'He Put No Difference Between Us'—Ss Peter & Paul in Radner & St Maximus

Last Thursday, 29 June on the Church’s calendar, we celebrated the memory of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul. I had thought about doing an old-school Logismoi post for the Apostles, but unfortunately things were much too busy for the full treatment and I let it pass. A perusal of a borrowed book the other day, however, convinced me that I should at least do a post connecting back to their feastday, even if it wasn’t one of my traditional Saints’ posts. 

I have more than once, I am sure, mentioned my enthusiasm for John O’Keefe’s and R.R. Reno’s Sanctified Vision: An Introduction to Early Christian Interpretation of the Bible. Well, my tremendous esteem for the merits of the authors’ arguments and conclusions led me to reread with careful attention the preface to the volume, wherein they acknowledge the various influences and intellectual debts that contributed to the book. One passage that caught my attention was this: ‘The work of Ephrem Radner defies epitome, but the fabric of his many publications is woven with figural patterns of biblical interpretation. He is a rare contemporary practitioner of an ancient art.’ [1] 

I don’t quite remember how it happened, but somehow or another I shortly afterward discovered the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible, edited by Reno, which ‘advances upon the assumption that the Nicene tradition, in all its diversity and controversy, provides the proper basis for the interpretation of the Bible as Christian Scripture’, and could be seen in some ways as a commentary attempting to carry out what O’Keefe and Reno present in Sanctified Vision. [2] I recalled having seen the series at our local evangelical megastore (which I was distressed to find no longer carries it, although the Christian romance section has certainly expanded), but I had never carefully examined it to discover its approach. Fortunately, my boss, the headmaster of our school, has what I take to be the entire series to date in his office, and I was surprised and excited to discover that the volume on Leviticus—surely a unique text for demonstrating the rich exegetical possibilities of the ‘Nicene tradition’—was written by that ‘rare contemporary practitioner of an ancient art’, Ephraim Radner. 

I realise I’m taking the long route to get back to Ss Peter and Paul. What does Ephraim Radner’s commentary on Leviticus have to do with the two chiefs of the Apostles? It so happens that interpreting Leviticus as Christian Scripture provides a direct connection: St Peter’s vision in Acts 10:9-16, which presupposes the distinction between clean and unclean animals in Leviticus 11: 

For I am the Lord who brought you up [ἀναγαγὼν ὑμᾶς] out of the land of Egypt to be your God; and ye shall be holy, for I the Lord am holy. This is the law concerning beasts and birds and every living creature [πάσης ψυχῆς] moving in the water, and every living creature creeping on the earth; to distinguish between the unclean and the clean [διαστεῖλαι ἀνὰ μέσον τῶν ἀκαθάρτων καὶ ἀνὰ μέσον τῶν καθαρῶν]; and between those that bring forth alive, such as should be eaten, and those that bring forth alive, such as should not be eaten. (Lev. 11:45-7, LXX) 

Compare then, the vision of the Apostle Peter in Acts: 

On the morrow, as they went on their journey, and drew nigh unto the city, Peter went upon the housetop to pray about the sixth hour: and he became very hungry, and would have eaten: but while they made ready, he fell into a trance, and saw heaven opened, and a certain vessel descending unto him, as it had been a great sheet knit at the four corners, and let down to the earth: where in were all manner of four-footed beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air. And there came a voice to him, ‘Rise, Peter; kill, and eat.’ But Peter said, ‘Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean.’ And the voice spake unto him again the second time, ‘What God hath cleansed that call not thou common.’ This was done thrice: and the vessel was received up again into heaven. (Authorised Version) 

Clearly, St Peter is professing his fidelity to the distinction outlined in Leviticus 11. Just as clearly, the same God who gave to the Israelites the category of ‘unclean’ in Leviticus, is telling St Peter that He Himself has ‘cleansed’ all things. The exhortation to ‘be holy’ is not negated, however, and indeed, St Peter himself quotes it in I Peter 1:16, but it is no longer tied to the observance of dietary laws. 

In his commentary on this chapter of Leviticus, Radner draws on the mediaeval Benedictine writer, Rupert of Deutz (c. 1075-1129), whom Jean Leclercq notes as an exemplar of the use of ‘Old Testament texts...for expressing the loftiest realities of the New Testament,’ in whom ‘we sense the shadow of the whole archaic Eastern [patristic] background’. [3] I shall quote Radner at length: 

For Rupert of Deutz (Patrologia latina 167.796-801), the pentecostal focus in Lev. 10 [he connects the fire that devours the sons of the Prophet Aaron in Lev. 10:2 with the tongues of fire of Pentecost] explicates the framework of Lev. 11 in terms of the mission to the Gentiles entrusted the church by God. That is, the outline of distinction that Aaron (and Moses) provide the people—in terms of animal life, food, and even the touching of carcasses—properly embraces the distinctions of the peoples and their place within the providential calling of God. From the perspective of the New Testament, this coordination of elements is almost natural. It is, after all, Peter himself, in the course of his calling by God to turn to the Gentiles with the church’s first deliberate Christian evangelistic effort in their direction, who is presented with a threefold divine vision treating specifically the question of clean and unclean foods (Acts 10:9-16)....Rather than seeing Peter’s vision as a simple nullification of the Levitical laws of distinction, Rupert of Deutz understands these laws as the reflection of this single providential goal, by which the whole of the world will be brought into right relationship with God, gathered into the heavenly sheet. The vision sets in motion Peter’s visit to the Gentile centurion Cornelius in Caesarea, who is baptized despite his fundamental nonadherence to the breadth of the Levitical laws. Hence the Levitical laws pertain to—they advance toward and present—this goal of Gentile baptism, both in terms of reference and object; they do not contradict it. [4] 

Thus, the taking up of the animals without distinction into the four-cornered sheet is a symbolic revelation of the taking up of the peoples of the earth without distinction into the Church, where ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Galations 3:28). In the words of St Irenaeus of Lyons, ‘For the God who had distinguished through the law the pure food from the impure, that same God had cleansed the nations through the blood of his Son, and that is the God whom Cornelius worshiped.’ [5] 

