Tag: Patristics

Severian of Gabala, De Pace – translation is go!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve been negotiating to get a translation of the full Greek text of Severian of Gabala’s sermon On Peace made.  The translator has accepted, and it should be ready by the middle of May, or — more likely — end of June.  The translator is not a Yank or a Brit, so some correction of the English will be necessary.  The report from the reviewer was basically positive, tho.  My estimate at the moment is that it will cost $150 to do, plus whatever a corrector charges, which is quite a bit, but worth it.  I’ll put it in the public domain and post it online when it arrives.

UPDATE: 14/12/2011: The translator never completed any more and emails went unanswered.  Oh well.

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More digging in Quasten

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m still reading through Quasten’s Patrology volume 3, looking for interesting texts which might be translated.  A few more have caught my eye.

It seems that Epiphanius of Salamis, author of the Panarion, also wrote three works attacking the veneration of images.  He became concerned that people were putting up such images in the churches, pagan-style.  These are extant (more or less). K. Holl, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte, vol. 2 (1928), pp.356-363.  I wasn’t able to find this online, unfortunately.

Theodore of Mopsuestia on Genesis I have mentioned before.  I admit that I am still drawn to this.  Likewise I need to remember to do something about the remains of Philip of Side.

Another snippet from Quasten relates to Diodore of Tarsus.  During the reign of Julian the Apostate he resisted the attempts at re-paganisation.  In a rage Julian wrote an angry letter to one Photinus describing Diodore as “a priest sorceror of the Galileans” and “a keen defender of a religion for farmers” who was defending the Christians with “the wisdom of Athens itself”.  Erudite Christians always tend to infuriate Christian-haters.  The letter is preserved by Facundus of Hermiane (who?), Pro defens. trium capit. 4, 2.  I am unfamiliar with this work, but the letter sounds like something that should be online, and does not seem to be. 

I wonder if the letter is present in the Loeb Julian?  I always hesitated to scan material from these, not least because I am very much in favour of the Loeb Library, and the volumes are still in print.  But now that PDF’s are online there seems little reason to hold back.

The letter is indeed in the Loeb edition of Julian the Apostate, volume 3, on p.186, which also tells us that Diodore was in Antioch in 362.

This letter may have been written at any time between Julian’s arrival at Antioch in July 362 and his departure thence, in March 363. The Greek original is represented by curious and sometimes untranslatable Latin. Photinus, bishop of Sirmium, where Constantius resided in 351, was tried, deposed and banished by a synod convened there by Constantius. According to Sozomen 4. 6, he wrote many Greek and Latin works in support of his heretical views on the divinity of Christ, which were opposed by both Arians and Nicaeans. He is mentioned by Julian, Against the Galilieans 262c.

Moreover the Emperor Julian, faithless to Christ, in his attack on Diodorus writes as follows to Photinus the heresiarch:

O Photinus, you at any rate seem to maintain what is probably true, and come nearest to being saved, and do well to believe that he whom one holds to be a god can by no means be brought into the womb. But Diodorus, a charlatan priest of the Nazarene, when he tries to give point to that nonsensical theory about the womb by artifices and juggler’s tricks, is clearly a sharp-witted sophist of that creed of the country-folk.

A little further on he says:

But if only the gods and goddesses and all the Muses and Fortune will lend me their aid, I hope to show that he is feeble and a corrupter of laws and customs, of pagan * Mysteries and Mysteries of the gods of the underworld, and that that new-fangled Galilaean god of his, whom he by a false myth styles eternal, has been stripped by his humiliating death and burial of the divinity falsely ascribed to him by Diodorus.

Then, just as people who are convicted of error always begin to invent, being the slaves of artifice rather than of truth, he goes on to say:

For the fellow sailed to Athens to the injury of the general welfare, then rashly took to philosophy and engaged in the study of literature, and by the devices of rhetoric armed his hateful tongue against the heavenly gods, and being utterly ignorant of the Mysteries of the pagans he so to speak imbibed most deplorably the whole mistaken folly of the base and ignorant creed-making fishermen. For this conduct he has long ago been punished by the gods themselves. For, for many years past, he has been in danger, having contracted a wasting disease of the chest, and lie now suffers extreme torture. His whole body has wasted away. For his cheeks have fallen in and his body is deeply lined with wrinkles. But this is no sign of philosophic habits, as he wishes it to seem to those who are deceived by him, but most certainly a sign of justice done and of punishment from the gods which has stricken him down in suitable proportion to his crime, since he must live out to the very end his painful and bitter life, his appearance that of a man pale and wasted.

