'Quickly to Saint Elias'

Today, 20 July on the Church’s calendar, we celebrate the memory of the Prophet Elijah the Tishbite (believed to have lived in the 9th century BC). I did a full post on St Elijah way back in 2009 when I was still a relatively new blogger. This will not be a full post in the old Logismoi style, but merely a couple of things I thought of posting related to the Prophet. 

First of all, it has long been noted that St Elijah has been taken as a type of the Christian monk. William Harmless has, for instance, pointed out the Elijah typology in St Athanasius’s famous Vita Antonii (which David Hicks at the CiRCE conference called his favourite book by St Athanasius): 

The most significant biblical type for Antony is Elijah. Athanasius says that Antony ‘used to tell himself that from the career of the prophet Elijah, as from a mirror, the ascetic must always acquire knowledge of his own life’ (VA 7). [1] Like Elijah, Antony is called a ‘man of God’ (VA 70; cf. 1 Kgs 17:18; 2 Kgs 1:9-13). Like Elijah, he dwells in the desert and is described as ‘seated in his mountain’ (VA 59, 60, 66, 84, 93; cf. 2 Kgs 1:9). Like Elijah, he win [sic] duels against those who worship false gods and foretells the death of a military commander who comes out to the desert to seize him (VA 86; cf. 1 Kgs 18, 2 Kgs 1). In 2 Kings, Elijah hands down his cloak to his disciple Elisha; in the Life, Antony has two Elishas, so to speak, handing down one sheepskin and his cloak to Athanasius and the other sheepskin to Serapion (VA 91; cf. 2 Kgs 2:13 ff.). In the preface, Athanasius says that he learned all that he could of Antony from a longtime disciple who had ‘poured water over his hands’, an allusion to 2 Kgs 3:11, in which Elisha is described as pouring water into the hands of Elijah. This Elisha-like informant was, presumably, Serapion (VA praef.). [2] 

Somewhat along the lines of the comment Harmless cites from VA 7, St Macarius the Great seems to find a deeper significance to the connection between the Prophet Elijah and the monastic life than the external desert life per se. In Homily 6.2, St Macarius writes: 

It is not becoming a servant of God to live in a state of disturbance, but rather in all tranquility and wisdom as the Prophet said, ‘Unto whom shall I look but unto him that is meek and quiet and that trembles at my words?’ (Is 66:2). And in the times of Moses and Elijah we find that in the visions granted them, even though there was a great display of trumpets and powers before the majesty of the Lord, still, amidst all of these things, the coming of the Lord was discerned and he appeared in peace and tranquillity and quietness. For it says: ‘Lo, a still, silent voice and the Lord was in it’ (1 Kgs 19:12). This proves that the Lord’s rest is in peace and tranquillity. For whatever foundation a person lays and whatever beginning he makes, he will continue in that until the end. [3] 

So the experience of the Prophet Elijah on Mt Horeb is taken as a model of the contemplative (theoretic) life—indeed, of hesychia itself. 

It is interesting to note that in the West, the model of the Prophet Elijah eventually became connected especially with an order that—while it later became part of the movement of mendicant friars, along with Franciscans and Dominicans—was originally a collection of hermits living in the Holy Land on Mt Carmel itself during the Crusades. As Thomas Merton observes: 

The Carmelites were originally hermits. And of course their life was the traditional hermit life known to the East from the earliest centuries of the Church. They lived as the desert fathers had lived eight hundred years earlier....They were in fact simple laymen, living as solitaries in a loosely connected group, in caves and huts on the side of Mt Carmel. Their manner of life was not yet institutionalized, and even when [c. 1209-1214] they first asked for a Rule, from the hands of the [Latin] Patriarch of Jerusalem [Albert of Jerusalem], that Rule was, as we shall see, deliberately kept simple and uncomplicated....In the words of the Rule itself, [the purpose of the Carmelite life] was: ‘Let each one remain in his cell or near it, meditating day and night on the Law of the Lord, and vigilant in prayer, unless he is legitimately occupied in something else.’ [4] 

And on the connection with the Prophet Elijah, ‘the symbolic adoption by the Carmelites of the prophet Elias as their “Founder”’: 

It is quite true that the hermits living on the slopes of Mt Carmel, near the ‘spring of Elias’, where the prophet himself had prayed and dwelt alone, and where the ‘sons of the prophets’ had had a ‘school’, [5] could themselves claim to be descendants of the ancient prophets. It is quiet true that Elias, in a broad sense, was the ‘founder’ of this way of life since he had in fact been the inspiration of those countless generations that had lived there in the places hallowed by his memory and stamped with his indelible character. [6] 

Finally, Merton notes that the Carmelites too found a deep typology in the Prophet of what appears to an Orthodox reader as an almost hesychastic contemplative experience of their own: 

The author of that moving ancient text on the spirit of Carmelite prayer and contemplation, the Institution of the first Fathers, interprets the retirement of Elias in typical medieval style. To hide in the torrent of Carith (2 Kgs 17:3) is to embrace the ascetical life, which leads to the perfection of charity by one’s own efforts, aided by the grace of God. To drink of the torrent is to passively receive the secret light of contemplation from God and to be inwardly transformed by His wisdom: ‘...to taste, in a certain manner, in our heart, and to experience in our spirit the power of the divine presence and the sweetness of the glory from on high, not only after death but even in this mortal life. That is what is really meant by drinking from the torrent of the joy of God...’ [7] 

One wonders if these Latin pilgrims had perhaps learned something from Orthodox monks that may have been living in the area. 

Finally, to bring the consideration of St Elijah down to the level of the ordinary life of traditional Christian laymen, in her fascinating book, Cosmos, Life & Liturgy in a Greek Orthodox Village, Juliet du Boulay writes: 

...there is a hint, in a poem to the Prophet Elias (Elijah) quoted later, that mountain tops are regarded as openings to the heavenly world. This prophet customarily has his churches on the tops of hills and mountains, so the invocation of Elias is the invocation of one who, as the inhabitant of the mountain peaks, lives at the point where earth meets heaven. [8] 

Eventually, du Boulay makes good on her promise to quote the poem, sung by young girls who perform a traditional folk ritual in traditional Greek villages on 1 May: 

Quickly, quickly,
Quickly to Saint Elias;
And Saint Elias to the sky
So that God will send rain
For the wheat, for the barley,
For all the grains of God.
Holes, holes for the wine,
Channels, channels for the water.
The farmer with his mattock
To stop the water running out. [9] 

In du Boulay’s words: 

The song takes the form of a call to the village to appeal to the Prophet Elias, previously noted as having his churches on mountain tops in reflection of his vision of God on Mt Horeb, so that he will intercede ‘for all the grains of God’, and its structure is parallel with a similar prayer made every week in the Divine Liturgy during the Litany of Peace: ‘For temperate weather, for abundance of the fruits of the earth, and for peaceful seasons, let us pray to the Lord.’ The structure in both is of an intercession made directly to a holy figure, and what is prayed for, translated as temperate weather (εὐκρασία ἀέρων), means precisely a good mixture or a good balance of the atmosphere, whose consequence is fruitfulness. Thus the symbolic language, which could be ambiguous on its own, is in the song and the mime that accompanies it made into a pattern of words and actions which is continuous with the pattern of prayer offered in church. [10] 

Although I’ve never witnessed this little ritual, I did have the good fortune once to attend a Divine Liturgy on the Feast of the Prophet Elijah at one of these little hilltop churches du Boulay mentions. My chief memories are of a woolly Pontian priest whose Greek dialect I couldn’t understand at all, and of the lingering breakfast in the cool shade just outside of the church. 