I have not been reading Radner’s commentary through, and so it was a look at the index for Greek Fathers, particularly for St Maximus the Confessor, that led me to the chapter on Leviticus 11. Unfortunately, the great 7th-c. Father is only cited once by Radner—when the latter writes: 

The allegorical reading—both Jewish and Christian—by which the sacrificial animals of Leviticus refer to those beastly, irrational, or wild (Maximus the Confessor [in Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware 1979-95: 2.273]) aspects of the self that require subjugation is in fact congruent with and perhaps even founded upon the presuppositions of this reality of distinction and offering. [6] 

A look at the text from the Philokalia which Radner cites is interesting. It is a Maximian anthology known as ‘Various Texts on Theology, the Divine Economy, & Virtue & Vice’. The part in question is numbered as the ‘Fifth Century’ of such texts in the English Philokalia, whereas it is the ‘Seventh Century’ in the Greek. The greater part of this century, including all of the chapters I will excerpt below, is taken from the treatise To Thalassios: On Various Questions relating to Holy Scripture. It is there that St Maximus dwells at length on what he calls ‘the spiritual contemplation [ἡ πνευματικὴ θεωρία] of...the written law’. [7] The simple statement—in chapter 50—of the allegorical reading of the animals as passions to which Radner is referring is believed to be the work of a 10th-c. scholiast. [8] St Maximus’s own comments in chapter 51, which the scholiast is presumably explaining, takes for granted the ‘passion’ reading: 

By spiritual sacrifices is meant not only the putting to death of the passions, slaughtered by ‘the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God’ (Eph. 6:17), and the deliberate emptying out of all life in the flesh, as if it were blood; the term also signifies the offering up of the moral state we have gained through the practice of the virtues, together with all our natural powers, which we dedicate and offer [προσαγωγὴν ἀφιερουμένων] to God as whole burnt sacrifices, to be consumed by the fire of grace in the Spirit, so that they are filled with divine power. [9] 

The ‘fire of grace in the Spirit’, an obvious allusion to Pentecost, is only the second tie into Rupert’s connection of Leviticus with Pentecost. In chapter 49, the Confessor writes: 

The mystery of Pentecost is the direct union with providence of those things that are in its care. It is the union of nature with its principle, the Logos, under the guidance of providence; and in this union there is not the slightest trace of time or generation. Again, the Logos is our trumpet (cf. Lev. 23:24), summoning us with divine and hidden knowledge. He is our propitiation (cf. Lev. 25:9), since He expiates our offences in His own person by becoming like us, and divinizes our sinful nature by the gift of grace through the Spirit. He is our booth or tabernacle (cf. Lev. 23:42), since He is the realization of that immutability with which our inner being, conformed to God, is concentrated on the divine, and also the securing bond of our transformation into an immortal state. [10] 

Indeed, it is a shame that Radner does not make more use of St Maximus in his commentary. The Confessor comments specifically on St Peter’s vision itself in Questions & Doubts 116, where he responds to the question of what is signified by the sheet and the beasts that were on it: 

Since, according to the vision by the prophet Ezekiel, ‘their work was like a wheel within a wheel’, and through these a perceptible as well as an intelligible world are depicted as existing within one another—for the intelligible world is in the perceptible world by types, and the perceptible world is in the intelligible world by its logos—therefore, all of the perceptible world was shown to the Apostle. For the letting down by its four corners’ signifies the world composed of four elements, existing as clean in the intelligible world according to the logos that exists inherently in these things. And he heard, ‘rise up, kill, and eat,’ that is, ‘by (your) nous raise yourself up from that which is according sense, and “kill and eat”, which means by the distinction of reason divides sense perception, [11] and taking up these things spiritually make them your own.’ 

Or, it also signifies the church that is supported by the four foundations of the gospels or, again, by the four cardinal virtues. And the beasts and reptiles depict the different human customs which, from the Gentiles, are going to (change over to) the faith in Christ. And the ‘kill and eat’ shows ‘first, by the word of teaching, “kill” the evil in them and then “eat”, making their salvation your own just as the Lord also made it food for himself.’ [12] 

Of course, this post has been mostly taken up with St Peter, and for reasons of length I do not intend to devote equal space here to St Paul. But I will point out that St Peter’s experience of the vision, and his subsequent baptism of Cornelius, ‘Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ’ (Gal. 2:16), connect him directly with the great Apostle of the Gentiles. ‘And’, in the words of Didymus the Blind, ‘through the figure shown by the linen cloth and through the granting of the grace of the Holy Spirit in like manner to the nations according to faith [cf. Acts 10:44-8], he [St Peter] made the case that in Christ there is no distinction between Jew and Gentile.’ [13] 

St Paul of course makes himself a compliment to St Peter, ‘For He that wrought effectually in Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision, the same was mighty in me toward the Gentiles’ (Gal. 2:8). But the baptism of Cornelius makes clear that the division in their duties is not a strict one, and St Peter at the Council of Jerusalem says to the apostles and elders: 

‘Men and brethren, ye know how that a good while ago God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the Gospel, and believe. And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as He did unto us; and put no difference between us and them [διέκρινε μεταξὺ ἡμῶν τε καὶ αὐτῶν], purifying their hearts by faith.’ (Acts 15:7-9) 

Once again, we see here that the erasure of difference between Jew and Gentile is signified by the erasure of difference between clean and unclean animals (the words of Acts 15:9 and Lev. 11:47 are not the same, but the phrases nevertheless echo one another). But if the separation of Jew and Gentile is abolished within the Church, how much more so that between these two holy Apostles? St Paul tells us ‘when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face’ (Gal. 2:11), but in the words of St John Chrysostom, ‘there was here a deep though hidden understanding between Paul and Peter’: 

Paul does not now say this to condemn Peter, but in the same spirit as when he said those who are ‘reputed to be something’ [in other words, St Paul does not in 2:9 deny that St Peter really is a ‘pillar’], he now says this too....And so Paul rebukes and Peter voluntarily gives way. It is like the master who when upbraided keeps silent, so that his disciples might more easily change their ways. [14] 

Thus, the witness of the Church to the spiritual unity of these two Apostles, testified to by their co-commemoration and the liturgical texts which praise them as ‘separated in body, united in the Spirit’, [15] is also expressed in the exegetical consensus of the Fathers. 

