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Melting down the statues in Constantinople in 1204

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Looting the tombs of the emperors was one thing.  Choniates goes on with yet more examples of cultural vandalism.  The fate of statues, many obviously from ancient times, was the furnace, to be turned into coins.[1]

Because they were in want of money (for the barbarians are unable to sate their love of riches), they covetously eyed the bronze statues and consigned these to the flames. The brazen Hera standing in the Forum of Constantine was cast into a smelting furnace and minted into coins; her head could barely be carted off to the Great Palace by four yokes of oxen. Paris Alexander, standing with Aphrodite and handing to her the golden apple of Discord, was thrown down from his pedestal and cast on top of Hera.

Who, having laid his eyes on the four-sided bronze mechanical device rising up to a height nearly equal to that of the tallest columns which have been set up in many places throughout the City, did not wonder at the intricacy of its ornamentation? Every melodious bird, warbling its springtime tunes, was carved upon it; the tasks of husbandmen, the pipes and milk pails, and the bleating sheep and bounding lambs were depicted. The wide-spread sea and schools of fish were to be seen, some caught and others shown breaking out of the nets to swim free again in the deep. There were the Erotes, shown in pairs and groups of three; innocent of clothing but armed with apples, they shook with sweet laughter as they threw these or were pelted by them. This four-sided monument terminated in a point like a pyramid, and above was suspended a female figure which turned with the first blowings of the wind, whence it was called Anemodoulion [Wind Servant].

Nonetheless, they gave over this most beautiful work to the smelters, as well as an equestrian statue of heroic form and admirable size that stood on the trapezium-shaped base in the Forum of the Bull. Some maintained that it was of Joshua, son of Nave, conjecturing that his hand was pointed towards the sun as it sank in the west, commanding it to stand still upon Gabaon. The majority were of the opinion that it was Bellerophontes, born and bred in the Peloponnesos, mounted on Pegasos; the horse was unbridled, as was Pegasos, who, according to tradition, ran freely over the plains, spurning every rider, for he could both fly through the air and race over the land. But there was an ancient tradition which came down to us and which was in the mouths of all, that under this horse’s front left hoof there was buried the image of a man which, as it had been handed down to some, was of a certain Venetian; others claimed that it was of a member of some other Western nation not allied with the Romans, or that it was of a Bulgarian. As the attempt was often made to secure the hoof, the statue beneath was completely covered over and hidden from sight. When the horse was broken into pieces and committed to the flames, together with the rider, the statue was found buried beneath the horse’s hoof; it was dressed in the kind of cloak that is woven from sheep’s wool. Showing little concern over what was said about it, the Latins cast it also into the fire.

These barbarians, haters of the beautiful, did not allow the statues standing in the Hippodrome and other marvelous works of art to escape destruction, but all were made into coins. Thus great things were exchanged for small ones, those works fashioned at huge expense were converted into worthless copper coins.

Also overturned was Herakles, mighty in his mightiness, begotten in a triple night and placed in a basket for his crib; the lion’s skin which was thrown over him looked terrifying even in bronze, almost as though it might give out a roar and frighten the helpless populace standing nearby. Herakles sat without quiver on his back, or bow in his hands, or the club before him, but with his right foot as well as his right hand extended as far as possible. He rested his left elbow on his left leg bent at the knee; deeply despondent and bewailing his misfortunes, he held his inclined head at rest in his palm, vexed by the labors which Eurystheus had designated, not out of urgency, but from envy, puffed up by the excess of fate. He was thick in the chest and broad in the shoulders, with curly hair; fat in the buttocks, strong in the arms, he was an incomparable masterpiece fashioned from first to last by the hands of Lysimachos [2] and portrayed in the magnitude which the artist must have attributed to the real Herakles; the statue was so large that it took a cord the size of a man’s belt to go round the thumb, and the shin was the size of a man.

They who separated manliness from the correspondent virtues and claimed it for themselves did not allow this magnificent Herakles to remain intact, and they were responsible for much more destruction.

Together with Herakles they pulled down the ass, heavy-laden and braying as it moved along, and the ass driver following behind. These figures had been set up by Caesar Augustus at Actium (which is Nikopolis in Hellas) because when going out at night to reconnoiter Antony’s troops, he met up with a man driving an ass, and on inquiring who he was and where he was going, he was told, “I am Nikon and my ass is Nikan-dros, and I am proceeding to the camp of Caesar.”