[1] This remarkable comment is found on p. 37 of Robert Gregg’s translation—St Athanasius the Great, The Life of Antony & The Letter to Marcellinus, tr. Robert C. Gregg (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1980), p. 37. 

[2] William Harmless, Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism (Oxford: Oxford U, 2004), p. 70. I've added the citations from VA and from Scripture to the text, whereas Harmless had them in endnotes. 

[3] St Macarius the Great, Pseudo-Macarius: The Fifty Spiritual Homilies & The Great Letter, tr. George A. Maloney (NY: Paulist, 1992), p. 76. 

[4] Thomas Merton, ‘The Primitive Carmelite Ideal’, Disputed Questions (NY: The New American Library, 1965), p. 168. 

[5] Merton notes here: ‘Schola not only in the sense of a place where one learns, but in the more original and etymological sense of a place of leisure, quiet and retirement, where one can think deeply’ (ibid., p. 169, n. 2). 

[6] Ibid., p. 169. 

[7] Ibid., p. 172. 

[8] Juliet du Boulay, Cosmos, Life, & Liturgy in a Greek Orthodox Village (Limni, Evia, Greece: Denise Harvey, 2009), pp. 33-4. 

[9] Ibid., p. 88. 

[10] Ibid., p. 89.

'Before it's light / the birds waken'—Wendell Berry & The Northern Thebaid

Fresh from hearing Wendell Berry speak at the CiRCE conference in Louisville last week, I was reading one of his poems on the porch yesterday—‘The Handing Down’, which centers around an aging man, his memories of the past and his thoughts of the future. At one point, in section seven, Berry writes: 

He has dreamed of a town 

fit for the abiding of souls 

and bodies that might live forever. 

He has seen it as in a far-off 

white and gold evening 

of summer, the black flight 

of swifts turning above it 

in the air. There’s a clarity 

in which he has not become clear, 

his body dragging a shadow, 

half hidden in it. [1] 

These lines remind me of two accounts of visions from the Lives of the Northern Russian monastic Saints: The Northern Thebaid. Both of these Saints spent a considerable amount of time living a semi-eremitic life in the forests before attracting disciples and founding monasteries that later grew into enormous institutions—really, small cities in the wilderness around which secular cities later developed. Following the order of Berry’s images, I’ll begin with St Cyril of White Lake (Belozersky): 

...Once, when he was singing the Akathist before the Icon of the Theotokos and had reached the eighth kontakion: ‘Seeing the strange Nativity, let us become strangers to the world and transport our minds to heaven’—suddenly he heard a voice: ‘Cyril, go forth from here to White Lake (Belo-ozero); there I have prepared a place for you where you can be saved.’ Together with this voice there shone a great light from the northern side; the Saint opened the window of his cell and saw as if by a finger the place shown to him where now the monastery stands. His heart was filled with joy from the voice and the vision, and all night he remained in prayer; but this night was for him already as most bright day. [2] 

The old man’s vision of a town ‘fit for the abiding of souls / and bodies that might live forever’, which he sees ‘as in a far-off / white and gold evening / of summer’, recalls for me St Cyril’s vision of light indicating a future monastery. The connection works, whether it is the heavenly city itself that the man sees, since the monastery is a type of that city, or another earthly city that, like the monastery, as also only a type. But it was actually ‘the black flight / of swifts turning above it / in the air’ that first reminded me of The Northern Thebaid. In the Life of St Sergius of Radonezh, we read: 

It happened late one night that the Saint was keeping vigil, performing the usual rule and praying for the brotherhood, when he heard a voice calling, ‘Sergius.’ He was astonished, and, after praying, he opened the window of his cell and beheld a marvellous vision. An extraordinary radiance shone in the heavens; the night sky was illumined by its brilliance, exceeding the light of day. A second time the voice called, ‘Sergius! You pray for your children; God has heard your prayer. Behold what a great number of monks has come together in the Name of the Holy Trinity, in your fold, and under your guidance.’ 

The Saint looked and beheld a multitude of beautiful birds flying not only to the monastery, but all around the monastery; and again he heard the voice, saying, ‘As many birds as you see, by so many will your flock of disciples increase; and after your time they will not grow less if they will desire to follow in your footsteps.’...[3] 

In Berry’s poem, there is no clear or necessary connection between the vision of the town and the ‘swifts turning above it / in the air’. They may just be an incidental detail, a touch of nature added to an otherwise otherworldly experience. But for the Saint, the birds clearly signify something. Indeed, the voice he hears tells him outright that there is an analogy between the ‘multitude of beautiful birds’ and the ‘flock of disciples’ that will multiply and fill his monastery. It is an instance of Nature herself turned prophet. 

But is there any reason to believe that Berry’s birds in this stanza may be connected with the town? Are they, like St Sergius’s birds, a symbolic image of souls? Perhaps. Just a little bit earlier in the poem, in section five, Berry writes: 

Before it’s light 

the birds waken, and begin 

singing in the dark trees 

around the house, among the leaves 

over the dampened roofs 

of the still town 

and in the country thickets 

for miles. Their voices 

reach to the end of the dark. [4] 

Now, I think there can be no doubt that these are literal birds. But they may also be fortelling the birds of section seven, indicating, it may be, their function. For this passage, which is essentially about an early morning vigil, reminds me of another poem, but one which continues the connection we see in The Northern Thebaid. In his ‘After the Night Office—Gethsemani Abbey’, Thomas Merton writes: 

Praises and canticles anticipate 

Each day the singing bells that wake the sun, 

But now our psalmody is done. 

Our hasting souls outstrip the day: 

Now, before dawn, they have their noon. [5] 

So the Trappist monks of Kentucky, like the birds, are arising to sing before dawn. Of course, they are inside the abbey church, not outside in the trees. But in the final stanza the poet evokes briefly the image of the land around their monastery, via its buildings: 

But now the lances of the morning 

Fire all their gold against the steeple and the water-tower. [6] 

In Allen Tate’s words, ‘Vision, giving us clear visual objects, through physical sight, moving steadily upward towards its anagogical transfiguration, is the first matrix of the vast analogical structure.’ [7] So perhaps Berry’s birds singing before the dawn suggest something of what the inhabitants of this town ‘fit for the abiding of souls / and bodies that might live forever’ must be up to. For what better preparation can we find for eternal life than doxology? And what else does the pilgrim discover as it rises ‘towards its anagogical transfiguration’ than the throngs of souls and the cœlestial choir singing the praises of the Most High? 

[1] Wendell Berry, Collected Poems, 1957-1982 (NY: North Point-Farrar, 2001), p. 43. 

[2] Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose) & Hieromonk Herman (Podmoshensky), eds. & tr., The Northern Thebaid: Monastic Saints of the Russian North (Forestville, CA: Fr Seraphim Rose Foundation-St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1995), p. 55. 

[3] Ibid., p. 31. 

[4] Berry, p. 41. 

[5] Thomas Merton, Selected Poems of Thomas Merton, enlarged ed. (NY: New Directions, 1967), p. 48. 

[6] Ibid., p. 49. 

[7] Allen Tate, ‘The Symbolic Imagination’, The Southern Critics: An Anthology, ed. Glenn C. Arbery (Wilmington, DE: ISI, 2010), p. 291.

'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.

