Category: Cyril of Alexandria

Isidore of Pelusium on Romans 1:28-29

Posted on by Roger Pearse

1245 (IV.59) TO POLYCHRONIOS

Since you ask me in your letter: For what reason was it that “God gave them over to an intelligence without judgement” [Rom. 1:28-29] ? I will answer: If you read the next bit, you will understand and you will have no more uncertainty. In fact it reads: “Filled with every kind of injustice”; so, after indicating vice in general, he then goes in detail through the species of vices. So if He has given over people who were, not about to be filled with vice, but already filled with it, he’d have been talking nonsense.

If this isn’t clear to you, although actually it is clear, I will try to give a clearer interpretation of this.

(Paul) did not say: “When they were given over…, they were filled…”, nor: “They were given over… in order to be filled…”, but: ‘(already) filled, he gave over them’, i.e.: he abandoned those who deprived themselves of his help, as a general abandons soldiers who, disobeying his orders, are beaten by their own fault, by depriving themselves of his power. Because those who, of themselves, allowed themselves to be filled with every kind of vice, he rightly gave them over and abandoned: he did not make them “an intelligence without judgement”, but he let them run off.

Our bibles render “an intelligence without judgement” as “a depraved mind”.  God does not throw us into depravity; He lets us run into it, if we are determined to do so.  A further snippet makes up the next letter:

1246 (V.26) TO THE SAME

Just as the quality of the site of a city is closely related to the quality of the climate [of the location], in the same way for hearts, a good disposition to virtue helps the divine alliance along.

In other words, if you are naturally virtuous, this will help lead you into a relationship with Christ.  Well, maybe; but I’m not at all sure that the apostles would have agreed.  Won’t the naturally virtuous tend to be proud, like the Pharisee? Pride obstructs the recognition of sin, and so prevents repentance and conversion at all.

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A couple more letters by Isidore of Pelusium

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Explanations of biblical passages form quite a portion of the letters.

1243 (IV.48) TO AMMONIUS

For fear of presumption,  a terrible ill from which one can escape with difficulty, lest we remain on earth and be deprived of the heavenly rewards, the Lord said:  “Now let us leave this place!” [John 14:31]  Indeed, having engaged His own power in the word which He spoke, He delivered his true disciples from tyrannical passions and made them pass into the celestial assembly.

The French editor, Pierre Evieux, tells is that the following letter is also preserved in the catenas on Romans found in two manuscripts, Vatican. gr. 762 (10th c.) and Vienna. Theol. gr. 166 (14th c.). 

In Romans 1:32, Paul condemns people who, not merely commit a sin, but even approve of those who do the same.  Theologios queries why it is wrong to consider those who encourage sin in others as worse than those who actually commit the sin themselves.  Isidore’s reply is interesting as showing that some were willing to suppose a corruption in the text here.

1244 (IV.60) TO THEOLOGIOS THE DEACON

Since you’ve provided us the occasion to return to the apostolic treasures — in fact you said:  ‘It says “Not only do they do this, but also they approve of those who do this” [Rom. 1:32] and you added:  If the approval is worse than the action itself, why did Paul adopt this order [of words] here?’ — call a little upon your good sense to work out the sense of the apostolic saying which is escaping you, and listen. 

There are some people who did not understand the quotation but which, being embarassed like yourself and supposing that the apostolic expressions are corrupt, have interpreted them this manner: “Not only are there  those who do this, but also those who approve those who do this.”  According to them, the primitive text was presented thus to make it understood that the action was the more serious and approval of it less serious.  For me, without saying that the apostolic books display an error in this passage, without siding either with those who did not understand — because perhaps, even if they are wrong on this passage, on others they are right, and they have caught the direction of passages that, for my part, I did not manage to understand — I will set out what I understood and will allow the judgement of the readers to decide if I am right. 