Nor, of a truth, did they keep their hands off the hyena and the she-wolf which had suckled Romulus and Romos [Remus]; for a few copper coins they delivered over the nation’s ancient and venerable monuments and cast these into the smelting furnace. This was also the fate of the man wrestling with a lion, and of the Nile horse whose posterior terminated in a spiniferous and scaly tail, and of the elephant waving its proboscis. They did the same to the Sphinxes that are comely women in the front and horrible beasts in their hind parts, that move on foot in a most bizarre manner and are nimbly borne aloft on their wings, rivaling the great-winged birds; and [the same] to the unbridled, snorting horse with ears erect, playful and docile as it pranced; and to the ancient Skylla depicted leaning forward as she leaped into Odysseus’ ships and devoured many of his companions: in female form down to the waist, huge-breasted and full of savagery, and below the waist divided into beasts of prey.

There was set up in the Hippodrome a bronze eagle, the novel device of Apollonios of Tyana, a brilliant instrument of his magic. Once, while visiting among the Byzantines, he was entreated to bring them relief from the snake bites that plagued them. Resorting to those lewd rituals whose celebrants are the demons and all those who pay special honor to their secret rites, he set up on a column an eagle, the sight of which gave pleasure to onlookers and persuaded any who delighted in its aspect to stay on like those held spellbound by the sound of the Sirens’ song. His wings were aflap as though attempting flight, while a coiled snake clutched in his claws prevented its being carried aloft by striking out at the winged extremities of his body. But the venomous creature accomplished nothing, for, transfixed by the sharp claws, its attack was smothered, and it appeared to be drowsy rather than ready to give battle to the bird by clinging to his wings. While the snake breathed its last and expired with its venom unspent, the eagle exulted and, all but screeching out his victory song, hastened to lift up the serpent and bore it aloft to leave no doubt as to the outcome by the flashing of his eyes and the serpent’s mortification. It was said that the very sight of the snake uncoiled and incapable of delivering a deadly bite frightened away, by its example, the remaining serpents in Byzantion, convincing them to curl up and fill their holes. This eagle’s likeness was remarkable, not only because of what we have said but also because the twelve segments marked off in lines along the wings most clearly showed the hour of the day to those who looked upon it with understanding when the sun’s rays were not obscured by clouds.

What of the white-armed, beautiful-ankled, and long-necked Helen, who mustered the entire host of the Hellenes and overthrew Troy, whence she sailed to the Nile and, after a long absence, returned to the abodes of the Laconians? Was she able to placate the implacable? Was she able to soften those men whose hearts were made of iron? On the contrary! She who had enslaved every onlooker with her beauty was wholly unable to achieve this, even though she was appareled ornately; though fashioned of bronze, she appeared as fresh as the morning dew, anointed with the moistness of erotic love on her garment, veil, diadem, and braid of hair. Her vesture was finer than spider webs, and the veil was cunningly wrought in its place; the diadem of gold and precious stones which bound the forehead was radiant, and the braid of hair that extended down to her knees, flowing down and blowing in the breeze, was bound tightly in the back with a hair band. The lips were like flower cups, slightly parted as though she were about to speak; the graceful smile, at once greeting the spectator, filled him with delight; her flashing eyes, her arched eyebrows, and the shapeliness of the rest of her body were such that they cannot be described in words and depicted for future generations.

O Helen, Tyndareus’s daughter, the very essence of loveliness, offshoot of Erotes, ward of Aphrodite, nature’s most perfect gift, contested prize of Trojans and Hellenes, where is your drug granted you by Thon’s wife which banishes pain and sorrow and brings forgetfulness of every ill? Where are your irresistible love charms? Why did you not make use of these now as you did long ago? But I suspect that the Fates had foreordained that you should succumb to the flame’s fervor so that your image should no longer enflame spectators with sexual passions. It was said that these Aeneadae condemned you to the flames as retribution for Troy’s having been laid waste by the firebrand because of your scandalous amours. But the gold-madness of these men does not allow me to conceive and utter such a thing, for that madness was the reason why rare and excellent works of art everywhere were given over to total destruction. Nor can I speak of their frequent selling and sending away of their women for a few coins while they attended the gambling tables and were engrossed at draughts all day long, or, being eager to engage, not in acts of prudent courage, but in irrational and mad assaults against one another, they donned the arms of Ares and set up as the prize of victory all their belongings, even their wedded wives, because of whom they heard themselves called fathers of children, and even that great treasure which others find difficult to sacrifice—the soul, for whose salvation men are eager to do anything. After all, how could one expect to find among these unlettered barbarians who are wholly ignorant of their ABCs, the ability to read and knowledge of those epic verses sung of you:

