Category: Announcements

General announcements

Archaeology on our own PCs – unravelling old file formats

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A good few years – seventeen! – have passed since I left off working for a certain major corporation, stashed a bunch of documents and sometime projects in a directory on my PC, and went off to seek my fortune.  But this week the past came back to me, in the shape of reunion drinks; and I found myself looking for a document that I hadn’t seen in 20 years.

When I found it, I found that it was in a file produced by WordPerfect 4.2.  For DOS!  It was last edited sometime in the late 80s.  Fortunately at the time I had the habit of using “.wp4” etc as the file suffix, so I knew what the format was.  I found other files, suffixed as “.ws5” – WordStar 5!  There were some “.drw” files, which I knew were vector graphics files, and proved to belong to Lotus Freelance.  There were bunches of zipped up directories; but in “.lzh” directories, produced using the lha.exe archiver, which is now dead.

I know a crux when I see one.  Whether I can retrieve all of this now I do not know; but certainly the problem won’t get better if I leave it.  I once thought these files worth keeping.  But there’s not a lot of point, if I can’t open them.

Dealing with the WordPerfect 4.2 files was relatively straightforward.  Corel bought WordPerfect long ago, and a correspondent showed me that the conv50.exe file at the Corel FTP site, under the WordPerfectDOS 5.0 directory (which you can’t open in IE, but can in Google Chrome) was a self-extracting zip file which contained the convert.exe file used to convert 4.2 to 5.0.  So I got hold of this, and converted my file to Wordperfect 5.0.  Few utilities indeed will work with WordPerfect for DOS versions earlier than 5.0, although in fact 4.2 was a far more popular and widespread version.  You can run this quite happily in a Windows 7 (64-bit) command window, and it will prompt for input – I put *.wp4 – and output, and it will do all the files in the directory in one go.

Now I have a WordPerfect 5.0 file, there is a utility you can obtain, again from Corel, to convert wp5 files to an ancient version of Word.  This may be found in the WordPerfect for Windows 6.1 directory, and is named wp_convert_utility.exe.  This is an installer, actually, which installs a windows utility in the c:\program files (x86)\corel directory on your PC.  Don’t get creative with installing it, by the way – it plainly is on its last legs.  Here’s a screen grab:

WordPerfect Convert Utility
WordPerfect Convert Utility

 You can’t actually browse to files anymore – that doesn’t work!  You must type the names in yourself, and choose the right output type.  You want Word 97, which is actually the next item.  This will give you a nice .doc file.  I was then able to double-click on the file and open it in Microsoft Word 2010; whereupon I promptly saved it in some new, shiny, file format.  In the same directory, naturally.

The Wordstar files were simpler to deal with.  Long ago Microsoft produced an import filter for all versions of Wordstar 3.0-7.0.  They don’t include it any more; but it is out there, on a Microsoft FTP site.  The site is incredibly slow, tho.  The file, wdsupcnv.exe, is a self-extracting zip file, which creates a bunch of .cnv files and a readme.  You then copy these into C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Textconv.  Once you have done this, you open the .ws5 (or whatever you called them; if you called them .doc, as was the default, then I don’t know if this confuses Word) by double-clicking and choosing Word 2010 as your application.  It opens, prompts you to confirm the file format, then asks you to say “Yes” to something, and …. your file opens.  I then saved it as a modern Word .docx file – again next to the original.

I haven’t yet managed to open the .drw files.  But I gather that Lotus SmartSuite 9.8 Millennium should be able to open it, and save the results in Microsoft PowerPoint format; and copies are available cheaply on eBay, so I have ordered one.  Whether this will work on 64-bit Windows I do not know.

The worst problem that I got was with the collection of .lzh files.  The lha site is gone, and although 7Zip will open these files (although not on the command-line version), that doesn’t help you if you have a couple of hundred.  If you have an old copy of the lha.exe file, you will find that it doesn’t run on Windows 7 (64 bit), because lha.exe is a 16-bit applicatio1n, and Microsoft thoughtfully ensured that any compatibility layer was only present on the rare 32-bit version of Windows 7.   However I was able to find a clone LHA for Windows, and this worked fine.  I copied the new lha.exe into my directory of files, and adapted a little batch script that I found online to scan for all the .lzh files in a directory, and unpack them to a new subdirectory of the same name:

@echo off 
setlocal enableDelayedExpansion 

set MYDIR=.
for /F %%x in ('dir /B/D %MYDIR%\*.lzh') do (
  rem set FILENAME=%MYDIR%\%%x
  set FILENAME=%%x
  echo Processing !FILENAME! to !FILENAME!.DIR\
  md !FILENAME!.DIR\
  cd !FILENAME!.DIR\  
  D:\MYFILES\lha x ..\!FILENAME! 
  cd ..
)

And it worked: FRED.LZH was unpacked to a new directory FRED.LZH.DIR, and so on.

It’s been an afternoon of archaeology.  I think that I have now converted all the files (except the .drw) that I have on disk.  I hope that these will go with me into the future.  Unless we are careful, even the past that we have saved carefully and archived will vanish.

Share

Guest-post: Valesius, on Sozomen and Socrates (translated by Anthony Alcock!)

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius ends in 325 AD.  It was continued by both Socrates and Sozomen.

The opinions of early modern editors are often of considerable interest, but, since they wrote their scholarship in Latin, few today take the trouble to read them.

Anthony Alcock has kindly translated for us the section de vita et scriptis Socratis et Sozomeni from the 1677 edition of their works by Valesius (Henri Valois), together with very useful footnotes.  The PDF is here:

I will put the main text inline here, as otherwise people reading this via RSS feed etc won’t see the content.

Welcome, Valesius!

    *    *    *    *    *    *

Our Socrates therefore, for we will start with him, was from Constantinople. He bears witness in c. 24 of Book 5 of HE that he was born and brought up in that city, and for this reason narrated principally those things that had happened in that city. As a youth he was instructed in the study of language and literature by Helladius and Ammonius, who at that time had perhaps taken refuge in Constantinople from Alexandria. Anyone wishing to know why those teachers left Alexandria will find the reason in c. 16 of Book 5 the HE. When the pagan temples at Alexandria were destroyed, as a result of the commitment and zeal of Theophilus the Bishop of that city, the teachers Helladius and Ammonius, one a priest of Zeus and the other of Simius at Alexandria, found this violence perpetrated on their gods difficult to bear and left the city for Constantinople, where they made their home.

The temples of the pagans at Alexandria were destroyed when Timaeus and Promotus were consuls, as Marcellinus writes in his History, which was the eleventh year of the Emperor Theodosius. It is clear that Socrates was first saw the light of day around the beginning of the reign of Theodosius: it was customary to start the education of boys when they were about ten years of age. After this Socrates studied rhetoric with Troilus the sophist, who was one of the best-known teachers at Constantinople. Socrates does not say this explicitly. However, the attentive and diligent reader easily gathers what I have just said from his words. For so often and with such admiration does he mention him that he appears to be paying tribute to his master. For he says that he came from Side in Pamphylia. He mentions quite a few of Troilus’ pupils: Eusebius the scholar, of course, and the Bishops Silvanus and Ablabius. Finally, in the seventh book he writes that the Praetorian Prefect Anthemius, who ran the state when Theodosius was still a boy, notably made use of Troilus’ counsel. He writes of Troilus the following words of praise: ‘who, in addition to his native understanding of philosophy, was the equal of Anthemius in political thinking.’ In consideration of these reasons I think that Socrates made use of Troilus as a teacher in matters of rhetoric. But each person will have decide individually on this matter. It should further be known that the ancients worked at their eloquence, not hastily and precipitately as is the modern custom, but with good deal of time. To be sure, Gregory of Nazianzus testifies in a poem about his life that he left Athens when he was thirty, having taught rhetoric in that city. After this Socrates, having left Troilus’ school, went to the bar and practised law at Constantinople, where he acquired the nickname of ‘pupil’. This is what lawyers were called at that time, as has been observed previously by others, not because they were still at school, but because, as young men who had come from lawyers’ schools, they professed this skill.