 [1] John J. O’Keefe & R.R. Reno, Sanctified Vision: An Introduction to Early Christian Interpretation of the Bible (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2005), p. x. 

[2] R.R. Reno, ‘Series Preface’, Leviticus, by Ephraim Radner, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos-Baker, 2008), p. 11. 

[3] Jean Leclercq, OSB, The Love of Learning & the Desire for God: A Study in Monastic Culture, tr. Catharine Misrahi (NY: Fordham, 1961), pp. 102-16. 

[4] Radner, p. 107. 

[5] Francis Martin, ed., with Evan Smith, Acts, NT Vol. V in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2006), p. 128. 

[6] Ibid., p. 110. 

[7] The Philokalia: The Complete Text, Vol. 2, tr. G.E.H. Palmer, et al. (London: Faber, 1990), p. 267. 

[8] See ibid., p. 395. 

[9] Ibid., p. 273. 

[10] Ibid., pp. 272-3. 

[11] I’m not sure I understand the grammar of Prassas’s translation at this point. 

[12] St Maximus the Confessor, Questions & Doubts, tr. Despina D. Prassas (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois U, 2010), p. 103. 

[13] Martin, p. 125. 

[14] Mark J. Edwards, ed., Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, NT Vol. VIII in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1999), p. 26. 

[15] First sticheron at Lord I have cried, Tone 2, by St Andrew of Crete, from Great Vespers for the Feast; from the translation of Archimandrite Ephrem (Lash), here.

This Aaron's Not Quite 'Drest'

Unfortunately, it appears there will likely be another gap of some days in the posts here at Logismoi. This is especially tragic since tomorrow is my nameday, the feast of the Holy High Priest Aaron and his brother, the Prophet Moses the God-seer. I promise that I will work on a proper post for St Aaron as soon as I have the chance and will put it up, however belatedly, but hopefully not too belatedly. Ditto for Part II of the St Symeon the Stylite post.

As for St Aaron, in the meantime I recommend that those who have not yet done so read my two original posts ‘On Being Named for the Prophet Aaron’, Parts I and II (Part II discusses St Aaron’s burial place), as well as this post, containing the beautiful poem ‘Aaron’ by George Herbert, and this one, on the lecture of Fr Justin of Sinai on Rephidim, where St Aaron and the Prophet Or (Hur) held up the Prophet Moses’s arms in the form of a cross so that the Israelites could defeat the Amalekites.

'Rejoice, Thou Who Didst Set Down Thy Rule'—St Benedict, Pt 2

In other posts I have already related and commented upon some of the events which took place after the creation of the twelve monasteries I mentioned in the last post, while St Benedict dwelt at Monte Cassino. Here I blogged about St Maurus, who figures prominently in Dialogues I.iii.14-vii.3 (see St Gregory, pp. 41-3). Here I reflected on the story of St Benedict’s raven in Dialogues II.viii.3 (St Gregory, p. 53). Finally, in this post, I gave the story of St Benedict’s sister according to the flesh, St Scholastica, from Dialogues II.xxxiii-xxxiv (St Gregory, pp. 154-5). So I will just give the brief tale of one of St Benedict’s miracles before moving onto something else. In Dialogues II.xxv, we read:

1 One of his monks was affected by restlessness of mind and would not stay in the monastery. The man of God corrected him assiduously and frequently admonished him but he would not, under any circumstances, agree to stay in the community, and with repeated requests urged that he be released. One day the venerable Father, wearied by his excess, got angry and told him to leave.

2 Soon after leaving the monastery, he found a dragon with open mouth standing on the road before him. As the dragon wanted to devour him, he began to shake and tremble and shout in a loud voice, ‘Hurry, hurry, because that dragon wants to devour me.’ The brethren came running, but they saw no dragon. They led the shaking, trembling monk back to the monastery and he immediately promised that he would never leave it again. From that moment he kept his promise, for by the prayers of the holy man he had seen standing before him the dragon which formerly he had followed, though he had not seen it. (pp. 113-4)

I excerpt this story primarily because it features a dragon, but it is also interesting to note its similarities with the superb Papadiamanis story, ‘The Monk: A Short Study’, which I mentioned yesterday.

In his comments on St Gregory’s references to St Benedict’s experiences of contemplation at Subiaco, before the foundation of the twelve monasteries, the infallible Adalbert de Vogüé writes, ‘Contemplation rejoices in solitude but it does not need it absolutely. This is so true that Benedict reached the summit of contemplation at Monte Cassino, during the fullness of his abbacy, as we shall see at the end of the book’ (p. 38). In Dialogues II.xxxv, St Gregory tells of how St Benedict, praying in his tower in the middle of the night—

looked up and saw a light spreading from on high and completely repelling the darkness of the night. It shone with such splendor that it surpassed the light of day, even though it was shining in the midst of darkness.

3 A marvelous thing followed in this contemplation for, as he himself related afterwards, the whole world was brought before his eyes, gathered up, as it were, under a single ray of sun. The venerable Father, while straining his attentive gaze on this splendor of shining light, saw the soul of Germanus, bishop of Capua, carried up to heaven by angels in a fiery sphere. (p. 164).

But as remarkable as this vision of the uncreated light is, perhaps the most interesting thing about this chapter is St Gregory’s subsequent explanation of the vision in II.xxxv.6-7. He writes:

6 . . . The whole of creation will seem small to the soul who sees the Creator. For however little she sees of the light of the Creator, everything created grows small for her, because in the very light of the internal vision the capacity of the soul is enlarged; it is so expanded in God that it is placed above the world. Indeed the soul of the seer is raised above itself. In the light of God it is carried above itself and is expanded interiorly. . . .

7 When I say that the world was gathered under his eyes, this does not mean that heaven and earth had shrunk, but that the mind of the seer was enlarged: caught up in God, it could see without difficulty all that is under God. This light which shone on his exterior eyes was also an interior light in his mind which revealed to the soul of the seer, because it was caught up to higher things, how narrow are all lower things. (p. 165)

It struck me how astonishingly consonant this is with the hesychastic tradition of the Orthodox East. We have already seen St Gregory’s hesychastic emphasis on St Benedict’s practice of watchfulness and the concentration of the nous in the heart—‘Before the eyes of the Creator he always looked at himself, always examined himself, never let the eye of his soul look outside himself’ (p. 31)—but here we have the object of St Benedict’s vision, ‘the light of the Creator’, explicitly contrasted with ‘everything created’ (p. 165). To me, it could not be more plain that this great Western Father is speaking of the uncreated light.

