Plato, Redeemed in Poetry & Prose

In a superb post reporting on a recent talk by His Eminence, Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia, entitled ‘Athens and Jerusalem: Hellenic Paideia and the Greek Fathers’, Andreas at Lord, I have cried unto Thee relates an anecdote which His Eminence told:

It is said that every night before he went to bed, St Anastasios would curse Plato: ‘God, damn Plato!’ (His Eminence’s words—at which chuckles filled the cathedral). Then one night, St Anastasios had a dream wherein he met Plato face to face, and he had a chance to speak with him and upbraid him for his errant teachings. When St Anastasios was done with his tirade, Plato responded and said, ‘When Christ descended into Hades to preach the Gospel, I was the first to be converted.’ [Note: Since getting home, I’ve tried to find some kind of source for this but can’t, so if you know of one, please share.]

A bit of digging turned up Fr Andrew Louth’s telling of this story in Greek East & Latin West. There, Fr Louth writes:

But it was not only representatives of the ‘outer wisdom’ like [St John] Mauropous who revered Plato: St Athanasios had called him ‘that great one among the Greeks’ (On the Incarnation 2), while among the writings ascribed to the seventh-century abbot of Sinai, Anastasios, there is a story which relates that it was the custom of a certain learned Christian to curse Plato daily, until eventually Plato himself appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Man, stop cursing me; for you are merely harming yourself. I do not deny that I was a sinner; but, when Christ descended into hell, no one believed in Him sooner than I did’ (Questions & Responses 111 [PG 89:764C]). [1]

This reminded me of a poem by the Byzantine humanist, St John Mauropous (c. 1050-75), Metropolitan of Euchaïta, that I’ve seen in a few places. Fittingly, St John was the Hierarch who had the vision which introduced the Feast of the Three Hierarchs. According to the Synaxaristes, he was ‘a holy hierarch who attained to the summit of virtue. He was a noble and erudite man, well acquainted with Hellenic wisdom, as his writings bear witness to his learning. He was also acclaimed for his writing of hymnographic canons and the lives of the saints.’ [2] Here is my poor attempt at a translation of his hexametric ‘Epigram on Plato and Plutarch’:

If Thou shouldst wish any of those outside the Church
to be raised from beneath Thy threats, O my Christ,
Plato and Plutarch raise up for me;
for both of them in word and deed
approach quite closely to Thy laws.
They did not know Thee as the God of all,
but here is only more of Thy goodness,
a gift through which Thou wouldst save all. [3]

Matthew Reed, of a fur piece, recently posted a lovely prose translation of another poem by the same author in the comments here. Although Joseph Patterson already got the jump on me on reposting it, here anyway is the text as Matthew quotes it from J.M. Hussey:

And thus, O Logos, mayest Thou guide and bear me, constant, unshaken, unmoved, remaining within the bounds of moderation, living among books like a bee among flowers, nourishing myself on words like a grasshopper in the dew, content to live only in the present, demanding nothing save salvation, to which mayest Thou, O Saviour, swiftly bring me, lest I grow very weary of the present. For the longed for haven far excels the easy labour of even a fair voyage, and is the consummation of all toils. May I quickly reach this, O my Christ.

One can also see a few of St John’s poems in a translation by Elizabeth Barret Browning here, at the St Pachomius Library.

[Addendum: As was noted in the comments below, there is a discrepancy between Met. Kallistos's version of the story about Plato and Fr Louth's. In the former's, St Anastasius is speaking of himself, whereas in the second he seems to be speaking of someone else. The resourceful Andreas has discovered (here) and posted the passage in Migne in the comments below, where it seems clear to me at any rate that St Anastasius is indeed speaking in the third person. But as we all know, there is a long and charming Christian tradition of speaking of one's own experiences in this way. As I suspected, it seems Met. Kallistos read St Anastasius as following this tradition!]


[1] Fr Andrew Louth, Greek East & Latin West: The Church AD 681-1071 (Crestwood, NY: SVS, 2007), p. 321. I had forgotten it, but Felix Culpa quoted a couple of paragraphs of this book, including the one above, in this post, from which I have also taken part of my title as well as the image at the top of the post (a Romanian fresco showing several pagan philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle).

[2] The Lives of the Three Great Hierarchs, tr. Holy Apostles Convent (Buena Vista, CO: HAC, 1998), p. 305.

[3] Tr. from Paul de Lagarde, ed., Iohannis Euchaitorum metropolitae (Gottingen: Dieterich, 1882), p. 24. I would appreciate any comments or corrections on this translation!