At length he abandoned the law and applied himself to the writing of church history, in which he displayed singular judgement and diligence. The judgement is expressed in the observations and statements incorporated into his books, which in my opinion are of outstanding brilliance. There are many of examples of his diligence, but foremost among them his attention to dates, often noted by consulships and olympiads, particularly when writing of significant events. He was not lax or negligent in his writing, like Rufinus of Aquileia, who seems to me to have composed his two books of church history, which he added to the works of Eusebius of Caesarea, from memory. Socrates is quite different: he has faithfully and scruplously composed his history using the best textual material he could find, that is, letters of leading prelates, acts of synods and books of church historians. In the first edition of his work he followed Rufinus and wrote of the Synod of Tyre and the exile of Athanasius to Trier as having happened during the reign of Constantius, but recognized his error after reading the works of Athanasius. For this reason he considered it necessary to produce a new edition of his history, in which he corrected the error I have just mentioned. He also added things that were missing in the earlier publication, as he tells us at the beginning of Book Two. It is clear from this how much we should value the history of Socrates, to which the author himself put the finishing touches. Socrates employs a simple and humble style in his work, and for a good reason: that it might more easily be understood by all, as he tells us at the beginning of Books One and Three. He thought that the sublime and ornate style was more fitted to panegyrics and speeches than to the history of church matters. Moreover he dedicated his work to a certain Theodore, whom he calls a holy man of God at the beginning of Book Two, in the same way that Eusebius addresses Paulinus the Bishop of Tyre at the beginning of Book Ten. I have not been abe to discover who Theodore is. I am inclined not to believe that it was Theodore of Mopsuestia, because he was dead when Socrates wrote his history. But is now time to enquire about religious beliefs and allegiance, as we promised at the beginning.

Baronius in the Annals and Philip Labbaeus in his book on ecclesiastical writers maintain that Socrates was a Novatian. Nicephorus said the same thing before them: Socrates, ‘pure’ of name, but not so much in spirit. This does not mean that his nickname was ‘pure’ but rather that he was a Novatianist, for the Novatians called themselves ‘pure’, as we learn fron Canon 8 of the Council of Nicaea. Similarly in c. 14 of Book Two Nicephorus writes about Socrates that he did not distance himself from the Novatians. There are several important reasons why Socrates was considered to a Novatianist. In the first place, he diligently records that there was a series of Novatianist bishops who ruled the Church from the time of Constantine, with details of the consuls, to whom individuals migrated from this light. In the second place, he praises each one of them, especially Agerius and Sisinius, Chrysanthus and Paul. And by his prayers, he writes, a certain miracle was performed at Constantinople. In the third place, everything that relates to the Novatianist sect, he examined with such care and diligence that he seems to have been a follower of the sect. But if one were inclined to examine them more accurately, one would find nothing in them to prove that Socrates was a Novatian. For he enumerates the Arian bishops who administered the Church at Constantinople just as scrupulously, and he is never said for that reason to have been Arian. He relates everything that happened to Arians, Eunomians and Macedonians at Constantinople as carefully as the things that happened to the Novatians. He himself gives the reason for this in Book 5 chap. 24, where he writes that it was his resolve to record as far as possible what had happened at Constantinople,partly because he lived there and had been born and brought up there and partly because the things that had happened there were more illustrious and worthier of memory. If anyone objects that Arian bishops did nor receive praise equal to that bestowed upon the Novatians, the response is easy: there were far fewer Arian bishops in Constantinople than Novatian ones. The Church at that time was bristling with prominent Novatian priests. Sozomen, who records the praises of them, similar to those of Socrates, also confirms this by his own testimony. As a result it has to be said that Sozomen was also Novatian, as Socrates has to be absolved of this slander. Nevertheless, he states that Sozomen was not Novatian, not to mention the testimony of Theodore the Reader, who according to a letter which he added to his Tripartite History calls him ‘most blessed’ and writes in Book Nine that he had attended a public procession celebrated in honour of the 40 Martyrs at Constantinople, when Proculus administered the church of that city. From which it can be clearly gathered that Sozomen was of the Catholic communion, because he was present at a public supplication together with Catholics. I admit that Socrates was very favourable to Novatians, as when he numbers the founder of the Novatian sect among the martyrs and says that the Novatians were attached to the Catholics by close ties of well-meaning benevolence and prayed with them in ths same church; when he praises the speech that Sisinnius made against that saying of Chrysostom: even if you have done penance ten thousand times, come to us. It is one thing to be partial to Novatians and other thing to be one. Socrates was able to be partial to them, either because he was tied to them for reasons of friendship or family or because he approved of their discipline and abstinence. He was, as we are able to gather from his books, rather strict, but I find it difficult to believe that he was a Novatian, especially since I seem to understand the opposite from some passages in his history. First, in c. 38 of Book 2 he does not once call ‘those of the church’ Catholics, but contrasts them with Novatians. He therefore recognizes that Novatians were outside the Church. He would not have done this if he had embraced the Novatian sect. But in cc. 20 and 23 of Book Six he calls Novatians heretics, with Arians of course, Macedonians and Eunomians. In the second place, he clearly reprehends the advice of Nectarius to remove the penitentiary priests. For he says that if this is done licence is given to sinners, for there would be nobody to prove conclusively that they were sinners. This view cannot come from a Novatian, for as Socrates tells us, Novatians would never admit penance or the priest of penances. There is also the testimony of Theodore the Reader, who in a letter that prefixes his History calls both writers ‘God-loving men’, pious and acceptable to God. Moreover, Theodore lived in the same city and almost at the same time as Socrates, that is when Anastasius was Emperor. Finally Peter Halloix agrees with us in his Life of the Blessed Irenaeus (p. 664). Disputing with Baronius, who had written about the year 159 AD : Socrates the Novatian, celebrating the Pasch on the 14th of the month, together with the Jews …says this. And the statement that Socrates is Novatian can be understood in two ways. One, that from time to time he wrote approvingly of Novatians, according to the description of Bellarmine in his book Ecclesiastical Writers for the year 440 about both writers. Another, that he was of the Novatian heresy. In the chapter cited he shows neither that was a Novatian nor that he favoured them. For he castigates them and uncovers their disagreements and faults. So that he seems not to be a friend, but an enemy, or perhaps neither but someone who told the truth. Because this is the task of the historian. So much for Socrates. It is now time to talk of Sozomen.

