Tag: Patristics

Scanty referencing in older sources

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m going through the fragments of Eusebius printed by Angelo Mai in the 1820’s from catenas.  These often refer pretty briefly to the sources from which he copied them.  Thus one fragment is headed (translated):

From Macarius Chrysocephalus’ Florilegium, in Villoison, Anecdota, vol. 2, p.74.

Hum, yes, well of course.

Fortunately I can find information online, that tells me the book was printed in two volumes in 1781, that the author was “De Villoison”.  Knowing that ligatures are not well handled by Google Books search engine, I search for author=Villoison and title=Anecdota, and behold!  I find that the book is actually on Google books, here, the two volumes bound as one (the second volume starts on p.514 of the PDF).

Likewise I can find a mysterious volume by “R. Simon” which turns out to be A critical history of the text of the New Testament, here.

When I started on the Eusebius project, I travelled by car to Cambridge, spending around $60 in petrol to do so.  I went to the University Library.  I went to the admissions desk, and paid $15, and renewed my library ticket which had lapsed.  Then I went to the Rare Books room (which only Privileged People are permitted to enter, with a letter of reference from an academic), and I ordered up the two editions of Mai’s book.  Then I looked to see which pages I needed.  Then I filled in a paper form, in pencil of course.  Then I handed it in, with the books, and went away, and came back a week later.  And then I paid 25c per page for a grainy photocopy.  This I took home, turned into a PDF, and have used ever since.

How much easier and cheaper it was today, to find this source which I probably want only a few lines from!  We are truly, truly blest!

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The perils of translating from old editions

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m still working on editing the translation of the Gospel Problems and Solutions by Eusebius of Caesarea.  The fragments of catenas and the like are all printed by Angelo Mai in the early 19th century, or reprinted by him from yet earlier non-critical publication.  In other cases he is printing unpublished material.  This means that I need to check for subsequent publication.

Several extracts come from the Questions of Anastasius of Sinai.  A web search — thank heavens for Google — reveals that an edition appeared in 2006, by Marcel Ricard, in the Brepols Corpus Christianorum Series Graeca, vol. 59.  I need the text of questions 9, 148 and 153, so my translator can compare the text given by Mai with that of a critical text.  Sadly the libraries are all closed when I am at home, so a day off for a day trip to Cambridge will be necessary.

Another extract — not actually from the Gospel Problems is given “from unpublished chronicles by George Hamartolus and Johannes Siculus.”  A search reveals that the chronicle of George Hamartolus or George Monachus was edited badly in 1859 by a chap called Muralt, and reprinted by Migne in PG 110.  No sign of a fresher edition, so I’m not sure I need to do much more.

But “Johannes Siculus”… that could be anyone.  All it means is “John of Sicily”; every third Byzantine was called John, and thousands of them lived in Sicily.  A search in Google on “Johannes Siculus” was rather dispiriting!  Fortunately “John of Sicily” was better.  This led to H. Heinrich, Die Chronik des Johannes Sikeliota, Graz, 1892, edited from a Vienna manuscript. A book of that date ought to be online, but … it’s in German.  Das Reich ist immer offline.

So off to COPAC to search for a copy offline.  Several searches later, I draw a blank.  Even a search by author=Heinrich, date=1892, draws a blank.  But I have played before, and am not dispirited.  I am reasonably sure that a copy exists in the UK.  So I wonder if this dratted thing is hidden in a serial?  Hmm.

Back to Google to look for clues, searching for “Johannes Sikeliota”.  And sure enough I find the book mentioned with an addendum, “In Reihe: Schulprogramm Graz / 1892”.  This gives the author as “Alfred Heinrich”.  Search COPAC for the series; nothing.  Ah, the joy of offline knowledge…

Then I remember that Google book search doesn’t work properly outside the US.  I retry via a US server.  The book at least appears now, albeit clearly not online, here.  I click the “Find in a library” link (to worldcat).  And it turns out to be a thesis, or dissertation, never published.  Boy that site is slow, tho.  It never actually finished displaying.

Does anyone know where I could get a copy?

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Angelo Mai comments on a catena fragment of Eusebius

Posted on by Roger Pearse

In the fragments of Eusebius, Mai added this note.  It was translated for me by the translator, but has no place in the book, so I give it here.