“Small blame that Trojans and well-greaved Achaeans
should for such a woman long time suffer woes;
wondrously like is she to the immortal goddesses to look upon.”[3]

The following should also be recounted. There was set up on a pedestal a woman youthful in form and appearance and in the prime of life, her hair bound in the back and curled along both sides of the forehead; she was not raised up out of reach but could be touched by those who put out their hands. The right hand of this figure, with no underlying support, held in its palm a man mounted on a horse which was poised on one leg more easily than another would have clasped a wine cup. The rider was robust in body and encased in a coat of mail, with greaves on both legs, and he fiercely breathed out war; while the horse pricked up its ears as though in response to the war trumpet. With neck held high, it was fierce in countenance, the eyes betraying its eagerness to charge forth; the legs were raised high in the air, exhibiting warlike agitation.

Next to this figure, very close to the eastern turn of the four-horse chariot course called Rousion [Red], statues of charioteers were set up with inscriptions of their chariot-driving skill; by the mere disposition of their hands, they exhorted the charioteers, as they approached the turning post, not to relax the reins but to hold the horses in check and to use the goad continuously and more forcefully, so that, as they wheeled round the turning post in close quarters, they should compel their rival, even though his horses were faster and he a skilled competitor, to drive on the outside of the turn and come in last.

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  1. [1]Choniates, 648-654; translation, p.357-361.↩
  2. [2]Actually Lysippos.↩
  3. [3]Illiad 3, 156-8.↩

The Latins break open the tombs of the emperors in Constantinople

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The history of Nicetas Choniates ends with a mournful description of the damage done to the city of Constantinople by the victorious Latins in 1204.  It seems to describe events well after the initial capture and sack of the city.

The following is very interesting:

Exhibiting from the very outset, as they say, their innate love of gold, the plunderers of the queen city conceived a novel way to enrich themselves while escaping everyone’s notice. They broke open the sepulchers of the emperors which were located within the Heroon erected next to the great temple of the Disciples of Christ [Holy Apostles] and plundered them all in the night, taking with utter lawlessness whatever gold ornament, or round pearls, or radiant, precious, and incorruptible gems that were still preserved within.

Finding that the corpse of Emperor Justinian [d.648] had not decomposed through the long centuries, they looked upon the spectacle as a miracle, but this in no way prevented them from keeping their hands off the tomb’s valuables. In other words, the Western nations spared neither the living nor the dead, but beginning with God and his servants, they displayed complete indifference and irreverence to all.

Not long afterwards, they pulled down the ciborium of the Great Church that weighed many tens of thousands of pounds of the purest silver and was thickly overlaid with gold.[1]

All the emperors of the East, from Constantine the Great onwards, were buried in the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople.  The church was pulled down after 1453 by the Moslems, and a mosque built in its place.  I believe that some of the porphyry sarcophagi of the emperors can still be seen at the archaeological museum, although I have not seen this myself.

But I had never realised that the tombs were actually looted by the Latins after their capture of the city in 1204.

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  1. [1]Nicetas Choniates, Annals, translated as O City of Byzantium: Annals of Niketas Choniates, tr. H.J. Margoulias, 1984, p.357.↩

From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve managed to read Diez’ article on al-Makin ibn Amid, the largely unpublished 13th century Arabic Christian historian.  It’s a cracker!  It is, indeed, the new entrance-point to all the literature on the subject.  It also – ahem – mentions this blog.

I’ll post some more about this in due course.  But I did start thinking … surely the first thing to do is to get a text of al-Makin into electronic form and get it on the web?  I wonder how this might be done, at a reasonable price?

I wish I could think of a way to get hold of the edition printed in Cairo a few years ago!

UPDATE: I have just spent an hour trying to locate copies — some may be found in the UK in www.copac.ac.uk by searching on the editor, Ali Bakr Hassan — and placing an ILL when I suddenly remembered, rather embarassingly … that I have met Dr Hassan, at Oxford some years ago, when he was so kind as to give me a copy of it.  A little searching and I have it in my hand.  I must be getting old or daft.  I have a vague memory — you can tell how good my memory is right now! —  that his edition only covers part of the work, however.

