Month: December 2013

The Life of Severus of Antioch – part 3

Posted on by Roger Pearse

From the Life of Severus of Antioch (6th c. AD), as written by Zacharias Rhetor:

Shortly afterwards occurred the events relating to Paralios and Horapollon the grammarian, from which we learn that he [Severus] who has been slandered, contrary to the divine laws, is innocent of the slanders of his infamous slanderer.  Here’s what was the origin of these events.

Paralios was from Aphrodisias, which is the metropolis of Caria.  He had three brothers, two of whom were engaged in idolatry and appeased the evil demons by invocations, sacrifices, incantations and by the arts of magicians; and the third, Athanasius, a man of God, had embraced the monastic life at Alexandria, in the convent called Enaton, at the same time as the illustrious Stephen.

After his early education, during which he studied civil law in Phoenicia, Athanasius went to Alexandria on business.  There he met Stephen, who I have just mentioned, who since childhood had been animated with an ardent piety and was exercising the functions of a sophist, i.e. a teacher, and he saw fit to reject, along with him, the pointless hopes of the bar.  As by a sign from God, each of them received the yoke of the true philosophy from the hand of the great Salomon, at this period the superior of those who cultivated philosophy in the convent in question.  He was a man of sound mind who was distinguished by the virtues of the monastic life.

Paralios, after being raised as a pagan in his own country by his two other brothers, went to Alexandria with the desire to learn grammar.  Before his departure, his brothers had strongly recommended him not to to speak a word to the aforementioned Athanasius.  So he went to the grammarian Horapollon.  The latter knew his art in a remarkable way, and his teaching was praiseworthy; but he was of the pagan religion, and full of admiration for demons and magic.  In engaging with Horapollon, the paganism of Paralios deepened further; along with his master, he was determined to offer sacrifices to idols.  At length Paralios, overcome by natural feelings, burned with the desire to finally see his brother Athanasius.  So he went to the monastery of Salomon, and was captivated by the holy pair, Stephen and Athanasius.  With the help of God’s spirit they easily overcame the numerous pagan objections and questions which they heard Paralios make.

Stephen was indeed very wise, and well aware of both the divine teachings and of encyclopediac knowledge.  After reading numerous treatises by the doctors of the church, who combatted the pagans, he had received from God the grace to triumph over them entirely, talking with them; and his zeal for religion made him seem like the great Elijah.  So he refuted the sophistical objections that the pagans made to the Christians, and then he retorted on Paralios the sleaziness of the pagans, the infamous mysteries of their gods, the lying oracles of polytheism, the obscure and shifty responses of their gods, their ignorance of the future, and other demonic deceptions.  He persuaded Paralios to submit some doubts of this kind to Horapollon, Heraiskus, Asclepiodotus, Ammonius, Isidore, and to the other philosophers who were with them; and then to weigh in a just balance what was said on both sides.  For many days Paralios had conversations on this subject with the pagans, and he found their responses feeble and unfounded.  He then produced a fact which deserves to be remembered and written down.

Asclepiodotus of Alexandria, who was involved with enchantments, practiced magic, made demoniac invocations, and who had thus commanded the admiration of the pagans for his philosophy, had agreed with his namesake (= Asclepiodotus), who at that time boasted of honours and dignities given to him by the king, and who held the first place in the senate of Aphrodisias, to give him his daughter in marriage.  He lived a long time in Caria with his wife, and wished to have children.  But his wish was not fulfilled, God inflicting on him as punishment, because he was involved with the evil practices of magic, the loss of his children and the sterility of his wife.  Since his father-in-law was  upset that his daughter had no children, our philosopher imagined an oracle (or perhaps he was tricked by the demon represented by Isis), according to which the goddess promised him children, if he went with his wife into the temple which this goddess had at Menouthis, a village fourteen miles from Alexandria, and near to the [locality] called Canopus.  So he persuaded his father-in-law to allow him to take his wife and go with her to this place.  He had promised his father-in-law to return home with his wife and the child she would have, but Asclepiodotus (of Alexandria) went to Alexandria, having deceived his namesake (= Asclepiodotus of Caria).

He stayed at Menouthis for some time, and offered a considerable number of sacrifices to demons.  But this achieved nothing.  The sterility of his wife persisted there too.  Having believed that he had seen Isis lying next to him, he heard those,  who interpreted dreams there, and who served the demon represented by Isis, say that he must join himself to the idol of the goddess, and then join himself with his wife; thus a child would be born to him.  Our philosopher believed this pretty crude deception, as the priest who had advised him from the start came back again, and he joined himself to the stone which represented Isis, and then, after the stone, to his wife.

Despite this, she remained sterile.  Then the priest advised him to go with only his wife to the village of Astu, to remain there some time, and then to take as his child one who had been born from the priestess, a compatriot of his, a short time earlier.  Because the gods and the fates, he said extravagantly, wanted him to do so.  Asclepiodotus likewise followed this advice, went with his wife, without anyone else accompanying them, to the mother of this child.  He gave her a certain amount of money, and took her child.  Then he returned to Alexandria, boasting that a sterile woman had given birth after all this time.  In consequence all those who were involved in the folly of the pagans boasted greatly about this fable, as if it was true, and praised Isis, and Menouthis, the village of the goddess, where someone doing a good deed had buried the temple of Isis under the sand, to the point where not a trace of it could be seen.

Fascinating stuff!

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

‘Twas Christmas Eve in the workhouse …  and I’m still busy even as late as this.

