of the church in the Middle Ages and grew out of the much more informal arrangement of legationes of Late Antiquity, but it is argued here that Boniface does not represent the beginning of that transformation and that his brief was not to negotiate a reconciliation between Constantinople and Rome.

This article offers a new critical edition of Augustine’s anti-Donatist sermon De utilitate ieiunii. The edition is preceded by a study of the sermon’s manuscript transmission (Vat. lat. 5758, Paris Bibl. Nat. lat. 792, Paris Bibl. Sainte-Geneviève 136, Mainz Stadtbibl. I 9 and the lost source of the Amerbach edition of 1506) and editorial history as well as by a discussion of its authenticity and global content. In addition, the article proposes February 405 as the sermon’s terminus post quem against the traditional dating between 408 and 411/412.

The present article offers a synthetic and chronological analysis of Augustine’s use of the Latin concept praeuaricatio (transgression). The analysis is situated within the recent scholarly debate on the continuity/discontinuity in Augustine’s doctrine of grace. As the concept of praeuaricatio entails many topics that play a major role in the Pelagian controversy (such as Augustine’s exegesis of Romans, the function of the Mosaic law and the nature of original sin), a chronological overview of Augustine’s use of the theme can provide new arguments for one of the positions in the aforementioned debate. The conclusion of the article supports the continuity-thesis. Already in his commentaries on Romans from 394-396 Augustine argues that the transgression of the law originates from misdirected desire (concupiscentia). The sinful desire that humanity inherited from Adam does not decrease, but only increases when confronted with the prohibition of the law. As a consequence, man transgresses the commandment which increases human sin (abundaret delictum). Only the grace of Christ can free man from the reign of concupiscence and his permanent lapse into transgression. This concept of praeuaricatio is also present in other contexts, such as the anti-Manichaean Contra Faustum (where Augustine argues that praeuaricatio would be impossible if the law were evil), De Genesi ad Litteram and De Ciuitate Dei. The use of the term becomes central in the Pelagian controversy. There, Augustine defends the uniqueness of Adam’s first transgression. His transgression vitiated human nature, so that his descendents were henceforth bound to transgress the law. Against Julian of Aeclanum, Augustine uses this position to show that the Catholic view on concupiscence is a middle way between Pelagianism and Manichaeism. The article concludes by stating that Augustine’s main ideas on praeuaricatio were already present before the Pelagian controversy and outside this controversy. Even before Ad Simplicianum (where some scholars situate the rupture in the development of Augustine’s doctrine of grace) Augustine regards man as totally incapable of avoiding transgression without the help of the grace of Christ.

Narsai’s homily “About the Fathers, the Teachers Diodore of Tarsos, Theodore of Mopsuestia and Nestorios”, is a document of primary importance for reconstructing the process that finally led to the separation of the East Syriac Church from both its Miaphysite neighbours and the Chalcedonian Byzantine Orthodoxy. In this homily an “official speaker” of the East Syriac Dyophysites, such as Narsai, for the first time overtly declares Nestorios to be a theological ancestor of the tradition he stands for and rejects Chalcedon, thus taking an unequivocal stand on two issues that were open for discussion up to then. The question this article poses is: What were the intentions of the author when he took these ground-breaking steps? Which audience did he have in mind and what did he wish to achieve with this homily? The primary audience of the homily could have well been the students and teachers of the School of Nisibis. However, as the historical context of its composition and its wide dissemination may show, Narsai meant this homily to serve a bigger cause: To spread the views of the “Theodoran” party, to which he adhered (further leading personalities being Barsauma of Nisibis and the Catholicos Aqaq), as widely as possible among the Syriac communities on Sassanian territory and their bishops. These views entailed a resoluteness to defend “Theodoran” orthodoxy even at the cost of breaking with the “Western” Churches, and it was primarily this resoluteness that Narsai, presumably in cooperation with Barsauma, wanted to convey to the East Syriac clergy and its leadership when writing this homily.