Incidentally, de Vogüé points out, in the absence of any identifiable scriptural parallels to this story, three interesting non-biblical ones, each corresponding to one part of this passage in the Dialogue. With the ‘noctural illumination’, he links the story of ‘the illuminated vigil of the monk Victorinus Aemilianus’ in St Gregory’s own Homily on the Gospel, 34, 18 (p. 168). He compares in depth the vision of ‘the world reduced to a point’ with Cicero’s famous ‘Dream of Scipio’ (pp. 168-72). Finally, he mentions the parallels of ‘the soul carried up to heaven’ with St Anthony’s vision of the soul of Amun (Ammon) passing up to heaven (p. 172).

The last part of St Gregory’s Life of St Benedict, Dialogues II.xxxvi-xxxvii, focuses on three things: what de Vogüé calls a ‘eulogy’ of the Rule, a brief account of St Benedict’s repose, and a story of a miracle performed at the Sacro Speco at Subiaco after the Saint’s repose. Concerning the Rule, St Gregory writes:

However I would not with it to be unknown to you that the man of God who became famous in the world by so many miracles was also very well-known for his words of doctrine. For he wrote a rule for monks, remarkable for its discretion [on p. 177, de Vogüé argues that ‘discernment’ might be a better translation of discretio here than the obvious cognate] and elegant in its language [here de Vogüé suggests ‘brilliant’ of form for sermone luculentam]. If anyone wishes to have a closer knowledge of his life and habits he will find all the points of his teaching in this rule, for the holy man could not possibly teach other than as he lived. (p. 174)

De Vogüé points out that this presentation of the Rule constitutes the requisite ‘portrait’ of the man typical of the biographical genre. For comparison he mentions the second part of Suetonius’s Life of Vespasian and also the Life of St Martin of Tours by Sulpicius Severus, in both of which the portrait is also ‘set just before the death of the hero’ (p. 176). Though de Vogüé wishes that St Gregory had added his own ‘portrait’ rather than just referring the reader to the Rule, he notes that historically this is the only 6th-c. reference to the Rule, and that it ‘constituted a first-class advertisement for the Rule, one which assured it of an enormous circulation’ (p. 177). Von Matt and Hilpisch observe, ‘No other Pope has exercised so profound an influence in the spiritual and ascetical sphere as this pontiff. . . . St Gregory’s encomium of St Benedict and his Rule reached a wide audience and helped to decide the problem as to what Rule should be adopted by the monks of the West’ (p. 144).

St Gregory’s account of the repose of St Benedict notes, first of all, the fact that like many Saints he had foretold the day to some disciples earlier that year, swearing them to secrecy (II.xxxvii.1; p. 174). Then, in xxxvii.2 he writes:

Six days before his death, he ordered his tomb to be opened. Soon he was attached by fever and was weakened with severe suffering. As the illness grew worse every day, he asked his disciples to carry him into the oratory. There he strengthened himself for his departure by receiving the Body and Blood of the Lord. While the hands of his disciples held up his weak limbs, he stood with his hands raised to heaven and breathed his last breath amidst words of prayer. (p. 174)

Concerning this blessed repose, de Vogüé is struck by the fact that it seems as if ‘it is to the saint’s own initiative—the order to carry him to the oratory—that death seems to respond by coming to the meetingplace Benedict had arranged’ (p. 178). His death becomes more heroic as he ‘strengthened himself for his departure by receiving’ the Mysteries. Then, de Vogüé writes, ‘But the most striking aspect of his agony is the heroism with which the dying man remains standing in prayer, upheld by his disciples, until the last moment’ (p. 178). He models for us ‘the struggle of a spent body to keep itself in an attitue of prayer as long as the breath of life remains in it. . . . He was a monk heading towards God, who obeyed until the last moment the evangelical command to pray without ceasing’ (p. 179). It is this moving account that has led to St Benedict’s traditional identification as an intercessor for a holy death (here I have noted that the medal of St Benedict contains the inscription, Eius in obitu nostro praesentia muniamus, ‘May we at our death be fortified by his presence’).

(As an aside, I will note that de Vogüé does not miss the similarity of the story of St Benedict’s arms being held up by his disciples with that of the Prophet Moses’s arms being held up by the Prophets Aaron and Hur at the battle with the Amalekites at Rephidim in Exodus 17:8-13, an episode I have blogged about here, in my post on a lecture by Fr Justin of Sinai. De Vogüé makes this comparison on p. 179 of his commentary.)

In conclusion, I offer two stanzas from the 9th Ode of the Canon for St Benedict, followed by Ikos IV of the Akathist in his honour (taken from St Benedict of Nursia, trans. Reader Isaac Lambertson [Liberty, TN: St John of Kronstadt, 1989]):

Thou wast shown to be like the great sun, illumining creation with awesome signs and rays of the virtues; wherefore, celebrating thy truly luminous memory, we are enlightened with heartfelt feelings, O father.

The flock of monastics assembled by thee giveth praise day and night, having in their midst thy body which poureth forth rivers of miracles abundantly an dunceasingly enlighteneth their steps, O wise father. (p. 25)

Hearing how thou wast like unto the heavenly hosts in the loftiness of thy righteousness, O father, the saved increased in number around thee; and for them didst thou flourish like a lily of the desert. With them do we also make bold to chant unto thee with compunction:

Rejoice, thou who wast arrayed in the splendid robe of dispassion;
Rejoice, thou who didst live an angelic life on earth!
Rejoice, O all-wondrous one who with faith hast taught us the ways of salvation;
Rejoice, O mighty one who trampled down the madness of idolatry!
Rejoice, thou who didst set down thy rule, which is sweeter than honey;
Rejoice, for thou didst reveal thy heart as a mirror of divine thought!
Rejoice, thou who didst make thy spirit a dwelling-place of the Trinity;
Rejoice, thou who didst found a great habitation for the praise of the Lord!
Rejoice, O prophet adorned with foreknowledge;
Rejoice, O venerable one, who through the air dost go to those who are amid tribulations!
Rejoice, O divinely wise one, for by thee are the faithful instructed;
Rejoice, O divinely blessed one, for by thee are many saved!
Rejoice, O Benedict, wonderworker of Nursia! (pp. 28-9)