I’ve been reading John Carey’s “Down with dons” (PDF) with great enjoyment this evening.  Written in 1975, it accurately predicts many of the disasters of the coming decades.  I love the way that it depicts the Oxford University establishment.  Indeed I shall think of his words every time I get a copy of the dismal university magazine, “Oxford Today”, replete as it is with self-satisfaction and infantile “rebelliousness” from some of the most establishment people in the land.  I need to remember to write to him and thank him for making the article available online.

I’ve also been taking a look at Metaphrastes’ (10th c.) Life of Nicholas of Myra — our Santa! — in the Patrologia Graeca edition, PG 116, 317-356.  This prints the Latin text of Surius against a Greek text from a manuscript.  The Latin is rather harder than the stuff I’ve been translating lately, and I don’t feel like straining my brains on Christmas Eve.  It opens with prologue, and, after a paragraph or two about our Nicholas’ upbringing, moves straight into the story of how he provided dowries for three girls otherwise to be forced into prostitution.  This fills quite a number of chapters.  Somewhat later Nicholas goes to the Holy Land; and then to the Council of Nicaea, where he opposes Arianism.  I didn’t see any mention of him thumping Arius, however, and the account is only a single chapter.  I found myself wondering … why has nobody translated this into English?

One of the sources for Santa suggested that a lot was borrowed from the 6th century Nicholas of Sion.  This Nicholas is mentioned as a contemporary of Nicholas of Myra in Metaphrastes’ Life, I note.  I went to look for the English translation of this.  Then I swallowed hard; the price was eye-watering!  Maybe not yet.

Today Amazon decided suddenly that I had earned a gift card.  It was only a few dollars, and only usable at Amazon.com, rather than Amazon.co.uk which I must presently prefer.  I found that I had a previous gift card also sitting there, unused.  A letter from the library informed me that Berger’s English translation of the Patria – medieval accounts – of Constantinople could not be borrowed by inter-library loan, as it was only published in November this year.  I decided, therefore, to use the Amazon.com funds and buy it, and have it shipped to the UK.  Doubtless it will arrive sometime next year, if the seas remain calm.  No rush.

On the Mithras site, I had my first troll today.  A munchkin turned up, informing me that Mithras had pre-Roman roots.  He didn’t justify his statement of course, but it was enough to cause me to add a couple of sections to the FAQ, and politely inform him otherwise.  His response was to down-vote my reply – imprudent of him – and to post a link to a strange and very ignorant web-page, at Counter-Punch.org, here, entitled “Happy Birthday Mithras!”.  He also posted a two-word insult on another page, and earned his blacklisting on Discus in one easy click of the mouse.

The “Counter-punch” page is full of crude mistakes of fact, yet professes to be written by a certain Gary Leupp, “Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion.”  But it reads like the production of a student.  I feel an obligation to the reputation of the academy, and so I have drafted an email to Dr Leupp, whom I find does exist, if not with that role, querying whether he has been the victim of identity theft.  It’s not an easy email to draft, of course; for all I know he may really be the author, six years ago!  Not so easy to tell someone that their academic reputation is endorsing a bunch of obscurantist nonsense.  Anyway I have tried.

On twitter I have been following the misadventures of Dr Sophia Hay, who has been attempting to travel from Rome to London for the last two days, and hasn’t slept in that time.  The flight was diverted last night to Amsterdam, and when she finally arrived at Gatwick airport, the British authorities had conveniently decided not to run any trains or buses from the airport into London, thereby stranding all the passengers in the wilds of Surrey.  Doubtless the richly rewarded officials are safe at home, and the job they are paid to do can go hang.  “If it feels good, do it” was the slogan of the current generation, and the inevitable selfishness and indifference to others riddles British society.  So it will be a profitable night for the taxi firms; but hardly a stress-free one for driver or passengers.

It’s Christmas Eve.  I want to translate some more of Severus of Antioch.  Maybe I will.  But maybe there is something on the television.  Although this is less likely, it must be said.

Yesterday British Telecom did a repair to one of my telephone sockets.  For reasons best known to himself, he also interfered with the main socket through which my broadband runs.  It has been falling out every quarter of an hour since.

Maybe I will hit “post” now, while I am ahead.

It’s Christmas Eve.  Let us think of those less fortunate than ourselves.  The permissive society has left an awful lot of people sitting alone at home tonight.  Some will be sitting there with a bottle, holding back the loneliness.  Shortage of money is rife in many households too.  These may be divorced, whose loneliness has been contrived by successive pieces of “progressive” legislation, or just the unwed, of whom there seem to be a very large number.

Bookish folks like us can’t do much for these people.  But Christian folk can pray for any known to us.  If you know someone like that, pray for them now.  Pray against the isolation, that they may feel something of the spirit of Christmas; of the Light of the World.

If anyone is reading this, in this situation, here’s a thought.  Maybe a local church is running a midnight service?  It will probably be on Google, if it is.  Maybe it might be fun to go there and get a mince-pie afterwards, even if they don’t know anyone?

Enough.  I feel a definite need to swig a diet coke and watch the news for a bit.  Maybe I’ll be back later!

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A new Claudio Zamagni article on Eusebius’ Gospel problems and solutions

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Claudio Zamagni has written to tell me that a new article of his is online at Academia.edu here.  It discusses the difficult question of the manuscripts of the fragments of Eusebius of Caesarea’s Gospel problems and solutions (Quaestiones ad Stephanum et Marinum).  It’s excellent stuff, as ever with Dr Z., and highly recommended.