This article examines a fragment of the Epistle of Paul to the Colossians with a series of marginal comments included in St. Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 1395. Written in a ninth-century Irish minuscule, this fragment has clear connections to early medieval Hiberno-Latin and Irish-influenced biblical exegesis, with implications for further study of this field. Many of the glosses derive from the Expositiones xiii epistularum Pauli by Pelagius, and the fragment therefore acts as a witness to the transmission of this work. A number of the non-Pelagian glosses remain unidentified in comparison with other early medieval commentaries, and such comments may be original to this fragment. Moreover, due to the layout of the manuscript with both biblical text and marginal commentary, this fragment also serves as evidence for shifts in exegetical and scribal practices in the ninth century. Considering the evidence of paleography, biblical text, and the character of the commentary, the early provenance (and possibly origin) for the fragment is placed at the abbey of St. Gall. The article concludes with an edition of both the biblical text and the marginal glosses.

In Sacris Erudiri 50 (2011) Prof. J. C. Martín has published an interesting compilation of theological interrogationes and responsiones which is transmitted under the title Item alie questiones in quibus sunt nonnulle de Genesi (AQ) in Monte Cassino, Bibl. Abb. 29 (s. X - XI). The present article turns our attention to a very similar compilation found under the title Item questionem veteris testamenti (IQ) in Monte Cassino, Bibl. Abb. 187 (s. IX²). It is demonstrated that these two florilegia go back, independently, to an older (presumably lost) collection of theological interrogationes and responsiones (IAQ) which was available in central Italy, in the second half of the 9^th century at the latest. The interrelationship between AQ and IQ is discussed in order to reconstruct IAQ as precisely as possible. In three appendices some hitherto unpublished texts are transcribed from Monte Cassino, Bibl. Abb. 187, and the importance of AQ, IQ, and IAQ for the reconstruction of the early transmission of the pseudo-Augustinian Dialogus quaestionum is discussed.

The paper comprises two sections. The first discusses the transmission of three versions of an anonymous eyewitness account of the first crusade. The account in question was written within a few years of the final events of the first crusade in 1099, as were its three versions studied here. The best known of the three is Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum (GF). The second version, Peregrinatio Antiochie per Vrbanum papam facta (PA), derives from Cambridge, St Catharine’s College, MS 3, a new manuscript, which this essay presents and examines. This version has so far been thought to be lost and was previously known only fragmentarily through the editio princeps of Gesta Francorum. The third version is Peter Tudebode’s reworking of the account (PT). Two stemmata are proposed as preliminary solutions to the question of how these three are interrelated. For, owing to the current research situation, as yet it is not certain whether Gesta Francorum or Peregrinatio Antiochie represents the earliest surviving stage of the work’s transmission. The stemmata are elaborated in an appendix, which extends them with a fourth, slightly later text, Hystoria de uia et recuperatione Antiochiae atque Ierusolymarum (HAI).

The second section of the article argues that, with respect to its title, contents, and literary fabric, earlier scholarship on Gesta Francorum and Peter Tudebode has apprehended the work somewhat insufficiently and even incorrectly. These shortcomings ensue primarily from inaccurate assessments of the relevant manuscript evidence by the modern editors of Gesta Francorum and Tudebode. As regards the title, the paper asserts that the name “Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum” was composed by a person other than the anonymous author. A better candidate for the authorial title is “Itinerarium Hierosolimitanorum”. This conclusion suggests that, contrary to the modern opinion, a description of holy places in and around Jerusalem that follows the studied account of the crusade in almost all manuscripts is an integral part of the work. The evidence from manuscripts verifies this inference. Finally, the paper demonstrates that as a literary piece, the work is a hybrid, combining elements of the genres of itinerary, gesta or historiography, and hagiography. For students of the crusade and medieval literature, the most fascinating of the work’s literary layers is the hagiographic one.