So, in my opinion, it is because to praise the culprits is much more wong and more serious from the point of view of the punishment that this sentence is relevant:   “Not only do they do this, but also they approve of those who do this.” Because he who condemns his sin after the misdeed will be able in time to repent one day, finding the judgment of the sin a very great help in changing his attitude;  while he who speaks in praise of the evil will deprive himself of the help which repentance procures.  So because this judgement concerns a corrupt conscience and a heart tainted with an incurable disease, he who speaks in praise of the fault of the culprit is rightly judged more culpable.  Because the one will very quickly be diverted from sin, the other not at all, according to whether the judgement relates to he who commits the misdeed or he  who approves it. 

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A bit more on the Zosimus affair

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Isidore of Pelusium writes to his friend Harpocras about the gang of corrupt clergy in Pelusium:

1285 (V.48) TO HARPOCRAS THE SOPHIST.

Undoubtedly it is to better endure insults in silence, like a philosopher, but your attitude is not without elegance either.  Indeed, as a victim of individuals known for their perversity, I mean Zosimus, Maron, Eustathios and Martinianos, you had found malicious to avenge yourself on them by bringing them to justice, but also reducing their supporters to silence:  then, you inflicted on these insolent men a verbal punishment, limiting it to sarcastic remarks which usually wound those at which they aim without being dangerous.  However, in my opinion, the initial reasoning which encouraged you to write is better than the text itself;  therefore I would advise you to add to it what is lacking, i.e. a noble attitude and language free from scandalmongering.  Because even if those people deserve to hear these sarcastic remarks and others even more severe, however it would be wrong for you to pronounce them, you whose language is a sanctuary of purity. 

Harpocras received 28 letters from Isidore, and was teaching in Pelusium.  He composed a monody against these clerics, which is mentioned several times in the correspondence (e.g. 1291, 1292).

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Another letter to Zosimus from Isidore of Pelusium

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Yesterday I gave translations of two letters from Isidore to the corrupt priest Zosimus.  Here is another, although the context is unclear.  But it seems that once again Isidore is attempting to reason away the excuses offered by a man who just doesn’t give a damn.  It would be nice to know just why Isidore is bothering.  Are these letters public letters, one wonders?

1241 (V.24)  TO ZOSIMUS, PRIEST

You seemed to have a good pretext for your last offence to forgive yourself as avenging your brother. But for your current offence, you have nothing of the sort to cover yourself, and you have even lost the benefit of the first forgiveness. Because if you were avenging earlier the wrongs done to your brother, how does it happen that you aren’t ashamed to do wrong today to him whose defence you claim to undertake, and to torment him by every means?  This last offence is enough evidence to show that you deliberately commited the first one as well, because he who would not rescue a brother, how could he have rescued a foreigner?

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A gay clergyman in Pelusium

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Some problems are always with us. It is always hard to believe that someone is a deliberate villain, even when all the evidence points that way. Isidore of Pelusium was neither the first nor the last to encounter one; nor the last spiritual counsellor to discover that he was dealing with a rogue.

1228 (V.12) TO ZOSIMUS, PRIEST

Many people — perhaps it would be too harsh to say “all people” – scoff at you, and do so extremely violently and bitterly. I wish they were wrong! But when he who is your own brother, groaning and deploring on your account, has submitted to us the same report, indeed a report more overpowering, by begging us to drag you out, if possible, from this abyss of vice where you have grown old in your misfortune, often rejecting those who were exhorting you not to go with those to whom you have entrusted yourself, then I address this letter to you.

I do so that you may become master of yourself and that you may blush at the shame at your immodesty, at the old age towards which you are being drawn, at the sacred priesthood which you have acquired I do not know how, at the misdeeds and actual scandals, and that you cease to wallow in vice, acting the young man “on the threshold of old age”.

Indeed how will you exhort the young people to temperance, if you don’t even exhort yourself at the time of old age? How can you not tremble to behave thus and yet approach the altar? How do you dare to touch the immaculate mysteries?

I warn you — even if this pains you, the truth must be said in all frankness — stop acting like this, or at least keep away from the venerable altar; fear to attract one day the fire of heaven on your own head [1], to provide the weak with good reasons to use the sort of language which they like.