Liturgical Consummation, Part II: St Venantius Fortunatus

It’s been a while since I posted the first installment in this series, so even faithful readers (if I have any!) may have forgotten about this. But this is the second example from the excised three-part illustration of my thesis about the ‘liturgical consummation of literary genre’ from a forth-coming paper entitled ‘Likeness & Approach: M.M. Bakhtin, C.S. Lewis, & the Liturgical Consummation of Literary Genre.’ For a little more background and context, see the first post, on St Ephrem the Syrian. 

b) St Venantius Fortunatus 

In Inferno XXXIV.1, [1] Dante pays a back-handed compliment to the hymn Vexilla Regis of St Venantius Fortunatus (c. 530-c. 600)—still sung during Holy Week in some churches—by using its first line to refer ironically to the figure of Satan. Samuel Duffield calls it ‘surely one of the most stirring strains in our hymnology’, [2] and Christopher Dawson has written of St Venantius that ‘the moment he is touched by the liturgical spirit his tired rhetoric is miraculously transformed into the mighty music of the Vexilla Regis’. [3] The Merovingian poet uses the four-lined stanzaic form in iambic dimeter characteristic of St Ambrose of Milan. [4] Though the meter is nominally classical, the form itself signifies the initial cracks separating Christian poetics from the rigid forms of the ancient genres. Charles Williams quotes the judgment of one historian of Late Antiquity on the old meters in Latin: 

The aristocracy of Greek metres, with their delicate music of quantitative syllables, had maintained a precarious hold over Latin verse, the natural roots of which were fixed deep in the stressed peasant rhythms of threshing-floor, spinning-wheel, and country dance, the gnomic saws of the rustic oracle, and the heavy tramp of the marching legionary. [5] 

In other words, St Ambrose’s simple, stress-based use of the dimeter, [6] employed here in St Venantius’s triumphant hymn, is a deliberate eschewing of the ancient generic verse-forms; it is an art ‘subordinated…to the new requirements of the liturgy and [written] for the Church and the people’. [7] Such poetry is already, in its form, in its use of the Latin language, taking into account the voices outside that of the poet—it is again a ‘chorus’ like the poetry of St Ephrem—and the ‘low’ forms that properly reflect their discourse. It leaves behind monoglossia and the ‘literature of ruling social groups’. [8] Helen Waddell writes, ‘It is the little byways [of poetry] that Fortunatus made accessible to men for whom the Roman road of the epic was too stately’. [9] His poetry inaugurates a ‘new authenticity’ and makes available new subjects, unknown to the ancient genres. [10] 

These observations should be borne out in an analysis of the first and fourth stanzas of the hymn in question: 

The standards of the King go forth, 

Shines out the blazoned mystery, 

The Cross whereon the Lord of men 

As man was hung. 

O Tree of beauty and of light, 

With royal purple dyed, 

Well wert thou chosen then to bear 

That sacred load. [11] 

‘The standards of the King’ bring the worshipper into the realm of nearness by likeness, of which royalty is perhaps the most obvious example, but it must not be forgotten that a royal procession is after all a popular spectacle. More importantly, the equation of the vexilla with the Cross [12] (made in the Latin in the second line rather than the third) signifies the ultimate way of approach. In the height of irony, ‘the Lord of men / As man was hung’ (literally, ‘the author of flesh as flesh’). The Christian God accepted the most ignoble death that the Greco-Roman world had to offer, and it is by imitating Him and following the way of the Cross that the Christian attains to His own royal dignity. Furthermore, in the paradox of the Arbor decora et fulgida (4.1), the Cross itself, while an object ‘of beauty and of light’, is still a humble piece of rough-hewn wood. In Waddell’s words, ‘[The Cross of Vexilla Regis] is not as the Latins took it, the symbol and the sign: to Fortunatus, it is still the tree as it grew in the forest, foredoomed to its great and terrible destiny’. [13] On Waddell’s reading of the Cross as Tree, St Venantius’s poetic voice teems with the chorus of the Germanic peoples of Northern Europe, represented by Radegunde, who ‘was his finest inspiration’. [14] In this choral perspective, even the lowly trees of the earth are lifted up in being chosen to bear the Lord and to ‘shine out’ His mystery by becoming a royal standard. Just like the tree that fashioned the Cross, the human being who must bear his or her own cross is not near to God by likeness, but is able to become near to Him by precisely this approach. 

[1] On Dante’s use of Vexilla Regis, see John Freccero, Dante: The Poetics of Conversion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1986), pp. 169-70. 

[2] Samuel Willoughby Duffield, The Latin Hymn-Writers & Their Hymns (NY: Funk & Wagnalls, 1889), p. 93. 

[3] Christopher Dawson, Religion & the Rise of Western Culture: Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Edinburgh, 1948-1949 (Garden City, NY: Image, 1950), pp. 38-9. 

[4] Carolinne White, Early Christian Latin Poets (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 45-6. 

[5] Qtd. in Charles Williams, The Descent of the Dove: A Short History of the Holy Spirit in the Church (Vancouver: Regent, 2002), p. 80. 

[6] Giulio Cattin points out that in St Ambrose himself, the change is still not complete: 

With Ambrose, hymnody took on a new and definitive shape; the short line of four iambs (each consisting of a short and a long syllable) is linked to ‘quantitative’ metrics, but already attention is being paid to the position of accent in the line, and a process of evolution is under way tending first to make long and accented syllables coincide, and ultimately to yield the complete predominance of the tonic accent as the constructive principle of versification. 

(Guilio Cattin, Music of the Middle Ages I, tr. Steven Botterill (Cambridge: Cambridge, 1984), p. 18) 

[7] Dawson, p. 40. 

[8] Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Michael Holquist, tr. Caryl Emerson & Michael Holquist (Austin: U of Texas, 1998), p. 4. 

[9] Helen Waddell, The Wandering Scholars (London: Constable, 1958), p. 28. 

[10] Gian Biagio Conte, Latin Literature: A History, tr. Joseph B. Solodow, rev. Down Fowler & Glenn W. Most (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1999), p. 723. 

[11] Helen Waddell, More Latin Lyrics from Virgil to Milton, ed. Dame Felicitas Corrigan (NY: Norton, 1977), p. 123. Here is the Latin text of these stanzas, as given in ibid., p. 122: 

Vexilla regis prodeunt, 

fulget crucis mysterium, 

quo carne carnis conditor 

suspensus est patibulo. 

Arbor decora et fulgida, 

ornata regis purpura, 

electa digno stipite 

tam sancta membra tangere! 

[12] Duffield, in his rendering of the second line as ‘The cross upon them [the banners] cheers the sky’ (93), seems to miss the point of these lines. St Venantius is not referring to a symbolic cross emblazoned on the royal banners, but to the True Cross itself, being carried in solemn procession to the church at Poitiers. Thus, the ‘royal banners’ is an ironic, or alternately, a theological reference to the relic. 

[13] Waddell, Scholars, p. 28. 

[14] Ibid., p. 29.

Hesychasts & Books

I have tried to keep this post brief, as I had a number of other things I wanted to do this afternoon, but I did want to try to post something. Maybe this will have to be a two-parter. In his Byzantine Theology, as elsewhere, Fr John Meyendorff contrasts the teachings and figures of the hesychast movement of the 14th century with so-called Byzantine ‘humanists’. Having listed and discussed a number of representatives of the latter category, he writes, ‘For all these intellectuals imbued with “Greek wisdom”, Palamism [1] symbolized a rejection of secular humanism.’ [2] Of course, Fr Meyendorff’s characterisation of the hesychast controversy as essentially a conflict between Byzantine humanists and anti-humanists has been, I think rightly, challenged by a number of Orthodox theologians. But I accept that hesychast teaching did indeed conflict with a certain type of humanism, and that this might have been part of the problem for some of those involved on the anti-hesychast side.