Hermias Sozomen was also a lawyer at Constantinople, at the same time as Socrates. His parents were not without nobility, from Palestine, a town near Gaza called Bethelia. At one time it was populous village, with very beautiful and ancient temples. The outstanding temple among them was the Pantheon, positioned on an artificial hill. It was a sort of citadel of Bethelia, according to Sozomen in c. 15 of Book 5 . His grandfather was also born in the town and was converted to Christianity by Hilarion the monk. When Alaphio of the same town was being tormented by a demon and the Jews and doctors who had tried to heal him were unsuccessful with their incantations, it was Hilarion who, in the name of God alone, drove out the demon. Sozomen’s grandfather was astonished by this miracle. Both he and Alaphio, with their entire families, embraced Christianity. His grandfather excelled in explaining the Scriptures, because he had a subtle intellect and large intelligence. He was moreover otherwise reasonably well educated. So, for the Christians living in Gaza, Askalon and neighbouring places he was precious, because he was useful and necessary to the religion as one who could easily untie the knots of Scripture. Alaphio’s family,, with the sancitity of their life and kindness to the poor, achieved great celebrity. They were among the first to found monasteries and churches there, as Sozomen tells us in the passage quoted. He adds that certain men of the Alaphio family had survived to his own day, with whom he had had dealings when he was was a young man and of whom he promises that he will speak later. He undoubtedly means Salamensis, Fusco and the brothers Malchio and Crispio, of whom he speaks in c. 32 of Book Six. He says that these brothers, instructed in the monastic life by Hilarion, became stars in Palestinian monasteries during the reign of Valens: they lived near Bethelia, a town in Gaza, where they were nobility. He mentions them in c. 14 of Book Eight where he says that Crispio had been the archdeacon of Epiphanius. It is therefore clear that the brothers I mentioned were of the Alaphio family: Alaphio was joined by family ties with the grandfather of Sozomen. From this I guess that Sozomen’s grandfather converted to Christianity with the whole household because he admired the caretakership of Alaphio, who had been cured by Hilarion using only the name of almighty God. Second, from what Sozomen writes, as a young man he had spent family time with the old monks of the Alaphio family. Finally, he took the name, from what Sozomen writes, from those sons and nephews of Alaphio. He was called Salamanes Hermias Sozomenus, according to Photius in the Bibliotheca, after that Salamanes who, as I noted above, was the brother of Fusco, Malchio and Crispio. For this reason the mistake made by Nicephorus and others is to be corrected, viz. that Sozomen was called Salamanes because he was from Salamis in Cyprus. But, as I have shown, the evidence of Sozomen himself was that he was not Cypriot but Palestinian. Not only was his grandfather, as said earlier, but Sozomen himself was educated in Palestine, among the monks of the Alaphio family. In my view, it was from this education that Sozomen appears to have drawn his love of the monastic life and discipline, which he displays throughout his work. Not merely content to relate the fathers and authors of monastic philosophy, he also scruplously commemorated their successors and disciples, in Egypt, Syria, Palestine as well those in the Pontus region, Armenia and Osrhoene. Hence the eulogy of the monastic life in c. 12 of Book One, as if it were to be read as an introduction. He thought it would be an act of ingratitude if he were not to expresse his thanks, at least in this way, to those in whose society he lived and from whom as a young man he had learned so many outstanding examples of good conversation. He indicates this in the preface of Book 1. Another passage that shows that Sozomen was Palestinian may be found at the end of Book 8, where he says that he had seen Zeno the Bishop of Maiuma.  Maiuma was the port of Gaza. It is true that Zeno was almost 100 years old, but he never missed matins or vespers, except when he was severely ill. Sozomen then took up the study of law, and studied civil law in Beirut, a neighbouring Phoenician city, where there was a well-known school of jurispudence. He also fought cases at Constantinople, as is clear from c. 3 of Book Two. While practising law at Constantinople he wrote his Ecclesiastical History, as can be gathered from his own words. Thus. on p. 48 of this edition, he writes: The things that happened to Aquilinus, a man with whom I still have contact today and practises law in the same forum, I have partly heard from him and partly seen for myself, I will speak of necessity. Moreover, Sozomen had written a breviary of ecclesiastical matters, from the Ascension to the dismissal of Licinius, before he wrote his 9 books of church history. This work consisted of two books, as he says in the preface of his first book. But there was a long interval between these two books.

In writing the history Sozomen’s style was neither too low-key nor turgid, but somwehere in between. It was indeed a style best suited to a writer on church matters. In his Bibliotheca Photius says he prefers the style of Sozomen to that of Socrates, with which we are happy to agree. Sozomen wrote elegantly, but Socrates showed better judgement. For Socrates’s judgement about people and church matters was always excellent. He never wrote anything that was not serious and important. There is nothing you can delete as superfluous. In Sozomen, on the other hand, there is a certain amount that is light and juvenile. In Book One there is a passage about the founding of the city of Hemona and the Argonauts who carried the Argo on their shoulders for several stades. Book Five has a description of the suburbs of Daphnae (p.209). There is also an observation about the beauty of the human body, in which he expresses about the Virgin what the blessed Athanasius adumbrated at such length. Finally, Book Nine contains almost nothing events connected with war, which have nothing to do with church history. But Sozomen’s style, which Photius preferred to that of Socrates, is not lacking in faults. For I have observed that his sentences are connected with each other only by the particles and , which is really rather laboured. If one carefully reads the δέ τέ letter written in which Sozomen mentions his work to the younger Theodosius, one will definitely find what I said earlier, that Sozomen was not a great orator.

It remains for us to ask which of the two wrote first and which borrowed from the other, or rather purloined. Both wrote almost the same things about the same events, both started and finished historically in the same period, that is to say from the reign of Constantine to the 17th consulship of the younger Theodosius, so it is inevitable that one compiled the material used by the other. The sort of plagiarism practised by many Greek writers is evidenced by Porphyrius in Book Ten of Eusebius’ Praeparatio Evangelica. But which of the two was the plagiarist is difficult to say, since they were contemporaries and wrote their works in the reign of the younger Theodosius. Accordingly, this question is a matter of conjecture. Thus, Porphyrius in the above-mentioned work, in the doubtful matter of whether Hyperides had purloined from Demosthenes or the other way round because they were contemporaries, pronounced that conjecture had to be used. Let us therefore see upon which of them the suspicion of theft falls. It is my opinion that the lesser writer purloined much from the greater and the younger from the older. In my view Sozomen is inferior to Socrates by a long way, and was younger than Socrates when he started writing his work. For he wrote it when he was a lawyer, as I siad earlier. The profession of advocate among the Romans was not a permanent occupation but temporary. Ultimately the one who added to and occasionally corrected the work of the other appears to have been the later writer. But Sozomen occasionally added to the work of Socrates and, in some places, disagreed with him, as Photius oberves and we have pointed out in our notes. Accordingly, Sozomen appears to have been the later writer. And this is the opinion of almost recent authorities, who place Socrates before Sozomen. Thus, Bellarmine in his book on Ecclesiastical Writers, followed by Miraeus, Labbaeus and Vossius. Among the ancients Cassiodorus, Photius and Nicephorus put Socrates in first place, though Cassiodorus is found to enterain different views. In the preface of his Tripartite History he changes the order, placing Theodoret first, Sozomen second and Socrates third. This too is the judgement of Theodore the reader in the letter which he prefixed to the Tripartite History. So much for Sozomen. It is now time for us to hear the testimony of the ancients about both writers.

(The article in PDF continues with statements about Socrates and Sozomen from ancient writers, but we will leave it here.)

Share

St Nicholas of Myra, “Life” by Michael the Archimandrite (Vita per Michaelem) now online in English

Posted on by Roger Pearse

We all know who Santa Claus is.  Some of us may even know that he is derived from St Nicholas of Myra, who threw three bags of gold through the windows of three poor girls, so that they could have a dowry and get married.  But none of the medieval literature about St Nicholas – who may be a Dark Ages invention anyway – has been translated into English.

I became aware of this a few months ago, and also that a translation of the earliest Life – by Michael the Archimandrite, the Vita per Michaelem – had been started by Prof John Quinn and was online at the St Nicholas Center website.  Unfortunately he only completed 11 chapters before his untimely death.

Thankfully Bryson Sewell has come to the rescue and has translated 12-52.  The St Nicholas Center have kindly agreed to allow Dr Quinn’s translation to be made Creative Commons-NoCommercial-NoDerivative4.0, thereby allowing the whole item to circulate.  They’ve completed Dr Quinn’s translation on their own site in a rather splendid way; and I am uploading my version of the thing here.  The text is the same, but this version has less pictures and more footnotes, and also my introduction.

Here are the files:

I’ve also placed these files at Archive.org here.

Bryson’s portion of the work, and my introduction, are public domain.  But you can circulate these files are you like for non-commercial usage.

Share

Uploading the remains of the failed al-Makin transcription project

Posted on by Roger Pearse

If you wish to learn the literature of a people, a good place to start is their histories of themselves.  For Arabic Christian literature – the literature of the Christian peoples occupied by the Muslims in the 7th century, there are five such histories.  I have done some work on Agapius and Eutychius.

