Tag: Chrysostom Project

Savile’s edition of Chrysostom

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The text of the complete works of Chrysostom published by J.-P. Migne was a reprint of the Benedictine edition by Montfaucon of a century earlier.  Rather surprisingly, it does not contain all the material included in the 8-volume edition produced a century before that by Sir Henry Savile.  

I learn from Quasten’s Patrology 3 and also from the Clavis Patrum Graecorum 2 that some of the sermons of Severian of Gabala are only contained in Savile’s edition.

A kind reader has sent me PDF’s of Savile.  It’s rather daunting!  The lack of a Latin title is a clue; inside there is solely Greek.  There is an index at the end of volume 8, but it too is all in Greek.  In short, it is a rather tough proposition to find your way around! 

Fortunately the CPG gives page numbers for the sermons in question.

I’ve been working on transferring data and software to my new PC since Saturday, and I’m getting there.  But it is a wearisome business.  Windows 7 hasn’t attacked me yet, but give it time.

I’ve had another chunk of the Greek of Eusebius’ Quaestiones back from proof-reading.  I’ve also had a chunk of the Coptic back in English, although not in any useful format — the translator seems to have terrible trouble doing simple things with a computer, which is very, very wearing.  On a more positive note the translator of the Arabic bits is on course to complete those.

The translation with text of Origen’s Homilies on Ezechiel is progressing very well, and there is very little more to do.  The translator has worked very hard on this, and it shows.  It’s likely to be ready before the Eusebius, at current progress.  If it does appear first, I might send it out first, contrary to my original intention.

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Chrysostom “In Kalendas” translation progress

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve received the first column of Chrysostom’s sermon on New Year, and it’s been checked over by someone I trust who has given it the all-clear (i.e. only a couple of minor glitches).  Full-speed ahead!

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Chrysostom “In kalendas” progress

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The first column of Migne’s text of John Chrysostom’s sermon On the kalends of January, translated and transcribed, has arrived!  I have sent the sample to a trusted translator for comment.  With luck it will be good and we can proceed.

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Copyfraud once more

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Today I received an email from a Romanian gentleman, asking about the translation of the lost passage by John Chrysostom from Oratio 2 adversus Judaeos, which I commissioned and then gave away recently.  He wanted to make a translation into Romanian.  So he asked what I paid the journal, in which Wendy Pradels published the Greek text with notes and German translation, for permission to have that English translation made.  I replied that I paid them nothing; there was no money in all this, and any claim to own a text by a man dead 16 centuries might be valid in some benighted lands but hardly in the USA. 

But it led me to muse on the likelihood that any academic publisher would try to sue out a claim to copyright in such a case.  It would hardly be sensible, in my opinion; why sue over what has no commercial value?  

While in bath, tho, my sense of humour took hold, and I took to wondering what questions one could ask in court.  Copyright only vests in “original, creative works.”  So…

“M’Lud, can the plaintiff tell us which specifically which words in the first line are NOT by John Chrysostom?”

“Would you give us a list of the differences between the text printed and the text composed in 400 AD by John Chrysostom?  If you cannot list the portions which are an original creative work by yourselves, on what possible grounds can you claim that any of it is by you?”

“Would you tell us what the commercial value of this item was, when you purchased — as you believed — the copyright from the scholarly author?  Did you pay any money at all for it?”

And so on.

I suspect, sadly, that courts are unimpressed by rhetoric  unless it involves clever points of law.   The layman who ventures into these waters does so at his peril, and indeed few of us ever do so unless cornered.  As Auberon Waugh remarked, from bitter experience, “He who goes to court places himself in the hands of a ring of grinning rascals who will all run up costs as fast as they can until somebody has to pay.” 

It’s probably easier and safer just to meet the plaintiff, shake hands with him, and then pitch him head first out of his office window, “accidental-like”.  Would the fines for so doing be at all likely to reach the charges that any law firm would demand?

The serious point behind all this is that the relentless march of commercial interests taking a yard where the law granted an inch has reached the point of absurdity.  Only the common sense exercised by publishers in the anglophone world is restraining them from foolishness of the sort feared by our Romanian friend; and outside that sunlit circle of generosity and mutual respect, there have been many examples of insane greed.  We need to push back. 