I note this comment of Fr Meyendorff’s, however, because I reread this passage while in the course of doing a little blog-related research that led me to an apparently very contradictory statement. In Thomas Butler’s fantastic anthology of texts and translations, Monumenta Bulgarica, he introduces a piece by one of the prominent hesychastic figures of the Slavic world, Gregory Camblak, with the following observations: ‘Gregory received his early education at the Monastery of the Holy Trinity at Turnovo. He was taught the reading and close analysis of Greek and Church Slavonic texts, an approach to learning similar to that used by Latin humanists of the time.’ [3]

Now, ‘humanism’ is a notoriously slippery word, [4] and it is obvious that there are two slightly different, if not entirely unrelated, definitions of ‘humanism’ being employed here. The distinctive mark of ‘humanism’ in Fr Meyendorff’s sense seems to be ‘considering Greek philosophy as a criterion of theological thought’. [5] In other words, humanism is primarily philosophical. Butler, on the other hand, is talking about the study of texts. 

But that study of texts is a normal part of the understanding of ‘humanism’ in the West, and it is quite pronounced among the hesychasts. In fact, for a movement said to be opposed to ‘humanism’ even in such a particular sense as it seems to bear for Fr Meyendorff, the hesychasts appear to place an extraordinary emphasis on education and textual study. The Slavic hesychasts, in particular, were well-educated, ‘knew Greek and worked intensively on translations of Greek texts.’ Anthony-Emil Tachiaos goes on to say: 

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. Their direct or indirect contact with Gregory Palamas and Patriarch Philotheos Kokkinos and their knowledge of these two men’s profound theological work, in which a high level of thought and subtle analysis were expressed through complex theological and philosophical terminology, compelled them to master this terminology so that they might better follow the discussions which were going on around them. [6] 

The content of hesychastic teaching depended on language, and therefore on texts. Butler’s comment on Gregory Camblak presupposes this, as does an interesting footnote of J.M.E. Featherstone on a passage from the Schemamonk Mytrofan’s biography of St Paisius Velichkovsky. Fr Mytrofan writes, ‘I was once in his cell when there was a conversation about books, for it was my obedience to copy books of the fathers according to the rules of grammatical orthography.’ [7] Featherstone gives the Slavonic—which I transliterate, po khudozhestvu gramaticheskago pravopisaniia—and then comments, ‘The technical term for the systematic correction of Slavonic manuscripts, which had been one of the favorite activites [sic] of fourteenth-century hesychasts in Bulgaria.’ [8] In other words, not only was detailed literary activity one of the favorite activities of the hesychasts, they had a standard, ‘technical’ term for this activity. 

St Paisius is of course a much later figure than the original hesychast movement, but he is the heir and disciple of this movement in more ways than one. The biography is very much preoccupied with books. St Paisius is said to have ‘such a gift for copying books as is rarely found anywhere in the world.’ [9] He is said to have read ‘holy Scripture, the Old and New Testaments, Chrysostom’s book, the Pearl, about the unfathomable mysteries of theology, the books of Ephrem and Dorotheus and others’ at the age of ten. [10] Books even become part of the physical setting of the biography. Fr Mytrofan writes, ‘The bed upon which he rested was strewn all about with books: innumerable lexica, the Greek Bible, the Slavonic Bible, Greek and Slavonic grammars, the book from which he was translating, and in the midst of all of them, a candle.’ [11] But none of this is surprising in the light of St Paisius’s teaching about books. In a passage from the Optina edition of the biography, a letter of the great hesychast is quoted as saying: 

I beg you, Father, abandon your empty and vain idea of not reading the patristic books. I praise your way of life and reverence your ascetic labors and receive benefit from your being (on the Holy Mountain). But to all your ascetic labors it is necessary to add understanding and discernment, lest all your labor be in vain. Wherefore, if you wish to be saved yourself and show your disciples the royal path, the doing of Christ’s commandments, which lead to the Kingdom of Heaven, then cling with all your soul to the reading of books. [12] 

Interestingly, in Fr Mytrofan’s portrait of his master, the following of this path leads to a passage that points us once again to the whole issue of philosophy and the life of prayer and asceticism. 

When we looked upon his face, we kept our ears always near his mouth, even as the Athenian philosophers of old did. For whenever they saw someone who excelled in wisdom, they desired to talk with him, and the eyes and ears of all were fixed upon him in their desire to hear some new bit of wisdom. How much more were our eyes fixed upon our blessed philosopher! [13] 

Besides its preoccupation with texts, hesychast humanism also reappropriates the idea of St Nilus’s ‘philosopher’, which I discussed here. Indeed, as I have suggested, the two are closely connected. In Tachiaos’s words: 

The most notable exponents of this movement were Gregory Sinaites, Gregory Palamas, and Philotheos Kokkinos, who, with their followers, engaged in wide-ranging literary activity. These men, and particularly Palamas and Kokkinos, were deeply versed in theological literature, and with their knowledge of classical philosophers and writers made extensive use of the classical language to express ideas which clearly opposed undogmatic liberal humanism. To them humanism was a sterile retrogression, which ignored the hard road the Empire had traveled for centuries in its efforts to guard the faith against the distractions of rationalism and Oriental mysticism. The Hesychast movement, represented by the most brilliant and spiritually dynamic Byzantine personalities, successfully prevailed in the spiritual life of the Byzantine Empire and breathed a new vitality into its final century. [14] 

This may seem rather obscure, but Tachiaos is pointing out that the hesychasts opposed the particular strand of ‘humanism’ in question because it compromised the faith—in St Nilus’s words, we could say that it tries ‘to philosophize without Christ, who alone has revealed the true philosophy in both His life and His teaching.’ [15] For St Gregory of Sinai, the primary transmitter of hesychasm to the Slavs, ‘A divine philosopher is he who through ascetic purification and noetic contemplation has achieved a direct union with God, and is a true friend of God, in that he esteems and loves the supreme, creative and true wisdom above every other love, wisdom and knowledge.’ [246.] 

[1] I don’t like this term, by the way. I prefer simply ‘hesychasm’. 

 [2] Fr John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends & Doctrinal Themes (NY: Fordham, 1979), p. 106. 

 [3] Thomas Butler, Monumenta Bulgarica: A Bilingual Anthology of Bulgarian Texts from the 9th to the 19th Centuries (Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Slavic, 2004), p. 261. 

 [4] Note that today it can mean anything from a Renaissance intellectual who imitates Cicero’s Latin to an atheist who wants to eliminate Christianity from the public square. 

 [5] Fr Meyendorff, p. 105. 

 [6] Anthony-Emil N. Tachiaos, Cyril & Methodius of Thessalonica: The Acculturation of the Slavs (Crestwood, NY: SVS, 2001), p. 139. 

 [7] J.M.E. Featherstone, tr., The Life of Paisij Velyckovs’kyj (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1989), p. 141.

 [8] Ibid., p. 141. 

 [9] Ibid., p. 141. 

 [10] Ibid., p. 139. 

 [11] Ibid., p. 137. 

 [12] Schema-monk Metrophanes, Blessed Paisius Velichkovsky: The Man Behind the Philokalia, tr. Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose) (Platina, CA: St Paisius-St Herman, 1994), p. 88. 

[13] Featherstone, p. 148. 

 [14] Tachiaos, p. 138. 

 [15] St Nilus the Ascetic, ‘Ascetic Discourse’, The Philokalia: The Complete Text, Vol. 1, tr. G.E.H. Palmer, et al. (London: Faber, 1983), p. 201. 