But the world history from the Creation to his own times of al-Makin, a 13th century writer, has remained outside the knowledge of most people.  It exists in two parts; the first part taking the story up to the Arab Invasions, and the second part to his own day.

The first part of al-Makin has never been printed, to my knowledge.  The second part was badly printed by Erpenius centuries ago from a manuscript which had lost the last section, with a Latin translation.  The missing text at the end was printed by Cahen in the 1950’s.

Foolishly, I decided that it ought to be possible to get the whole text transcribed from manuscripts.  If an electronic Arabic text existed, then at least we could all use machine translation on it or something.

Unfortunately the project went hopelessly awry, because I was dealing with people in other cultures, who proved intractable.  I ended up $600 out of pocket and with nothing that was usable.  Somehow my wish to transcribe part 1 became a transcription of part 2.  My wish to transcribe from manuscripts turned into a transcription from Erpenius.  Unfortunately the PDF of Erpenius was damaged; and getting it fixed was beyond my powers of communication or persuasion, even though the portion to fix was trivial, if you know Arabic letters.

In fact the psychological pain, caused by the stress and frustration in trying to get this done, became so acute that I was obliged to abandon the project.  I have never regretted that decision.  It was stupid for me to try to deal with foreigners on a text in a language which I do not know using an alphabet that I do not know.

I believe that someone with knowledge of Arabic might fix the transcription in an hour.  I could not do so.  If anyone would like to do this, I would be grateful.  So it seems to me that it might be useful to upload the mangled text, and the PDF, marked up with the fixes, in case anyone does feel like running with it.  So here it is:

  • Erpenius_with_fixes – small (PDF of the copy of Erpenius from which the transcription was made, with pages that should have been inserted marked in red, and duplicate pages that should not be in the transcription marked also).
  • complete Makin (PDF of transcription of Erpenius, complete with errors)
  • complete Makin (.doc of transcription)
  • cahen1 (PDF of part 1 of original article by Cahen)
  • cahen2 (PDF of part 2 of original article)
  • cahen1 (.doc) – transcription of Cahen)

I also have PDFs of various manuscripts, about which I have written in other posts (click on the tag for “Al-Makin” at the bottom of this post to see them).  Rubbish quality most of them are too!  But as more manuscripts come online, it may well be possible to attack this problem again.  And it should be done.

Share

HMML microfilmed manuscripts in Syriac and Christian Arabic

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The Hill Monastic Manuscript Library, under Fr Columba Stewart, has been photographing manuscripts in the East for quite a few years now, and creating microfilms of them.  How necessary this work is, has been shown graphically in recent weeks by the barbaric destruction of Assyrian monuments in Iraq by Muslim thugs, apparently out of sheer savagery.

This evening I learned by accident that the microfilms are being uploaded to Archive.org, as the Center for the Preservation of Ancient Texts, complete with catalogues.  For instance, the catalogue of microfilms of manuscripts from the Coptic Patriarchate is here:

Unfortunately the collection is very badly organised, at least to a newcomer.  Thus I know that manuscripts of the 13th century Christian Arabic writer al-Makin’s History are in this collection.  And indeed a search of the PDF – the online reader is unusable for black and white – reveals a mention of al-Makin, and some mysterious references:

Jirjis aI-Makin Ibn al-‘Amid:

Excerpts from the history of Agapius of Manbij falsely ascribed to him: CMA 7-13-12.
Kitab al-ta’rikh: CMB 8-15; 12-5; 13-3.
Ta’rikh al-Muslimin: CMB 12-16.

Erm, right.  I think we want the second one, the Kitab al-Tarikh.  So what is CMB 8-15?  More to the point, how do I find the microfilm of this on Archive.org?  Here I ran into difficulty.

I learned from the catalogue that CMB means volume B of some other catalogue of the mss of the Coptic Museum.  So far so good.  It looks as if this is connected to the name of the uploaded PDF.  CMD10-8 is https://archive.org/details/CMB10-8, for instance.  So …  no luck with al-Makin, then.

But perhaps it will come.  In the mean time, look around.  There are also Slavonic texts up there.  It is a huge treasure chest – if we can find anything.

Share

Some stories from the Apophthegmata Patrum

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I suppose that only a few will download the PDFs of Anthony Alcock’s new translation from Coptic of the Sayings of the Fathers.  But it contains many stories that the monks told each other.  Here are one or two samples.  I have over-paragraphed them for readability.

226. It was said of Apa Macarius that one day as he was walking in the desert, he found a skull. He moved it with his staff and it spoke.

The elder said to it: ‘Who are you ?’ It said: ‘I am the high priest of the pagans who were in this place. And you are Macarius the spirit-bearer at all times. If you are merciful to those in punishment, they will have a little rest.’

Apa Macarius said: ‘ What is rest ?’ He said: ‘As the heaven is far from the earth, so is the fire below us and above us as we stand in the middle of the fire. It is impossible for anyone to see the face of his neighbour, but back is turned to back. When you pray for us, each one for a moment sees the face of his neighbour.’

The elder heard this and said: ‘Woe to the day when the man was born if this is rest from punishment.’

The elder said to him: ‘Is there torture worse than this ?’

The skull said to him: ‘The great tortures below us.’

The elder said: ‘We who did not know God are given a little mercy. Those who knew God and denied Him and did not do His will, they are below us.’

The elder then took the skull, dug a hole in the ground, put it there and left.

It looks as if there is a mistake in the text: surely it must be the skull that describes “those below us”, rather than Macarius?

Here’s another:

231. At the time of Julian the Impious, when he went to Persia, he sent a demon to the west to bring news to him in haste. When the demon reached places where a monk lived, he stayed there for ten days. He did not move. He was unable to walk because the monk did not stop praying day or night.

The demon returned to the one who had sent him without having done anything. He said to him: ‘Why did you take so long ?’

The demon replied: ‘I took so long and did nothing because I spent ten days waiting for Apa Publius to stop praying when I might leave, but he did not stop. I was prevented from leaving and I returned, having wasted my time.’

The impious Julian then became angry, saying: ‘I will deal with him when I get back.’

Within a few days he was struck and died through the providence of God. One of the eparchs with him went and sold everything he had and gave the money to the poor. He came to the elder and became a monk with him.

Share

Anthony Alcock, Fourth part of Coptic Sayings of the Fathers now online

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Anthony Alcock continues his translation of the Apophthegmata Patrum – The Sayings of the Fathers with a translation of the fourth and final part.  The complete set are all here.

Share

The Annals of Eutychius of Alexandria (10th c. AD) – chapter 12

Posted on by Roger Pearse

This part of the Annals continues the history of the 4th century, interleaving material from the Greek chronographic tradition with a lost Sassanid Persian chronicle known to the author in Arabic translation.  Unfortunately the chapter ends with a curious oriental folk tale.  One wonders what Theodosius the Great would have thought of it!

1. Sabur lived for seventy-two years in all, and died. After him there reigned over the Persians Azdashīr, son of Sabur (1), for four years and died.  This was in the first year of the reign of King Constantine, son of Constantine, King of Rūm.  After him there reigned over the Persians, for five years and four months, his brother Sabur, son of Sabur (2).  This happened in the fifth year of the reign of Constantine, the son of Constantine, King of Rūm.  In the fifth year of his reign there rebelled against his brother Constans, in Rome, a general named Maghnitiyūs (3) who killed him.  When Constantine, son of Constantine, learned that his brother had been killed, he sent a large army,  killed Magnentius, together with all those who had supported him in conspiring against his brother, and appointed as his representative in Rome a man who reigned in his name.  In the seventh year of his reign there was made patriarch of Rome Marcus (4).  He held the office for two years and died.  In the ninth year of his reign there was made patriarch of Rome Būliyūs (5).  He held the seat for fifteen years and died.  In the twenty-fourth year of his reign there was made patriarch of Rome Līnāriyūs (6).  He held the office for six years and died.  In the twentieth year of his reign there was made bishop of Jerusalem Cyril (7).  He held the office for five years and fled.