* Twice in this letter Facundus translates Julian’s “Hellenic” as “pagan.”

Interesting that this Photinus was currying favour with Julian.  We tend to think of the corrupt bishop as a modern figure, but of course it is not so.

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Smiling men with bad reputations

Posted on by Roger Pearse

… Or so the Arians must have thought!  Yes, it’s the Cappadocian Fathers.  These are the group of clergymen who turned the tide against Arianism in the mid-4th century; Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory Nazianzen.

Less well known are some of their associates, such as Amphilochius.  I’ve been looking at his works with an eye to seeing whether any of them are (a) short and (b) untranslated.

One interesting text is the Iambics for Seleucus (PG 37, 1577-1600).  This is a set of moral advice to a friend, composed in verse form, and ending with a recommendation to study the scriptures and a list of canonical books.  There is a poor translation of the latter here – the portion of Hebrews misrepresents what Amphilochius writes.

I understand that a critical text of all the works of Amphilochius was made by C. Datema, Amphilochii Iconiensis Opera, CCSG 3 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978).  I don’t know whether any translation of the Iambics exists, tho; I could find none.

Another interesting text was published in Leipzig in 1906 by Gerhard Ficker in his Amphilochiana, I., p.23-77, Against the Apotactites and Gemellites.  Quasten says this is a Coptic version, but it seems to be a mistake; there is a Greek text, and then another work on Isaac, presented in German translation only of a Coptic text.  Who the people attacked in the former are I do not know, but they seem to be ascetic or perhaps encratite heretics.  Thankfully Ficker’s book is online here.

Asterius of Amasea was another of the Cappadocian Fathers.  Fourteen homilies survive, and the same Datema made an edition with English notes (but no translation!) here.  The edition appeared from Brill in 1970, who have put online a limited preview.  It is a pity that they didn’t make the whole book available.  Five of his fourteen homilies are online in English at my site.

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Eusebius Update

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The translation of Eusebius Gospel problems and solutions (Quaestiones ad Stephanum/Marinum) is nearly done.  The one big chunk to do is the transcription of the Syriac fragments.  Producing an electronic file containing the text is not quite as simple as it sounds, tho; and not merely because of the Syriac alphabet!  The words were originally printed without vowels, and I feel that these should be added.  It’s going to be fairly expensive and time-consuming, but a sample appeared today which looks very good, and I am promised it by the end of May.

I also need to finish off the transcription of the Latin text, which I am doing myself, but which is trivial.  There are minor tasks such as adding cross-references to be done.  I suppose I ought to add some kind of index. 

I expect the book to be done by the end of May, all the same.  Then the whole book needs to be typeset, and then marketed.

It will be worth the wait.  The material is excellent, the translation is good, the inclusion of the original language will  give readers the chance to check particular wording, and all in all I think it will be a good thing.  Eventually the translation will go online as well, but not until I have managed to recoup some of the cost by book sales!  So far it’s cost around $4,000, which is quite a lot!

 

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The carmen adversus paganos is a late 4th century poem which is one of only four texts that record the Taurobolium.  This ritual was when a bull was slaughtered over a grill, with people standing underneath to get bathed in the bull’s blood.  So I asked someone to do a translation.  Unfortunately it looks as if an English translation may already exist.  It’s hard to bring myself to pay for translating stuff that exists already in English, although inaccessible, when there is so much for which no translation exists.

I’ve finished the first stage of translating the first sermon of Severian of Gabala on the creation.  I need to look at a few difficult passages, and make sure they’re right, and then I will put it online.  Interestingly Severian is preaching to a hostile audience, or so it seems.

I’m still going through volume 3 of Quasten’s Patrology.  There are quite a few interesting-sounding texts that ought to be translated.  I just wish I had more money!  I’m thinking again about Cyril of Alexandria’s Contra Julianum, against the work of the emperor Julian the Apostate attacking the Christians.  This is only about 500 columns, so might be possible.