Holy Martyrs Julius & Aaron

Today, 1 July on the Church’s calendar, we celebrate the memory of the Holy Martyrs Julius and Aaron († c. 303), traditionally the Protomartyrs of Wales. The earliest source for these Martyrs is St Gildas the Wise, who tells us precious little except that the Holy Martyrs Aaron and Julius were identified with ‘the city of the legions’ (traditionally held to be Caerleon-on-Usk) and that they ‘were tormented with divers sufferings, and their limbs were racked in such unheard of ways, that they, without delay, erected the trophies of their glorious martyrdom even in the gates of the city of Jerusalem’ (J.A. Giles, trans.; from the Internet Medieval Source Book). St Gildas is concerned, however, that access to their shrine has been hindered (a fact leading one historian to dispute the identification of the site as Caerleon in favour of York), which suggests that whether or not ‘trophies’ had been erected in Jerusalem, people were making pilgrimages to the site of the martyrdom to venerate the Martyrs.

In a passage clearly indebted to St Gildas, the Venerable Bede, too, mentions them briefly in EH I.7 (The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. Judith McClure and Roger Collins [Oxford: Oxford U, 1994], p. 19):

About this time [the martyrdom of St Alban] Aaron and Julius, both citizens of the city of the Legions (Caerleon), suffered, and many others of both sexes in various other places. They were racked by many kinds of torture and their limbs were indescribably mangled but, when their sufferings were over, their souls were carried to the joys of the heavenly city.

I don’t know what to make of it, but it is interesting to note that St Bede seems to have slightly modified St Gildas here. Perhaps, rightly or wrongly, he took St Gildas’s ‘city of Jerusalem’ to be a reference to the ‘New Jerusalem’, i.e., the ‘heavenly city’, or perhaps he was uncertain of the likelihood of the British Martyrs being venerated in the earthly Jerusalem. According to Butler, however, ‘Leland and Bale say, Ss Julius and Aaron had travelled to Rome, and “there applied themselves to the sacred studies”.’

As I have mentioned before, they are given a date of commemoration (22 July) in the 9th-c. Martyrology compiled by Florus of Lyon (a date given, according to Butler, to another St Aaron as well—of Brittany), and are even invoked in the marginalia of a 9th-c. manuscript—copied by an unknown Irish monk—of Priscian’s Institutiones Grammaticæ at the famous Abbey of St Gall in Switzerland (see Field). According to the Our Sunday Visitor’s Encyclopedia of Saints, however, they are commemorated on 1 July (Matthew Bunson, et al., Our Sunday Visitor's Encyclopedia of Saints, rev. ed. [Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 2003], p. 23), the date Field says is that of the Prophet Aaron in at least one early martyrology. My favourite online Orthodox calendar, based, I believe, on the St Herman calendar, also supports this date.

The icon above (from Orthodox England) is that of All Saints of the British Isles. The Holy Martyrs Julius and Aaron do not, however, seem to be depicted.

The Prophet Aaron: The Un-Post

I did not, of course, fail to notice that my patron Saint, the Prophet Aaron, the High Priest and brother of the Prophet Moses, was listed for 12 March on my favourite online Orthodox calendar as well as the St Herman calendar, along with St Gregory the Great and others (not the least of whom was St Symeon the New Theologian, about whom I shall have to blog on another day soon). As I have already indicated, however, I myself have elected to celebrate my nameday on 4 September, the feast of the Prophet Moses, since it is close to my birthday. I only recently learned of the Chapel of the Prophet Aaron at Mt Sinai, and I have not yet learned when the fathers there celebrate the feast day of the chapel, or what sort of akolouthia they have for the feast. But if anyone has come to Logismoi today thinking that surely here of all places they will find something on the Prophet Aaron, I apologise. Feel free to read or reread my posts on being named for the Prophet Aaron here and here. Then check back on 4/17 September. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with George Herbert’s beautiful poem, ‘Aaron’ (taken from this lovely site):

HOLINESS on the head,

Light and perfection on the breast,

Harmonious bells below raising the dead

To lead them unto life and rest.

Thus are true Aarons drest.*

Profaneness in my head,

Defects and darkness in my breast,

A noise of passions ringing me for dead

Unto a place where is no rest:

Poor priest! thus am I drest.

Only another head

I have another heart and breast,

Another music, making live, not dead,

Without whom I could have no rest:

In Him I am well drest.

Christ is my only head,

My alone only heart and breast,

My only music, striking me e'en dead;

That to the old man I may rest,

And be in Him new drest.

So holy in my Head,

Perfect and light in my dear Breast,

My doctrine tuned by Christ (who is not dead,

But lives in me while I do rest),

Come, people; Aaron's drest.

* Exodus xxviii. 29-37.

Source:

Herbert, George. The Works of George Herbert in Prose and Verse.
New York: John Wurtele Lovell, 1881. 276-277.

'The Celebrant of Unfathomed Mysteries'—St Euthymius of Tŭrnovo

On the 20th day of the month of January, along with St Euthymius the Great, who laboured in Palestine, and several other Ss Euthymius as well, we commemorate St Euthymius of Tŭrnovo, Patriarch of the Bulgarians († c. 1402). Fr Georges Florovsky calls him ‘a monk and spokesman for Hesychasm’ as well as ‘a scholar and linguist’, writing, ‘His translations of liturgical and canonical texts into Old Slavonic (an Ustav of the Liturgy of John Chrysostom and a Sluzhebnik which corrected and brought uniformity to liturgical texts) sparked the late medieval Slavonic renaissance’ (Ways of Russian Theology, Part I, trans. Robert L. Nichols, Vol. 5 in The Collected Works of George Florovsky [Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1979], p. 275, n. 37).