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Ehrman on Epiphanius and the Borborites – some notes

Posted on by Roger Pearse

We have now gone through all the ancient evidence concerning the gnostic cult known as the Borborites (here).  This includes the long chapter (26) in the Panarion of Epiphanius in which he recounts their practices, says something about their mythology, and tells us of his own personal encounter with the group.

The time has now come to review what Bart Ehrman has to say about it, in his recent book Forgery and counterforgery.  After all, the comments about Epiphanius, in the review copy sent to me, are the reason why we looked into this in the first place![1]  Now that I know what the data is, I can discuss his ideas about it.

Ehrman’s argument can be summarised very briefly as follows.  He argues that the account of the Borborites given by Epiphanius is factually wrong.  He then highlights that Epiphanius claims personal knowledge of the cult, and uses this to “show” that Epiphanius must be lying.  Once he has convicted Epiphanius of lying, he then dismisses the quotations from gnostic texts in Epiphanius as being forgeries.  On this basis, he calls Epiphanius a forger.  He then takes this forward into the rest of the book as evidence of early Christian dishonesty.

Of course an argument stated so baldly may misrepresent the author.  I don’t believe that I have done so, however.  E.’s treatment of the subject is itself brief, and a good proportion of it is given  over to summarising what Epiphanius says.   It would have been better, tho, if E. had given the text and translation of chapter 26 in his book, perhaps as an appendix, so that the reader could decide for himself whether Epiphanius was saying what E. suggests.  But E.’s summary of the chapter is fair enough.

All the same, regardless of the subject, an argument of that form raises doubts in my mind.  This kind of argument is the sort made by a prosecutor, not a scholar.

A couple of other red flags spring out. It is fairly obvious that a man may be wrong, without being dishonest.  Further, a dishonest man who is writing a polemic against a hated foe will not necessarily compose fake quotations.  My own experience of such a process, examining just such a book eleven years ago, revealed a host of errors, but all of them consisted of repeating uncritically from others, or else taking out of context.  Surely it is obvious that the polemicist would prefer to use true quotations?

On the face of it, then, the argument has difficulties.  But we are not here to chop logic.  If E. has not made his argument very well, that is not our concern.  The question remains; is it true that Epiphanius  lied about the Borborites and forged supposed quotes from their books?  This we need to investigate.

I have already examined Epiphanius’ account here, and I came to no such conclusion.  So what does E. know, that did not strike me when examining the data?

We need to review what E. says for his argument.

E. discusses Panarion 26 on p.19-24.  He claims that Epiphanius composed the quotations from gnostic texts which appear within chapter 26.  He gives the quotation of the Greater Questions of Mary, given by Epiphanius, and asks whether such a text actually existed.  On p.21 he enters what he considers is the main question: how reliable is Epiphanius as a source?

Here a red flag comes up.  The question is a perfectly reasonable one to ask about any ancient source.  But there are pitfalls in this, and indeed E. falls squarely into one.

Scholars in the 19th century became notorious in the 20th century for le hyperscepticisme, for debunking material selectively where a piece of data was inconvenient to the theory being advanced.  The conclusions reached often have been overturned since.  Texts dismissed as forgeries have been found in the sands of Egypt.  We must never confuse data with deduction, nor must we selectively ignore unwelcome portions of texts that we use without question elsewhere.  For E. to question the reliability of Epiphanius is entirely in order; so long as his argument does not then use Epiphanius as a source himself, or treat material by him as reliable when convenient.

Anyway, E. introduces the question by an appeal to authority:

The prior question is whether Epiphanius’ description of the activities of the group is at all plausible. Historians have long treated Epiphanius in general with a healthy dose of skepticism.[26]

And then responds to historians who do not think so with:

[These arguments] may just as well show that he has invented a set of scandalous rituals imagined as appropriate to the nefarious theology of the group. How would we know?

It is a reasonable, if somewhat morose question.  Similar questions can be asked about every ancient text on every subject whatever, of course.  But the question is not answered.

Instead, as if answering it, E. moves on to query the reliability of the account:

One obvious place to start is with Epiphanius’ sources of information. Because he had some contact with the group as a young man–was nearly seduced into it–it is sometimes claimed that he had special access to their liturgical practices. But this is scarcely plausible. Epiphanius indicates that he spurned the advances of the two attractive Phibionite women before being drawn into their orb. This must mean that he was never present for any of the ritual activities. And it defies belief that missionaries would inform outsiders about the scandalous and reprehensible activities of the group before they were admitted into the inner circle. Potential converts were not likely to be won over by accounts of ritualistic consumption of fetuses.