Another delightful thing has happened to me.   While I was translating from Greek into Latin all the passages of Eusebius in the MS of Nicetas’ Catena on Luke, I fortunately observed that the last passage of Eusebius, written on the two final pages of the MS, corresponded word-for-word with Theophania bk 4 chs.8 and 9, as read, in translation from Syriac, in the English edition of the Rev. Samuel Lee, top of p.224 – top of p.229.   The original Greek fragment discovered by us will now have to be placed in our own Greek edition of Theophania, between nos. 5 and 6 on p.121.  Furthermore, as I have already more than once said elsewhere, Nicetas was in the habit of reproducing portions of Theophania in his MS catena, sometimes with the actual title of the work, but sometimes just ascribed to Eusebius by name; hence, before finding out about the English or Syriac editions of the work, we could not ascribe them to the Theophania.  This we have now done, thanks to the English book; just as the English editor will, we think, be pleased in his turn to incorporate our Greek originals, when convenient, into his book.   To avoid repetition here, let us refer our readers to the discussions in the Observations on p.108 and pp 157-9 above, as well as in scattered remarks in the notes.  In any case, it is evident from this that another fragment of ours, cited by Rev. S. Lee in a note on p.224, cannot, as he would wish, be applied to this passage of Theophania.

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Editing Eusebius

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve spent the day working on the Word documents that contain the new translation of Eusebius’ Tough Questions on the Gospels.

It’s been about turning the notes into Word footnotes, correcting the margins, fixing issues with the typefaces.

One curious feature is that my translator chose to use the specialised commercial non-unicode font GrkAcca.  This comes with a software package, Greek without tears.  I bought a copy of this, and learn that a new version is imminent.

The main issue to decide, however, is how to organise the collection of 45 fragments that I have had translated.  I’m moving towards the idea of replicating how Migne does things.  So for the quaestiones to Stephanus, you have the big chunk of materials from the catena of Nicetas.  Then you follow it up with the supplementa minora, better known as “other bits I found lying around.”

One problem is that Migne just copied the second edition published by Angelo Mai.  For some unaccountable reason, this did not include some perfectly worthy fragments published in the first edition. 

So I am toying with this structure:

  1. Supplementa – Major fragments, from Nicetas
  2. Supplementa minora – Minor fragments, from Mai’s 2nd edition
  3. Minor fragments, from Mai’s 1st edition
  4. Other fragments

We have fragments of the questions to Stephanus, about the differences at the start of the gospels; but also from the questions to Marinus, about problems at the end.  So I’d first have the fragments from Stephanus, in the above format; then the fragments from Marinus.

I also have Syriac fragments, all from the Stephanus questions.  These I thought I’d put at the end.  Mai also prints some Latin fragments, all from the Marinus questions.  I thought I’d put these after the Syriac.

My hopes of printing translations of the Coptic fragments are fading fast.  They were translated, to a high standard, by Carol Downer and her people; but nothing I can say seems to induce her to let me have more than the latter half.  Ah well…  We’ll have to manage without.

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Back to Eusebius

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The Tough Questions on the Gospel by Eusebius of Caesarea has been sitting on my hard disk for a few weeks now, awaiting some editing.  On Boxing Day I went out and bought a laser printer.  I can’t edit long documents on screen — I need something I can look at!  Today I went out and bought a printer cable — thank you, whoever decided to omit this from the box — and have printed off most of the materials.

Time for pencil and paper and red ink!

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Christmas day on the winter solstice?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The time has come to summarise some of the findings of the dozen or so posts on questions related to whether Christmas, on 25 December, was on the winter solstice in antiquity.   I think we can say with certainty that it was thought to be on 25 December, or at least when the solstice was marked.  I will return to this last point after reviewing the evidence associating 25 December with the solstice.

In the 1st century BC Varro, De Lingua Latina 6.8 says that the Latin word bruma means “the shortest day” (i.e. the solstice).  From this longer quote:

Dicta bruma, quod brevissimus tunc dies est; solstitium, quod sol eo die sistere videbatur, quo ad nos versum proximus est.

Bruma is so named, because then the day is brevissimus ’shortest’: the solstitium, because on that day the sol ’sun’ seems sistere ‘to halt,’ on which it is nearest to us.