Born to a noble family in the third decade of the 14th c., St Euthymius was made a monk when he was still quite young, becoming the spiritual child of the great Bulgarian hesychast, St Theodosius of Tŭrnovo, who in turn had been a disciple of St Gregory of Sinai. In Thomas Butler’s words, ‘Theodosius imparted to Euthemius the essence of Gregory’s teachings regarding the use of the “Jesus Prayer” in meditation, the guarding of the mind during long vigil, and other paths to attain what the Greeks called hesychia or “quietude” (Slavonic bezmlŭvie)’ (Monumenta Bulgarica: A Bilingual Anthology of Bulgarian Texts from the 9th to the 19th Centuries, ed. and trans. Thomas Butler [Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Slavic, 2004], p. 239).

In fact, the young monk advanced so greatly that his elder soon made him abbot of the monastery of Kilifarevo, while St Theodosius himself retired to a cell outside of the monastery. In about 1363, St Kallistos, the Patriarch of Constantinople, invited St Theodosius to the imperial city, and the latter took with him St Euthymius and St Cyprian, future Metropolitan of Kiev. According to St Kallistos, the two junior monks ‘studied carefully and diligently the divine rules and laws’ while they were in the city (qtd. in Butler, p. 239), and it seems they thoroughly absorbed the Greek language at that time if they had not already done so. St Euthymius stayed for a time at the Studion Monastery, where ‘he undoubtedly made use of the monastery’s extensive library and observed the operations of its scriptorium’ (Butler, p. 240).

In 1364, the great elder, St Theodosius, fell asleep in the Lord, and St Kallistos became the first to write his Life. Upon the death of their elder, Ss Euthymius and Cyprian went to the Great Lavra on the Holy Mountain, where there was a highly active group of translators from Greek into Slavonic that included Elder Joseph, the translator of the Slavonic Triodion (Butler, p. 240). Anthony-Emil Tachiaos writes of these monks, and their counterparts throughout the Balkans, ‘These were men of a high spiritual and cultural level who, having gone beyond the limits of a broad general education, plunged into the prevailing theological and ideological currents in Byzantine society’ (Cyril and Methodius of Thessalonica: The Acculturation of the Slavs [Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary, 2001], p. 139). On the Holy Mountain, among such men, Ss Euthymius and Cyprian were more fully initiated into various aspects of the hesychastic literary movement: the rediscovery of Greek patristic texts, the close adherence to Greek terminology and syntax in translation, the attention to orthography, and the use in original Slavonic compositions of an ornate literary style known as pletenie sloves, or ‘word-weaving’. On these literary qualities of hesychasm, Tachiaos cites one source in English, which I have yet to read—H. Goldblatt, Orthography and Orthodoxy: Constantine Kostenečki’s Treatise on the Letters, Studia Historica et Philologica, 16 (Florence, 1987) (Anthony-Emil N. Tachiaos, Introduction, The Life of Paisij Velyčkovs’kyj, by St Paisius [Velichkovsky], trans. J.M.E. Featherstone [Cambridge, MA: Ukrainian Research Institute of Harvard University, 1989], p. xxix, n. 36). Here, however, is Butler’s characterisation of the effect:

The convoluted word order, the uninhibited stringing together of synonyms, and the idiosyncratic juxtaposition of words for acoustical effect and cadence often present the reader with a kind of ‘monkish’ test or trial. In this meditative blurring of syntactic boundaries, words become rigid, refuse to meld, assume a numinous quality, suggesting that for the hesychast they are icons, whose array provides an esoteric meaning other than the usual one conveyed by grammar and syntax. (p. 266)

Upon returning to Bulgaria in about 1371, St Euthymius almost immediately went to work establishing a school at Holy Trinity Monastery in Tŭrnovo in order to train new translators and writers, a project he continued even after being consecrated Patriarch of Bulgaria in 1375 (Butler, p. 241). All of this had, of course, a profound effect on Slavic letters, not just in Bulgaria but throughout the Slavic world. Fr Florovsky observes:

One notes a sizeable quantity of manuscripts and books in Russian monastic libraries which date back precisely to this period. More importantly, these new writings form a fresh new stream. This time their content was mystical and ascetical, but once again they constituted a complete literature. Indeed, this new translation activity on Mt Athos and in Bulgaria stems from the Hesychast movement with its deeply contemplative spirit and approach. These translations made the works of the ascetical Fathers known in Slavic literature. (p. 10)

Sadly, the mediæval Bulgarian kingdom that had nutured and sheltered this work came to a violent end during St Euthymius’s patriarchate. In 1393 the Turks attacked Tŭrnovo, and St Euthymius urged the citizens to fight the invading Muslim army. In the end the city was sacked, the nobility and clergy were executed, and many were sent into exile, including the Patriarch himself, who settled in Bačkovo Monastery until his death. Butler writes, ‘He died there in 1401 or 1402 AD, having lived a full and exemplary life’ (p. 241).

St Euthymius translated the Sluzhebnik, wrote an Akolouthia for St Theophano, wrote the Lives of Ss Paraskevi, Philothei, Hilary of Moglen, and John of Rila. as well as Eulogies to Ss Constantine and Helen, Nedelja, John of Polybotum, and Michael of Potuka, and wrote numerous letters, of which we still have a few: to St Cyprian, to Metropolitan Antim of Wallachia, and to St Nicodemus of Tismana (Butler, pp. 242-3). St Euthymius’s most prominent disciple, Metropolitan Gregory (Camblak) of Kiev, has written a moving ‘Eulogy’ for his elder which is still the primary source of biographical information on the Saint. Here is the beginning:

If Aaron, ancient priest within the shade of the Law, through the sacrifice of the dumb /animals/, and through sprinkling the profaned with the blood of young oxen and goats and the ashes of heifers, sanctified them for bodily purification and thereby earned himself a memorial appropriate for one of God’s servants, so that the prophet /David/ always mentions him in the temple, as he says in the Book of Psalms: ‘Moses and Aaron among his priests’ and again: ‘He sent Moses, his slave, and Aaron whom he chose for himself’, and again: ‘He led his people out like sheep, through the hands of Moses and Aaron’—is not Euthemius far more worthy of praise, who was the celebrant of unfathomed mysteries and sharer of the apostolic glory, a priest of that great sacrifice and teacher of that truth which angels wish to fathom and which, furthermore, he kept pure and passed on undefiled, and finally a priest who by various sufferings offered himself as a holy sacrifice pleasing to the Lord?