2. At that time the followers of Arius and all those who professed the doctrine went to King Constantine;  after having presented their religion in a good light and expounded their doctrine in enticing colours they said: “The three hundred and eighteen bishops, who gathered at Nicaea, made a mistake and have turned away from the truth by claiming that the Son is consubstantial with the Father.  Please, order that such a thing is no longer upheld because it is an obvious mistake.”  The king agreed to their request.

3. At that time there appeared on the site of Cranion, i.e. on Golgotha, at noon, a cross of light which rose from earth to heaven, until it reached the top of the Tūr-Zaytā: (8) for the intensity of its glow even dimmed the sunlight.  All the inhabitants of Jerusalem, large and small, were spectators of this.  Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, also witnessed the phenomenon and hastened to inform the king, writing to him a letter in which he said: “In the days of your father, O blessed king, the cross of Christ, our Lord, appeared, made of stars, at noon, in the sky.  And in your days, O blessed king, there has appeared at noon, on the site of Cranion, a cross of light so intense that it exceeds that of the sun” (9).  In the same letter among other things he urged him not to welcome the doctrine of Arius and his supporters, or of his followers, because they were far from the truth and wicked, and had already been excommunicated by three hundred and eighteen bishops together with all those who professed the doctrine.  The king received willingly the letter of Cyril and rejoiced at what he had written, and turned back to the truth and decided not to accept the doctrine of Arius.

4. At that time, the doctrine of Arius had almost taken over Constantinople, Antioch, Babil, and Alexandria: the followers of the religion of Arius and the supporters of his doctrine were called Arians, from the name of Arius.  In the second year of the reign of Constantine, the son of Constantine, Cyprian was made patriarch of Antioch (10).  He was an Arian. He held the office for two years and died.  In the fourth year of his reign Blāsiyūs was made patriarch of Antioch (11).  He held the office for four years and died.  He was an Arian.  In the eighth year of his reign Ustātiyūs was made patriarch of Antioch (12).  He held the office for five years and died.  He was an Arian.  In the thirteenth year of his reign Lāwn was made patriarch of Antioch (13).  He was also an Arian.  He held the office for nine years and died.  The king then sent for Eudoxius (14), bishop of the city of Girmāna (15), and made him patriarch of Antioch.  He was a Manichaean.  He held the See of Antioch for two years.  Then the king sent him to Constantinople, where he remained for ten years and died as patriarch (16).  In the twenty-second year of his reign Athanāsiyūs was made patriarch of Antioch (17).  He was a Manichaean.  He held the office for four years and died.  In the first year of his reign, the king deposed Paul, the patriarch of Constantinople and made Eusebius patriarch of Constantinople, in his place (18).  He was a Manichaean.  He held the office for three years and died.  At his death the king reinstated in his own see the patriarch Paul, whom he had deposed.  He held the office for three years and died (19).

5. In the tenth year of his reign Macedonius was made patriarch of Constantinople (20).  He asserted that the Holy Spirit is a created being.  He held the office for ten years and died.  In his twenty-first year of his reign, the king called to Constantinople Eudoxius, Patriarch of Antioch, and appointed him patriarch of that city (21).  He was a Manichaean.  He held the office for ten years and died.  Of the population of Egypt and Alexandria, most were Arians and Manichaean.  They occupied the churches of Egypt and Alexandria and took possession of them.  Then they made a raid against Athanasius, patriarch of Alexandria, with the intention of killing him, but he managed to escape and hide.  Up to that time he had been Patriarch for ten years.  Gregory was then made Patriarch of Alexandria (22).  He was a Manichaean.  He held the office for twelve years and died.  At his death Athanasius, patriarch of Alexandria, reoccupied his own place.  He held the office for three years.  In that time there came from Constantinople to Alexandria a general named Sawīriyānūs that, being an Arian, confined Patriarch Athanasius in a place called Tībāriyādah and appointed Khurayğ  as patriarch of Alexandria (23).  He was an Arian.  He held the seat for six years.  The general Sūriyānūs then left Alexandria bound for Constantinople.  When he left Alexandria, the Melkites of the city revolted against the patriarch Gurayh and killed him and then burned his body.  Patriarch Athanasius again reoccupied his see.  At that time there was a terrible tsunami and many places and many churches of Alexandria were submerged.

6. The King Constantine, son of Constantine, died after a reign of twenty-four years.  After him reigned over Rum Julian, the apostate King (24).  This happened in the twenty-first year of the reign of Sabur, son of Sabur, king of the Persians.  This king Julian was a renegade from the Christian religion, who wanted to return people to the worship of idols and killed a large number of martyrs.  In the first year of his reign the Arians who were in Jerusalem rose against Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, with the intent to kill him.  [Cyril] fled and Heraclius was elected bishop of Jerusalem (25).  He was an Arian.  He held the office for three years and died.  In the second year of his reign Milītiyānūs was made patriarch of Antioch (26).  He was an orthodox (27).  He held the seat for twenty-five years.  In his twenty-first year in office there was the second council in Constantinople (28).

At the time of this king there lived at Alexandria the patriarch Athanasius, at Constantinople the Manichaean patriarch Eudoxius, and at Rome the patriarch Līnāriyūs (29).

At the time of this king lived the blessed Basil, Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, a territory subject to the jurisdiction of Rum, and Gregory, bishop of Nazianzus.  The inhabitants of the city of Nazianzus were all Sabeans.  Gregory, bishop of Nazianzus, composed the sermon on the birth of Christ, our Lord, which begins: “Christ is born, glorify [him]; Christ [is] from heaven: welcome Christ on earth: glorify [him]”(30), and while he was reading to them, they mocked him and started laughing.  On the feast of the Baptism, Gregory wrote another sermon in which reviewed the religion of the Sabeans and illuminated its errors.  This was the sermon that begins with the following words: “And again, my Jesus, and still a mystery” (31).  At the time of Julian the Apostate there lived Anba Antonius, who was the first monk to live in the desert of Egypt, where he founded the monasteries and gathered monks there.  Anba Hilarion lived in Syria (32), who was the first monk to live in the desert of Jordan where he collected the monks and founded the monasteries and many other places.

Learning that Sabur, son of Sabur, king of the Persians, was preparing to invade his territories, Julian the Apostate made the necessary preparations and went out against him.  Meanwhile he had spread his cult and his wicked religion everywhere, carryinbg out his perverse intention and proposal to return people to the worship of idols.  But Sabur, son of Sabur, king of the Persians, defeated him and killed him in battle, making great slaughter of his men.

7. Basil, Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, has handed down to us that, one day while he was sitting in his room in front of a painting depicting the martyr Mercurius, he realized, suddenly, that the image of the martyr was missing from canvas.  He was very surprised.  After just one hour the image of the martyr had reappeared on the canvas but now, on the tip of the spear in his hand, was something like blood.  The wonder of Bishop Basil at the sight of this increased, and he remained deep in thought, until the news came that the King Julian the Apostate had been killed in the war in that hour.  Basil then understood that the martyr Mercurius had killed him, that Julian had been put to death on account of the animosity he felt toward Christians, and because of his firm resolution to restore everywhere the worship of idols (33).

8. After Julian the Apostate had been killed, there reigned over Rum, for one year only, Jovian (34).  This happened in the twenty-first year of the reign of Sabur, son of Sabur, king of the Persians.  The king Jovian was of excellent faith and a staunch defender of the religion of the Christians.  A rebel rose up against him a rebel, and Jovian made war on him, but died on the way at a place called Daris (35).

After him there reigned for twelve years over Rum Valentinian (36). This happened in the twenty-fourth year of the reign of Sabur, son of Sabur, king of the Persians. In the third year of his reign Damasus was made patriarch of Rome (37). He held the seat for twenty-eight years and died.