[1] An allusion to the fire which destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. This indicates the sort of scandalous vices that Zosimus was practising. In other letters Isidore is equally frank: n° 671, 795, 1326 (5.77), 1508 (5.220), 1754 (5.389), 1729 (5.373), cf. Is. de P., p. 217, and n. 138.

1229 (V.13) TO THE SAME

I learn that a wise man, detached from riches and a defender of virtue [1], has met you, that he did all that was necessary to correct you, but saw himself dismissed without having achieved anything, without having been able to help you; your disease appeared stronger than his medical art. Whereas you should have, charmed by the beauty of his ideas, full of admiration for his intelligence and respect for the nobility of his feelings, put a limit to your vice, you dismissed him, not only as a failure, but even with an insult.

What must be done then? If nobody can be of any help to you, if even advice is merely treated as mistaken, if the laughter of people doesn’t matter, if the public scandal appears negligible to you, if you are inaccessible to the fear of God, if the threat of judgement makes you laugh, it seems that without knowing it we have been dealing with a heart of stone.

[1] Perhaps the sophist Harpocras or the cornes Herminos.

To the selfish, the church is merely an opportunity for self-advancement or plunder, not something with whose reputation they are in any way concerned.  Parallels with men of similar vices in our own days are not far to seek.

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Look again at Google Books; you will find more than you did last time

Posted on by Roger Pearse

On this hot summer’s day, I was idly searching in Google books for “library of the fathers” review “cyril of alexandria”, as I have done before in the hope of finding the review which caused Phillip Pusey to abandon work on the translation of the Commentary on John after only publishing one volume.

To my surprise, this time there was far more material.  We tend to forget that Google books is not a static collection, but is being continually enriched with more books and journals.  And although I have not yet found the article in question, I did find several reviews of Phillip Pusey’s work.  The Church Quarterly Review 23, p.32 contains a review of the second volume, published posthumously, which explains how Pusey tended to translate:

THE first-named of these volumes, which will apparently close the series inaugurated in 1838 under the name of ‘The Library of the Fathers,’ enjoys the advantage of a preface by Dr. Liddon, explaining the circumstances which have caused its appearance. In 1874 Mr. P. E. Pusey published the first volume of a translation of this Commentary, which, extending to S. John ix. 1, ‘was reviewed,’ we are told, ‘by an English critic in terms which rendered its humble and too self-distrusting author unwilling to resume it.’ We fear that these words may produce an impression which would hardly do justice to the case; the reader might infer that the critic was captious and inequitable. Now, we never met with the review in question ; but we are constrained to say, as we said on a former occasion (Church Quarterly Review, xv. 287), when reviewing another volume of Mr. Pusey’s translations from S. Cyril, that ‘ translation was not his forte’, and that when he attempted it, he seldom rose above the baldest ‘ construing,” very often so strangely worded as to associate his author’s name with mere grotesqueness. The fact is undeniable, however we may account for it; our own supposition is, that Mr. Pusey was debarred from success in this line by the very narrow range of literary interest to which he perforce restricted himself, when ‘ in his uniform filial love,’ in obedience to his father’s wish, he ‘ took as the central work of his life to make the text of S. Cyril’s works as exact as it could be made.”

The dreadful English of the first volume is indeed fully as bad as this gentle description suggests.

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Cyril of Alexandria – commentaries on Paul’s letters

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Ben Blackwell is thinking about translating the commentaries of Cyril of Alexander on Romans and the other letters, as part of a post-doctoral project.  Doing so could only benefit everyone.  He discusses how he is going about it, and (excitingly) how the online TLG now has parsing information (if you can access it!)  Computer-based resources must be increasingly important in translation, I think.

One wry thought: the “standard” edition is that of Philip Pusey; who died in 1880!  So neglected is Cyril in the West.  A new critical text would seem a desideratum; or at least, a few papers on the manuscript tradition.  It is unlikely that Pusey had access to the best mss. 

Still, the first step in making a new edition would be to become conversant with the text and its problems, and the best way to do that is to make a translation of it into some other language.  So Ben might be beginning a life’s work here!  Either way, for a scholar setting out, it would seem that he is looking at unexplored territory.  Go for it, Ben!