These are reasonable questions by themselves, although Epiphanius tells us that he spent rather more time with the cult and with their books than the reader may realise from E.’s comment.  But it is certainly true that Epiphanius did not take part in the rituals he describes.  The inference that this means that he had no certain knowledge is problematical; we don’t know this.  The appeal to what we today find credible, however, seems unsatisfactory; what we want, surely, is data.  In its absence, we must refuse to reach conclusions.

Fortunately we do have some evidence on this.   The Nag Hammadi texts confirm some of the “liturgical practices” recorded by Epiphanius, as we have seen.   But E. does not reference this, although he does reference Benko’s article which quotes it.  This is a slip-up.

So far, then, we have very little.  E. has said that Epiphanius’ account “defies belief”, and points out that Epiphanius’ status as eyewitness extends only to talking to cultists and reading their books.  The former point we must reject; the latter seems reasonable enough.  None of this proves Epiphanius a liar and forger, however.  But E. is not done yet.

Next, E. suggests that, because other Christian writers have recorded libertine gnostic cults, that it must be a piece of common rhetoric rather than anything factual.  The point of this is to infer that Epiphanius must have done the same.

There are several problems here.

Firstly, it is always unwise to rush into explaining why people are wrong before we have established that they are indeed mistaken.  E. does not offer evidence that all of these writers are mistaken.  Until he does, their testimony is data in the historical record.  To offer an explanation of why they were all so silly as to say it – that they were conforming to a stereotype – and then class Epiphanius with them, seems like placing the cart before the horse.

Secondly, it seems odd for E. to suggest that there are no such things as groups of religious libertines.  We all know different.  Some of the 60’s cults were libertine; the Children of God and the followers of Bagwan Shree Rajneesh come instantly to mind, and one recalls such a group being mentioned by John Wesley.  A long list of antinomians could probably be provided.  No doubt a list of false accusations could also be supplied.  Whether a given group is of this kind must be resolved by investigation.

However E. does indeed have a reason to suppose that the Fathers are mistaken about the gnostics; he merely hasn’t given it yet.  After a page of not-very-useful commentary, his reasoning appears on p.24, and it is worth quoting in full:

The proto-orthodox heresiologists uniformly assumed that since various Gnostic groups demeaned the material world and bodily existence within it, they had no difficulty in demeaning the body. Moreover, since for Gnostics the body was irrelevant for ultimate salvation, reasoned the heresiologists, then the body could be used and abused at will. And so, for their opponents, the Gnostics engaged in all sorts of reprehensible bodily activities, precisely to demonstrate their antimaterialist theology.

This heresiological commonplace has been effectively refuted in modern times. The one thing the Nag Hammadi library has shown about Gnostic ethics is that the heresiologists from Irenaeus (and no doubt before) to Epiphanius (and certainly after) got the matter precisely wrong. Many Gnostic groups did devalue the body. But that did not lead them to flagrant acts of immorality. On the contrary, since the body was the enemy and was to be escaped, the body was to be treated harshly. One was not to indulge in the pleasures of the flesh precisely because the goal was to escape the trappings of the flesh. The Nag Hammadi treatises embody a decidedly ascetic ideal, just the opposite of what one would expect from reading the polemics of the proto-orthodox and orthodox heresiologists.

The argument may be summarised as follows.  (A) the Nag Hammadi library is representative of all gnosticism (b) any opinion not included in it was never held by any gnostic (c) the Nag Hammadi library reflects ascetic ideas and (d) that proves that all the early Christian writers who describe libertine gnostic practices are wrong and lying.

Now arguments that absence of evidence is evidence of absence are notoriously weak.  But in the first place, we must ask whether there is any reason why we should suppose that the contents of the Nag Hammadi library are anything but a selection, one assembled by a person or persons unknown for purposes unknown, some time in the 4th century AD?  It is not clear why the collection ‘must’ be designed to reflect the entire width of gnosticism, useful as such a selection would be for modern students of gnosticism.

For if it is not, then E.’s argument collapses immediately.  Unless we know for sure that it is indeed representative of all cults from the second century to the fourth, again E.’s argument collapses.  Unfortunately the book simply skates over these problems.  But we cannot.  Can we find anything to make this argument work?