This holiday I’m going to look at the sales of the Eusebius book and see if we have reached the point at which we can start to place material on the web on open access.  I believe that sales have been dropping for some time, but I won’t know until I review the sales statistics.

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Ancient literary sources for St Nicholas of Myra

Posted on by Roger Pearse

It is Christmas Eve, and so what better time to ask the question: what, if anything, does the historical record tell us about a supposed 4th century bishop of Myra named Nicholas?

Every Christmas there is a flood of articles in the press and online about the origins of “Santa Claus”.  It is a curious reflection on our society, however, that these consist entirely of unreferenced hearsay.

I’d like to make a small difference this Christmas.  For some this means feeding the homeless and other useful things.  We book-lovers can’t do that kind of work; but here’s something we can do.

Let’s begin the process of collecting whatever primary sources there might be.  I am conscious that I probably don’t have the right reference literature.  I don’t know my way around the hagiographical texts.  So this can only be a first effort at the problem, and I intend to highlight my ignorance!  Feel free to contribute.  What we want here, surely, is primary sources.[1]

If there was such a person as Nicholas, bishop of Myra, during the time of Constantine, he left no literary works behind him.  Quasten’s Patrology for the period does not even mention him.

There are various lists in circulation, of various dates, of the bishops who attended the First Council of Nicaea.  Some of them supposedly include a Nicholas of Myra.  I have not seen any indication of which ones, however.

The orations of 5th century bishop Proclus of Constantinople[2] are supposed to contain a sermon praising Nicholas.  This item is listed in the CPG 5890, Laudatio S. Nicolai, but among the spuria.  It is BHG 13640, incipit: Adelfoi/ mou~, pate/rej kai\ te/kna. A text is offered: G. Anrich, Hagios Nikolaos I, Leipzig, 1913, 429-433.  This seems to be at Google Books here, but I cannot access it.  Apparently it denies that the text is really by Proclus; but as I say, I can’t look and see.  If anyone can, please let me know.

In the 6th century Procopius, De aedificiis book 1, chapter 6 (at Lacus Curtius), tells us that Justinian constructed a church in his honour:

Further on he established a shrine to St. Priscus and St. Nicholas, an entirely new creation of his own, at a spot where the Byzantines love especially to tarry, some worshipping and doing honour to these saints who have come to dwell among them, and others simply enjoying the charm of the precinct, since the Emperor forced back the wash of the sea and set the foundations far out into the water when he established this sanctuary.[3]

I don’t know enough hagiography to know if this really does refer to Nicholas of Myra.  It sounds like a pair of linked saints, however.

Our next port of call is the Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graecorum (BHG), vol. 2, p.139-151, nn. 1347-64 n.  This tells us the following:

  • BHG 1347: A Vita exists, published by Anrich (p.3-55), but previously by N.C. Falconius Sancti Nicolai … acta primigenia, Neapoli, 1751, 1-29. (Falconius is online here).
  • BHG 1348:  A second Vita per Michaelem, by Michael the Archimandrite (or by Methodius, bishop of Patar.), is again in Falconius 39-55, and Anrich.
  • BHG 1348b:  Another vita praemetaphrastica, of which the start is lost, and only part of it appears in Anrich.

Following this, there are several pages listing material.

Returning to Jones, however, I learn that 4 vitae originating in the 9th-10th century are known; the vita per Michaelem (start of 9th c.), “an epistolary composition, Methodius ad Theodorum (842×6)”, a Latin vita and miracles by John, a deacon of Naples (3rd quarter of the 9th c.; the Legenda aurea of James of Voragine, d. 1298, is based on this version), and a vita by Simon Metaphrastes (second half of 10th c.).

11 chapters of the Vita per Michaelem exists in English here.  The site states:

John Quinn, professor of classical languages, Hope College, Holland, Michigan, was doing the first English translation of the text for us when he suddenly and unexpectedly died while out jogging on June 19, 2008. His as yet unfinished translation is offered as a memorial to his work.

They add:

When an appropriate and willing scholar is found the translation will be completed.

I feel that somebody ought to do this.  It serves the interests of everyone to do so.  I suspect Anrich’s book — what a nuisance that this is inaccessible! — is the text used.

The Methodius ad Theodorum is BHG 1352y, and appears only in Anrich vol. 1, 140-150 and again in vol. 2 546-556.

Doubtless the Latin of John of Naples is to be found in the BHL, but I have no access to this.

The Metaphrastes version is BHG 1349, and may be found in Falconius p.86-108 and Anrich, and also in the PG 116, 317-356.  This last makes it very accessible.

I think that’s enough for the moment.

What we now need, I would have thought, is some translations of some of these; and some evaluations of them.  Unfortunately I have been unable to access either Anrich or Falconius!  It seems likely that Anrich will contain commentary.  How infuriating that a 1913 book is inaccessible, a century after publication!

Postscript: I have discovered that Anrich is at Hathi trust here; but only for US readers.

UPDATE: I have now managed to access the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church[4].  This tells me (p.1148):

[Tradition says he] was present at the Council of Nicaea. The latter supposition is most improbable, as he is not in any of the early lists of bishops present at the Council. The earliest evidence for his cult at Myra is found in the contemporary Life of
St Nicholas of Sion, who lived in the reign of the Emp. Justinian (d. 565). Episodes from the Life of St Nicholas of Sion were later transferred to the Life of his namesake.
Justinian himself built a church in Constantinople dedicated to St Priscus and St Nicholas.