9. In his seventeenth year in office there was the second council at Constantinople.  In the fourth year of the reign of Valentinian Demophilus was made patriarch of Constantinople (38).  He was a Manichaean.  He held the office for eleven years and died.  In the first year of his reign Irnis was made bishop of Jerusalem (39).  He was a Manichaean.  He held the office for five years and died.  In the seventh year of his reign Hilarius was made bishop of Jerusalem (40).  He was an Arian.  He held the office for four years and died.  On his death there returned to his own see Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, who had fled because of the Arians.  He held the seat for sixteen years and died.  The entire period for which Cyril was bishop was thirty-three years.

10. In his twenty-seventh year in office there was the second council at Constantinople.  The population of Alexandria rebelled again against the patriarch Athanasius and decided to kill him.  But [Athanasius] fled and hid.  They therefore made Lucius Patriarch of Alexandria (41).  He was an Arian.  Five months later there gathered, along with a large group of Melkite Christians, a good number of bishops who excommunicated the patriarch Lucius and deposed him. The patriarch Athanasius returned to his own see and remained there until his death.  He was patriarch was for forty six years.

11. In the eighth year of the reign of Valentinian Peter was made Patriarch of Alexandria (42).  But the followers of Arius rose up against him, with the intention of killing him, and he fled away from them.  Lucius was then recalled, who had been deposed, and he held the office for three years.  But since the Melkites rose up against him with intent to kill him, he fled away from them.  The patriarch Peter then returned to his place. He held the office for six years and died.  In the Maghrib a rebel rose up against Valentinian. Valentinian went out against him at the head of a huge force but was killed in the war (43).

12. After him his brother Valens (44) reigned over Rum for three years.  This was in the thirty-sixth year of the reign of Sabur, son of Sabur, king of the Persians.

At the time of Valens, king of Rum, there lived in Alexandria, a man named Theodore who disputed and fought in defense of the doctrine of the Melkites, refuting the assertions of the Aryans.  The followers of the excommunicate Arius took him, tied his hands and tied him to the feet of a horse that they drove off at full speed in the direction of the desert.  He thus had all his limbs dislocated and died a martyr for the faith.  In the second year of the reign of Valens, king of Rum, Timothy was made patriarch of Alexandria (45), Peter’s brother, former patriarch of Alexandria before him.  He held the seat for seven years and died.

In his sixth year in office there was the second council in Constantinople.  The patriarch Timothy had built many churches in Alexandria and numerous tombs, and converted many people from Arianism to the Melkite religion.  In the third year of the reign of Valens, king of Rum, Evagrius was made patriarch of Constantinople (46), of the Melkite religion.  He held the seat for two years and was removed.  The king Valens sent for Gregory, bishop of Nazianzus, and ordered him to take care of the see of Constantinople.  Gregory administered it for four years and died.

At the time of Valens, king of Rum, St Euthymius was born (47).  In the West there rose up against Valens a rebel and Valens came out against him with his forces.  After many days of fighting, in a place called Tarāqā, Valente, king of Rum, was defeated and fled to a village in the province of Adrianople where they set fire to him and to the village (48).

13. After him reigned over Rum his son Valentinian (49) together with Gratian (50) for three years.  The king Gratian died a few days after the king Valentinian.  Then arose within Rum much contention about to whom to entrust the kingdom.  Some said: “One of the sons of the great king Valentinian should reign over us”. Others said: “Only a man who shares our faith should reign over us, to fight for the Christian faith.”  The opinions of many Christians and their doctrines were varied, but the doctrine of the Arians and followers of Macedonius won out.  They remained prey to confusion for six months without being able to give themselves a king, nor was there, then, a patriarch in Constantinople, because after the death of Gregory (51), bishop of Nazianzus, who had held the seat of Constantinople, another patriarch had not yet been made.  Then the ministers and generals went to one of the bishops of Constantinople, named Cyrus, excellent man, and full of virtue, and said:  “We will rely on you because you can judge what is best for us in such a predicament.  Choose from your full and unconditional initiative a man of your own faith and make him our king, because, if we continue to be without a king, the Persians or others could invade our country and subjugate us, because of our many doctrines and bitter disputes, and destroy us”.  The bishop replied, “If I choose for you a man, and I make him your king, this will leave some happy and others not, and thus there may be more fighting between you and more dead.  I can only give you some advice, that if you follow it will be more useful both to me and to you.”  They said to him: “What?” And the bishop replied: “Send around the city of Constantinople an crier and tell people to gather, at sunset, in the church where we will pray all night. Tomorrow we will celebrate the Mass and ask our God and our Lord Jesus Christ to choose for us a king. Whom He will choose, we will welcome him as our king.”  They welcomed his advice.

14. There lived in Constantinople two men, poor and of low condition, bound together by friendship.  One was called Theodosius, and was bald and thirty years old, and the other Theophilus, who was a sage and a philosopher and was twenty-five.  Both, every day, went out early from Constantinople in search of wood, which they carried on their heads and then sold, giving half of the proceeds in alms to the poor.  With what was left they bought something to eat and whatever they needed.  Only night separated them, when each went to his home and returned to their accustomed place.  That day Theophilus went early in the morning to Theodosius to wake him and go out in search of firewood.  When he called, Theodosius came out and said: “My brother, I was having a strange dream when you called me and woke me up in the throes of my turmoil.  If I can find someone who will give me an interpretation, I will give all him earn throughout the week, allowing that I am poor and have no other source of income except what I procure by selling the wood.”  Theophilus said:  “I know how to interpret dreams.  Tell me what you have dreamed of, and also, Christ, our Lord, willing, I’ll give an explanation, without you having to give anything to the person who would explain it.”

Theodosius said: “While I was sleeping, I heard a great voice and I awoke in the grip of turmoil.  Then I said to myself:  “The soldiers of the Persians have come to Constantinople” and I rushed into the street, but I did not see anyone and I did not hear any voices.  So I went back to bed and I fell asleep and I dreamed that I was in a vast desert full of big rams, sheep, cows and beasts, lions and birds and animals of every race and species, of leafy trees and large and most numerous heaps of grain, and I said: “I wish I could have a bit of that grain I, who are so poor!”  And as I looked at the animals, the trees and the vast harvest of wheat, behold I saw a tall man fifty cubits high, whose body shone like pure gold in his right hand and wore a double-edged sword, on which were engraved four seals that shone like gold, and in his left hand he had a golden shield.  When I saw him come near me, I was afraid and fell face down. But he took me by the hand, raised me up and told me: “Fear not. Would you like to have all that is in this wilderness?” I replied: “My Lord, I just want a bit of wheat.” And he answered me: “Everything you see in this wilderness will be yours from now on, and under your power.” Then he told me: “Follow me,” and I followed, as I walked here and I saw the rams, sheep, cows, the beasts and the birds and the trees fall down before me and reverence me.  The lions, however, greeted me with roars and I had great fear. But he told me then: “Fear not, take this sword and shield and keep them tight in your hand.”  The sword was double-edged and there were four seals on it.  I took them from him, therefore, the sword and the shield, and I kept them tight in hand.  When the lions saw the sword and shield in my hands, they bent their legs to the ground and prostrated themselves before me.  Then he took me to the sea and I saw come out of it a column of light.  The man stretched out his hand, took the column and it covered me, and in doing so the column was divided into three stars.  The first star was similar to the earth, and he wrapped me up in this light around the chest; the second was like beryl and he wrapped this light around my thighs, and the third was similar to ruby ​​and he wrapped this around my foot.  Then I was taken by the hand and taken back in that great wilderness and he told me: “Lift up your eyes to the sky.”  I looked up, and I saw a big star like lightning which is divided into two parts falling on my head.  Then he led me to a corner of the wilderness, and I saw thick briars and brambles sprouting in the middle of fruitless trees.  Then I was led into a wide and beautiful tent.  I looked into the tent, and there I saw in the centre a lamb, and a spring of water, as white as milk.  Then that lamb became like the flame of a fire, and ascended to heaven together with the water.  I came out of the tent, and I saw the man holding a long key which was a cubit wide, which he gave me and I said to him: “My Lord, how can I hold the shield, the sword and this key?”  He replied: “This is what you are commanded to do.”  I am left to speculate on whom to entrust the key.  And I saw you, standing to my right, wrapped in a white pallium and beautiful, and with a tiara on your head.  I handed the key to you, and then I saw only the man.  Then we headed home, but along the way we came across a wall that blocked the road, two hundred cubits long.  And I said: “How will we overcome this wall?” And as we were halted, I saw a light descending from heaven like lightning. The wall collapsed and we passed through. Then I woke up to the sound of your shout.”