What do we know about the collection?  The origin of the jar containing the books found at Nag Hammadi is not known.  But we do know that Pachomian monasteries in Egypt in the 4-5th c. had some wild stuff on their shelves.  And there was a Pachomian monastery, not far from the find site.  We know because letters from Shenoute and others exist, condemning the practise or even recording episcopal calls for purges of libraries (the references do not come to hand).

But if the books did indeed come from a Pachomian monastery – although we do not know this -, then it would hardly be surprising to find that such a collection was rather ascetic in outlook.  This origin is an alternative to E.’s proposal, and is better, in that, while still speculative, it is based on some actual evidence from the period.

We have already seen that the Nag Hammadi documents, far from  being silent on the Borborites, do indeed mention them.

In short, E.’s argument that no such gnostic groups exist fails.  The gnostics say that they did, the Christians say that they did, and our own experience of New Age groups tell us that people do such things.

But let us return to E.’s argument.  He believes that E.’s description of the Borborites is fiction.  Because Epiphanius states it, that makes Epiphanius a liar, since he claims to know personally.  And, somehow, this makes him a forger too.  But we have yet to see anything very solid in this direction.

But by this point he is almost done! For we are now at the foot of p.23.  And in fact he has nothing more to offer: only his conclusion, which we may give here:

Epiphanius almost certainly fabricated the accounts of these activities: he had never seen them, no one from within the group would have told him about them, they could not have been described in their other literature, and they stand at odds with what we do know of the ethical impulses of all other Gnostic groups from antiquity. On these grounds I would propose that Epiphanius made up the account of the Greater Questions of Mary. The Phibionites may have had a long-lived reputation for scurrilous activities – thus Gero – but if they were like every other Gnostic group for which we have firsthand knowledge – and why would they not be? – then their antimaterialist theology did not lead to socially scandalous and illegal promiscuity, but to ascetic dismissal of the passions of the flesh. The conclusion seems inevitable: Epiphanius got the matter precisely wrong and then fabricated his accounts, and at least one document, in order to make his point.

And that’s it.  That’s the end of E.’s discussion of Epiphanius.  He doesn’t even attempt to explain why Epiphanius’ statements make him a forger, but just “propose”s it.

It is all very well to assert that Epiphanius was wrong about the Borborites – a  group of people whom even E. accepts he knew personally – and then that that he fabricated the texts he quotes.   But the value of such claims is very low indeed.

We have already looked at Epiphanius’ chapter, and evaluated what we might make of it.  To some extent it is impossible for us to be sure what to t hink.  We are in no sense obliged to believe that every word in it is accurate, nor witnessed personally by Epiphanius.  I think it is a great mistake to strain the words of a man of that generation for evidence that he is, or is not, attesting personally every line of a text writing down the memories of 30 years earlier.   But that he wrote honestly seems beyond doubt.  He records a peculiar and disgusting libertine group, of a kind known elsewhere in history, and whose pecularity is attested in gnostic texts also.

One final point.  I have drawn attention above to the dangers of using texts selectively.  There is a nemesis that awaits those who do so.

There is another chapter in Epiphanius, where he quotes extensively from the books of a cult whom he knew slightly himself: the Ebionites.  The material is very valuable.  Rightly it is used without question in a book discussing them, by Bart Ehrman himself, who adds of the quotations, “we should like to have more.”[2]  Indeed we should.  But a writer can hardly be abused as a fraud and liar in one book, only to be used as a reliable source in another.

This is the peril that any of us can fall into, once we start on the dangerous road of finding excuses to ignore, in an ancient writer, what is inconvenient for our own theories.  In the end this perhaps explains E.’s treatment of Epiphanius: E. had a book to write, and used Epiphanius too hastily and without sufficient consideration of the facts.

NOTE: I have revised this post after rereading it.  It is quite hard to review a thesis that one disagrees with profoundly without ranting, and I felt that the style could usefully be changed accordingly.

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  1. [1]My thanks once more to Oxford University Press for a review copy.↩
  2. [2]Bart Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The battles for scripture and the faiths we never knew, Oxford University Press, 2005, p.102.↩

Some Chrysostom, ps.Chrysostom, ps.Athanasius in translation at academia.edu

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve just discovered a group of English translations available online here.  All of them are of previously untranslated texts.   Most excitingly (for me), the translator has started on Chrysostom’s letters.