The Life of St Nicholas of Sion is ed., with Eng. tr., by I. and N.P. Sevcenko (The Archbishop Iakovos Library of Ecclesiastical and Historical Sources, 10; Brookline, Mass. [1984]).

Perhaps we need to look at Nicholas of Sion next.

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  1. [1]A valuable secondary source pointing to the literature is Graham Jones, “St Nicholas, Icon of mercantile virtues: transition and continuity of a European myth,” in Myths of Europe (ed. Richard Littlejohns), 2007, 73-88; 75.↩
  2. [2]Listed in the Clavis Patrum Graecorum vol. 3, entry 5800 and on.↩
  3. [3]I obtained this reference from the otherwise useless entry in W.Smith and H. Wace, Dictionary of Christian Biography, vol. 4, 1887, p.41.  This does tell us that his “saints’ day” is December 6; important for looking up material.  The other reference is to “Surii Hist. Sant.”; I have had no luck with this yet.↩
  4. [4]3rd edition, 1997.↩

Proof-reader wanted

Posted on by Roger Pearse

This morning, to my considerable surprise, the proof copy of Ancient Texts in Translation 2 — Origen of Alexandria: Exegetical works on Ezekiel — arrived on my doorstep.  My surprise was because I do my proof copies through lulu.com, and I only uploaded the PDF to the site on 18th December.  Six days to print it and deliver it is pretty impressive!  It’s actually taken more time for Neilsen, the ISBN bureau, to add the details to their database (which they still have yet to do properly).

There are quite a few typographical errors — mostly the wrong font being used at various points, etc — which will need fixing.

But I am conscious that I have seen this text rather too many times.  I wonder if anyone would care to help the project along by proof-reading a printed copy and sending in corrections?  I can offer a free copy of the final hardback volume as payment, if that would help.

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How not to do scholarship – the perils of studying those we disagree with

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I trained as a scientist.  Like all scientists, I despised scholars.  I thought that they were just people decorating their prejudices with the results of a library search.  Given time, we all knew, we could do as well or better.  Inspecting the occasional volume of what was sold in Blackwell’s bookshop as “Biblical Scholarship” did nothing to convince me otherwise.

It was only the encounter with Timothy Barnes Tertullian: a literary and historical study[1] that presented me with a piece of real scholarship; something that I knew that I could not have written, however long I spent in the library.  To read it is a liberal education.  To follow the approach taken is to learn something about what it means to try to determine the facts about the events of past times.  Everything that I have ever done since has been influenced by it.

What I had seen, what we had all despised, was not scholarship as such.  Rather it was — and is — bad scholarship.  What made it bad was the contamination of outside factors, and the failure of those who wrote it to maintain an intellectual Chinese wall between data and opinion.  I have seen more of this since.

The mind of a scholar is influenced by many things, most of which he needs to exclude from his thought when practising his trade.  Most obviously, a scholar is influenced primarily by the culture in which he lives.  This is unavoidable.  He is also influenced by the political or religious opinions by which he actually lives his life, especially if these are in tune with the prevailing culture.   The opinions may not be the same as those he professes verbally, of course; but even here, the cultural demand for constant verbal repetition of an opinion will have an effect on the one doing it, as the Chinese brainwashers of Mao Tse-Tung knew very well.

We see the consequence of this in older scholarly literature.  Sometimes a splendid piece of scholarly work is followed by some stale genuflection to some contemporary shibboleth or controversy.  Sometimes a then-dull piece of opinion dressed up as scholarship may today provide a valuable piece of evidence as to the attitudes in vogue and determining the conclusions of “scholarship” at the time.  For, in any controversial subject, the “consensus of scholars” tends, quite naturally, to reflect the opinions of those controlling university appointments in that country at the time in question.

There are other risks for the scholar who also teaches.  Being surrounded constantly by students means a constant position of superiority of information, and often of intellect.  It is terribly easy to become self-important, and to lose touch with reality, and to write twaddle in consequence.

This is no new thought: John Carey famously observed in 1975 in Down with Dons.[2]

From the viewpoint of non-dons, probably the most obnoxious thing about dons is their uppishness. Of course, many dons are quite tolerable people. But if you ask a layman to imagine a don the idea will come into his head of something with a loud, affected voice, airing its knowledge, and as anyone who has lived much among dons will testify, this picture has a fair degree of accuracy. The reasons are not far to seek. For one thing, knowledge – and, in the main, useless knowledge – is the don’s raison d’être. For another, he spends his working life in the company of young people who, though highly gifted, can be counted on to know less than he does. Such conditions might warp the humblest after a while, and dons are seldom humble even in their early years. Overgrown schoolboy professors, they are likely to acquire, from parents and pedagogues, a high opinion of their own abilities. By the time they are fully fledged this sense of their intellectual superiority will have gone very deep and, because of the snob value attached to learning and the older universities, it will almost certainly issue in a sense of social superiority as well. …

In the end I attributed it to the insulating effect of donnish uppishness. Years of self-esteem had, as it were, blinded the Professor to his true economic value. Bumptiousness and insolence are the quite natural outcome of such a condition …

We are not concerned here with the moral state of such scholars.  What we need to think about is whether such foolishness will affect their scholarly work.

It is difficult to imagine that it cannot.  A man accustomed to thinking himself a jolly clever chap is not likely to cultivate the self-distrust necessary to avoid anachronism, to avoid imposing himself, his judgements, his attitudes, on to a world far different in almost every respect.