 [16] St Gregory of Sinai, ‘On Commandments & Doctrines, Warnings & Promises; on Thoughts, Passions & Virtues, & also on Stillness & Prayer: One Hundred & Thirty-Seven Texts’, The Philokalia: The Complete Text, Vol. 4, tr. G.E.H. Palmer, et al. (London: Faber, 1995), p. 201.

St Cyril on Philosophy, Revisited

I actually wrote this post last week, but for some reason it seems our Internet connection woes have not entirely come to an end. Having spent the weekend in a long-needed pilgrimage to Holy Archangels Monastery in Texas, we returned today and my brilliant wife was able to get things working again. So, here you go.

In a post I wrote quite some time ago, I noted an interesting similarity between the definition of philosophy offered by St Cyril the Apostle-to-the-Slavs in his Vita, and two of the definitions of philosophy found in the ‘Philosophical Chapters’ of St John Damascene’s Fount of Knowledge. In connection with St Cyril’s definition, I mentioned that I hoped eventually to read an article devoted entirely to that subject by Ihor Ševčenko. Well, I did indeed finally read Ševčenko’s article, and it more than explains the similarity between St Cyril’s definition and those of St John. Both it seems were drawing on definitions given in various commentaries on Porphyry’s Isagoge, commentaries which served as the standard textbooks in Byzantine philosophical studies. Here is St Cyril’s definition, first in Ševčenko’s translation from the Old Church Slavonic, then the OCS text transliterated, then Ševčenko’s hypothetical Greek version:

Knowledge of things Divine and human, as much as man is able to approach God, for it teaches man by deeds to be in the image and after the likeness of the One who created him. 

I vъprosi ego jedinojǫ, glagolę: filosofe, xotelъ byxъ uvěděti, čьto jestь filosofija. On že skoromь umomь reče abije; božijamъ i člověčamъ věščьmъ razumъ, i jeliko možetъ člověkъ približiti sę boʒě, jako dětělijǫ učitъ člověka po obrazu i po podobiju byti sъtvorъšemu i. 

θείον καὶ ἀνθρωπίνων πραγμάτων γνῶσις, καθ’ὅσον δύναται ἄνθρωπος προσεγγίσαι (πλησιάσαι) θεῷ, ὅτι πράξει διδάσκει ἄνθρωπον κατ’ εἰκόνα καὶ καθ’ ὁμοίωσιν εἶναι τῷ ποιήσαντι (πλάσαντι, κτίσαντι) αὐτόν. [1] 

The first phrase, ‘Knowledge of things Divine and human’, originates with the Stoics, [2]. The second, ‘as much as man is able to approach God’, originates with Plato’s Theaetetus 176 AB. [3] These two phrases had been combined in a definition of philosophy by the 6th- or 7th-c. commentator David, who argued that it had the advantage of encompassing ‘both the subject matter and the purpose of the thing to be defined’. [4] The reference to ‘in the image and after the likeness’ is from the LXX text of Genesis 1:26, and had been combined with the Theaetetus passage by Clement of Alexandria and Origen. [5] With the exception of the Genesis quote, most of the definition St Cyril gives is found in Porphyry’s commentators. 

But one part of the definition that seems slightly less accounted for than the rest is the reference to man imitating God ‘by deeds’—dětělijǫ in the OCS. Ševčenko notes that the word—dětělь in the nominative form—usually represents either Gk praxis or energeia, arguing for praxis in this case because it is the term used in the philosophical manuals. But the use of praxis in the manuals as Ševčenko cites them is not really part of the previous formulae per se for defining ‘philosophy’. The closest they come is David’s comment that ‘the politic philosopher strives to immitate [sic] the Godhead in as much as it is possible for Man, both through knowledge and deeds (kata ten praxin)’, and Ammonius’s comment—‘as has been said, philosophy is the becoming like God according to man’s ability. The one who becomes like God strives to become like Him by use of Reason: he also wants his actions to be his adornment (praxesi kallopizesthai).’ [6] In neither case, however, is the reference to praxis part of the original formula, but rather an add-on or elabouration. 

I emphasise this point because apart from his very careful and—to my mind—irrefutable research on the origins and history of the various components of St Cyril’s definition, at the beginning and end of his article Ševčenko has used this philosophy textbook provenance of the Saint’s statement to make an argument about the historical context of the latter’s personality. I myself can’t help but think, however, that this word praxis might contribute something to our portrait of that personality that Ševčenko has either overlooked or deliberately suppressed. The opening paragraph of his article reads: 

To a cultivated Byzantine of the ninth century, philosophy could mean at least two different things: It could be defined as the ‘discipline of disciplines’ providing first principles for all the branches of knowledge, or it could be conceived as moral perfection based on the ‘true gnosis’ of Being, that is to say, on the tenets of Christianity. [7] In the first case, philosophy meant primarily a technical rational activity, and the philosopher was a learned intellectual, dealing with a precious part of antique heritage which he might use for a better understanding of Christian truths. In the second, philosophy was synonymous with an intense spiritual life: the best philosopher was the ascetic monk, and his ancestors, the first true philosophers, were the disciples of Christ. [8] 

Then, having demonstrated that St Cyril’s definition of philosophy falls into the first category, Ševčenko concludes: ‘From his university years on, St Constantine [Cyril] belonged to the “intellectual” strain in the Byzantine milieu of the ninth century. He was a Christian philosopher-scholar, not a “philosopher” of the monkish ascetic kind.’ [9] 

Ševčenko has the advantage over me of a good deal more learning and access to a good many more books, so I admit there will be an enormous gap between his article and what I am capable of proving in this post. But for a number of reasons, this placing of St Cyril in an intellectual, philosophical as opposed to a spiritual, ascetic tradition does not sit well with me. Of course, it is obvious that St Cyril was not a desert-dwelling hermit, taken up solely with ascesis and unceasing prayer. It is also obvious that he was an intellectual. But this distinction between monks and intellectuals seems a little too neat. Clearly, there were examples of both. The greatest theologian of the 7th century, St Maximus the Confessor, who had an enkyklios paideusis, was a simple monk. St John Damascene, a monk of St Sabas Monastery in the Holy Land, is clearly well acquainted with the philosophical literature of the ‘intellectual milieu’. Perhaps most importantly, St Cyril himself went to a monastery very shortly after completing his studies (more on this below), though he was not tonsured until the end of his life. 

Let us not forget, however, that there was an ancient tradition of association between ascesis and philosophical endeavour. It seems unlikely to me that most philosophers, from Pythagoras and Plato, to the Stoics, right up to Porphyry’s commentators, would have agreed that philosophy was primarily a ‘technical rational activity’. Even if it is pointed out that Porphyry’s Isagoge and its commentators—apparently the object of St Cyril’s studies with St Photius the Great [10]—represent that part of philosophical study that could most justly be characterised as ‘technical rational activity’, logic, Ševčenko himself observes that even for them logic was but a ‘tool’ of philosophy. [11] 

At any rate, according to Douglas Burton-Christie, ‘By the second century CE the philosophical schools were not thought of merely as intellectual schools of thought but as something broader—bioi or ways of life....Conversion to philosophy meant then, as it had for some time in the Greek world,...“a turning from luxury and self indulgence..., to a life of discipline and sometimes to a life of contemplation...”’. [12] This is so true of Porphyry himself, that the very first line of his Vita of his master, Plotinus, notes that the great Alexandrian philosopher ‘seemed ashamed of being in the body’. [13] To quote, once again, C.S. Lewis: 

A world-renouncing, ascetic, and mystical character then marked the most eminent Pagans no less than their Christian opponents. It was the spirit of the age. Everywhere, on both sides, men were turning away from the civic virtues and the sensual pleasures to seek an inner purgation and a supernatural goal. The modern who dislikes the Christian Fathers would have disliked the Pagan philosophers equally, and for similar reasons. [14] 

Note that Lewis links the Fathers and the philosophers together via this ‘world-renouncing, ascetic, and mystical character’. But while for the philosophers, asceticism was, perhaps, the activity of an intellectual elite, [15] for the Fathers it was more or less the way of life of all Christians, including the simple and unlearned. Commitment to Christian faith necessarily entailed some ascesis. One would think that St Cyril and all of his teachers, as members of an intellectual elite and as Christians, would have been doubly committed to the ascetic life. I admitted earlier that St Cyril was not a desert-dwelling hermit, engaged solely in ascesis and unceasing prayer. But that is not to say that he was not occupied at all with ascesis and unceasing prayer. 