The translations are a work in progress; but very welcome!

More!

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Al-Makin in prison

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The Diez article on the 13th century Arabic Christian historian, al-Makin ibn Amid, contains an interesting anecdote from the historian’s life:

A second obscure point in the life of Ibn Amid concerns the period of the attempted Mongol invasion of Syria.  The functionary, who was then at Damascus, was accused of being in contact with the Mongols in order to reveal the secrets of the Mameluke army.  He was therefore thrown in prison in 1261 AD by order of the sultan Baibars, and remained there for more than ten years, before being liberated by the payment of a fine.  The biographer Ibn al-Suqa`i (and al-Safadi with him) attributes his detention to the slander of some envious envious scribe, while a Moslem contemporary, the sheikh Ghazi ibn al-Wasiti, cites the case of Ibn al-Amid as proof of the bad faith of the “dhimmis” which, in his opinion, shows that “it is necessary to seize the goods of the Christians, their wives and their lives, and to leave on the face of the earth neither Christian nor Jew.”

Interestingly the work by Ghazi ibn al-Wasiti exists in English, translated by Richard Gottheil[1]  Let us give Gottheil’s translation:

In the days of the Sultan al-Malik al-Thahir, a lot of sincere Moslems from the country of the Tartars told him that al-Makin ibn al-‘Amid, the Secretary of War, was corresponding with Hulagu in reference to the Egyptian army, its men and its commanders.  Al-Malik al-Thahir had him seized, with the intention of having him put to death. His condition was much worse than that of those who were governed by Christian Emirs-he was confined in prison for more than eleven years. Then, through payments of money, his release was effected. In order to put through this release, it was considered proper by Moslems to seize the property of Christians, their wives and their very lives. In the end, not a single Christian and not a single Jew remained in the land.

The work is well worth reading for a series of anecdotes on Moslem-Christian relations in the Moslem states.

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  1. [1]R. Gottheil, “An answer to the Dhimmis”, Journal of the American Oriental Society 41 (1921), 383-457, esp. 410.  JSTOR.↩

LACE Greek OCR project

Posted on by Roger Pearse

On a better note, we live in blessed times where technology and the ancient world are concerned.  The astonishing results of a project to OCR volumes of ancient Greek from Archive.org may now be found online here.  Clicking on the first entry, and one of the outputs in it here gives astonishingly good results.

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Arrested for saying a word

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The BBC has the story, and, curiously, seems to approve.

Two men have been arrested for posting anti-Semitic tweets following Tottenham Hotspur’s match with West Ham. …  Both men were arrested on Thursday on suspicion of inciting racial hatred. … West Ham told supporters that anyone caught behaving in a racist, anti-Semitic or homophobic way would be punished to the full extent of the law. … Police had warned fans before the fixture not to use the word “yid” and said supporters who did so could be committing a crime.

The claims about “inciting hatred” are just words for “saying something we disagree with”.  Nobody seriously supposes it has any other meaning. Nobody is threatened.  Nobody is in fear.

Once laws permit officials to act oppressively, they do so.  Indeed they enlarge and expand the area of their authority.  Officials gain credit and advance their careers by “smelling out” ever more examples of whatever they have been told to detect and punish.  Informers spring up, and informations are laid out of grudges.  This is what official bigotry means; passing laws whose inevitable consequence is to allow such a process.

By a curious coincidence I was reading a 19th century history of the Spanish Inquisition this week.[1]  This documented the same process; officials, once they could act to strain men’s brains, took ever more liberties and extended this ever more.  The long drawn-out trial of the Archbishop of Seville, who had attended the Council of Trent, debated with Lutherans and himself had burned heretics, ended only with his death.  The long-drawn out political trial, designed to punish rather than do justice, has made an unpleasant return in our own days.

When I started writing about freedom of speech online, it was because I could see the likelihood of such a censorship being brought in.  Even so the pace of it has been astonishing.  The establishment have taken few pains to curb the spammers who fill the comments of this blog with rubbish; but they have been red-hot about ensuring that nobody who holds views that they strongly dislike shall be allowed to speak.

These are sad days in Britain.  We live under a shadow of hate and intolerance deeply embedded in the ruling castes of every nation.  I pray that we may live to see freedom once more.

UPDATED (later):  Via Twitter and the Birmingham Mail I learn of the arrest of a man for a joke comparing Nelson Mandela to his laptop.  He was held for 8 hours, “questioned”, and had his DNA taken.  What offence he is claimed to have committed is not disclosed.