Genuine creative work should be protected by copyright, for the benefit of us all.  Attempts to own the work of the ancients, by one subterfuge or another, should not exist in a civilised land.

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From my diary – Chrysostom and Eusebius

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve just spent a busy couple of hours writing emails to people who host copies of Chrysostom’s Sermons against the Jews online, asking them to update the page with the extra material I’ve had translated.  Paul Halsall is going to update the Fordham site, which is probably the parent of many of the others.  No replies back yet, but I am hopeful.  In some cases the material had been posted to fora, and all I had to do was register and reply to the post.

Menwhile I’ve been making progress with the Greek text of Eusebius Gospel problems and solutions.  Now I have this all in unicode, it’s a much better proposition to deal with.  I need to spend some time working it over, tho.

One nice bit of email today: from a medievalist interested in Porphyry’s Isagogue who discovered the reference to it in Abu’l Barakat’s catalogue of Arabic Christian literature.  He found the latter on my site, because I’d had it translated and put online.  It’s nice when my endeavours visibly help others!

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Chrysostom, Against the Jews homily 2 (missing part) is now in English!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Ever since the eight sermons against the Jews by the 4th century writer John Chrysostom were published, men have noticed that sermon 2 is only a third of the length of the others, and speculated that some of it is missing.  The missing portion was discovered in a manuscript on Lesbos a decade ago and published, but no English translation has ever been made of it.

One now exists, and it is here.  I commissioned it and own the copyright, but I make the translation public domain.  Do whatever you like with it, personal, educational or commercial. 

Now to communicate with the owners of copies of the Eight Sermons online, and try to persuade them to host the missing chunk as well!

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Chrysostom against the Jews — online copies

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Once we have a final version of the missing portion of Chrysostom against the Jews, I need to make sure that it is added to the copies of the defective text that are around online.  Of course that means I need to know where they are.  A google search provided quite a few links:

The first is undoubtedly the most important; many of the others derive from it.   But I have yet to visit most of these.

Some of the more unusual sites in this list — and there are a few — can be difficult to communicate with, as their authors are either very eccentric or have developed a well-grounded fear of entrapment by their political enemies.   I cannot say that I am looking forward to the task of writing to all these sites and asking them to add the missing passage to sermon 2.  Doubtless some will ignore my email.

But unless we do this, unless we reunite the lost portion of the text with all the copies we can find, we may be wasting our time.  We cannot be certain which copy of the text will be the ancestor of all the copies to reach the year 3,000 AD.  In so many cases, we know that a single copy ca. 800 AD is the ancestor of all our current copies of a text.  To fail to reunite the severed texts may be tantamount to wasting the rediscovery.

Our duty to the future dictates that the effort must be made.  Once I have the final version, I will make that effort.  Not because I agree or disagree with the sites above; but because we cannot tell which of them may provide the future with the text of Chrysostom.

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Dreaming of Chrysostom and his works

Posted on by Roger Pearse

quastenI often take a volume of Quasten’s Patrology to bed with me.  In times past I tended to turn down leaves where English translations that were not online were marked.  These days I find myself looking at texts and wondering whether a translation of them would be worth commissioning.  Short, obscure, interesting texts are the sort of things I look at.

So I looked, and I browsed.  There are several works by Chrysostom that seem interesting.  I’ve mentioned the missing portion of his Adversus Judaeos — but that was just housekeeping.  It costs $20 to get a translation of a column of Migne’s Patrologia Graeca Greek text, and at that rate there are a number of possible texts of historical interest.

On p. 453 Quasten mentions a discourse In kalendas (PG 48, 953-962, i.e. 9 columns, or 4.5 columns of Greek, i.e. $90) — On the kalends [of January] — in which he discusses and condemns the pagan celebration of the New Year.  That ought to contain quite a bit of historical material.