Furthermore, recall St Cyril’s definition itself. Is it possible that he or any of the Byzantines, or any of the pagan philosophers for that matter, believed that becoming like God was a ‘technical rational activity’ that required no ascetic struggle? Indeed, to see that they did not I would like to discuss that word praxis that St Cyril incorporates from elabourations of the definitions of philosophy into his own definition proper. 

First, it could be argued that like Ševčenko’s account of ‘philosophy’ in his opening paragraph, the word praxis in the philosophical context, or at least its adjectival form, had at least two meanings. Fr Andrew Louth notes that for Aristotle it simply meant business or activity as opposed to philosophical contemplation, and that even St Gregory the Theologian uses it in that sense. But Evagrius Ponticus used the word to refer to ‘struggle with the demons, a struggle to overcome temptation and subdue the passions’, in other words, ascesis. [16] This is of course the normal meaning of the word in the spiritual writings of the Fathers. 

Now, according to Ševčenko’s distinction between intellectual and monastic ‘philosophy’, and his placing of St Cyril into the former category, Aristotle’s use of praxis would make more sense for a learned intellectual to employ. But even Aristotle would not agree that ‘business’ makes one more like God. If the aim of philosophy is to become like God, Evagrius’s use of praxis makes more sense. Read in the light of Evagrius and the Philokalic tradition, St Cyril seems to be saying, ‘Philosophy teaches man to be in the image and after the likeness of the One who created him by the practice of ascesis.’ 

This makes even more sense if we actually look at the example Ševčenko cites for the ‘monkish’ definition of ‘philosophy’—St Nilus the Ascetic (†430). St Nilus accuses some of ‘the Greeks’, by which he means the pagan philosophers, of imagining ‘themselves to be engaged in metaphysics [logiken philosophian]’ but ‘neglecting praxis entirely’. [17] On the next page, he writes: 

For philosophy is a state of moral integrity combined with a doctrine of true knowledge concerning reality. Both Jews and Greeks fell short of this, for they rejected Wisdom that is from heaven and tried to philosophize without Christ, who alone has revealed the true philosophy in both His life and His teaching. For by the purity of His life He was the first to establish the way of true philosophy....[T]he true philosopher must renounce all life’s pleasures, mastering pains and passions, and paying scant attention to the body... [18] 

The extraordinary thing about these passages from St Nilus is that they are in fact not altogether removed from the ‘intellectual’ conception of philosophy that Ševčenko contrasts so strongly with the ‘monkish’ one supposedly exemplified by St Nilus. Rather, it almost seems as if St Nilus is directly confronting and objecting to the notion of philosophy as primarily a ‘technical rational activity’ (note that he chastises the Greeks for studying logiken philosophian but neglecting praxis). 

Furthermore, I am not at all convinced that Porphyry’s commentators and St Nilus are employing the word ‘philosophy’ in two different, unrelated senses. St Nilus’s own definition of philosophy as ‘a state of moral integrity [ethon katastasis] combined with a doctrine of true knowledge concerning reality [meta doxes tes peri tou ontos gnoseos alethous]’, while it is worded very differently, is similar in import not only to Porphyry’s commentators but especially to St Cyril’s particular version of their definitions. Note that St Nilus, assuming of course the aim of becoming like God, has the statement of the content of philosophy—‘true knowledge concerning reality’, corresponding to ‘knowledge of things divine and human’. But, like St Cyril’s, his definition also tells us the means of becoming like God—‘moral integrity’, or as he called it a few paragraphs previously, praxis. 

Now, I don’t know whether St Cyril would have read Evagrius or St Nilus (though his teacher, St Photius, discusses some writings of the latter in his Bibliotheca). But it is interesting to note the similarities between his definition of ‘philosophy’ and the latter’s, especially when Ševčenko himself has paused so over St Cyril’s inclusion of the reference to praxis. I am almost compelled to believe that St Cyril has added this reference perhaps even as a nod to St Nilus. 

My suspicions would seem to be further confirmed when we turn again to St Cyril’s life. Anthony-Emil Tachiaos tells us that immediately after the little viva voce examination in which the young man produced his famous definition of philosophy, he was given an important position in the capital as Director of the Patriarchal Secretariat. [19] Now, if St Cyril had been interested in praxis in the Aristotelian sense of the active life of business, such a position would have been the ideal path to a promising career. But Tachiaos writes that ‘he soon resigned and withdrew to a monastery on the Bosphorus, which was probably Kleidion monastery.’ [20] 

Here is a striking evidence ‘indeed’ that the praxis St Cyril had just been advocating is likely to have been Evagrian asceticism! In this light, the reference to praxis in his exam almost seems like a kind of foreshadowing, and the great missionary's subsequent act of withdrawal looks a good deal like a gloss on the definition he he had just given.

Readers of this blog realise, I think, that I’m generally confined to working with whatever resources I have at home or manage to find online. With the exception of Ševčenko’s fascinating article itself, obtained with the help of my good friend, Chris Rosser, theological librarian at Oklahoma Christian University, this post is no exception. To come up with a truly scholarly response to Ševčenko’s conclusions would require some serious research that is not only beyond my printed resources, however, but beyond my linguistic skills! Nevertheless, as a reasonably well-read layman, I can’t help but think that I’ve got something here that perhaps he missed over there at the Institute for Advanced Study all those years ago. [21] 

[1] Ihor Ševčenko, ‘The Definition of Philosophy in the Life of Saint Constantine’, For Roman Jakobson: Essays on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday, 11 October 1956 (The Hague: 1966), p. 450. 

[2] Ibid., pp. 450-1. 

[3] Ibid., p. 451. 

[4] Ibid., p. 454. 

[5] Ibid., p. 456. 

[6] Ibid., p. 455. 

[7] For this, Ševčenko cites St Nilus the Ascetic in PG, LXXIX, 720A; 721D—723AB (Ševčenko, p. 449, n. 2), about whom more below. 

[8] Ibid., p. 449. 

[9] Ibid., p. 457. 

[10] Ibid., p. 453. 

[11] Ibid., p. 453. 

[12] Douglas Burton-Christie, The Word in the Desert: Scripture & the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism (NY: Oxford, 1993), p. 49; quoting from A.D. Nock, Conversion (London: Oxford, 1933), p. 179. 