In the 1st century AD, Ovid also tells us in his Fasti 1.161 that bruma is the new sun:

bruma novi prima est veterisque novissima solis

Midwinter is the beginning of the new sun and the end of the old one

In the 1st century AD, Pliny the Elder tells us in his Natural History 18.221, discussing the solstices and equinox that the bruma — which he still understands as the winter solstice — begins on 25 December:

… omnesque eae differentiae fiunt in octavis partibus signorum, bruma capricorni a. d. VIII kal. Ian. fere, aequinoctium vernum arietis, solstitium cancri, alterumque aequinoctium librae, …

the bruma begins at the eighth degree of Capricorn, the eighth day before the calends of January, …

Later writers use bruma more loosely, and Isidore of Seville in Etymologies 5:35.6 in the 7th century says frankly that it means winter.

In the 3rd century we get our first Christian connection of the birth of Christ with the sun.  Cyprian, in De pascha Computus, 19 writes:

O quam præclare providentia ut illo die quo natus est Sol . . . nasceretur Christus.

O, how wonderfully acted Providence that on that day on which the Sun was born . . . Christ should be born.

In the 4th century, Servius tells us in his Commentary on the Aeneid 7. 720 that the “new sun” is 25 December.  Commenting on the words of Vergil (underlined):

[720] vel cum sole novo prima aestatis parte: nam proprie sol novus est VIII. Kal. ian.; sed tunc non sunt aristae, quas ab ariditate dictas esse constat.

Or when the new sun in the first part of the year; for properly the new sun is the 8th day before the kalends of January; but at that time there are no harvests, which ab ariditate dictas esse constat.

In 354 AD the Chronography of 354 displays on 25 December, the VIII kal. Ian., “Natalis Invicti”, presumably the natalis of Sol Invictus.  This may be either the birth of the unconquered sun, or the anniversary of the dedication of the temple.

In the fourth century Gregory of Nyssa comments in his Sermon on the nativity of the Saviour:

And again let us resume it: “This is the day which the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it,” – (the day) on which the darkness begins to decrease, and the lengths of night are diminished by the increase of the sun’s rays.

At the end of the 4th century, or perhaps later, ps.Chrysostom preaches on the solstice and the equinox.  The sermon de Solst. Et Æquin. has never been translated, but the following excerpt appears in the Catholic Encycloped, giving a reference to the 1588 edition of “II, p. 118, ed. 1588”.  I suspect in reality the material is in Migne!  This also identifies the date with the sun, and here is clearly the birth of the new sun.  It says:

Sed et dominus noster nascitur mense decembris . . . VIII Kal. Ian. . . . Sed et Invicti Natalem appelant. Quis utique tam invictus nisi dominus noster? . . . Vel quod dicant Solis esse natalem, ipse est Sol iustitiae.

But Our Lord, too, is born in the month of December . . . the eighth before the calends of January  . . . But they call it the ‘Birthday of the Unconquered’. Who indeed is so unconquered as Our Lord. . .? Or, if they say that it is the birthday of the Sun, He is the Sun of Justice.

In 401 AD, on Christmas day, Augustine (PL 46, 996) preaches a sermon discussing pagan customs on the same day:

Stop these latest sacrileges,  stop this craze for vanities and pointless games, stop these customs, which no longer take place in honour of demons but still follow the rites of demons … Yesterday, after vespers, the whole city was aflame with stinking fires; the entire sky was covered with smoke!  If you make little of the matter of religion, think at least of the wrong that you do to the community.  We know, brothers, that it is kids who have done this, but the parents must have let them sin.

In the 5th century Paulinus of Nola in Carmen 14, 13, links the birth of Christ at Christmas with the solstice (“days of bruma”), and the new sun explicitly:

ergo dies, tanto quae munere condidit alto Felicem caelo, sacris sollemnibus ista est,  quae post solstitium, quo Christus corpore natus sole nouo gelidae mutauit tempora brumae atque salutiferum praestans mortalibus ortum procedente die se cum decrescere noctes iussit, ab hoc quae lux oritur uicesima nobis,  sidereum meriti signat Felicis honorem.

13. So the day which bestowed so great a gift by setting Felix in the heights of heaven is the day of our yearly ritual. It comes after the solstice, the time when Christ was born in the flesh and transformed the cold winter season with a new sun, when He granted men His birth that brings salvation, and ordered the nights to shorten and the daylight to grow with Himself. The twentieth day that dawns on us after the solstice marks the heavenly glory which Felix merited.