Also mentioned is his Contra circenses ludos et theatra (PG 56, 263-270, i.e. 7 columns or $70) — Against the circus games and theatre — which he preached on July 3, 399, on finding the church half-empty because everyone had gone off to see the show.  He mentions chariot racing on Good Friday, for instance.  Again, this must give insights into the popular entertainments at the end of the 4th century.

The temptations of the theatre are addressed in Homiliae 3 de diabolo (PG 49, 241-276, i.e. $350, so quite a bit more) — Three sermons on the devil — which must, therefore, describe these events.  At that price, tho, I can probably resist.  The nine homilies on penitence (one in fact by Severian of Gabala) are 80-odd columns, and a bit long for my purse.

Equally interesting are some of the sermons delivered for church festivals.  His In diem natalem Dominus Noster Jesu Christi, (PG 49, 351-362, i.e. $110) was given on Christmas Day 386 and calls Christ Sol Iustitiae, the Sun of Justice.  It is important for the history of Christmas.  A partner sermon (PG 56, 385-396, i.e. $110) is probably spurious, but also interesting historically for what it tells us about the rivalry in that period between the pagan solar cults and the Christians.  None of the other festal homilies grab my eye.

The first sermon that Chrysostom ever delivered (PG 48, 693-700, i.e. $70) ought to be in English, if only as a curiosity.

Two sermons, before and after his first exile (PG 52, 427-430, i.e. $30; and PG 52, 443-8, i.e. $50) are probably just waffle, but it would be good to have them.

One very interesting work is De S. Babyla contra Julianum et Gentiles (PG 50, 533-572, i.e. $390) — On St. Babylas against Julian and the pagans.  When the emperor Julian the Apostate attempted to restore the oracle at Daphne in Antioch in 362 AD, the priests told him that the Christian shrine of St. Babylas — interred at the sacred grove — was interfering with the voice of the god.  Julian ordered the remains removed; but soon after the temple burned down, and then Julian himself was killed in battle.  Chrysostom treats both events as evidence of the power of the saint, and responds to the lament of Libanius on the temple of Apollo by describing it as drivelling nonsense.  I could wish the work was shorter.

Another text of interest is Contra Judaeos et Gentiles quod Christus sit Deus (PG 48, 813-838, i.e. $200) — Against Jews and Gentiles that Christ is God.  I had originally seen this as a natural complement to the Eight Homilies Against the Jews, but it is only so to a limited extent.  Apparently it does mention the attempted rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem under Julian, when the Jewish workers were driven back by subterranean gas explosions.  Again, this seems interesting.

I could carry on.  But what is noteworthy is how little it would cost to translate some of these, and that almost none have ever been translated.  I might commission translations of some of these, just to make them available.

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A.L.Williams, “Adversus Judaeos” (1935)

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I was browsing through Quasten vol. 3 and noticed several short anti-Jewish pieces.  I am rather tempted to commission translations of these while I’m dealing with Chrysostom’s anti-Jewish work as well.  Quasten says that Williams’ book is a guide to all these works.  It is rather curious tho — it isn’t online, and no copies are available for sale!  It shows how much I miss having PDF’s of things!

But I can manage without, anyhow.  I also notice several short works by Chrysostom which it would be useful to have online, such as two Christmas sermons, and his In Kalendas, on New Year, and one on the circus games being held on Good Friday (which emptied his church).

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Update on Chrysostom on the Jews

Posted on by Roger Pearse

John Chrysostom delivered eight sermons against the Jews.  All are of about the same length, except for sermon two, which is about a third of the length of the others.  The 18th century editor Montfaucon signalled a lacuna (reprinted by Migne), i.e. that part of the sermon was lost. German scholar Wendy Pradels conducted a search of collections of manuscripts, and finally found a complete copy on the island of Lesbos.  The new material was printed, with a German translation, ten years ago.  But no English translation exists.

I have today received a first draft of a translation of this material, which I commissioned a while back.  It looks very good.  Once it is finished, I will place it in the public domain.  I will also try to make sure it is added to the end of whatever copies of the English are online.  Let’s hope website owners — some of rather different politics to myself — are willing to cooperate in reuniting the pieces of this work of Chrysostom.

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