But what sort of worldly praises shall we offer one who, while eloquent in the perfected word, was teaching lovers of the word to celebrate virtue with silence instead of the word? Who transcended the limits of nature itself? Who, totally enraptured by the contemplation of the divine, maintained that life was not in the body but in the language of the divine? And about whom the Psalmist, as he was weaving a homily, was saying: ‘My tongue is the quill of the fastwriting scribe’ (Ps
44:1)?

And so . . . do we dare to praise him? We do dare, by all means, drawn by our zeal. (Butler, p. 269)

On Being Named for the Prophet Aaron, Part II

Well, I might have waited until my nameday next September to do these posts on St Aaron, but something very exciting happened a few days ago. I was doing a little bit of research on one of the Saints Aaron (I don’t recall which, now), when I came across this page. It’s a list of publications, lectures, etc., by an archæology group in Finland called the ‘Finnish Jabal Haroun Project’. ‘Jabal Haroun’, it turns out, is Arabic for ‘Mount Aaron’. As I scanned the titles of these articles and lectures, I became increasingly excited. Many of them directly referred to a Byzantine Monastery of St Aaron, which was cool enough in itself, as I’d never heard of anything dedicated to any St Aaron.

But then I came across this, which I shall quote at length:

Jabal an-Nabi Haroun (the mountain of the Prophet Aaron) is located about 3 miles to the southwest of Petra, Jordan. According to the Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions, the mountain is the burial place of Moses’ brother Aaron. That the Mountain of Aaron was located near the Nabatean city of Petra was already mentioned by Josephus, and followed by Eusebius and Jerome in the 4th century AD. The Vita of St Stephen the Sabaite (8th century) recorded Mar Haroun; possibly a monastery on Jabal Haroun. . . . In 1217, Magister Thetmarus noted a church there, in which two Greek Christian monks still lived.

Currently, the peak of the mountain is occupied by the mid-14th century Muslim shrine (weli) with Aaron’s cenotaph. In addition to the early descriptions by Palmer and Wiegand, the most recent one is sby R. Schick, G. Peterman and K.W. Russell in 1996, which concentrated on the ruined architectural complex located on a plateau at about 4,230 feet above sea level, and about 230 feet below the peak. They concluded that the ruins should probably be identified with a monastery of Saint Aaron. This identification is also supported by the Papyrus Petra inv. 6 (AD 573), which mentions ‘the House of the Saint High-Priest Aaron’ outside Petra. . . . Combined with the religious tradition and the remains on the plateau, this would strongly suggest that the latter should be identified as the Monastery/Pilgrimage Center of Saint Aaron. . . .

. . .

Apparently, the complex represents a pilgrimage center related to the veneration of St Aaron, and associated with the monastic presence. It resembles a monatery of a cœnobium type, usually erected next to a memorial church which generally served the needs of pilgrims.

(Avraham Negev and Shimon Gibson, ed., Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land [London: Continuum, 2005], pp. 251-2)

So, I discovered, not only was the Prophet Aaron venerated actively at one point, there was a monastery dedicated to him that either housed, or was near to, his tomb. In other words, his relics were apparently preserved!

Although not possessing the complete works of Josephus (I’ve got an ancient Penguin Classics edition of The Jewish War), I looked up the Antiquities (IV.4.7) online, and found this:

Now when this purification, which their leader made upon the mourning for his sister, as it has been now described, was over, he caused the army to remove and to march through the wilderness and through Arabia; and when he came to a place which the Arabians esteem their metropolis, which was formerly called Arce, but has now the name of Petra, at this place, which was encompassed with high mountains, Aaron went up one of them in the sight of the whole army, Moses having before told him that he was to die, for this place was over against them. He put off his pontifical garments, and delivered them to Eleazar his son, to whom the high priesthood belonged, because he was the elder brother; and died while the multitude looked upon him. He died in the same year wherein he lost his sister, having lived in all a hundred twenty and three years. He died on the first day of that lunar month which is called by the Athenians Hecatombaeon, by the Macedonians Lous, but by the Hebrews Abba [a cursory look for the meaning of this date suggests the July dates for St Aaron may be closer to his actual repose than any others].

Of course, Josephus is closely basing his account on Numbers 20:22-9, but he goes further in identifying the biblical ‘Mount Hor’ with a site overlooking Petra. This identification seems to be taken for granted in the one comprehensive ‘Bible dictionary’ I possess (the limits of my library really begin to appear!), F.N. Peloubet’s apparent abridgement of that of Sir William Smith and J.M. Fuller. Peloubet’s entry has:

The mountain on which Aaron died. . . . Mount Hor is situated on the eastern side of the great valley of the Arabah, the highest and most conspicuous of the whole range of the sandstone mountains of Edom, having close beneath it on its eastern side the mysterious city of Petra. It is now the Jebel Nebi-Harûn, ‘the mountain of the prophet Aaron.’. . . The mountain is marked far and near by its double top, which rises like a huge castellated building from a lower base, and is surmounted by a circular dome of the tomb of Aaron, a distinct white spot on the dark red surface of the mountain. (F.N. Peloubet and Alice D. Adams, Peloubet’s Bible Dictionary, Based Upon the Foundation Laid by William Smith [Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1974], pp. 261-2)

Well, it would be nice to know what sort of hymns and services they had for the Saint at the monastery, or to see the icons they would have had, or even to know what date they observed for the commemoration. Alas, I’m afraid all of these things ‘have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow’. But at least I’ve got just one more thing to hold onto as a token of my Saint, with whom I consent gladly to be stuck!

(The icon above is a 17th-c. work housed at the Saris Museum in Bardejov, Slovakia.)

[Read Part I of this post here.]

On Being Named for the Prophet Aaron, Part I

When I first became Orthodox, back in January of 1996, I made the fateful decision to keep the name my parents gave me: Aaron. I’m sure part of my reasoning was that I wasn’t really familiar enough with the Saints to choose one that I felt a connection with. Add to this my then priest’s fairly casual attitude about the whole thing, and I felt downright silly about it. It was easier just not to make an issue out of this name business.