Theophilus said: “If you have described your dream accurately, know that it will be you that is chosen as king. There, now I’ll explain.  The great wilderness is the world.  The sheep and the sheep are men, both the good and the bad, living in the world.  The beasts are the Greeks and the birds represent every town and village.  The trees are the ministers and generals.  These all shall bow down before you in your kingdom.  The lions are the enemies of the king.  The double-edged sword is the Torah and the books of the Old and New Testaments.  The four seals of the sword are the four evangelists and the piles of grain represent the enormous wealth of your kingdom.  The column of light with which you have been covered is the mercy of God that has fallen upon you, and that your days will abound.  The three stars that have fallen on you represent the baptism that you received in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  The star then that fell from heaven alighting on your head is the crown of your kingdom.  And as you saw it split in two, you will have two children in your kingdom.  The brambles and fruitless trees represent the people who do not believe in Christ, our Lord.  The tent is the church and the lamb you saw in the middle of the tent is the Eucharist.  And the water was like milk is Baptism.  And as you saw the lamb like the flame of a fire with water ascend to heaven, so the Eucharist will rise to heaven.  The key, then, is the authority that was assigned to you, to give the church a leader who will govern according to your mandate.  You gave me the key, and that means that I will be made patriarch.  The wall, finally, is the peace and tranquility that there will be in your kingdom. And this is the interpretation of your dream.”

Theodosius said: “That’s very nice, my brother, your interpretation of my dream! But that I become king, and that you will become patriarch, this will never be possible!  Come on, get up, let’s go to work.”  As they were going out, they saw people heading to church and asked: “What day is this?” “We go to church,” they answered, “to see who God will choose as our king.” Theophilus said to Theodosius: “Let’s do the same ourselves and go to church. It could also be that your dream will come true.”  They entered the church and having prayed, Theodosius said Theophilus: “Our clothes are shabby and worn.  Let’s get behind everyone and let ‘s see what happens.”  The mass ended, and people were about to leave, when suddenly a large bird appeared, carrying in its beak a crown of light.

The people watched it for a couple of hours and began to shout: “O Lord, have mercy on us!”  The bird then moved toward Theodosius and dropped on his head a crown of light.  He was immediately brought to the altar, where the bishop took away the worn and shabby clothes, covered him with the royal robes and put on his head the crown of the kingdom, calling on him the blessing of God.  Then he was made to mount on one of the king’s horses – Theodosius still did not believe his eyes seeing himself surrounded by ministers and generals – and introduced him to the court, that the king’s palace, going then each their own way.

Share

Did St Nicholas of Myra / Santa Claus punch Arius at the Council of Nicaea?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

In many places online we can find the statement that St Nicholas of Myra – the basis for Santa Claus – was present at the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, where he punched Arius in the mouth.  So … is it true?

Unfortunately we have almost no historical information at all about any St Nicholas of Myra – our information is entirely based on Saint’s Lives of him, of which the earliest are 9th century, and the latest are modern compilations based on medieval collections.  All these Lives are really closer to folk-tales than to history, and they reflect the accumulations of popular legends.  Some of them do have Nicholas attending the Council of Nicaea; but they do not contain the story of Nicholas punching Arius.

The main collection of source materials about Nicholas is by Gustav Anrich,[1] and in this I found what I suspect is the answer.

Before I look at the data, let’s summarise what it says.  Sometime in the middle ages, the story about his attendance at Nicaea was “improved” to show him slapping “an Arian”.  Over time, this turned into a story about him slapping Arius himself.  The story is now a standard item in Greek Orthodox tradition, and is embedded in their handbook of icon-painting.

On to the data.

In Anrich volume 1, p.459, in the section devoted to testimonia, there is an extract from a Latin text (!) by a certain Petrus de Natalibus, a Venetian.  Petrus in 1370 was bishop of Equilio (Jesolo) near Venice, and died around 1400.  The text of his work reads:

Fertur beatum Nicolaum jam senem Nicaeno concilio interfuisse et quemdam Arrianum zelo fidei in maxillam percussisse ob idque a concilio mitra et pallio privatum extitisse; propter quod ut plurimum sine mitra depingitur.  Sed dum aliquando missam beatae virginis, cujus erat devotus, in pontificalibus celebraret et privationem mitrae et pallii defleret quasi zelo nimio fidei ablata: ecce, cunctis videntibus, duo angeli eidem astiterunt, quorum unus mitram, alius pallium sibi divinitus restituerunt.   Et extunc insignia reassumpsit sibi caelitus restituta.[2]

It happened that saint Nicholas, now an old man, was present at the Council of Nicaea,  and out of jealousy of faith struck a certain Arian in the jaw, on account of which it is recorded that he was deprived of his mitre and pallium; on account of which he is often depicted without a mitre.  …[3]

This tells us that the story had arisen by whenever Petrus wrote these words – it is really difficult to find much about him! -, and was known in the West, or at least in Venice.  So it probably had existed for some time at that point.  But at this point it is not Arius himself – only “a certain Arian”.

The next piece of data is an extract from a biography by an obscure Damaskenos Monachus, written in the second half of the 16th century.  Apparently he lived in the second half of the 16th century, and may (or may not) be identical with the man of that name who was Bishop of Liti and Rendini in 1564; and Metropolitan of Naupaktos and Arta in 1570.  He composed a biography of St Nicholas of Myra, based on earlier accounts, which he included in his Thesaurus.  The oldest edition of his work was printed in Venice in 1570.  Anrich obtained this information from E. Legrand, Bibliographie hellenique II (1885), p.12 f., which contains little more than you have above.[4]

Anrich states that the Vita of Damaskenos is a vulgarisation of the Vita by Simon Metaphrastes, who created the standard Greek hagiographical texts in the 11th century.  I don’t know if any edition of Damaskinos can be found online?

Anrich gives the Greek of the extract.  Yesterday I posted this, and an appeal for a translation.  A kind corrrespondent obliged:

Damascenos the Monk:  Life of saint Nicholas the wonder-worker:  Large collection of lives of saints, or “Great Book of Saints” by Const. Chr. Doukakis.   Athens, 20 December, 1896, pages 171-190.

10.  p.179-180.  After the king seated himself on the throne, one hundred and fifty nine fathers seated themselves at either side of him, both they and Arius arguing with much unease.  Saint Nicholas, noticing that Arius was about to quash all the archpriests and moved by divine zeal, rose up and gave him a slap that shook all his members. Complaining, Arius says to the king: “O most just king, is it fair, before your royal highness, for one to strike another?  If he has something to say, let him speak as the other fathers do; if he is ignorant, let him remain silent as his like are. For what reason does he slap me in the presence of your highness?”  Hearing this, the king was greatly disappointed and said to the archpriests: “Holy archpriests, it is the law, that whosoever raises his hand before the king to strike someone, that it should be cut off. I leave this to you, so that your holiness(es) might be the judge.”  The archpriests replied, saying: “Your majesty, that the archpriest has acted wrongly all of us confess it; except that we beseech you, let us unstate him now and imprison him, and after the dissolution of the council, we shall then convict him.”

