Early Christian & Patristic Latin literature

This volume contains the first translation into English of a number of documents associated with the Donatist movement in North Africa a dissident church which flourished during the fourth and fifth centuries before the Vandal invasion obscures our view of it. Donatists are often remembered for their fanatical opposition to traditores—those who had “handed over” the sacred scriptures during the Diocletianic Persecution—and their belief that those baptized by such people were not part of the true church. The writings contained in this volume add critical nuance to this portrait. At its centerpiece is the Donatist Compendium of 427 a collection of eleven exegetical texts compiled c. 427 CE by an unknown Donatist editor; other translated writings include a chronograph revised on the eve of the Vandal conquest of Carthage known as the Genealogy Book a set of section-headings for the Major Prophets and the book of Acts and a Donatist homily on the Epiphany one of the few sermons by a Donatist preacher that still survives. All of these texts were produced within a Donatist milieu and taken together they offer us a unique window into the inner life of the dissident communion as well as valuable insight into the exegetical tools that late antique bishops had at their disposal as they sought to illuminate the biblical text for their congregations.

Following the first volume entitled Analogical Identities: The Creation of the Christian Self of a trilogy dedicated to Christian anthropology in a modern re-assessment the present second volume deals with the specific content of this concept of “Analogical Identity” as a new hermeneutic retrieval of Christian anthropology in its relation with its historical roots and in the light of modern Philosophical and Psychological thought to which we thus introduce some new conceptual tools. At the same time a theological criticism of modern Philosophy and Psychology is initiated and some new anthropological concepts of theological provenance are proposed.

Faustus was a Gallic representative of what has been referred to as 'semipelagianism'. In his De Gratia he fiercely opposed the Augustinian view of Grace and Predestination that had been upheld by Lucidus a presbyter who possibly misunderstood Augustine's thought. Faustus did not open new ground about these contested doctrines but put significant roadblocks to their possible extreme trajectories.

This book explores the transmission of the letters of Leo the Great (pope 440-461). After setting out the contours of Leo’s papacy and the factors contributing to the sending and subsequent transmission of his letters to posterity it deals in detail with around sixty collections of Leo’s letters and over 300 manuscripts ranging in date from the sixth up to the sixteenth century. Each period of the Middle Ages is introduced as the context for collecting and copying the letters and the relationships between the letter collections themselves are traced. The result is a survey of the impact of Leo the Great upon Latin Christendom an impact that was felt in theology and canon law especially from the age of the Emperor Justinian to the Council of Ferrara-Florence and moving through the major monasteries of Europe from Corbie to Clairvaux. At every cultural Renaissance Leo was a presence being copied rearranged interpreted and eventually printed. This book is a testament to the legacy of one of the midfifth century’s most influential figures.

Girolamo completa il Commentario al profeta Abacuc nel 393 e lo dedica all'amico Cromazio vescovo di Aquileia. Nel percorso esegetico che lo vede impegnato a spiegare l'intero corpus profetico l'interpretazione di Abacuc dipende fortemente da Origene sulla cui eredità sorgerà proprio in quell'anno la famosa controversia. Girolamo offre un doppio commento al testo ebraico e a quello greco dei Settanta. Al primo dedica una spiegazione per lo più letterale mentre al secondo è riservata l'esegesi di stampo allegorico. Un punto qualificante del commento di Girolamo è la coerenza interpretativa che riesce a stabilire anche fra l’esegesi dei primi due capitoli e il terzo il cosiddetto cantico di Abacuc che ha la forma di un salmo. I suoi predecessori notando una certa estraneità fra la vicenda storica dell’oppressione di Nabucodonosor (cap. 1-2) e il cantico avevano dato di quest’ultimo testo una lettura cristologica indipendente dall’interpretazione della prima parte. Girolamo invece riesce a congiungere nella sua esegesi anche quest’ultima parte (che verosimilmente risulta aggiunta da un redattore al testo profetico) anticipando e applicando il senso cristologico anche ai primi due capitoli grazie a inserti in cui annuncia proletticamente la venuta di Cristo.

La versione latina originale del testo proposto in traduzione in questo volume è pubblicata nella collana Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina con il titolo Hieronymus - Commentarius in Abacuc (CCSL 76-76A bis 1). I rimandi alle pagine corrispondenti dell’edizione sono forniti a margine di questa traduzione.

This book examines how the Venerable Bede constructs a racial order in his most famous historical writing Ecclesiastical History of the English People a remarkable eighth-century work known for how it combines myth and history into a compelling charming narrative of the English conversion to Christianity. Yet Bede’s History also disturbingly deploys Scripture’s tropes and types many of them anti-Jewish to render unflattering sketches of some of Britain’s “races” (gentes)-especially the Britons.