These opinions and judgements, as we have seen, are not primarily scholarly.  They are the product of the environment in which the scholar operates.  The cleverer we think we are, the more certain it is that we will fail to recognise that, where antiquity is concerned, we are ignorant dumb clucks who don’t know the sort of things that the lowliest and stupidest ancient slave took for granted.  The more bumptious we are, the less likely it is that our conclusions will be correct, or that our work will have permanent value.

There is a further pitfall in store for the unwary academic.  By chance I encountered an example of it on twitter last night.  Here is the tweet that raised my eyebrows:

I don’t intend to pillory the author – otherwise unknown to me – but if I understand him correctly, it is a useful example of where scholarship can go off the rails.

For, on the face of it, isn’t it a very odd statement?  That we don’t care about the truth of what we read?  Is “patristics” important, if it doesn’t matter to us whether anything said by any patristic writer is true?  Indeed let us generalise!  Is any intellectual movement important, if it doesn’t matter to us what they said except as footnotes for the history of thought?  Do we really not care whether something said is right or wrong?  When the early socialists were grappling with the problem of anarchism, do we not care whether they made the right or wrong decision, but only about “how socialist beliefs evolved”?   Or let us look at Cicero’s De officiis, book 3, chapter 12:

12.  Let it be set down as an established principle, then, that what is morally wrong can never be expedient — not even when one secures by means of it that which one thinks expedient; for the mere act of thinking a course expedient, when it is morally wrong, is demoralizing.

But, as I said above, cases often arise in which expediency may seem to clash with moral rectitude; and so we should examine carefully and see whether their conflict is inevitable or whether they may be reconciled.

The following are problems of this sort: suppose, for example, a time of dearth and famine at Rhodes, with provisions at fabulous prices; and suppose that an honest man has imported a large cargo of grain from Alexandria and that to his certain knowledge also several other importers have set sail from Alexandria, and that on the voyage he has sighted their vessels laden with grain and bound for Rhodes; is he to report the fact to the Rhodians or is he to keep his own counsel and sell his own stock at the highest market price?

I am assuming the case of a virtuous, upright man, and I am raising the question how a man would think and reason who would not conceal the facts from the Rhodians if he thought that it was immoral to do so, but who might be in doubt whether such silence would really be immoral.

Cicero asks a very real, and very contemporary question!  (The link to the full text will provide some answers.)  But would we make of a scholar who believes the answer to this is unimportant, and instead treats the writer only as “important for the understanding of the evolution of philosophical teaching”?

It’s a remarkably patronising position to take towards any object of study, surely?  It means that we, glorious us, are placing ourselves far above the object of our study.  Implicit in all of this is contempt for the people we are studying, and anything that they have to say.    Nothing they say matters, except insofar as their remarks help us to advance our own thesis about the “evolution of beliefs”.

This comes about naturally if we start to spend our days studying people whom we disagree with, however mildly.  It is a trap that the unwary scholar can easily fall into.

For these people are under our microscope.  We are the scholar, they are merely material!  First we will tend to look down on them, naturally, for being wrong.  Then we will tend to pin them on cards, like butterflies.  Then we will lose any ability to consider whether what they have to say is correct or not.  At which point, obviously, we have lost all power to produce any kind of balanced assessment of the men and their work.

It is probably difficult to avoid this attitude, when studying some long-dead movement.  But I find that scholars who do study these movements don’t take that attitude.  They seek to find importance in what these movements had to say, to connect them, somehow, with the living world.  When we find this attitude directed, as here, towards a major modern intellectual movement, then the red flags must go on.   We’re not doing scholarship, if we write as if those alive today with whom we disagree don’t deserve a hearing, but are merely insects under our “scholarly” microscope.  This is polemic.

Hate is a powerful force.  Hate-literature is the most depressing of human writings, because the writers have lost their balance.  They can see nothing except the follies of their subject, and their study through that lens magnifies every pimple and defect to enormous proportions, when a more normal perception would see nothing.

It is hazardous to us all, to spend much time disagreeing with people.  To remain balanced, we must love what we study.  The peril of over-enthusiasm may be corrected by more study; but over-scepticism is always reinforced by it.

Study what you love, and listen to those you study.  To decide that we need not listen to our subjects will rot our brains, and prevent us ever writing anything worthwhile about them.

UPDATE: I’ve decided that the name of the author of the tweet is irrelevant, and removed it. I don’t, after all, know whether he intended that which I understand him to say, and let us by all means suppose a misunderstanding.  The point is a general one.

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  1. [1]Oxford, 1971, reprinted with important additions in 1985.↩
  2. [2]1975. Online here. (PDF)↩

The Life of Severus of Antioch – part 2

Posted on by Roger Pearse

We continue from the Life of Severus of Antioch by Zacharias Rhetor.

The illustrious Severus is Pisidian in origin, and his home town is Sozopolis.  In fact it was this town that fell to him as his his home, after the first [birth], of which we have all  been banished following the transgression of Adam, and that the divine apostle invites us to do again.  Because here, he says, we have no continuing city, but we seek that one where we shall live one day, one where God is the architect and founder.  He was raised by distinguished parents, as those who knew them say.  They were descended from that Severus who was bishop of the town of Sozopolis at the period when the first council of Ephesus met against the impious Nestorius.  After the death of his father, who was one of the senate of the town, his widowed mother sent him with his two brothers, who were older than him, to Alexandria, to study grammar and rhetoric, both Greek and Latin.