Having unstated and imprisoned him, that night Christ and the Holy Mother Theotokos appeared in prison and said: “Nicholas, why are you imprisoned?”  And the saint replied: “For loving You”. Christ then said to him: “Take this,” and gave him the holy gospel; the Holy Mother Theotokos gave him the archpriestly omophorion (scapular).  The next day some acquaintances of his brought him bread and they saw that he was freed of his fetters and on his shoulder he was wearing the omophorion, while reading the holy gospel he was holding in his hands. Having asked him where he found them, he told them the whole truth.  Having learnt of this, the king took him out of the prison and asked for forgiveness, as did all the others.  After the dissolution of the council, all the archpriests returned home, as did saint Nicholas, to his province.

This is the earliest text known to me, and evidently to Anrich, which records Nicholas punching Arius.

Anrich adds:

Die Darstellung der Nicaea-Episode stimmt mit den Angaben des Malbuches (unten S. 463,15 ff u. 33 ff); die nur in den Hauptzügen mit diesen beiden stimmende Dartellung von Petrus de Natalibus beweist, daß der Grundstock der Legende mindestens ins 14. Jh. zurückgeht.

The presentation of the Nicaea episode is consistent with the information provided by the Painting book (below, p 463, 15 et seq u 33 et seq.); since only the more significant features of these two versions agree with the story as given by Petrus de Natalibus, this shows that the foundation of the legend goes back at least to the 14th century.

The “Painting book” (I don’t know the English name of this work: in German it is the Malbuch) is the 18th century manual of iconography from Mount Athos, produced by Dionysius of Foura.  This gives the legends to be attached to icons.  The first reads as follows:

“The holy and ecumenical 1st Synod in Nicaea….
And Arius, standing, also in hieratic vestment, and standing before him, Saint Nicholas with arm outstretched to slap him.”

The second one says:

“The saint in prison, receiving the gospel from Christ and the omophorion from the Holy Mother. – Prison, and at the centre is the saint and Christ at his right holding a gospel; at his left the Theotokos holding an omphorion: they are giving these to him.”

The presence of the item in the Handbook shows that the topic is a standard one for icons.  So we may presume that the story reaches us today from Greek Orthodox sources, for whom it is a traditional motif, depicted in their churches.

Here is an example of the scene in a fresco from the Soumela monastery (via Livius.org):

St Nicholas of Myra slapping Arius at the Council of Nicaea. Fresco at Soumela. By Marco Prins. Via Livius.org.
St Nicholas of Myra slapping Arius at the Council of Nicaea. Icon at Soumela. Via Livius.org.

To summarise again: there is no ancient evidence whatever that St Nicholas punched or slapped Arius at the First Council of Nicaea.  The story is not found in any text before the late 14th century, and even that one mentions only “a certain Arian”.  In the next two centuries the legend mutates into Nicholas slapping Arius; and is then disseminated in works of popular fiction, and by the paintings of icons.  It has no historical basis whatever.

UPDATE: I am advised that ράπισμα means slap, not punch.  My correspondent adds: ” it was a slap intended to shock Arius back to his senses”.

Share
  1. [1]G. Anrich, Hagios Nikolaos: Der Heilige Nikolaos in der Griechischen Kirche, 2 vols, 1913.  Accessible to Americans at Hathi Trust.↩
  2. [2]Anrich gives a reference: Petrus de Natalibus, Catalogus sanctorum et gestorum eorum ex diversis voluminibus collectus, Lugduni 1508, Fol. VII.  The English title appears to be Legends of the Saints.  Various editions are present on Google Books.  In the 1543 edition, the text is on folio Vb, at the top of the right-hand column.↩
  3. [3]Translation is mine.↩
  4. [4]This volume can be found online at Google Books, but not without considerable effort.  It is here (US only).↩

Is this Katharevousa and can anyone translate it? A passage from Damaskenos Monachos on St Nicholas punching Arius

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Let me introduce to a certain Damaskenos Monachos.  Apparently he lived in the second half of the 16th century, and may (or may not) be identical with the man of that name who was Bishop of Liti and Rendini in 1564; and Metropolitan of Naupaktos and Arta in 1570.  He composed a biography of St Nicholas of Myra, based on earlier accounts, which he included in his Thesaurus.  The oldest edition of his work was printed in Venice in 1570.  There is information about him in E. Legrand, Bibliographie hellenique II (1885), p.12 f.

All these details I obtain from G. Anrich’s Hagios Nikolaus, I (1913), p.459-60.  Anrich prints an extract from the 1896 edition of the text which mentions, charmingly, how St Nicholas of Myra punched Arius on the jaw at the First Council of Nicaea.  I’ve posted it below.

Unfortunately I can’t read this.  A Greek correspondent tells me that it seems very like Katharevousa, or like the Greek that might be read in a service on Mt Athos.  I had not heard of this, but apparently it was a compromise between ancient and modern Greek which was the official language of Greece until 1976.  An educated Greek should be able to handle it, he thinks.

If you can read it – all of it -, would you like to translate it into English for me?  I can pay something.  You can message me via my contact form.

Here is the text:

damaskenos_monachus

UPDATE: And here are a couple more lines, from the Handbook of painting icons, issued by Mount Athos:

painting_manual

A kind correspondent has sent in a rough translation of all this material, which is as follows:

Damascenos the Monk:  Life of saint Nicholas the wonder-worker:  Large collection of lives of saints, or “Great Book of Saints” by Const. Chr. Doukakis.   20th of December, in Athens, 1896, pages 171-190.

10.  p.179-180.  After the king seated himself on the throne, one hundred and fifty nine fathers seated themselves at either side of him, both they and Arius arguing with much unease.  Saint Nicholas, noticing that Arius was about to quash all the archpriests and moved by divine zeal, rose up and gave him a slap that shook all his members. Complaining, Arius says to the king: “O most just king, is it fair, before your royal highness, for one to strike another?  If he has something to say, let him speak as the other fathers do; if he is ignorant, let him remain silent as his like are. For what reason does he slap me in the presence of your highness?”  Hearing this, the king was greatly disappointed and said to the archpriests: “Holy archpriests, it is the law, that whosoever raises his hand before the king to strike someone, that it should be cut off. I leave this to you, so that your holiness(es) might be the judge.”  The archpriests replied, saying: “Your majesty, that the archpriest has acted wrongly all of us confess it; except that we beseech you, let us unstate him now and imprison him, and after the dissolution of the council, we shall then convict him.”

Having unstated and imprisoned him, that night Christ and the Holy Mother Theotokos appeared in prison and said: “Nicholas, why are you imprisoned?”  And the saint replied: “For loving You”. Christ then said to him: “Take this,” and gave him the holy gospel; the Holy Mother Theotokos gave him the archpriestly omophorion (scapular).  The next day some acquaintances of his brought him bread and they saw that he was freed of his fetters and on his shoulder he was wearing the omophorion, while reading the holy gospel he was holding in his hands. Having asked him where he found them, he told them the whole truth.  Having learnt of this, the king took him out of the prison and asked for forgiveness, as did all the others.  After the dissolution of the council, all the archpriests returned home, as did saint Nicholas, to his province.

And from the painting manual (I don’t know the English name of this work: in German it is the Malbuch), the items seem to be legends to place on the icons.  The first reads as follows:

“The holy and ecumenical 1st Synod in Nicaea….
And Arius, standing, also in hieratic vestment, and standing before him, Saint Nicholas with arm outstretched to slap him.”

The second one says:

“The saint in prison, receiving the gospel from Christ and the omophorion from the Holy Mother. – Prison, and at the centre is the saint and Christ at his right holding a gospel; at his left the Theotokos holding an omphorion: they are giving these to him.”

Again, many thanks!  Comments are welcome!

Share