To uncover the History’s characterizations of what it identifies as the British Irish English and Latin races Foley examines three of its episodes that narrate attempted conversions of the first three races- respectively-either to Christianity or to a better more orthodox catholic Latin version of it. This close analysis exposes the theological dimensions of each episode’s racial constructions. Foley argues that unlike modern conceptions of race which are grounded in imagined biological difference Bede’s is rooted in his perception of a particular race’s affective disposition its habits of the heart. More than that Bede closely ties a race’s disposition to its relative proximity to theological orthodoxy and catholicity. This book’s close reading also highlights surprising similarities between Bede’s medieval Christian discourse and modern secular and white discourses on race.

This collection of essays explores the multifaceted representation of power and authority in a variety of late antique and medieval hagiographical narratives (Lives Martyr Acts oneiric and miraculous accounts). The narratives under analysis written in some of the major languages of the Islamicate world and the Christian East and Christian West - Arabic Armenian Georgian Greek Latin Middle Persian Ottoman Turkish and Persian - prominently feature a diverse range of historical and fictional figures from a wide cross-section of society - from female lay saints in Italy and Zoroastrians in Sasanian and Islamic Iran to apostles and bishops and emperors and caliphs. Each chapter investigates how power and authority were narrated from above (courts/ saints) and below (saints/laity) and by extension navigated in various communities. As each chapter delves into the specific literary and social scene of a particular time place or hagiographer the volume as a whole offers a broad view; it brings to the fore important shared literary and social historical aspects such as the possible itineraries of popular narratives and motifs across Eurasia and commonly held notions in the religio-political thought worlds of hagiographers and their communities. Through close readings and varied analyses this collection contributes to the burgeoning interest in reading hagiography as literature while it offers new perspectives on the social and religious history of late antique and medieval communities.

Rome be it as a concrete space or as a concept and idea occupies an outstanding place in the thoughts and actions of Jerome of Stridon (c. 347-419). Glowing propagandist of the ideal of asceticism in the Latin sphere and highly influential scholar of the Bible he received his philological education here as well as his baptism. Beyond this background of study and adherence to the church of Rome the Vrbs continued to hold a key position for him who under the pontificate of Damasus established himself as a mediator between East and West and translator of Scripture. A sharp-tongued and increasingly controversial figure at the same time Jerome subsequently turned into the target of antiascetic criticism and once bereft of papal protection had to leave Rome for good. However even in distant Palestine the city on the Tiber and its memories remained present in the writings of Jerome who did not stop using a Roman network in order to have his works circulate within the Vrbs and eventually lamented its fall as that of “the entire world in a city”.

From multifaceted perspectives - historical philological theological exegetical and archaeological - the papers collected in this volume explore Rome’s unique and exemplary meaning for Jerome’s life and works. In the juxtaposition of both lieux de mémoire the father of the Church and the Vrbs this reciprocal thematic cut illuminates additional aspects of a Roma Christiana as imagined by Jerome and of the Stridonian himself as both key figurations of Late Antiquity.

This book offers an anthology from the proceedings of the Second International Conference on Patristic Studies “The Discoveries of Manuscripts from Late Antiquity: Their Impact on Patristic Studies and the Contemporary World” which took place in San Juan Argentina in March 2017. The aim of this event was to analyze and assess 20th- and 21st-century discoveries of manuscripts from Late Antiquity. Indeed complete libraries of manuscripts as well as individual documents of great importance for our understanding of historical authors and situations have come to light after having been buried for millennia. Just some examples are the incredible discoveries of the Nag Hammadi Gnostic library the Dead Sea Scrolls Origen of Alexandria’s homilies and Augustine’s sermons among others. Rather than being passive documents these manuscripts pose numerous questions to specialists from a diverse array of fields demanding new evaluations of a past that was already thought to be understood and judged.

The figure of Melchizedek which appears expressly mentioned in the Scriptures only twice in the Hebrew Bible (Gen 14 18-20 Ps 110 4) and once in the New Testament (Heb 7) became an important topic in patristic literature as well as in the polemic of Christianity against various heresies and Judaism becoming a popular theme in Byzantine iconography. The Epistle to the Hebrews was a turning point in the way of perceiving this character in antiquity when the former kingpriest of Salem of earthly character in ancient Jewish sources (Gen 14 Genesis Apocryphon Pseudo-Eupolemus Philo of Alexandria and Flavius Josephus) was characterized in the New Testament as an eternal being (7 3). From that moment on the figure of Melchizedek played a significant role in the heterodox speculations of some Christian sects (for example the heresy of the “Melchizedekites”) considering it a heavenly “great power” superior to Christ (Theodotus the banker) an “angel” (Origins) or even identifying it with the “Holy Spirit” (Hieracas the Egyptian). Likewise Melchizedek was interpreted as a soteriological figure in Gnostic literature having a celestial-angelic priestly and warrior character. How can one explain this radical transformation in the way of apprehending the figure of Melchizedek? The hypothesis of this work is that the sectarianqumranite exegetical tradition present in 11Q Melquisedec (11Q 13) would be the key to understanding the mutation suffered by the pre-Christian Melchizedek at the end of the Greco-Roman period which would have served as background or even as inspiration for the later development of this figure in ancient Christianity.