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Eusebius “Quaestiones” in Isidore of Pelusium

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The Differences in the Gospels and their Solutions by Eusebius of Caesarea is quoted all over the place.  One stray quotation appears in the letters of Isidore of Pelusium.  In the Migne edition this is book 2, letter 212, (PG 78, col. 651).  This letter consists entirely of a quotation from the Quaestiones Ad Marinum; how can we say that Jesus was dead for 3 days?  The text here is of course a corrective for that published by Mai, and I must send it to my translator.

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Fresh Cyril of Alexandria

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Ben at Dunhelm Road has the following very interesting note:

There’s a new translation of Cyril of Alexandria’s Festal Letters 1-12, by Philip R. Amidon, S.J., in The Fathers of the Church series (Vol. 118). See here.  This look at his pastoral side will be interesting.

This piggy-backs on works on his commentaries on the 12 Prophets (3 volumes: FOTC 115, 116, & tbd) and also a recent publication of his Commentary on Isaiah, all of which were done by Robert C. Hill.

There is also a proposed re-translation of Cyril’s majesterial commentary on John–it runs some 1300 pages if I remember correctly–as part of the Ancient Christian Texts series by IVP.

I’m thinking about proposing to do some translation for a post doc here at Durham since we’re staying longer, so it’s good to see other work being done on him.

The IVP series is interesting, since it includes Origen’s Homilies on Numbers which I had in mind to do.  Here’s their list of proposed translations:

  • Commentaries on Romans and 1-2 Corinthians by Ambrosiaster, translated and edited by Gerald L. Bray
  • Commentaries on Galatians-Philemon by Ambrosiaster, translated and edited by Gerald L. Bray
  • Incomplete Commentary on Matthew (Opus imperfectum), Vol. 1, translated by James Kellerman; edited by Thomas C. Oden
  • Incomplete Commentary on Matthew (Opus imperfectum), Vol. 2, translated by James Kellerman;l edited by Thomas C. Oden
  • Homilies on Numbers by Origen, translated by Thomas P. Scheck; edited by Christopher A. Hall
  • Commentary on Jeremiah by Jerome, translated by Michael Graves; edited by Christopher A. Hall
  • Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles by John of Damascus and Theodore of Mopsuestia, translated by James R. Blankenship and Charles David Gregory; edited by Michael Glerup
  • Commentary on John, 2 vols, by Cyril of Alexandria, translated by David Russel Maxwell; edited by Joel C. Elowsky
  • Commentaries on the Prophets by Ephrem the Syrian, translated by Marco Conti; edited by Thomas Buchan
  • Commentary on Isaiah by Eusebius of Caesarea, translated by Jonathan Armstrong; edited by Joel C. Elowsky
  • Commentaries on Genesis by Severian of Gabala and Bede the Venerable, translated by Robert C. Hill and Carmen Hardin; edited by Michael Glerup
  • Commentary on the Gospel of John by Theodore of Mopsuestia, translated by Marco Conti; edited by Joel C. Elowsky
  • Greek Commentaries on Revelation by Oecumenius of Isauria and Andrew of Caesarea, translated by William C. Weinrich; edited by Thomas C. Oden
  • Latin Commentaries on Revelation by Victorinus, Apringius, Caesarius, and Bede, translated and edited by William C. Weinrich

Good though these look… if they aren’t online, how will most of us ever access them?

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Cyril project cancelled

Posted on by Roger Pearse

In June 2008 I commissioned a translation of Cyril of Alexandria’s Apologeticus ad imperatorem.  It’s about 15 pages in the ACO edition, and a competent person should be able to translate it in 3-4 days.  Unfortunately the translator has been very hard to deal with, and hasn’t produced anything but excuses since before Christmas.  It’s always just about to be completed! Emails are not replied to. It even looks as if he’s using some other text than the one specified.  So I have written to him and dismissed him.

I would like to recommission this, at 10c a word.  It’s probably around $700 worth.  But I’m not sure that I can quite face the hassle at the moment! 

Later: I’ve emailed someone who offered for the role back in January.  Let’s see what happens.

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