Also in the 5th century, the calendar of Polemius Silvius has an entry for 25 December:

25     VIII    natalis domini corporalis                                    solstitium et initium hiberni

25      8         birthday of the Lord in the flesh                       solstice and beginning of winter

The VIII is the count down to the kalends of January.

It is pretty clear, then, that the date of 25 December was understood as being the winter solstice, and was marked as such at least in the fourth century onwards.

I was also interested in whether we could tell whether 25 December really was the astronomical solstice under the Julian calendar.  This I was unable to determine.  But it may not have been.  The solstice moves, even under the Gregorian calendar, and only astronomers in antiquity would have been measuring it exactly.  That the solstice had passed would become apparent to most people only a day or two later, perhaps.  Some remarks by Julian the Apostate in 361 — over the Christmas period — in his Hymn to King Helios are interesting in this context, as they reflect this idea of deferral.  The Kronia is of course the Greek for Saturnalia.

But our forefathers, from the time of the most divine king Numa, paid still greater reverence to the god Helios. They ignored the question of  mere utility, I think, because they were naturally religious and endowed with unusual intelligence ; but they saw that he is the cause of all that is useful, and so they ordered the observance of the New Year to correspond with the present season; that is to say when King Helios returns to us again, and leaving the region furthest south and, rounding Capricorn as though it were a goal-post, advances from the south to the north to give us our share of the blessings of the year. And that our forefathers, because they comprehended this correctly, thus established the beginning of the year, one may perceive from the following. For it was not, I think, the time when the god turns, but the time when he becomes visible to all men, as he travels from south to north,that they appointed for the festival. For still unknown to them was the nicety of those laws which the Chaldaeans and Egyptians discovered, and which Hipparchus and Ptolemy perfected : but they judged simply by sense-perception, and were limited to what they could actually see.  But the truth of these facts was recognised, as I said, by a later generation.

Before the beginning of the year, at the end of the month which is called after Kronos, we celebrate in honour of Helios the most splendid games, and we dedicate the festival to the Invincible Sun. And after this it is not lawful to perform any of the shows that belong to the last month, gloomy as they are, though necessary. But, in  the cycle, immediately after the end of the Kronia follow the Heliaia. That festival may the ruling gods grant me to praise and to celebrate with sacrifice ! And above all the others may Helios himself, the King of the All, grant me this, even he who from eternity has proceeded from the generative substance of the Good: even he who is midmost of the midmost intellectual gods ; who fills them with continuity and endless beauty and superabundance of generative power and perfect reason, yea with all blessings at once, and independently of time !”

But the end result of all of this seems perfectly clear; in the 4-5th centuries, Christmas day was on the day of the winter solstice, as far as anyone knew, and Christ was born with the new sun, as the Sun of Justice, Sol Iustitiae.

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Augustine on pagans at Christmas

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Here’s an excerpt from one of Augustine’s Christmas sermons, delivered on 25 December 401:

Stop these latest sacrileges,  stop this craze for vanities and pointless games, stop these customs, which no longer take place in honour of demons but still follow the rites of demons … Yesterday, after vespers, the whole city was aflame with stinking fires; the entire sky was covered with smoke!  If you make little of the matter of religion, think at least of the wrong that you do to the community.  We know, brothers, that it is kids who have done this, but the parents must have let them sin.[1]

The tone of the sermon tells us that few of his hearers were more than nominal Christians.  The purpose of all these fires, according to Heim, was ostensibly to help the dying sun rekindle its fires.  The real purpose, of course, was fun!

1.  Frangipane 8, 5 = PL 46, 996.  See Dom Morin, Miscellanea agostiniana, Rome, 1930, p. 223-4.  All quoted from F. Heim, Solstice d’hiver, solstice d’ete dans la predication chretienne du ve siecle.  Latomus 58 (1999), p. 640-660, p. 649.

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Abu’l Barakat part 2 has arrived

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The second tranche of Abu’l Barakat’s 13th century catalogue of Arabic Christian books has arrived today.  It’s very, very interesting.  The translation is getting better, and the translator is going to cross-reference the authors and works to Quasten’s Patrology and Graf’s Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur.  I’ll release this into the public domain, with transcription, when it’s done and post it online.

