I’m afraid that I am easily distracted. I still need to write another post on the Sacra Parallela of John Damascene (d. 745). But while looking at Lequien’s 1712 edition, I found at the start of volume 1, on p.i-xxiv, a “Vita”: a hagiographical “Life” of John Damascene. This was ascribed to a certain “John, Patriarch of Jerusalem.” The Vita is listed in the Bibliographica Hagiographica Graeca – the big index created by the Bollandists of all the hagiographical texts – where its number is BHG 884. This text is reprinted in PG 94, cols. 429-490, and in the Acta Sanctorum for May, vol. 2, 723-730.
There does not seem to be any translation into a modern language. However Lequien printed the Life with parallel Latin translation. This is fortunate, for the Greek text in Lequien is somewhat abbreviated and hard to read, at least by me. And these days we have quite decent Latin translation, from Google Translate, and also, less accurate but more readable, from ChatGPT.
Out of curiosity, I scanned the Latin text and ran it through ChatGPT 4. The result was rather amazing – a terribly readable and useful output.
Encouraged by this, I tried to discover whether an electronic Greek text was in the Thesaurus Linguae Graeca collection. It has; but finding it in the “canon” was really quite difficult. At least, as someone who rarely uses the TLG, I found it difficult. There are three different “Lives” in the TLG, together given the index number TLG 5273, and the title is “Vitae Sancti Joannis Damasceni”. It’s the “vitAE” rather than “vitA” that gets you. Our text is TLG 5273.2.
Unfortunately this text is not in the elderly CDROM versions that circulate online. However a kind correspondent sent me the electronic Greek, and I fed this into ChatGPT as well. This also produced a fairly readable output.
Let’s compare them. First the translation of the Latin:
I. [The deeds of holy men should be passed down to future generations, especially those of the Doctors of the Church.]
It has become customary among men to honour with representations the image of God in those who have kept it pure from all stain and blemish. Whether they preserved it in its original integrity and grace, or, when it was tarnished and defiled, they restored it, a divine likeness is made for them as a mark of honour. Indeed, those who desire to be seen as lovers of a more exalted reverence, often spare no expense in this endeavour; their generous hands, inclined toward magnificence, employ superior materials in which they engrave their images, thinking that they thereby show greater honour to the holy men.
So, if they display such splendour and grandeur in depicting the forms of these saints, should we leave the words recounting their deeds in a rough and ornament-less style? By no means! The less polished writers are worthy of pardon when, according to the capacity they possess, they narrate in a simple style the deeds of those who pleased Christ. But for those who have dedicated themselves to the pursuit of eloquence, it will not be forgiven if they compile hastily assembled accounts of the lives of the saints—especially of those men whose very spirit and life was devoted to learning, who laboured to free both the mind from ignorance and forgetfulness and the soul from all disorderly passions. These men, who have brought honour to the world and whose books have enlightened the minds of all, did not simply adorn themselves with the external elegance of worldly wisdom, but poured forth abundantly the light of the Holy Spirit.
Now the Greek:
1. To those who have preserved the image unsullied and uncorrupted, well-ordered, and in good condition as from the beginning—or even to those who have often let it be scattered or stained but have restored it—people customarily give honor to the divine forms of these individuals. And those who show their reverence more zealously, and whose hand, along with their wealth, is more magnificent and splendid, use more radiant and noble materials and imprint their forms upon them, believing they thereby dedicate greater honor to the saints.
If, then, they are so eager to adorn their outward form, how could they be expected to neglect and leave in a crude state the words concerning the history of their deeds? Certainly not. For the rougher people, as they are, are excused for simply recounting the deeds of those who were pleasing to Christ; but for those who take study of words seriously, it is not excusable to neglect the lives of saints, recording them hastily and carelessly—especially of men whose very breath and life is to be vigilant in words, and who, by means of words, have purified their minds from ignorance and forgetfulness and their souls from all passionate impulses.
And from those by whom the earthly realm has been adorned, and every mind illuminated, the words upon which they labored not only possess the grace of worldly wisdom but also abundantly emit the light of the Paraclete [Holy Spirit].
There’s no question as to which is more readable. You have to struggle with the output from the Greek, and mentally retranslate it, merely to understand what is being said. It probably does reflect the wordiness of the Byzantine text, to be fair. But it’s not very usable.
Likewise Lequien’s Latin translator probably paraphrased and simplified. He wrote so that people with little Greek could understand the text. They might not have great Latin either! Best keep it simple.
I started to work on a translation myself, taking account of both of these and the original Greek and Latin. But then I found that the ChatGPT output is not reliable, in either version. Additional words and clauses appear, with no justification in the original, and going some way beyond the acceptable for paraphrase. I was tempted just to post both outputs, with a cautionary note, and move on. But I have resisted doing this.
What I am doing now is to produce a translation from the Latin version, therefore. It’s not ideal. But it’s going to be more useful than struggling through 40 chapters of the Greek, which I would anyway have to paraphrase in order that anybody could understand it.
Oh well. The Sacra Parallela will have to wait.
The start of the autumn term has brought a rash of emails, many of them asking me to do something for somebody. I try to be sympathetic to such people, many of whom plainly have been thrown in the deep end of a subject about which they do not know even the basics. But of course I am also wary of the email which reads “please mistuh can you do my homework for me huh” or similar. There is also the type of researcher for a TV programme who writes and wants you to do the research – which they are paid to do – for them. The unwary are flattered. But after a while, you get wise to the scam.
Recently I had one lady write to me asking me to research the background to a medieval quote. My first thought was “why me?” But I was lying on the sofa with my smartphone in hand when it arrived. A simple google search revealed that the very volume that she wanted to find was online, a couple of clicks away. A second google search revealed the Latin text, and that the quotation in question was from Solinus, the 3rd century pagan medical writer. It took all of five minutes, and she could perfectly well have done this herself and answered her own question, in the time that it took her to write to a perfect stranger with his own life to lead on the other side of the world. I confess that I felt very impatient with this. Indeed I found that she had written to me six times in two years with similar requests. This time, her request was in vain.
There are those who contribute to the internet, as I do, and spend their days uploading, researching, publishing, purely for the love of it. There are also those people in this world who, on seeing someone being generous, see only a mug, and an opportunity to help themselves. I am reminded of the story of a monastery of Benedictine monks in England who decided to serve free steak dinners to any who came. Their intended guests were the homeless. But it was not long before men in expensive cars started to drive down all the way from Birmingham in order to get a free lunch at someone else’s expense. Likewise other religious houses in England have found that there is a certain constituency of vagrants who see them as prey for free board and lodging.
Indeed while writing these words, my phone rang, and woman with a thick Indian accent spoke, telling me that she was from a mobile phone company, in order to offer me a discount for being such a good customer. “No, you aren’t,” I replied, somewhat curtly, for I have had this scam before. “No, I suppose I’m not,” came the response in a sad voice.
It can be a sad world, if we let it. But actually it’s a jolly good world for the most part, and we are extremely fortunate and blessed, all of us, beyond our deserts. Let’s remember it!