The translation of Severian’s De pace, preached when he reconciled with John Chrysostom, has been requested.  But I suspect I will not be able to reach terms with the translator.  He seems to know his Greek; unfortunately he does not have the native-speaker level command of English which a translator needs.  This means I will have to hire someone else to fix that, which means I can’t offer him much.  So … probably a bust.  I’m also wondering what to do about the Armenian sermons of Severian.

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A work of Athanasius extant in English, possibly out of copyright

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I was reading Quasten’s Patrology vol. 3, looking for interesting untranslated texts, when I came across (p.57-8) mention of a work of Athanasius on the Holy Spirit, consisting of four letters to bishop Serapion of Thmuis.  Quasten lists an English translation: C. R. B. Shapland, trans., The Letters of Saint Athanasius Concerning the Holy Spirit, Ad Serapion (New York: The Philosophical Library, 1951).

The subject is probably dull, but a US publication of that date may be out of copyright, unless the copyright was renewed after 28 years.  So I thought it was worth checking.  And … I can find no evidence of a copyright renewal.  “Shapland” is quite an unusual name, after all.  “Athanasius” is going to get a limited number of hits in any database.

By contrast the Tertullian / Minucius Felix in the “Fathers of the Church” series (1950) turns up as renewed in 1978 in this database.

A look in COPAC reveals that “Shapland” was Cuthbert Richard Bowden Shapland, but no dates for his life.  (The copyright system outside the US demands that we know the biography of the author, absurdly enough). The book is 204 pages, and Shapland’s last date of publication was a volume of sermons in 1957 – but this was edited by someone else, and was probably posthumous.

A search for the name on Ancestry.com reveals a man of that name born 1907, died 1952.  There is a picture of a young clergyman there.  This is likely to be the same man, and the dates are right.  If so, his books goes out of copyright outside the US in 2022 (1952+70).

What a performance, just to find out the status of a long defunct book!

So … are any copies available for sale?  Not that I can find.  Hum!

Well, I’ve placed an ILL for it instead.

Update: (3rd September 2021): Eleven years later, a kind correspondent writes that C. R. B. Shapland, trans., The Letters of Saint Athanasius Concerning the Holy Spirit, Ad Serapion (New York: The Philosophical Library, 1951), is online here:

https://archive.org/details/TheLettersOfSaintAthanasiusConcerningTheHolySpirit

Excellent news!

I wonder whatever happened to that ILL?

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Chrysostom sermons that exist

Posted on by Roger Pearse

It looks as if some of the sermons by Chrysostom that I was thinking of getting translated already exist in English.  The sermon on his return according to this is said to be included in W. Mayer and P. Allen, John Chrysostom (The Early Church Fathers), London: Routledge, 2000.  A look at the table of contents confirms this. I certainly don’t want to spend money on texts already translated.

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De ligno vitae – The Tree of Life

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There are a number of short poems which appear in the manuscripts and older editions of the works of Tertullian and Cyprian.  In truth their authorship is unknown, but they seem to belong to the end of the 4th century.

One of these is De ligno vitae, The tree of life.  I was considering commissioning a translation, but then I came across this lovely translation in Early Christian Latin Poets by Carolinne White in Google books.  The text itself is clearly a gem!