[13] Porphyry, ‘On the Life of Plotinus & the Arrangement of His Work’, The Enneads, by Plotinus, tr. Stephen MacKenna, abgd. John Dillon (London: Penguin, 1991), p. cii. I should perhaps add, however, for readers that may lack the background in ascetic theology, that Porphyry’s statement suggests a literal contempt for the material body per se that is absent in the Fathers, even in their most ascetic moments. Having excerpted a passage from Evagrius in such a moment, Fr Placide (Deseille) notes (Orthodox Spirituality & the Philokalia, tr. Anthony P. Gythiel [Wichita, KS: Eighth Day, 2008]): 

It would be a mistake to see in this bodily asceticism scorn for the body or a wish to ignore it. Quite the opposite, asceticism proceeds from a deep conviction about the unity of the human composite. For the Fathers, the link between body and soul is so intimate that all inner attitudes must “take shape” in an external behavior. (p. 119) 

Christian asceticism is based on the call to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Christ (Matt. 16:24), and St Paul’s example of bringing his body into subjection (I Cor. 9:27) and ‘bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body’ (II Cor. 4:10). 

[14] C.S. Lewis, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval & Renaissance Literature (Cambridge: Canto-Cambridge, 2002), p. 47. 

[15] They were also a socio-economic elite. Burton-Christie quotes Garth Fowden’s observation that most pagan ‘holy men do seem to have come from prosperous backgrounds’ (p. 50). 

[16] Fr Andrew Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys (Oxford: Clarendon-Oxford, 1981), pp. 102-3. 

[17] St Nilus the Ascetic, ‘Ascetic Discourse’, The Philokalia: The Complete Text, Vol. 1, tr. G.E.H. Palmer, et al. (London: Faber, 1983), p. 200; Η Φιλοκαλία των Ιερών Νηπτικών, Τόμος A΄ (Athens: Astir, 1962), p. 190. The first phrase in quotes is taken from the Faber translation of the Philokalia, the second is my own translation from the Astir edition. 

[18] St Nilus, p. 201; GT, p. 191. 

[19] Anthony-Emil N. Tachiaos, Cyril & Methodius of Thessalonica: The Acculturation of the Slavs (Crestwood, NY: SVS, 2001), p. 28. 

[20] Tachiaos, p. 29. 

[21] I take some comfort in the fact that it seems one F. Grivec, who published in the Orientalia Christiana Periodica, XVII (1951), seems to have agreed with me, though I don’t know whether he mentioned St Nilus at all. At any rate, Ševčenko mentions that ‘Fr Grivec arrives at an opposite conclusion [to me]. He sees in Constantine a philosopher after the fashion of the Fathers who identified asceticism, sanctity and philosophy, and writes quae philosophia Constantinum potius cum humilibus ascetis ac monachis quam cum superbis doctoribus sociabat’ (Ševčenko, p. 457, n. 61).

'Wise Men Hunt after Truth'—Introducing St Eustathius of Thessalonica

In a post back in March called ‘Robert Fitzgerald on Homer’, I quoted a passage from Fitzgerald’s postscript to the Odyssey where the famous translator made a reference to ‘the twelfth century archbishop of Thessaloniki, Eustathius’. [1] I myself then added in brackets the title ‘Saint’ just before the archbishop’s name. This took a little research, as I am ashamed to admit that I knew nothing of this man despite having lived in his city for two years. The warrant for the title was discovered in this excellent article (worth looking at for the beautiful images of Vatopaidi’s frescoes) from the online edition of Pemptousia, the magazine of faith and culture published by the Athonite Monastery of Vatopaidi, where Efthymios Tsigaridas refers to St Eustathius as ‘one of the most important spiritual figures of the 12th century’. [2]

Well, in the hustle and bustle of life, I managed to forget about St Eustathius—until yesterday. I was finally reading Peter Leithart’s Deep Exegesis: The Mystery of Reading Scripture, recommended to me by no less an authority than Esteban Vazquez, and happened to skip ahead a little bit, when I found this:

Christ was the ‘true Orpheus’, who brought his bride back from Hades, and Odysseus tied to the mast was a type of Jesus on the cross, resisting the siren temptations of the world. [3] Eustathius, twelfth-century bishop of Thessalonica, repeats a commonplace about the plant Hermes gives Odysseus to protect him from Circe’s magic:

By Hermes Homer most tellingly indicates the logos and by moly he indicates paideia, our spiritual education that is to say; for this can only be developed with great travail, ek molou, and by means of suffering and misfortune. The root of moly is black because the beginnings of paideia are always dark as shadows and extraordinarily ill-formed. Therefore our spiritual development is as the carrying of a heavy load and in no wise sweet. Yet moly has a flower and it is white as milk, for the end that paideia aims at and seeks to achieve, lies before us in a gleaming brightness and all is sweet and satisfying. Hermes it is who gives us this moly, and this is nothing less then those logos-inspired directives which do not by any means lie ready for the human understanding to grasp. For moly comes from God and is a gracious gift. [4]

At last my slumbering curiosity was aroused! Prevented by a faulty internet connection from making the mistake documented in this post, I searched through my own volumes at home until I came across the following passage in Vasiliev’s History of the Byzantine Empire:

Among the celebrated figures of the twelfth century in the field of general culture belongs also the talented teacher and friend of Michael Acominatus, the archbishop of Thessalonica, Eustathius, ‘the most brilliant luminary of the Byzantine world of learning since Michael Psellus’ (Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Athen, I, 205, 207). He received his education in Constantinople, became deacon of the church of St Sophia, and was a teacher of rhetoric. He wrote most of his works there, but his historical writings and various occasional compositions he wrote later at Thessalonica. Eustathius’ house in Constantinople was a sort of school for young students; it became a center around which the best minds of the capital and youths anxious to learn collected. As religious head of Thessalonica, the city next in importance to the capital, Eustathius devoted much of his energy to raising the spiritual and moral standard of contemporary monastic conditions, which sometimes created enemies against him among the monks. From a cultural point of view his repeated appeals to the monks not to squander the treasures of the libraries are very interesting; he wrote: ‘Woe to me! Why will you, O dunces, liken a monastic library to your souls? As you do not possess any knowledge, you are willing to deprive the library also of its scientific means? Let it preserve its treasures. After you there will come either a man of learning or an admirer of science, and the first, by spending a certain time in the libraries, will grow more clever than he was before; the other, ashamed of his complete ignorance, will, by reading books, find that which he desires’ (Migne, PG CXXXV, 836). Eustathius died between 1192 and 1194. His pupil and friend, the metropolitan of Athens, Michael Acominatus, honored his memory with a moving funeral oration. 

A thoughtful observer of the political life of his epoch, an educated theologian who boldly acknowledged the corruption of monastic life, as well as a profound scholar whose knowledge in ancient literature secured him an honorable place not only in the history of Byzantine civilization but also in the history of classical philology, Eustathius is undoubtedly a prominent personality in the cultural life of Byzantium in the twelfth century. His literary legacy may be divided into two groups: in the first group are his vast and accurate commentaries on the Iliad and Odyssey, on Pindarus, and some others; to the second group belong the works written at Thessalonica: a history of the conquest of Thessalonica by the Normans in 1185; his very important correspondence; the famous treatise on the reforms of monastic life; an oration on the occasion of the death of the Emperor Manuel, and other writings. Eustathius’ works have not yet been adequately used for the study of the political and cultural history of Byzantium. [5]

Leaving no print stone unturned, I even ransacked Lesky’s History of Greek Literature for references to Eustathius—the most interesting of which was: ‘In the commentary on the two poems compiled by Eustathius, archbishop of Thessalonica from 1175, a good deal of ancient criticism and exegesis survives, embedded in a prolix exposition. The work of the four men [‘scholars who were influention in transmitting Alexandrian learning to posterity’] was known to him through the commentary of Apion and Herodorus.’ [6] Stephen Scully (on whom there will be more in future posts) quotes the archbishop on the sanctity of the polis: ‘Not only is Thebes (in the Troad) called sacred [hiere], but so is every polis, as it guards those within, which [act of guarding], indeed, is divine [theion] (at Il. I.366).’ [7]