A few times I’ve been tempted to regret that decision. For one thing, the original Aaron, the Prophet Moses’s brother and high priest, is one of those Old Testament figures whose faults seem to have been recorded more readily than his virtues. He’s remembered primarily for having given in to the Israelites when they wanted to make a golden calf to worship while the Prophet Moses was up on the mountain with God (see Exodus 32). In countries like Greece and Russia, and even sometimes in the US, people often assume I’m Jewish. Furthermore, I get a little envious when I see friends celebrating vigils, venerating relics, etc., of their patron Saints, whereas the Prophet Aaron doesn’t even have a troparion all to himself, or a definite nameday. This last has been especially frustrating—I was originally told I was supposed to celebrate the Sunday of the Forefathers, then I noticed the St Herman calendar listed a date in March, then I discovered the Greek Menaion mentions him with his more famous brother on 4 September (at least in the Holy Transfiguration Monastery’s The Great Horologion [Boston: HTM, 1997], p. 242), the date I finally decided on since it’s close to my birthday anyway. Then, in the course of doing some research for this post, I discovered that the Prophet Aaron is listed on 1 July in an early Irish martyrology (P.J.C. Field, ‘Gildas and the City of the Legions’, The Heroic Age, Issue 1—Early Arthurian Tradition: Text and Context, Spring/Summer 1999)!

There have been a couple of encouraging moments, particularly when I’m among monks. I remember one old Athonite told me I had a φοβερό όνομα, an ‘awesome’ or ‘fearful name’ (I'm not sure if he intended one or the other connotation, or both). Another time, a couple of excited monks introduced me to a chanter at their monastery named ‘Father Moses’, saying that we were brothers. It was some consolation discovering George Herbert's beautiful poem, 'Aaron'. But generally speaking, I’ve begun to think that perhaps I got the short end of the stick.

Since there is so little veneration of the brother of Moses, I’ve kept a watchful eye out for any other saintly Aarons just so I could find more fodder for veneration. One of the first I came across was Abba Aaron of Philae in Egypt (2nd half of the 4th c.), whose life and miracles are told at some length in Paphnutius’s Histories of the Monks of Upper Egypt, III.86-140 (trans. Tim Vivian, Histories of the Monks of Upper Egypt & the Life of Onnophrius, by Paphnutius [Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1993], pp. 114-41). He’s a great desert father (Vivian observes that his disciple, Abba Isaac, ‘unlike the modern reader, shows absolutely no surprise at finding Aaron naked in the desert with a millstone tied around his neck’—p. 37), but unfortunately his cultus does not seem ever to have caught on. I know of no commemoration date or hymnography for him.

The next St Aaron—the British martyr, who suffered with St Julius under a Roman persecution in perhaps the early 4th century (?)—was at one time more venerated than the Egyptian monk. The earliest source for him is St Gildas the Wise, who tells us precious little except that the Holy Martyrs Aaron and Julius were identified with ‘the city of the legions’ and that they ‘were tormented with divers sufferings, and their limbs were racked in such unheard of ways, that they, without delay, erected the trophies of their glorious martyrdom even in the gates of the city of Jerusalem’ (J.A. Giles, trans.; from the Internet Medieval Source Book). St Gildas is concerned, however, that access to their shrine has been hindered, which suggests that whether or not ‘trophies’ had been erected in Jerusalem, people were making pilgrimages to the site of the martyrdom to venerate the martyrs. They are given a date of commemoration (22 July) in the 9th-c. Martyrology compiled by Florus of Lyon (a date given, according to Alban Butler, to another St Aaron as well—of Brittany), and are even invoked in the marginalia of a 9th-c. manuscript—copied by an unknown Irish monk—of Priscian’s Institutiones Grammaticæ at the famous Abbey of St Gall in Switzerland (see Field). According to the Our Sunday Visitor’s Encyclopedia of Saints, however, they are commemorated on 1 July (Matthew Bunson, et al., Our Sunday Visitor's Encyclopedia of Saints, rev. ed. [Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 2003], p. 23), the date Field says is that of the Prophet Aaron in at least one early martyrology. My favourite online Orthodox calendar, based, I believe, on the St Herman calendar, also supports this date.

The third St Aaron I’ve turned up is St Aaron of Aleth (†543-4?), in Brittany. He is most well-known in connection with St Malo, one of the Seven Founder Saints of Brittany. St Malo—according to the Catholic Encyclopedia—had been a disciple of St Brendan the Navigator and a companion on his legendary sea journeys before travelling to France and placing himself under the eldership of St Aaron. St Malo discovered the latter serving as abbot of a monastery on a small island, eventually named for St Aaron, opposite the town of Aleth, just off the coast of Brittany. When, much later, the bishopric of Aleth was transferred to the island, the whole town followed suit, becoming the town of St Malo. According to Alban Butler, St Aaron of Aleth is commemorated on 22 July, the same date given by Florus of Lyon’s Martyrology for Ss Aaron and Julius of Britain (see Field).

The other Aarons I’ve found very little about. Apparently there was a Cluniac, St Aaron of Cracow (†1059), who was a disciple of St Odilo and became abbot of a Benedictine monastery in Poland, and later, the first archbishop of Cracow. He is especially venerated in Cracow and by Polish Benedictines, who commemorate him on 9 October (see Bunson, p. 23). There is a passing reference to an Elder Aaron at Zadonsk Monastery in the 18th century, who prophesied that the Mother of God would not allow St Tikhon to leave the monastery (Archbishop Philaret (Gumilevsky) of Chernigov, ‘Appendix B: The Life of St Tikhon’, Journey to Heaven: Counsels on the Particular Duties of Every Christian, by St Tikhon of Zadonsk, trans. Fr George D. Lardas [Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1994], p. 208). Finally, I seem to recall St Seraphim (Sobolev) the New of Sofia speaking to an Elder Aaron before leaving Russia. I cannot currently discover this reference, however, which is not mentioned in the Orthodox America article here (any help would be appreciated!).

(The icon at the top is a detail of a fresco by Lasha Kintsurashvili, a Georgian Orthodox Christian and one of my favourite contemporary iconographers.)

To be continued . . . [UPDATE: One can read Part II of this post here.]