There is a place, we believe, at the centre of the world,
Called Golgotha by the Jews in their native tongue.
Here was planted a tree cut from a barren stump:
This tree, I remember hearing, produced wholesome fruits,
But it did not bear these fruits for those who had settled there:
It was foreigners who picked these lovely fruits.
This is what the tree looked like: it rose from a single stem
And then extended its arms into two branches
Just like the heavy yardarms on which billowing sails are stretched
Or like the yoke beneath which two oxen are put to the plough.
The shoot that sprung from the first ripe seed
Germinated in the earth and then, miraculously,
On the third day it produced a branch once more,
Terrifying to the earth and to those above, but rich in life-giving fruit.
But over the next forty days it increased in strength,
Growing into a huge tree which touched the heavens
With its topmost branches and then hid its saccred head on high.
In the meantime it produced twelve branches of enormous
Weight and stretched forth, spreading them over the whole world:
They were to bring nourishment and eternal life to all
The nations and to teach them that death can die.
And then after a further fifty days had passed
From its top the tree caused a draught of divine nectar
To flow into its branches, a breeze of the heavenly spirit.
All over the tree the leaves were dripping with sweet dew.
And look! Beneath the branches shady cover
There was a spring, with waters bright and clear
For there was nothing there to disturb the calm. Around it in the grass
A variety of flowers shone forth in bright colours.
Around this spring countless races and peoples gathered,
Of different stock, sex, age and rank,
Married and unmarried, widows, young married women,
Babies, children and men, both young and old.
When they saw the branches here bending down, under the weight
Of many sorts of fruit, they gleefully reached out with greedy hands
To touch the fruits dripping with heavenly nectar.
But they could not pick them with their eager hands
Until they had wiped off the dirt and filthy traces
Of their former life, washing their bodies in the holy spring.
And so they strolled around on the soft grass for some time
And looked up at the fruits hanging from the tall tree.
If they ate the shells that fell from those branches
And the sweet greenery dripping with plenty of nectar,
Then they were overcome with a desire to pick the real fruit.
And when their mouths first experienced the heavenly taste,
Their minds were transformed and their greedy impulses
Began to disappear; by the sweet taste they knew the man.
We have seen that an unusual taste or the poison of gall
Mixed with honey causes annoyance in many:
They rejected what tasted good because they were confused
And did not like what they had eagerly grabbed at,
Finally spitting out the taste of what they had for long drunk unwisely.
But it often happens that many, once their thoughts are set to rights,
Find their sick minds restored and achieve what they denied
Was possible and so obtain the fruits of their labours.
Many, too, having dared to touch the sacred waters,
Have suddenly departed, slipping back again
To roll around in the same mixture of mud and filth.
But others, faithfully carrying the truth within them, receive it
With their whole soul and store it deep in their hearts.
And so the seventh day sets those who can approach
The sacred spring beside the waters they longed for,
And they dip their bodies that have been fasting.
Only so do they rid themselves of the filth of their thoughts
And the stains of their former life, bringing back from death
Souls that are pure and shining, destined for heaven’s light.

I will look more at the volume.  It looks as if Dr. White has done something that should have been done a century ago, and addressed all these Latin poets who are largely neglected.

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Sermons of Chrysostom after his first exile

Posted on by Roger Pearse

John Chrysostom made a lot of enemies very quickly in Constantinople after he became patriarch, especially among the more corrupt clergy and court officials who objected to his campaign for higher standards of behaviour. They quickly arranged for him to be deposed and exiled.  But when the Constantinople mob found out, a riot was threatened and he was quickly recalled.

After his return, attempts were made to patch things up, especially with Severian of Gabala who had been insulted pretty seriously by John’s deacons. 

I find in Migne three sermons; De Regressu Sancti Joannis (PG52, col. 421), De Recipiendo Severiano (col. 423), and Severian’s reply De Pace (col. 425).  All three are given in Latin, and seem far too short to be full versions.  I don’t know if there are more sermons than these three.

The full Greek text of Severian’s reply exists, and indeed it turns out to be online.  But what about the Chrysostom sermons?  Are there Greek versions of these, and if so where?

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Anianus of Celeda and Chrysostom’s sermons in the West

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The sermons of John Chrysostom became known to fathers such as Augustine at a very early date.  Apparently a bunch of them were translated by the deacon Anianus of Celeda in the early 5th century.  Emilio Bonfiglio has written a dissertation on the translations of Anianus, although I have not seen this, and it may be in Italian anyway.

Quasten’s Patrology gives Anianus as the translator of some of the sermons on Matthew, and the encomiums on St. Paul; but also of other works.  It would be very interesting to learn more about this activity.  We’re all familiar with the Latin translations that appear in Migne’s Patrologia Graeca opposite the Greek; but what proportion of these are in fact ancient translations, rather than renaissance?

I’ve managed to find online a paper about Anianus of Celeda, given by Kate Cooper and published in the papers of the Oxford Patristic Conference here.  This tells us that he wrote a prefatory letter to each of those two translations (PG50, 472-3, to Evangelius before the Paul texts and PG58 975-6 to Orontius for the homilies).  A new and rather different version of the letter to Orontius was uncovered in 1972 by Adolf Primmer (Die Originalfassung von Anianus’ epistula ad Orontium, in Antidosis: Festschrift für Walther Kraus, ed. R. Hanslik, A. Lesky, and H. Schwabl, 278–89. Vienna, 1982).  It would certainly be worth getting an English version of these.

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