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Another bit of Sbath commissioned

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A while ago I commissioned translations into English (with transcription of the text) of some of the Arabic Christian texts in Paul Sbath’s Twenty Philosophical and Theological Treatises.  Treatises 15-19 were translated by Sam Noble, and I placed them online and into the public domain.  You can find them here.  So do as you like with them. 

The first five pages of treatise 20 (by Hunain ibn Ishaq, with a commentary by Youhanna someone-or-other) were partly translated, but from a more modern text which is not in the public domain.  This limits the circulation of what was done.  ThenI had to stop commissioning stuff back in October, as I joined the ranks of the unemployed. 

Now that I seem to be employed again, at least for a few months, I have decided to commission a translation from Sbath’s public domain text of the whole of treatise 20, including the commentary of Youhanna, with a transcription of the text.  In this way I can place that in the PD as well.  It’s a small thing, but will round out the texts nicely.

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A translation of John the Lydian, “De Mensibus” 4.158 (on December)

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Here’s a little translation that I commissioned of a page of book IV of John the Lydian “On the Months”.  It’s relevant to our discussions of bruma.  This translation is public domain – do whatever you like with it, commercial or educational.

The Romans customarily divided their citizenry into three [groups] and distinguished those who were suitable for arms, those [who were suitable] for farming, and those [who were suitable] for hunting; and the season of winter brings an end to these [pursuits]. For in it, neither do they arm themselves, nor do they practice farming, because of the season’s cold and the shortness of the days—and hence in the old days they named it bruma, meaning “short day.” And Brumalia means “winter festivals”;[1] so at that time, until the Waxing of the Light,[2] ceasing from work, the Romans would greet each other with words of good omen at night, saying in their ancestral tongue, “Vives annos“—that is, “Live for years.”[3]

And the farming people would slaughter pigs for the worship of Cronus and Demeter[4]—and hence even now the “Pig-Slaughter” is observed in December. And the vine-dressers would sacrifice goats in honor of Dionysus—for the goat is an enemy of the vine; and they would skin them, fill the skin-bags with air and jump on them.[5] And the civic officials would also [offer as] the firstfruits of the collected harvest wine and olive oil, grain and honey and as many [products] of trees as endure and are preserved—they would make loaves without water and they would bring [all] these things to the priests of the [Great] Mother.[6] And this sort of custom is still observed even now; and in November and December, until the “Waxing of the Light,” they bring [these] things to the priests. For the [custom] of greeting [people] by name at the Brumalia is rather recent; and, the truth [is],[7] they call them “Cronian festivals”[8]—and because of this the Church turns away[9] from them. And they take place at night, because Cronus is in darkness, having been sent to Tartarus by Zeus—and they mysteriously signify[10] the grain, from its being sown in the ground and thereafter not being seen. And this is quite true, as has been said: The attention to [these] things goes on at night, such that finally, in truth, the Brumalia are festivals of the subterranean daemones.

Notes

[1] Gk. Βρουμάλια δὲ οἱονεὶ χειμεριναὶ ἑορταί; alternatively, “…[function] as winter festivals,” but οἱονεί introduces the significance of a term just before, with bruma.
[2] Gk. τὰ Αὐξιφωτία, presumably referring to 25 Dec., as (e.g.) in the “Calendar of Antiochus” the date is marked: ἡλίου γενέθλιον· αὔξει φῶς. For the phrase, cf. also Cosmas of Jerusalem, Comm. in S. Greg. Naz. carm. [PG 38:464].
[3] Lit., “you will live for years.”
[4] I.e., Saturn and Ops, who were considered husband and wife, and whose festivals were associated at this time of year; some further considered them the equivalents of Heaven and Earth (Macrobius, Sat. 1.10).
[5] Cf. askoliasmos / Askolia, the name for such an “event” at the Rural Dionysia.
[6] I.e., the Magna Mater (Cybele) (?).
[7] Gk. τὸ…ἀληθέστερον; lit., “the truer [thing]” / “the quite true [thing].”
[8] I.e., Saturnian festivals (Saturnalia).
[9] Gk. ἀποτρέπεται; alternatively, “turns [people] away from them.”
[10] Gk. αἰνίττονται.

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