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  1. [1]1826.  On Google books here.↩

From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Is it just me, or is everyone frenetically busy right now?  For myself, it’s ridiculous; every day seems to bring an interesting or important email (or three) that I simply must deal with.  Often the issue is something well worth blogging about as well.   So suddenly I find myself snowed under.

This week the new book — Origen’s Homilies on Ezekiel, plus fragments — is bing typeset.  It’s nearly all set up in Adobe Indesign, and looking very good.  I suspect that by the weekend it will be complete.  I shall then have to set up a project in Lulu.com and print a proof copy, to check the PDF and see how it looks in bound form.  I shall also have to get the cover design done.  “Something more green than blue” is as far as I have got.  Then I can get it set up at Lightning Source and formally published.

I don’t know that the book will sell all that many copies.  But of course the object is to get it online.  So whatever sales it makes will help to defray the costs, and whatever loss it makes is one that I can cope with.  Sometime in 2014 I think it will go online.

UPDATE: One slightly embarassing probem with the project has been my own inability to spell “Ezekiel”.  I have often given it as “Ezechiel”, influenced by the French translation of Borret, and the Latin Selecta in Ezechielem.  Today I went through old posts and fixed all that I could find.  It is horrifying to discover that this project was in full flight in … 2009!!!  I was much younger then, or at least I felt so.  Those posts make clear that I never expected this to last more than 4 years!

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Epiphanius and the veil – a 4th century attitude to images

Posted on by Roger Pearse

While searching for old commentary on Epiphanius and the Borborites, I stumbled across something even more interesting.

In The Catholic Layman in 1853[refTwo articles are referenced: ]”The Story of St. Epiphanius and the Veil”, The Catholic Layman, 2.17 (1853), 50, 56.[/ref] appear a couple of quotations from Epiphanius.

The first (p.56) appears in a discussion of purgatory.

… we refer to Epiphanius’s letter to John, bishop of Jerusalem* (works, vol. ii., p. 314, Paris, 1622) in which, after calling Origen the father of Arius, and the root of other heresies, he goes on: “And this, too, which he maintains, I know not whether to grieve or laugh at ; for this excellent teacher, Origen, dares to teach that the Devil will again be what he was once, and will return to the same dignity, and will ascend the kingdom of heaven!  O shocking!  Who can be so senseless and so foolish as to believe that John the Baptist, and Peter, and John the Apostle, and Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and the rest of the prophets shall be co-heirs with the Devil in the kingdom of God ?”

The second (p.50) is more interesting still:

Having had occasion, in another column, page 56, to quote the letter of St. Epiphanius to John of Jerusalem, we give here, according to our promise, an extract which will explain some of the circumstances which gave rise to the letter.

“I heard that some are murmuring against me, for the following reason:-

When we were going together, to the holy place, which is called Bethel, that I might there hold a service with you, according to the ecclesiastical custom, and when I had come to the village called Anablatha, I saw, as I was passing by, a light burning there.  So I asked what place it was, and, being told that it was a church, I entered in, to pray there; and I found there a veil, hanging on the doors of the same church, dyed and painted, and having the likeness of Christ, I believe, or of some saint or other, for I don’t exactly remember whose likeness it was.

So, when I saw this–the likeness of a man hanging in the church of Christ, contrary to the authority of the Scriptures–I tore it, and I gave directions to the keepers of the place, to roll up some poor dead person in it, and bury him in it.

But they murmured against me, and said, ‘If you wished to tear our veil, it would be only right that you should give us another in exchange for it.’  So, when I heard this, I acknowledged that it was reason.able, and promised that I would give it, and would send one forthwith. Some delay, however, has taken place, because I was anxious to send a very good veil, instead of it, for I thought I ought to send one from Cyprus [his own diocese]; but now I send the best veil I could find, and I beg you will give directions, to the priests of that place, to’ take it from bearer, and will give orders that no veils of that kind, which are contrary to our religion, should henceforth be hung up in the church of Christ, for it becomes you to be more careful to take away this cause of offence, which is unworthy of the church of Christ, and of the people who have been committed to you.”

It’s worth noting that Epiphanius was not on the best of terms with John of Jerusalem.   But evidently this was something of no relevance to their disagreement.

I shall have to locate that letter in full and see what else it says.

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