The custom being established in his homeland, so it is said, not to come to holy baptism before middle age except when urgently necessary, it happened that Severus and his brothers were still only catechumens when they came to Alexandria, for the reason stated.  At that time I too was staying in the city for the same reason.  The three brothers went first to the sophist John, nicknamed Σημειογράφος (?), then to Sopater, who had a reputation for the art of rhetoric, as everybody spoke highly of him for this.  It happened that I was also frequenting the course of this master at that time, as well as Menas, of pious memory, whose orthodoxy, humility of life, great chastity, love of his fellow man, and sympathy for the poor were universally acknowledged.  He was in fact one of those who assiduously frequented the holy church, those whom the Alexandrians, following the custom of the country, were accustomed to call Philoponoi.

In the course of our studies, during our stay at Alexandria, we admired the subtlety of mind of the marvellous Severus, as well as his love of learning.  We were astonished to see how, in a short space of time, he learned to express himself with elegance, in applying himself assiduously to the study of the precepts of the ancient rhetors, and striving to imitate their brilliant and practised (?) style.  His mind was occupied with this, and not with that which usually attracts youth.  He devoted himself entirely to study, secluding himself in his zeal from every blameworthy spectacle.

Upset that such intelligence had yet to receive divine baptism, we counselled Severus to place opposite the discourses of the sophist Libanius, whom he admired as the equal of the ancient rhetors, those of Basil and Gregory, those illustrious bishops, and to compare them together.  We gave him this advice so that he  might come by way of rhetoric, which was dear to him, to their teaching and philosophy.  When Severus had come to know these writings, he was completely conquered by them.  He was immediately heard to eulogise the letters addressed by Basil to Libanius, and those which Libanius wrote in response, in which he admitted himself defeated by Basil and accorded the victory to the letters of the latter.  The result of this was that Severus plunged into reading the works and meditations of the illustrious Basil, and Menas my friend, who was admired by everyone for his fervour, declared in a prophecy, which events have confirmed (in fact Menas loved to do good), “This one (Severus) will shine among the bishops like St. John, to whom was given the helm of the holy Church of Constantinople.”  God, who alone knows the future, revealed these things about Severus, when he was still a young man, using here again the intermediary of a pious soul.

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The life of Severus of Antioch by Zacharias Rhetor – part 1

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Tidying your desktop can be perilous.  I found a PDF with the French translation of the Vita of Severus of Antioch on mine.  I had forgotten how interesting a work this was.

I know that there is an English translation out there somewhere, but of course it is inaccessible to most of us.  So I feel no compunction in translating some of the French!

Here follows the biography of holy Mar Severus, patriarch of Antioch, which was written by Zacharias the Scholastic, who studied [grammar and rhetoric] along with Severus at Alexandria, and law at Beirut.

— Where are you coming from today, O friend and comrade?

— From the Royal Portico (=στοά), my dear chap.  I have come to see you to clarify some questions that I want to put to you.  In fact I have just been upset by a libel, which appears to have a Christian as its author, but who in reality seems rather to flout Christian teaching.

— And how is that?  Tell me all.  And how did you come to read this libel?

— I was looking at the books of the booksellers who are set up at the Royal Portico — hey, you know my passion for books! — when one of those who was sitting there and selling books gave me the libel in question to read.  In this book a philosopher is defamed, slandered, jeered at and abused.  You knew him at the start of his career.  He has since distinguished himself in the episcopate and is outstanding even now by his conduct and learning of the holy scriptures.  I mean Severus, whose reputation is great among those who appreciate the good without bias.  And that’s why I feel cruelly afflicted.

— But my friend, if you have so good an opinion of Severus, why do you worry about his slanderer and defamer, whoever he may be?  It seems, in fact, from what you say, that he is only a Christian in form, and by hypocrisy, that in reality he has taken on the task instead of glorifying the pagans, and aspires only to cover them with praise, insulting the kind of people who are valued for their virtue and to whom it has been given to serve God for so many years already by this beautiful philosophy which they have shown us.

— It is not because doubt has come over me, or because I have given credence to stories made up out of malevolence, that I have come to you today.  No! But I feel afflicted, as I said.  I am afraid that readers of a simple spirit may by mischance acquire a negative opinion of the patriarch.  Also, if you really want to know — and you do — please tell me the life of Severus since his young, for the glory of God Almighty and of our saviour Jesus Christ, in whom rest those who are dedicated to the priesthood and to philosophy; I mean the true philosophy.  Please tell me from what city he was, of what people, of what family, if you do actually know these details.   Please tell me above all about his conduct, and what have been his opinions on God since his youth.  Because the slanderer has attacked him not only for his life, and his conduct, but also because, at the start of his career, he worshipped malevolent demons and idols.  In fact he said, “He was also caught offering pagan sacrifices, in Phoenicia, at the time when he was studying literature and the law.”

— But if someone defames the life of another, collecting futile and false stories about him, we must not worry about this, unless what is said contains an element of truth.  For the wicked demons and their friends slander easily the conduct of those who have conquered in virtue.  We mustn’t be astonished if the servants of Christ, God of the universe, are treated like Satans by Satan, since, when the efficient and creative cause of all things had come among us, he caused the Jews to blaspheme and to say, “It is by Beelzebub, prince of demons, that he expelled the demon.”  However, since you have told me that you believe that this libel may harm some simple souls, I will, out of respect for truth and love for you, recount the life of Severus, with whom I was, in his first youth, at Alexandria and in Phoenicia, hearing the same masters as him and sharing the same occupations.  Those who studied with us and are still alive — their number is very considerable — can attest the truth of my narrative.

We need not take this literary frame too seriously.  But Severus was an active figure in the controversies of the late 5th and 6th century, and there can be little doubt that his enemies used the pleasant methods of Byzantine controversy to undermine him by means of personal accusations.