This article presents a particular application of the liberal arts to theology, as that application was developed in the commentary Librum hunc (or better, Commentum super Boethii librum De trinitate), attributed to Thierry of Chartres. In an effort to synthesize, the article combines Trinitarian doctrine and the idea of the Trinitarian structure of the created universe with the Aristotelian distinction between “the numbering number” and “the numbered number.” Even though the reciprocal relation of unity (1x1), which is an image of the Son’s birth from the Father in the divine Trinity, retains the same value, it nonetheless gives rise to a duality and thus to numerical plurality. According to this analogy, the Son (as the tetragonus primus) is at the same time the perfect image of the Father and the “wisdom” that gives birth to the forms of created things. Unity and its self-expression are joined together in a reciprocal relation, i.e., the Holy Spirit, to which corresponds, in the process of cosmogenesis, the cosmic love that sets the universe in motion, that is, the desire of all things to be what they are. In God all the forms are just one simple form, a “number that numbers,” which, solely through matter, gives birth to diverse forms, to forms in the plural, that is, to “the numbered number.”

The late thirteenth-century manuscript Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms. lat. 11867 (and the membrum disiectum in Ms. lat. 9376, fol.61r-72v) is famous for its large collection of Latin poems and letters, e. g. the poems of Alexander Neckam and the so-called Campanian letter collection. Among the still unpublished items the manuscript preserves an anonymous satire in 28 goliardic stanzas directed against the inhospital Cistercians of Pipewellin Nottinghampshire (P fol. 102vb-103ra, Inc. Vera loqui liceat: quisquis es, asculta, WIC 20145). In its first part (st. 7-19) the author gathers the accusations commonly proffered against the Cistercians, whereas in the second part (st. 20-28) he describes how he went to Pipewell to discharge a friend’s debts. There he expected to be served a meal better than that ordinarily prescribed by the Rule, given the fact that he had arrived on the very day of the abbot’s return from the annual general chapter of the Cistercians; but he received only cabbage, coarse bread and cold beer, the latter he deemed to be an attempt of murder. According to the poet’s tale it was his luck that he met with a royal forester whom he had known from childhood. When the other guests were sent away by the monks in rather an impolite manner, the royal officer obtained from the hospiciarius a better meal and tasty wine that he willingly shared with the poet in a separate chamber. As neither names nor dates are given in the text, it is impossible even to guess at the author's name. We may surmise that he was one of the many Englishmen who went abroad to study in France. In any case, his style reveals distinctive characteristics of the modern French poets, as in particular he cites a few lines from the Metamorphosis Golie, an anonymous satire written ca. 1142 in favour of Peter Abaelard, while attacking St Bernard.

Though, since the second half of the 20th c., scholars have underlined the important differences which separate Orosius’ theological and historiographical approach from that of Augustine, Orosius indeed “benefited very greatly from the general assumption that his Historiae was an indispensable complement to the City of God” (Hillgarth). This article aims to investigate the history of this “general assumption”. In fact, this point seems to be absolutely secondary, if not unknown, in the most ancient sources. Only later, some anonymous works, such as the Dialogus quaestionum LXV (attested from the 8th-9th c.) and a biographical note on Orosius (attested from the 11th c.), started to underline the personal relationship linking these auctoritates, as well as to praise the Augustinian patronage of the Historiae. The topos of their nearness and mutual agreement appears to be definitively established, both in texts and images, during the 12th c. and then transmitted to the modern erudition. The conclusions point out the issues at stake of this cultural topos with regards to the conception of the Christianity and the role of political power in it.

The present article provides a survey of the printed history of the De duabus Christi naturis, a chapter collection attributed to the Byzantine theologian Maximus the Confessor. This history spans from Francisco Torres’ Latin translation (dating to the beginning of the seventeenth century) to Jacques-Paul Migne’s famous edition of 1865. Attention is paid to the particularities of the editions made by Ioannes Meursius, François Combefis and Dositheus of Jerusalem. Although it is not always possible to identify the source manuscripts of the editions and translation in question, this study nevertheless reveals some useful insights with regard to the editors and their use of the available source material.