Today is Easter Saturday. I happened to see an interesting tweet from none other than Eduard Hapsburg, the Hungarian ambassador to the Vatican, here.
The link to the English translation is here.
This text is apparently the second reading for Easter Saturday in the Roman Catholic Church – not sure how I would verify that – but there is often no reference to the source.
Fortunately on this site I found a text: “PG 43, 439, 451, 462-463”. This is the edition of the Greek text used for the homily. The material in the reading is not the complete homily, but rather extracts.
Looking up this reference to the Patrologia Graeca, I find that these extracts are all taken from a homily attributed by the editor to Epiphanius of Salamis.
A look in the Clavis Patrum Graecorum shows that the text is listed there. It’s CPG 3768, “Homilia in divini corporis sepulturam”; or, at more length in the Patrologia Graeca (=PG), “Epiphanii episcopi Cypri oratio in divini corporis sepulturam Domini et Servatoris nostri Jesu Christi, et in Josephum qui fuit ab Arimathaea, et in Domini in infernum descensum, post salutarem passionem admirabiliter factum. Sancto et magno Sabbato.”
The Greek text of the complete homily is printed in PG volume 43, columns 439-464, with a Latin translation. As usual with the PG, this is a reprint of an older text, in this case the text of Petau (Paris, 1622). A more modern edition of the Greek exists, by Dindorf, Epiphanii episcopi Constantiae opera, Leipzig (1859-62), vol. 4, part 2 (here); Pseudo-Epiphanii homiliae, p.9-29, and Annotationes p.90-101. But this is not a critical edition: merely the Petau text, with improvements from a comparison with the 9th century Escorial manuscript.
But other ancient versions of the text also exist. The text exists in Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Georgian and Arabic; and in two different Old Slavonic versions. The latter was edited, with parallel Greek, and a French translation of the Old Slavonic, by A. Vaillant, “L’homélie d’Épiphane sur l’ensevellissement du Christ, Texte vieux-slave,Texte grec et traduction française,” Radovi Staroslavenskog instituta 3 (Zagreb, 1958), pp.7-101, and is online at the journal website here and at Alin Suciu’s blog here.
The text is not by the very solid Epiphanius of Salamis, of course. Vaillant identifies a later Archbishop of Cyprus, also named Epiphanius, who attended the 6th council of Trullo in 691, who is the most likely author. The style of the work is witty, full of word-play, and characteristically Byzantine. The content derives from the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, composed in 424-5, in which Jesus, after his death and before his resurrection descends into hell, liberates the righteous, and rescues Adam and Eve.
Interesting! Sometimes when I’ve seen this homily, it was ascribed to Melito of Sardis – but without any citation / references. I wonder how that tradition developed.
Great find re: Vaillant and the Archbishop of Cyprus / Epiphanius angle, I hadn’t heard of that one before.
I wonder too. I saw nothing on the Melito business. The Vaillant article was listed in the CPG so I googled and thankfully Alin Suciu had it.
Just to confirm that this is the second (patristic) reading for the office of readings in the Roman brevity. Consider it verified.
Thank you! I presume you mean “breviary”?
“[A]pparently the second reading for Easter Saturday in the Roman Catholic Church”?
Mass readings are always from the Bible. The Vatican did post the selections from Epiphanius that you linked, but they’re not Mass readings. Priests have personal readings they’re supposed to do daily at certain times, “The Divine Office.” The selections from Epiphanius are from the second reading from it for Holy Saturday. (How many Catholic priests actually still do those readings regularly is a wholly different question.) There is no daily Mass celebrated on Holy Saturday or Good Friday.
Without checking it against the sources, I’d guess this is an English translation of the whole of the sermon.
https://www.holycross.org/blogs/spiritual-articles/sermon-of-st-epiphanius-of-cyprus-for-holy-saturday?srsltid
Thank you. Let’s hope so. I will have to check.
The article says: “Translated from the critical Greek text in André Vaillant, “L’homélie d’Epiphane sur l’ensevelissement du Christ,” Radovi Staroslavenskog Instituta, 3 (1958). A pdf of Vaillant’s work, which includes a critical text of the Slavonic version, as well as Vaillant’s own French translation of the Slavonic text, can be found here: https://hrcak.srce.hr/index.php?show=clanak&id_clanak_jezik=21478.”
I had trouble working out what Vaillant’s Greek text actually was, however. It’s not a critical edition. Is it perhaps the Dindorf text?
I have just compared the Vaillant Greek with the Dindorf and the PG, just looking at the first page. Vaillant capitalises and punctuates more or less as the PG does. He follows the PG incipit. My impression is that he basically gives the PG text. In one place I saw a difference with both, which I wondered whether it was a typo. His notes are not critical, but mainly concerned to illuminate differences between the Slavonic texts, “Sl.” – “Suprasliensis” and “SMP”, 3 of the Slavonic MSS. Vaillant nowhere says where his Greek text came from.