Kazhdan’s and Epstein’s Change in Byzantine Culture in the Eleventh & Twelfth Centuries yielded a bit more. There is the remark that ‘Eustathios was one of the best-educated scholars of his time, an excellent representative of the self-conscious, intellectual elite of twelfth-century Byzantine society....Eustathios’s influence on his associates is evident in their quotations from his works and in their imitations of his literary style.’ [8] There is a longish passage on the expansion of ‘naturalistic detail...into a spacial and social dimension’ [9] in St Eustathius’s writing, [10] supplemented by a sizeable excerpt from his description of the fall of Thessaloniki to the Normans in the Appendix. [11] But more interestingly, there are the following observations concerning his Homeric criticism:

Homeric criticism became more profound and varied in the twelfth century. Though Eustathios of Thessaloniki was familiar with the ancient commentaries, now lost, his exegesis was often the fruit of his own consideration. He did not restrict himself to the interpretation of difficult words and grammatical constructions; rather he attempted to understand Homeric heros in terms of contemporary linguistic usage, ethnography, political institutions, and cultural life. Also included in his explanations of the text are popular folkloric elements—dwarfs in England (Inglika) who used arrows tiny as needles, inhabitants of Taurika, probably the Kievan Rus, who made wooden books out of boxes. [12]

When I finally exhausted the possibilities on my shelves, the internet had returned and I duly poked around a bit. From the Orthodox, there was a rather second-rate article on ‘Hellenic Paideia &Church Fathers’ by Demetrios Constantelos, author of the lamentable Marriage, Sexuality, & Celibacy: A Greek Orthodox View, in which by far the most interesting comment on St Eustathius is a quotation from the funeral oration preached for him by Michael Acominatus—‘all young students of literature sought his company, and his home was truly a shrine of the Muses, another Academy, Stoa, and Peripatos.’ [13]

More imporantly, there was a great treatment of St Eustathius in Philip Schaff’s History of the Christian Church (found here, at CCEL). Schaff informs us, ‘His education was carried on in the convent of St Euphemia, but he became a monk in the convent of St Florus. He early distinguished himself for learning, piety and eloquence...’ He then writes glowingly of the Saint, ‘He was a model bishop, pious faithful, unselfish, unsparing in rebuke and wise in counsel, “one of those pure characters so rarely met among the Greeks [!]—a man who well knew the failings (superstition, mock-holiness and indecorous frivolity) of his nation and his times, which he was more exempt from than any of his contemporaries” (Neander IV, 530-1).’ [14]

It took me longest to find again something I had actually seen when I originally looked into the question of St Eustathius’s sanctity—Anthony Makrinos’s faculty page at the University College London website. Makrinos specialises in St Eustathius, and has Book 1 of his commentary on the Odyssey forthcoming from Brill. I look forward to tracking down some of Makrinos’s articles.

But I have saved the best for last. At the Notre Dame library site, I found a pdf of a translation by David Jenkins, David Bachrach, and Darin Hayton of the ‘introduction’ to St Eustathius’s commentary on the Iliad. I urge all to read the entire thing, and I am tempted to repost much of it here, but this post has already become intolerably long. I will content myself with one central controversial question:

However, since this work is full of myths there is the risk of wondering whether he runs afoul. First of all, these Homeric myths are not intended to be humorous. They are instead the phantoms or veils of noble thoughts. Some are molded by him to fit his subject matter, while others naturally allegorize his themes. Finally, many of these myths that were composed by the ancients and drawn aptly into his poetry are not allegories specifically related to the Trojans at all, but rather are used as those who first composed them intended. But a man so prolific in wisdom did not delight in myths alone. For if wisdom is truthful observation, then the wise man observes truthfully. How can we say that Homer did not do the same? He performed his art by bringing together many elements and mingling them together in his work. Thus, he first entices and charms by surface appearance then captures in this net, so they say, those who shrink from the subtlety of philosophy. Then, having given them a taste of the sweetness in truth, he sends them off to proceed as wise men to hunt after truth in other places. Moreover, he becomes the model for creating credible myths in order that he mgiht lead those eager to learn in this technique just as he does in all others. But it is especially remarkable that, although his work is full of myths, he is not shunned but loved. [15]

I’d love to see more of the Homeric criticism, and I’d also like to see more research on St Eustathius from an Orthodox theological perspective (I’m not sure that there’s been any to speak of—he’s not even mentioned in Fr Meyendorff’s Byzantine Theology). I’d be particularly interested in learning more about the veneration of the Saint. Despite the icon at Vatopaidi, [16] I’ve yet to see any references to a feastday or hymnography for him.

[1] Robert Fitzgerald, ‘Postscript’, The Odyssey, by Homer, tr. Robert Fitzgerald (NY: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1998), p. 476.

[2] Efthymios N. Tsigaridas, ‘The Wall-paintings of the Nave’, Pemptousia—accessed 13 June 2012, here.

[3] The Christian reading of Odysseus tied to the mast goes back at least to Clement of Alexandria, whose reference to the scene I first discovered here on the late, great blog, Ora et labora (Felix Culpa, wherever you are, you are in our prayers!), and later in the source from which it’s quoted there—Alan Jacobs’s wonderful A Theology of Reading: The Hermeneutics of Love (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2001), p. 13. Unfortunately, however, Jacobs believes such readings are not compatible with the ‘hermeneutics of love’ (not merely his own idea, but one based on St Augustine). I think Leithart is more on target here when he observes that the Christian allegorical reading of the pagans ‘reflects a profound insight into the supremacy and universality of Christ’ (p. 181).

[4] Peter Leithart, Deep Exegesis: The Mystery of Reading Scripture (Waco, TX: Baylor, 2009), pp. 180-1.

[5] A.A. Vasiliev, History of the Byzantine Empire 324-1453, Vol. 2, tr. (Madison, WI: U of Wisconsin, 1976), pp. 495-6.

[6] Albin Lesky, A History of Greek Literature, tr. Cornelis de Heer & James Willis (London: Duckworth, 1996), p. 77.

[7] Stephen Scully, Homer & the Sacred City (Ithaca, NY: Cornell, 1994), p. 21.

[8] A.P. Kazhdan & Ann Wharton Epstein, Change in Byzantine Culture in the 11^th & 12^th Centuries (Berkeley, CA: U of California, 1985), p. 218.

[9] Ibid., p. 216.

[10] Ibid., pp. 216-8.

[11] Ibid., p. 261-2.

[12] Ibid., p. 134.

[13] Demetrios J. Constantelos, ‘Hellenic Paideia & Church Fathers: Educational Principles & Cultural Heritage’, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America—accessed 13 June 2012, here.

[14] Philip Schaff, ‘Eustathius of Thessalonica’, History of the Christian Church, Vol. IV: Medieval Christianity from Gregory I to Gregory VII, AD 590-1073—accessed 13 June 2012, here.

[15] Eustathios of Thessaloniki, ‘Critical Remarks on Homer’s Iliad: Introduction’, tr. David Jenkins, David Bachrach, & Darin Hayton, Byzantine Studies Collection, Hesburgh Libraries—University of Notre Dame—accessed 13 June 2012, here.

[16] The only other reference I’ve seen to him so far as a Saint is in the title of Constantelos’s source—Agios Eustathios Praktika Theologikou Synedriou ['Saint Eustathios—Acts of the Theological Conference'], ed. Christoforos Kontakis (Thessaloniki 1989). I have of course looked in the indexes to the Prologue from Ochrid and the HTM Great Horologion.