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An old engraving of the Hippodrome at Constantinople, sabotaged by Google Books

Posted on by Roger Pearse

This afternoon I was trying to find out what early engravings might exist of Constantinople.  The search was mainly vain; but I did learn that a certain Onofrio Panavinio in his Ludi et Circences (1600) had printed an engraving of the Hippodrome.

This may be found here at Flickr, and I have uploaded the original here since it took quite a long time to locate it.  You should be able to click through to the splendid full-size image.

onufrio_panavinio_hippodrome_constantinople
Onufrio Panavinio, engraving of the Hippdrome at Constantinople. Published 1600.

I wondered if perhaps the book itself might exist at Google Books.  A reprint of 1642 has no plates in it; but the original does exist there, and may be found here.  The plate is between pages 60 and 61.  On page 61 Panavinio adds, after discussing the Circus here in Constantinople:

Eius Circi descriptionem, ex antiqua Constantinopolis topographica, quae paulo antequam Urbs in Turcorum potestatem venisset facta fuit, excerpta, sic adieci, parum his quae a Petro Gilio dicuntur quadrantem.  Fieri n. potest ut centum annorum intervallo, Circi sive Hippodromi Constantinopolitani aspectus mutatus sit, Turcis eum indies demolientibus, & vastantibus, ac ad suos usus praeclarissima marmora, & columnas vertentibus.

I have added opposite a drawing of this circus, picked out from the topography of old Constantinople, which was made a little before the city came into the power of the Turks, a quarter of these things which are discussed by Petrus Gyllius.  It has come about that,  as a hundred years has intervened, the appearance of the Circus or Hippodrome of Constantinople has been changed, the Turks from day to day demolishing and devastating it, and putting its most excellent marbles and columns to their own uses.

The absence of any mosques does indeed suggest a 15th century drawing.

The Google Books page for the right-hand side looks as follows:

panavinio_desktop

I thought that I would keep a copy locally, so I downloaded the PDF. Imagine my shock to find that I didn’t get what was visible on-screen.  Instead I got this:

panavinio_download

(I have included the full screen in both images because our software tools change so fast at the moment that these may be of interest in five or ten years time!)

I don’t think we need ask which we prefer.  The colour image is far better to work with.

In these early books, moreover, the paper is thin and the text often comes through.  It’s manageable enough in colour images; but in the monochrome ones, this makes the pages near unreadable.

Did Google always do this?  Why don’t they make the images shown onscreen accessible for download?  A bit worrying this, in a way: for the image I have above was something I couldn’t have got from the book.

One postscript to all this.  I found a wonderful site this afternoon, on the Sphendone, the supporting platform at the west end of the Hippodrome.  The site slopes down towards the sea, and the Roman architects built a platform of brick and mortar — known as the Sphendone — to support it.  It’s still there.  The website contains numerous photographs and drawings, as well as an aerial photograph showing the extent of the Hippdrome, superimposed on today’s buildings.  Marvellous, and very recommended.  The author of the page is an artist named Trici Venola.

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The brass statue of Justinian in Constantinople

Posted on by Roger Pearse

One of the sights of Constantinople before the Ottoman conquest was the colossal equestrian statue of Justinian, standing in the Forum Augusteum, atop a 100 foot-tall pillar outside the senate house.  The statue faced east and was widely thought to have magical powers to repel invaders from that direction.

At Robert Bedrosian’s site I have found a treasure-trove of articles about Byzantium.  One of these, on ancient statues in medieval Constantinople,[1] contains a fascinating portrait of the statue:

One of the oldest was the equestrian statue which Justinian set up of himself ; it is described by Codinos. The horse was on the top of a column, and the emperor held in his left hand the ball and cross, signifying his universal dominion over the earth by the power of the faith of the cross.[2]

“The right hand,” says Codinos, “he has stretched out towards the east, signifying that the Persians should halt and not come over to the land of the Greeks, crying by means of the repelling gesture of his uplifted hand,’Stay, ye Persians, and do not advance, for it will not be to your good ‘.”

The idea is as old as the time of Justinian himself, for it is found in the contemporary historian Procopios, who says that the statue, “was riding, as I think, against the Persians.” The gesture of his right hand was to forbid the advance of the eastern barbarians.[30]

The latest notice of this statue we owe to Bertrandon de la Broquiere who saw it in 1432 ; by his time the Persians had been superseded by the Saracen holders of Jerusalem, and he says that the figure has “le
bras droit tendu et la main ouverte devers la Turquie et le chemin de Jherusalem par terre, en segne que tout celluy pays jusques en Jherusalem luy souloit estre obeyssant.”[31]

It was destroyed about 1525, shortly before the visit to the city of Gyllius, who saw fragments of it of gigantic size “carried into the melting Houses where they cast their Ordnance.”[32]

[29] Codinos, 28.
[30] Procopios, De Aedificiis, 182, especially lines 14 and 20. The idea spread to Europe and is found in John of Hildesheim, edition quoted, p. 274, and also in Arabic authors: Qazwini in the thirteenth century says that there were two opinions, and some said that the hand held a talisman to keep off enemies, and others that on the ball was written, “I own the world as long as this ball is in my hand” (J. Marquart, Osteurop. und ostasiatische Streifzuge (1903), p. 221). Harun ibn Yahya in the ninth century thought that the right hand was beckoning people to come to Constantinople (ibid. p. 220). An old drawing of this statue connected with the name of Cyriac of Ancona was found by Dothier in the library of the Seraglio. It has often been reproduced, and may be seen in Rev. des etudes grecques, vol. ix. p. 84.
[31] Bertrandon de la Broquiere, Le Voyage d’Outremer, publie par Ch. Scheffer (1892), P. 159.
[32] Gyllius, The Antiquities of Constantinople (translated) (1729), p. 129.

I did try to locate that drawing.  But this is harder than it might be.  Thanks to AWOL, I learn that REG is online here.  But this does not go back so far as vol. 9.  Archive.org list the volumes here, and vol. 9 (1896) is here.  Unfortunately page 84 is missing!  The Gallica collection of microfilms is here; but the series is incomplete and does not include the relevant parts of vol. 9.

I did find a drawing at Wikimedia Commons, however, which looks like a modern redrawing.  Note the inscription “THEODOSI”, suggesting – inevitably – reuse of an older statue by Justinian:

The volume of Gyllius – Pierre Gilles – is accessible online, however, and his description is worth hearing:

Chap. XVII. Of the forum called the Augustaeum, of the pillar of Theodosius, and Justinian, and the Senate-house.

Procopius writes that the forum which was formerly called the Augustaeum was surrounded with pillars and was situated before the imperial palace. Not only the forum is at present quite defaced, but the very name of it is lost, and the whole ground where it stood is built upon. The palace is entirely in ruins, yet I collect from the pedestal of a pillar of Justinian lately standing, but now removed by the Turks, which Procopius says was built by Justinian in the Augustaeum, and Zonaras in the court before the Church of Sophia, that the Augustaeum stood where there is now a fountain, at the west end of the Church of St. Sophia. Suidas says, that Justinian, after he had built the Church of St. Sophia, cleansed the court, and paved it with marble, and that it was formerly called the Forum Augustaeum; and adds, that he erected his own statue there. Procopius writes, “That there was a certain forum facing the Senate House, which was called by the citizens the Augustaeum; where are seven stones, so cemented together in a quadranglular manner, and are so contracted one within another, the upper within the lower stone, that a man may conveniently sit down upon every projecture of them.”

I was more induced to give this account from Procopius of the pedestal because I do not find it in his printed works. Upon the top of it, says he, there’s erected a large pillar, composed of many stones covered with brass, which did at once both strength and adorn them. The plates of brass did not reflect so strong a lustre as pure gold, yet was it, in value, little inferior to silver.

On the top of the pillar was set a large horse in brass, facing the east, which indeed afforded a noble prospect. He seemed to be in a marching posture, and struggling for speed.  His near foot before was curvated, as though he would paw the ground; his off foot was fixed to the pedestal, and his hind feet were so contracted, as though he was prepared to be gone.  Upon the horse was placed the statue of the emperor: it was made of brass, large like a colossus, dessed in a warlike habit like Achilles, with sandals on his feet, and armed with a coat of mail, and a shining helmet.  He looked eastward, and seemed to be marching against the Persians.  In his left hand he bore a globe, devised to signify his universal power over the whole world.  On the top of it was fixed a cross, to which he attributed all his successes in war, and his accession to the imperial dignity. His right hand was stretched to the east, and by pointing his fingers, he seemed to forbid the barbarous nations to approach nearer, but to stand off at their peril.

Tzetzes, in his “Various History”, describes what kind of helmet he had upon his head. “The Persians,” says he, “generally wore a turban upon the head.  When the Romans obtained any victory over them, they plundered them of their turbans, which they placed upon their own heads. These are,” says he, “of the same shape with that with which the statue of Justinian, erected upon a large pillar, is crowned.”  Cedrenus relates that Justinian held the globe in his silver hand.

Zonaras writes that Justinian, in the seventeenth year of his reign, set up this pillar, in the same place where formerly had stood another pillar of Theodosius the Great, bearing his statue in Silver, made at the expense of his son Arcadius, which weighed 7,400 pounds. When Justinian had demolished the statue and the pillar, he stripped it of a vast quantity of lead, of which he made pipes for aqueducts, which brought the water into the city. This ill-treatment of Theodosius by Justinian was revenged upon him by the barbarians; for they used his pillar in the same manner, and stripped it of the statue, the horse, and the brass with which it was covered, so that it was only a bare column for some years.

About thirty years ago the whole shaft was taken down to the pedestal, and that, about a year since, was demolished down to the base, from whence I observed a spring to spout up with pipes, into a large cistern. At present there stands in the same place a water-house, and the pipes are enlarged.

I lately saw the equestrian statue of Justinian, erected upon the pillar which stood here, and which had been preserved a long time in the imperial precinct, carried into the melting houses where they cast their ordinance. Among the fragments were the leg of Justinian, which exceeded my height, and his nose, which was above 9 inches long. I dared not measure the horse’s legs, as they lay upon the ground, but privately measured one of the hoofs and found it to be 9 inches in height.

An article by J. Raby references Ottoman sources, to show that the statue was taken down by 1456.[2]  This also gives a copy of the drawing, and indicates its present location: Ms. Budapest, University library 35, fol.144v, which is a miscellaneous manuscript.

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  1. [1]R. M. Dawkins, “Ancient Statues in Mediaeval Constantinople”, Folklore 35 (1924), pp. 209-248. Download here: Ancient Statues in Mediaeval Constantinople. File size: 3.6 MB.↩
  2. [2]J. Raby, “Mehmed the Conqueror and the Equestrian Statue of the Augustaion”. Illinois Classical Studies 12 (1987), 305–313.↩